In his regular column for the Wizard website, Brian Michael Bendis talks to Ed Brubaker about, among other things, the exhaustion that comes from his big publicity push for Criminal:

Well, I was pretty much exhausted for the whole month or so — from that time we announced the book up until the final order cut-off day. I was so relieved on the day of final order cut-offs that I no longer had to try with my every waking moment that wasn’t spent writing to figure out where else I could promote this thing and how else I could get the word out. A lot of that came from every time that I would be exhausted and looking at an email interview for some website and think, “Ugh. Here’s 12 questions that I’ve already answered and I need to answer them in a slightly different way.” I didn’t just want to give stock answers, but I’m also trying to promote the book while answering these questions. I’m trying to hype the book. I realized that I am terrible at coming up with catch phrases or some simple way to explain the book. Basically, I was having to sell me and Sean [Phillips, artist for Criminal]. So I was just exhausted. I was so relieved to be like, “Okay, I no longer have to try to do as many interviews as possible or think of as many things as possible everyday.” So I was kind of relieved, but at the same time I still feel like I didn’t do enough. It all comes down to every time that I would be exhausted and looking at one of those emails I would just hear you in my head going, “I meet people all the time who say that they’re my biggest fan and they’ve never heard of Powers.” I would hear that echoing and I would be like, “Do the damn interview. Every single interview could be the only interview that someone sees about this book.” I knew that we would get some of that inevitable “If I read another interview with Brubaker about Criminal …” but then I thought that maybe there’s only a couple hundred people who see them all. Most people don’t.

Related: Sean Phillips’ idea for the cover of the first Criminal collection

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