Comics is a language. It's a language most people understand intuitively.
But I couldn't draw as fast as she requested. Thus, I tried to create the worst abomination of a comic that I could, so as to make her not want comics anymore. That abomination, my friends, was Happy Noodle Boy.
The comics that are just conversing with you up there and drawing on their own life, yeah, I guess so. I guess some do political humor, some do topical humor, but the ones that I like, the ones that are appealing to me, were guys who were just talking to you about their life.
I've always loved pinup art, and I've always enjoyed drawing women. I think it was a conscious decision that has resulted in me getting almost exclusive work on comics where the main character is female.
The most impactful comics that I've read are the ones where the artists swung for the bleachers and tried to immerse you in their world.
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.'
Girls have always read comics. There's nothing intrinsically masculine about telling stories with pictures.
I went to an art school in Brooklyn and painted Fine Art, if that's what you'd call it for eight years in New York, until I saw the first underground comics in the East Village Other.
When I grew up, one of comedy idols was Rowan Atkinson, who of course is Mr. Bean and uses physical comedy. Same with Jim Carrey. Both of those guys. And Peter Sellers. Most of my comedy idols are physical comics.
We didn't have television until I was about eight years old, so it was either the movies or radio. A lot of radio drama. That was our television, you know. We had to use our imagination. So it was really those two things, and the comics, that I immersed myself in as a child.
I grew up with comics. Whether it be from the East or the West, I devoured them.
What I've found in my career is that 70 to 75 percent of comics are nice and have some sense of social skills, but there are those who end up in comedy because they don't know how to socialize. I don't want to deal with that group.
I grew up reading comics - mostly Marvel - Doctor Strange was my favourite comic book and has remained my favourite as an adult. It's the only comic book movie property I've ever gone after. I felt uniquely suited to it.
There will be the 5% on the fringe of any hardcore fanbase that get angry about any change you make to the source material. The truth is that novels, games, comics, and what-have-you are not usually ready to be slapped up on screen as-is.
I was an 'Ironman' fan. It was in the '70s. I definitely liked comics and drew a lot of panels on my notebook when I should have been studying - probably why I ended up in the arts.
Anyone should be able to read comics.
One similarity I see between peers and some of the people who read my books is that comics were definitely an outlet for us.
If you look at the common denominator of all the comics who have had big success, it's being true to their nature... that's what takes a long time to learn.
I went to church irregularly and was mostly reading comics in the pew.
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.
I've seen too many comics who got their own shows and were undone because they worked for an executive producer who didn't understand their comedy or their sensibility.
Comics are really my life blood in a lot of respects.
Comics were not something that as a young kid you could say you were into in Manchester, Missouri. Kids did not read comic books back then.
It's not like since I make comics I only read comics and since I make movies I will only go out and watch movies. Any kind of artistic expression interests me; it goes from literature to music to sculpture, painting; whatever is extremely inspiring for me becomes a reference also for me.
The comics I read as a kid were much more influenced by TV and movies. Encountering superheroes as an adult without that kind of childhood sentimentality, it just doesn't allow you, or in my case at least, it wouldn't let me take the characters seriously.
People think comedians don't do drama. Comics are drama. And what is drama, as opposed to comedy? It's all the same to me.
Comics are a dying art. If you ask a little kid to choose between a video game with insane graphics or comic books... you have to compete with cable, satellite TV with its thousands of channels, and with video games that are like movies, with CGI explosions where you can blow up worlds.
I'm pretty illiterate when it comes to comics history.
If you look at shows like 'Def Comedy Jam' in its heyday, there were so many really funny, talented black comics that never would have gotten on that show because they just weren't doing comedy that fit that mold.
Social media allows comics to bypass the gatekeepers and connect directly with people who will want to come see them.
People ask 'do you make a conscious effort not to swear?' - if you're doing silly stuff you're not tempted to put swearing in. All the comics from my childhood, who were funny without swearing, were the people that influenced me. What I do is quite traditional anyway.
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 have worked with a great many comedians as opposed to comics, although I have worked with comics as well, I make the distinction.
The problem for me is that 'Watchmen,' one of the great comics of all time, is a look at superheroes that has gone beyond the concept of or necessity for superheroes.
I don't like 'graphic novel.' It's a word that publishers created for the bourgeois to read comics without feeling bad. Comics is just a way of narrating - it's just a media type.
I'd like to be involved in 'SNL' somehow. I mean, being a permanent cast member is a stretch! That's pretty damned hard, but to host it one day would be a dream come true. And I would like to play the DC Comics villain Harley Quinn.