The animated adaptation of Morrison and artist Frank Quitely's comic book epic flies into stores on February 22 courtesy of Warner Bros. Animation and DC Entertainment's line of original and adapted animated features. The Eisner Award-winning series chronicles the final days of the Man of Steel, featuring Superman battling enemies new and old, finally confessing his feelings to longtime love Lois Lane and, of course, going toe-to-toe with his archenemy and rival Lex Luthor. Critics and fans alike praised Morrison's "All Star" for its iconic take on the Man of Tomorrow, which infused the timeless hero with a genuine sense of drama and emotion despite the grandiose nature of his adventures.

CBR News: When Warner Brothers and DC decided to adapt "All Star Superman" to animation, did they approach you about it and make you aware of their intention?

I don't know. I think comics is kind of a movie of a different kind. They both share the same idea of a good story. Everyone likes a good story, so I think it's one of the things of translating from one medium to another. That was why I was interested in seeing it. I was always interested in seeing everything moving and that transformation that it goes through. It was an experience for me to see what they could make out of it and I was very pleased with the results.

It was really trying to get down, "What is the essential Superman?" There are really three different eras, and I read all of them, from the 1938 Superman, the scrappy socialist who can only leap an eighth of a mile, to the 1950s Superman, who is always in major peril but his problems were still human problems, whether losing his hair or getting fat or growing old. He was kind of the most normal of them all. Then, the superhuman Superman of the 70s, who is just a scorecard of a guy fighting bad guys and other superheroes.

But really, it's about walking the dog and going out with a girl and messing things up. I think that's why maybe people think of "All Star Superman" as a bit more Silver Age in the sense of trying to do new, modern real human stories, but on the giant scale of Superman. That's the most interesting thing, is the "man." The best stories are just about this guy trying to make sense of stuff and the girl doesn't like him as much as he wishes she would. The bad guy hates him, but he likes the bad guy. That real, small human emotional stuff works great when you blow it up to cosmic proportions.

The best Superman stories, particularly in that era I was talking about, is stuff like "The Death of Superman" and "Superman's Return to Krypton." There were really love stories or stories of grief, but as I said, you do them on a biblical scale with cosmic weaponry and space ships and it looks great. I think comic books should be about that stuff. I love the comics that have big energy and superheroes in big conflicts. As you said, Superman can be as powerful as you like, but his heart can be broken and that's why it doesn't matter if he can throw planets. If you break his heart, he's useless. The emotional stories are always the big thing with Superman.

There's always things that you think, "Oh, it'd be nice to have that," but I was more impressed with the fact that they got so much in. I was really surprised when Atlas and Samson came out. I thought, "There was no way they'd get these guys in." But it really comes to life. The same goes for the story with the Kryptonians. I really like the almost epic nature of it -- showing these different days as we're counting down toward Superman's death. So, honestly, I was most impressed with the fact that they got so much of it in. When I went back and read the book, and I'd think, "Oh, it'd be nice if we could have seen the Bizarros, or great if we'd seen the goth girl alone at the top of the skyscraper," but there's so much there that it's kind of a miracle. It's a big book, with 250 pages, and they managed to get it into a feature length movie.