What I want to bring back to superheroes with this project is a sense of play. Things have gotten so dreary. The heroes have gotten so ugly that even their muscles have muscles.

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.

An old man dies. A young woman lives. A fair trade.

Mighty cultures never - are almost never conquered. They crumble from within. And frankly, I think that a lot of Americans are acting like spoiled brats because everything that isn't working out perfectly every time.

I'll make it. I won't die. I've got too much I have to do to let myself die.

It is more raw and unfettered and I'm more likely going into something you could call extreme cartooning. There's a lot of that in the course of 'Holy Terror.' There are interludes where there are pictures - cartoon pictures - of modern figures and they are all wordless. It's up to readers to put the words in.