Christopher Priest Quotes

Comics were going down for the second time and here, all of a sudden, came this thing and for the next fifteen years, romance comics were about the top sellers in the field; they outsold everything.

The '90s was a great period for the fans that were collecting at that time. Comics sold at an all-time high and reached the largest audience in our modern age, and the energy in our business was fantastic. Any bad feelings from fans of that era were a result of the poor delivery of the product we sold them.

The comic page is dying; I didn't want to go with it.

To me, I was always just standing on the sidelines because up until issue 50, we were just doing Spawn. I wasn't recruiting anybody because I didn't have any books for people to work on.

Then he took me off Jeannie and he gave me Millie the Model. That was a big break for me. It wasn't doing to well and somehow when I got on it became quite successful.

I created lots of characters in high school and college, and the first character I created in pro comics was Liana, Green Lantern of M'Elu, for a backup story in 'Green Lantern #162,' my first professional sale.

Things improved a little bit in the '80s; there was kind of a revival of alternative comics, but then they went downhill in the '90s.

The third biggest comic people in America want to make a comic book out of me. It's unbelievable.

Marvel has put out good product. DC has put out good product. Even Image has put out good product, as far as I'm concerned... although it's few and far between. But it's not getting recognized, no matter who's doing it.

I grew up when comics were only sold in food markets and news stands, so the direct market is vital to me. The best way to make it stronger is if everybody buys my comics in multiple copies before they buy any others.

I love the medium and I love individual comics, but the business is nothing I would be proud of.

People have debated both sides of the Liefeld influence, good and bad, and I maintain the sales and the results of that time bear out that people love that stuff.

I think, for the most part, comics have devolved into fantasy for the sake of fantasy.

I was given a chance to re-haul 'New Mutants' and take it from the dog of the 'X-Men' office to 1 million copies with its final issue.

Comics publishers are used to looking in a very, very narrow focused prism. It's like when I started writing 'X-Men.' Our 'meat and potatoes' money was made of newsstand sales, while anything that came through the Direct Market was considered gravy.

One of the things that kept most comics from being monthly was that very few artists could produce 24 pages per month. Jack Kirby was very much the exception to the rule, but his towering presence at Marvel started to dictate the whole shape of the industry - and that's where problems set in!

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

It's a strange thing to be a so-called alternative cartoonist, because in the early part of my career, I was really tethered to the superhero world.

Honestly, before I started working at the comic shop, I was not a huge comic reader. I grew up reading 'Archie' and have an incredible love/hate relationship with Archie Comics. I got back into it when I started living with some roommates who were really comics fanatics.

Marvel has such a huge slice of the pie.

When I did get into comic books, it was after a whole other career, and when I got into comic books, they didn't even know who I was.

In some films it wouldn't be surprising to see the United States envisioned as a significant but not primary dominant marketplace, and treated accordingly. But in comics, that's for the governing minds at each of the companies and corporations to find out for themselves.

My career path is the weirdest thing. I was a hairdresser, I worked at Marvel for a few months, and then I was signed to a DC exclusive for eight years.

Being able to work in comics at all - I know I came into it from a different medium, but I'd like to stay here. It's not like a weird touristy thing for me.

I think when I first sold digital comics it was sort of on a whim.