MARK: It tickles me that people refer to me as a 2000AD-style writer because I HATED 2000AD growing up. It just seemed too dirty and dangerous to me, which is interesting. I look back on that stuff now and I love it, but I grew up on the same books as Brian Bendis, Brian Vaughan and all the other American creators who are around 30 years old. I'm a sucker for a happy ending. I like things to be nice, but I don't mind seeing everybody go through a shit-storm to get there. I'm interested in drama and I like to juxtapose shocking art images with amusing dialogue. I see a page as a little mini-exhibit. I'm not cynical, as some people have suggested. I'm a utopian. I'm a believer in a better world and I think my books are generally about this. Sure, the characters are flawed, but they're all idealists at heart and I think most people reading them fall into this bracket. I know I certainly do.

RICHARD: So how did it feel to write 2000AD, especially the Summer Offensive, where you and Grant Morrison wrote pretty much all of the scripts for a season... get any self-loathing from it?

MARK: It felt strange because I didn't read it growing up. I had no idea what the characters were about or even really the tone of the book until about half-way through my couple of years there. The Summer Offensive (which Grant Morrison and I did with John Smith and a bunch of our artist pals a few years back) was huge because I think I was finally getting the hang of it. Oddly enough, I think I'd do a good 2000AD now. Frank Quitely and I would be very suited to that kind of material, but I'd been raised on Curt Swan. 2000AD was the opposite of what drew me to comics so it didn't appeal to me as a teenager.

RICH: You talked about Paul Levitz earlier... Levitz personally organised an instant payment for DC work when your child was seriously ill and accounts had lost one of your cheques. Are your public comments concerning the man and his comics company suitable for someone who went out of his way to help you and your daughter so?
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MARK: The only reason you know this is because I've cited this as an example of how Paul Levitz can be a nice guy, right? So of course I've never set out to blacken a man's reputation. I don't like personal attacks on people in the same way I don't feel I should mouth off about other people's work because it's below the belt and it affects their earning-capacity. My old attacks on DC (and it's so long ago I genuinely couldn't care less) were attacks on their company policy and a publishing vision which I think was and is detrimental to an industry I don't just happen to earn my living from, but which I also love.

The Authority was the fastest growing book in the market when all their other books were sinking in sales and they killed it. As a creator and as a reader, I just think that's an abomination and it's why I wouldn't work there at the moment. But that's just my personal decision and I don't suggest other people do the same. I also think they're in a fantastic position to reinvigorate a still-depressed market with their limitless connections through Warners and AOL, but they purposely keep their line trimmed because they earn nice salaries regardless of whether there's a boom or a bust and they don't want to attract the attention of their parent company or anyone else who might want those highly-paid jobs. But, again, that's none of my business. I don't work for them at the moment and I have no intention of doing so for the time being, but that's not to say they're evil people. Some of them are very, very nice people. Paul, for all his faults, does a lot of stuff behind the scenes to help out older creative people who built the industry we're making a nice living from today.

When a cheque of mine went missing for three weeks and accounts said I'd have to wait a FURTHER six weeks to get my salary from DC, Paul knew my wife and I already had a kid in hospital and personally made sure that this cheque was wired to us without delay. So I'm not attacking the individual. I NEVER attack the individual. I just feel that guys like Bill and Joe or Jim Valentino or whoever would capitalize on the enormity of DC's potential much more than we're currently seeing. The fact that the 3 most famous fictional characters in the world are selling less than a Glasgow newspaper is just appalling to me.

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