Interviews

LWW: You’re known for your indie, creator-owned work such as Strangers In Paradise - how did you get the Runaways and Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane assignments at Marvel?

TM: I’m actually working on my Runaways script right now.

What issue number are you working on at the moment?

I’m finishing up #4 and I have to be quick about it because Humberto Ramos, the artist, is really fast and he’s already started drawing the early pages. I am racing trying to stay ahead of him, he’s so fast. It’s usually the writer who’s ahead of the artist but that hasn’t been the case with this book.

Do you feel pressured by that?

Yes, I have to stay ahead of him, I don’t want him to lose momentum, I don’t want it to be my fault. It keeps me on my toes.

I got this job by just making a ‘phone call. I knew that I was about to close out the Strangers In Paradise series and I wanted to take a year away from my creator role to do some mainstream. I thought it would be a breath of fresh air, clear my head. I’d been talking to DC because I wanted to do Supergirl, but they already had a team going and they were busy doing their own thing, there was no way they would just hand it over to me, so I called Joe [Quesada] and said ‘Do you have anything over there for me, I’d like to do a project inbetween books of mine.’ He said ‘Yea, let me talk to the editors and call you back.’ And he gave me a callback within a couple of hours and said ‘Here’s a couple of books we think you might enjoy.’ And it was Runaways and Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane.

Wow, as easy as that?

That was it, I had the job.

Had you read much of either title beforehand?

I knew about Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane, I knew enough about it to know it was an all-ages book, but I did have to go back and read everything on both titles, again, but after I’d taken the job.

I guess it’s helpful that they’re both fairly short runs.

Yeah. You would think, but there seemed to be an awful lot of material. It’s not like taking on X-Men, sure, but they both had maybe 4 years under their belt.

They’ve both got quite a lot of plot fitted into those years.

They do. It felt like studying for a driver’s test. I was taking copious notes, I didn’t know what I needed to know, so I tried to learn everything.

Your contract with Marvel is for one year. Roughly how many issues of both titles will that equate to?

It’s supposed to be 12 issues each, and that divides into … they like to do six issues into a book collection, so it’s two books each.

What attracted you to … let’s take it one book at a time … what attracted you to Runaways as a title, given it’s not a book you’d already read?

I liked the fact that it’s an ensemble cast. It’s a lot of fun to write ensemble because you get so many different character voices going and as a writer that’s just fun. I liked the fact that they were on the West Coast, away from all the big teams and all the big action on the East Coast. That’s where are all the concerns and problems with continuity are. The Runaways are in their own little world, I didn’t have to worry about continuity any more. I’m a Marvel rookie so that’s a good thing for me.

Until the X-Men picked up and moved to San Francisco!

Imagine being the new guy and they give you a book where every word you say has to be approve by all the other groups because your character is involved in all these other crossovers. I don’t have to worry about that stuff, I’m happy about it.

Will there be much involvement with the rest of the Marvel Universe for the Runaways?

From time to time. They certainly acknowledge each others existence, especially now I’ve got one of the last remaining Skrulls in the universe, that comes in to play, but I’m pretty autonomous.

That is quite an unusual situation, isn’t it, for a Marvel book at the moment – to have a Skrull as one of the good guys.

It’s nearly unique, and not only do I have a Skrull – a real one. The only other one I know of that’s on a team is a half-Skrull, a Changeling – I have a full Skrull and they’re a female. How many female Skrulls do you know? So that’s pretty cool too.

Has Secret Invasion and the generalities of that plot impacted on your writing of Runaways or will that just be dealt with in the Runaways/Secret Invasion mini-series?

No, it impacted on me a lot because one of my original ideas for the big storyarc utilised my Skrull, Xavin, and that story idea has changed drastically and then finally had to be almost thrown out because of what was going on in the rest of the Marvel Universe. I still think it’s a terrific idea but I’m going to have to modify it and figure out another way to do it. The Marvel machinations of the Skrull invasion have affected me even though my character is not directly involved in the fight.

Is it intimidating to follow two big name mainstream comics writers – Brian K. Vaughan and Joss Whedon – on Runaways, with you coming from a different kind of comics background?

[Long pause] It’s … it’s not intimidating but it doe make you have to say, okay, where’s my place in all this. It’s not that intimidating because I’m always trying to play with the big guys, you know? I see these guys as people I can relate to. It’s not like trying to follow Alan Moore, let me put it that way. I’m not intimidated by many people, but I would not want to follow Alan Moore on a project. It does make me realise – and I knew this going in – you have to think about it and what I’m going to do. You can’t try to be the junior version of each one, you can’t be a clone, I can’t write like either one, so you have to think … it’s kind of like administrations. They have their turn, now it’s my turn, how am I going to make it better and still make it a Runaways book. It’s like Runaways is The Yardbirds and I’m the third guitarist they’ve had. If you’re intimidated by the first two guys they had then you probably shouldn’t apply for the job.

What do you think you’ll bring to the table that’s different from what we’ve seen before in Runaways?

It comes down to characterisation and imagination, I think everybody has something to offer if they rely on things like that. The previous guys, they have their interests and the stories they want to tell and I have mine. You can do it with the same group of characters. My focus is a little bit different to each one of those guys, although I think we all come from the same plan, and maybe that’s why the editors picked me. We all three care about the characters and the emotional turmoil of life and ordinary people dealing with extraordinary circumstances, that’s where the story is, and the friction that can crop up within a team. That’s the fun of this series, to watch these kids … in the early stage they’re not only trying to figure out their powers and the world.

One of the things that’s interesting to me about both Marvel titles you’re working is that … with Mary Jane we’ve got the whole supporting cast who are the stars of the book, and many of them are real women without superpowers dealing with situations that many younger readers will be dealing with. With Runaways, even though it’s a superhero book it’s very much about real people and how those kind of characters are dealing with an unreal situation. You’re known for depicting real looking and acting in women in real situations, in Strangers In Paradise, for example …

It’s a time honoured tradition in literature to explore situations like that. You get a bunch of people and put them in an elevator or a bus stop and you write a play about. We’re continuing a fine literary tradition of throwing an assortment of magic and people into a situation and … that was the original appeal of shows like Heroes and Lost and if you stay in that focus it can maintain its appeal. I think that’s one of the important things about letting new writers come I every once in a while. They refresh the outlook like that.

Runaways has this terrific strong female cast and issues of bisexuality and fluid sexuality that obviously echo themes found in Strangers In Paradise. How much of those kind of themes are you looking to explore in Runaways or is that something you think, ‘I did 90 issues of that, I want to take things a different way.’

I certainly don’t want to go from title to title taking the same box of tools with me. There’s more to life than that but I have to respect the characters and what they’re doing. In all honesty, I approach the story and I’m aware of all that stuff and I could handle it correctly or incorrectly, so I tread carefully. I’m not going to go in there and say ‘now it’s going to be Runaways my style’ and make them copycats of my iconic characterisations, I’m very careful about that. It’s really not that hard to take a different voice. I feel like an actor, like last year I took this one character and this year I’m taking a totally different character in a different play and last year I was a Gladiator and this year I’m the Math King. Russell Crowe didn’t act like a Roman Gladiator when he did the Math genius story. That’s how I approach it as a writer – I think Nico and Karolina have their own dynamic and it’s a totally different story and the next thing you know I’m on their turf and I’m using their boundaries, their rules, their capabilities and limits … it’s more confusing to think of that situation from the outside than it is to be in the middle of it. It’s harder to describe than it is to deal with it.

Given that there are similar themes – even though the characters and characterisation are different – did you have to approach those themes in a different way because you’re working for a big publisher as opposed to self-publishing?

Oh yeah. A lot of adapting and thinking on your feet. I can’t make any reference to things political or religious, I can’t say ‘Oh my god’ or things like that that tend to come out on the page naturally. It does make you think on your feet because it’s actually … writing for a mainstream publisher is a lot like writing a 1960s sit-com where you’re trying to write a sophisticated story an adult can enjoy but you have to imply many things so that the kids can have a funny story they just enjoy but the adults can get the undertones. When I go back and look at Doris Day movies, that stuff is all there. I didn’t see it as a kid, I didn’t know Doris Day and Rock Hudson were talking about sleeping together that night. I mean I knew it, but I didn’t get it. I knew they were talking about that but it wasn’t until I watched them as an adult that I realised ‘oh, they’re horny!’ [laughter]. It’s kinda like that, you have to say things to spur the imagination, you say things without saying them, a lot of things are subliminal. It’s fun to put them in there because it makes the story a little pert and they’ll be there for the second and third read for the younger person when they want to get back to it.

What do you enjoy most about writing Runaways?

What I’ve enjoyed most so far is that they can something extraordinary when they want to. I’m writing teenagers and the 12 year old girl can throw a Buick in the ocean. Nico, when she runs out of the ability to talk someone into something, she can just use magic. I like writing stories where magic is real and little girls can do incredible things.

Is there one Runaways who’s harder to write than the others?

Yeah, there is, and I can’t explain it very well because you haven’t seen the last issue of Joss Whedon’s story yet … but he leaves me with a new Runaways, a new character, and I’m trying to find the voice and I’m the one making the voice, it’s tricky. The others, the ones who’ve been around all along, there’s something about everyone that there’s not a problem for me to find the voice of the characters. Writing them is like watching a movie and there’s six characters with six personalities and six voices and you appreciate them all, just like South Park. You would know how to write each character in South Park.

What kind of villains are you planning on using?

In the first storyline they’re dealing with some of the repercussions of something that happened in [BK] Vaughan’s run. The moral of the story is you don’t get away with anything. There are consequences. That’s what the villain is in my big first arc. It’s a big deal.

One of the things I find particularly enjoyable about Runaways is the generation clash, starting with the parents as villains and Joss Whedon then using Gert’s parents as villains. Do you plan on using any of the parents?

No … they are the villains of the story but not necessarily ‘in your face. What the kids are dealing with is the aftermath of what the parents have done.The ‘sins of the father’ type of thing. In that sense they are a very real presence in the story.

Thinking about Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane, can you tell us a little about the cast that you’ll be using in the book? Will it be much different?

It’s the same cast. I have added a new character. There’s a new girl in acting class. I feel free to bring in a lot of ‘B characters’, people who come in and need to say a line here or there. I don’t feel compelled to make every single spoken line come fro a major character, because it’s high school – you know a hundred people at high school. Somebody walks down the hall and says something and moves the scene along, it doesn’t mean we have to see them again, although I’m trying to keep track of them. Mary Jane knows a lot of people.

What can you tell us about the new character you’ll be adding to the cast?

Not too much to tell, really, mainly because she doesn’t come into the story and then splash our her whole ‘Here’s who I am!’, she’s more of a wallflower and her story is more about bringing her out of herself.

What’s the state of play for Peter and MJ at the start of your run?

My approach is going to be that all the printed material so far happened in their Freshmen year of High School, their first year, so between [Sean] McKeever’s run and mine I installed a summer break and now they’re coming back into their sophomore year so it’s kind of like second form at Mallory towers for me. Peter and Mary Jane are just as friendly and close as they’ve ever been. As they get a little older – I’m thinking of them now as 16 – they’re feeling a little bit more able to talk to each other as friends. Their relationship … it’s beginning to slightly mature a little bit, they’re becoming comfortable walking down the sidewalk together etc. It’s funny, I have to remember they’re still young, I’m also making sure I’m writing the stories so that a 12 year old girl can pick up and read it and enjoy it and not only the plotlines but the words have to ring true.

Does it feel strange writing a book about Peter and MJ and this kind of close interaction in the wake of One More Day/Brand New Day?

It doesn’t, because I secretly didn’t read it [chuckles]

You and me both. [Friendly laughter]

The only reason I really wanted to do Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane was because Gwen Stacey is alive and in the cast and I kind of stopped reading Spider-Man the day they killed Gwen Stacey. I thought that was a terrible, terrible idea and I haven’t read the book since. When I heard that Peter was gonna marry Mary Jane and they got married I thought … that’s just so wrong, because to me that’s the alternative life, his life was supposed to be with Gwen, and MJ was always supposed to be the feisty friend. You had the perfect triangle there and they totally, totally, completely ruined the future of the title by killing Gwen and ruining the triangle and then it’s nothing but a guy waiting for a Venom suit. I never did approve of the marriage, anyway. I’m like an old Jewish father “I don’t approve of this marriage” and I never formally endorsed and now that it’s dissolved – just as I knew it would always end in ruin – I don’t care!

My attitude is that my title, Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane, because it’s high school and it’s the entire original cast, mine is the only legitimate Spider-Man book left [guffaws of laughter]. I have the only book that Stan Lee and Steven Ditko could possibly recognise. I feel really good about that. And because there’s a Gwen … I’m thinking where there’s a Gwen there’s always hope, maybe we can rewrite that wrong somehow.

You will notice that on my other title, the Runaways have a time machine. I was thinking about this. If Peter could use a time machine for just one day he’d go back to that day with the Green Goblin. We could totally fix the entire Marvel universe. That’s my subversive plot to overthrow the entire Marvel universe via this one modest little title. [Chortling] Obviously I’ve had way too much time to think that one through.

That’s the sign of a true comics fan isn’t it?

See! I’m really a comic geek at heart. One who had his heart broke and 1971 and never got over it. That’s a real geek [Laughs].

You’ve never gotten over that first crushing.

What a geek.

What I like most about Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane … I always felt when I was reading Spider-Man comics that the most interesting things – the most interesting stories and scenes were with the supporting cast, and my attention would start to wander when Spider-Man came on because I was much more interested in those other characters. Here we are with Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane and Spider-Man pops up now and then but it’s Peter Parker’s boo, it’s Mary Jane’s book, and Spider-Man’s the incidental guy in it all.

Exactly. I totally agree. I’m always interested in the discovery period of these kind of stories. Once they leave their training and discovery and adapting part of the story they lose me. Once they get out their in the cosmos and start saving the universe I’m bored. I love the discovery process and the roots of it all. Working on this title has, for the first time, driven home that here’s a 15/16 year old boy underneath that suit and here he is at lunch and it’s raining outside and later on that day he’s downtime fighting some big grown up guy … it really drives home that there’s still a kid inside of here. I enjoy all that, it’s kinda like being able to go back and look at it from a different perspective now. In the early Spider-Man stories … I love the part where they were in school the most, being able to relate to it all. I agree, I think that’s the charm of the whole book.

I think as well when Peter puts on the costume – even now in 616 he reverts to being a 15/16 year old boy again, hence the wise-cracking and almost psychological beating he gives the villains. It’s a ‘back to high school’ thing going on there.

Yeah, and it’s got to have a certain genuine ring to it like the young teen that drives around in the car and laughs at the neighbours poodle as opposed to some girl now who’s mouthing of like a professional wrestler. One is kinda funny and the other on is really kinda isn’t. It has to have a certain sincerity to it, an age appropriate sincerity to it in order to appeal.

One thing I like about the title is that the reader is never shown that Peter Parker is Spider-Man because the reader is only allowed to know what Mary Jane knows. I like that too.

It’s a really nice conceit.

One of the rules that I’m to follow is that never the twain shall meet. Mary Jane has a relationship with Spider-Man and a relationship with Peter Parker and they’re two different friendships. I like that.

How much of Spider-Man will we see in Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane? Will it be roughly the same ratio as before?

Probably the same, maybe even a little less actually. I’m actually a little gun shy of showing too much. When I turned in my first two scripts I had a little too much. Some of the action in Manhattan spilled over back into Queens and the editor called me up and said ‘That’s too much, I don’t want Mary Jane being actually face to face with that side of … and all’ so I backed off a lot and he more I focused on Mary Jane and school the more it sucked me in to being able to become more comfortable just sticking with her world. I think it’s interesting to keep reminding the reader that she lives in this incredible place where you turn on the nightly news and the footage of what happened downtown that day is unbelievable. There’s a little bit of a magic to it all in your stay at home world when it’s all happening out there. It’s a little more magical that way.

And Mary Jane can have a different kind of relationship with Spider-Man because she’s not in imminent danger all the time. She sees the news and knows there’s the dangerous side of it, but she’s able to separate herself from that.

She also have an instinctive notion that Spider-Man is basically he age, her peer, which is one of the reasons she’s comfortable enough to talk to him, form a crush and all that. As that really puts a new light on Spider-Man’s appeal … there’s a scene where they’re walking home in her neighbourhood, he’s walking her home, and it really strikes you – if he’s downtown swinging and in danger you just see this very powerful icon. When he’s in her neighbourhood and he’s walking down the sidewalk with her, you’re reminded: this is a sixteen year old boy in tights walking down the sidewalk, it’s kinda funny. [laughs] I don’t know if I could do that.

When I was a kid I always pictured the fighting and the swinging and the villains and the adoration, I never pictured walking down the street in my tights and a mask and it’s hot outside and you’re talking to a girl and … it’s kinda embarrassing.

That would be totally weird.

It’s like being on a bus with Vikings – when they’re out of place, it’s a little weird.

What’s the most exciting thing about this book for you?

I think being able to explore a new point of view, like we’ve just been talking about, because as I write the book I’m very aware of the fresh perspective it gives me for characters I’ve read for a long time. I’m able to enjoy them in a whole new light now because of the viewpoint that this particular book offers. It’s been a treat for me as a writer.

How will you be using Felicia Hardy as part of the cast?

I like her, I’m always looking for a place for her to walk in and hurt someone’s feelings.

It’s fantastic that you’ve got so many strong female characters to draw upon who aren’t ‘the love interests’. It’s almost like Harry and Peter are the love interests. How much of a treat that for a writer?

It’s fantastic. My perspective is that these girls are actually incredibly strong and interesting women that we happen to be catching about ten years early. There are great women in the making. Imagine Mary Jane being an unbelievably cool woman … but ten years early. It’s interesting to be able to enjoy it, to see the woman that Mary Jane came from, what experiences and passion formed her? What better place to do that than in high school? High School is quite a gauntlet to run. It’s really a place to forge character.

One of the interesting comparisons between this and a regular 616 Spider-Man title is that the supporting cast can take centre-stage and we see that these really are smart women in a way that can’t always be seen in 616 because the focus of the interaction has to be on Spider-Man and Peter. How much do you enjoy playing with that and how much of a challenge is it to show the building towards the strong women that we know they become, and finding the right age, developmentally, that they’re at at this point in High School?

As a writer this is what it’s all about. Writers tend to fall into two groups. There may be a group that wants to write about people, and another group that likes to write about events and action and I’m a people person, I love to write about characterisation, and I think if you really settle down and think about people from the inside out and try to explore that in a story you end up with something everyone can read and relate to, so it’s very rewarding to dive into a cast of characters like this because it’s rewarding for me and I end up with a story I can enjoy and maybe other people can enjoy as well. It’s interesting, you would think you would have to be sixteen to be interested in a story about a sixteen year old but that’s not the case at all because all of us look back in our memories at moments in life and replay them with fondness or regrets and that’s no different to reading an issue of this title. You’re looking back at people that represent your own youth and watching these moments play out again and wonder what might have happened if things had played out a little bit differently.

I can relate to it, even at my age. It’s not difficult to write!

I’ve been enjoying a lot of the DC/minx line books, and there’s a similar thing in that they’re often about or focused on teenage girls and aimed at them, but things like The Plain Janes I’ve really enjoyed. Have you read much of the minx line?

I have not.

Echo is your new creator-owned book. How would you explain the concept to the unfamiliar?

It depends which concept you want. I’ve learned there are two ways to pitch a concept to people. If you’re talking to book people then you describe the basic plot with all its facets and they go ‘Ooh, cool’ but if you say that to someone from Hollywood they think you don’t have a handle on the essence of the story, ‘What is the essence of the story?’ I’ve come up with both answers now. Which one do you want?

The book one.

Okay. The book one … I had this idea about a woman, an everyday woman who’s a really likeable loser, and she’s out in the desert near Area 51 and there’s an explosion overhead and it rains down this fallout, a liquid microid, and this stuff sticks to her, she can’t get it off, and it throws her into this story of adventure where it totally changes her life. The people who created this stuff want it back, the further she gets into her story she realises this stuff is not harmless at all, it’s actually a new kind of liquid atomic bomb and a tremendous threat to the future of our country and everything and suddenly decides she doesn’t want to give it back to the people who want and she goes on the run and they come after her.

That was my original notion that hit me in one second while I was staring at my navel. I saw the way I want to tell the story as something like a cross between X-Files and The Fugitive. That was the whole embryonic notion and that’s the same gameplan I’m following through on.

Julie, the central character, is at a stage in her life where she’s pretty much able to cut and run. There’s the message on her answer machine in the first issue with her husband saying ‘we need to get those papers signed and the divorce finalised’, she’s not got those things holding her back. Is the book a voyage of discovery for her as she deals with her changing personal life and this new chapter that’s opening up?

Yes, tracking back to the essence of the story, this woman who has never been able to make a real connection in life finally is able to make it by connecting with a woman who is dead. So there’s actually a poignant story at the heart of this with this woman who is actually very nice, very likeable, and who just through a run of bad luck or something has never been able to achieve significant relationships in her life. If you know anything about women then you know that this is absolutely crucial to her life, relationships are everything. This woman has been deprived of that joy and satisfaction. Her sister’s lost her mind, her husband … it’s just not worked out, her parents are dead. She’s totally on her own when all this happens, no-one to turn to, and she has to deal with … she’s thrown into this thing completely on her own. Lo and behold in the middle of all this chaos emerges another woman in her life and they get to make a connection in a very unusual way and it’s that connection that enables her to connect back with life, it gives her a much fuller life than she could ever have achieved before.

Is the dead woman Annie, the test pilot from issue #1?

Yes. She’s the woman who’s killed in the very first scene of the book, and she’s a major character in the entire series. [laughs]

Cool. I didn’t see that coming …

It’s the title Echo – the echo is the echo of Annie inside Julie. I’ve only read the first issue thus far but I’m very much enjoying it and looking forward to seeing where it’s going.

I’m glad you liked it on the basis of the first issue. Consider the first issue to be just a plane crash it’s like the first fifteen minutes of Lost. The rest of the issues … 2,3,4,5 … are when you find out who’s who and what’s what.

I must confess to being predisposed to liking the book, being a big fan of Strangers In Paradise. It’s like ‘Whoa! The new Terry Moore book!’ if you’ll forgive my gushing.

I hate that. [both laugh]

Strangers In Paradise … how hard a series was it for you to finish?

It was a lot of work. I worried about the ending for years because I realised that if the book had a bad ending it would spoil the series. I had obviously gone through the different computations of ending the book in my head, but I was very cautious about approaching the actual execution of it. It was … I lost an awful lot of sleep over that. It was really a kind of a ‘go to the mountain top’ thing for me to work out over a period of nine months and decide what I thought the ending was going to be. I think the process, the way you get through something like that … because I had fourteen years invested in this thing, and then have the capability of finishing on a high note or just really kind of losing everybody and the process was to first off think about all of that until you’re sick of thinking about it and then it finally leaves you and your imagination again, where you started from, and that’s when you finally get on it and are able to do the work. I worried about it so much I got sick of worrying about it and then I sat down and did what my heart told me and that was the ending I came up with.

What’s your favourite memory of Strangers In Paradise?

I have two favourite things that will always mean something to me. One of the first things was that after a lifetime of unsuccessfully trying to come up with good characters in comics I finally came up with a really good cast of characters and every day is just a joy to be able to have these great characters that I could give voice to. If I want to mouth off and be a manhole I have Freddie. If want to rage against the machine I have Katchoo. If I want to just hug everybody in sight I have Francine. If I wanted to be goofy I had Casey. It was all there, I had the whole package. Every cartoon I tried before it was a complete, total failure and suddenly I had the whole mob. The difference was just amazing.

I never took it for granted, and to this day I miss them. I miss not having those characters. That was really something, the dynamic of it all, of having those characters to live with and as a cartoonist it’s a joy. That’s why you cartoon.

The other thing was when I went out into the world and met readers. It was so great to see so many people from different walks of life embrace these characters and the humanity of the book. The whole book, he whole key was the characters trying to find peace, love and happiness. Everybody I ran into that read the series got that and were pulling for that so all these people I met over the years, all over the world, were really kind of also fans of peace, love and happiness and hoping somebody in the world could find it. It really restored my faith in humanity. If you sit around and watch the news on TV you’re in danger of thinking the world is going down the toilet, but when you go out and actually meet people it’s a lot better than the news makes it out to be. That’s what I learned, and those two experiences will lat me the rest of your life.

I can’t imagine what it must be like to stop writing such vivid characters after so many years, I can’t imagine closing the door on that and saying I’ve done this story now. Was it hard to reach that point of saying ‘okay, I need to bring this to a close now.’ Was there a temptation to keep writing more and more?

I think it felt like a band that needed some time off. My instincts told me they needed time off. I had accomplished what I had originally set out to do and it was time to wrap it up. I felt like the person who’s standing up in front of a room full of people and saying ‘I hate to tell you but it’s time to wrap it up.’ That’s what it felt like as a writer. It felt like I did have more to say, I just didn’t want to wear out my welcome. I thought, better to have some sort of ending so that we have a book with a beginning, a middle and an end and then … if I never write any more again, I can live with that. If I’m lucky enough to write more later, there’ll be a place for that.

I must interject that when you’re writing characters that long you get into that dynamic – even on my small scale – where the characters are much bigger than you are, like Harry Potter, Sherlock Holmes and James Bond. You’re not a creator any more, you’re more of a guardian of this character that the world has embraced. It’s all about the characters, it’s not about the writer. We all love Harry Potter, we don’t love JK Rowling. I realised that I was meeting fans not of me but of Katchoo and Francine and all and your job after a while is just don’t screw them up. Don’t kill them, don’t do something out of character, blah blah blah. That’s why I was so obsessive about Gwen Stacey dying. That was a case of bad characterisation. That was the opposite of what I’m about. You get to the point where you can’t do anything right and you paint yourself into a corner and that’s why books change. Ian Fleming, Conan Doyle, they both tried to kill off their characters unsuccessfully, so I was contemplating the same thing. Do I start just reiterating myself in the stories and become my own repetitive genre or do I get out while I think I still have a couple of original lines, and I chose the latter.

Thinking of Francine, Katchoo, they’re really … especially when you look eleven, twelve years ago when you were planning the book … they’re very far away from the comic book norm. Why did you make that decision to almost counterpoint the prevailing comic book types?

I think it was because I didn’t have a broad awareness of what the comic book type was. My reference points were cartooning and underground comics. I read mainstream but I stopped reading those when I was fairly young. My favourite cartoonists growing up were the American underground and the European storytellers like Crumb and Herge and Dan Wilson, those guys. My thought about cartooning was that you drew things that you couldn’t photograph. It wasn’t about trying to come up with the great American hero it was all about showing embarrassing moments in life with the power of the pen.

I’m struck that you’ve mentioned theatre, acting and actors a number of times during this interview. Is there either a frustrated actor inside you or is theatre something you’d like to write for?

I grew up in a film family, my father was a director and I worked on production crews when I was going up, and for about ten years I was a film and television editor. I’m a huge film buff anyway, but with that background … it’s easy for me to relate in terms of them. I’ve pooled a lot of my personal creative resources when I need a reference or something, in how I think about it. I use film in imagery a lot, and in my head, in how things work in storytelling, certainly moreso than comics. The great comic book artists … I can only name the great ones on one hand, I’m not an historian or a big fan, by no means. I know a lot more about comic strips than I do about comic books so I think that may be one of the reasons why I was stupid enough to think I could do it and do it my way. I’m still doing what I’ve always done.

When you’re drawing a comic, then, do you imagine it almost as if you’re thinking about … take, for example, Echo … do you imagine it in a film setting, thinking about where the camera would be?

Absolutely. I’m not trying to make a comic book, I’m trying to make a TV series and I look at each issue like an episode and I think of it when I’m blowing up the panels. I think about the camera angle not page framing and all that. I think in terms of the ebb and flow of the momentum of the issue as like an episode in the series. I definitely do that. On Strangers In Paradise I fell into the world of literature, poetry or songwriting a lot and I’m really trying to do it as if I’m working on paper. Sometimes I’d be writing a scene and I’d work on it as if it were a play, sometimes I’d look at a scene and think ‘if this is a movie how would it play it out?’ … I draw on everything. I felt really pleased to do that. I don’t work inside a genre with limits, I feel more like a hybrid media kid whose got as million influences and it all comes out in one … sausage. [big laugh] My work is sausage!

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