If the League were real, today, they'd most likely be sued by every person they ever saved. They'd be subpoenaed by every authority in every jurisdiction imaginable; hearings upon hearings. There'd be waves of accolades followed by tsunamis of boos from social media.
You go back to look over the body of my work, and there are no archetypal villains in my books.
I'm abrasive. I am so sure that I'm right about virtually everything. I can sing you an aria of reasons to not like me.
Escapism has its place. I used to write 'Conan the Barbarian' for Marvel, which takes place in an environment completely removed from the real world.
I quit comics in 1988 and trained as a bus driver. I used to drive those big Greyhound coaches out of New York Port Authority and down to Princeton, New Jersey. It was, hands down, the best job I ever had, and I profoundly regret having left it. I kept that job the entire time I was on staff at DC Comics in the '90s.
Most people don't realize that when we were producing 'Black Panther,' 'Quantum & Woody,' and 'Steel,' fairly few people were reading those titles. We were constantly threatened with cancellation.
When you're talking about villainy, then you're automatically circling around to talk about justice.
Hollywood is, of course, loaded with egos, but it's amazing to see how, despite the egos, those collaborators pull together and focus on telling a story rather than butt heads and sabotage what is extremely hard work and investment just because their ego apparently demands it.
If I could make Panther tough, mysterious, wily, and often at odds with his 'Avengers' comrades, that was a character I'd find interesting.
When I read comics, they were dense stories. When you put them down, there was a sense of having gotten a great deal from them.
With all due respect to the other writers, I don't want to disparage any other writers; I don't want to have to invent a bigger villain than Deathstroke so Deathstroke can seem heroic fighting this bigger villain. I'd rather just have Deathstroke be who is, and he's kind of a bastard.
My first draft of Marvel Knights 'Black Panther' was not funny at all. They smartly rejected the entire script and counseled me to inject liberal doses of humor into very serious subject matter.
My 'Black Panther' run really wasn't about Black Panther. It was about Ross. It was about exploding myths about black superheroes, black characters, and black people, targeted specifically at a white, male-dominated retailer base.
I wanted to demonstrate that Deathstroke does not need to solve every problem with his fists.
In 'Black Panther,' I tried to preserve virtually all versions and interpretations of 'Black Panther' - including the Jack Kirby one, which was really tough to do - and make it work within current continuity.
In my opinion, I feel like all versions of 'Deathstroke' are valid. Just like with 'Black Panther,' I felt like it wasn't good for a writer to say another writer's work was invalid or never happened.
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 don't think there is really much from my career that I want to go back to. I think that, with most of the characters that I've been lucky enough to work with, I've said all I have to say about the Black Panther, Green Lantern, and on and on.
At some point along the way, I stopped being a writer, and I became a black writer. I never used to be a black writer. I used to write 'Spider-Man,' 'Green Lantern,' whatever was lying around. 'Thor,' 'Hulk,' whatever. Now, if the phone rings or when the phone rings, it's almost exclusively some project that has something to do with my ethnicity.
What makes a good villain is someone who doesn't just challenge the hero but comes organically out of that character's history and circumstances.
