A collection of interesting quotes from this week:

“Aunt May is very old. And her husband is dead. I just want you to consider that before you do anything crazy like trade your life as you know it for hers. I know you love her. We all do. But seriously, she is, like, what? 150 years old now? She probably wants to die. And she certainly doesn’t want you throwing your life away so she can live the last six months or whatever of hers.

“Also, incidentally, your comic books suck.”

– blogger Rachelle Goguen, in her message to Spider-Man

“The character designs — what is it that makes them so appealing? I can’t figure it out. ‘Appealing’ is the only word that seems to fit — they’re not ‘cute,’ exactly, or ‘pretty,’ or ‘dynamic,’ or at least, insofar as they are, that’s not what I like about them. They’re the visual equivalent of a catchy song: they draw the eye and hold it. Even long before I read the manga or watched the anime, I saw Naruto-related art all over the internet, and it was always distinctive and attractive. Masashi Kishimoto certainly has the ‘it factor’.”

– blogger Katherine Farmar, finally giving in to Naruto

“I’m sure that it exists to some degree, but I saw no negativity, no beefs, no snark, no rivalries. It was just this great show where comics are art, and I use that word properly, not capital-A art or art with finger quotes around it but a legitimate art form, like it should be everywhere. Imagine an industry that’s truly balanced, where the overall output resembles more the catalog from First Second than it does the Marvel insert in Previews. Where instead of being stuck in a warehouse convention center somewhere, the show warrants an immense outdoor set-up in one of the most beautiful medieval cities in Europe?”

– writer Brian Wood, on the comics festival in Lucca, Italy

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A collection of interesting quotes from this week:

“Just because Marvel’s comics have a shitty interface or an unwanted run of Gambit comics doesn’t validate my pirating their stuff, it doesn’t excuse or justify it or give me any moral or ethical high-ground. If I’m stealing their IP then I’m a thief, and I either make my peace with that or I don’t, and stop stealing.”

– blogger and retailer Christopher Butcher, on torrenting and entitlement

“I simply can’t stress enough how shortsighted, how ignorant, how goddamned lunkheaded DC and Marvel are being right now. They aren’t just shooting themselves in the foot like other media companies; they’re shooting themselves in the head. Internet downloading and the word-of-mouth generated by it has been quietly driving their business for the last couple of years now and they want to kill it. It’s just staggering.”

– blogger Christopher Bird, on word that DC and Marvel have sent cease-and-desist letters to a popular torrent site

“Frankly, the problem with American comics is that they were too conservative. They lacked the courage to go fully with the creator-owned model to the extent that Japanese publishers have. The American publishing companies are corporate-owned, and they go with this mindset that they’ll ‘reinvent Spider-Man for every generation.’ You can’t read every issue of Spider-Man that’s come out since 1963 and read it all the way from then to the present — that’s just ridiculous and impossible to do.

“And maybe that’s what some people want. They want a story that they can just drop into at any point. But I think that it’s much, much more rewarding to read and follow a complete story and to identify the story with the artist, not just the character.”

– Jason Thompson, author of Manga: The Complete Guide, comparing American and Japanese comics

“What’s great, and rather unique, about comics is that we’re a small concern, financially. No one is sinking tens of millions of dollars into a new monthly series like they would a film, so the freedom is so much greater. A creator can see his vision realized just like it is in his head, not after being rewritten by a bunch of hacks, edited mercilessly, and filtered through a bunch of producers and a director. I have a feeling if I tried to write for Hollywood I’d be stressed out and driven mad within weeks.”

– writer-artist Brian Wood, on comics storytelling

“I was just always amazed that people used to rag on my movies. Nobody really acknowledged the fact that [Batman] was slightly different at the time from other comic book movies. So lay off, will you? They would get on my case all the time and it’s still kind of that way today.”

– director Tim Burton, on criticism of his Batman movies

A collection of interesting quotes from this week:

“Of all the comics published over the course of 2007, could this really have been one of the worst? Really? I understand if people didn’t like it, if they didn’t respond to what we were going for, or plum didn’t have a good time while reading it … but does it really fail on every level one can aspire to when creating comics? Is it illegible? Unreadable? Insulting to the readers’ collective intelligence?”

– writer Marc Bernardin, on the first issue of The Highwaymen appearing on a list of the “worst comics of the year”

“Joss Whedon’s Astonishing X-Men comic, a title that exists solely because Joss Whedon and John Cassady have enough of a grip on the nerd festival that they could get Marvel to publish a comic where USAgent spent 22 pages making out with Fin Fang Foom, is pretty much the holy archetype comic of all time. Every issue has clever dialog and big booming fights, and it’s pretty comprehensible even though it only comes out every three months or so. That means it’s supposed to be really good, right? Yet it still seems to lack a bit of the soul and imagination that shows up in lesser books. It might have something to do with it being about the X-Men, a family of characters that’s about as unwelcoming to an uninformed reader as a watching untranslated French soap operas would be to a confused Dallas Cowboys fan. Or maybe it’s just that Joss Whedon and John Cassady are both a little better than this kind of stale tripe, and their lack of ability to disguise their condescension comes across too aggressively.”

– blogger Tucker Stone, in his review of Astonishing X-Men #23

“I think they’re pretty good at it. Like anything, it’s a challenge, when you’re selling books all over the world, to keep records like that. But I think they’re pretty good.

“One proof of that is that recently we felt our market share was increasing and that was reflected in Diamond’s reporting. Our market share is going up this year, which is great. So, I may be more skeptical of Diamond’s numbers if we’re, like, ‘Hey, our sales are going up, how come your information isn’t reflecting that?’ But it is. So, I think it’s pretty on the money.”

– Dirk Wood, director of marketing for Dark Horse, on the accuracy of the Diamond sales charts

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A collection of interesting quotes from the previous week:

“Now, in Zudas tiniest defense, when I orginally pitched the J & Jesus screens for ‘This American Strife,’ I was told to modify certain things to make it kosher enough to have it public. However, I changed these ‘questionables‘ and re-drew every panel in accordance to their requests. But to have weeks go by and then release ‘This American Strife’ with such a crucial, non-disclosed edit is lame. So lame. So lame and disrespectful to one of their selected artists prompted to help premiere and promote their site . . . I cant help but feel a bit offended, agitated, and slighted.”

J. Longo, one of the first Zuda contestants, on a missing page from his submission, This American Strife

“We were a casualty of the change in Editorial at DC that came right at the time we finished the book, really. Elseworlds was on it’s way out to begin with, and I was told our story would confuse fans of the new Titans series, despite the fact that there were two competing versions of the Teen Titans at the time, and nobody seemed too baffled. Honestly, I think the story was simply too weird for them.”

Jay Stephens, on the Teen Titans’ Swingin’ Elseworlds Story that’ll finally see print as the Teen Titans Lost Annual

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A collection of interesting quotes from the previous week:

“It’s fun to write a stupid protagonist because you don’t really have to know anything.”

Bryan Lee O’Malley, talking about the title character in the Scott Pilgrim books

“… DC shouldn’t be aiming this at me; they should be aiming this at folks who aren’t reading comics yet but could possibly be talked into it.”

Matt Maxwell on Zuda

“I think that Webcomic collectives are the new garage bands. Everyone plays an instrument and you look for people to develop a sound with. We all got together and started jamming one a week and realized, ‘holy crap, guys… this sounds GOOD. We should take this on the road.’”

Scott Kurtz, on the recently formed Halfpixel

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A collection of interesting quotes from last week:

“This is for killing my boy in the first place.”

–A super-powered Pa Kent, as he punches Doomsday in Action Comics #857

“Sure, that’s right– there’s a conspiracy of artless crassness afoot. Everyone’s in on it; didn’t you hear? 100% of comic creators are white, male pigs, who don’t know a damn thing about art, or people, and frankly couldn’t care less.

“Why is it like this? Why, when there are plenty of examples of praiseworthy comics, is so much of the ‘commentary’ consist of unsupportable generalizations? It’s up the hill backwards, it is.”

–Artist Stuart Immonen, commenting on two recent blog posts

“I’ve come to realize that I still need my New Comic Day. But where I used to think I needed it to keep my favorite stories from getting spoiled or being more “in the know” than the rest of the comic book community, I now need New Comic Day for my mental and physical health. I need the day as an anchor with which I can tether my sad little rowboat of sanity for an hour or so, not having to battle the increasingly turbulent societal waves crashing down on a daily basis.”

–Sean Kleefeld

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A collection of interesting quotes from last week:

“The best thing about writing fiction is that moment where the story catches fire and comes to life on the page, and suddenly it all makes sense and you know what it’s about and why you’re doing it and what these people are saying and doing, and you get to feel like both the creator and the audience. Everything is suddenly both obvious and surprising (’but of course that’s why he was doing that, and that means that…’) and it’s magic and wonderful and strange.

“You don’t live there always when you write. Mostly it’s a long hard walk. Sometimes it’s a trudge through fog and you’re scared you’ve lost your way and can’t remember why you set out in the first place.

“But sometimes you fly, and that pays for everything.”

Neil Gaiman

“It was written to be disturbing. Any time someone’s being beaten, and it doesn’t have that aura of superhero derring-do…yeah, it’s going to be disturbing. It was supposed to be violent; it was supposed to be a complete reversal of what you’d expect, especially from a top-tier superhero book. I’d like to think that no one is reading New Avengers expecting to see a hero have their ass beat. If it was a crime book, or even in Powers, readers probably wouldn’t have even flinched, but you weren’t expecting it here and that was the point.”

Brian Michael Bendis on the Tigra beating in New Avengers #35

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A collection of interesting quotes from this week:

“This is so weird. I like paper. I like to turn the page. I like to read comics in the bathroom. Suddenly, all of my work is primary online. Weird.”

–Fabio Moon, artist on Sugarshock, among others

“Sin City was just this brilliant translation into human form. And it just resonated with me that life is kind of comic book-like, not super hero-like, for me. A good comic book for me is all about a continual presence of parallel triumph and intensity in extremes, and that’s pretty much life these days.”

–Singer KT Tunstall

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A collection of interesting quotes from this week (and maybe some holdovers from last week that I missed when I was out of town):

“I never thought I’d say this about a comic called Super-Villain Team Up: MODOK’s 11, but the latest issue needed more MODOK.”

Kevin Church

“I would always give anything to Terry Gilliam, forever, so if Terry Gilliam ever wants to do Sandman then as far as I’m concerned Terry Gilliam should do Sandman. But Terry’s busy trying to get Good Omens made that Terry Pratchett and I wrote. He needs someone to give him $70m. If you or any of your readers have a spare 70 million dollars you are not doing it with then send it to T Gilliam, care of the London Pipe Organisation.”

Neil Gaiman

“Clearly, Mr. Fisher made a mistake in that it was not an appropriate referral for this ninth grader. But it was not a malicious or lascivious one and should not have led to his suspension and subsequent resignation. In my view, he is a gifted teacher and our students are poorer for his departure. He was Amanda’s favorite teacher.”

Loren Sterman, whose daughter was taught by Nate Fisher, the teacher who gave a student a copy of Eightball #22

“… I want to control more of how my work is seen, and how it’s represented, and how it’s distributed. I want to be more informed about what’s being done with my work, even if it means selling fewer books.”

Mike Hawthorne, on why he’s putting his creator-owned material up on ThinkTankComics.com

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A collection of interesting quotes from this week:

“Kirby’s covers brilliantly serve a single purpose: to catch the eye and suck the reader in so that they want to read the comic. This is the basic, fundamental purpose of the comics cover, and in Kirby’s hands it was a tool that saved Marvel Comics.”

Steven Grant

“Do people spring forward full-formed politically? I don’t think so. All the things I read and have seen growing up became part of me and helped me become involved and interested, including reading Mad Magazine growing up. There were so many lessons in Mad and we’re still soaking in the world Mad helped create, including the Onion, National Lampoon, and Jon Stewart. We need to connect to the choir because anyone in that choir can be the next Rosa Parks.”

Peter Kuper

“Can a good action-adventure book that received a decent PR launch about a pair of racially diverse seniors who aren’t superheroes fly in today’s market? I guess that’s the $64,000 question.

“And I guess we got our answer.”

Marc Bernardin

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A selection of some of the interesting, funny and strange quotes from the past week:

“When I was in college, I was belittling the woman who later become my wife for not knowing who Boba Fett was, and she responded by asking me if I knew who the Prime Minister of Israel was. Surprisingly? Not Mon Mothma.”

Writer Brian K. Vaughan

“Why do we as readers so often settle for ‘good enough’?

“Here’s what I mean by that. I see post after post, review after review from people who clearly aren’t enjoying the books they’re reading. And yet, back they come, month after month, even when things don’t get better for them. In other cases, we’re willing to suffer through long runs of average stories, either hoping for a change to the positive or for some other reason (”I don’t want to break up the run” being one that comes to mind.)”

Marvel Editor Tom Brevoort

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A selection of some of the interesting, touching, funniest and strangest quotes from the past week:

“My big brother is gone now. And I don’t know what I’m going to do now that he’s not around to look out for me. I feel lost and alone and scared. Mike and I weren’t very religious. But I can’t believe that a soul as sweet and gentle and caring and generous as Mike’s just goes away. Today, I’m a believer. I believe my big brother is out there and he’s waiting for me. I believe he’s with Jack Kirby and Alex Toth and Will Eisner and they’re telling him how much they loved his work. And when my time comes, he’ll hug me and take me over to introduce me to his new friends. And then he’ll smile and say, ‘You just wanted to come up here because I’m here.’

“And he’ll be right.”

Matt Wieringo, from the eulogy for his brother Mike

“Jeff is a beautiful father figure in this movie. But you know the comic book. You know what the comic book is about. You know what has to take place.”

Terrence Howard, hinting at an appearance by Obadiah Stane’s armored alter ego, Iron Monger, in the Iron Man movie

“This is the sickest, most perverted piece of writing I have read in many a year. It is certainly the pervy-est thing I have ever drawn. God I love it so.”

Colleen Doran, on Stealth Tribes

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A selection of some of the funniest, most interesting and strangest quotes from the past week:

“When it comes to movies, the dead certainties never happen and the things you think are dead come back to life. I have no predictions and absolutely no theories. I watch everything that goes on in Hollywood with amusement and occasional trepidation … but mostly amusement.”

– Neil Gaiman

“Any minute now, Galactus will just show up and interrupt the hearing.”

– Glenn Hauman of ComicMix.com, on the delays in the Gordon Lee trial

“Artists should make whatever comics they feel compelled to make, and they shouldn’t be cowed by half-assed, poorly argued essays that fail to bring the goods.”

– Tom Spurgeon, on a recent essay by A. David Lewis complaining about autobiographical comics

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A selection of some of the funniest, most interesting and strangest quotes from the past week:

“Now find a cave that’s got a gigantic penny in it and you’ve really got my interest.”

Peter David, on the news that scientists found the “Fortress of Solitude”

“This means that, like Joss, I can do four stories without having to refer to, react to or otherwise deal with monthly shifts in continuity. It’s as close to complete creative freedom as you can get on a major franchise book. It means that I can ring changes without having to worry about anyone else. I already told the main X-writers that I am their blood enemy now. I don’t think they quite understood. This is why I don’t have any friends.”

Warren Ellis, talking about his upcoming run on Astonishing X-Men

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A selection of some of the funniest, most interesting and strangest quotes from the past week:

“The last thing he ever writes: ‘If lost, please return to Light Yagami’.”

– blogger and retailer Hal Johnson, making a joke that will only be funny to fans of Death Note

“I hate to let people down when it comes to my work, and I hope that everyone understood that my reasons are the best imaginable: we want to stop while we’re doing well. I can’t do it without J. I didn’t realize that until I was faced with the possibility of it. I hadn’t ever considered doing The Spirit without J. and when I did, I realized it was a losing proposition to try. We’d exhausted a search for the right talent and other tangential issues deepened my concern for the ability to keep things on the quality level the Eisner name demands.”

– cartoonist Darwyn Cooke, on the announcement that he and inker J. Bone will leave DC’s The Spirit with Issue 12

“We are NOT contestants. I can’t expect the corporation looking to break into Hollywood with the next big idea to understand that. But I SHOULD be able to expect the people MAKING these comics to understand it.

“We are NOT contestants. You don’t need to ‘win’ your success in some foolish contest where a media corporation dangles a contract over your head. You are a creator. You may not have much, but the one thing you do have (maybe the ONLY thing you do have) is the internal spark that allows you to create a character or a universe out of thin air. If the one thing you have is the dignity of being a creator, why would you give that one thing away so eagerly?”

– cartoonist Scott Kurtz, on contests such as those sponsored by Platinum Studios and DC’s Zuda imprint

“Following extensive research, we discovered The Dandy readers were struggling to schedule a weekly comic into their hectic lives. They just didn’t have enough time. They’re too busy gaming, surfing the net or watching TV, movies and DVDs.”

– editor Craig Graham, on The Dandy’s change to the biweekly Dandy Xtreme

“We respect the fact that the studio is still calling it Rory’s First Kiss, especially if Batman draws more problems, in terms of crowd control. But, clearly, there’s no sense pretending it’s not a Batman movie.”

– Rich Moskal, director of the Chicago Film Office, on efforts by Christopher Nolan & Co. to keep shooting of The Dark Knight under wraps

A selection of some of the funniest, most interesting and strangest quotes from the past week:

“I like her, she’s a very nice, lovely girl.”

– Stan Lee, discussing Paris Hilton

“The way I look at the books is this: Jack was telling the story of this great cosmic war that was enveloping the Earth. In New Gods, you had the war as seen on the front lines by the primary warriors who were engaged in the battle.

“In Forever People, you saw their children, for whom war still has romance. It still has a kind of a glitter, an attractiveness. And so they fight it, but for them, it’s a great adventure. They’re having the adventure of a lifetime.

“In Mr. Miracle, you have the war from the point of view of the conscientious objector. These books were coming out during the Vietnam War, when there was a lot of concern about whether we, as a nation, should be fighting a war.

“In Jimmy Olsen, you see the war at the very bottom level, from the mortal point of view — how this whole thing affects ordinary men and women. Well, as much as anybody in a Kirby comic can be an ordinary man and woman.

“But it was so far beyond what anybody else was doing with superheroes. It was a treasure.”

– writer-artist Walt Simonson, on Jack Kirby’s Fourth World epic

“It’s different, that’s for sure. We’re creating the rules as we go. It’s also my first real, straightforward superhero book. Iron Fist isn’t necessarily a straightforward superhero and neither is Punisher. This is straightforward like, ‘Hey, that guy has a cape, shooting rays out of his hand.’”

– writer Matt Fraction, on how working on The Champions differs from working on his other Marvel titles

“It’s like a weekend at a spa. … You have a creative concept and instead of going through an endless array of suits to realize it, instead of spending millions of dollars of someone else’s money to realize it — which is why the suits come along — you give it to an artist.”

– writer and filmmaker Joss Whedon, preferring the comics industry to Hollywood

A selection of some of the funniest, most interesting and strangest quotes from the past week:

“All the iPhone is is a retarded Mother Box.”

– artist-writer Paul Pope, on the new iPhone

“We’re counting down to something … [but] we’re not bringing back the Silver Age.”

– Dan DiDio, senior vice president-executive editor of DC Comics, on Countdown

“They’re all standing on Darkseid’s head, which can only mean one thing: one of the younger heroes killed him. Maybe a bunch of them. The Teen Titans killed Darkseid. Why? So when old Flash and old Green Lantern and Wildcat are all ‘Do it our way, because we beat Hitler!’ the kids can respond “F*** off, grandpa, we beat Darkseid. Who the f*** is Hitler?’”

– blogger Chad Nevett, on DC’s latest teaser for Countdown

“Anybody who does this has to have a regular, well-paying job. It ain’t a cheap hobby.”

– cosplayer Paul Lombard, who dons a $1,000 Batman costume for charity events and store appearances

“So, what does it mean, ‘life?’ A stand against abortion? The death penalty? A reference Marvel comic book hero Captain America dying on the steps of a federal courthouse earlier this year?”

– Richard Walker, staff writer for the Orangeburg, S.C., Times and Democrat, pondering the meaning of the graffiti scrawled on the steps of the county courthouse