When I first started out, 'Time' magazine did an article on what it called 'the sick comics,' and they were myself, Shelley Berman, Nichols & May, Jonathan Winters, Lenny Bruce, and Mort Sahl. We were considered 'sick.'
I was embarrassingly well-versed in Marvel lore, so it was pretty easy to slip into that world. But really, already, by the time I'd started writing superhero comics, my dream was really to be writing my own characters.
Getting trapped back in the '80s, it's almost like a comic nightmare, which for me is a very real nightmare. Every time I flip through the cable, I have flashbacks.
I've heard that Alfred Hitchcock said that by the time he was ready to shoot a film, he didn't even want to do it any more because he'd already had all of the fun of working it out. It's the same thing with these Frank comics.
At one time Tribune Syndicate emptied out their storeroom. They put tables full of original cartoons down in the lobby and said take one if you want one. The comics were simply a burden to them.
That became a big time in comic books because it's when people were starting to break out into independent stuff, the market was getting choked with speculators and everybody was trying to do their own trick covers.
Tommy Doyle: What about the jack-o-lantern? Laurie: After the movie. Tommy Doyle: What about my comics? Laurie: After the jack-o-lantern. Tommy Doyle: What about the boogey man? Laurie: There's no such thing.
Primus: [speaking of his father] There was not a horse or beast he could not master. So much so that in his youth, he took to riding a camel... which was comical.
I read comics and I did science, and never really put them together until I accidentally found myself in the middle of one.
I tried to get into comics initially after I graduated Clemson in 1994. I spent a year trying to get in, and I quit reading books because not getting in made me sad.
I grew up with six brothers, and I'm from Chicago, so princesses and Barbie dolls were not around the house. It was more like sports and comic books, so getting to work for Marvel is like my version of being able to be a princess.
I think comics should test people, I think it's our job to go too far. That way we know as a society what too far is. Where else are you going to hear it?
The reason I love comics more than anything else is that the longest story will be just a few pages. With a novel, it takes so many pages to get to one thing happening.
I've always hated superheroes. I cannot stand them. I love Norse mythology, but I hate superheroes. They ruined movies, then comics, and now games.
I'm excited about becoming a transmedia storyteller. The idea that we can tell the 'Agent Mom' story online with MTV Comics and build a fan base that we can take over to Paramount to discuss turning that story it into a movie is just awesome.
The comics I read as a kid were much more influenced by TV and movies. Encountering superheroes as an adult without that kind of childhood sentimentality, it just doesn't allow you, or in my case at least, it wouldn't let me take the characters serio...
Kids don't even read comic books anymore. They've got more important things to do - like video games.
I had to find my way of translating the excitement you get when you're reading comic books to the big screen.
That pompous phrase (graphic novel) was thought up by some idiot in the marketing department of DC. I prefer to call them Big Expensive Comics.
Did you know I started out as a stand-up comic? People don't believe me when I tell them. That's how I saw myself, in comedy.
Those of you who are not aware of my brilliant career as a stand up comic, I'm not aware of it either so we might well wonder what we're doing here.
