Nobody's angry all the time, unless you're a psycho.
Brian Azzarello
I like alleys. They are the backdoor to everything.
I think the Joker resonates with people as much as Batman does.
I have a reputation for writing all kinds of hard-core, violent things.
To ground a character in reality, you have to use shades of gray.
From a storytelling perspective, perfection is death.
DC characters are from a different era than Marvel characters.
I'm kind of a graphic novel ambassador.
'100 Bullets' is such a post-modern noir; there are certain rules you gotta follow.
Superman is pretty much the way he was - you know - what he's always been. A lot of the Marvel characters are products of their time. I think Batman, as a character, has been able to adapt; he's pretty malleable.
I think portraying the Joker's point of view would do a disservice to that character. As soon as you get inside his head he would lose so much power.
What's the trick to writing a good bad guy? Well, for me, it's always been the idea that you pit yourself against authority, you know? I think that's what it takes - and then you can write villainous characters.
I didn't really like superheroes. I liked monsters and war comics.
Everybody's got scars. It's not so unique.
Good people struggle against what's imperfect about them. The people that we call 'bad' people embrace that kind of stuff, embrace the darker side.
When I write, I'm talking to myself constantly to make sure that it sounds OK; it has kind of a nice rhythm and a nice jump to it.
I have to challenge myself, and I have to challenge the reader. We should be weaving and working on new stories and not the same story over and over.
When something is well-crafted, you know it, and the enjoyment comes from experiencing it.
Believe it or not, but 'White Heat' and 'Little Caesar' keep dancing around in my brainpan while I'm writing 'Moonshine.'
I like being a cult figure.
I think a lot of superheroes seem to have the same value system; they just have a different costume. They're all doing exactly the same thing.
Noir deals with the disenfranchised: people who can't catch a break under normal circumstances. In noir books, you root for these people, but you know they are going to fail. That's what makes them so compellingly human. I can relate to that kind of stuff.
I'm interested in damaged people because we've all been roughed up in one way or another.
I'm happy with the way '100 Bullets' ends terribly.
Characters with questionable morals are sexy.
If you read any sort of, like, military general autobiographies or biographies, most of them never wanted to fight, you know? It's necessary. War is necessary.
It's depicted in comics as, like, this gung-ho, 'Let's die in battle, in glory' idea, because that's just the genre we're in. But that's not what war really is.
Like, why is Batman so relevant? It's because he gets reinvented constantly. There are a lot of stories you can tell with that character.
Characters work really well when they're reflective of the times that they're operating in.
Civil war, now, 100 years in the future - the things that motivate human beings, they don't change emotionally.
Hollywood, they love everything, but they move like molasses. They'll option anything - the worst idea in the world will get optioned just because they want to keep the other person from getting that idea.
I think, personally, it's our flaws that define us to us - or maybe it's just me.
It is our mistakes that make us interesting, right?
If there's nothing interesting about a character, people leave because there's no desire to see what happens.
Denny O'Neil did some great things with Joker - I thought Greg Rucka used him really well in 'Gotham Central.'
One of the problems in modern comics is that they keep referencing themselves endlessly.
People have told me that the dialogue in '100 Bullets' is very realistic. I don't agree.
Man, I think mistakes - that's what makes us distinct human beings. Those imperfections.
We finished 'Spaceman,' and before we were even done with that, we had already been talking about what we were going to do next.
I really like language - and slang in particular, and just the shorthand we use when we communicate with people.
I have never met a feminist who didn't have a father.
I like everything that is wrong about Chicago.
These are the kinds of stories I'm really interested in telling: bad stories about bad people, I'm comfortable with.
I'm not the monthly comic guy, and I never really have been.
Basically, I think that Gotham is all of our urban nightmares and fears made into reality. Instead of hearing footsteps from behind you while you walk down the streets, turning around and finding nobody there, there is somebody there.
One of the reasons Batman works as a character is that it's not beyond possibility that he could exist - you could become Batman if you had a billion dollars at your disposal. There's nothing paranormal or superhuman or supernatural about that character. And I think his villains work the same way. You could be one of his villains just as easily.
The metro section of the newspaper every day is full of stuff I can use. It's the greatest inspiration for me because it's full of endings. That's where the ends of stories show up.
Wonder Woman is not horrible. Her villains should be.
Writing 'The Spirit' is really fun.
My mother would make a good Wonder Woman.
