These characters were like twelve-bar blues or other chord progressions. Given the basic parameters of Batman, different creators could play very different music.

I love 'Batman.' I love the Adam West 'Batman.' I love the animated 'Batman.' The character of Batman can encompass any interpretation, which is what makes that character so brilliant and why it's survived so many different media.

The only thing that made me, or any of us, special was that no one in the whole of history would ever see the universe exactly the same way any other of us saw it.

We tell our children they're trapped like rats on a doomed, bankrupt, gangster-haunted planet with dwindling resources, with nothing to look forward to but rising sea levels and imminent mass extinctions, then raise a disapproving eyebrow when, in response, they dress in black, cut themselves with razors, starve themselves, gorge themselves, or kill one another.

My art school rejection letter arrived as a cold manila fist that closed around my fragile hopes ... The fear was practically edible. Nothing would happen unless I get out and make it happen. Then, as if handling me the keys to the jet pack, my dad bought me a typewriter and a taped message to the inside of its case: "Son - the world is waiting to hear from you".

Sometimes you wonder, in an interconnected universe, who's dreaming who?

I'm a fan myself, so I try to write the kind of comics I want to read.