Jim Carrey, a comic genius, has a harder time overcoming the public’s desire for him to be funny simply because he’s so good at it.
‘XIII’ is a spy show. I think the comic book is a little too similar to ‘The Bourne Identity.’ I tried to take it away from that. I believe there was, many years ago, before the Bourne movies, a lawsuit that made it so they couldn’t be published in English.
The nature of an ensemble means when you’re a supporting character and not the lead character, you get little tidbits here and there, but you’re usually there to provide bits of comic relief and little bits of action or something.
There’s no getting around it – I am a politically incorrect, racially insensitive, culturally controversial comic, but at least I’m self-aware.
When my brother and me got into performing in the late ’40s and early ’50s, it was a sensational opportunity to learn from our elders. Every show we played had a dancer, a comic, a juggler, a singer, an acrobat. I came to appreciate virtuosity in all forms of the business.
I was born a comic.
It’s a cliche, but it’s true that all the fun lies in baddies, grotesques and comic roles.
Kingsley Amis was one of a trio of brilliant comic novelists who made English literature sparkle in the twentieth century.
That became a big time in comic books because it’s when people were starting to break out into independent stuff, the market was getting choked with speculators and everybody was trying to do their own trick covers.
It was 1978 when Superman came out, and I kept thinking, Why don’t they do something about it? They’ve done all these crappy attempts at comic book film adaptations. What can we do different? Why don’t we just re-release this thing?
I’m a huge Groucho fan. There were some great comic minds that would transfer into any generation, and Groucho is certainly one of them.
I performed after 9/11 for relief workers down by Ground Zero. There were these men just coming back, and they were voraciously hungry. They were heroes, pulling rubble, and I was a new comic trying to go blue just so I could get some laughs.
I’m a severe graphic novels junkie. People ask me about it, and I say I like the graphic novels. Comic books are for kids, and graphic novels are for adults. But you can’t really separate the two.
The experience of reading a printed comic book will never change, but now, thanks to the digital age, there are many different ways to enjoy the same story. Digital comic books, of course, can be interactive in many different ways, allowing the reader to feel like a participant in the story.
I created ‘Captain Underpants’ when I was in the second grade. I was constantly getting in trouble for being the class clown, so my teacher sent me out into the hallway to punish me. It was there in the hall that I began drawing ‘Captain Underpants’. Soon I was making my own comic books about him.
