Arakawa: At the beginning, I was contracted for a one-shot publication. However, the editor-in-charge of the storyboards passed down a request, "Let us serialise this, okay...". With a story that is meant to be completed in one chapter at this time, "How on earth am I going to do it?" [laughs]. I pounded my brains for around half a month, thinking about ideas to serialise this work.

[Creator-owned projects] give you the chance to do your own ideas. But there's a lot of fun to be had working on characters that somebody else owns. I mean, before I die, I'd love to do a Batman [story]. I won't get as much money for it, unless it sells really really well. But it's something I'd like to do.

I've the most extraordinary longing to say 'Bloody Hell'!

What model reader did I want as i was writing? An accomplice, to be sure, one who would play my game.

I love to work in the comics medium -- I really do -- and I've realised that a total contempt for the intelligence of the audience is the key to success. You know that Doom Force thing I did recently for D.C.? -- the pisstake of X-Force, right? Well, eighty percent of the people who sent letters of comment in on the story actually took the thing seriously! They didn't see the joke! It's horrific. Tom Peyer phoned me up and read page after page of these insane letters. That was the turning point. That is the moment that I became a super-villain. (1992)