Comics Quotations | Page 2

I grew up on monthly comics. My closet is full of monthly comics. I've always wanted to do a monthly comic, and while I've had a couple of offers, the timing has never worked out. Most superhero comics come into the world as monthly series, so we wanted the same for 'The Shadow Hero.'

If they come into the library, they're reading. It doesn't matter if they're reading comics or easy horror stories.

I do not read newspaper comics unless they happen to be out when I visit my parents, but I follow several online comics, which I check every morning while I drink my coffee and wake up for the day.

I don't buy comics anymore, for the most part. I eat my lunch off of them.

I always want to laugh at the sad stuff. You don't need to laugh at the other stuff. I'm not numb to these things. I still go into really dark periods about Sept. 11. I think it's kind of like bullies. Bullies are just scared and thin-skinned, so they have to become bullies as a kind of survival tactic. I think comics are that way, too.

I'm a huge Marvel Comics fan, and I'm a huge 'Wolverine' fan, I like the 'X-Men' comic book.

I loved all the camp comics of my childhood, Kenneth Williams and Frankie Howerd and John Inman, but school gave me a very bad feeling about being gay and then, when I was about 12 - bang, along came AIDS. I can't think of a single positive thing about being gay at that time.

If cartoonists would look at this more as an art than as a part time job or a get-rich-quick scheme, I think comics overall would be better. I think there's a tremendous potential to be tapped.

I don't think it's a coincidence that comic books appeal so strongly to children. Not that it negates any of their power for adults, but there is something about comics that makes them a perfect storytelling system for children.

From the time I could read, I've been devouring these things. I had a $5 allowance growing up in Brooklyn and I spent the whole thing every week at the Nostrand Avenue Comics shop.

I got cast on 'MADtv' as one of eight permanent cast members chosen from 8,000 comics who'd been screened. For any comic trying to make something of themselves, that was like hitting triple 7s-jackpot.

I get frustrated by the fact that comics go on stage with some kind of agenda beyond comedy - I'm not sure it should be about that.

He looked like a Midwesterner, but he was a rebel, ... He is to comics what Brando was to movies. He broke ground that allowed me to ultimately exist.

I actually have a peculiar feminism that does not involve the idea that women shouldn't be sexy. Female characters written in comics have always been pretty damned sexy, and used their sexuality. And I don't have any problem with that.

Joan Rivers was a role model to comics everywhere, but especially to women. She got the first laugh and the last laugh.

It always amazes me that Japanese comics have, like, 200 pages. How do they do that? They're fat books; it's a whole different kind of comic that's very close to their films. So I'm drawing from that history and bringing it here - bringing it to Katana.

I think the best collaborations in comics come from a lot of talks with the artists where you are finding out what they want to draw, what kind of villains they want to do.

Last Comic Standing will be an exciting addition to our summer schedule. The show gives unprecedented exposure to talented comics and provides countless laughs to our viewers in the process.

I think that, ultimately, there are so many characters in G.I. Joe that even all the iterations - the comics and the different cartoons and everything - have been a big ensemble. Lots of crossing storylines and stuff.

I was always most interested in drawing - most of my childhood drawings are black-and-white line work. And when I kind of abandoned comics, through college and art school, I was doing a lot of painting. But once I started doing comics again, everything else just fell by the wayside.

I was a big 'MAD Magazine' fan when I was a kid, and I read a lot of horror comics - I illustrated as well.

I was just finishing high school and entering college in 1988, when the Creator's Bill of Rights was drafted, and had already set my sights on building a career as a writer of comics. Discovering the Creator's Bill of Rights - in an issue of 'The Comics Journal,' if I'm not mistaken - I accepted it as gospel.

Just about everything put out by Top Shelf and Drawn & Quarterly and Fantagraphics is what I keep up with. And once in a while, I'll read the more mainstream comics - I like Grant Morrison's writing and some of Warren Ellis' stuff, although maybe they're more on the fringe of the mainstream.

Jerry Robinson illustrated some of the defining images of pop culture's greatest icons. As an artist myself, it's impossible not to feel humbled by his body of work. Everyone who loves comics owes Jerry a debt of gratitude for the rich legacy that he leaves behind.

Outside of hip-hop, it was in comics that I most often found the aesthetics and wisdom of my world reflected.

People who liked the 'Arkham Asylum' video game can Google comics to download.

Part of running DC Comics is that it's much larger than Image Comics is, or was. There's a challenge to being one of the industry leaders in that everything you do is scrutinized and watched.

Looking back, I realize my favorite stories weren't in books, they were in comics. On top of being a history enthusiast, my father was also a comics fan, and he kept his stash in the top drawer of his dresser, in easy reach of a kid making a beeline to the bathroom.

Marvel Comics has always been a place where I felt at home. It has been a very important part of my life and has always been a wellspring of creative and relevant ideas.

I think comics should test people, I think it's our job to go too far. That way we know as a society what too far is. Where else are you going to hear it?

It dawned on me that comics were not an intrinsically limited medium. There was a tremendous amount of things you could do in comics that you couldn't do in other art forms - but no one was doing it. I figured if I'd make a try at it, I'd at least be a footnote in history.

I think Joan Rivers is such an untapped legend that people just don't appreciate, because they grew up with her on QVC, or they grew up with her on E!, or they grew up watching her do the things that in their minds the more prestigious comics wouldn't have taken or done.

I think I've been able to build up a wide range of styles in storytelling, using comics in different ways from project to project. I think my art has become more accomplished, although I try to keep it from becoming slick or superficial.

I'm still awaiting the idea of drawing comics for a living being a reality. I feel like I've been dodging work for 20 years, and at some point, I'll have to get a real job.

I would love to learn archery. Unfortunately I'm too busy writing and drawing ten thousand comics a month. Maybe one day!

We couldn't be happier to have an icon like Jim Lee involved with this project. SOE, WBIE and DC will be working together closely on this project and Jim's contributions will be key to bringing the amazing world of DC Comics to life online.

To look back and know that I have had a pivotal role in the development of comics is something I'm very proud of, although it's not something I think about unless someone brings it up.

True, comics are a popular art, and yes, I believe their primary obligation is to entertain, but comics can go beyond that, and when they do, they move from silliness to significance.

You know, comics were created at the same time as the cinema. And the cinema very quickly became a major art. Cartooning didn't become a major art. There's a reason for that. People don't know how to deal with drawings.

When I first started writing comics, in the way-back days, Typhoid Mary was my explosive response to women characters in comics - I made her an innocent virginal type, a clever, dark, liberated woman, and as Bloody Mary, a feminist bent of punishing men - all in one character. She was an instinctual rather than a calculated creation.

We got to go to Lucas Ranch and, at that time, my brother was still living in a condo about a mile from Robin Williams, and so I made all of the other comics jealous because I got to get a ride home with him.

We'll meet a Wonder Woman who is similar to the one from the original comics and from the TV series to an extent. Neither of them are really a template. I've never loved the comics and I didn't watch the television series, but I loved the character very much.

When 'American Born Chinese' started getting a lot of attention, I freaked out a little bit because I realized that up until then I had just been doing comics by following my gut. I didn't really know much about plot structure or anything; I kind of just followed my gut.

We relate comics to the main super-heroes, but it's a great medium through which all sorts of stories are told.

The deal with the Disney comics is to do stories and comics in a style that appeals to an older audience than is normally associated with a Disney brand.

With comics you can put interesting and solid information in a format that's pretty palatable.

With superheroes and comics and fantasy and sci-fi being absolutely the popular currency in cinema, it's like people have said in endless magazines, it's the revenge of the geeks and all that. There's some truth in that.

We wanted to protect the legacy of DC Comics here in New York, and there are many things that make sense to protect and maintain while setting up parts of the organization in Los Angeles to grow.

We've got a great shop with as wide a selection of new comics and back issues as anyone in the state. But if there's one thing I'm proudest of it's that everyone who has ever worked here loves comics more than anything else in the world. That's a rare thing, but that's what we're all about.

What crushed my soul was hanging out with bitter, desperate comics backstage. They're a different breed than the bitter yet eager psyches in the wings of an improv theatre. Struggling stand-ups have externalized self-loathing into an art form. They're a hunching, quaking, unshaven lot.

The problem for me is that 'Watchmen,' one of the great comics of all time, is a look at superheroes that has gone beyond the concept of or necessity for superheroes.

When I started out in the eighties, the idea of creating serious comics for adults was pretty laughable to most folks, and for the longest time it was hard to even explain what alternative comics or graphic novels were. Nobody seemed to understand or care. Not so, any longer.

When I started collecting, it was a lot harder. You could get comics at newsstands or grocery stores maybe, but if you missed an issue, your best chance was to send away to the dealers in New York who advertised in the back of the comics.

Dichotomies are an inherent part of comics, aren't they? Comics are both pictures and words. They blend time and space. Many feature characters with dual identities like Bruce Wayne/Batman. Cartoonists also tend to live dichotomous lives because many of us have day jobs.

Eliminating Garry Trudeau's 'Doonesbury' on the basis of its competitive score on the comics page is a little like choosing a Rhodes scholar from a group of competitors made up of beauty queens, champion consumers of hot dogs, and three-legged racers. 'Doonesbury' is in a class by itself.

There's something about the intimacy of comics that gives you a false bravado; you don't always consider the consequences.

I started off doing indie comics that I wrote and drew myself. I was doing those for ten years before I started to work for DC. The first book that I wrote for DC was for another artist. I did some backups in 'Adventure Comics' years ago starring The Atom. That's the first time that I ever wrote for another artist.

I started 'American Born Chinese' as a mini-comic. I would write and draw a chapter, photocopy a hundred or so copies at the corner photocopy store, and then try to sell them on consignment through local comics shops. If I could sell maybe half a dozen, I'd be doing okay.

I've been trying to make this argument that digital comics and print comics are both art, but there are subtle differences.

I've been reading comics since I was four. I used to get them when I would go grocery shopping with my mom. I remember getting the digest versions of old DC comics. The one that I remember reading first was Paul Levitz' 'Justice Society of America' stuff that he was doing in the '70s.

I've been driving in the city for years because, as a stand-up in N.Y.C., you can perform at more comedy clubs a night if you have a car. Getting from club to club by subway is too slow at night and too expensive by cab. So, many comics live far out from Manhattan and drive in every night.

I used to read comics all the time - escapism, ... So, it was good you get to make up your own adventures as an only child.

I used to write a column in there, called Genius, And How It Got That Way, they had asked me to write a column on the great comics in history.

These are things kids struggle with every day, ... and these comics are a format that will grab their attention, then turn them toward biblical principles and truths.

The thing that I've learned, not just from writing comics but also from writing television programs like 'Law & Order,' is that you can fool some of the people some of the time - but you can't fool all of the people all of the time.

The thing is, the Superman comics have been around a long time, and so have the movies. They've done a lot of Superman movies, as they have with Batman.

I've always loved pinup art, and I've always enjoyed drawing women. I think it was a conscious decision that has resulted in me getting almost exclusive work on comics where the main character is female.

So much of comics are dictated by characters talking to one another - or in focused spaces where 'the camera' has to stay in pretty close on what's going on.

Read something of interest every day - something of interest to you, not to your teacher or your best friend or your minister/rabbi/priest. Comics count. So does poetry. So do editorials in your school newspaper. Or a biography of a rock star. Or an instructional manual. Or the Bible.

Our thing was always music. Back in the heyday people would come in constantly and say 'You know, you ought to get into comic books. We could put a rack of comic books over here.' Well, I don't know (anything) about comics so we're not going to do it. I used that space to sell some more Joy Division or something like that.

Aquaman is one of the greatest characters at DC Comics and one of my favorites.

As far as the trades go, I want to avoid how comics have captions or just really stilted dialogue at the beginning of the pages.

As a kid, I fell in love with the EC Comics from the '50s. It was illegal to produce horror and science fiction in the state of New York because of EC Comics. They just went over the line. Their covers were hangings and brutal stabbings.

As lifelong fans of comic books, Dan Didio and myself, we definitely have our own takes on what make for successful comics and the kind of comics that we want to publish.

This is something I'm intimately involved in and will be for the next several years. Comics and games were a big part of my childhood and this really is a realization of my dreams.

They're very different people. Johnny is aggressive, no bull crap. This is the business. He's the enforcer in the class. Cannon is the friend. He's there. He's the good guy, ... The good cop/bad cop thing is really vital to the success of the comics coming out of there.

A lot of on-line comics have very involved storylines, and even though the archive is online, it is faster to flip open a book and read than plow through an electronic archive.

There were a lot of comics out there who we love whose half-hours were five, six, seven years old.

There's bleeding between age groups in terms of reading material, and there's bleeding between media. So there are books that are clearly comics and books that are prose, and then there are these books that are kind of in-between.

There seems to be a peculiar kind of clamor for comics. And I'm not sure how much a part of reality that is. I think partly it's based on some idea that comics are what everybody wants to read - and I don't think that's the case.

There's Dick Van Dyke and John Ritter, the two greatest physical comics of our generation.

It's not like since I make comics I only read comics and since I make movies I will only go out and watch movies. Any kind of artistic expression interests me; it goes from literature to music to sculpture, painting; whatever is extremely inspiring for me becomes a reference also for me.

It's not easy to convey to someone who doesn't read comics just how Alan Moore has dominated the field since 'Watchmen.'

It started out as sketches of Popeye, and the old comics when I was a kid. Then one of my first paintings was of my 2 granddaughters. Then one day I told my wife I'm going to paint the presidents.

It's survival of the funniest -- it's like Darwinian evolution on the comics page,

Taking a comic strip character is very hard to write. Because comics are meant to work in one page, to work in frames with minimalistic dialogue. And a lot of it is left to the imagination of the reader. To do that in film, you've got to be a little more explanatory. And that requires a good screenplay and good dialogue.

Superman has been my favorite character since I was six years old, and I have more comics featuring Superman than any other single character.

I've gotten more and more cut off from the regular comic-book world, from straight comics and stuff like that. Once in a while, I'll take a look at something.

I started in comics in 2005, ten years ago, and at that time, I didn't have a cell phone. I don't even think I had a computer myself, you know. And just in those ten years, how much technology has changed.

I started going with my friend to a bar in New Orleans, ... I met a bunch of comics down there and I sort of emceed a show for the comics and I would improvise with the audience and that went over really well, so I did another one last year ... in Chicago ... and that also went really well, so I kind of decided to do one more starting in Los Angeles and heading to Chicago and out West and do that for 30 days and 30 nights.

There's this idea that it has to be made in London. But we've got everything up here, and if you've got comics who are gifted because of where they're from, you shouldn't drag them away from that natural resource.

I was a big comics reader when I was a kid, from about six to fifteen. I collected them, I read them, I even created my own characters in comics.

Not paying the comics a dime -- that's Penn's greatest magic trick,

Art should walk a tightrope. That's what art should be. Art should be dangerous. You can't be scared to say something with it. People love to talk about how comics are real art and real literature, so why not use these characters to talk about real things, even if it is dangerous?

Any time you bring sexuality into the comics pages, you have to brace for pushback.

The issue of childhood is extremely complicated, the issue of comics is extremely complicated. And the intersection of the two is extremely, extremely complicated.

I'm not just offensive, I'm very smart about the way that I do it, and that takes a lot of time. People say that young comics shouldn't be trying these things. That's ridiculous. You should try everything and see what sticks.

I'm doing a lot of stand-up, but not like when you're living in New York and you can do three sets a night and it's your life, and you sleep all day and you wake up and you eat with a bunch of other comics and then get ready for the night.

In L.A., a lot of comics live here, but we don't get to spend that much time together because we've got to drive 45 minutes home, or do another set. So in San Francisco we can hang out, go for dinner - the community aspect of it is really lovely, as well as seeing people's shows that you don't normally get to see a longer version of.

I'm not a confrontational person or comedian. I think we can explore more things if one of us is not fighting with the other. I take it easy. But I do like comedians who are very different from myself: I love dry comics with deadpan one-liners. I look on and think, 'That's amazing; why didn't I think of that?'