Comic Book Industry Quotes

My only problem with fans is when they turn pro. For example, when all the professional writers were fired by DC in the '60s, they brought in a generation of comic book fans who would have paid to have written these stories.

There's nothing that could get me interested in Hollywood again. And, increasingly, there's nothing that could get me interested in the American comics industry again.

This is a profession for me, but I started off as a self-publisher working on my own schedule and my own stuff before moving on to graphic novels with First Second Books, where there was definitely a schedule, but it was very different from monthly comics.

I had seen this comic called 'Invincible' created by two people I had never heard of before, Robert Kirkman and Cory Walker, and I was a huge fan. 'Invincible' probably had five or six issues under the belt, and the book was so impressive to me, I was surprised that I had never heard of them before. It's like they came out wholly formed.

Comics are my first love, and I hate seeing an art form that I love suffer.

I kept telling my mom that reading comic books would pay off.

I've been a Marvel reader since I was just a kid, and I've dreamed of being a Marvel writer for almost as long, so being tapped to officially join the team is truly something.

Being able to work in comics at all - I know I came into it from a different medium, but I'd like to stay here. It's not like a weird touristy thing for me.

One of the things that kept most comics from being monthly was that very few artists could produce 24 pages per month. Jack Kirby was very much the exception to the rule, but his towering presence at Marvel started to dictate the whole shape of the industry - and that's where problems set in!

The people who worked in comics were terrific guys. I had a good association with them, and I enjoyed comics for that very reason.

I've probably had my day in the sun. I think I've influenced a lot of comic book writers.

When I was at Marvel, they were in bankruptcy, which is hard to believe now with 'Avengers 2' out, but it was during the 1990s. It was a troubled place. Comic book sales were dropping. Work was scattered.

At any comic book convention in America, you'll find aspiring cartoonists with dozens of complex plot ideas and armloads of character sketches. Only a small percentage ever move from those ideas and sketches to a finished book.

Everything you've ever read of mine is first-draft. This is one of the peculiarities of the comics field. By the time you're working on chapter three of your masterwork, chapter one is already in print. You can't go back and suddenly decide to make this character a woman, or have this one fall out of a window.

That and the fact that I knew that nobody was going to publish my work at Dark Horse or DC or anywhere.

I am the product of Denny O'Neil in many ways, I carry forth a lot of what Denny instilled in me.

Once publishers got interested in it, it was a year in developing, and it was launched, I think, in 1960. But Willie Lumpkin didn't last long - it only last a little better than a year, maybe a year and a half.

I'd hate to be writing 'Adventure Time' comics and not be excited about it.

Some artists, such as Jack Kirby, need no plot at all. I mean I'll just say to Jack, "Let's let the next villain be Dr. Doom" ... or I may not even say that. He may tell me. And then he goes home and does it. He's so good at plots, I'm sure he's a thousand times better than I. He just makes up the plots for these stories. All I do is a little editing ... I may tell him that he's gone too far in one direction or another. Of course, occasionally I'll give him a plot, but we're practically both the writers on the things.

When 'Watchmen' was published in 1986, the vast majority of comics readers deemed it a watershed in comics history. The 12-part serial comic book was widely acclaimed as a genius subversion of the superhero genre, and it did much to popularize comics to adults.

I think comics are really part of The Zeitgeist. They reflect back to us the issues that we're concerned about in the time they are written.

The '90s was a great period for the fans that were collecting at that time. Comics sold at an all-time high and reached the largest audience in our modern age, and the energy in our business was fantastic. Any bad feelings from fans of that era were a result of the poor delivery of the product we sold them.

Right from the outset, the prevailing mindset in British comics fandom was a radical and progressive one. We were all proto-hippies, and we all thought that comics would be greatly improved if everything was a bit psychedelic like Jim Steranko.

I was into Alan Moore and Frank Miller. I was a teenager when all those books where coming out for the first time - 'Watchmen,' 'V for Vendetta.' It was a great time to get into comics.

My generation was a special generation. I was born in 1960 and in my childhood we were all big manga consumers that was the culture. We were brought up in manga. Manga evolved around what was being made to cater to kids. All children at that time read ridiculously thick manga books every week.