Jaime Hernandez Quotes

When I put together a graphic novel, I don't think about literary prose. I think about storytelling.

My overall artistic goal is to marry graphic design with comic books and traditional storytelling.

Comic art is just different. It's art on its own terms.

The real power of comics is writing as you draw.

Comics don't work without the visuals, obviously.

Comics are words and pictures. You can do anything with words and pictures.

People unacquainted with graphic novels, including journalists, tend to think of 'Watchmen' as a book by Alan Moore that happens to have some illustrations. And that does a disservice to the entire form.

Comic books and graphic novels are a great medium. It's incredibly underused.

Some of my earliest work was in comics. I tend to think in pictures and always like to write scenes possessing the dynamic you find in comics.

In film, you have the luxury of accomplishing what you need in 24 frames every second. Comics, you only have five or six panels a page to do that.

With comics, you've got to develop some kind of shorthand. You can't make every drawing look like a detailed etching. The average reader actually doesn't want all that detail; it interferes with the flow of the reading process.

Graphic novels are such a visually creative world - it's really interesting what they can do in one sketch. Now I'm hooked.

Comics is a language. It's a language most people understand intuitively.

Comics have always been storyboards.

Comics are not theatre - there's a very important difference in that the reader controls the page. You can linger on a page of comics as long as you want. You can read and go forward and then move back; you can reread, in one sitting or at your leisure. You can take as much time as you want to take in that story.

I love the interplay between words and pictures. I love the fact that in comics, your pictures are acting like words, presenting themselves to be read.

Comics are a wonderful form. You can do so much with it.

I've said this before, but I don't like putting captions in my comic books. I feel, for me, they become a crutch, a way to ignore the essential fact that our medium is a visual medium, and the greatest pleasures to be derived from comics are how stories can be told with pictures.

When I'm writing comics, I'm also visualizing how the story will look on the page - not even always art-wise, but panel-wise, like how a moment will be enhanced dramatically by simply turning a page and getting a reveal. It requires thinking about story in a way I never had to consider when I was writing prose.

It's not movies and it's not "fine art." The beauty of a comic is that it's clear, direct communication. My work is getting simpler and more cartoony because I'm much more interested in communication now than in any illustrative value.

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

You can write a little and can draw a little, but there's necessarily a limitation on both in a comic strip, since it appears in such a tiny space.

I minored in creative writing in college, and I've played with the idea of doing something more hybrid, but comics are my first love.

I try to do things in comics that cannot be repeated by television, by movies, by interactive entertainment.

Some of my favorite media is the still cartoon that you can sit and study. You can get amazing metaphors across really quickly. I'm in awe of a Charles Schulz.