When I was around eight years old I wanted to make movies (movies intended to look like a combination of "Walt Disney and Norman Rockwell", whatever that meant!). I looked into buying a Super-8 mini-movie camera, but quickly realized that, even if I was able to save enough of my allowance to afford the camera and the film, I could never afford the processing, so I dropped the idea. I had always shown an interest in drawing. I would copy photographs of animals from the encyclopedia and cartoon characters from newspaper strips and comic books (Hot Stuff, Baby Huey, the Peanuts crew, Li'l Abner, Dennis the Menace, etc.). When my mother began to allow me comic books in the house observed the similarities in storytelling between comics and film. I had always been an avid reader and wanted to tell my own stories, and comics seemed the perfect medium to do them cheaply and quickly. Starting in 1968 with ball point pens and color pencils on binder paper, I wrote and drew about fifty issues of various comic titles averaging ten to twenty pages each over the following three and a half years. In 1971, I got together with Frank Cirocco and Gary Winnick and switched my focus to fanzine work, but I've never forgotten the joy and pleasure I derived from producing those comics.

Would you say penciling comics is a lot like making movies? As the artist, you're handling the storytelling aspects of a director, cinematographer and actors/characters. Do you think drawing fulfilled a side of you that wanted to be a filmmaker?

Yeah. It also fulfilled another childhood ambition, and that was to become an actor and/or stuntman! I loved making up voices for the characters in stories I read. I did death-defying leaps from my bicycle and choreographed phony fist fights between myself and my friends. I also directed sci-fi and WWII action scenarios for them to play out. In comics I get to do ALL these things. I have to "act" for all the characters and set the stage. I am a GOD! (Mad, yes, but a god nonetheless.)

(Laughs) And I'm sure that's a good thing.

What creative input are you looking for from the writer? What creative format do you typically prefer or work in, full script, 'Marvel-style' or both?

I like to work in any creative format that gets me "in sinc" with the writer, and I've worked with many different writers over the past twenty-five years. I'm currently working with two "full script" writers -- Joe Kelly on Green Lantern and J. Michael Straczynski on RISING STARS. They both exhibit a "hands off" approach, letting me take the script and "do my magic." I only need to turn to them if some bit of storytelling is vague or inconsistent or I'm just not grokking it, or if I have some additional or augmented story input. Marvel plot style works best for me if I participate in the development of a story with the writer from the outset. I rarely feel I've done my best work over a plot without a LOT of back-and-forth interaction with the writer. I HATE the idea of taking an idea away from a writer and changing it to suit me. When I've done this in the past, I've either felt I've disrespected the writer or that I'd been asked to do the writer's job, neither of which makes me happy with the final product. Much of the success of ASTRO CITY lies in the fact that Kurt and I were more-or-less in sinc from the outset. The collaboration was successful because Kurt's vision for the series was so strong, and working full script gave me the inspiration and information I needed to realize my full potential. He also believed that, no matter what he threw at me to draw, I could draw it. Some of that belief may have been wishful thinking on his part, but I always did my best to clearly illustrate his stories.

How did Astro City come about? What cosmic event brought you two together that lead to collaboration?

My future wife Shirley had been invited to attend the World Science Fiction Convention in San Francisco in 1992, so I accompanied her. There was very little comic book programming, but there was a panel that had Marv Wolfman and Kurt Busiek on it. I didn't know who Kurt was at the time. I hadn't been following mainstream comics at that time. I had done a stint with LucasArts in their computer game division and was working to finish Spinworld (then known as Spacing Dutchman) for DC. I also had an ill-fated project with the Cousteau Society waiting in the wings. During the panel, I asked a lot of questions about the current state of the industry and generally made a fan-boy of myself. Kurt even turned to Marv after the panel and wondered aloud who that guy in the audience who sounded like he knew something about comics was. When Marv told him who I was, Kurt responded Oh, I guess that would explain it! After the panel, Kurt introduced himself, said he liked my work and wondered if I was interested in working on a new series with him. I wasn't familiar with Marvels and thought Kurt was an amateur writer looking to link up with an established pro to sell an idea. I wasn't really interested in any but a polite way until I read a very positive review of Marvels by Don Thompson. THEN I was interested! Kurt and I got together in San Diego that year and after sharing with me some brief synopsis of the dozen or so stories he had to tell, I was hooked. Originally I was to draw only the Samaritan "In Dreams" story. At some point Kurt asked if I was interested in drawing issues 7- 12, the "Confession" story, as well. I said sure. Then he asked if I had time to be the "regular artist" and draw them all. So I did.

How would you describe your creative input on the series and where do Alex Ross' designs figure into the art process?

Kurt had been working with Alex on ASTRO CITY character designs prior to my involvement. Kurt's original idea was to have six different artists do one each of the first six ASTRO CITY stories, but he didn't want to deal with six different character designers who would each have a stake in their original designs. So he worked with Alex to design them all. After I came on board, Alex had first refusal to design any character that struck his fancy or that he would need to paint on the cover. I designed the ones Alex passed on or Kurt didn't approve on the first pass. Alex and I jointly co-created some of the later characters. When Kurt saw I could "draw anything", he began to rely more and more on me to do the design work, and leave the covers to Alex. Kurt worked very closely with each of us to get just the design he wanted or could use to best effect for each story.

This might be a good time to explain my work procedure. I begin by drawing storytelling layouts of the pages (called thumbnails) each at about 1 1/2" x 2 1/4" per page. I then fax 200% enlargements to Kurt for approval. Kurt has a definite feel for how panel shape affects the storytelling, so I asked him how much input into the visuals he wanted to have. He didn't want to tell "Brent Anderson" how to do his job, so I invited him to send me thumbnail-sized panel-shape breakdowns. This process worked beautifully. Kurt eventually could predict, with fair accuracy, how I would fill the panel shapes with visuals. I would surprise him sometimes, but with a little discussion, they always seemed to fill Kurt's needs. Next I would fax him 64% reductions of the pencilled pages for more tweaking and to facilitate balloon placement. My collaboration with Kurt on Astro City has been one of the most perfect creative collaborations I've had in twenty-five years as a professional comic book artist.