I wanted to portray very, very dark subject matter and a deceptively complex story in the brightest colours and simplest lines possible to leave the readers reeling.

The books are all very, very different so the publishers really had to be different too.

Anytime something becomes a success in this way you always get imitators. I'm an imitator of the guys I love. I imitate people like Frank Miller, who is a huge inspiration to me.

The ultimate [act] that would be the taboo, to show how bad some villain is, was to have somebody being raped, you know? I don't really think it matters. It's the same as, like, a decapitation. It's just a horrible act to show that somebody's a bad guy.

I didn't break into comics to write fairytales or crime comics.

The highest form of leadership is one in which a leader raises up other leaders - not as an accident, but as a result of conscious effort.

If I'm creating a new superhero, it shouldn't be any different from other superheroes in terms of the qualities. Obviously the personality can be different. I think traditionally in comics women have tended to be a girlfriend or the daughter of whoever, whether it's even Batgirl as Gordon's daughter, or whatever. There is that relation of the hero, you know, like Superman's cousin, Supergirl. And that's great. It's fantastic to have a link to these amazing characters, but I kind of like the idea of things being something in their own right, which is why I've always loved Wonder Woman.