Comics shouldn't be 'tools' for anyone's agenda except for the characters. And I am speaking only of super hero action comics. I love many of the alternative comics that are like journalistic stories. Documentary comics, a mix of reportage and fiction. Those are just great.

I believe in working with your morning brain - you have your coffee, and then maybe you'll start thinking about the grand plan and what's going to happen in the next arc, and then you write for a while, and then you get really dreamy, and over the course of the day or in the middle of the night, something comes, and you just throw it in!

I don't think most people are all heroic or all villainous, so I find ambiguity of motivations to be a natural human condition.

I know my predecessors have written a Green Arrow who has a lot of thoughts about social justice, but that was a more evolved, older, wiser Green Arrow.

I know I've erred in the past putting too much of my social justice sentiments in comics, but hopefully not too much, and I tried to only do that with characters that it made sense with it. These days, with the 'social justice' aspects of the two books I write, 'Catwoman' and 'Katana,' the concerns are more about moral justice.

I live in New York City, and one day many years ago I was with a poet, Gregory Corso, walking through Greenwich Village. He pointed to a doorway in an alley that he said led to a tunnel under Manhattan, a tunnel he'd use to run from the cops. I started learning about old Prohibition-era speakeasy tunnels under the city, for running whiskey.

I'm very much about stories that are fast but character development that moves slow.

I'm one of those people who believes you are what you do.

I like talking about comic book process, and one of the things is that I have plans going ahead for years, and the plans constantly get thrown away and shifted. There's a difference between planning and what actually happens in life, and comics have a life of their own.

I'm thrilled to be taking over Green Arrow. What I adore about the Arrow is his recklessness. He'll shoot off on an impulse, dispatch someone if they deserve it; his heroism is instinctive.