But I'm not trying to convince anybody how to vote or how to live. Nobody's ever successfully accused me of being realistic.

Superman punched out Hitler. So did Captain America. That's one of the things they're there for.

You can't have virtue without sin. What I'm after is having my characters' virtues defined by how they operate in a very sinful environment. That's how you test people.

In the world of comic books, "troublemaker" means someone who has some sense of dignity.

I grew up on the crime stuff. Spillane, Chandler, Jim Thompson, and noir movies like Fuller, Orson Welles, Fritz Lang. When I first showed up in New York to write comics back in the late 1970s, I came with a bunch of crime stories but everybody just wanted men in tights.

People are attempting to bring a superficial reality to superheroes which is rather stupid. They work best as the flamboyant fantasies they are. I mean, these are characters that are broad and big. I don't need to see sweat patches under Superman's arms. I want to see him fly.

The American conscience died with the Kennedys.