I don't own an ounce of the work I've ever done on 'Batman,' and I still work on 'Batman.' I love the character, I think it's a lot of fun, and it's kind of fun to be in that ballpark every once in a while, where you're seeing a different crowd.

We live in the shadow of crime with the unspoken understanding that we are victims.. of fear, of violence, of social impotence. A man has risen to show us that the power is, ans always has been, in our hands. We are under siege. He's showing us that we can resist.

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

This should be agony. I should be a mass of aching muscle - broken, spent, unable to move. And, were I an older man, I surely would ... ... but I'm a man of thirty - of twenty again. The rain on my chest is a baptism - I'm born again.

I realized that I was about to turn 30, and Batman was permanently 29. And I was going to be damned if I was older than Batman.

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.

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