Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
The best moments in comics come from a primal image that captures the emotion and the conflict. What you add are the pieces that get you to the point and what happens next.
I love Captain Cold. I have him on my door at the office. He's grounded; he doesn't want to rule the world. He's not necessarily driven by ego, which a lot of villains are.
Every character needs an adversary - one who is both challenging and a contrast for the hero. The best adversaries reveal something about the character they're contrasting.
I think there are certain questions that get asked in comics over and over again, and people want definitive answers, but I feel like there shouldn't be definitive answers.
I've done so many superhero comics, and I've actually just been really excited about sci-fi, and Chrononauts and Starlight were both sci-fi, which I had a great time doing.
If you have a certain point of view and reasons that you think are valid, then whether it's pro or anti, you can only and should only express those views you honestly hold.
We forget when we're all grown up. 16 was a long time ago. It's hard to remember how freakin' difficult it is as 16! Life is not easy, and you're trying to figure stuff out.
I think that people who don't mind reading find the immersion and their ability to get into a deeper place with the story to be satisfying. That's the kind of reader I want.
I don't know where the hell I'll be in 5 years. Maybe I'll be producing movies maybe I'll be on a corner selling apples. I don't know, but I'm having a hell of a lot of fun.
I suppose I have come to realize that entertainment is not easily dismissed. Beyond the meaning (of a work of art), it is important to people. Without it, lives can be dull.
I think with something like Watchmen you can genuinely call that a graphic novel because it has the weight and the intent of a proper novel and it also is the complete story.
The world gets more like Disneyland every day, and it's the same the other way round. I can't explain what I know. Try explaining RED to a DOG and see how fast he gets bored.
He [Stuart Immonen] and I have known each other over email for 18, 19 years or something, so to finally work with him is like kissing the girl that you always wanted to kiss.
I don't know, maybe it's just timely, or maybe it's the fact that I live in a house with four women, but I just find my thoughts kind of skewing that direction at the moment.
When I was little, I used to have nightmares about Godzilla walking out of the Great South Bay, because we had a fire alarm out where we lived that sounded just like his feet.
I think any writer coming on to Batman should at least attempt to do their own definitive version. What it means to them. Whatever they think that symbol or character can say.
I didn't like characters that were one- or two-dimensional. I liked a guy to have a lot of different levels to him and layers, and I think I pretty well succeeded with Thanos.
Phonogram is the memory of a long period in my life through a surprisingly small filter. Those characters are basically the golem who accompanied me on that decade and a half.
I'm the Chairman Emeritus, and according to my contract I am supposed to devote 10% of my time to working for Marvel... and the rest of my time, I can do anything that I wish.
I love gothic monsters, but I like to root them more firmly in the traditional folklore from which they sprang. Or at least, I like to evoke the feeling of those folk stories.
I think with something like 'Watchmen' you can genuinely call that a graphic novel because it has the weight and the intent of a proper novel and it also is the complete story.
Write comic books if you love comic books so much that you want to write them. Don't write them like movies. Comics can do a lot of things that movies can't do, and vice versa.
There's that old cliche that art is never finished, only abandoned. That's the nice thing about comics. It forces you to abandon it long before maybe you're ready to let it go.
Dracula, if he could see modern corporations, wouldnt like them much. He took care of his people, at least as he saw it. They had very little freedom, but they had a protector.
If I got a superpower I wouldn't say, oh, I got to get a costume and put on a mask. I would say hey, I can do something better than other people. How can I turn it into a buck?
There's some good films, there's some films that could be improved. So we keep trying until we get it right. That's the nature of storytelling, whether it's on paper or on film.
The characters that have greys are the more interesting characters. The hero who sometimes crosses the line and the villain who sometimes doesn't are just much more interesting.
I use everything. Turning life into stories is how I make sense of my experience. No matter how weird or disturbing or upsetting to me personally, it all finds its way in there.
I think any writer coming on to 'Batman' should at least attempt to do their own definitive version. What it means to them. Whatever they think that symbol or character can say.
The female experience is different from that of the male, and if, as a male writer, you cannot accept that basic premise, then you will never, ever, be able to write women well.
Dracula, if he could see modern corporations, wouldn't like them much. He took care of his people, at least as he saw it. They had very little freedom, but they had a protector.
Any character can find an audience and work if you have passion for that character. You might have to just scrape off the dirt and the barnacles and pull it out and highlight it.
There are dozens of unfinished or aborted projects in my files, but I can only assume they don't get done because they're not robust enough to struggle through the birth process.
Anytime something becomes a success in this way you always get imitators. I'm an imitator of the guys I love. I imitate people like Frank Miller, who is a huge inspiration to me.
Any place that manufactures humans into weapons is going to piss off a couple members of X-Force. I always want a personal reason for why these characters take on these missions.
Maybe there will always be a market for the regular comic books because you can read [them] at your own pace. You can save them, collect them, [then] go back and read them again.
Us comics guys tend to get really good at the things we draw a lot. I'm good at creepy old forests, Victorian houses, underground goblin cities, and beautiful but creepy fairies.
I've been writing 'Green Lantern' for a long time, and one of the reasons I've enjoyed it is because the depth of stories you can tell is pretty endless with space and everything.
Women’s voices, LGBT voices, and the voices of people of color are all needed in any art form if we want to explore the true possibilities of that art form. Diversity is strength.
Self-publishing is still my basic recommendation to anyone wanting to do comics. Do it. Do it until you get good. Do it after you get good. It's good for your spirit as a creator.
I'm not building each one character around one metaphor, so much as trying to build a heroic archetype that can be used to express the kind of metaphors that I find in each story.
I always thought it was more interesting to think about Reed Richards. As you know, he had the ability to stretch, and sexually, that would seem to be a great asset in many areas.
For me, one of the things that makes the X-Men so crucial is they are relatively small in number but they have the potential to have a tremendous impact on the society around them.
The first comic book I ever read was an issue of 'Legion of Super-Heroes' where the earth was surrounded by all of these chains. I remember the cover; I got it at a birthday party.
It didn't take a trauma to make you wear a mask. It didn't take your parents getting shot...or cosmic rays or a power ring...Just the perfect combination of loneliness and despair.
When I was in high school, I started writing a serial novel, longhand, set in the Arthurian mythos, and influenced not incidentally by Marion Zimmer Bradley's 'The Mists of Avalon.'
When I'm working on comics, I have to give myself a million deadlines, or I'd never get anything done. Comics are just so hard to make - I find it very difficult to motivate myself.
What's gratifying for me and interesting is that people are picking up on exactly what I want them to, which is that this is energizing people, and making them want to make stories.
If there are people who like the work you've done, because of that, they like you and want your autograph and to take a photo, that's really gratifying. You have to be appreciative.
I have a reputation for doing superheroes, but I like all kinds of writing. In fact, hardly anybody knows this, but I've probably written as many humor stories as superhero stories.