Having that North Star for every story [about Batman] is really key for me. It allows me to go farther and farther off the reservation.

[Duke] is the same way that Harper Row is a character who doesn't want to know who you are beneath the mask, and that makes her interesting. She'll show up and help Batman, but she never wants to know if he's Bruce Wayne.

I was on Batman with "Superheavy" or "Zero Year" where there was a lot of fun and bombast, but it was also personal. [In All-Star], I wanted to take that to its complete extreme, like the end of the Earth extreme, where it's over-the-top humorous, yet at the same time really deeply about what I think is of this particular moment in time, at least for me. The things I'm terrified of and the things I'm hopeful about. My life is the page.

I really wanted to make sure that if we set Duke up, that he's set up the right way and he's his own hero for the right reasons.

A post-9/11, modern take being Batman training people to be the heroes they know they can be on their own.

The hope that they have legs. That's the biggest fear you always have creating new people. You love them, but then they kind of dissipate. Sometimes you don't get to write them as much as you'd like, like me and Harper Row.

I had to fight for wingdings. Batman needs to curse sometimes!