Mark Waid Quotes

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.

A superhero is someone who, at some point or in some way, inspires hope or is the enemy of cynicism.

The best comics editors have the smallest egos. The worst ones feel like they have to justify their salaries by making changes just so they can leave their fingerprints. Every creative medium has those guys, and they’re all loathsome.

Never forget that at the end of the day, as a creative person, your rГ©sumГ© is all you’ve got.

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.

I’m not as good a prose writer as I’d like to be, but I never aspired to that.

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.

I’d still love to work with John Romita Sr. at some point. That’s the dream.

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.’

By coincidence and not design, ‘Everstar’ is written and drawn by an all-female creative team, and it makes me smile to think that there may be young female readers out there, future writers and artists, who get to see that comics doesn’t have to be a ‘boys’ club.’

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.

The nice thing about working with BOOM! on ‘Irredeemable’ and ‘Incorruptible,’ man, was they let me have my head. No one said boo about anything.

Especially in the digital age, people want everything now, now, now.

In the long run, the quality of your work is all that matters. That is your only resumГ©. Be professional. Make sure your editor or publisher can always reach you. Do what’s asked of you if your conscience can bear it.

I don’t write stories about despair. I write stories about hope.

I think of it this way: When you hear that people have downloaded your comic, appreciate that thousands are eager to hear what you have to say. The poetry club down the hall may not have the same problem. That’s a good problem to have.

I’ll still do print comics; as long as there’s a market, I’ll still be there. I just have a hard time believing that’s the future.

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.

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.

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.

We’re brought up to believe in a fairytale-romance sort of way that true love is out there and true loves don’t care about what you look like and stuff, just what’s down inside. And that’s probably true, but what’s also true, sadly, is that true loves are very rare and very hard to find.

It’s always an amazing gift to be able to work with storytellers who ‘get it’ and who can not only draw anything but can draw it better and more dynamically than you’d ever envisioned.

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.

I think there are things that digital can’t do as well as print thus far. Even an iPad is only 80% the size of a standard comics page, so the images are going to be smaller. You don’t get your big, whopping two-page spreads.

Hulk fans are impossible to please.

I like the brighter, shinier, happier comic-book material on a personal level, but I also think the best stories are told where you just don’t know from page to page or moment to moment when the sucker-punches are coming.

I was the last guy I imagined anyone would ever associate with ‘Daredevil,’ but once I gave the character some thought, much like with the ‘Fantastic Four,’ I found my hooks and, I think, some angles on the series that have never been explored.

Does Batman ever NOT have a plan…?

I like being able to have a conversation. I like being able to do a vocal interview.

Younger characters are just much more emotional.

Comics are expensive. Don’t make me resent the money I spend buying yours. Every single moment in your script must either move the story along or demonstrate something important about the characters — preferably both — and every panel that does neither is a sloppy waste of space.

Find me anybody in comics who has a longer history of yanking defeat from the jaws of victory than Bruce Banner.

The idea of lasting consequences isn’t your usual ‘Archie’ trope.

Everyone knows what it’s like to make the wrong decision for the right reasons. For me, wrong decisions are the heart of drama – a character who’s always making the right decisions is boring.

I think superheroes are about flying. They’re not about moping.

I’m a big believer that if you buy a comic, you ought to own it.

When you’re writing a team book where every character already has his or her own series, you don’t have dominion over them as individuals – but what you can exploit is their relationships with one another.

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 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.

The problem with most digital comics is that you’re simply taking print material and adapting it. It’s like reading through a cardboard tube.

I think there’s a moral imperative when you’re writing fictional heroes to give characters who somehow give us something to aspire to as opposed to dragging them down to our level.

Flash is about freedom; Flash is about expression. Flash is about just the joy of exuberant running and of freedom, and the moment you weight him down with too much Batman-like baggage… that’s not the Flash anymore.

To my mind, a mix of veterans and rookies is number one on the list of ‘things that make a good Avengers team.’

The best stories, the most-fun ‘Avengers’ stories, explore the relationships between the characters.

I know my ‘Archie’ history.

Super-heroes were created to represent the best in all of us. We should aspire to match their nobility, not their ability to shoot big chrome guns.

It’s not often that I get to remember and use phrases like “on out my farm” or “powerful ugly” in modern scripts.

I got taught a lot of great lessons by superhero comics as a kid about virtue and self-sacrifice and responsibility. And those were an important part of imprinting my DNA with ethical and moral values.

Captain America is an interesting character because it makes you ask those questions in yourself as a writer. What do we want as a nation, what do we mean as a nation, what is our role in the world as a nation? What are our strengths and weaknesses as a country?

If you come into any creative project without questions, you’re gonna bore yourself, and it’ll show on the page.

I do like Hank Pym.

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.

Juggling a huge cast is a bear.

There are other ways to create tension and drama than to have somebody stabbed through the back with a sword.

I love what Max Landis is doing with ‘Superman: American Alien.’ That’s a really good book.

Jan. 26, 1979, was the most important day of my life. Because that’s the day that I saw ‘Superman: The Movie.’ I came out of it knowing that no matter what the rest of my life was going to be like, it had to involve Superman somehow.

What I need is for comics to not cheapen out and just do what they think a bunch of bloodthirsty 15 year old fans want.

Gillen and McKelvie shared their upcoming The Wicked + The Divine with me, and its amazing. Please tell your retailer this week to order!

You don’t want to hit readers over the head like they’re completely incapable of picking up on subtlety.

Indestructible does not mean utterly invincible.

In a perfect world, I’d like to start running comics for kids – by kids.

Marvel has always been to a large extent the world around us. It has to be evocative of the world around us, the feelings people are feeling. You take real-world concerns and you put a Marvel face on it.

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 genuinely enjoy the puzzle put before me with a crossover – how do I use this bigger piece of the Marvel Universe to tell a character-based tale I wouldn’t normally think to tell?

I just love rolling up my sleeves and doing research, and I especially love doing research on the origins of folklore and the origins of mythology.

I am just tired of writing about heroes that we’re dragging down to our level, and I want to write about heroes that we want to be.

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.

I think someone like Jack Kirby, for instance, would suffer greatly in the transition from print to digital were he still around.