“As much as I liked the build-up to Christmas, the week after always socked me wi…” — Paul Dini

One Thanksgiving weekend, I had a lost weekend at a friend's place with 'Grand Theft Auto.'

It's wrong to become a bully yourself or to take it out on other people, and in my case, I just retreated to a place where I was safe. And that place was my imagination, books, and television.

Bruce Wayne needs a sense of humor to do his job. Batman, for a very long time, was going to a very dark place.

The old Rankin-Bass animated specials seemed to exist in a loosely shared reality, which is what attracted me to them. Santa, Snow Miser, Rudolph, Frosty, even the Easter Bunny seemed to be on nodding acquaintance with each other, even if only in cameo appearances in each other's cartoons.