I am always nostalgic being in New York. Every neighborhood represents something to me. I lived here until I was 60 years old or so. So it was my life.

I don't sound disloyal, but I've never had a pair of Marvel pyjamas or underwear. I do have a lot of Marvel figurines at home in a cabinet. Every time they make a new Marvel figure I put it in my cabinet.

Virtually every kid is exposed to giants and ogres and talking wolves, and so forth. And magic. And I think you never outgrow your love for those imaginative, fanciful, farfetched, fantastic characters and situations.

I had been writing comic books for years and I was doing them to please a publisher, who felt that comics are only read by very young children or stupid adults. And therefore, we have to keep the stories very simplistic... And those were all things I hated.

I wanted them to be diverse. The whole underlying principle of the X-Men was to try to be an anti-bigotry story to show there's good in every person.

I think I've got 12... Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, The Flash, Aquaman, Plastic-Man, Green Lantern, Sandman, The Justice League, The Atom Legion of Superheroes and Teen Titans.... Just about all of their top titles.

The cliché I tried to avoid was I hated "teenage sidekicks." I always figured if I were a superhero, there's no way on God's earth that I'm gonna pal around with some teenager. So my publisher insisted I have a teenager in the series, because they always felt teenagers won't read the books unless there's a teenager in the story; which is nonsense.