Learning to write comics is, in fact, so bloody difficult, because it’s such a weird form that it does actually make you a bit more adaptable for other forms.

You’ve worked in many other forms, but I’d class your online presence as almost a work in itself. With your persona, but also your use of Twitter and your blog and your discussion forums like Whitechapel. You’ve created this platform where you look beyond your immediate work and audience, and bring people together. Not many writers do that.

When Alan Moore started out, and was getting known in the 80s, pretty much the first thing he did when he got the opportunity, is he set up a column in one of the British comics he was working on, The Daredevils at Marvel UK, where he could review fanzines and things.

Reading that as a kid, I kind of got the impression that that was part of the job. How once your profile got to the point where people actually paid attention to what you were saying, you should use that to direct their attention to things that are worth knowing about, by people who don’t have that profile yet. I got the sense that that was what you did.

So, once my profile got to that point, that’s what I did. And it didn’t dawn on me till later that not everybody does that. And I was never interested in just limiting it to comics, because I’m interested in more things than just comics.