The comics I read as a kid were much more influenced by TV and movies. Encountering superheroes as an adult without that kind of childhood sentimentality, it just doesn't allow you, or in my case at least, it wouldn't let me take the characters seriously.

As the scripts come in they are sent to the artists, and the artists are either very busy, or ready to start.

It would have shown people that I was prepared to do that kind of work, although I find myself in a position now where I don't really need to and I could pick and choose the kind of characters I'd like to do.

If you look at Marvel Comics, there are very few Marvel characters I would like to write.

Hitman does well and it certainly does well enough to survive, but at the same time I don't want to involve the character into the DC Universe even if it meant more sales, to the point where we sort of upset the balance that we have at the moment.

Yeah, Hitman I suppose is most of the time a lighter read than Preacher it was always going to be.

I've seen a fair bit of the States and the rest of the world, and I'm convinced that there's nowhere I'd be happier, there's nowhere I'm missing out on because I'm in NY.

Preacher is a book that somehow allows me time by its settling on it's characters, that sort of modern gothic western feel. You're not likely to see the boat veering too far from that.

I don't necessarily write everything as automatically assuming it will be collected, there's nothing that says Hitman will be collected, though it might be.

I tend to forget what I'm doing will ever be read while I'm writing it, and just get on with the task at hand.

I can't really put it in one sentence because although on one hand Preacher is about faith and yes it is also about, I suppose, the search for God, the search for faith and the manipulation and the abuse committed by figures in whom I suppose people have faith.

I guess you can stay sort of true to the story you don't have to artificially bring the character back from whatever doom you've designed for them, you can tell the story, I suppose, honestly.

I suppose that Heartland, Unknown Soldier and Pride and Joy represent not a quieter side but more of a serious side to my work, something I've been getting into recently.

Wouldn't want to write the X-Men, and I suppose the X-Men is the ultimate Marvel comic, and I really wouldn't want to go anywhere near it at all, although on the other had I wouldn't mind having a crack at something like the Punisher.

What happens when your world ends? Your lover steals your heart...and your father casts you out...and you fall.

It's nice to be in a situation where the two books that I write for a sort of regular monthly income are also works that I enjoy immensely, rather than them being some kind of bread and butter, do it because you have to do it.

Howard Chaykin was one of the few who dared to make mainstream comics different back in the eighties it was guys like him, Alan Moore and Frank Miller who made sure there'd be no going back. Howard's work on The Shadow is amongst his very best: razor-sharp character work, sizzling dialogue and an unsurpassed sense of layout and design.