Geroge Perez with Billy Tucci, and John Romita Jr.

Each year, Scoop photographer and internet DJ Mike Solof travels to a number of comic book conventions, including Comic-Con International: San Diego, to take pictures of the creators, publishers, retailers, fans, exhibitors, panelists and even the architecture at the show. In 2004, Solof started interviewing some of his subjects.

This interview with Infinite Crisis, JLA/Avengers, and New Teen Titans artist George Pérez was one of the first ones he finished. And yes, we know there's more than 10 questions.

You can here Mike Solof's internet radio show regularly on www.ear.fm.

Scoop: What is it you love about comics?
George Pérez The ability to tell a story, to create whole worlds out of the imagination, to be able to live a childhood that never ends. Plain and simple I love to draw and tell stories and I get to do both in comics.

Scoop: How would you explain comics to people who just don't get them?
GP: It's basically watching a silent movie in pictures, with word balloons as title cards, with just enough information to give you the characters motivation. Take a movie in still images and add special effects that until recently, movies could never do.

Scoop: Baseball players sometime wear lucky uniforms or caps. Do you have any strange rituals or superstitions that help you prepare for writing or drawing?
GP: No superstition, but the luckiest thing in my life is my wife. As long as she says she'll stay with me, I've got the inspiration to keep going.

Scoop: How do you go about editing you own work and what's the hardest cut you've ever done?
GP: Everybody does their own editing in terms of thinking how much can I fit on a page. There are times when there are scenes and you think "Oh... it would be nice to expand this a bit but you just have to cut it down." You edit in your mind. My greatest gift is I'm a natural storyteller so there is not much editing I have to do because I've already designed the book in my mind before it goes down on paper.

Scoop: If you could kill off one character, who would that be and why?
GP: You mean besides an interviewer? [Laughs] Oh gosharoonie... I don't think there's such a thing as a bad character. A character I don't like, somebody else might come in and suddenly do a take that everyone will think "Why didn't anyone else think of this before?"

Scoop: What's your weirdest inspiration for a story?
GP: I was doing Crimson Plague and I had a certain idea of the power, like Aliens deadly blood and the model I was working with asked me what happens when she menstruates and the entire series took on a different tone from that point on.

Scoop: If you could change one word, one line, one moment, one story or one piece of artwork that you've done, what would that be?
GP: Sgt. Pepper's lonely Hearts Club Band the comic adaptation of the movie. I would have said no! Wipe that off the face of the earth.

Scoop: What's the strangest thing you've ever acted out in real life to see if it would work in the comic you were doing?
GP: I don't need to act out many things in order to do it. That's a television version of how a comic book artist works. I have my wife do strange things with her right hand if I need to draw a certain position. I draw with my right hand so I can't actually model with it. Of course her right hand is smaller than my left so sometimes my characters will have a smaller right hand than left.

Scoop: What was the last job you really had to work for as opposed to it just being offered to you?
GP: Actually I've been very lucky. The only one I really had to work for was inking Dan Jurgens on the Titans. At that time I had a bad reputation for reliability. DC was very reluctant to give me a monthly title and Dan and Eddie Berganza had to fight to have me ink that title. So I did 15 issues straight without missing a deadline. That was before I did the Avengers and doing so rebuilt my reputation.

Scoop: Have you ever dreamed a story or artwork?
GP: The only one I ever had was a short story I wrote in high school. I had a dream where I went to New York City and rode a subway and the subway went to Hell. It was called "Terror Train."

Scoop: What's your favorite or strangest groupie story?
GP: I severed my Achilles tendon and as I was going into surgery, I was on the gurney being wheeled into the operating theater when the attending physician looks down at me and says " Are you the George Perez?" just as they are about to put the IV in me. As it turned out his sister was the operating nurse and then she shouts out "Not in his hand, not in his hand," so they made sure to pump up my arm until they found a vein they could use there.

Scoop: What was your proudest moment as a person, as a collaborator and as a writer/artist?
GP: As a person, I've been married 23 years and I'm more passionately in love than I ever have been in my life.

Scoop: With your wife?
GP: [Laughs] Yes, with my wife. Professionally, I've proved that if you really, really work hard you can rebuild your career and reputation because in this industry, you always have a chance to be new to someone at any given time when they pick up the book. When a person picks up a comic book and likes my work, he has no idea how old I am, or how long I have been in the business and, if it's the first time, and I grab them, that's success! And I'm glad I have a pretty good track record on that.

Scoop: What do you want to be remembered for?
GP: Strangely enough, when I'm introduced in the industry, people think I'm a nice guy. If for nothing else, fooling that many people, for so long, well, I'm very, very proud of that.

Scoop: What makes a great writer or artist?
GP: Anyone, writer or artist, who never believes that dreaming is a waste of time. The idea of "What if?" is a question you will always want to ask and no matter how the business rises and falls, I draw because I love to draw. I write because I love to write. The fact that I'm earning money is an extra plus but as I tell people who are showing me their portfolios, draw because first and foremost, you love it, not because you want to get paid. I've been offered jobs in other occupations, advertising, and animation but this is what I love to do! Ross Andru, God rest him, gave me the highest compliment when he said I'm a natural at this. I love doing this work with a passion. I want to die with an unfinished page on my drawing board... I just don't want it to be the one that's there now... [Laughs]