quotations about comic books
A comic book in mint condition is an offense against the multiverse. I only collect damaged comics with torn covers and missing pages.
STEPHEN EVANS
attributed, goodreads
I don't got no lawyers. I don't got no PR people. I don't got no licensing people.... I hate to say it but I just proved that half those jobs at Marvel and DC are worthless. They could get rid of all of those guys and it's not really going to affect the sales of their comic books, if you're doing a comic book that taps into the heart of what the kids want right now. You don't need a battery of people to produce big sales.
TODD MCFARLANE
interview, The Comics Journal, August 1992
We must get the product back into the maximum number of venues, in cheap and accessible packages. Comics are primarily a cyclical fad, and they depend upon new readers being able to spontaneously discover them, on a spinner rack, at the drugstore, or the Mom & Pop, or the grocery story, or the bus depot, etc., etc. As long as new blood has to make a conscious decision to walk into a comic book shop, looking for comics, and as long as the comics we produce continue to be aimed at the wrong audience -- witness Gareb Shamus and his insane attempts, of late, to rekindle the speculator mentality!! -- the industry has slim hope of recovery, or even survival.
JOHN BYRNE
"John Byrne: The Hidden Answers", CBR, August 22, 2000
If Shakespeare and Michelangelo were alive today, and if they decided to collaborate on a comic, Shakespeare would write the script and Michelangelo would draw it. How could anybody say that this wouldn't be as worthwhile an artform as anything on earth?
STAN LEE
Stan Lee: Conversations
The thing about comics is that you can hypothesize anything and not have to blow $20 million on special effects or locations or anything else--you just use your imagination. For me, that's what makes comics transcendent. All you really require is the ability to tell a story ... with a pencil. And you're off and running.
CHRIS CLAREMONT
interview, Salute Magazine, March 16, 2018
Nowadays I'm really cranky about comics. Because most of them are just really, really poorly written soft-core. And I miss good old storytelling. And you know what else I miss? Super powers. Why is it now that everybody's like "I can reverse the polarity of your ions!" Like in one big flash everybody's Doctor Strange. I like the guys that can stick to walls and change into sand and stuff.
JOSS WHEDON
"Featured Filmmaker: Joss Whedon", IGN, June 16, 2003
One of the key characteristics of the comic book medium is that it is not brought to life by just one voice. These universes are developed and evolved by multiple creative voices, over multiple generations.
JIM LEE
"Alan Moore On Watchmen's 'Toxic Cloud' And Creativity V. Big Business", Fast Company, February 14, 2012
I discovered DC Comics and to my chagrin, I liked it. I'm embarrassed to say that even though I was just there temporarily, because until I could solid myself up with a strip, or illustration work, or advertising work, I intended to leave as soon as I could. I just sort of fell in love with it and comic books to me is, in a weird way, the best medium of all. The rates were terrible, the attitudes were terrible, they didn't have contracts, they were operating in the dark ages, they were total a**holes, but the medium is just too good to not appreciate and understand and it's just fantastic.
NEAL ADAMS
interview, Comic Book Historians, August 5, 2018
Once, while at a party in London, the editor of the literary reviews page of a major newspaper struck up a conversation with me, and we chatted pleasantly until he asked what I did for a living. "I write comics," I said; and I watched the editor's interest instantly drain away, as if he suddenly realized he was speaking to someone beneath his nose. Just to be polite, he followed up by inquiring, "Oh, yes? Which comics have you written?" So I mentioned a few titles, which he nodded at perfunctorily; and I concluded, "I also did this thing called Sandman." At that point he became excited and said, "Hang on, I know who you are. You're Neil Gaiman!" I admitted that I was. "My God, man, you don't write comics," he said. "You write graphic novels!" He meant it as a compliment, I suppose. But all of a sudden I felt like someone who'd been informed that she wasn't actually a hooker; that in fact she was a lady of the evening.
NEIL GAIMAN
The Sandman Companion
In short, strips have their own aesthetic: they are a language, with their own grammar, syntax and punctuation. They are not some hybrid form halfway between 'literature' and 'art' (whatever those words might mean), but a medium in their own right.
ROGER SABIN
Adult Comics
Most comic books are vehicles for escapism, which I think is unfortunate. I think that the so-called average person often exhibits a great deal of heroism in getting through an ordinary day, and yet the reading public takes this heroism for granted. They'd rather read about Superman than themselves.
HARVEY PEKAR
attributed, Comic Books as History
Badly drawn, badly written and badly printed -- a strain on young eyes and young nervous systems -- the effect of these pulp-paper nightmares is that of a violent stimulant. Their crude blacks and reds spoil the child's natural sense of color; their hypodermic injection of sex and murder makes the child impatient with better, though quieter, stories. Unless we want a coming generation even more ferocious than the present one, parents and teachers throughout America must band together to break the 'comic' magazines.
STERLING NORTH
Chicago Daily News, May 8, 1940
Comics are hard work. Comics are relentless. Comics will break your heart. Comics are monetarily unsatisfying. Comics don't offer much in terms of fortune and glory, but comics will give you complete freedom to tell the stories you want to tell, in ways unlike any other medium. Comics will pick you up after it knocks you down. Comics will dust you off and tell you it loves you. And you will look into it's eyes and know it's true.
BECKY CLOONAN
Ink and Thunder, August 8, 2011
Does the noise in my head bother you?
Something's gotta give
Comic books are comin' true
AEROSMITH
"Something's Gotta Give"
Comic books helped me to define myself and my world in a way that made both far less frightening. I honestly cannot imagine how I would have navigated my way through childhood without them.
BRADFORD W. WRIGHT
Comic Book Nation
I taught myself how to draw, and I soon found out it was what I really wanted to do. I didn't think I was going to create any great masterpieces like Rembrandt or Gauguin. I thought comics was a common form of art and strictly American in my estimation because America was the home of the common man, and show me the common man that can't do a comic. So comics is an American form of art that anyone can do with a pencil and paper.
JACK KIRBY
interview, The Comics Journal, February 1990
Comic books are ultimately a generational experience. For the most part, they are the domain of young people, who inevitably outgrow them, recall them fondly, and then look at the comic books of their own children and grandchildren with a mixture of bewilderment and, perhaps, concern.
BRADFORD W. WRIGHT
Comic Book Nation: The Transformation of Youth Culture in America
I am not a critic of the whole industry, by any means. I am a critic of the wrong-headedness which sometimes -- as now -- comes to control the industry. To this end, in my little Jimmeny Cricket fashion, I like to keep reminding people of how much more successful the whole thing was, back when we were doing it right.
JOHN BYRNE
"John Byrne: The Hidden Answers", CBR, August 22, 2000
I don't remember when exactly I read my first comic book, but I do remember exactly how liberated and subversive I felt as a result.
EDWARD SAID
Palestine
Specific, closed cultures like that surrounding comic books have allowed voices to be heard that might not have been audible in a world in which all cultural texts speak the same common language.
MATTHEW J. PUSTZ
Comic Book Culture