Real science is the greatest, most exciting springboard I have available to me as a writer, and I don't feel the least bit constrained by it.

I'm not as good a prose writer as I'd like to be, but I never aspired to that.

Hulk fans are impossible to please.

What sets 'Archie' apart from the many, many times I've reworked and rebooted long-standing characters is that this time, it was really scary.

Every ongoing character has to start somewhere.

I love 'Archie' comics.

I think of it this way: When you hear that people have downloaded your comic, appreciate that thousands are eager to hear what you have to say. The poetry club down the hall may not have the same problem. That's a good problem to have.

If I wanted to write a bunch of comics about 50-year-olds sitting around having a conversation about politics, that would be realistic, but it'd be the dullest comic in the world.

I love writing comedy.

There are other ways to create tension and drama than to have somebody stabbed through the back with a sword.

I am just tired of writing about heroes that we're dragging down to our level, and I want to write about heroes that we want to be.

When they first asked me to do 'Hulk,' my first instinct was to say no because I didn't think I had anything to say with the character, especially when they said, 'Please do what you did with 'Daredevil,' whatever that was.'

Certainly, your characters - whether they are superheroes are not - should have foibles. They should have problems; they should have things that their powers can't solve. That's what makes them nuanced, interesting characters. They can have intense motivations. They should have intense motivations to do what they do.

When you're writing a team book where every character already has his or her own series, you don't have dominion over them as individuals - but what you can exploit is their relationships with one another.

Maybe this is because I'm a comics historian as much as anything else, but I really have a deep-seated respect for the characters that have been around since before I was born and are probably going to outlive me.

I don't write stories about despair. I write stories about hope.

It's Marvel's toybox; I'm just glad I'm able to play with the toys and have some impact on what goes on. I didn't create Daredevil, so I'm not about to stand here and say that I'm the only one who gets to play with the toy.

The idea of lasting consequences isn't your usual 'Archie' trope.

I love Jughead. I love his one-step-removed perspective on everything in Riverdale. And I love the fact that he wears that stupid hat.

I knew I really wanted to work in comics in 1979.

I think superheroes are about flying. They're not about moping.

I wouldn't mind taking a stab at... I'd love to take a shot at 'Doctor Strange' at some point.

I know my 'Archie' history.

I don't know if you'd do a Marvel story on Ferguson, because it trivializes what the real flesh-and-blood people on the ground are doing there. But you can make an allegory and deal with the bigger questions.

We have a lot of supergeniuses in the Marvel universe, but very few of them are women.

Younger characters are just much more emotional.

To my mind, a mix of veterans and rookies is number one on the list of 'things that make a good Avengers team.'

There have been many days when I have had to work up to writing 'Irredeemable' because I just didn't feel like wallowing in that world, feeling those emotions... but that's the process.

Style and entertainment tastes change, but the core emotions of being a kid - which, not coincidentally, are the core foundations of any good story - are constant.

In Marvel Comics, the worst thing was always that your loved ones could be attacked, or you could be horribly beaten in a knock-down, drag-out fight, but in the Superman comics, you would be run out of town with people throwing rotten vegetables at you and waving a sign that said, 'Superman, Who Needs You?'

Everyone knows what it's like to make the wrong decision for the right reasons. For me, wrong decisions are the heart of drama - a character who's always making the right decisions is boring.

For me, it's infinitely more interesting to read or watch a character making decisions they think are right, but the audience knows differently, and seeing that disconnect. The only way characters can grow and learn is by making the wrong decisions and then learning from them.

I'll still do print comics; as long as there's a market, I'll still be there. I just have a hard time believing that's the future.

What I need is for comics to not cheapen out and just do what they think a bunch of bloodthirsty 15 year old fans want.

I'd still love to work with John Romita Sr. at some point. That's the dream.

The best stories, the most-fun 'Avengers' stories, explore the relationships between the characters.

I think it's imperative of me to advance that theory that you can win your small victories against the dark.

In a perfect world, I'd like to start running comics for kids - by kids.

By coincidence and not design, 'Everstar' is written and drawn by an all-female creative team, and it makes me smile to think that there may be young female readers out there, future writers and artists, who get to see that comics doesn't have to be a 'boys' club.'

You can do all of the world-building you want; at the end of the day, what's important is the heart and the drive of the story and the heart and the drive of the characters.

I think there's a moral imperative when you're writing fictional heroes to give characters who somehow give us something to aspire to as opposed to dragging them down to our level.

Teaching is good for me. It forces me to articulate ways of doing things or rules of thumb that I've sort of taken for granted.

It's always an amazing gift to be able to work with storytellers who 'get it' and who can not only draw anything but can draw it better and more dynamically than you'd ever envisioned.

I think someone like Jack Kirby, for instance, would suffer greatly in the transition from print to digital were he still around.

If you come into any creative project without questions, you're gonna bore yourself, and it'll show on the page.

I love print comics.