I love comics for comics' sake. Always have. Always will.

As ever, I caveat with saying that I don't write about the factual content of my C.I.A. experience. Ever. People who are working hard to save lots of lives depend on me to keep my mouth shut.

Not to get political, but it seems like every day I read the paper, and you're reading about nuclear war and Russians taking over the country and Nazis again. It's like every once in a while, the world blinks for a second, and it goes, 'Darkseid is!' The world has changed, and it's changed in a 'Darkseid is' way.

I think sometimes you go through an experience, and you don't feel the impact, especially in a war experience, until way past it.

When I was dealing with a lot of Iraqis, lies were constant; people constantly lied to you. It's a part of their culture. They wanted to please you so much, they were willing to lie to you to please you.

I don't believe in writing for goals, or else I'd write essays.

I try not to push characters too close to myself because they get harder to write, but as a writer, you try to find odd little personal experiences that you hope are universal or think might be universal.

When I talk about the C.I.A. stuff, I feel guilt because I left. I really believed in that job, and my colleagues are still there. But I have kids now.

Batman gets close to the insanity of Gotham, to the craziness, to what drives that city mad, and not be driven mad himself - or, at least, most of the time he isn't. That's most like the mission of the C.I.A. We get into the heads of our enemies without becoming our enemy.

I'm a firm believer in putting your experiences in your writing, of bleeding into the page.