Top 50 Jeff Lemire Quotes

People like Superman, The Flash – they just feel limited in who they are and what you can do with them because everyone knows who they are and what they do. Someone like Animal Man feels very open to interpretation.

To me, Green Arrow in the past, what people loved about Oliver Queen pre-New 52 was his relationships with other heroes. Like his friendship with Green Lantern, his animosity with Hawkman, his romance with Black Canary – these are all the things that sort of defined him.

Sony is looking at ‘Descender’ as a franchise of films rather than just one movie.

There are so many books I love for different reasons. For superhero stuff, I always go back to Alan Moore’s ‘Watchmen’ or his ‘Swamp Thing’ run. Those are my two favorites, and there are indie books that I really love, like Eddie Campbell’s ‘Alec’ books and ‘From Hell.’

When I write Superboy and other DC characters, it’s about boiling them down to core concepts.

I am sort of pessimistic in that way where I often think the worst of people.

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.

I started in comics in 2005, ten years ago, and at that time, I didn’t have a cell phone. I don’t even think I had a computer myself, you know. And just in those ten years, how much technology has changed.

There’s something so arrogant about us creating robots that are more and more human-looking or acting. It’s like we’re playing God. Let’s create something that’s a reflection of us, but it’s inferior.

I’ve always been attracted to themes of isolation in my work – in my independent work and my DC work.

The cool thing about ‘Sweet Tooth’ is that you can bring influences from the underground and alternative people that I read and also bring in some genre influences, too, from movies and comics. And kind of mash it all up. It’s a fun project.

I think America’s obsession with guns and with violence in media and society is a horrible sickness.

Letting a project sit and coming back to it is just as important as working on it all the time. You need to come back to it with fresh eyes.

Everyone finds my work super sad. I never do. I always find it uplifting in a weird way.

Sometimes, if you have a lot of history with a character and a lot of affection, it’s hard for you to do anything with that character. Like with Swamp Thing, for instance, I revere the Alan Moore run so much that it would be hard for me to do my own Swamp Thing. I care too much about the way it was done before.

When I was offered ‘Hawkeye,’ it was very intimidating at first because that book is so loved and so successful, commercially and critically. The worst thing you could do is try to imitate what they did because, in the end, you’re just going to get a watered-down version of what they did.

You run the risk, whenever you build your story around a central mystery, of either letting it go too long, or revealing it too soon and then taking the wind out of the sails of the narrative.

I know a lot of people who read ‘Sweet Tooth’ are the kind of people who don’t read a lot of other comics. Whatever it was, I’m just glad it happened.

I think when science fiction is at its worst, it’s just spaceships flying around shooting at each other. There has to be a lot more going on than that… science fiction is about exploring new worlds and new ideas, not about ray guns and action, necessarily.

I grew up in a pretty religious house. My family was Roman Catholic, and I couldn’t wait to get away from that. But that doesn’t mean I’m not a spiritual person.

I can’t really write anything without knowing the ending. I don’t know how people do that. Even with my superhero stuff, I have to know at least where I want to take the characters and what the ending of my story with them will be. I just can’t structure stories or character arcs and stuff without knowing the endpoint.

I don’t play video games because I know that if I ever started, I’d never be able to maintain a career again.

I feel like if you really know the ending right from the beginning, you can add so many subtleties and little things later that will pay off and be more consistent and more rewarding for the reader.

If I’m not invested emotionally, the artwork doesn’t feel emotional.

I tend to write my beginnings and endings first – as a cartoonist and storyteller, I couldn’t sit down every day if I didn’t know where the story was headed.

There is definitely a thematic lineage between ‘Descender’ and my previous work, like ‘Sweet Tooth’ and ‘Trillium.’

There are certain things in ‘Descender’ that I’ve dealt with in the past. I think you can see a direct parallel with Sweet Tooth in TIM-21.

I have always been drawn to young characters and seeing big tapestries through the eyes of a child. It probably comes from being a father myself and having a young son and seeing the world through his eyes. I write stories that are sort of the exaggerated version of that.

For some reason, I have always had a really good ability to write children in a way that’s realistic but not annoying. The key to that is underwriting them: peel back the dialogue and keep it simple.

There’s been Hollywood interest in a lot of the stuff that I’ve done, but Descender’s felt different right from the start for whatever reason. I don’t know if that’s because a lot of my other stuff’s a little more idiosyncratic, and ‘Descender’ has a bit more of a high concept to it.

I’ve always enjoyed teen characters, and kids as well. For whatever reason, I seem to have an ability to do it sort of well, and I enjoy doing it.

I don’t enjoy putting my characters through hell unless there’s a reason. I don’t use violence or anything just for shock value. They’re always a means to an end.

I think being an archer is much more integral to Green Arrow and his mythos than it is to Hawkeye.

I never thought I would work in mainstream superhero comics or Valiant or Marvel. I just set out to make the kinds of stories I wanted to make, which at the beginning was small personal stuff like ‘Essex County.’

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.

We want to take our time with ‘Descender’ and let the story unfold at its own pace. But we have carefully planned each world and worked to give each its own look and feel. And each of the 9 core worlds will play a role in the series.

I can handle a lot of work. I’ve always been able to. I’m a very focused individual. I come to my studio at about 7:30 in the morning and exit almost 5:00 P.M. In that time, those eight or nine hours, it’s kind of laser focus on whatever I’m working on. There aren’t really any distractions or anything.

I’ve always had a good handle on drawing children.

In general, I feel so much of pop culture is set in the generic big city, particularly comics. I feel like there are so many other stories to tell.

Art should walk a tightrope. That’s what art should be. Art should be dangerous. You can’t be scared to say something with it. People love to talk about how comics are real art and real literature, so why not use these characters to talk about real things, even if it is dangerous?

One of my favorite things about the DC Universe, growing up as a reader, was just how big it was and just how many characters and superheroes there were. And how many odd characters there were.

When I approached ‘Animal Man,’ I approached it as if it wasn’t a reboot, as if the Grant Morrison and Jamie Delano stuff happened. I mean, as much as I could make it all make sense, it still all happened.

I write and draw from the gut. I often don’t know what my stories are about until they’re done.

I grew up reading a lot of superhero comics, so it’s really fun to take a shot at one myself and see what happens.

Oliver Queen/Green Arrow is a character whose core is about legacy and responsibility. And that all comes from his father and the responsibilities of living up to his legacy.

‘Bloodshot,’ for me, was unlike anything I’d ever done before, which was really the draw of it. In addition to trying to reconnect with my earlier work, I also wanted to try to do something that was completely new and different.

For me, Bloodshot was the least appealing character that Valiant had. He was so cold.

You spend so much time writing a character the way I did with Buddy Baker and then Green Arrow that you start to care about them. And you almost think of them as people, you know?

Why not take a science fiction comic and put the characters in a small town to gain their particular perspective? A lot of that comes from me growing up in a small town on a farm, so that’s what I know and what I’m comfortable with. My drawing style is also very sparse and minimalist, so a rural setting complements that.

I would love to learn archery. Unfortunately I’m too busy writing and drawing ten thousand comics a month. Maybe one day!