It's fun to take a piece of formula and go someplace else with it and see what happens.

At one point, I worked up a list of five requirements for a superhero: superpowers, a costume, a code name, a mission, and a milieu. If the character had three out of the five, they were a superhero. But that's just my definition.

Dracula, if he could see modern corporations, wouldnt like them much. He took care of his people, at least as he saw it. They had very little freedom, but they had a protector.

I like superheroes. I like the drama of it, the stirring, larger-than-life aspect.

I think James Bond is a spy. He's not superhuman. Calling him a superhero is like calling James Bond movies "comic-book movies."

I think the purpose of deconstruction is to take something apart and see how it works. If you're not going to put it back together again and watch it go, what's the point?

What really matters is not how well a character fits a definition, but how strongly he or she resonates. Characters with strong, resonant ideas at their core will have more of an impact on the cultural consciousness than a character who's just an empty collection of attributes.