Tom King doesn't just want to create great comic book stories with DC Comics; his goals are loftier than that. In fact, he lets himself at least think about the all-time great stories that have found the printed page at the house that Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman built.

"We look back at all of DC, and DC made the best comics ever made with Dark Knight Returns, Watchmen, New Frontier ... and we're like, can we do that? Can we do something that's both a comic you want to read and addresses the modern age like that?" King posited to SYFY WIRE's Mike Avila at San Diego Comic-Con. "And obviously the answer is no, because no one can! But we can try, right? You can have that vision!" he answered with a laugh.

"You can swing for the fences. I wanted to do something that can talk about the current time. Regardless of the politics, you feel like every day you wake up in a world you don't understand. I don't want to write about the politics, I don't want a Twitter feed in my comic, but about the emotion of our times."

The writer is taking on a character created by the great Jack Kirby, Mister Miracle, in this, the celebration of 100 years since Kirby's birth. That's not lost on him.

"You can't out-Kirby Kirby. If you're trying to pay tribute to that man, you can't think 'I'm going to write as big and bombastic as him. I'm gonna have as brilliant ideas as he did.' That's a fool's errand, because that's what Kirby did, and Kirby was unique," King explained. "The way to be the best Kirby you can be is to swerve from that. We took that world, the epic world, the incredible space opera, and wanted to make it more personal."

Watch the full video below:

Video of Batman, Mister Miracle Writer Tom King on Jack Kirby | San Diego Comic-Con 2017 | SYFY WIRE

Additional reporting by Lucas Siegel