I was like a mutant when I was a boy. I learned to read when I was four years old; it was like a miracle.
There are a lot of writers who just want to do their own thing and avoid the rest of the Marvel Universe. But for me that was one of the things I loved about Marvel: that shared universe. So of course you would run into a mutant in Manhattan. You would run into another hero in Manhattan. For me, I figured why not? Why not have that fun?
Everything about being a teenager and not feeling like you fit in is just magnified by being a mutant!
'Xen,' to me, was a necessary excursion inward, into myself. 'Mutant' is a response to it and is more extroverted.
Epigenetics doesn't change the genetic code, it changes how that's read. Perfectly normal genes can result in cancer or death. Vice-versa, in the right environment, mutant genes won't be expressed. Genes are equivalent to blueprints; epigenetics is the contractor. They change the assembly, the structure.
I was obsessed with the Turtles, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. There's Leonardo, Donatello, Michelangelo, Raphael and my dad used to call me Callemundo, saying you're the fifth turtle.
The weird thing for me is I'm sitting there in the '80s writing about the Mutant Control Act and here we are in the second decade of the 21st century with the Patriot Act, listening to presidential candidates talk about building walls to keep people out: who's acceptable and who isn't. It's very creepy.
If I were a worm, I would rather be the long-lived mutant than the normal worm, that's for sure.
With worms you can just change genes at random and see if you can find a mutant that does what you want it to do.
'Batman Begins' came out and it was really successful, and it had gritty naturalism. And suddenly... I can't tell you how many movies I was pitched where it was, 'We want to do what you did with 'Batman' but with 'Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles,' or whatever.
