Artists, no matter how good their intentions, are always slower than they think.

I didn't break into comics to write fairytales or crime comics.

I didn't want the headache of having a publisher reviewing everything I wrote in advance.

I spent as much time writing proposals in '98 and '99 as I did writing scripts.

I'd love to do something else for Avatar after this.

I'm honestly as happy writing Superman Adventures as I am writing Wanted.

Likewise, I see no shame in writing Captain America or Wolverine.

The animated books pay the lowest rates at the Big Two and you can forget about royalties.

The books are all very, very different so the publishers really had to be different too.

The breadth of the potential readership is also a factor.

The trick was really finding the appropriate publisher for each of the projects I'd devised.

At the moment, I have it planned as a six or seven year experiment, but the books will only ever appear in bursts like this every couple of years and only with the best quality artists.

Being the first to do something like this also registers a lot of attention that the line might not have gotten if all four books had just appeared from one company.

However, if I can expand this to Top Cow or Avatar I'm helping the sales, however small, on my Marvel books because I'm almost certain to pick up some new readers.

I don't see one as bring better or more literate than the other and there's a real buzz to not only writing about a character I love like Superman, but also writing something that kids can enjoy.

I think American audiences are quite interesting in that they can handle almost any amount of violence, but the moment the violence becomes sexual violence it immediately becomes an issue.

I wanted to portray very, very dark subject matter and a deceptively complex story in the brightest colours and simplest lines possible to leave the readers reeling.

It's been the most creatively liberating thing I've ever done and so I'm bringing some of that mad enthusiasm to Marvel for the next couple of years as they let me loose on some Marvel Universe titles you'll be hearing about soon.

Marvel books also feed into the smaller publishers and the fact that this is happening in the same month we're launching Ultimate Fantastic Four is no coincidence.

Their argument, and I think it's a correct one, is that they'll make more money from the trades and the hardcovers if nobody messes with the creative team.