Jeff Lemire Quotes

We grew out of the superhero comics, but we still liked comics, so we started putting our own experiences in the stories we were doing for our own amusement.

One of the best things that happened for me as a playwright is becoming a comic-book writer.

I ended up reading comics and just started drawing at a very young age. By high school, I was putting together longer stories. In college, I started doing strips for the newspaper and doing mini-comics. It sort of grew in scope and scale over time.

I never thought I would work in mainstream superhero comics or Valiant or Marvel. I just set out to make the kinds of stories I wanted to make, which at the beginning was small personal stuff like 'Essex County.'

At the end of the '60s, I was trying to enter the world of comics.

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.

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

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.

And that, to me, is the main attraction to comics. It's an avenue to say what you want to say.

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.

I know as a child, I was really interested in becoming a manga artist, to create my own stories and illustrate them and present something that people would be interested in reading and looking at as well.

I love creator-owned comics. Most of my favorite books these days are creator-owned, from stuff DC publishes, like 'Fables,' to books like 'Saga,' 'Fatale,' 'Hellboy,' and 'Courtney Crumrin.'

I'm sure that no matter what I'm involved in, I'll always be doing comics, at least in some minor capacity.

DC used to print up all of their pages, they were the only company that did it.

To be honest, writing comics is a dream come true - the form is unparalleled and is home to some of the most original and innovative storytelling around.

Comics, at least in periodical form, exist almost entirely free of any pretense; the critical world of art hardly touches them, and they're 100% personal.

I've wanted to write comics ever since I figured out it was a job.

There are great comic books, these great geniuses that manage to tell you a story in one frame, and that became the thing that opened my eyes.

I understand the visual media very well, as I used to write comic books for Walt Disney, and I've written a graphic novel. How you carry a story in pictures is different than how you do it in text.

Watching people like Brandon Graham, Erik Larsen, and Joe Keatinge produce stories for my characters was a revelation... Like, 'Why are you doing work for hire when others are working on characters you own?' 'Bloodstrike' and 'Brigade' is me re-focusing my focus!

'Human Target' was probably one of the best projects I ever worked on - that and 'Dr.Thirteen.' I just appreciated how smart Peter Milligan's writing is. It was smart and entertaining.

My view is that comic books are meant to be long-form stories. They're meant to be novels.

One of the reasons that DC, Marvel, and other comic book companies have always asked me to do covers and variant covers is because they know that when they tell me 'icon,' I jump over their words, and I give them an iconic cover - but while I'm doing it, there is going to be an idea there.

I particularly like Alan Moore and Neil Gaiman. Both writers have wit and imagination and the breadth of stories they tell coupled with extraordinary artwork make for fascinating reading.

The whole thing about comics is the reason I think you shoot to be a comics author is because it's a very solitary activity and that you sit down and you're arguing with yourself that's kinda the plan.