If you loved everything you were writing, you would be deluding yourself or a complete and absolute narcissist. It's not about liking what you write, it's about improving with every word, little by little, exploring your craft, becoming the artist you hope to be one day. And you can only do that by working at it every day. It doesn't happen overnight, it doesn't happen over a weekend, it is a lifelong pursuit.

I was on the set of the first Powers pilot, and an actor of color came up to me and said, "When I was a kid, my friends wouldn't let me play Batman or Superman, because I wasn't their color. But they would let me play Spider-Man. And that's the difference." And I realized I had heard this story a hundred times from different people, but I wasn't there in my head yet.

The one thing that Jessica [Johnson] and Miles[Morales] have in common is that there's a great many people in the audience who were desperate for that kind of material. They didn't say anything, didn't tell anybody.

I obviously love those characters ['The Avengers'] with my whole heart. I was on a one-man "Luke Cage is cool" campaign for most of the Aughts. When we announced the New Avengers line-up, and Luke Cage and Spider-Woman were there, a lot of fans went, "WHAT?!?!?! Bulls--t!" And I had to prove myself. They were right: I can't just announce they're cool. What's less cool than that? I have to show that they're cool! But this is way farther than I ever thought it would go.

You can't just have a fight scene. In my opinion, it has to be a character moment or story moment.

One of the things I like to do is people's hearts are on their sleeve, whether it's a good or a bad heart. And I think that's one of the things living in a world with Powers would do: it's too theatrical not to express yourself constantly. It would change them socially and sexually, everything would be altered because of superheroes.

And I had worked at the comic-book store almost by accident, because I was deciding to make a living as an artist, be it as an art tutor or illustrator, and that's how I wanted to make my living.