Comic books themselves are getting more literate. And there are people who are screenwriters and television writers and novelists who are writing for the comics, for some reason, they love doing it and some of the art work in the comics, I mean it rivals anything you'll see hanging on the walls of museums, they're illustrations more than drawings and all the people are discovering this and they're turning on to it.

Of what import are brief, nameless lives . . . to Galactus?

My memories are beautiful because my wife Joan is English and shortly after we were married, we stayed in London and I never forgot it. We loved it so much that we've been back very often and it's always a thrill. To me, there's New York City where I was born and raised and then there's London!

These stories of people with unusual powers and unusual appearances, who do unusual things, people are always fascinated by them.

If you wanna be an artist carry sketch pad with you, and sketch everything you see. Get so you can draw anything and it looks like what it's supposed to be. It's a lot of work, but if you really have it in you, it's not like work. It becomes fun.

I thought it would be great to do superheroes that have the same kind of life problems that any reader - that anybody could have.

When I was a kid, I loved reading Sherlock Holmes. Now, you don't think of him as a superhero, but he was so damn much smarter than anybody else.