In an interview setting, Kane is talkative,   

gracious and disarmingly friendly. Unexpected traits for a big scary monster who electrocuted Shane McMahon's crotch, set Jim Ross on fire, and allegedly had post-mortem relations with Katie Vick.  

Everybody wants to know...

Kane, you came in at a pretty high position at Taboo Tuesday. Were you expecting that, after so much time away?

"Yeah, I really was. (laughs) And I think at the level I'm at, it was as good a place as any to start."

A gimmick like yours usually has a short shelf life, but the Kane character has grown into one of the iconic figures in wrestling. There's no way you could ever have expected the character to reach this level of success, right?

"First of all, I appreciate what you said, thank you. And, well, that's always what you hope for, that kind of success, but who knows when you first start out. You work at it, and you have a lot of good fortune along the way, and you need to have the company behind you. I've been fortunate enough to have had all that and, for seven or eight years, I've remained healthy. So, you know, was it a surprise? No, I was always hoping this would be the situation. But has it passed my highest expectations? Probably."

The Kane book (Journey Into Darkness, an unauthorised biography) details the back-story of your character. Have you read the book yet?

"Yeah, and I thought it was really neat, a unique concept. Because of the time constraints on TV, you just can't get into that sort of detail. You have seven or eight minutes here or there. You're always touching on it, never going into detail on it. With the book, you can take more time to flesh out and explain what would seem like inconsistencies. Whereas normally you'd just get a flash picture on TV."

Honest opinion; How does it compare to other wrestling books?

"The other books we've done have been non-fiction, autobiographical stuff. Triple H is more of a work-out book, more of a self-help type of genre, whereas mine was straight fiction. It reminds me a lot of a book store when you see Star Wars books or Star Trek books. You take the characters in those shows and you tell back stories and put them in different situations. It's actually an extension of what people see on TV. I thought the book was good and solid. I thought it was pretty cool."

The Kane story is pretty convoluted and the book does an amazing job tying all the loose ends together. Before this, in your own head, had you ever tried to figure out how it all made sense?

(Laughs). "I thought about it quite a bit, but the book is very well done. You know, it meets your expectations of the story, of the character."

Is there any part of your character's history you look back on and think 'God, we could have done without that'? I mean, Katie Vick, for example...

"Not really, no. Everything served a purpose. Especially with the Katie Vick thing, that's covered in the book Any questions or wondering why in the world did they do that, I think in the book, they took very good advantage of it." «»

» Everybody wants to know: Kane (Part 2)

Kane's unauthorized biography, Journey Into Darkness, is available at bookstores everywhere and WWEShop.com. You can see Kane in action every Monday night on WWE Raw.

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