COMICS: Marvel Bringing Back PAINKILLER JANE; Another Movie Adaptation Being Planned

"I have been working on the screenplay and started thinking more and more that I needed to get back to the character, and then the hard part came up: Where to publish her. I spoke to Joe Quesada, and, because I had already been working on a few Marvel projects, he mentioned the Icon line to me. I spoke to my buddies [there] about what I had planned and told them the talent involved, and we struck a deal. Honestly, I didn't want to go back to writing her 'til I had a better sense how she would fit into the world. I think the last series I did at Dynamite caught the biggest audience the character had, including a really cool female audience I never expected.

The story takes place around New York, Fire Island and in Queens, and we bring a piece of the Middle East here. The story was inspired by reading about a real princess and her life and how she wanted something different for herself. At its most basic, it's Jane versus the world around her once again. My biggest goal with the books are to get people to understand and root for Jane as she gets some peace in her life. Unfortunately, she is a character that attracts chaos on a daily basis, and that is never going to change.

I look at the movie and TV series as alternate realties of the character that existed in different mediums. Both have their good and bad points, but in the end, it opened the book and my work to an international audience, and this can never hurt. The real Painkiller Jane is located in the comic for now, and that's cool. I still have hopes that someone comes along and makes a film or series that respects the original work a bit more. I have spent six months co-writing a screenplay with writer Craig Weeden, and it's just now making the rounds in Hollywood. It's the closest adaptation ever of the work because it came from me."