I actually started trying to be a professional writer with novels, and I wrote two that exist and are around... kind of. But they never really went anyplace in particular. I still like them both. What it showed me was that you can spend years on a novel, and then it could just be, like, OK, you spent that time and that's that.
'Thunderbolts' I was mostly attracted to because I really wanted to write Punisher and Elektra and Deadpool, who are characters I have always really enjoyed. But the funny thing is that over time, I came to really like Red Leader; he became one of my favorite guys in the book. Sometimes characters surprise you.
The thing about Red Lanterns is that, while they have light powers and they have a power battery, they also have this weird shamanistic kind of blood magic side to them.
The Marvel universe is a deep, weird, woolly place, and getting to expose strange corners of it is part of the fun of 'She-Hulk.' Honestly, it's part of the fun of any Marvel book.
The Inhumans, just as an idea - the idea that you were an ordinary horseman until you were exposed to this catalyst that is a very rare element - is a neat idea in and of itself.
The Inhumans are almost a mythological creation unto themselves. They're royalty, and are always involved in Marvel's cosmic events. But with the explosion of the Terrigen bomb and these new Inhumans coming to light, it brings a new street level aspect to add to the royalty aspect.
The first comic I can remember ever reading was a 'Fantastic Four' issue that my dad bought out of the drugstore once. The thing that struck me about it was that the ending wasn't an ending. It was essentially a cliffhanger. It was the first time I had ever read anything like that, where you read a book, but the book isn't the book.
The decision to work with Marvel for a while isn't any sort of denigration of DC. I had a fantastic time there, I was treated extremely well, I have strong positive feelings about all of my editors and the DC universe of characters, and I look forward to hopefully working with them at some point down the road.
One of the things that's been really fun about my run on 'Swamp Thing' is putting him in all kinds of different locations around the world, and seeing how his exterior foliage changes based on his location.
Of all the things I've done, the first 'Strongman' story was one of the easiest things to write. It was almost fully formed from the get-go. It's almost a 'Dark Knight Returns' riff, except you have a battle-worn Mexican wrestler instead of Batman.
It's kind of like when you have guests coming over to your house, and you haven't really picked up in awhile, and you look around and say, 'Wow, my place is kind of a mess, but I never noticed it because it's what I've been living in every day.' That's kind of what Supergirl is to the Red Lanterns.
I've been a Marvel reader since I was just a kid, and I've dreamed of being a Marvel writer for almost as long, so being tapped to officially join the team is truly something.
I'm an attorney when I'm not writing comics, and have been for years. That's a side of my life I don't always associate with pure creativity, but it's all worked out nicely.
I think to this day, 'Superman/Wonder Woman' is probably one of the trickiest things I've been working on. It's like being asked to write a 'Star Wars' movie or something like that. You don't know how you're going to handle it; you don't know if you can. You don't know if you should be the guy.
I love comics work, and I hope I never stop doing it. But at the same time, I have my own law practice that I've built up over quite a while - it's been more than a decade that I've spent building that business - so it seems a little premature to just shut it down after nine months of working at a high level in comics. We'll see.
I like learning things, and I like that writing comics is an excuse to look into new stuff and research and learn new things and hopefully put them in books.
For 'Inhuman,' it's a 'chess game' series. You have a lot of pieces moving different ways at once, and it's about what they do on their own and what happens when they collide into one another. It's about long-range planning, new character creation, and trying to really build things.
I actually imagined 'Thunderbolts' as a straight-up comedy book in a lot of ways, like a very dark comedy book, whereas 'Red Lanterns' is more of a cosmic saga that has some jokes every once in a while.
