...continued...

I’ve always had a wild imagination. My earliest memories involve my sitting at my play table with action figures telling stories with them. Making up my own movies. To be completely honest, that’s where the Hunters actually came from: my escapades with an old Batman figure. David the Hunter was actually the root of an old character I created during my childhood.

I can’t remember what or who that character was, but I remembered how I had utilized the claws on Batman’s arms (I think it was one of those retro-sixties toys; the figure was a beefed up version of Adam West’s caped crusader). They were spring-blades, jutting from below his elbows like shark fins, and they finally found their way through the bleeding ages to somehow end up as character traits for Ashton the Hunter. Here he has blades that distend from his arms with the pull of a loop. A part of his face is covered by a primitive mask to conceal his identity. Yes. Both of them reminders of Batman but in no way as a means to steal his iconic status or borrow his genius. They were from the character I had created as a kid. And that’s the way I wrote The Man with the Stone - with the sensibilities of a child.