Quotes & Sayings About Comics Books

Books are almost always better than the movies made from them, because there are things books do well and things movies do well, but usually those things don't overlap: the same with comics and animation. — Bill Watterson

He likes to pretend he lives inside the comic books. I guess a fake life inside a cartoon is a lot better than his real life. — Sherman Alexie

I didn't read comics, growing up. I watched a lot of movies, and those were my comic books. And then, my exposure really increased by becoming affiliated with Spider-Man. — Emma Stone

I've died before. It was boring, so I stood up. — Warren Ellis

'Just looking at pictures' used to be considered cheating. No longer. The graphic novel is booming. Comics, heavily illustrated texts, books with no words are now accepted as reading. — Jon Scieszka

The enmeshing of polysemy with grammar is also visible in one of the ways that Americans and Britons are divided by their common language. When a product gives its name to an employer, the name is singular in the United States (The Globe is expanding its comics section) but plural in the United Kingdom (The Guardian are giving you the chance to win books). — Steven Pinker

Comic books themselves are getting more literate. And there are people who are screenwriters and television writers and novelists who are writing for the comics, for some reason, they love doing it and some of the art work in the comics, I mean it rivals anything you'll see hanging on the walls of museums, they're illustrations more than drawings and all the people are discovering this and they're turning on to it. — Stan Lee

Comic books sort of follow with the move - if people see the movie and if they're interested in the character and want to see more of the character, they start buying the comic books. So a good movie helps the sale of the comic books and the comic books help the movie and one hand washes the other. So, I don't think there's any reason to think that comics will die out. — Stan Lee

Because that's what a comic is, ultimately: a collection of pages. It's not a flatpanel or a touchscreen, even though that's where it might eventually be displayed. It's a page. — John Heffernan

Would you rather see a super soldier battling Nazis or something more serious? Or lesbians down a coal mine? Generally, the films are engaging in the same way as the comics are. It's no coincidence that the biggest movies are genre-related, whether it's Lord of the Rings or comic books. — Mark Millar

I confess I didn't read the 'Green Arrow' comics before coming to play Shado. The comic books are not as easily accessible in Hong Kong as they are in the States. I do enjoy superhero fiction, though. — Celina Jade

I know I've erred in the past putting too much of my social justice sentiments in comics, but hopefully not too much, and I tried to only do that with characters that it made sense with it. These days, with the 'social justice' aspects of the two books I write, 'Catwoman' and 'Katana,' the concerns are more about moral justice. — Ann Nocenti

The best books - like the best music or television or movies or comics or video games - can challenge us and force us to think or perceive aspects of life that we may prefer to avoid. In a sense, they threaten us. — Geoffrey Reiter

I was a Charles Schulz kind of guy. I didn't read comics books. The Warner Bros. guys were great - Chuck Jones and Friz Freleng. — Bob Peterson

Ambivalence reaches the level of schizophrenia in our treatment of violence among the young. Parents do not encourage violence, but neither do they take up arms against the industries which encourage it. Parents hide their eyes from the books and comics, slasher films, videos and lyrics which form the texture of an adolescent culture. While all successful societies have inhibited instinct, ours encourages it. Or at least we profess ourselves powerless to interfere with it. — C. Sommerville

Japan is the first nation in the world to accord 'comic books'
originally a 'humorous' form of entertainment mainly for young people
nearly the same social status as novels and films. — Frederik L. Schodt

I came up in comics doing lots of DIY self-published stuff, producing my own books, handling all the details of creation and production. And theatre is something that's really attractive to me, as it's a similarly accessible form - it has a lot of the same sort of down-and dirty DIY spirit, where you can make a lot with a little. — Fred Van Lente

Let me tell you, writing comics is as hard as anything I've ever done - for me, at least. I'm now officially in awe of guys who can crank out multiple books a month and maintain a high level of quality. Comics are completely different than any other medium I've dabbled in. — Warren Spector

As lifelong fans of comic books, Dan Didio and myself, we definitely have our own takes on what make for successful comics and the kind of comics that we want to publish. — Jim Lee

I wouldn't necessarily have been making books about how to make comics if I'd really felt I knew how to make comics. — Scott McCloud

There is a certain danger in thinking about diversity in its own little box, as something that is somehow separate from 'normal' comic books and comics creators. — G. Willow Wilson

My hero in comic books is Jack Kirby: 'Spider-Man,' 'Fantastic Four,' 'Captain America,' Marvel Comics. He was really the basis for Marvel Comics. — Walter Mosley

Geek and Sundry has an eclectic line-up of shows all targeted around things I love: Comics, Tabletop Games, Books and more. — Felicia Day

I love meeting fans. The people who are fans of my books are really smart and dedicated, because some independent comics are hard to get. I will drive all the way to Pittsburgh or Detroit to put it in their hands. — Brian Michael Bendis

I love creator-owned comics. Most of my favorite books these days are creator-owned, from stuff DC publishes, like 'Fables,' to books like 'Saga,' 'Fatale,' 'Hellboy,' and 'Courtney Crumrin.' — Kurt Busiek

Man, I don't read books! I just read a bunch of 'Walking Dead' comics. I don't even read comics, but zombies are something I just can't get enough of. — Diplo

'Drawn & Quarterly' has always given me complete editorial control over my books and comics, so any decision about what to include or exclude from the book was my own. — Adrian Tomine

Some books don't answer the inside, I read one comic called Ms.Marvel!
Under Marvel can be understand that this person is powerful and can handle a lot of stuff, but reality this wasn't a powerful one or one strong. This guy was a guy who just called the Avengers like Iron Man for help! — Deyth Banger

The audience for comics has shifted dramatically. And the boundaries between books and fine arts have blurred. Maybe it's the globalization of fine art through the Internet - it's easy for certain groups to coalesce around a certain kind of work or medium. — Shaun Tan

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. — Seth

It always amazes me that Japanese comics have, like, 200 pages. How do they do that? They're fat books; it's a whole different kind of comic that's very close to their films. So I'm drawing from that history and bringing it here - bringing it to Katana. — Ann Nocenti

Glenn and I were listening to a radio show in the car, and he said, "Glass Eye Pix should do radio plays." I loved the idea of working in a different medium. We've made comics, books, movies, video games, models, advent calendars, why wouldn't we try audio plays? — Larry Fessenden

In recent years I have become more interested in making the critical ideas that I love teaching and talking about available in more forms, because many people prefer to engage with ideas in films, infographics, comics and other forms that are not traditional books or articles. — Dean Spade

In a place like Israel, they're very concerned with Iran, so there's a lot of interest. So they want to see what this Iranian from France has to say in her comics. I guess that's good. My the books are coming out in other countries. And each time, they discover something different to be interested in. — Marjane Satrapi

I saw a lot of lousy movies and watched a ton of crappy television and read a bunch of utterly forgettable books and comics and listened to hours of junk music as a kid. And I'm still drawing profitably in my own art on some of the tawdry treasure I stored up in those years. — Michael Chabon

There are a lot of Chinese comics, but the Chinese comics tend to be more historical and conservative. Japanese culture, just the comics are amazing. They're like films: very few words; they move so much in these books with hundreds of pages. — Ann Nocenti

Write comic books if you love comic books so much that you want to write them. Don't write them like movies. Comics can do a lot of things that movies can't do, and vice versa. — Grant Morrison

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. — Jim Lee

Reading books might itself be a bit weird, but obviously okay, since books were part of school, and doing well in school was clearly a good thing. But comics were more like candy, just flashy wrappers without any nourishment. Cheap thrills. — Michael Dirda

This is a profession for me, but I started off as a self-publisher working on my own schedule and my own stuff before moving on to graphic novels with First Second Books, where there was definitely a schedule, but it was very different from monthly comics. — Gene Luen Yang

I have read countless comics books while listening to hip hop, and as a young one, I wasted countless hours practicing nunchuks to Schoolly D's "Saturday Night." I would give anything for a video of that. — Axel Alonso

If I can avoid doing freelance work, I prefer to. Not just because it takes me away from drawing comics, but also because it's just annoying having to deal with art editors, and having to read people's articles or books or whatever. — Chester Brown

I tend to be known for different things. I mean, there are a lot of comics or sci-fi fans out there who sort of think of me doing that kind of work, but there are just as many people who like the CD covers I've done, or the children's books I've done. So different people like different things. — Dave McKean

I don't remember when exactly I read my first comic book, but I do remember exactly how liberated and subversive I felt as a result. — Edward W. Said

I think, honestly, the film industry is eating up comics characters at such a fast pace, and spewing them out as so much unspeakable, stench-y, crap. I mean, I think people are going to get pretty sick of the comics product of superhero, per se. Super-heroism seems to be so visceral for these times. Nobody needs a big clunky guy to throw cars about. You know, we've got drunks in town here that can do that. We don't need that kind of superhero. What we need is a super-sage. We need a genuine group of wise people. We need to become wise. That's the job of tomorrow; becoming wise, and integrated, and understanding. — Melinda Gebbie

Mainly horror movies and exploitation movies and a lot of stuff comes from those press books from those old movies. Lines out of old movies, comic books that we collect, all the old horror comics of the 50s, probably about the only comics that we collect are obscure horror comics, the real sick ones from the 50s. Some stuff comes from there but mainly just old records, old rockabilly records and that stuff, singles mainly, 45s. — Lux Interior

You reach a certain age when reality grabs you by the scruff of the neck and shouts in your face:"Hey, look, this is what life is." And you have to open your eyes and look at it, listen to it, smell it: people who don't like you, things you don't want to do, things that hurt, things that scare you, questions without answers, feelings you don't understand, feelings you don't want but have no control over.
Reality.
When you gradually come to realise that all that stuff in books, films, television, magazines, newspapers, comics - it's all rubbish. It's got nothing to do with anything. It's all made up. It doesn't happen like that. It's not real. It means nothing. Reality is what you see when you look out of the window of a bus: dour faces, sad and temporary lives, millions of cars, metal, bricks, glass, rain, cruel laughter, ugliness, dirt, bad teeth, crippled pigeons, little kids in pushchairs who've already forgotten how to smile ... — Kevin Brooks

I live making comics. Comics is an industrial art but less suffering, because comics are for young people who are more adventurous. I do that. I live off comics, and then I write books, but when you want movies, you cannot make movies without money. — Alejandro Jodorowsky

I didn't set out to do a gay comic, but given the current political and religious climate in this country, I feel it is important as a gay person, and a Christian, to create stories with humor and honesty. — Paige Braddock

The publishers of Superman comic books, National Periodical Publications [later DC Comics], killed my days, murdered my nights, choked my happiness, strangled my career. I consider National's executives economic murderers, money-mad monsters.
I, Jerry Siegel, the co-originator of Superman, put a curse of the Superman movie! — Jerry Siegel

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. — Dave Gibbons

An extraterrestrial being, newly arrived on Earth - scrutinizing what we mainly present to our children in television, radio, movies, newspapers, magazines, the comics, and many books - might easily conclude that we are intent on teaching them murder, rape, cruelty, superstition, credulity, and consumerism. We keep at it, and through constant repetition many of them finally get it. — Carl Sagan

When I first learned about Abrams and saw the types of books they were making, I knew I wanted my books to be published by them. Abrams books are special-when you hold one in your hands, you have the feeling that this book needed to be made. I once heard an artist say that books are fetish objects-I think Abrams gets that, because their books demand to be treasured. So who better to give comics art its proper due? I feel privileged to have found a home with Abrams. — Jeff Kinney

I tried to get into comics initially after I graduated Clemson in 1994. I spent a year trying to get in, and I quit reading books because not getting in made me sad. — Jonathan Hickman

Publishing the lyric books, poetry or comics of other musicians I know. That's the thing I really want to break into! — Frank Iero

Nowadays I'm really cranky about comics. Because most of them are just really, really poorly written soft-core. And I miss good old storytelling. And you know what else I miss? Super powers. Why is it now that everybody's like "I can reverse the polarity of your ions!" Like in one big flash everybody's Doctor Strange. I like the guys that can stick to walls and change into sand and stuff. I don't understand anything anymore. And all the girls are wearing nothing, and they all look like they have implants. Well, I sound like a very old man, and a cranky one, but it's true. — Joss Whedon

One similarity I see between peers and some of the people who read my books is that comics were definitely an outlet for us. — Brian Michael Bendis

There's bleeding between age groups in terms of reading material, and there's bleeding between media. So there are books that are clearly comics and books that are prose, and then there are these books that are kind of in-between. — Gene Luen Yang

As much as I devoured comics, I read non-graphic books exponentially more, so I'm not sure I can credit or blame them. Comics, however, taught me a lot about what makes a story arc work and how to bring a story to its natural resting place between issues. — Lilith Saintcrow

These 'mistakes' occur in my books for a reason. I have an agenda: I'm secretly trying to inspire kids to create their own stories and comics, and I don't want them to feel stifled by 'perfectionism.' — Dav Pilkey

Have you ever seen a little girl run so fast she falls down? There's an instant, a fraction of a second before the world catches hold of her again... A moment when she's outrun every doubt and fear she's ever had about herself and she flies. In that one moment, every little girl flies. I need to find that again. Like taking a car out into the desert to see how fast it can go, I need to find the edge of me... And maybe, if I fly far enough, I'll be able to turn around and look at the world... And see where I belong. — Kelly Sue DeConnick

Looking back, I realize my favorite stories weren't in books, they were in comics. On top of being a history enthusiast, my father was also a comics fan, and he kept his stash in the top drawer of his dresser, in easy reach of a kid making a beeline to the bathroom. — Jeff Kinney

When I was working upon the ABC books, I wanted to show different ways that mainstream comics could viably have gone, that they didn't have to follow 'Watchmen' and the other 1980s books down this relentlessly dark route. It was never my intention to start a trend for darkness. I'm not a particularly dark individual. — Alan Moore

'Comic book' has come to mean a specific genre, not a story form, in people's minds. So someone will call 'Die Hard' a 'comic-book movie,' when it has nothing to do with comic books. I'd rather have comics be the vehicle by which stories are told. — Frank Miller

I like learning things, and I like that writing comics is an excuse to look into new stuff and research and learn new things and hopefully put them in books. — Charles Soule

I was planning to sort my comic books based on level of second wave feminist influence." "As opposed to first wave?" "Yes, well, Susan B. Anthony laid the foundation for those who have come after. It's all really interrelated but she didn't have direct influence over late twentieth century comics. — Penny Reid

I've always wanted to write comic books, my earliest memories are of waiting for Dad to come home from work, and, secreted in his lawyer's leather briefcase, would be comics from the store. — Arvind Ethan David

As a small kid, I came across things like these early Edward Gorey books in department-store bookstores. These were these really unusual objects to me. I didn't know how they fit into the comic world or into newspaper comics. — Ben Katchor

I had been writing comic books for years and I was doing them to please a publisher, who felt that comics are only read by very young children or stupid adults. And therefore, we have to keep the stories very simplistic. And that was the thing I hated. — Stan Lee

Because making movies is such an expensive endeavor, other media such as books and comics have long been a more feasible way to experiment with truly new ideas. — Anita Elberse

Anything really well-made has the effect of making you want to do what you do-better. Abrams has always made very beautiful books. It's exciting to see this same excellence applied to the presentation of comics. Abrams ComicArts shows comics are stepping out of vaudeville and into Carnegie Hall-but the Marx Brothers will always be welcome! — Jon J. Muth

Our hope is that the elementary reading of comics will lead to the joy of reading good books. — Nelson Mandela

My bookcase is all yours."
I walked to the door. "I've just decided that those are my favorite five words in the world. — Kasie West

Oh yeah, I was one of the first guys writing comic books, I wrote Captain America, with guys like Stan Lee, who became famous later on with Marvel Comics. — Mickey Spillane

Growing up devouring horror comics and novels, and being inspired to become a writer because of horror novels, movies, and comic books, I always knew I was going to write a horror novel. — Colson Whitehead

Stephen King started to read comics first, I started to watch films and little reading books...Now everything has changed Stephen King reads books and watch films, I read comics, watch films, read books listen to audiobooks...
This are two different stories, you were challanged to open them, good job you open them now but can you try to start a new life??
To start by opening a new book??
Meeting with new characters??
With new writers??
With one new book which has a story which you haven't heard??
Probably, you aren't still ready! — Deyth Banger

I've always loved comic books. As a kid, I used to read cowboy stories and historical comics about other worlds, unknown places that would take me out of myself and which helped to develop my imagination. — James Herbert

I grew up on the old EC comic books before the Comics Code in North American and with all sort of good-natured fun. I never had nightmares I think because all of the old horror stuff that I was exposed to was well meaning in a certain sense. — George A. Romero

There are no easy answers for the balance of how you protect the core business of the books with what the digital future will look like, but that would be our job with DC Comics, to figure that out and experiment and take some risks while always protecting the core business. — Diane Nelson