Doug TenNapel Quotes

Graphic novels are such a visually creative world - it's really interesting what they can do in one sketch. Now I'm hooked.

Comics is a language. It's a language most people understand intuitively.

Comics are not theatre - there's a very important difference in that the reader controls the page. You can linger on a page of comics as long as you want. You can read and go forward and then move back; you can reread, in one sitting or at your leisure. You can take as much time as you want to take in that story.

I love the interplay between words and pictures. I love the fact that in comics, your pictures are acting like words, presenting themselves to be read.

I'm more into graphic novels than comic books.

People underestimate the complexity of comic books.

The graphic novel form really interests me and I like the freedom that format offers.

Graphic novels and comic books offer an easy foothold into that world, and screenwriters and studio execs gravitate toward those, because I think they can see it all right there. It's like, "Here's what the movie looks like."

Comics are words and pictures. You can do anything with words and pictures.

Some people will say, "Why read a comic book? It stifles the imagination. If you read a novel you imagine what people are like. If you read a comic, it's showing you." The only answer I can give is, "You can read a Shakespeare play, but does that mean you wouldn't want to see it on the stage?

It's not movies and it's not "fine art." The beauty of a comic is that it's clear, direct communication. My work is getting simpler and more cartoony because I'm much more interested in communication now than in any illustrative value.

One way of understanding a graphic novel is that it's an ambitious comic and one way or another my comics have had ambitions. I have no problem with escapism. When I get my depressions all I want to do is escape reality.

Comics deal with two fundamental communicating devices: words and images. Admittedly this is an arbitrary separation. But, since in the modern world of communication they are treated as independent disciplines, it seems valid. Actually, the are derivatives of a single origin and in the skillful employment of words and images lies the expressive potential of the medium.

I've been trying to make this argument that digital comics and print comics are both art, but there are subtle differences.

I'm a severe graphic novels junkie. People ask me about it, and I say I like the graphic novels. Comic books are for kids, and graphic novels are for adults. But you can't really separate the two.

Some of my earliest work was in comics. I tend to think in pictures and always like to write scenes possessing the dynamic you find in comics.

I don't think anyone has written a great graphic novel.

I had a lot of ideas on how comics worked and pretty early on I had this idea that it would be fun to explain them in comics form.

Comics as art. I do comics as comics, and my opportunity to tell stories. Simple. Basic. Let the characters have the excitement, not the package. That's where I come from.

Comics have always been storyboards.

I love print fiction, but sometimes when I'm reading a good graphic novel or manga, I find myself envying those who work in an illustrated format.

I hadn't thought specifically about doing graphic novels until a couple of my friends got contracts for them. Then I started picturing how various of my stories or poems would work in an illustrated format and thinking how cool that would be.

I think comics have far more potential than a lot of people realize.

I'm not opposed to comics on the Internet. It's just not interesting to me.

Comics don't work without the visuals, obviously.