Scott McCloud Quotes

I think graphic novels are closer to prose than film, which is a really different form.

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.

Comics are about the illusion of movement, and movies are about movement itself.

Comics is a great medium to get a lot of stories out.

In a film you only get two hours to do this big arc and so you have to pick and choose your moments carefully, but with television you get to take your time and just take it episode by episode and discover new things.

I get asked a lot about writing for games and prose and film, and I will do some, but I can never see myself leaving comics. I love it too much.

There are very few films that work like a novel.

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

The beauty of cinema is that it can do some things that novels just can't.

You can have ambiguity in television that you are not allowed in film... at least in Hollywood studio films.

The real power of comics is writing as you draw.

Comics don't work without the visuals, obviously.

In a film we have limited time and space to say what we have to, hence the visual language and brevity needs to be paramount. In a novel, however, we can dissect each thought and emotion and build on it.

You know, things that might work in a book just do not work in the visual medium of movies.

My role as an artist helps me tremendously in breaking down each story. Pacing, layout, movement - having drawn a few thousand pages, I understand the language of comic books very well.

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.

When you're writing TV or movies your vernacular is time, it's all based on rhythms, a character takes a beat or two characters have a moment, like everything is about time. And when you're writing a comic, everything is about space. It's how many panels to put on a page, when should you do a full page splash, what is the detail that you see in any particular image.

Comics are stories; they're like novels or anything else. So the first thing you have to do is become a good storyteller.

You can't rely on the acting to tell the story.

Cinema is a medium that can translate ideas.

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.

Comic books were just the means for me to tell the story.

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

When I read 'Watchmen,' it changed my view of so many things. It was the first time I'd read a graphic novel really like that.

I think you can do anything with comics that you could do in just about any art form.