Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I've always had a good handle on drawing children.
If I'm not invested emotionally, the artwork doesn't feel emotional.
When I do my best work, the stories tend to be pretty emotionally-charged.
'Animal Man' and 'Swamp Thing' have so many commonalities in tone and mood.
My indie work is mostly reality-based, focused on real life and characters.
I am sort of pessimistic in that way where I often think the worst of people.
I'm never one to care too much if my work becomes adapted; I make comic books.
'Hawkeye' is much more intimate than any of the superhero works I've done before.
Sony is looking at 'Descender' as a franchise of films rather than just one movie.
For me, Bloodshot was the least appealing character that Valiant had. He was so cold.
Everyone finds my work super sad. I never do. I always find it uplifting in a weird way.
When I write Superboy and other DC characters, it's about boiling them down to core concepts.
I write and draw from the gut. I often don't know what my stories are about until they're done.
I think being an archer is much more integral to Green Arrow and his mythos than it is to Hawkeye.
There's only two ways to be completely alone in this world, lost in a crowd or in total isolation.
I think America's obsession with guns and with violence in media and society is a horrible sickness.
I've always been attracted to themes of isolation in my work - in my independent work and my DC work.
I have a lot of great fans. A lot of fans have cosplayed as Sweet Tooth, which I thought was really cool.
I've found I sometimes have the best success working on characters I didn't really connect to right away.
I don't play video games because I know that if I ever started, I'd never be able to maintain a career again.
When I do 'Sweet Tooth,' really, whatever I want to do with the characters kind of goes. I'm sort of in charge.
It's my job to write the best book I can each month and hand my scripts in. Everything else is beyond my control.
I grew up reading a lot of superhero comics, so it's really fun to take a shot at one myself and see what happens.
There is definitely a thematic lineage between 'Descender' and my previous work, like 'Sweet Tooth' and 'Trillium.'
I would love to learn archery. Unfortunately I'm too busy writing and drawing ten thousand comics a month. Maybe one day!
I feel like there are comic book artists who are comic book artists, and then there's comic book artists who are cartoonists.
There's a lot of mystery just inherent in the story of 'Descender.' There's sort of a central mystery that runs throughout it.
There are certain things in 'Descender' that I've dealt with in the past. I think you can see a direct parallel with Sweet Tooth in TIM-21.
Letting a project sit and coming back to it is just as important as working on it all the time. You need to come back to it with fresh eyes.
I've always enjoyed teen characters, and kids as well. For whatever reason, I seem to have an ability to do it sort of well, and I enjoy doing it.
In general, I feel so much of pop culture is set in the generic big city, particularly comics. I feel like there are so many other stories to tell.
I know a lot of people who read 'Sweet Tooth' are the kind of people who don't read a lot of other comics. Whatever it was, I'm just glad it happened.
I tend to write my beginnings and endings first - as a cartoonist and storyteller, I couldn't sit down every day if I didn't know where the story was headed.
I grew up in a pretty religious house. My family was Roman Catholic, and I couldn't wait to get away from that. But that doesn't mean I'm not a spiritual person.
A lot of cinematic influences on 'Descender' - Kubrick for sure. '2001: A Space Odyssey' is my favorite movie. It has been since I was 12. I just love that film.
I don't enjoy putting my characters through hell unless there's a reason. I don't use violence or anything just for shock value. They're always a means to an end.
Oliver Queen/Green Arrow is a character whose core is about legacy and responsibility. And that all comes from his father and the responsibilities of living up to his legacy.
Sometimes at night, when I wake up real late, I can hear my dad talking to God. He whispers, but I still hear him. I even hear him crying sometimes, when God says something sad.
You spend so much time writing a character the way I did with Buddy Baker and then Green Arrow that you start to care about them. And you almost think of them as people, you know?
You run the risk, whenever you build your story around a central mystery, of either letting it go too long, or revealing it too soon and then taking the wind out of the sails of the narrative.
One of my favorite things about the DC Universe, growing up as a reader, was just how big it was and just how many characters and superheroes there were. And how many odd characters there were.
I feel like if you really know the ending right from the beginning, you can add so many subtleties and little things later that will pay off and be more consistent and more rewarding for the reader.
For some reason, I have always had a really good ability to write children in a way that's realistic but not annoying. The key to that is underwriting them: peel back the dialogue and keep it simple.
There's something so arrogant about us creating robots that are more and more human-looking or acting. It's like we're playing God. Let's create something that's a reflection of us, but it's inferior.
You can write a script, but that's just a starting point as a cartoonist. The heart of the process comes when you start to draw it, and you work out how to lay the page out, how best to tell the story.
I draw on a lot of cinematic influences like Ingmar Bergman and Wim Wenders, artists who let a story take its time. Comics are a visual medium, and visuals should be allowed to tell some of that story.
I started in comics in 2005, ten years ago, and at that time, I didn't have a cell phone. I don't even think I had a computer myself, you know. And just in those ten years, how much technology has changed.
When I approached 'Animal Man,' I approached it as if it wasn't a reboot, as if the Grant Morrison and Jamie Delano stuff happened. I mean, as much as I could make it all make sense, it still all happened.
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.'
When I first seriously decided to become a cartoonist would have been '99/2000, right before 9/11. I've been writing and illustrating stories in the world post-9/11 since then, watching the world change around me.