Comic Craft Quotes

In a 22-page comic, figuring an average of four to five panels a page and a couple of full-page shots, a writer has maybe a hundred panels at most to tell a story, so every panel he wastes conveying a.) something I already know, b.) something that's a cute gag but does nothing to reveal plot or character, or c.) something I don't need to know is a demonstration of lousy craft.

If you want to draw comics, you really have to love to draw, as you will be spending many hours sitting down with a pencil or pen in your hand.

I think, you know, a lot of the business of comedy is taking your personal experiences and making them relatable to other people.

I write separately from the inking up. I'm sure this varies from cartoonist to cartoonist; I find that the writing is the hard part and the drawing is the fun part.

What I feel responsible for is, if my name is on a comic, I want it to be the best-written comic that I can possibly do. I want it to include some new things we haven't seen before, new story ideas, new characters. Quality, quality art, all those kinds of things.

I'm not a great joke writer, which is odd for a comic to say, but I'm not. So it's hard for me to come up with things, because I don't write stuff, I don't write my act down.

There aren't any concrete steps to becoming a comic.

In earlier comics, my only priority was telling a joke in the last panel, but now I try to make every panel as interesting as possible, and that normally means at least a li'l joke there.

I always had a great history of comics. I've been buying them since I was six years old. I was a student of the craft.

Maybe the best comics are written by people who really are at ease in the comic world.