I don't worry about budget, at least not early on. I discovered that if you start worrying about budget, then you'll get half of whatever you're trying to worry about. You're constantly working yourself into a corner. So, you just shoot for the stars and then see what you get.
That's the thing about the writer's life is that you have to have self-discipline. Otherwise you'll never get paid.
The beauty with comics - and also the risk - is it is a far smaller number of voices. It's the writer and the artist and to a lesser extent the editor, who typically is the silent partner, if you've got a good enough team. Whatever you put out is the author's intent. You have to be able to defend that, of course. You have no one to hide behind, or no one to blame but yourselves, which I find refreshing because I've found in film too many times I've been blamed for other people's decisions.
What I need more in my culture and in my life right now is hope, and so I tend to write to that. I'll always end up bending more toward optimism.
As my contribution as an artist and a storyteller, I have to have some hope. I have to have some beacon of good at the end of it.
Studios are mercurial kind of creatures. A lot of the times getting a movie out can be as much luck as anything else.
