Jeff Lemire
There are so many versions of Batman that I love so much from different artists that I had to almost stop trying to draw those versions and get past that and just draw the Jeff Lemire version of Batman eventually.
I've always had a good handle on drawing children.
When I'm doing the Justice League stuff, my point of view is always coming through Buddy. And he's a dad, and there's stuff about his life that I relate to with my life, and I can also take the abilities of animals, which a lot of people don't know about me.
I started off doing indie comics that I wrote and drew myself. I was doing those for ten years before I started to work for DC. The first book that I wrote for DC was for another artist. I did some backups in 'Adventure Comics' years ago starring The Atom. That's the first time that I ever wrote for another artist.
There are so many books I love for different reasons. For superhero stuff, I always go back to Alan Moore's 'Watchmen' or his 'Swamp Thing' run. Those are my two favorites, and there are indie books that I really love, like Eddie Campbell's 'Alec' books and 'From Hell.'
I have a lot of great fans. A lot of fans have cosplayed as Sweet Tooth, which I thought was really cool.
Everyone finds my work super sad. I never do. I always find it uplifting in a weird way.
There are certain things in 'Descender' that I've dealt with in the past. I think you can see a direct parallel with Sweet Tooth in TIM-21.
When I first seriously decided to become a cartoonist would have been '99/2000, right before 9/11. I've been writing and illustrating stories in the world post-9/11 since then, watching the world change around me.
There's been Hollywood interest in a lot of the stuff that I've done, but Descender's felt different right from the start for whatever reason. I don't know if that's because a lot of my other stuff's a little more idiosyncratic, and 'Descender' has a bit more of a high concept to it.
I never thought I would work in mainstream superhero comics or Valiant or Marvel. I just set out to make the kinds of stories I wanted to make, which at the beginning was small personal stuff like 'Essex County.'
You can write a script, but that's just a starting point as a cartoonist. The heart of the process comes when you start to draw it, and you work out how to lay the page out, how best to tell the story.
Sometimes, if you have a lot of history with a character and a lot of affection, it's hard for you to do anything with that character. Like with Swamp Thing, for instance, I revere the Alan Moore run so much that it would be hard for me to do my own Swamp Thing. I care too much about the way it was done before.
I've found I sometimes have the best success working on characters I didn't really connect to right away.
I enjoyed my time at DC. Dan Didio, Geoff Johns and Jim Lee were great to me, and I'm very grateful for the opportunities they gave me. Having said that, I think it's important to try new things and work with new people to keep myself fresh.
It's my job to write the best book I can each month and hand my scripts in. Everything else is beyond my control.
I think being an archer is much more integral to Green Arrow and his mythos than it is to Hawkeye.
I would love to learn archery. Unfortunately I'm too busy writing and drawing ten thousand comics a month. Maybe one day!
In general, I feel so much of pop culture is set in the generic big city, particularly comics. I feel like there are so many other stories to tell.
Why not take a science fiction comic and put the characters in a small town to gain their particular perspective? A lot of that comes from me growing up in a small town on a farm, so that's what I know and what I'm comfortable with. My drawing style is also very sparse and minimalist, so a rural setting complements that.
I tend to write my beginnings and endings first - as a cartoonist and storyteller, I couldn't sit down every day if I didn't know where the story was headed.
When I write Superboy and other DC characters, it's about boiling them down to core concepts.
I am sort of pessimistic in that way where I often think the worst of people.
I know a lot of people who read 'Sweet Tooth' are the kind of people who don't read a lot of other comics. Whatever it was, I'm just glad it happened.
If I'm not invested emotionally, the artwork doesn't feel emotional.
I draw on a lot of cinematic influences like Ingmar Bergman and Wim Wenders, artists who let a story take its time. Comics are a visual medium, and visuals should be allowed to tell some of that story.
Self-publishing worked for me. Being able to put your work in print, even if it's a tiny print-on-demand print run of a dozen or so copies, shows publishers and editors a completed piece of work and that you can follow through on a project.
I feel like if you really know the ending right from the beginning, you can add so many subtleties and little things later that will pay off and be more consistent and more rewarding for the reader.
I grew up reading a lot of superhero comics, so it's really fun to take a shot at one myself and see what happens.
When I do 'Sweet Tooth,' really, whatever I want to do with the characters kind of goes. I'm sort of in charge.
There's only two ways to be completely alone in this world, lost in a crowd or in total isolation.Collection: Two
Sometimes at night, when I wake up real late, I can hear my dad talking to God. He whispers, but I still hear him. I even hear him crying sometimes, when God says something sad.Collection: Dad
I have always loved telling stories about families. I love the idea of people who may not choose to be together, but are nonetheless bonded for life and forced to interact and develop these relationships. I love the tension throwing different types of people under one roof creates.Collection: People