MARK: Sorry, I meant AMERICAN books. I don't read any of that stuff and forget that there's a market for it through various international outlets. That said, Marvel and DC books sell huge numbers in Brazil and Germany and Spain and so on -- so I'd be curious to see what the total sales are for all these things on a comparative level.

RICHARD: You don't read Viz Comics... is that because you're a character in it? No, don't answer that. The favourite British comic for children and it's got a big Not For Sale To children sticker on the front. Bless them. But then again, most superhero characters were created for children. In light of that, do you believe your writing style on Ultimates and Ultimate X-Men has been appropriate?? The Oz version of Rupert The Bear may be amusing, but if the Mail or IPC published those kind of Rupert The Bear comics on a continual basis, it could destroy a childhood character. Can Marvel superheroes really be put back in the "all ages" box after you've finished playing with them? Why, when you've shown you can write all-ages comics for Superman Adventures and Sonic The Hedgehog, do you refuse to write them for other titles? Can't you be "cool" and all-ages suitable at the same time?

Take a look at the Ultimate X-Men Hardcover here...

MARK: This always makes me laugh when this question is raised because the answer is incredibly simple. Comics aimed directly at children will not sell to children. Children read manga if they read anything at all. There's been an evolutionary change in what kids want to read and we're only just waking up to that right now. For ten years, I've been watching Marvel and DC launch well-meaning lines aimed at eight year olds and they sell between seven and fifteen thousand copies every month (approximately one third of what their poor-selling Marvel and DC Universe parent books sell) and even then they're mostly read by middle-aged men on a nostalgia trip.

Now I worked on Superman Adventures for eighteen months. I was nominated for two Eisners for those books. They were incredibly well-received. I count those issues as among the work in my career of which I'm most proud. But you know what? Nobody read them. Sure, the critics and fellow pros enjoyed them, but it was performing in a theatre to empty stalls. Ty Templeton produced the best Batman stories since Dark Knight Returns and nobody was reading them. It was a crime.

RICHARD: Tintin and Asterix. Comics are aimed at children, selling to children, and everyone else as well. And they sell millions. Why not Marvel?

MARK: Not on a monthly basis they don't. Those books have been in print for up to four decades and, yeah, their cumulative sales are impressive. What we're talking about here is monthly sales and those books actually sell very little in an average month, despite coming out in a dozen different languages. Also, we're aiming primarily at an American market and Asterix and Tintin sell virtually nothing in the USA so, again, outside of manga I really don't think there IS a market for young children's comics. There's been a genuine culture shift, like the shift with Superman in 1938, and we'd better adapt.

The Ultimate line was never about comics aimed at children. Bill and Joe were very, very clear about this from the start because they knew, from experience, that these kinds of books didn't work. They wanted a MAINSTREAM audience who didn't read comics and this is the market they asked Bendis and I to appeal to. And we did. The books are consistent top ten books in the direct market even though this is merely a bonus; the real demographic being the mainstream distribution the line allowed us to get and the fact that we're, by far, the fastest growing line in the book-store market. So yeah, the books are edgy and feel kind of dangerous, but as Stan Lee said to me 'people said the same thing about the original Marvel line compared to the more conservative DC books of the day'. We're just writing about real people with real problems who happen to be wearing costumes. There's nothing in the Ultimate books more adult in content than we'd see in an episode of Buffy and people have no issues with Buffy.

RICHARD: Well some people do. It was named one of the most
Objectionable TV shows citied by a Christian group. You're an ordained Catholic minister. How does that inform your creative work? Have you sinned when writing The Authority?

MARK: People are weird about Catholicism and pretty weird about
Christianity in general. If I said I was a Hindu or a Jew or a Seikh, people would be very respectful and say it was nice that I had some kind of spirituality. If I said I was a Buddhist or a Raelian or a Satanist or Scientologist, people would smile and say it was kind of cool and quirky. However, tell people you're a Catholic and they kind of sneer. Christianity is the one religion in the West which isn't deferred to or respected or maybe even tolerated which is weird, considering the principles behind it are just about trying to live a good life and being decent to other people. Write a story about a priest who interferes with young boys and nobody bats an eye-lid. I've seen it in mainstream comics like Vertigo books. Write a story about a Rabbi who interferes with kids and the ADL will have you in court and possibly jail.

Why is Christianity the one religion it's OK to take a shot at? Nobody asked the actor Art Malik if his peaceful faith was compromised by appearing as a terrorist in the movie True Lies. But to answer your question more directly, I don't think writing fiction can ever be a sin because fiction is just a peaceful expression of an idea. As a Christian, I think it's immoral to curb art-forms which bring pleasure to millions of people, so, if it's not doing anyone any harm, I'm opposed to any kind of censorship.

Continued here...