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

In the long run, the quality of your work is all that matters. That is your only resumé. Be professional. Make sure your editor or publisher can always reach you. Do what's asked of you if your conscience can bear it. But know that, five years from now, as fans or prospective employers are looking over your published pages, no one will care that this story sucks because the publisher moved the deadline up or because the editor made you work an android cow into the story. All they will care about is what they see in front of them, and they will hold you responsible for it, no one else.

I like the brighter, shinier, happier comic-book material on a personal level, but I also think the best stories are told where you just don't know from page to page or moment to moment when the sucker-punches are coming.

Each time I think I've made a connection with someone... once they find out what I can do, whether it's hours or days later, everything changes. Invariably they freak. They get retroactively paranoid, wondering what else Clark Kent is hiding from them.

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.

In the long run, the quality of your work is all that matters. That is your only resumé. Be professional. Make sure your editor or publisher can always reach you. Do what's asked of you if your conscience can bear it.

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.