David Lloyd

Our society's need for escapism has always interested me.

The Guy Fawkes mask has now become a common brand and a convenient placard to use in protest against tyranny - and I'm happy with people using it; it seems quite unique, an icon of popular culture being used this way.

The whole purpose of maintaining your power in government is to make sure that you stay in government. You stay in government by finding out who is liable to be against you. To do that, you try and put your finger into every single pie that is available to you.

Every single means of communication amongst the public, the government has antennae into, to find out who is liable to be sympathetic and who is not liable to be sympathetic, and I think this has probably been going on since all channels of communication began.

The way I look at it is that once you create a piece of art, and it's out in the world, there's nothing you can do about it. People can use it the way they want to. There's nothing you can do about it. All you can hope for is that people that are using it are using it with the best intent.

I think the Occupy movement is absolutely fantastic; in my opinion, it's probably one of the most important people's movements of the 21st century and the 20th century. The trouble is that nobody really wants to support what they represent. They are too 'grassroots' for their own good.

When we were talking about this, an idea for this master vigilante, it was an urban guerilla. One of my ideas was that he would be a member of the police force who turned on the government.

We spend more time developing means of escaping our troubles than we do solving the troubles we're trying to escape from.

V is like a mythical situation. It's an allegory for what could happen. V has philosophies within it that actually warn against things like that happening.

They did offer me a chance of being a V in the crowd, but it's not my scene. I think they just thought it would be fun for me to do that, but I don't know. I heard that Stan Lee appears in every movie of his.

The beginning of Book Three is the last one that I drew, where V's conducting the 1812 overture.

Part of the plot was a knock that V wanted to bring down the government and bring chaos. I don't know why I thought of Guy Fawkes, because it was during the summer. I thought that would be great if he looked like Guy Fawkes, kind of theatrical.

You are not going to get peace with millions of armed men. The chariot of peace cannot advance over a road littered with cannon.

Kickback is a police thriller which I wrote. I'm very proud of it. I did it in two parts for France because when I wrote it, there wasn't the audience demand for crime stuff that there is now.

It's absolutely of no importance who or what V was under the mask. He isn't a who or a what, he's an idea. The thing is, you couldn't continue it. Now and then the idea of a sequel has been raised, in vague forms, but I think it would be a bad idea. The story's finished.

I've always been a liberal and I've always had strong socialist leanings.

I'm interested in why people compromise when they shouldn't. It comes back to what V's about in a sense. We've all got ideals, but given the right circumstances, we'll forget about them and put them behind us. I'm very interested in why people do that.

I'm interested in how artists and writers do this, using art as therapy. Escaping into the worlds we create. We're all victims and few of us are truly free.

I understand why people do vote on the conservative side of the ticket because people have a tendency to go for strong governments when really, from an idealistic point of view, it's a bad thing.

I just sit at the drawing board most of the time. I am used to talking to people. I love going to conventions, getting feedback and talking to people. Some artists don't. Some artists sit at their drawing board because their personality actually dictates that.

I do like to work on a Marvel method, so if I've got the opportunity, and the writer is happy to do it, I like to have a writer detail what happens on a page, but not saying what happens in every scene.

But if you have a point of view and you're an artist or a writer, it's kind of crazy to not take advantage of that, especially if you can do something that's entertaining as well. I've done a number of things like that over the years.

Alan was always interested in politics in a major way. He actually believes that anarchy is a politically viable system, but I don't. I was always interested in putting forward the ideas that represented my viewpoint. I feel the same about anything I'm doing.

Alan is a great guy, a terrific guy. We haven't worked together since then, and he's always working with different artists. I think he sees different dimensions he can see from different guys.