Seven actors have played Batman on the big screen, and if you can name all seven without reading any further, your youth has been wasted.

I do like to keep abreast of what the hardcore vocal members of the comics-reading audience are talking about on Internet message boards, but there are so few of them, as a percentage of the buying audience, that I can't allow their opinions to dictate story direction.

Why am I in Hell? It hurts. It hurts all the time. Why am I in Hell? I just want to go home and lie on the bed the way I used to. Please take me home.

I tend to only read comics written by friends or people I've known. And I'm not a great comic reader.

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 was always interested in myths growing up. So, first I got into some Roman myths, then I was interested in Norse, then Celtic, then I started spreading to all the other mythologies.

I write every day, for most of the day, so it's just about turning into metaphor whatever's going on in my life, in the world, and in my head. Every nightmare, every moment of grief or joy or failure, is a moment I can convert into cash via words. I use everything. Turning life into stories is how I make sense of my experience.