There's a thing that creeps into this conversation ... that if you complain about the depiction of women [in comics], it becomes, 'Well, but ladies - the dudes are idealized too.' And the thing is that the dudes are idealized for strength and the women are idealized for sexual availability. It's very, very different. The women's costumes are cut in such a way that I could give a cervical exam to 90% of our heroines. And I don't have a medical degree! So if I can find it, that's impressive.

Having my brain doing different work is helping me a lot in terms of retro-feeding from the other experiences. It makes me feel inspired, looking forward to the projects and wanting to work harder.

When I'm looking for a strong female character, or a strong character at all, I'm looking for a character that has a purpose in that story, that has an interior life of some sort. They don't have to be physically strong; they don't have to be morally strong or ethically strong, because men and women come in a huge variety of all of those things. Emotionally, ethically - I'm less concerned with that. I just don't want them to be props. That's the only thing that offends me.

I don't think we're supposed to say [expletive deleted] anymore.

I wish I could say confidently that pacing remains my weak point, if you could talk about your own stuff without sounding like you're self-obsessed. But I think you kind of have to be.

Comics are reflective of what's going on in larger culture. Wonder Woman came to be in her position when women were first entering the workplace in numbers during the war. Then Wonder Woman had another rise in the '70s when Gloria Steinem latched on to her as an icon for the [feminist] movement. I think we're seeing another wave of feminism today, a fourth wave characterized by intersectionality and the internet. And I think it falls right in line that we would see another wave of superheroines coming to the fore.

There's a difference between feeling like I don't need to explain and deliberately confusing you. If the impression is that I'm deliberately confusing you, that is not what I am trying to do at all.