I know what a good movie is.

The response to the characterizations in the book was immediate. People would say, We love these characters. How long have you been doing them?

We would make a mistake if we were trying to write women, but we're not. We're just trying to write people, and they happen to be women.

Jaime is doing the Hispanics living in the United States and dealing with life that way, and I'm doing stories about back home, basically.

We thought everybody read comics. We didn't know we were weird. We didn't know people that collected comics were strange. It was as normal as listening to rock music on the radio.

For me, the reason to make the movie is that if people like the comic, then people would like the movie if it was well made. There are good movies for them, but very few. And I mean that in a true sense. If they love your story for freaking 30 years, then they can do a movie about it.

Whichever character I'm using and wherever I am in my mind dictates what kind of story I'm going to tell.

My two biggest influences are Archie comics and Dennis the Menace.

In the old days, I just could not leave characters alone. Now I just try to keep the ones that still have something in the way of stories to tell.

I've sort of dealt with the characters' lives more; particularly the women characters.