I wrote five issues of that and got the sack. Actually, they paid me for eight, but they changed their minds about the direction and threw three issues out the window.

I came in on the decline. Phil Elliot was in first, he got his book out, he sold thirteen thousand, I think he got two issues out before I got mine in, this was March '87. He was out in December '86.

It's business, selling comics, you work out what sells and you don't want to muck about with it too much.

It's not the last one. Five's out, six is coming out in November, that's a single chapter, and then seven is the big horrifying one. And I think a couple after that to wrap the thing up.

I wrote some three hundred pages, threw most of them out, and started over. The novel seemed to require a maturity and breadth of vision I didn't yet have. What I discovered was that this maturity and vision accrues gradually over the course of many days, months, years of struggling to be a better writer.

The thing that bothers me about journalism is the false equivalency we sometimes place on certain issues.