Quotes from Greg Rucka

Punisher is scary; he should be scary.

Comics don't work without the visuals, obviously.

I think Batman has the Wolverine problem. I think he's overexposed.

All the sudden, I was part of the 'No Man's Land' thing, and there was a bundle of core writers for that, but somewhere along the line, I became the go-to guy after that initial arc.

For every person who passes on the opportunity to write Spider-Man or Superman, I guarantee there are 5000 hungry writers who would give their eye-teeth to do it. But just because they want to do it, it doesn't mean they are capable of doing it.

I just know that if you make a Superman movie you can't take kids to, you've done something wrong.

I think if you look back at some of the stuff that we broadly label as the crime 'ouvre,' there are certainly elements of the supernatural at work.

I showed up pretty much at the exact right moment to end up with a lot of work on my plate very quickly, because I was young and foolish, and so I wrote very quickly.

For me, plot always comes out of character, so I had to be sure of my characters.

I love 'The Omen,' just as a piece of plotting.

You know how a nonlethal weapon is supposed to work? A nonlethal weapon works on the basis of three things: It needs to deter, and that's normally done through pain, and that pain creates a byproduct, which is fear.

Fear is one of the elements of nonlethal weaponry. You're going to get hurt, and you don't want to get hurt. Pepper spray hurts. You don't want to be sprayed. That's why it's a useful deterrent as a nonlethal weapon - I'm not advocating spraying people randomly.

You have to accept that Batman is a fact of life in Gotham City, and on top of that, you have to accept that somehow this city manages to function with a police force that's 90% corrupt.

If Portland can truly have a true comics show that doesn't become a media show but retains its focus on comics, I think it's going to serve the city well. If this becomes a big show, it's going to bring in a lot of money for the city.

The writer's curse is that the more you fall in love with the work you're doing, the more I think it shows.

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.

The goal with 'Alpha' was to run towards the cliches and then to break through them, and that doesn't change depending on the medium.

Superman is precisely what we should be teaching our children. Superman inspires us to our best.

'Alpha' is a very fast-moving book. It doesn't lend itself to laborious introspection and the navel-gazing that some stories can fall prey to.

I come from a prose background. I come from short story background, and that led me into novels.

I'm not a huge Lovecraft fan as far as that goes; I think there are some stories of his that are really quite wonderful, but for the most part, I have great difficulties with his prose - and the more you know about the man, the harder it is to separate him from the work in many ways.

The goal of 'Revelations' is that once it's all done and finished, and you've read all of it, it is its own story.

To me, the joy you're going to get in a 'Punisher' story is watching him punish incredibly wicked people. Now, if you can add to that an emotional content, wonderful.

The first story I can remember writing, that I truly set down on paper, was a Christmas story that I wrote when I was ten years old.