Comic Book Publishing Quotes

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.

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

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.

I've always loved both Marvel and DC equally, but I don't have a career without DC giving me the original 'Hawk and Dove' mini-series.

Ever since I'm done with Zim everyone thinks that I'm going to go back to comics. I've been flooded with emails asking me if I'm working on the new Johnny over and over again.

When I started writing comics, 'comics writer' was the most obscure job in the world! If I wanted to be a celebrity, I would have become a moody English screen actor.

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.'

I knew I really wanted to work in comics in 1979.

One of the seminal moments I remember as a young punk is, when Roy Thomas was doing an editorial read-through of a book before it went to press, and being so gob-smacked by it, he just canceled it right there.

Despite all the criticisms that have been leveled at the comics community, both in terms of fans and creators, I have always felt more comfortable and accepted in the comics community than I have in any other medium of publishing that I've had the pleasure of working in.

My wife, Caroline Spector, and I pitched some comic ideas to various publishers back in the '80s, but nothing ever came of it.

The comic book world is a tough business.

Then is when I decided to take it to Archie to see if they could do it as a comic book. I showed it to Richard Goldwater, and he showed it to his father, and a day or two later I got the OK to do it as a comic book.

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 feel like there are comic book artists who are comic book artists, and then there's comic book artists who are cartoonists.

One of the weapons Marvel used in its climb to comic-book dominance was a willingness to invent new characters at a dizzying speed. There are so many Marvel universes, indeed, that some superheroes do not even exist in one another's worlds, preventing gridlock.

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!

In many ways, my entire graphic novel career was a long diversion. Originally, all I wanted to do was to be an underground cartoonist and maybe bring out a groovy underground mag.

I've always been apprehensive about doing comic books, period.

There is a sequence in my 'Detective Comics' run where you can't find consecutive issues by the same artist. That's intentional. That was done on purpose.

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

At this very moment I'm behind on a compilation that Slave Labor is doing for Free Comic Book Day.

I wrote a graphic novel that came out in 2011 called 'Everlast.' We had a really successful run with that.

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

Especially with Elektra, because I'm doing a lot of the covers for the new version of Elektra.