If our shallow, self-critical culture sometimes seems to lack a sense of the numinous or spiritual it’s only in the same way a fish lacks a sense of the ocean.
Life doesn’t have plots and subplots and denouements. It’s just a big collection of loose ends and dangling threads that never get explained.
Seven actors have played Batman on the big screen, and if you can name all seven without reading any further, your youth has been wasted.
I don’t ignore continuity, and try my best to stick as closely to the current status quo as possible, but it’s not my primary concern when I start a story.
I think that superhero comics in particular are really useful for talking about big emotions and feelings, and personifying and concretizing symbols.
One must commit acts of the highest treason only when dressed in the most resplendent finery.
We’ve always known we’d eventually be called upon to open our shirts and save the day, and the superhero was a crude, hopeful attempt to talk about how we all might feel on that day of great power, and great responsibility.
I just do what I do because it feels right. Other people attach labels to that.
Sometimes I pretend not to look at my own characters, because that’s like different people getting off with your girlfriend or something.
I prefer working out of strict continuity, because no normal human being can have a firm grip on the constantly shifting bardo-like territory of a comics universe, where entire histories can be erased by a strong enough super-sneeze.
I’m at a stage in my career where I don’t expect or get too much editorial input into what I’m doing. I have a proven track record of success, so my editors are willing to cut me some slack even when a particular approach is not to their personal taste.
Then I reminded myself that all intelligent children suffer bad dreams.
I can always see ways to improve what I’ve done. At the same time, knowing it’s all an ongoing life’s work allows me to be less precious about blind alleys, failed experiments, and misfires.
I write dozens and dozens of pages more than I need, and then edit them down to size. It’s more like sculpture than construction.
Hell changes constantly but there are certain consistent landmarks which always stay in the same relation to one another.
Who needs girls when you’ve got comics?
I plan years in advance, but I like to leave enough space in the narrative scheme to change things, because I always get my best ideas the closer I come to the end of a project, after I’ve lived with it for a while.
Reality and unreality have no clear distinction in our present circumstances.
Remember it’s all just a mirror we made to see ourselves in.
It’s so horrible to realize you’re just the same as everyone else, isn’t it?