When I was at Marvel, they were in bankruptcy, which is hard to believe now with 'Avengers 2' out, but it was during the 1990s. It was a troubled place. Comic book sales were dropping. Work was scattered.
I had gotten a lot of acclaim for giving a previously dead franchise, 'Hawk & Dove,' a facelift.
I grew up in the 1970s and early 1980s, loving comic books, and they were much cartoonier. And then everything became super dark and muscular and airbrushed, and I stopped collecting comics.
I was given a chance to re-haul 'New Mutants' and take it from the dog of the 'X-Men' office to 1 million copies with its final issue.
Comics were going down for the second time and here, all of a sudden, came this thing and for the next fifteen years, romance comics were about the top sellers in the field; they outsold everything.
I remember the dark days when, thanks to 1966's 'Batman' with Adam West, comics were considered the ugly stepchild of popular culture.
I loved 'Lobo' in the '90s, but I think that character is hard to connect with, especially for new readers.
The comic page is dying; I didn't want to go with it.
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.
Things improved a little bit in the '80s; there was kind of a revival of alternative comics, but then they went downhill in the '90s.
