When I was very little, four or five, I did comic strip drawings, so my first novel had no words. I couldn’t write and thought adult handwriting was a mysterious scribble. When I was 14, my grandmother gave me a typewriter and I started writing in a different way.
And my father was a comic. He could play any musical instrument. He loved to perform. He was a wonderfully comedic character. He had the ability to dance and sing and charm and analyze poetry.
I am one of the lucky ones, to work with comic giants.
Looking back Little Lulu was an early feminist, but at the time I just thought she was a really feisty developed comic strip character.
I had been drawing my weekly comic strip, ‘Life in Hell,’ for about five years when I got a call from Jim Brooks, who was developing ‘The Tracey Ullman Show’ for the brand-new Fox network. He wanted me to come in and pitch an idea for doing little cartoons on that show.
I wasn’t intending to create a comic strip to begin with. So I think I wasn’t aware that when the strip started, there had never been a woman’s voice quite like this in the newspaper.
We all know showbiz isn’t easy, but being a comic – especially being a female comic – can be quite punishing.
Any comic is a tragic soul. Comedy is one of the things that allows one to survive. Particularly if one has been in the process of separating off the emotions, it’s one place you can process them.
But I read comic books. I read things like Richie Rich and Little Lulu.
Comic books are a big passion of mine.
A comic book and a straight drama all have the same elements. If you’re playing tragedy, you have to be aware of the comedy; if you’re playing comedy, you have to be aware of the tragedy. If you’re playing comic book, you have to be aware of the reality.
I came in with a very specific idea about what a Doctor Strange movie should be, which was rooted in the comics, and I thought it should be as weird and as visually ambitious compared to modern comic book movies as the comic was when it showed up in the ’60s compared to other comic books at the time.
I came to one of the first Comic Cons in 1985, when it was just people trading back issues of comic books.
I want to read a lot of comic books. I want to watch movies. I want to rest.
I love the comic opportunities that come up in the context of a father-son relationship.
There is nothing that is so serious that you can’t also see its comic side. Comedy is a way of talking about the most serious things.
I just use my life story as a kind of device on which to hang comic observations. It’s not my interest or instinct to tell the world anything pertinent about myself or my family.
If you have a smartphone – and you have a smartphone – then you have a comic book store in your pocket. So you don’t have to get over any social anxiety you have about entering that space.
I don’t think it’s a coincidence that comic books appeal so strongly to children. Not that it negates any of their power for adults, but there is something about comics that makes them a perfect storytelling system for children.
I’m not a joke guy; I’m not a stand-up comic.
Growing up, I mostly read comic books and sci-fi. Then I discovered the book ‘Jane Eyre’ by Jane Austen. It introduced me to the world of romance, which I have since never left. Also, the world of the first-person narrative.
He sort of gets comic moments. Not a lot of directors do.
I never storyboard. I hate it. I don’t understand why so many directors want to make comic strips of their films.
I used to watch ‘Last Comic Standing’ with my mom before she passed. So when I got that red envelope, I was extremely emotional.
Personally, I really enjoy sci-fi. I watch it, I read comic books, and I play video games. I love this kind of world, so to be able to work in it is a dream. I enjoy it. It’s all good.
I definitely was a big comic collector as a kid.
I always loved Batman, the Michael Keaton ‘Batman.’ I loved those films, and Superman, but I was never a real comic book geek.
I’d love to see a good script of one of my books, in these years of animations and comic book sequels, and had so many written over the years, but none quite clicked.
I’ve always felt that there’s a Catskills comic who lives in my head and is constantly trying to get out. There’s all these jokes that have been passed down from Jewish generation to Jewish generation, which I love but which I’ve always made fun of.
What I really want to do is create great roles for women. And I’m not talking Nicholas Sparks romance. I think women’s roles have gotten ghettoized in these sort of places… I’m thinking women in action, comic books, or like the Tony Soprano of women. We need some complex roles.
When I and the other young artists were working in comics, our work carried with it a particularly American slant. After all, we were Americans drawing and writing about things that touched us. As it turned out, the early work was, you might say, a comic book version of Jazz.
I vividly remember my first ‘Superman’ comic, which my granddad bought me when I was about 7. From that point on, all I wanted to do is draw comics. And specifically, superhero and science fiction comics. Basically I used to copy comic books, and draw my own comics on scrap paper.
Once I started down the path of co-founding Image Comics, and even co-publisher, it just seems a lot more like a career path that isn’t that atypical for someone with a college degree. Whereas, someone who draws comic books as a freelancer and lives from job to job is a more unusual story.
It was mostly through pop culture, through hip-hop, through Dungeons & Dragons and comic books that I acquired much of my vocabulary.
I’m constantly trying to mine the DNA of John Constantine and stay true to that character in the comic books.
I had a great time making the last movie, ‘Eclipse.’ We shot my back-story stuff from the 1930’s. But I was waiting for ‘Breaking Dawn’ because I love the relationship Rosalie has with Jacob and the rest of her family and Bella. She also provides comic relief.
One of the interesting things about Twitter is looking how famous people choose to use it. Take someone like Steve Martin, who I follow: it’s all sorts of comic gems, nothing private, nothing personal – all jokes. Other celebrities are overtly personal – like Charlie Sheen. I do a mix of observations and updates.
A lot of comic conventions go way beyond comic books and include other parts of pop culture, like celebrities and science fiction and movies and books. So I go to them either as a celebrity, or as a fan, because I’m a big sci-fi geek.
I think the premise of somebody trying to recreate a night from their teenage years stuck with me as something potentially very tragically comic.
For reasons probably related to the popular vision of Albert Einstein and, also, the threat posed by black holes in comic books and science fiction, our gravitational wave discoveries have had an amazing public impact.
It seems like they make every comic book into a film. ‘Watchmen’ is my favorite of all time.
It’s just a great, legendary comic book hero and it’s one that has never been kind of been brought back to life after Lynda Carter. I mean, it’s a reinvention. When Tim Burton reinvented Batman after Adam West, and when Donner reinvented Superman after George Reeves, it’s time to do that with Wonder Woman.
I’m in a comic book now. That was cool. That’s something that I’m still sorta reeling about, ’cause I read comics as a kid. Someone drew me, and actually did a pretty good job!
I can say that even in the midst of my most cynical comic stripping: Opus shone through with a bit of heart, anchoring the ugly proceedings with a comforting pull of emotion.
Most people haven’t seen my dramatic work, but I did 10 years of theater before I ever became a comic. I’m just better known for comedy.
My stories are very somber, so I think I need the comic ingredient. Besides, life has so much humor.
I don’t consider myself a comic but a performer. A comic tells bad jokes.
You see people who are disenfranchised elsewhere coming to Comic Con and making lifetime friends. I love seeing the outcasts of society all bonding together.
The majority of comic book villains are pure evil, but Curt Connors is an exception. Curt Connors is a good man who initially wants to save the world, but he gets hungry and greedy and reckless, and he pays the price for that.
I guess people might be surprised to know I read comic books. I’m a Marvel girl, as opposed to DC.
I’m sort of the comic relief after a hard day at work. My message is that it’s OK to relax.
It’s hard for a comic to be joking when your lines can’t be funny.
I guess that compared to other comic strips, I’m edgy. But put me along something like ‘South Park,’ and I’m ‘Captain Kangaroo.’
My favorite comic book growing up was ‘Thor.’ It was one of my three, favorite comic books. Obviously, Marvel is such a huge name, but for me, to book a role in a Marvel movie, and for it to be ‘Thor.’ When my manager told me I booked ‘Thor,’ I literally didn’t know what to say.
When I started acting, doing theater stuff at a young age, I was always the comic relief-type roles, so I knew I had a funny bone and could make groups of people laugh, but I didn’t really take it seriously until I started getting paid on a weekly basis; then I was like, ‘Oh, well, this could be a lifestyle.’
