If you have superheroes or characters that exist in the same world, and you're doing movies of them, wouldn't it be fun to put a couple of them together in one movie? Audiences love that. It's a natural thing to do that.

A superhero's catchphrase should be like a really memorable advertising slogan. It sticks in your head and you can't stop humming it. And let's face it, superheroes are just really selling themselves as products.

I thought it would be fun to take the kind of character that nobody would like, none of our readers would like, and shove him down their throats and make them like him.

To my way of thinking, whether it's a superhero movie or a romance or a comedy or whatever, the most important thing is you've got to care about the characters. You've got to understand the characters and you've got to be interested. If the characters are interesting, you're half-way home.

What the hell could you do? I've never been arrested, I haven't taken drugs, I've had the same wife for 54 years; where's anything of interest to people?

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.

I've been very lucky. All I wanted was to pay the rent. Then these characters took off and suddenly there were Hulk coffee mugs and Iron Man lunchboxes and The Avengers sweatshirts everywhere. Money's okay, but what I really like is working.