I understand the rules of Superman - not necessarily better than anyone else - but better than a normal filmmaker would. After doing 'Watchmen' and digging that deep into the why of superheroes, when Superman is presented to you, I felt like I was in a unique position to say 'I get this guy. I know what this is.

I think that, for me, Superman just seemed to make a lot of sense to me. After doing 'Watchmen,' it was - you know that thing, you've got to know the rules before you can break them? There was something about that in making 'Watchmen.'

I love comic books - maybe to a fault sometimes.

I used to be a huge fan of Heavy Metal magazine growing up, and I was exposed to Cobalt there and fell in love with the character and the world. I've tried to track it down and pursue it myself to make a movie out of it. Also I felt like the thing that's cool about Cobalt is it does have a culty kind of underground quality to it that I really like.

I write in a pretty straightforward way. I kind of sit down at page one and start writing.

I'd say the purest experience for the movie is not to have read the book because I think when you've read the book you're just ticking off boxes. I think that after you see the movie, reading the book is a cool thing. I always say the movie's not meant to replace the book. That's ridiculous. I'm a huge fan of the book.

My mom always encouraged me, it was never weird. She'd look at 'Heavy Metal' and go 'Woo-hoo!'