Quotes About Comics

Superheroes are best imagined in comic books. The union between the written word, the image, and then what your imagination has to do to connect those allows for so much.

I had amazing intellectual privilege as a kid. My mom taught me to read when I was two or three. When I was five, I read and wrote well enough to do my nine-year older brother's homework in exchange for chocolate or cigarettes. By the time I was 10, I was reading Orwell, Tolstoy's 'War and Peace,' and the Koran. I was reading comic books, too.

I got into comics because I wrote an 'X-Men' novel for Pocket Books, and I introduced myself to the head of recruitment at Marvel. I'd heard through the grapevine they liked the book, so that gave me the courage to go up to them and be like, 'Hey, if you ever need a writer, here I am.'

I wrote five issues of that and got the sack. Actually, they paid me for eight, but they changed their minds about the direction and threw three issues out the window.

One of the best things about my job is that I get to meet a lot of great children's and YA authors at events all over the country. So I figured it might be fun to interview some of them and turn the interviews into short online comics.

In America, there's a very long tradition of a comic strip that comes in newspapers, which is not true all over the world. To sell papers, they put color comics in.

I'd like to see the comics' style expanded. I'd like to see artists synthesize traditional comics arts style with fine-arts styles or whatever. I like to see innovation. I don't like it when an art form becomes stagnant.

I think it's good that we're not embarrassed that we're comic book creators anymore. It's good that people are able to make a good living at doing it, and not doing the traditional sort of mainstream fare.

Horror used to be one thing, and I think that's starting to broaden - there can have subgenres, and other things can be going on in a horror story. In comics, you'll never get the 'Boo' effect in a comic; you can go for mood, atmosphere and personal tragedy to build the horror elements and sense of dread.

I quit comics in 1988 and trained as a bus driver. I used to drive those big Greyhound coaches out of New York Port Authority and down to Princeton, New Jersey. It was, hands down, the best job I ever had, and I profoundly regret having left it. I kept that job the entire time I was on staff at DC Comics in the '90s.

When I was a small child, I partially learned to read with comics, in particular with 'Scamp,' about the Lady and the Tramp's male child. That was the prime comic that made me fall in love with comics as a kid.

I've been reading titles from IDW for probably as long as they've been in existence. 'Ninja Turtles' is one of my all-time favorite properties ever. I also love, love, love 'Locke & Key.' I also love some of the things they do with pre-existing properties like 'Transformers' and 'Ghostbusters.'

I grew up reading '2000 AD' and the occasional Transformers and GI Joe comic, but when I could finance comics myself, I lasted only a little reading superheroes.

It's almost like these games are the modern day comic books, especially when you play Alone in the Dark. There's a real story that goes along with it and a movie seemed like the right kind of transition to make.

Face front, true believers!

The phrase 'I just turn on my monkey and it makes me feel good' sounds very dirty, but I can't explain why. It's great to try to use expressions like that on the comics page. People want to complain but they can't, because they can't figure out quite what they should be complaining about.

I seem to be able to get away with pun strips if I add a panel at the end where I somehow indicate that I know it's a bad pun.

Man, I put myself in a lot of comic strips. Something's wrong with my sense of self.

Gary Larson: The funniest cartoonist I've ever seen. His two-volume set (The Complete Far Side) should be the textbook in any course taught on how to be funny on the comics page.

Everyone cites [Charles Schulz], but it's with good reason. He taught me timing, tone, character development, practically everything.

Scott Adams: From him, I learned how to write a three-panel comic. Probably the best pure writer on the comics page.

Comedy is a blood sport. It flays the truth and spurts twisted logic. In America, people become comics because we don't have bullfighting.

Children did not abandon comics; comics, in their drive to attain respect and artistic accomplishment, abandoned children.

Comic books actually are inferior," Sammy said. "I really do believe that. It's—it's just built in to the material. We're talking about a bunch of guys—and a girl—who run around in their long johns punching people, all right?