Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
To some degree, I don't think 'Batman' works in a completely modern city; I think Gotham has be reflective of his personality and those of his enemies.
I think you have to serve a lot of masters when you're doing a video game: you're not just telling a linear story or doing something that's all action.
Batman's got this whole cloaked 'man of mystery' thing around him and represents a wish fulfillment. He's more driven than Superman yet is also very human.
What makes Batman and what makes other superheroes work is the myth that when life is at its lowest, and when you need a hero, a hero swings down and helps you.
If the opportunity came my way, if somebody wanted me to look over a script or sit in a room in sort of like a brainstorming session... I would certainly be open for that.
I take inspirations from newspaper strip cartoonists who look for ways of expanding their characters' worlds once they have established the initial concept of their strips.
Batman doesn't use a gun. When Bruce Wayne thinks he had to resort to a street thug's level to defend himself and the girl he was rescuing, he decides he can't be Batman anymore.
As a writer, every time I create a character, I try to go for something to captivate the audience in some way. It's also an extension of how the audience would like to see themselves.
To overcome any form of adversity, to not give up, to not give up on yourself, your dreams, to not sequester yourself away from people - that's the most important thing to do with your life.
As much fun as it is gaming, I have so much to do that I've had to get away from them. I still enjoy them. When I go to a friend's house and they have a game on, I'll happily join in and play.
It's wrong to become a bully yourself or to take it out on other people, and in my case, I just retreated to a place where I was safe. And that place was my imagination, books, and television.
There's a sort of eternal, indefinable 20th century quality to 'BTAS.' We never really pegged the decade, but it's anytime in the 20th century, so I often harkened back to things from the '40s or '50s.
I've always felt in my own small, little way that if I could just write a story where it works out well, where the scales of justice are balanced, then that's something that I do really love to see in the world.
In 'Batman Beyond,' Terry McGinnis has the responsibility of protecting Gotham City, as well as maintaining a home and social life. He's also got a single mom and a pesky younger brother, which young kids will relate to.
Encourage your kids to be creative. When you see them tracing a character from TV or a comic, say something like, 'That's nice. Now how about you create a character yourself?' Keep kids curious and excited about creating.
I have a great fondness for any character I work on. Whether it's somebody like Batman or Harley Quinn or whatever character I'm writing, I just really enjoy the heck out of it, and I try to do the best job I can with it.
I'm always thinking about stories and ideas, and I have a few I'd like to actively pursue, but as much as I love them, I love the process of creation, and I want to go on and create things for myself, and create new things.
I've always liked the Krampus character, and I've always been fascinated with him, especially the tradition that he was such a part of the holiday season in Europe, in Germany, Austria, northern Italy, various other places.
With 'Tower Prep,' Cartoon Network wanted to go into a new area where no other kids' programming was going. There were a lot of kids' sitcoms on the air, but they wanted to really go with more of like an adventure/drama feel.
As much as I love elements of Spider-Man's past, I don't really want to go back in and retell the Gwen Stacy and Green Goblin story in animation just so I can do my take on it. I don't want to redo the first 'Spider Slayer' story.
With 'Wonder Woman,' I did one story with Alex Ross, and I had a lot of fun doing it, but I don't think I could do a 'Wonder Woman' book on a regular basis, because there's so much history there and so much mythology and everything.
That's the thing about writing for a lot of the villains is that, as a writer, you kind of have to put the best part of your own personality aside and instead focus on whatever little strange quirks you may have in your personality.
Batman is pretty much a self-trained guy. I think it would be fun to do a character like Superman or Captain Marvel or maybe Green Lantern, somebody who's got a completely different resource for fighting crime and fighting villains.
I think that when you've got a world in which it's plausible to have a guy dressed as a giant bat and fight evil clowns and other nightmarish freaks, I think the world has to be visually a little more arresting than a regular world.
There's something very, very liberating about Harley Quinn. Much more so than a character like Catwoman or Poison Ivy. Those are great characters. But then again, those characters are more of the femme fatale and the temptress roles.
If 'Jingle Belle' harkens back to anything, it's sort of the Harvey Comics. Not really 'Archie,' but more of a teenage version of what Harvey Comics would have become, with the type of fantasy wonderland of her and her various friends.
One of the things I've learned from animation is that some guys are really good at writing, some guys are really good at design, some guys are really good at directing. It's almost like working in a band - not everybody plays every instrument.
Hugo Strange is interesting in the sense that he's a master manipulator. He doesn't really engage Batman in any sort of physical way. His weapon is his mind, and he's very incisive and clever: he reads people and sizes them up almost instantly.
Mr. Freeze is motivated by different things. He doesn't really have that much of an axe to grind with Batman. Batman is an irritation and an impediment to him, not an enemy that he hates. He doesn't have the hatred that the Joker has for Batman.
I was working in cartoons. I could go to Comic-Con, buy the Hal Jordan ring, I could buy animation cels, but at the end of the day, I come back to an empty apartment. I had a life that was only around me, and when I was broken, my world was broken.
You can have villains like the Penguin, who strut around in a tuxedo with an umbrella, and Poison Ivy and all of the fantastic stuff she does, but unless there's a bit of a human in there, and unless there's a credible threat, then Batman himself doesn't work.
I remember when I saw 'The Dark Knight' movie, and I was sitting there watching it, and there actually came one or two places where I had trouble divorcing myself from the reality of the locations because it was filmed in Chicago, and I know that city quite well.
I was writing a script about the Joker menacing a regular person who had strayed into his path, and I needed to give him a gang of henchmen to work with him. The idea occurred to me, let's put in a female henchperson, because that seemed like a fun variation on the regular big thug guys.
The old Rankin-Bass animated specials seemed to exist in a loosely shared reality, which is what attracted me to them. Santa, Snow Miser, Rudolph, Frosty, even the Easter Bunny seemed to be on nodding acquaintance with each other, even if only in cameo appearances in each other's cartoons.
Creativity, for a lot of young people, is a coping mechanism. It's the only place they feel comfortable. It's the only time they feel like they're being heard or can make a difference, is if they can go into a room and do a drawing or go to a garage and play a song or retreat to this world.
A lot of times, female characters - particularly the villains - come off as very one-dimensional. They get the short shrift in that they're only given the snappy comeback, or they're relegated to a very stereotypical role. I want to know what's driving them - that's what's really interesting.
'Boo & Hiss' has been a passion project of mine for a couple of years. I was intrigued with the idea of what would happen in a classic cartoon predator/prey relationship if the predator - in this case, a cat - got to finally do in his adversary only to have the mouse return as a ghost and bedevil the cat.
Jim Henson once allowed me to visit the Muppets on set and spent an entire day showing me how he and the other puppeteers performed Kermit and all the characters! After that, I was lucky enough to work with both George Lucas and Steven Spielberg on many fun animation projects and learned so much from them.
The Joker is a tremendous vehicle for talented actors. Cesar Romero's was a bubbly, lunatic criminal. Nicholson did him as a vain, preening manipulator. Heath's performance of the Joker was remarkable, too. His was a low-simmering crazy street clown. Joker can be played all these ways, and they're all true.
When you're writing for a game - even if you're using very well known characters like Batman and his villains who lend themselves to many different interpretations - you have to keep in mind that you're writing for a different medium. Things are a bit more straightforward than it is for a feature film or a TV show.
I'm a very visual thinker, so the characters are running through my head, doing what they're doing when I'm writing them. And there'll be moments where I'll just kind of throw a look off to the side as if I'm talking to one of the characters. It's always been something that I've had with me since I was a little kid.
I really didn't have any plan for her other than the henchgirl role, who was better at getting laughs out of the other gang members than the Joker was. I gave her the name Harley Quinn because I thought Harley was a fun name for a girl, and a lot of 'Batman' character names have a bit of a pun to them, like E Nygma.
I remembered what it was like: the weirdness, being the odd man out, trying to make my way around campus, and trying to figure out who my friends would be, who to steer clear of. I wrote it all down in a fanciful way - the feelings of alienation, the feelings of uncertainty, of being away from home for the first time.
I was one of those goofy kids whose year narrowed down to focus on Christmas from about September on. I guess I was like Ralphie in 'A Christmas Story,' in that I would get swept up into the anticipation of the holiday, watching the lights go up, hearing the songs in the stores, getting special Christmas issues of comics and all that.
In those times when a kid first tries to express themselves creatively, it sets them on a different path. Sometimes, that path can be really wonderful and can lead to a career doing some of the things you love. I also think that the price on that is a certain amount of alienation or distance created between a lot of the people around you.
We had established Harley Quinn as an accomplice to the Joker who was also crushing on him and found herself in the middle of this weird relationship being at the beck and call of his every whim. We wanted to stretch her and make her a stronger character, so to have her leave him and go off on her own was a story I wanted to tell for a while.
We’ve all selected the wrong partners, all gotten hurt, and hopefully all moved on wiser for the experience. But there are those who, even in the face of constant disappointment, continue to believe that the intensity of their desire will be rewarded by an eventual jackpot of affection. And if that’s the slot machine you’re playing, friend, you’d better leave the casino ‘cause that one don’t pay out