Famously, DC has been pretty great showing gay women, with characters like Batwoman, but has shown fewer prominent men on the sexuality spectrum outside of hetero. It's something we need to address. I also think it's lovely how the readers respond to this.
I do a lot of book signings and conventions every year, and I meet a great many readers who are struggling... they're working through illness, injury, addiction, depression, grief, or some other trauma. It seems to me that there's a lot of heroism in fighting those things as well, as best you can.
People resist and fight against things that are new that they haven't seen before, especially if they make them uncomfortable. But fiction is a safe place to tell these stories and to reach out to people and maybe affect them and make a difference in their lives.
I have been involved in lots of crossover and event books, and the truth is, I dearly love them. I love stories that actually take advantage of the huge DC library and catalog - that stuff thrills me.
I love any books by Kelly Sue DeConnick or Marjorie M. Liu; it's lovely to have successful, talented female writers doing great work in comics.
People who are exposed to great Wonder Woman stories love her. You have to do your best work and get it out there so people can experience it.
If you love Tarzan, you can read stories from the 'Jungle Tales of Tarzan,' where he's just a kid, all the way up until he has a son of his own and beyond. Same with 'Batman' - you can follow him from Gotham, as a kid, to 'Dark Knight,' as a cranky old weirdo. I really love that.
I have worked with a lot of great artists, including some of my heroes like Michael Golden, George Perez, and Jose Garcia Lopez, just to name a couple. I have been spoiled.
The 'Womanthology' book got a lot of people jobs, inside and outside the industry, and I think stuff like that tends to be really effective. You have something in print that you can point an editor or a publisher to, and it makes a huge difference for a lot of people.
When I started in comics, people were always trying to classify me as either/or. Either a writer who appealed to women or a writer who appealed to guys. This need to categorize was just exhausting.
I try to make every issue new-reader friendly. I remember being frustrated many times trying to pick up new series that were overladen with baggage. The trick is to make that backstory seem like something compelling that they will want to explore rather than an obstacle course they have to crawl through to get to the story.
I have never really gotten to write Catwoman. She's one of the few iconic females at DC, along with Supergirl, that I haven't really gotten to take out for a spin.
I get asked a lot about writing for games and prose and film, and I will do some, but I can never see myself leaving comics. I love it too much.
When I think about Plastic Man, he was genuinely the first funny super hero. I'm obviously attracted to that. There's also this great mixture of tragedy in there, too, that I love. The humor comes from a place of pain.
If you succeed at all, you find yourself suddenly working with artists whose work you don't just admire but you deeply love.
For me, even though I love, love, love both Cliff Chiang and Brian Azzarello, I haven't read the new '52 Wonder Woman' past the first issue. It's just... you know, once I'm on a book for a really long time... it's like going through a divorce. It takes a while before I can be 'friends again' with the character.