Richard: Why did you get into writing comic books?

Dan: I read my first comic when I was five, my uncle Dave picked it up at the local 7 Eleven as a gift. Captain America drawn by Frank Springer. I just remember trying to get my hands on any comic I could after that. When I was eleven a friend of the family took me to a comic convention in Los Angeles where I got to meet Jack Kirby. Jack had finished signing and was leaving the show but stopped long enough to sign fifteen Black Panther comics for me, three of which he hadn’t even worked on. I remember coming out of that show thinking that making comics had to be the greatest job in the world if someone as nice as Jack was doing it. Combine the love of comics and the interest in the industry with the fact my drawing talent stops after the occasional misshapen Jawa or crooked Mysterio head… becoming a comic book writer seemed the most logical thing.

Richard: How would you describe your writing style on "Grimm Fairy Tales"?

Dan: I don’t know if I would separate it out from anything else I write. I write from the point of view that a story is simple characters, environments and situations. Genre dictates what those environments and situations are, but characters are the same across the board. Take a story about mysterious murders in the bayou and reports of horrible creatures. Drop a no-named Sheriff in there and you’ll end up with a horror movie. Drop in the Punisher and the odds are the mob is using the place to dump bodies. Change it to Superman and the odds are their alien creature or cause by run-off from Lexcorp. So when I approach anything story, I find the environment and situations then write the story keeping the characters true to their nature.

Richard: Have you watched any of the Sinbad movies?

Dan: When I got the project, I went back and first read the adventures in 1001 Arabian Nights to make sure I was looking at the character how he was originally created. I then picked up as many Sinbad movies, books, etc to see what the common threads were. Not in character or story, but simply in tone and tempo. The Sinbad movies of the 70s are looked upon so fondly and I believe its because how fun they were. So I wanted to make sure that a reader would come away from an issue not only seeing full realized characters, but come away with a sense of adventure and fun.

Richard: What kind of personality do you give Sinbad in the comic your writing about him?

Dan: To use popular characters, I think of Sinbad as James Bond crossed with Captain Jack Sparrow. He’s loyal, courageous, charismatic, reckless, witty but with a touch of darkness that we’ll explore as we go on. He’s been everywhere, he’s done it all and he’s still alive to tell the tale but you may not believe the whole tale.

Richard: What is prose writing?

Dan: To use the dictionary definition: the ordinary form of spoken or written language, without metrical structure, as distinguished from poetry or verse. But the easier way to say it, it’s the style of writing you see in almost all novels, short stories and newspapers. Straight paragraph form devoid of rhyming couplets, iambic pentameter or anything else poetic.

Richard: Who is the Avenger and how did you end up writing for the Moonstone anthology?

Dan: The Avenger is a classic pulp character created in the late 30s and early 40s for the dime magazines similar to Doc Savage and The Shadow. He was a man whose family was murdered by the mob so he took the fight back to them with a few cohorts. Overly simplified actually, but with the Internet you can find out far more about him through Wikipedia than I could tell you here. As for working on the project, I met Joe Gentile at Comic-Con a couple years back and we hit it off pretty well. As with anyone who can dole out freelance work, I followed up our conversations with emails after the show and he asked my desire to write prose fiction. Having done very little of it in the past, I was eager to try my hand at more… then he offered me a spot in The Phantom anthology and I jumped at it. After that came a vampire anthology and then The Avenger. I’m eagerly awaiting to see what else they have coming up that I might talk my way into.

Richard: What is your book "Private Skin" about?

Dan: Private Skin is my other passion, and one that I get no sympathy for having. It’s a collection of black & white glamour nude photos that I have taken between 1995 and 2005. I have been lucky enough to work with some amazingly beautiful women to create some image I am very proud of. My editor at Mixopix, Miki Bunge, selected 200 that he liked the best to make the book. I have been shooting on and off the last three years working towards a second collection.

Richard: You created several comics at Hardline Studios do you have any more ideas for comics?

Dan: In truth I probably have more ideas than time and artists to tap. I keep two folders on my computer: “ideas to get back to” and “bad idea file”. So anytime I come up with something new I’m not using right away, it goes into one of those. A couple years back, I emptied out a bunch of the ideas in the “bad ideas file’ and put out a book called The Unusual Suspects… cause even bad ideas can be funny.

Richard: What do you have lined up next to work on?

Dan: I’m about to start writing the second story arc for 1001 Arabian Nights: The Adventures of Sinbad (they like it when I use the full title) along with a couple more Grimm Fairy Tales and some other surprises for Zenescope. I’m also doing a four-issue mini-series for Shadowline/Image called Savage with Steve Niles, Jeff Frank and Mike Mayhew. After that, there are a few other things in the works, but nothing I can speak of just yet.

Richard: Would you like to work for one of the big two comic companies?

Dan: Most certainly; I grew up reading the comics of both DC and Marvel (in alphabetic order as not to insult). I wasn’t going to say any specific characters, but there is one book I would probably do for free if offered. My uncle got me into comics, but my mother was the one who kept me going, read them with me, encouraged me, etc. I know her favorite comic is Blackhawk and it would mean a lot to her to see my name on a Blackhawk comic.

Richard: What comics did you read as a child and do you read now?

Dan: As a kid it was anything Marvel to start with. I got more into DC as a teenager as Superman died and Batman had his back broken. A lot of what I read now is for research or to keep up with characters I want to pitch. The last comic series I remember reading just because of how good it was is Geoff John’s Sinestro Corp War.

Richard: How can someone contact you?

Dan: I have a website http://www.danwickline.com and I am available through most of the social networking sites such as http://www.myspace.com/danwickline , http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=589658459 and http://twitter.com/danwickline .

Richard: Any last words of wisdom?

Dan: Sure. The problem with words of wisdom is that the person saying them had to screw it up himself to learn it… and do you really want to listen to a screw up?