Dave Gibbons Quotes

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

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.

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

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.

In prose, you have a lot more room for digression, for very meaty kinds of dialogues. In graphic novels, you're writing haiku-length dialogue. Your job is to be efficient, to get out of the way of the art.

I'm always a little nervous when someone comes from other media into writing comics. It's a unique storytelling form, and it requires both talent and respect.

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

Learning to write comics is, in fact, so bloody difficult because it's such a weird form that it does actually make you a bit more adaptable for other forms.

I love graphic novels - I love reading them, I enjoyed writing them, I would love to go back and do them again. I hope I'm savvy enough to do them in the right way.

I like the idea of making big budget films with a heart. I like graphic novels more than comic books.

The important thing about any book is that you have to have a good story and that it has to be exciting. Then it's nice to add other levels underneath that people can pick up on.

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.

One of the things about comics is people can linger on images and words as long as they want.

I would say what Mad Men has taught me has been a super elevated evaluation of text in general, and understanding subtext, and understanding where a character comes from - what he means by this or by that.

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

Comics as art. I do comics as comics, and my opportunity to tell stories. Simple. Basic. Let the characters have the excitement, not the package. That's where I come from.

The real power of comics is writing as you draw.

I didn't read many comics as a kid - I've always been a really fast reader, and I would fly through a comic book in a few minutes and be so mad that it ended so quickly. But now that I've been in the business, I tend to look at the panels so much more carefully, and realize that so much of it is about the art; I don't think I got that before.

I never want to write a book just to tell a story. There is always something deeper going on.

When I read comics, they were dense stories. When you put them down, there was a sense of having gotten a great deal from them.

The best moments in comics come from a primal image that captures the emotion and the conflict. What you add are the pieces that get you to the point and what happens next.

You have to think about space differently; you have to think about time differently when you're talking about a graphic novel versus a movie.

Certain things work on paper held together with staples. Comics use bright colors to make things leap off the page, but movies are a different medium.

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.