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A lively, humor-filled joint interview conducted at the 1988 San Diego Comic-Con, tracing both creators' paths from Oregon-area fandom through film work and back to comics. Verheiden discusses his original story approach for the Aliens six-issue mini-series (not an adaptation of the films), his plans for a contemporary Phantom series set in modern Africa, and The American ongoing series; Nelson describes his background teaching art at Northern Illinois University, his "funny animal" typecasting problem, the development of Aliens, and upcoming plans for Silverwing and Empire of the Dinosaur.

Verheiden traces his path from struggling Hollywood screenwriter to Dark Horse's go-to licensed-property writer, arguing that comics and film are fundamentally different media requiring different storytelling approaches. He explains how he differentiates Aliens (dark, thematic, inner monologue-driven) from Predator (action-oriented fun), describes his 14-issue maxi-series vision for the Aliens trilogy, and discusses his return to screenwriting with a Warner Bros. adaptation of The American, produced by Joel Silver.

Verheiden discusses his path from comics writing (The American, Aliens, Predator for Dark Horse) to Hollywood screenwriting, detailing his credited work on The Mask for New Line Cinema and his sole screenplay credit on Timecop, the Jean-Claude Van Damme film due September 1994. He recounts the origins of Timecop as a concept developed with Dark Horse publisher Mike Richardson in 1989, the long road to production through Sam Raimi and Largo Entertainment, and his rewrite work on Darkman II and Darkman III for straight-to-video release.

Dark Horse's founding editor recounts how he and Mark Verheiden came to comics after failing to break into film, how Dark Horse acquired the Aliens and Predator licenses (and then combined them on a whim by Chris Warner). He discusses the strengths and limits of adapting movie monsters to comics, Dark Horse's growing Hollywood relationships (including The Mask and The American film deals), and his personal ambition to move into film production.