... and what was happening in comics when you kicked in the door.

The city and the comics industry both declaring themselves at death's door.

And, you know, uh, this was the time that then President Gerald Ford notoriously had harsh words for New York City.

That cover ...

The front page of a local tabloid said, "Ford to New York: Drop Dead." And as the city's economy was a mess, morale was, was beneath the pavement, and it was a cold winter.

The weather was just plain awful.

And so, it should have been a depressing, hopeless scenario, but I was just filled with hope.

Those were not the stories they were telling, and that was not the New York you saw on the pages of Spider-Man.

How, how did you manage to do that?

Well, I think that, I think that we're, we're sister media.

That, that, that there, there are, there are certain dynamics that exist in both.

But, but, but c- c- comics are, are a, a, a medium that exists somewhere between, between cinema and literature on a spectrum.

I had long arguments with, with, with mentor, the, the great Will Eisner, um, of, of, of 1940s fame, who, who...

He would always argue that comic books were very much a literary form.

Um, and, and, and that they w- they related to novels and to plays, and I would be arguing more that they were, that they related to, um, to cinema.

And I'm interested in the idea that you're almost trying to impart your knowledge to a, to a new generation of comic book writers.

What was your relationship like with him?

Neal, Neal is, is one of the most unforgettable people in my life.

I regard him as a second father in many ways.

He, um...

And, and he...

There's so many things that were remarkable about this man.

One of them was that, was that even though he was, at the time, an absolute legend in, in the business, he was amazingly accessible.

What was '70s New York really like?

Sure.

Uh, I mean, it's, some- sometimes I'll work on a, on a collaboration, and it has everything to do with who's involved in it.

You know, with, with Jeff Darrow, I'm dealing with an outrageous absurdist, and I was playing into that.

With Dave Gibbons, I was dealing with somebody who would treat the most absurd things in the world with a straight face, and I played to that as best I could.

Um, with David Mazzucchelli, I knew that, that he had an uncanny grasp of subtleties of human emotion and manner that meant that I could take my stuff from the melodramatic to the dramatic and that he would deliver it as impeccably as he did.

And when I'm on my own, it's an exploration.

Like, do you feel like, in a way, that failure is inspiring to you creatively?

It could be.

I

appreciate that.

I just wanted to say, look at it this way.

I don't want you to get bored.

And I sure as hell don't want to get bored myself.

So it's like, you want to keep it interesting and you want to, it's very important to, for me to, to take a look at each project I work on, whether it's something I'm making up whole or whether it's something that already exists and say, okay, look at this as if it's never been done before.

And get at what the central point of it is.

And then,

What makes a character a myth? Like if you're writing now on a character, how would you make that character into a mythic creature?

It's finding a theme.

Finding something about the character that you can sum up in maybe one word.

With Superman, for instance, it's hope.

And with Batman, you might say vengeance.

You might say justice.

Those are the great characters, the ones that can have a simple central theme.

And then, of course, in Ronin, there's so many ways to kind of be different one way is let's change the standard three by two panels per page let's change the art of the story let's make it multi multi-issue stories but then also mixing cultures and bringing disparate storytelling techniques into one package i think that's another skill you brought to the table here you know sometimes it

Can you take us back to your childhood self imagining the city and just elaborate on that a little bit?

Yeah, I would say I was, I was, I was raised in two places at once.

I was raised in rural Vermont and by rural, I mean really rural.

I grew up at the foot of a mountain.

Um, and in, uh, you know, in the Granite State and, you know, spent my playtime playing in the woods.

I was a complete country boy.

There was, you know, there was a huge farm to the side of where we were and not much in the way of neighbors.

Can you talk about embracing comics or making comics to be comics?

Oh, yeah.

Well, I think that's my own conjecture, but if you look at Star Wars...

Lucas Lucas is a myth maker.

And like any myth maker, he's going to be casting a pretty wide net.

And so you know, I'm sure he was, he's obviously a very educated fellow.

And he obviously was aware of, of all kinds of things would be the story of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table.

as well as the story of, you know, Wagner's Ring, you know, the Ring of the Nibelung, and the Norse myths.

And I wanted to know from yourself, what were some, you know, like your favorite memories of the world's tallest comic editor, Jim Shooter?

So how do you, how do you regard color today?

Well, yeah, absolutely.

Absolutely.

I, I, I think that, I mean, I think of color as being, um, See, color is extremely powerful.

Properly used.

What I worry about most is the absolute saturation of color that we're seeing.

So that everything is...

All three of these guys, really, really interesting, gritty characters.

Paradoxically, getting rid of the treaty makes us stronger.

stronger.... makes the world more peaceful.

The treaty capped US force levels, deterrence force levels, at the 2010, 2011 levels.

The world is vastly different.

We now face an antagonistic Russia and a growing antagonistic China, and so if we are kept at deterrence levels that are inadequate to deter Russia and China simultaneously, which is a conclusion that a, that a commission that Rose and I both served on in '23, then by, by signaling that we're not prepared to keep our deterrent at current levels, we suggest to the Russians and the Chinese that we are bluffing, not that we have a real deterrent.

So Frank Miller, would Russia do that if the caps are lifted?

Russia could do that, and to be perfectly honest, that doesn't bother me one bit.

What bothers me is that the United States doesn't have a deterrent force adequate to deter China and Russia simultaneously, and if the Russians want to make the rubble bounce, that's up to them.

Yeah, who is he?

He was the outstanding artist of...

He was in a way a one-man generation because there was a long period where nobody entered the comics business because it didn't pay well.

And believe me, the common wisdom was we'd be out of business soon.

We'd just been through the horrors of the Comics Code and the public humiliation and the- and the, uh, self-censorship of that time.

Been disgraced going from a mass medium and being turned into a, just a, a punchline, you know, a dirty punchline.

And there were just a few people keeping the light alive and still doing these old titles, like The Flash and so on.

What is your relationship to alcohol? What has it done for or against you?