Jeph Loeb Quotes

Marvel is a very vast and diverse universe.

I've been a fan of 'The Defenders' since childhood, and Devil Slayer was always one of my favorite members of the team - especially during J.M. DeMatteis' wonderful run on the series.

There are a lot of writers who just want to do their own thing and avoid the rest of the Marvel Universe. But for me that was one of the things I loved about Marvel: that shared universe. So of course you would run into a mutant in Manhattan. You would run into another hero in Manhattan. For me, I figured why not? Why not have that fun?

By the time I finished the first series, 'Marvel Universe vs. Punisher,' I knew that there was a lot more story to tell.

We just don't want to repeat anything that we've done in the movies [X-man] or that we're going to do in the movies. There's so many stories to tell, we just want to stay out of each other's way.

If you can't write a story that pleases yourself, you will never please the public. But in writing the story forget the public.

If you just write the kinds of stories you think others will want to read, you'll be competing with cartoonists who are far more enthusiastic for that kind of comic than you are, and they'll kick your ass every time.

I was very clear that I wanted to keep 'Thor' out of the rest of the Marvel universe for no less than the first six issues. And the success of the book, I think, speaks well to that decision.

Over at Marvel, I have a five-part series coming out very soon. The books or chapters will appear weekly. It's called '5 Ronin' and features some iconic Marvel heroes as you've never seen them.

Listen, my day job is also Chief Creative Officer for Marvel, and it's a very painful job because we publish a lot of books, and there are things I see where I can punch people out. Therefore, we have some new people now, and the kids are going to read our books.

Marvel has, like, 9,000 characters. They could do a horror movie tomorrow and call it Marvel. They can do anything.

Write the story you need to tell and want to read. It's impossible to know what others want, so don't waste time trying to guess.

I've been exposed to a ton of 'Magneto' stories over the years, and they all influence me.

Creativity was definitely a big part of our household, and I remember always writing stories and being encouraged to be creative.

Overall, I'm happy how 'Original Sin' has come together. It's an amalgam of all I've done at Marvel, mixing the gritty, violent 'Punisher Max' stuff with the zany, light-hearted 'Wolverine & The X-Men' work.

I think it's our job as writers for Marvel Comics to continue to create those type of stories that can be mined instead of just trying to give readers exactly what they see on film.

When I grew up reading comics, the part in the Marvel universe that was so exciting was that you could have a battle going on in 'Iron Man' and then, suddenly, Thor would fly overhead, and you realized, 'Oh, it's all one place.'

My big dream has always been to write and create my own things.

I absolutely love television. What's so great about TV is that I can tell 20 stories in a year. If I was working at a feature studio, I'd tell 1% of someone else's story, over the course of four years.

I have to write the story I want to write. I never wrote them with a focus group of 8-year-olds in mind. I have to continue telling the story the way I want to tell it.

There's 54 years of X-Men comics by now, so there are a lot of characters to explore.

Everybody wants to feel that you're writing to a certain demographic because that's good business, but I've never done that ... I tried to write stories that would interest me. I'd say, what would I like to read?... I don't think you can do your best work if you're writing for somebody else, because you never know what that somebody else really thinks or wants.

In my opinion, trying to guess what readers want is the wrong approach. You have to tell your story as best you can and as true to yourself as possible. You have to be honest and fair and vulnerable and foolish and brave, and not care what anyone thinks of it.

I do not put myself in a box and say, for instance, I'm writing post-colonial literature. I don't know what I'm writing. That's the business of professors and critics. My job is to tell a story, and that's it.

If you have a structure beforehand, you're sort of stuffing your story into a pre-assembled box. You don't want that to happen. What you want in your writing is to have a sort of wildness that occurs. And then, out of the wildness, a structure emerges.