Don't you understand how dramatic it is to be a comic? To be a fool, to get people to laugh at this show-off? Milton Berle could take Laurence Olivier and stick him under the table if he wanted to. And so could I.
I was a stage actor for 20 years or so; I was leading men in classical things. 'Shakespeare,' you know. And now, I never play leading men. I'm that kamikaze comic that comes from the left, turns the table over, and leaves, or the hyper-intelligent yu...
I had a very mixed kind of childhood reading. I read the childhood classics like 'Robinson Crusoe,' 'Alice in Wonderland,' 'Chums Annual.' At the same time, I read an enormous number of American comics because Shanghai was an American zone of influen...
If you spend any time in Washington you'll find nerds. What happens is most of them sublimate their fixations with comics, or baseball cards, or 1960s British comedies to policy minutiae and political arcana. But, like Christians in ancient Rome, you...
I tend not to look at my work after I've done it. In fact, the only time I typically get to review it is when the fans bring up comics at shows, and I kind of flip through it and be like, 'Oh, I remember doing this!'
When I started formulating the first Frank comic, I knew I wanted it to be something that was beyond time and specific place. I felt that having the characters speak would tie it to 20th-century America, because that would be the idiom of the languag...
I know there are fewer women comics, and I think there'll continue to be an inherent sexism in many industries, comedy being one, just because things do take a while to evolve. Things are changing, but it's going to take time. I accept this rather th...
Martins: I'd make comic faces... and stand on my head and grin at you between my legs... and tell all sorts of jokes. I wouldn't stand a chance, would I?
In the '50s, a lot of stories were built around radiation and the proliferation of new technology. In the '70s, there were a lot of stories that dealt with the Vietnam War. So comic books have always been a reflection of the times we live in.
I'm the biggest nerd - I love comic books and stuff like that! I don't have any friends who are actresses. I only had one girlfriend when I was growing up. Most of my friends were boys. I was such a tomboy. I enjoyed doing guy things.
I'm not sure anybody's ready to see me in a drama. And loving movies so much, I've seen a lot of comics try to make that transition too fast, and it can be detrimental. And I don't think I've had as much success as I need in the comedy genre to open ...
I play a character called Lieutenant Delcourt who, in the original comics, pops up from time to time to rescue Tintin. I guess if you've grown up watching movies like 'Jaws' and 'Indiana Jones,' it's pretty surreal to find yourself on set with Steven...
Robert Crumb: You turned yourself into a comic hero? Harvey Pekar: Sorta, yeah. But no idealized shit. No phony bullshit. The real thing, y'know? Ordinary life is pretty complex stuff.
Real Harvey: If you think reading comics about your life seems strange, try watching a play about it. God only knows how I'll feel when I see this movie.
I'm a fan of characters wherever they come from. Truth be told, I wasn't a big comic book fan growing up. Maybe that helps me bring a fresh perspective to things because I'm not trying to match anything that's been done in the past.
Kids are no longer interested in reading comic books; they've got television and the electronic games that they can bury themselves in like ostriches. They don't have to pay attention to what's going on in the world around them.
We pitched 'Sightseers' as a TV idea originally, and it was rejected because it was too dark. But then things like 'Dexter' came out, 'Breaking Bad'... There are so many sophisticated dramas now with comic elements to them.
There are comics in L.A. doing impressions, and the first thing they do is hunch over and then start to do this bad Rick Moranis voice I do as well when I really get going. It's pretty horrible.
When you're young, with less on the line, it's easier to be audacious, to experiment. So I introduced the concerns of my generation - politics, sex, drugs, rock-and-roll, etc. - to the comics page, which for many years caused a rolling furor.
Any comic is a tragic soul. Comedy is one of the things that allows one to survive. Particularly if one has been in the process of separating off the emotions, it's one place you can process them.
The best books — like the best music or television or movies or comics or video games — can challenge us and force us to think or perceive aspects of life that we may prefer to avoid. In a sense, they threaten us.
