Words matter. These are the best Ryan North Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
There are so many ways to make a book or comic, but most involve doing something online.
Your worst enemy as a writer – especially one working online a lot of the time – is obscurity.
I spent age 6-12 basically thinking about ‘Back to the Future’ all the time, so I think it’s probably had a pretty huge influence on me and the way I think and write.
Squirrel Girl is basically a Silver Age character in the modern age, and that makes her a fish out of water in a lot of ways. She likes being a superhero. She likes fighting crime. She doesn’t sit around brooding in the darkness of her Squirrel Hole trying to figure out new ways to make crime pay.
It’s like jazz: You learn the rules to break them – as long as you can break them in a meaningful way.
I read all these Marvel wikis, and there are characters that just stand out to you, and you think, ‘How is this character not being used? This is crazy.’
My goal is for a complete collection of ‘Squirrel Girl’ comics to be equivalent to a C.S. bachelor degree. Now there’s a comic that increases in value!
This is why it’s hard to talk about winning awards. You can’t do it without sounding like a tool.
For me personally, I get to be a cartoonist, because my comic would never survive in print. Maybe one in 100 people would like it, but online, I can gather that one percent all in one place.
I think with most things online, if you treat your audience like friends instead of like Impressions and Clickthrough Percentages and Returns On Investment, then you’re off to a great start.
You can have an idea that everyone else thinks is dumb, and it’s still a good idea.
I thought there was something inherently interesting in people turning to gold. It’s pretty cool.
You can always take on more projects; it just makes your life worse and worse.
In earlier comics, my only priority was telling a joke in the last panel, but now I try to make every panel as interesting as possible, and that normally means at least a li’l joke there.
There’s a difference between children’s literature and all-ages literature. One is written expressly for children. The other is written for everyone, including children. And the difference usually manifests in not talking down to kids.
I’d hate to be writing ‘Adventure Time’ comics and not be excited about it.
The fun thing about writing a book with multiple paths and multiple endings is you really get to explore the characters and figure out their different fates.
The nice thing about Squirrel Girl is that she’s smart, and she looks for situations that don’t necessarily involve punching people all the time.
It turns out childbirth is really… messy.
Everything I write should have lasers. That’s my #1 rule.
I’ve always found it funny when people call ‘Romeo and Juliet’ ‘the greatest love story ever told’ because – man – it does not work out well for those kids, you know? I’d like to think the greatest love story ever told would at least let them be together for more than a few hours.
A huge potential audience, great interaction with your readers, the ability to see what people like and what they don’t, the ability to see how people respond to what you’re doing in real-time – there’s just tons of great stuff that you get by being online.
Librarians are awesome; I don’t care who knows it.
It’s good to have hobbies.
Being online works really well for any creative work, but especially comics.
There’s tons of people doing awesome things with comics online – I’m just one dude!
The nice thing with Shakespeare from a modern point of view is that a lot of stuff that was tragic for him can read as comic for us.
When I graduated, I sort of went from school to being a cartoonist, and I couldn’t draw.
The great thing about online comics is that this happens naturally, even if you don’t advertise.
I believe good writing can save bad art.
If you’re going to be adapting something across media, you should at least have the moves that people want you to hit and that you want to hit.
I see Jughead as being generally this really rational dude, this anchor of sensibility in a world of boy/girl-crazy friends.
I am a big proponent of the pal-centric lifestyle.
