Joe is the hero and Sammy is the sidekick. That's how I feel about it.

Comic books were just the means for me to tell the story.

Every time another review comes out I let out a deep breath.

I have a deadline. I'm glad. I think that will help me get it done.

I love Richard Yates, his work, and the novel, Revolutionary Road. It's a devastating novel.

I wanted to give readers the feeling of knowing the characters, a mental image.

I was thinking, too, of Superman and his fortress of solitude.

It is unusual for Joe to be that way, but that's what interested me.

It was fun. That was something I came to fairly late.

People keep saying, 'Oh, you're getting all these great reviews, that must make you really happy.' I guess it does, but mostly it's just a relief.

So it was scary, but that's how it goes. To my great delight, I discovered that it did all belong.

That was all very nice of them. They didn't have to do anything because I wasn't officially involved at all.

That's the best thing about writing, when you're in that zone, you're porous, ready to absorb the solution.

The First Amendment has the same role in my life as a citizen and a writer as the sun has in our ecosystem.

The things I keep going back to, rereading, maybe they say more about me as a reader than about the books. Love in the Time of Cholera, Pale Fire.

As soon as I read that, it clicked: that's my theater of war. It was exciting to think that I could write about World War Two from a totally new place.

He comes to this other world and he has to reinvent himself. Again, it felt natural, even though I'd been working really hard trying to come up with something.

I found one remaining box of comics which I had saved. When I opened it up and that smell came pouring out, that old paper smell, I was struck by a rush of memories, a sense of my childhood self that seemed to be contained in there.

I was surprised that my wife thought it was a good idea, then again with my agent, another woman, then my editor, another woman - in spite of the fact that all three of them reacted positively I still have this fear.

I wasn't involved, except to the degree that they sent me drafts of the script as the writer turned them in. They asked me at one point to write a memo about what I thought of it.