I want to thank Kurt for his enthusiasm in agreeing to do this interview.  Kurt has always been generous with his time and you can tell he has a love for this medium of storytelling that is shared by some, and unrivaled by most.

If you’re unfamiliar with Kurt’s amazing writing work, his love of comics, storytelling, and superheroes shine most in his creator-owned projects like Shock Rockets and Astro City (I’m also very excited for his upcoming new collaboration with Alex Ross on the new Kirby: Genesis series from Dynamite).

1-  Which work do you look back on as a defining moment of your career and which do you feel was probably the most creatively challenging?

I'd have to say MARVELS would be the defining moment -- it was my breakthrough book, and set the stage for most of what came afterward. Most creatively challenging? Either ASTRO CITY or SUPERMAN: SECRET IDENTITY.

2-  In the business of comics, we've come pretty far in creator's rights.  Despite how far we've come, what do you think is the next plateau?

We're still a ways away from book publishing, where the audience supports author-owned work at least as enthusiastically as company-owned work, and the author-owned work represents the vast majority of work published. Plus, "creator-owned" in comics comes with many more strings attached, in terms of film and licensing rights.

3-  Whether it's a project of your own or someone else's, what is the one project that hasn't been published that you feel should be?

So much to choose from. An ongoing SECTION ZERO by Karl Kesel and Tom Grummett? Lawrence Watt-Evans's PENTAGRAM SQUADRON? A complete collection of Posy Simmonds' longrunning "Mrs. Weber's Diary" strip from THE GUARDIAN? THE COMPLETE CARY BATES FLASH in hardcover?

I want them all.

4-  Because of technology, both fans and creators now have an amazing amount of access to each other with an incredible level of immediacy.  How do you think the attitudes of both fans and creators have changed because of that? 

I think the chance to communicate, from fan to pro and vice versa, has been great -- it's like a never-ending comicon. At the same time, though, the immediacy of focus on the creators, editors, upcoming twists and more has put the spotlight on what goes on backstage, rather than what happens in the comics that are hitting the stores now, and I think too often it makes "how the comics are made" a bigger story than "what's happening on the page," often to the detriment of the reading experience.

As with anything, it has its good points and its bad, and it's up to us to navigate the rapids, getting the most we can from it while minimizing the negative effects.

5-  Who do you feel is one of the biggest visual influences in comics in the last two decades?

The past 20 years? Going back to 1991. Well, just staying close to home, Alex Ross has been a huge influence. Probably quite a few manga artists could be named, but I'm not the guy to name them -- I like Rumiko Takahashi more than most of the stuff that influenced American comics artists.  And Jeff Smith, not so much for surface style but for a clarity of storytelling that I think affected a lot of artists.

6-  I know that in these interviews, one of the most common questions is about creative influence.  I'd like to ask that question in a different way though. Which people in your life have influenced your career, either through direction and advice, providing a break, etc.?

Scott McCloud, simply because it was years of talking (and arguing) comics with each other that got us both going. Richard Howell and Carol Kalish for constant advice, education and support. Ernie Colon was the editor who first bought a major-company script from me. Ton Brevoort and Scott Allie are two of the best editors I've ever worked with, in terms of shaping the material and helping me bring out my intent most successfully. Alex Ross, of course. Jim Salicrup, who hired me as his assistant editor, giving me a year-plus look at how comics are made from within.

I could go on (and probably should, for fear I've neglected someone important), but that ought to do...

7-  For the last 30 or 40 years the comics industry has supposedly been "dying".  What do you think this business is lacking, and what can creators, fans, and those behind the scenes do to fill in those gaps and return comics to the healthy business it should be?

This question could merit a book-length answer, and unfortunately, it's been asked and discussed so many times that it's gotten to be kind of a rut.

But to essay a quick answer: What we're doing wrong is that we're putting so much of our energy trying to make comics that will keep the existing audience on board, by concentrating the thrills, the hype and the excitement in ways that make the work forbidding to newcomers. And at the same time, not doing enough outreach to new audiences. And when we do reach out, too often we confuse the genre for the form, and wind up trying to figure out how to sell Spider-Man to girls and adults who weren't interested even when they were kids.

Nothing wrong with pleasing your core audience, but something's wrong when you don't _also_ reach out to wider audiences, and your audiences of tomorrow. And you do that not by figuring out how to get people who aren't interested in the content you're selling to develop a taste for it, but by creating material they _will_ have a taste for.

The four-part mantra of how to reach a new target audience remains true: 1. Publish material they will like. 2. Publish it in a form they'll be willing to pick up. 3. Distribute it to places they will see it. 4. Tell them it exists.

When we reach out to new audiences, we often do only one of the four -- and sometimes none, and then complain that it's not possible.

Thankfully, we've been doing better at this -- or perhaps I should say that some people are finding ways to do better at it, and the mainstream industry is copying them where it's easiest. But there's a lot more to do.

Oh, and the industry's been "dying" since about 1948. That' another thing we do wrong: We look back to when things were better and try to figure out how to get back to those days, not noticing that things were on a downslope even then. Bringing back strategies that were slowly bleeding away readers the first time won't make you a success again, particularly not if you're starting from a much lower level.

What can creators and fans do? Fans shouldn't be expected to fix the industry. They should buy what they like and skip what they don't; it's not their job to change their own tastes or buying habits. If we want a wider audience, we need to publish for it, not to expect existing fans to suddenly become wider in their tastes. Creators can look for opportunities to reach out to new audiences and take them -- or take the ones they're suited to. Publishers? The four steps I listed above. Do those. All four of them. Spend some money reaching new readers with material they'll like, while you're also keeping the readers you have happy.

8-  What's the most discouraging thing you've heard or experienced while trying to get your first big break and how did you overcome it?

I had a MADAME MASQUE mini-series in the works at Marvel and two projects in the works at DC, so I quit my job assisting Jim Salicrup to concentrate on writing. Within a week, the editor I was working with at Marvel quit and went to DC and the editor I was working with at DC quit the industry entirely, and all the projects I was working on were suddenly dead. And I'd gotten my roommate my old job with Jim, so I couldn't just go back to it. In one week, I was out of the industry, with no other means of support. It was devastating.

As for how I overcame it -- I got a job at Burger King, kept looking for comics work, and eventually found a job as a literary agent and did that for two or three years, during which time I sold a little more comics writing and learned a hell of a lot about the publishing industry. That job led to me coming back to Marvel as a direct sales manager, too.  So It was mostly just a matter of keeping going and keeping at it.

9-  Whether it's the quality of material, publishing strategy, marketing, or the treatment of people- what do you think is the biggest "wrong" and the biggest "right" that you've seen in the comics business?

I think the biggest "wrong" is that we keep looking for the magic bullet -- the one thing we can do differently that will fix everything. And it just doesn't work like that. We have to do it all well, not just one magical thing. The biggest "right" is that we keep trying. Compared to movies, TV and such, it's cheap to make comics, and the barriers to entry are low enough that someone working in his bedroom in the evenings after work, with an Internet connection and a scanner, can make and publish comics. And they do.

So if the existing publishers can't reach out to wider audiences, that's not the end of the world. Someone will. And if they capture an audience, someone will want to give their work a bigger platform. And things'll keep happening.

10-  There seems to be a bit of a disconnect between what comic fans think/say they want and what publishers see in buying trends.  Do comics fans generally know what they want or are the publishers really giving them what they want and they just don't want to admit it?

Well, the fans who say things loudly and repeatedly on the internet aren't speaking for the entire audience, any more than I speak for all writers. If everyone on the internet says, "We want self-contained comics" and everyone not on the internet buys the big crossovers, then the big crossovers will make money and we'll see more of them.

That said, the readers on the internet who says they want self-contained comics often don't buy them when they get published, partly because some of those fans like the idea of them more than they like the reality of them, and partly because they feel they "have to" keep up with the big entangled storylines, and don't have money left over to buy stuff they'd like better. So to some degree, yes, there are readers who don't buy what they say they want publishers to do, and do buy what they say they don't want publishers to do.

Nothing to do about it, really, other than to look at what sells more than at what the most-vocal fans say they'll buy, and make your choices from hard data instead of online assertions.

11-  As disposable/ consumable entertainment, how do you think comics (or publishing in general) can keep from suffering the same pitfalls as the music industry?

I'm the wrong guy to ask. I don't know what the pitfalls of the music industry are. But I also think the music industry is structured very differently than the comics industry, so what's a pitfall for them might not work the same way for us.

One thing's for sure: We can't support ourselves by touring and doing live shows....

12-  A few years ago, people thought getting into the book stores was going to be some big boon to comics.  I think we've seen that's not entirely true.  Do you think we're headed for the same thing with digital comics/ downloads?  Is it ultimately help or hype?

I don't think I agree with the question. Getting comics into bookstores _has_ been a big boon to the industry. It hasn't solved our problems miraculously overnight, but it's been a big help and has played a role in keeping publishers and creators going in the face of lumping periodical sales, and reaching out to new readers who don't shop in comics stores.  But it's taken 25 years or so to get as far as we have with bookstores, and there's still room to grow. It's not something that started recently, and it's not something where the benefits are a matter of flipping a switch -- the bookstore boom of recent years is the result of long years of work and slow growth in the decades before it.

Digital comics are probably going to encounter the same thing: It'll take time to build up to the point that they're really effective, and it'll take work, and there'll be positives and negatives. There'll be help _and_ hype, and we shouldn't expect anything to be all one thing or the other.