My daughter is reading various Young Adult vampire stuff, and I ask her, "Is there even a bad vampire in the story?" There's always a good vampire now, but do any of them sleep in coffins? And I would bring her down to my library and say, "Here's every classic vampire literature. There are coffins, there's this, there's that," you know? "When you get to the YA stuff, you may try some of this stuff just to see where it came from."

But if there must be an end, let it be loud. Let it be bloody. Better to burn than to wither away in the dark.

My thumbprint is on every single thing that happens with Hellboy. It was the hardest thing I ever had to do professionally, letting someone else draw the main Hellboy comic. He's so much mine. But I still have no intention of ever handing over the writing of the main Hellboy comic to someone else. That character is my baby.

I wish I could say I had any idea what I was doing when I designed characters. I just take things I like and make my version of it.

Hellboy was entirely the comic I wish someone much more talented than I was doing, because I would have been a huge fan of that comic. But nobody was doing it, so it fell to me to do it.

Don't mess with me, lady. I've been drinking with skeletons.

What keeps this industry alive is creators doing their own work. Once you change a costume or origin enough times, it's a dead body - you're just electrocuting it and keeping it sort of shambling on. There is a lot more creator-owned stuff now, and some of it I look at and go, 'Oh, that's his pitch for a TV show. That's his pitch for a movie. That's him saying oh, this kind of thing sells.' I didn't do that.