Having completed Messiah Complex, what are your thoughts? Are you happy with how it all played out? You seemed to have gotten quite a few of the crossover's most dramatic beats...

Yeah, all things considered, I'm very happy. I've said before that I think we did the planning exactly as it should be done - with everyone involved, and far enough in advance so that we all knew where we were going and could make the individual titles flow into the crossover smoothly and naturally.

It was kind of weird, and kind of providential, because the structure we chose - which was effectively a three-act structure - gave me the climactic beats three times in a row: I did the two back-to-back battles with the Purifiers and the Marauders, the reveal that Bishop was the traitor and the big finale. It was very cool, and I tried not to let the residual guilt stop me enjoying myself.

How far back were you laying the seeds in X-Men for what was to come?

Since day one, almost. Way back in January of 2006 Marvel flew me over to New York for a creative summit, and that was when the idea of having a big X-Men crossover event was floated. I was already developing my ideas for my first year on the book at that stage - I hadn't written a single script. So I was able to build the ideas we were kicking around into my own planning for Adjectiveless X-Men in what felt like a very natural way. And then as things moved on and the character arc I was creating for Rogue took shape, I put that back onto the table as one of the things that would both drive and be resolved by Messiah Complex. Looking back on it now, I'm still slightly in awe of that process. It was such a luxury to have that degree of forewarning and that degree of control.

You got to set things in motion for Cable. Why was he the character who ultimately ends up with the baby?

It had to be someone with knowledge of the future who would be in a position to make that call. But why Cable? You've only got to look at his own past - at what he's suffered and the crazy shape his life has been bent into. It's psychologically very believable that he would feel a sense of responsibility towards this other new-born child who's going to represent the same irresistible prize or target to... well, to some of the very same people who've shaped his life, for better and for worse. His protectiveness towards her makes total sense to me - and it makes for a really powerful and loaded conflict of interest between him and Cyclops, which I think comes to a head in that final chapter.

Now you have X-Men: Legacy. Can you give some more clarity for what this new direction is actually about?

Legacy, as you know, is a Professor X solo book, and it's Janus-faced. It walks forward while looking backward, allowing Xavier to review his entire life while at the same time involving him in some intense situations in the present. It's a very potent mix, I think. The flashbacks are always seen in relation to what's going on in present time, so they're not self-indulgent or decorative: particularly in the second arc, there's an urgency to them that's driven both by Xavier's need to understand his own past actions and by the ongoing consequences of those actions. The word "redemption" gets bandied around a lot, often in some fairly unlikely contexts, but that's a lot of what this book is about. It's about a redemptive or purgatorial journey through forty years of X-Men continuity, seen through the eyes of the man who started the wheels in motion in the first place.

With the X-Men seemingly disbanded, how closely does Legacy tie into current X-Men continuity?

To begin with, hardly at all. Xavier is on silent running, as it were - out of contact with the X-Men and deliberately not letting them know anything about his whereabouts or his plans. We acknowledge what's going on in the other books, but we don't feed into it - I think for good and sufficient reasons. When Xavier does come back onto the map as far as the X-Men are concerned, look out for fireworks.

You've mentioned that while Xavier is the main character in Legacy, he will have a larger supporting cast. Can you talk about who these characters are and how they tie into your story?

It's very much a rolling programme, and it will depend on the logic of each arc. To begin with, we see him with the Acolytes, particularly Exodus, with Omega Sentinel and with... a very old acquaintance who's been both a friend and an enemy at different times. I've already blown the lid on the fact that Rogue and Gambit are coming in at various points, and some other prominent former X-Men will also get to be involved.

One of the central themes is Xavier interrogating his own past, and he's going to be seeking out people who've played a part in that past. Not just to reminisce but to claim fragments of his memories that he lost as a result of being shot in the head by Bishop. You can expect that quest to go all the way back to his earliest childhood, so literally anyone could turn out to play a part. But some of the things he discovers along the way make him seek out certain individuals with particular urgency.

What about adversaries? Who can we look forward to seeing pop up?

Apart from Exodus and Magneto (oops, what a giveaway!) Sebastian Shaw, Juggernaut, Hazard... lots of people. But this book doesn't resolve itself through fight scenes. It really doesn't. The significant encounters are mostly verbal.

You've been paired with some dynamic artists for your Marvel work. What can you say about working with Scott Eaton? And what about your backup artists?

Scott is fantastic - really a great visual storyteller, which is what it's all about. We had a ball with Endangered Species and we're having a ball with Legacy. It's not really a case of lead artist and backup artist, though: it's more that the flashback scenes scream out for a stylistic contrast with the present-day narrative, and we reflect that by having different artists handle them - to begin with, the legendary (overused word, but in this case what else can you say?) John Romita Jr. I think this is turning out to be one of the most beautiful and visually arresting books I've ever been associated with. Which, you know, considering some of the people I've had the privilege of working with, is really saying something.

I'd like to ask you about Crossing Midnight. Why do you think it didn't catch on? How do you feel about the book ending?

Oh man, that's material for a whole interview in itself. Why didn't Crossing Midnight find its audience? I don't think it was any one thing, but if I had to pick out the main factor, I'd say that in spite of knowing I HAD to do this, I didn't come out of the gate fast enough. A first issue these days has to lay everything on the line - has to play to the high concept, and leave the audience feeling like they know what they're going to be getting - in broad outline, anyway - in the rest of the series. There's no room to be coy or teasing or indirect or allusive or even (except within strict limits) to bait and switch.

Crossing Midnight#1 made a strong genre statement, I think, in the way it set up as fantasy and then switched to really nasty horror. But it didn't make a strong narrative statement: people weren't sure where the Hara twins' story was going and how they were meant to feel about it. If you stick around for the first arc, then it all makes sense, but not enough people did. And to be fair, not enough people picked up the first issue in the first place, so even a normal level of attrition would probably have been fatal for us - and we had very high attrition in those early days. I think most of the people who stayed with the book have a strong affection for it, but it wasn't a high enough number to give us stability.

So yeah, I feel sad about it ending prematurely - but happy that DC gave us the time to finish out the core story of Kai's quest. They treated us very considerately, warned us up front that there was likely to be a problem and then kept us appraised month on month so we could plan to get to the climax and denouement more quickly if we had to. Really, we were able to wrap up everything that we'd set in motion, and the overall ending is more or less what it would have been if we'd had all the time in the world to play with. It could have been so very much worse, if the axe had fallen suddenly.

In Crossing Midnight #10 you have a commentary in the issue titled "Innocence for Sale or Rent". Why was it important for you to address the issue of child prostitution? Do you think you might speak out on other issues through your work again?

I think what prompted me to do that was a combination of three things - the strangeness of that situation to a Western eye, which might have led some readers to see it as purely invented; the seriousness of the issue, which seemed to require some contextualisation (or at least some choric comment besides Tarimoku's); and the fear that I might be seen as complacently pointing to the mote in Japan's eye while ignoring the beam in Europe's. As I said in that essay, people trafficking is fast becoming Britain's national shame. It's happening on a colossal scale, and the authorities don't seem to be dedicating any serious resources to dealing with it. So I yielded to temptation and got up on my soapbox.
Generally, although there *is* a political dimension to the stuff I write, it's usually left implicit. The inherent danger of being topical is that your references date very quickly and become incomprehensible to later readers. Which is not to say that topical is always equal to bad: it depends on what your aims are. Some critics sneered at Dickens's Great Expectations because the prison ships he writes about had all been decommissioned before the book came out - as if that invalidated the story in some way! But the issues of class conflict and mistrust at the heart of the book aren't affected at all by the collapse of the topical reference

Do you hope to give Vertigo another go at some point?

Absolutely. In fact I've got two pitches in at Vertigo right now. I love the imprint, I love the creative freedom and most of all I love the people. I learned the ropes at Vertigo - to an enormous extent, honing my writing skills first with Alisa Kwitney and then for seven years on Lucifer with Shelly Bond. Since then I think I've worked with every editor Vertigo has, and always had a fantastic time. Without any bulls**t or hyperbole, Vertigo is a unique entity, with a unique place in comics history, and I'm really proud to have been a part of it.

As a creator, what are the range of emotions you experience during the creation of your work?

Everything from triumph to despair by way of inspiration, desperation and pulmonary resuscitation. There are distinct phases, but they're not always the same. Some scripts I go into with a kind of eagerness and hunger, because I know what I want to do and I'm just keen to be doing it. Others are conundrums. I know where I want to come out on the other side, but either I'm not sure how to get there or I've got a plan and I'm not sure it will work. I'm lucky to have been able to choose my projects for a good few years now, so it's a long while since I went into a script thinking "how am I going to make this piece of crap move like it's alive?" but I've been there. I think everyone's been there.

The bottom line is that if you're a writer, whether you're making a living out of it or just doing it in your free time, there's got to be a level on which you're having a good time yourself. It's hard work, if you're putting your heart and soul into it, but the exhilaration still has to be there on top of everything else. In case that sounds like flannel, I'll ante up and admit that there have been times when I've lost that feeling. There have been scripts that I've trudged into without any sense of joy, although usually I found some joy while I was in there.

Do you want to strike a balance between your more mainstream work, like X-Men, and with things like Lucifer or Crossing Midnight, or even Voodoo Child for that matter?

If you mean in the sense of keeping a foot in a lot of different camps, then yeah, definitely. Genre writing is in my blood - whether that's superhero books, horror, fantasy, sci-fi or whatever. I don't want to be typecast, and I don't want to stop experimenting with different forms and different ways of telling stories. I'm terrified of becoming the guy who writes the same book over and over. It comes to everyone, if they stay on their feet long enough, but you have to fight against it as long as you can.