If you talk about genres - I don't care if you're talking about war, Westerns, science fiction, horror, fantasy, humor, romance - anything you can find, strolling the aisles of a Borders or a Barnes & Noble, I can bring you many comic books representing each genre.

If you talk about genres - I don't care if you're talking about war, Westerns, science fiction, horror, fantasy, humor, romance - anything you can find, strolling the aisles of a Borders or a Barnes & Noble, I can bring you many comic books representing each genre.

Part of battle has been getting Hollywood to recognize that comic books and superheroes are not synonymous. That's been a huge breakthrough, just in recent years really, and as a result of that recent breakthrough, we've had movies like 300, Road to Perdition, and A History of Violence, that very few people realize were based on comic books and graphic novels. It's very important to make that differentiation.

I reject the concept that comic books in movies are a genre. I have been fighting that for many years, with the powers-that-be in Hollywood.

They [comic books] are not a genre, they are not something to get hot and cold from one year to the next, they're the exact same thing as books and plays: they are a source of great stories and colorful characters.

To keep the readers interested, and coming back, and to keep coming up with new and exciting ways to present stories and to present the character in a reflection of the times, is an absolutely incredible accomplishment. Hats off to all these people who have done such incredible creative work and still do every week.

There have been so many interpretations of both Batman and the Joker in the comic books themselves over the decades, from one extreme to the next, and in the media, from one extreme to the next.