Know what your characters want, know what they need most, know what they fear most, and don't be fearful of facing it, no matter how unpleasant it may be.
— Mark Waid
I'm not as good a prose writer as I'd like to be, but I never aspired to that.
If you're ruling the world, you can't trust anybody. Because even those who profess to be working in your interest - those are also villains in and of their own right.
I love writing comedy.
We have a lot of supergeniuses in the Marvel universe, but very few of them are women.
Hulk fans are impossible to please.
When I was a kid, what captivated me about detective fiction were the puzzles more than the detectives or their enemies. And as I've gotten older, I see a lot of merit in setting your investigative sights higher than figuring out how someone stole Encyclopedia Brown's bicycle.
Certainly, your characters - whether they are superheroes are not - should have foibles. They should have problems; they should have things that their powers can't solve. That's what makes them nuanced, interesting characters. They can have intense motivations. They should have intense motivations to do what they do.
I like being able to have a conversation. I like being able to do a vocal interview.
If I wanted to write a bunch of comics about 50-year-olds sitting around having a conversation about politics, that would be realistic, but it'd be the dullest comic in the world.
When they first asked me to do 'Hulk,' my first instinct was to say no because I didn't think I had anything to say with the character, especially when they said, 'Please do what you did with 'Daredevil,' whatever that was.'
I think superheroes are about flying. They're not about moping.
I knew I really wanted to work in comics in 1979.
The idea of lasting consequences isn't your usual 'Archie' trope.
It's Marvel's toybox; I'm just glad I'm able to play with the toys and have some impact on what goes on. I didn't create Daredevil, so I'm not about to stand here and say that I'm the only one who gets to play with the toy.
Maybe this is because I'm a comics historian as much as anything else, but I really have a deep-seated respect for the characters that have been around since before I was born and are probably going to outlive me.
There have been many days when I have had to work up to writing 'Irredeemable' because I just didn't feel like wallowing in that world, feeling those emotions... but that's the process.
To my mind, a mix of veterans and rookies is number one on the list of 'things that make a good Avengers team.'
I'm a great salesman when I believe in a product that somebody else is producing, but I always feel very awkward and clumsy asking for money for my work.
Younger characters are just much more emotional.
I'm a big fan of when you model a character as someone with a biological origin, doing deep dives and a lot of research.
Every ongoing character has to start somewhere.
I respect people of faith, but I'm not one.
I know my 'Archie' history.
I wouldn't mind taking a stab at... I'd love to take a shot at 'Doctor Strange' at some point.
I love 'Archie' comics.
Find me anybody in comics who has a longer history of yanking defeat from the jaws of victory than Bruce Banner.
A superhero is someone who, at some point or in some way, inspires hope or is the enemy of cynicism.
I love Jughead. I love his one-step-removed perspective on everything in Riverdale. And I love the fact that he wears that stupid hat.
What sets 'Archie' apart from the many, many times I've reworked and rebooted long-standing characters is that this time, it was really scary.
I do like Hank Pym.
The fun of writing established characters is that there's a rich mythology to draw from - you get to play with toys you loved as a kid.
When I first did 'Empire,' it was a severe break from everything I'd written up to that point, which is all very continuity-driven, super-heroic, and ethics and morals-infused. 'Empire' was a chance to break away from that.
I'm not a big fan of the George Lucas school of meddling and tinkering. That's a slippery slope.
When you're a kid, regardless of the age you grew up, everything is high opera. With hormones raging, you have to fight external and internal battles that you've never had to deal with before. Unlike Tony Stark and Steve Rogers, who have seen it all and been through it all, everything heightens the drama.
I don't know if you'd do a Marvel story on Ferguson, because it trivializes what the real flesh-and-blood people on the ground are doing there. But you can make an allegory and deal with the bigger questions.
Anyone can write a detective story about a detective who fails, for Pete's sake. That's pretty unambitious.
I'm a big veteran of being able to, in one comic, explain to you everything that you need to know to get forward in the story without you having to refer back to years of continuity and a universe in these superhero comics.
There is a reductive nature to the Internet, and it's not limited to comic book news sites and stuff: it's everybody. There is a reductive nature of it, by which anything that's said very quickly gets reduced down to the next. Reduced, reduced, reduced to the point where rumors with some sense of nuance to them just become fact.
What's interesting is that younger characters just have a more vibrant, exciting point of view on the world. They are more emotional, they are more dramatic, and they are just electric.
If you go back and look at the first issue of 'Indestructible Hulk,' if you have a sharp eye, you'll catch something that I totally forgot to put in there. In my horror, I only realized after the fact that I took totally for granted that everyone in the world knows what triggers the transformation.
You don't want to hit readers over the head like they're completely incapable of picking up on subtlety.
I broke into comics by working as a press reporter for the industry, for a trade press in comics, and reporting on events and reporting on books and so forth, and I got to know some of the editors at DC Comics in the mid-'80s.
Juggling a huge cast is a bear.
Indestructible does not mean utterly invincible.
I don't write stories about despair. I write stories about hope.
