Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I think we worry way too much about where books should fit inside genres. In a romance, the hero and heroine are on a journey together, and no matter how awful it gets, by the end of the book they'll be in love, with the probability of a happy ending.
We've been conditioned to be incredibly avoidant. 'I'm afraid I'll be called a racist if I say something wrong,' is the familiar retort. Well, okay, that's scary and difficult, but staying silent, avoiding the issue, doesn't mean that racism goes away.
Part of the reason why my folks - why any immigrant family - wants their kids to go into law or medicine is because there's the promise of reliable work. That's a powerful idea that got hammered into my head growing up: Be this thing, or else you'll starve.
I could be shooting myself in the foot, but in some ways, I feel I've said all I've needed to say when to comes to, say, the 'X-Men.' I think I've hit the bright points, I think I've hit what I wanted to hit, and I can be happy moving on doing other things.
I don't think of myself as having any freedom when it comes to how 'Monstress' is structured and how the story is going because a comic book has to be even more tightly structured than a novel, because there is no room for mistakes. Once the art is done, the art is done.
Freedom to tell any story I want, with all the imaginary tools of my trade, is why I love writing novels. I love taking an idea, fleshing it out into a new world - and going on adventures with characters who day-dream themselves into existence and take on lives of their own.
I don't want to give people the wrong advice to follow their dreams no matter what, because it's not fun to be a starving artist. But on the other hand, life is short, and if you are burning with a passion to do something, then do it. Work hard, study hard at it, and don't give up.
I got into comics because I wrote an 'X-Men' novel for Pocket Books, and I introduced myself to the head of recruitment at Marvel. I'd heard through the grapevine they liked the book, so that gave me the courage to go up to them and be like, 'Hey, if you ever need a writer, here I am.'
We're not accustomed to giving women the space to express the full range of emotions and flaws that men are permitted. Anger and aggressiveness aren't part of the scale of what is acceptable behavior in women, whereas men - in reality and in fiction - are allowed a much fuller range of emotion.
My dad is Chinese, and my mom is a white American, and they married only ten years after the United States Supreme Court ruled that it was illegal to ban mixed marriages. Imagine that. Marriages between people of different races - now common and accepted - were illegal in many states up until the late Sixties.
When I'm writing comics, I'm also visualizing how the story will look on the page - not even always art-wise, but panel-wise, like how a moment will be enhanced dramatically by simply turning a page and getting a reveal. It requires thinking about story in a way I never had to consider when I was writing prose.
It's great we have a female Thor. It's great we have a black Captain America. But those are just optics; it's optics of change... Unless you have the structural diversity, the structural change behind the scenes - more women, more people of color actually calling the shots and editing these books - those optics won't last.
I think when you look at the diversity of the readership, all the different people who love comics, I want comics to reflect the real world, and I think Marvel does a good job of trying to do that, but I don't think there's ever an end point when it comes to creating diversity and creating stories that people can relate to.
The thing about Gambit is that he's a man who knows how to adapt to survive. He plays things by ear, depending on the situation, and never feels obligated to follow the rules, because the only rules that matter are his own sense of honor. Ultimately, that sense of honor includes 'doing no harm' - at least, not to the innocent.
A novel is 400 pages; it's an endurance race. There's no artist, so I have to describe everything. It's all prose. Whereas with comics, I can rely on the artist. It's really wonderful to have that collaboration and to not always feel the burden of describing everything myself and also just to have someone who can paint the world.
Marriage isn't the end-point of a relationship. It's just a stepping stone, one aspect of a long-term evolution between two people who have, for whatever reason, decided to take a leap of faith and say, 'Well, hey, this is a person who I want to try with for the rest of my life.' Which is not a guarantee of perfection - far from it.