Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Marvel has put out good product. DC has put out good product. Even Image has put out good product, as far as I'm concerned... although it's few and far between. But it's not getting recognized, no matter who's doing it.
The DC Universe animated made-for-videos are a great, specific opportunity to offer fans something that they might not have gotten otherwise; it's also proven to be a great business for Warner Video and Warner Premiere.
When I was approached by Warner Bros. and DC about the possibility of directing 'The Flash,' I was excited about the opportunity to enter this amazing world of characters that I loved growing up, and still do to this day.
The general public has been conditioned to think 'comics = superheroes' for as long as caped crusaders have been around - by critics, mass media, and Marvel and DC themselves, who have what you might call a vested interest.
People look at Marvel movies as epic in scope, but if you look back at the comics, you realise that Marvel heroes were often a reaction to the square-jawed DC characters like Superman, who were flawless and beyond reproach.
My only problem with fans is when they turn pro. For example, when all the professional writers were fired by DC in the '60s, they brought in a generation of comic book fans who would have paid to have written these stories.
I broke into comics by working as a press reporter for the industry, for a trade press in comics, and reporting on events and reporting on books and so forth, and I got to know some of the editors at DC Comics in the mid-'80s.
I'd like to be involved in 'SNL' somehow. I mean, being a permanent cast member is a stretch! That's pretty damned hard, but to host it one day would be a dream come true. And I would like to play the DC Comics villain Harley Quinn.
For DC, I'm working on the new 'Red Lanterns' and 'JLA Dark.' Both of these are very different books, which is great for me. I've heard 'JLA Dark' described as a team of people with supernatural powers - but that's only half the story.
I will say that Vertigo is an area of great interest to me. It is even less well tapped than other parts of DC, and could potentially offer amazing stories for our future television video game, digital and consumer products businesses.
I do still read comics since I started writing for DC, but nowhere near as much as I used to, and I'm finding now that it's becoming harder to read comics as a consumer, so I think I'll have to make the call there and stop reading them.
I'm a huge comic book collector. When I was a kid, I had both Marvel and DC. I was my own librarian. I made card files. I had origin stories of all the characters, and cross-referenced when they appeared in other comic books. I was full on.
Every film that gets made, and I'm not just talking about 'Star Wars,' I'm talking about Marvel, DC, every tent pole film - they seem to just keep getting bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger. The worlds get bigger, the stakes get bigger.
I enjoyed my time at DC. Dan Didio, Geoff Johns and Jim Lee were great to me, and I'm very grateful for the opportunities they gave me. Having said that, I think it's important to try new things and work with new people to keep myself fresh.
It feels to me like 'Shazam' will have a tone unto itself. It's a DC comic, but it's not a Justice League character, and it's not a Marvel comic. The tone and the feeling of the movie will be different from the other range of comic book movies.
Hitman does well and it certainly does well enough to survive, but at the same time I don't want to involve the character into the DC Universe even if it meant more sales, to the point where we sort of upset the balance that we have at the moment.
I'm not taking anything away from DC. He carries himself well, is a champion, a stud athlete, an unbelievable fighter and it'd be one hell of a fight. But I wouldn't be in this sport or the position I'm in today if I didn't believe I can beat him.
The same music is playing on the radio in San Francisco, New York, Washington DC and Annapolis. Everywhere you go there's the same artists and same songs by them, over and over again. At some stations they play the same songs 50 to 60 times a week.
I studied everyone in the business of entertainment: Dr. Dre, Diddy, everyone. Rob Dyrdek was big for me. He would get 2 million views a week on 'Rob and Big,' and from that sprung everything: DC shoes, Monster Energy, 'Fantasy Factory,' everything.
My credentials, briefly: I no longer go to church or believe in God, but I can still name every one of the fruits of the Spirit and reeled for days upon hearing the announcement that Audio Adrenaline was reunited with one of the singers from DC Talk.
There were only a couple of Marvel characters I read. I read 'Iron Man.' I have a lot of those. And this was the time they tried X-Factor out. I was never an X-Men person, but I was like, 'Let me check out X-Factor.' I was more of a DC guy in general.
The DC Universe has the best villains in fiction, right? I don't think there's any group of villains collectively or anywhere else that come close to DC's. Joker, Cat Woman, Lex Luthor, are all staples. A lot of the comic book icons are fiction icons.
'Forever Evil' is my love letter to DC super villains. It's my chance to take all of the villains I've worked with and all the ones I've never worked with and put them into one gigantic, epic story that will bring together the bads of the DC Universe.
Famously, DC has been pretty great showing gay women, with characters like Batwoman, but has shown fewer prominent men on the sexuality spectrum outside of hetero. It's something we need to address. I also think it's lovely how the readers respond to this.
I've been really impressed with 'Supergirl.' It's a great show because it's appeals to DC Comics fans, staying true to the characters in spirit and costumes, and it also appeals to casual fans who enjoy good action, fun storylines and interesting characters.
The majority of the DC and Marvel comic lines are white male characters, and the minute you make Thor a woman or Captain America a black guy, the Internet is filled with hateful comments and people saying, 'That's not what Captain America is supposed to look like.'
I was looking to explore the theme of good and evil, so what better inspiration than the comics? I'd developed a relationship with DC and Warner Bros. when I donated a sculpture of Catwoman to the 'We Can Be Heroes' campaign a few years ago. That's what started it.
We wanted to talk about death in the DC Universe, and how some people go to get a pass and come back, and some people didn't. That opened up a whole other topic about legacy. We wanted to talk about what was required to be a hero, what were the elements of true heroism?
There are no easy answers for the balance of how you protect the core business of the books with what the digital future will look like, but that would be our job with DC Comics, to figure that out and experiment and take some risks while always protecting the core business.
Evil is relative - and what I mean by that is that our villains are as complex, as deep and as compelling as any of our heroes. Every antagonist in the DC Universe has a unique darkness, desire and drive. And the reason for being of 'Forever Evil' is to explore that darkness.
The DC Universe Animated made for videos, which we do in cooperation with Warner Animation, are very intentionally scheduled at 3-4 a year, depending on whether or not there's a theatrical tent pole release in a given year, in which case we may choose to do four of them a year.
Growing up, my dad owned a restaurant in Washington, DC, and food was something I was passionate about. But when I finally got into it, I felt like it was so late in the game; that's why I worked seven days a week at Craft and Mercer Kitchen. I wanted to see how far I could take it.
I've been reading comics since I was four. I used to get them when I would go grocery shopping with my mom. I remember getting the digest versions of old DC comics. The one that I remember reading first was Paul Levitz' 'Justice Society of America' stuff that he was doing in the '70s.
People at Marvel and DC, we're rooting for each other. And when we're friends, like me and Jeff Lemire, or Charles Soule, or even Dan Slott - it doesn't matter if you're Marvel or DC. You'll talk story with each other, and there's like an agreement that you're just helping each other out.
One of the reasons that DC, Marvel, and other comic book companies have always asked me to do covers and variant covers is because they know that when they tell me 'icon,' I jump over their words, and I give them an iconic cover - but while I'm doing it, there is going to be an idea there.
It's nice to go back and look at the original version of Cyborg in the 1980s, when he was created, and seeing how politically and socially charged they were: it was no holds barred. If DC ever made a return to that social awareness and that sort of context, I'd be super-thrilled to see that.
There is a very diverse range of superheroes, especially with the Firestorm character. In the comics, there is a black Firestorm. But we still don't see that many black superheroes. So what The CW is doing and what DC Comics is doing with this whole universe with diversity is absolutely amazing.
Dave Cockrum's work at Marvel and DC defined my childhood and inspired me to be a comic book creator. Without Dave, there is no New 'X-Men' resurgence, there is no Colossus, Storm, Nightcrawler, Lilandra, Star Jammers, or the Imperial Guard. His influence on generations of fans cannot be measured.
I read some Marvel, but I was more of a DC guy. Particularly the Flash, Barry Allen. I latched on to him because I felt like him. You thought to yourself, 'Well, you can't really be Superman.' You couldn't really be Batman - Batman was a really dark figure. I identified with Barry Allen's hopefulness.
If there are two kinds of people in the world - DC Comics people and Marvel Comics people - what kind am I? Well, to be honest... I'm a Wildstorm kinda guy. In the interest of full and fair disclosure, I write for Wildstorm. But even if I didn't, I'd love what they do. No, seriously, I'd love their stuff.
After graduating college, I finally allowed myself to strive for what I loved to do, even if there were no guarantees that I would be able to make a living off of acting. This, combined with my life experiences prior - like stars aligning - led me to this lovely role of Katana within the DC Comics universe.
The decision to work with Marvel for a while isn't any sort of denigration of DC. I had a fantastic time there, I was treated extremely well, I have strong positive feelings about all of my editors and the DC universe of characters, and I look forward to hopefully working with them at some point down the road.
Over the years, the writers at DC Comics softened Wonder Woman's powers in ways that would have infuriated Marston. During the 1960s, she was hardly wondrous at all, less a heroic warrior than the tomboyish girl next door. It was no longer clear whether she was meant to empower the girls or captivate the boys.
I looked out into the audience, saw dozens of faces I knew well - LGBTQ folks, mostly - all avid comics readers and superhero fans and DC supporters, and it just hit me: Why was this so impossible? Why in the world can we not do a better job of representation of not just humanity, but also our own loyal audience?
Fortunately, the DC Universe is full enough and replete enough with every kind of character that you could want, that it's not that hard to find the right character. Sometimes it's nothing more than an Easter egg, or a name drop, and sometimes it's someone like 'Deathstroke,' who is a huge part of the DC Universe.
I started off doing indie comics that I wrote and drew myself. I was doing those for ten years before I started to work for DC. The first book that I wrote for DC was for another artist. I did some backups in 'Adventure Comics' years ago starring The Atom. That's the first time that I ever wrote for another artist.
I quit comics in 1988 and trained as a bus driver. I used to drive those big Greyhound coaches out of New York Port Authority and down to Princeton, New Jersey. It was, hands down, the best job I ever had, and I profoundly regret having left it. I kept that job the entire time I was on staff at DC Comics in the '90s.
The comics I read as a kid were all about guys in tights. But here was a guy who wore a fedora. He fought crime like they did in Marvel and DC, but he did it in the real world. I had just turned 12 when I met the Spirit and it was a strange coincidence. At the same time I discovered girls I fell out of love with guys in tights.
Aquaman has the ability to be a huge character, and I think we really brought him to a new level in comic books, and I'm hoping that new level continues to everything that is DC Entertainment. Certainly, that's the goal. He's one of our most recognizable and most important characters, and it's going to continue to stay that way.
Greg Rucka always writes lovely, believable female characters in books like 'Whiteout,' 'Queen and Country,' and 'Lazarus.' I am a fan of Kelly Sue DeConnick, who does a wonderful female lead in 'Captain Marvel.' And DC's 'Batwoman' is currently the only book at the Big Two with a lesbian solo lead character, and it's always outstanding.