At New York Comic Con 2012, writer Brian Wood came by the CBR Tiki Room to discuss his incredible volume of current work including his upcoming "Star Wars" series at Dark Horse, his Image Comics creator-owned series "Mara," his work on "X-Men," "Conan," "The Massive" and more.

On "Star Wars": "I never in a million years would have ever thought to pitch for it. It was offered to me and then it kind of made sense, once the thought was in my head. I sort of found that I'm much more of a fan of it, a knowledgable fan than I ever thought. There's a lot in my head that's been there. ... Maybe not quite that deep, but I know a lot of names of ships and parts of the X-Wing fighter and everything. I'm like, 'How do I know that?' It's been good. I feel like I've really bought into that and accepted that side of me. It's been a lot of fun."

On his intense amount of research: "I'm trying to dial it back a little bit, because I really can disappear down the rabbit hole if I'm not careful about it. Definitely, I can over-research and then it just gets in the way time-wise and otherwise. I did buy a bunch of 'Star Wars' reference books -- like, atlases of the universe, which is possibly a mistake. [Laughs] Because it is, there's so much information out there that's appeared in novels and games and roleplaying games -- it's just a lot. I try to keep it in check. I feel like research is very important, I'm just trying to be careful about when I do it."

On his favorite project: "'The Massive' is the hardest to write, takes the longest to write, but it's the one I have the emotional connection to. It's my big creator-owned book. So, I feel like if I ever had to choose, that's maybe the one I would sit down to work on, as frustrating as it is at times. But writing 'Star Wars' is pure fun. It really is. I don't know how else to describe it, so that's a close second."

On "Mara": "'Mara' is very 'Demo'-esque in that it's a very grounded, very personal look at a super powered person. In this case, it's not indy in the way 'Demo' was, it's this big futuristic world built on a story about professional athletes in this future world where competition is everything. It's not a path to money or anything like that, it is the goal. It's a world obsessed with personal physical achievement. She's a sports star at the top of her game. In the sense of the Olympic athlete, she began when she was very, very young. At this real pivotal moment, she manifested a superpower. There's no other superheroes in this world, so she's this real freak. It's basically some sort of version of a performance enhancing drug. She's deemed to have cheated her entire career. In this world where your entire self-worth is about what you've physically achieved, it all comes crashing down.