I don't know, maybe it's just timely, or maybe it's the fact that I live in a house with four women, but I just find my thoughts kind of skewing that direction at the moment.

Cookbooks are almost a substitution for a lost sense of culture. People want some other life than the one they're living, so they buy a cookbook with pictures and imagine themselves as part of that life.

Their argument, and I think it's a correct one, is that they'll make more money from the trades and the hardcovers if nobody messes with the creative team.

Jesus, man. Why do people want to be Paris Hilton and nobody wants to be Spider-Man?

You can lead with or without a title. If you wait until you get a title, you may wait forever.

I'm so used to artists saying to me, "Listen, I'm going to have five pages done next week," and then three weeks later I'm phoning them, begging them for two pages. And Stuart [Immonen]is a guy who will promise you five pages and deliver six pages, and the six pages are even better than you could have ever imagined.

In the U.S., Superman or Batman or something, the law-enforcement people, are the most famous comic characters. Americans have a respect, I think, for badges and a respect for uniforms. I think that's, in some ways, quite a nice thing, but it can be dangerous, too, because it can obviously be abused.