I really became a hardcore Batman fan when I was eight years old. What was clear to me, the reason I liked him better than Superman or Spider-Man or the Hulk or whoever, was the fact that he was human, and I could identify with him, and I really believed in that character strongly. In my heart of hearts, when I was eight years old, I believed that if I studied real hard, and worked out real hard, and if my dad bought me a cool car, I could be this guy.

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.

In a sense, comic books are frozen movies. If you look at a comic book, you are generally seeing the storyboard for a film. The great advantage of comic books, over the years, has been that, if they are frozen movies, they are not limited by budget. They are only limited by imagination.

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 think it's one thing if you are turning out dozens or even a hundred stories a year, you've got to have a great supporting cast behind you. Superman had a family that developed, and it's only natural that Batman has a family of sorts that developed. I think it's a great way to keep the comics interesting and varied, to appeal to different segments of an audience, to bring new perspectives to it.

There are times when you need to step back and realize that movie studios today are not necessarily the same things that they were many years ago. Many movie studios are international conglomerates now. They own everything from theme parks to toy companies to T-shirt companies to video companies. There's a lot of different wheels to be greased.

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.