‘I want to see a Batman that combines the cynic, the scholar, the daredevil, the businessman, the superhero, the wit, the lateral thinker , the aristocrat. He terrifies the guilty but he has great compassion for the weak and the downtrodden and will lay his life on the line for anybody who’s in trouble. He’s a master of yoga and meditation who has as much control over his body and his feelings as any human. He has a wider range of experiences than most people will dream of in ten lifetimes. This is not a one-note character! So, while I won’t pretend we all live on Sunnybrook Farm, I don’t think its appropriate – particularly in trying times – to present our fictional heroes as unsmiling vengeance machines. I’d rather Batman embodied the best that secular humanism has to offer – a sour-faced, sexually-repressed, humorless, uptight, angry, and all-round grim ‘n’ gritty Batman would be more likely to join the Taliban surely?’

‘The way that we worked on Lost Girls was actually different than the way I’ve worked on any other comic I’ve done. I’m known for turning out book-sized scripts with detailed written descriptions of each panel and all the dialogue and captions and sound effects. But Melinda had never worked with a scriptwriter before, so she looked at these enormous scripts I’d written for the first four or five episodes, and I think it crushed her spirit. She wasn’t comfortable, and she suggested that maybe I could do thumbnails, which is something I haven’t really done for other artists because I’m so lousy at drawing thumbnails. I have to write pages of explanation to tell them that this little blob down in the right-hand corner is actually the leading character’s head and shoulders. But Melinda, since she was living up here, I could talk her through all the breakdowns. She’d take my rough thumbnails and a pep talk and would go and turn out these lovely pages. Then I would do the dialoguing after the artwork was done, so that I could have a look at the expression that Melinda brought to the work. I could fine-tune the dialogue for the images so everything was much more synchronized. Lost Girls probably marks the closest that I’ve worked with an artist on a comic, perhaps unsurprisingly. With the nature of the material, it more or less demands an intimate relationship between the creators. Not just intimate in the usual physical sense, but also intimate in a mental and creative sense.’

Alan Moore: ‘…if we have any optimism in [Watchmen] it’ll be valid optimism because it won’t simply be based on ignoring the nasty facts of life. To me, just in that last panel, in Godfrey’s last line “I leave it entirely in your hands” – that’s talking to the reader as well… I leave it entirely in your hands, how do we sort out this Gordian Knot? If the question is who makes the world? then if there’s an answer it is that everybody does. Yeah, there’s people that seem to be in more immediate power than others but really the world is an elaborate series of accidents, coincidences and unbelievable synchronicities that people appear to be in control of but… well, think about the events in your own life, the things that have made really dramatic changes in you can be traced back to deciding to pick up a ballpoint pen or not pick it up.’

1. Alan Moore.
2. Grant Morrison.
3. From Hell by Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell.
4. Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons.
5. Daredevil: Born Again by Frank Miller and David Mazzuchelli.
6. Cerebus by Dave Sim and Gerhard.
7. St. Swithin’s Day by Grant Morrison and Paul Grist.
8. Batman: The Dark Knight Returns by Frank Miller.
9. 2000AD (between 1977 and 1989).
10. The Castafiore Emerald by Hergé.
11. Steve Bell.
12. The Playboy / I Never Lived You by Chester Brown.
13. Dan Clowes.
14. Doom Patrol by Grant Morrison and Various Artists.
15. Elektra: Assassin by Frank Miller and Bill Sienkiewicz.
16. Hate by Peter Bagge.
17. It’s A Good Life if you Don’t Weaken by Seth.
18. “Gaze into the Fist of Dredd!”
19. Peep Show by Joe Matt.
20. Doonesbury by Garry Trudeau.
21. The Alec McGarry Stories by Eddie Campbell.
22. Daredevil.
23. Rupert the Bear Annuals (Probably the first comics I ever read).
24. Brendan McCarthy.
25. The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen by Alan Moore and Kevin O’Neill.