Top 50 Mark Waid Quotes

To my mind, a mix of veterans and rookies is number one on the list of ‘things that make a good Avengers team.’

All of us who grew up reading comics love the memory of sitting under an apple tree with a comic book in one hand and a peanut butter sandwich in the other; the tactile sensation of the paper on the skin and so forth is part of the experience.

The beauty of Captain America is that you didn’t have to come from a distant planet, like Superman, or he didn’t have to be born into a family of billionaires like Bruce Wayne. He happened to be in the right place at the right time, and someone gave him a magic potion, and he grew muscles and became a superhero.

What I’ve found over the years working on various projects is, you can have a clever book or clever tagline, but there has to be a story to go along with it that leads to something bigger. Something with a little more texture to it.

In Marvel Comics, the worst thing was always that your loved ones could be attacked, or you could be horribly beaten in a knock-down, drag-out fight, but in the Superman comics, you would be run out of town with people throwing rotten vegetables at you and waving a sign that said, ‘Superman, Who Needs You?’

Flash is about freedom; Flash is about expression. Flash is about just the joy of exuberant running and of freedom, and the moment you weight him down with too much Batman-like baggage… that’s not the Flash anymore.

I don’t know if you’d do a Marvel story on Ferguson, because it trivializes what the real flesh-and-blood people on the ground are doing there. But you can make an allegory and deal with the bigger questions.

We’re brought up to believe in a fairytale-romance sort of way that true love is out there and true loves don’t care about what you look like and stuff, just what’s down inside. And that’s probably true, but what’s also true, sadly, is that true loves are very rare and very hard to find.

Indestructible does not mean utterly invincible.

I knew I really wanted to work in comics in 1979.

I think of it this way: When you hear that people have downloaded your comic, appreciate that thousands are eager to hear what you have to say. The poetry club down the hall may not have the same problem. That’s a good problem to have.

The fun of writing established characters is that there’s a rich mythology to draw from – you get to play with toys you loved as a kid.

Heroism is heroism, regardless of the timeframe or the backdrop.

I’m a great salesman when I believe in a product that somebody else is producing, but I always feel very awkward and clumsy asking for money for my work.

If you’re ruling the world, you can’t trust anybody. Because even those who profess to be working in your interest – those are also villains in and of their own right.

Younger characters are just much more emotional.

I’m a big fan of when you model a character as someone with a biological origin, doing deep dives and a lot of research.

Certainly, your characters – whether they are superheroes are not – should have foibles. They should have problems; they should have things that their powers can’t solve. That’s what makes them nuanced, interesting characters. They can have intense motivations. They should have intense motivations to do what they do.

There are other ways to create tension and drama than to have somebody stabbed through the back with a sword.

When I was a kid, what captivated me about detective fiction were the puzzles more than the detectives or their enemies. And as I’ve gotten older, I see a lot of merit in setting your investigative sights higher than figuring out how someone stole Encyclopedia Brown’s bicycle.

The problem with most digital comics is that you’re simply taking print material and adapting it. It’s like reading through a cardboard tube.

There’s a reason Archie didn’t go the way of Betty Boop or Davy Crockett or Woody Woodpecker, forgotten relics of a bygone era, and it’s because when ‘Archie’ stories are at their best, anyone of any age can see a little bit of themselves in them.

I’ll still do print comics; as long as there’s a market, I’ll still be there. I just have a hard time believing that’s the future.

I’m a big veteran of being able to, in one comic, explain to you everything that you need to know to get forward in the story without you having to refer back to years of continuity and a universe in these superhero comics.

We want the reading experience of digital comics to be as simple as tapping a tablet or an arrow key or mouse button to move forward or back.

I think there’s a moral imperative when you’re writing fictional heroes to give characters who somehow give us something to aspire to as opposed to dragging them down to our level.

I’m not as good a prose writer as I’d like to be, but I never aspired to that.

Juggling a huge cast is a bear.

I think comics are really – superhero comics are at their best and most primal when they’re about joy and flying, and about escaping the gravity of the world. But, at the same time, that’s not to say all stories should be happy.

I’d still love to work with John Romita Sr. at some point. That’s the dream.

Know what your characters want, know what they need most, know what they fear most, and don’t be fearful of facing it, no matter how unpleasant it may be.

I got taught a lot of great lessons by superhero comics as a kid about virtue and self-sacrifice and responsibility. And those were an important part of imprinting my DNA with ethical and moral values.

I love what Max Landis is doing with ‘Superman: American Alien.’ That’s a really good book.

I love Jughead. I love his one-step-removed perspective on everything in Riverdale. And I love the fact that he wears that stupid hat.

I think it’s imperative of me to advance that theory that you can win your small victories against the dark.

I think there are things that digital can’t do as well as print thus far. Even an iPad is only 80% the size of a standard comics page, so the images are going to be smaller. You don’t get your big, whopping two-page spreads.

Maybe this is because I’m a comics historian as much as anything else, but I really have a deep-seated respect for the characters that have been around since before I was born and are probably going to outlive me.

I was the last guy I imagined anyone would ever associate with ‘Daredevil,’ but once I gave the character some thought, much like with the ‘Fantastic Four,’ I found my hooks and, I think, some angles on the series that have never been explored.

You can do all of the world-building you want; at the end of the day, what’s important is the heart and the drive of the story and the heart and the drive of the characters.

What sets ‘Archie’ apart from the many, many times I’ve reworked and rebooted long-standing characters is that this time, it was really scary.

I do like Hank Pym.

I like being able to have a conversation. I like being able to do a vocal interview.

Hulk fans are impossible to please.

When you’re writing a team book where every character already has his or her own series, you don’t have dominion over them as individuals – but what you can exploit is their relationships with one another.

If you come into any creative project without questions, you’re gonna bore yourself, and it’ll show on the page.

If I wanted to write a bunch of comics about 50-year-olds sitting around having a conversation about politics, that would be realistic, but it’d be the dullest comic in the world.

I love writing comedy.

Anyone can write a detective story about a detective who fails, for Pete’s sake. That’s pretty unambitious.

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 wouldn’t mind taking a stab at… I’d love to take a shot at ‘Doctor Strange’ at some point.