Marvel has always been to a large extent the world around us. It has to be evocative of the world around us, the feelings people are feeling. You take real-world concerns and you put a Marvel face on it.

Super-heroes were created to represent the best in all of us. We should aspire to match their nobility, not their ability to shoot big chrome guns.

The most basic definition of a story is 'Somebody wants something and something's in his way,' and I'm more likely to be engaged if I at least think I know what those two 'somethings' are. They can be simple, they can be complex, but - particularly if you're a beginning writer - I'd rather you err on the side of revealing too much than too little.

A superhero is someone who, at some point or in some way, inspires hope or is the enemy of cynicism. Even if you bog it down with political allegory, or even if you're doing celebrity allegory. You still need to take the cynical out of it.

Socrates should have written comics.

Never forget that at the end of the day, as a creative person, your résumé is all you've got.

One of the greatest sins in any story is false suspense. The kind of 'suspense' that disintegrates the moment you give your reader one second to think about it. And it's an easy trap to fall into, so watch carefully for it. If your story hinges on the question, 'Will Superman be pushed so far in his battle against Lex Luthor that he'll have to kill him?', or if your big cliffhanger moment is, 'Wow, is Spider-Man really dead this time?', then I understand Food Lion is hiring.