Gilbert Hernandez Quotes

I love the medium and I love individual comics, but the business is nothing I would be proud of.

The '90s was a great period for the fans that were collecting at that time. Comics sold at an all-time high and reached the largest audience in our modern age, and the energy in our business was fantastic. Any bad feelings from fans of that era were a result of the poor delivery of the product we sold them.

The comic book world is a tough business.

There are a lot of people in the medium who came and got into the industry and work in the industry, and these are people who were raised on comics and loved comics. Comics are their religion. To such an extent, that they don't know anything else.

Comics are printed on paper, which is expensive, making it tough to stay in business.

Comics publishers are used to looking in a very, very narrow focused prism. It's like when I started writing 'X-Men.' Our 'meat and potatoes' money was made of newsstand sales, while anything that came through the Direct Market was considered gravy.

The comic page is dying; I didn't want to go with it.

The direct market has evolved into a machine that is very good at selling corporate-owned superhero titles published by two main companies: DC and Marvel.

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.

I come to Comic-Con in San Diego because this is where those fans are - those to whom I owe the longevity of my career.

'New Mutants' #100 went out the door with over a million copies. It is the highest-selling last issue of any comic ever. And that's when I knew that I spoke fandom. I spoke their language.

I thought I had a great opportunity when I started doing my comic book in 1972. I thought there was so much territory to work in.

The comic book world is so dangerous, you know what I mean? You say one thing and people - they're ravenous - they are very opinionated fans. But they're great fans.

Comics were going down for the second time and here, all of a sudden, came this thing and for the next fifteen years, romance comics were about the top sellers in the field; they outsold everything.

That became a big time in comic books because it's when people were starting to break out into independent stuff, the market was getting choked with speculators and everybody was trying to do their own trick covers.

Listen, people like Brian Bendis did great things for comic readers, great things for comic readers.

I could go through a lot of my old emails from when I first started doing comics. Back then the lowest age of fans was like 15 or 16 up to people in their 20's and 30's.

When I was a young artist, I liked and was interested in belonging to the mainstream comics group. I didn't introduce myself as an author, but only as a designer.

The third biggest comic people in America want to make a comic book out of me. It's unbelievable.

In the sixties and seventies you could probably name all the great comics. It was still special.

I do still read comics since I started writing for DC, but nowhere near as much as I used to, and I'm finding now that it's becoming harder to read comics as a consumer, so I think I'll have to make the call there and stop reading them.

I'm very distanced from the comics industry. I love the comics medium, but I have no time for the industry.

We can't really make a living doing comic books, despite the fact that would be an awfully fun way to make a living.

For a long time, I was under the impression that 'Terry and the Pirates' was the best comic strip in the United States.

Despite all the criticisms that have been leveled at the comics community, both in terms of fans and creators, I have always felt more comfortable and accepted in the comics community than I have in any other medium of publishing that I've had the pleasure of working in.