Ann Nocenti Quotes

Doing graphic novels is cool! It's fun! You get to write something, and then see it visually page by page, panel by panel, working with the artist, you get to see it fleshed out.

Comics writing is for your artist. It's not for the general reader; it's for the artist. So I love writing scripts for artists.

I'm supposed to be making comics, so I had to do it the best way I knew how, which is what those guys at the beginning of the Twentieth Century were doing.

Writing a comic book series, you're so reliant on whoever the artist is. It truly is collaboration.

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

I created lots of characters in high school and college, and the first character I created in pro comics was Liana, Green Lantern of M'Elu, for a backup story in 'Green Lantern #162,' my first professional sale.

'Thunderbolts' I was mostly attracted to because I really wanted to write Punisher and Elektra and Deadpool, who are characters I have always really enjoyed. But the funny thing is that over time, I came to really like Red Leader; he became one of my favorite guys in the book. Sometimes characters surprise you.

All of the characters at Marvel were my ideas, but the ideas meant nothing unless I had somebody who could illustrate it.

I love writing novels, but there is something deeply invigorating about the comic-book medium.

Then he took me off Jeannie and he gave me Millie the Model. That was a big break for me. It wasn't doing to well and somehow when I got on it became quite successful.

To paint comic books as childish and illiterate is lazy. A lot of comic books are very literate - unlike most films.

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.

I don't need to write comics for a living. I have movies and TV for that. I write comics for one reason and one reason only: I love comics. I love the form, the structure, the storytelling process, I love everything about it.

The most labor-intensive part of putting together a comic is the drawing.

And I've never viewed comics as assignments for the client.

Comics are so full of amazing work. And I can't look at a drawing of a woman without thinking of, for instance, Wallace Wood and his amazing way of capturing beauty.

One of the key characteristics of the comic book medium is that it is not brought to life by just one voice.

There are still some people out there who believe comic books are nothing more than, well, comic books. But the true cognoscenti know graphic novels are - at their best - an amazing blend of art literature and the theater of the mind.

In the Golden Age of Batman, I penciled, inked, and lettered my strip by myself.

All of the penciling was consistently done by one person and the inking was whoever could finish on time.

When I and the other young artists were working in comics, our work carried with it a particularly American slant. After all, we were Americans drawing and writing about things that touched us. As it turned out, the early work was, you might say, a comic book version of Jazz.

To my mind, the most successful and the best comic book illustrators are those who translate the real world into a consistent code. If you look at Jack Kirby or Steve Ditko, their drawings look nothing like the real world, but they are internally consistent. In terms of a comic book it can work just fine.

I had a lot of ideas on how comics worked and pretty early on I had this idea that it would be fun to explain them in comics form.

As much as I devoured comics, I read non-graphic books exponentially more, so I'm not sure I can credit or blame them. Comics, however, taught me a lot about what makes a story arc work and how to bring a story to its natural resting place between issues.

Before I ever put anything on paper, Jerry and I would talk back and forth.