Comic Artists Quotes & Sayings

Jack Byrne's Fiction House became known for its powerful, invincible female heroes. At a time when many publishers had none, Fiction House employed more than twenty women artists.46 The popularity of comics soared. Gaines, who did not tend to hire women to do anything except secretarial work, began publishing All-American Comics in 1939. That same year, Superman became the first comic-book character to have an entire comic book all to himself; he could also be heard on the radio.47 The first episode of Batman appeared in Detective Comics #27, in May 1939. Three months later, Byrne Holloway Marston, staff artist for the Marston Chronicle, drew the first installment of The Adventures of Bobby Doone. — Jill Lepore

Comic books, if you're adapting a comic book - like X-Men, for example - you've got 40 years of amazing stories to dig into, things that incredible artists have been thinking about for decades. — David Hayter

I have great admiration and respect for the editors, writers, and artists of the comic books. They're turning out, I don't know, maybe 100 Batman stories a year, and the character turns 70 years old in May. It's incredible: for 70 years, on a weekly basis, every Wednesday, there is some Batman story coming out, if not a bunch of Batman stories coming out. — Michael Uslan

Artists forget than the first purpose of a comic character is to convey emotion. Everything else, like realism, or other kinds of virtuosity, is an optional extra. If you sacrifice expression for the sake of other concerns, you're putting the cart before the horse. — Ted Naifeh

One thing that most comic artists avoid is showing decisions. They show action, sure, and they show results, but they don't show (because it's difficult to show) the hero or the villain making a choice. — Seth Godin

I've been very lucky with the people I've met over the years. Way back in the early '70s I went to [Phil] Seuling's conventions for something like three years in a row from '70 to '72 and I remember at the '72 luncheon with the Academy of Comic Book Artists and talking with John Romita about the kind of brushes he used. Pros ask pros the same questions that fans do. "What kind of pens do you use? What kind of brushes do you use?" I was so amazed that the wonderful work John Romita was doing was accomplished with a Windsor-Newton series 7 Number 4. Not a 2 or a 3, but a 4. — Mike Royer

I'm very much influenced by your traditional comic book artists like Jack Kirby, Alex Toth and Walter Simonson. Their styles were sort of what I was gravitating towards. — Tim Fish

Comic-strip artists generally have very modest ambitions. Day to day, we labor to fit together all these little moving parts - a character or two, a few lines of dialogue, framing, pacing, payoff - but we certainly don't think of them adding up over time to some larger portrait of our times. — Garry Trudeau

One of the great things about being involved with comics is that those people are devoted to their characters, writers and artists. The average comic reader isn't casual about their habit. — Charlie Huston

What does the radicalism of radical writers nowadays amount to? Most of it is hand-me-down bohemianism, sentimental populism, D. H. Lawrence-and-water, or imitation Sartre. For American writers radicalism is a question of honor. They must be radicals for the sake of their dignity. They see it as their function, and a noble function, to say Nay, and to bite not only the hand that feeds them (and feeds them with comic abundance, I might add) but almost any other hand held out to them. Their radicalism, however, is contentless. A genuine radicalism, which truly challenges authority, we need desperately. But a radicalism of posture is easy and banal. Radical criticism requires knowledge, not posture, not slogans, not rant. People who maintain their dignity as artists, in a small way, by being mischievous on television, simply delight the networks and the public. True radicalism requires homework - thought. Of the cleans, on the other hand, there isn't much to say. They seem faded. — Saul Bellow

Society cannot exist without inequality of fortunes and the inequality of fortunes could not subsist without religion. Whenever a half-starved person is near another who is glutted, it is impossible to reconcile the difference if there is not an authority who tells him to. — Napoleon Bonaparte

I had a few glasses of wine at lunch. just the little bottle Sutter Home 4-pack from the party store. Kept it light. It's European, helps you relax, and lets you digest your food properly. Plus. I paired it with a new Artisan Bread sandwich from Quiznos. It's inspired by Europe. So good. Ate it in my car. Europeans love to dine outside. — Karl Welzein

Comic artists have always been part of my social circle. I just like hanging out with artists, and I always see them at conventions or a store signing or something. "Hey, we should do something together." — Mark Millar

Comic-strip artists do not make good husbands, and God knows they do not make good comic strips. — Don Herold

I'm taking a lot of my favorite artists, different people, my favorite music and marrying that with what I do as a comic. It's very collaborative, arty, fun and cool. — Margaret Cho

I, like all artists in Western cultures, am a shaman ... come in the guise of a comic ... to heal perception by using ... 'jokes' ... — Bill Hicks

I try to do a lot of asymmetrical, triangular compositions - I find those work really well for comic book covers in that portrait mode, and I don't always see that in other artists. — Jim Lee

Whatever you do, put all your soul, your spirit and your strength into it. — Lailah Gifty Akita

I'm really interested with the way light plays on images and one of the artists that really reawakened my interest in comic books was Frank Miller and his treatment of Daredevil, and then Wolverine and, of course, Batman. — James Marsters

I feel like there are comic book artists who are comic book artists, and then there's comic book artists who are cartoonists. — Jeff Lemire

Most comic scriptwriters are very bad. The artists are good, but the writers are so bad. — Harry Harrison

The movie feels to me like a real work of lovely art. — Jeff Goldblum

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. — Joe Simon

All of us are experts at practicing virtue at a distance. — Theodore Hesburgh

3-D is a waste of a perfectly good dimension. Hollywood's current crazy stampede toward it is suicidal. It adds nothing essential to the moviegoing experience. For some, it is an annoying distraction. For others, it creates nausea and headaches. — Roger Ebert

An idea is a light turned on in a man's soul. Comic-strip artists are in the habit of representing it by means of a light bulb flashing on, above the head of a character who has suddenly grasped an idea. In simple, primitive terms, this is an appropriate symbol. — Ayn Rand

Many of the artists who have represented Negro life have seen only the comic, ludicrous side of it, and have lacked sympathy with and appreciation for the warm big heart that dwells within such a rough exterior. — Henry Ossawa Tanner