Funnybook Babylon

In the history of comics and movies and music too, it's always when things are at their bottomed-out, either creatively or financially, there's more chance-taking going on. You might as well, you know! Everything else is fucked-up. You might as well green-light Easy Rider, 'cause we've got nothing else to do, nothing else is working. I'm not saying that Ultimate Spider-Man is Easy Rider, but the similarity is that in the movie industry, they were literally closing their doors; it was over. And they might as well try a couple low-budget, counterculture things and see if maybe they want that, 'cause they don't want Hello, Dolly! And I felt a similarity when we were doing the Ultimate books, when they were first launching, that things were really bad over at Marvel. And if they were so far down the list that they were up to me, then it really was, "Well, we might as well let these guys go crazy, 'cause nothing else is working."