'Batgirl' and 'Harley Quinn' are the first DC hit books in a while that aren't starring Batman personally, really. But some of the attempts to reach the female audience have been really depressing to me.
I really didn't like Batgirl. I was like, "No, if I'm not gonna be Batman, I'm not gonna play." Maybe they could write an evil female super villain who takes over Batman, and nobody knows.
I really didn't have any plan for her other than the henchgirl role, who was better at getting laughs out of the other gang members than the Joker was. I gave her the name Harley Quinn because I thought Harley was a fun name for a girl, and a lot of 'Batman' character names have a bit of a pun to them, like E Nygma.
I have a great fondness for any character I work on. Whether it's somebody like Batman or Harley Quinn or whatever character I'm writing, I just really enjoy the heck out of it, and I try to do the best job I can with it.
I read some Marvel, but I was more of a DC guy. Particularly the Flash, Barry Allen. I latched on to him because I felt like him. You thought to yourself, 'Well, you can't really be Superman.' You couldn't really be Batman - Batman was a really dark figure. I identified with Barry Allen's hopefulness.
Looking at the Batman pages is like revisiting my youth. My first seven years in New York were the first seven years of Batman itself. While my time on Batman was important and exciting and notable considering the characters that came out of it, it was really just the start of my life.
I still love Marvel to death and I had a great experience, and it was a really tough decision to leave Marvel. It was a very easy decision to come to DC; it was very difficult to leave Marvel. And I really wanted to draw Batman, and really, that was entirely the discussion when it came to coming to DC.
I was reading some books by Michel Houellebecq, and the first thing that comes to mind is that they're really funny, all the ways they describe the most depressing things.
I've built a comedy brand for myself that is, one, really satisfying and fulfilling personally and, two, has been able to cultivate this young female audience that's hungry for knowledge, information, and entertainment.
At first, being a female role model really terrified me. But it hasn't turned out to be an awful burden. I get a lot of letters from women who tell me that, after watching Xena, they have bought the Harley-Davidson they always wanted or left an abusive relationship.
I'd like to be involved in 'SNL' somehow. I mean, being a permanent cast member is a stretch! That's pretty damned hard, but to host it one day would be a dream come true. And I would like to play the DC Comics villain Harley Quinn.
When I was writing 'Black Panther,' on one level, I was angry because DC would never let me write 'Batman,' so I was doing Marvel's 'Batman,' and Reverend Achebe became sort of the Joker to Panther's Batman.
I've probably written some books - I know I've written some books that were more interesting to me than to a large audience, but that was mostly when I was first getting started in academia and writing for a narrow audience.
I'm really depressing. Some people watch comedy to relax. I watch 21 Grams. I can recognize sadness and tragedy really easily because it's been with me forever.
I started off doing indie comics that I wrote and drew myself. I was doing those for ten years before I started to work for DC. The first book that I wrote for DC was for another artist. I did some backups in 'Adventure Comics' years ago starring The Atom. That's the first time that I ever wrote for another artist.
To be honest with you, I didn't really read a lot of DC comics as a kid, but I was obsessed with Batman and still am.
I don't really want to make this sound depressing, but I will say that I didn't really have my first kiss until really, really late.