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Was it like that working for the British companies?

It always ends up like that. It tends to be you move in and you've got friends in the business and they let you do stuff, kind of experimental stuff. At 2000AD I was gettin' away with anything. But me and Mark Millar did the 2000AD Relaunch, we were doing this strip called Big Dave, which was like South Park before its time, real non-political stuff and they were letting us away with it, and then this new regime came in and I'm blacklisted at 2000AD for no reason! It's the same at DC, you've got friends there and things are experimental and then suddenly they clamp down because DC is now the market leader, and the market leader's frightened, they don't' want change, they want to keep it in that position.

But they use you to become the market leader.

Exactly. Justice League is now the franchise. It is to DC what the X-Men was to Marvel. But interestingly, now the experimental stuff is coming out of Marvel, because they're in the second position. They can try anything to get back on top. Marvel have got some top DC writers going over to them.

How do you feel about this reputation you get where people get scared of you and blacklist you for what you do? This reputation as the frighteningly weird intense comic guy?

I feel like a perfectly sane person. The people I speak to and who understand what I do also seem perfectly sane and rational. But I'm dealin' with children. I'm dealin' with people who think like children and respond to things emotionally - if you say you don't like their work, they'll hate you forever. If somebody says they don't like my work, that's because they don't like my work, it's as simple as that! Not everyone's gonna like what you do.

You find yourself dealing with really unusual people you wouldn't get on with in normal life. It's comic nerds. It's boys who got severely beaten up at school and they're suddenly running the company. And I look like the kind of guy who used to beat them up! So these emotional, reptile brains of theirs take over and it's got nothing to do with what's rational, it's "Oh, my god, it's a skinhead! We're in trouble!"

Well, you're not from America, either. The whole Trainspotting thing...

Oh, I get that a lot. And they think I'm on heroin constantly, and I'm carrying a knife. But that's away at home! (laughs)

You were saying yesterday that you were having trouble dealing with artists - what is it that you have trouble with?

It's not trouble, I just can't be bothered. I don't have time for them. I've been doing thirteen hour days for the last few years. It's this really intense thing. I haven't got time to see my family, let alone talk to artists. It just hasn't worked. I'll do my bit as well as I can, and I hope they do their bit as well as they can, but I don't want them to call me. I'll speak to Frank Quitely, who lives near me, but that's about it.

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