Jeff Lemire Quotes

'Thunderbolts' I was mostly attracted to because I really wanted to write Punisher and Elektra and Deadpool, who are characters I have always really enjoyed. But the funny thing is that over time, I came to really like Red Leader; he became one of my favorite guys in the book. Sometimes characters surprise you.

I have a terrific editor in Molly Mahan - she's the best - and Red Sonja has become up there with Black Canary as my favorite character to write, ever.

I have a great fondness for any character I work on. Whether it's somebody like Batman or Harley Quinn or whatever character I'm writing, I just really enjoy the heck out of it, and I try to do the best job I can with it.

I was not creating icons when I wrote the 'The X-Men' and the 'The New Mutants.' I was creating people.

I love writing novels, but there is something deeply invigorating about the comic-book medium.

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.

Sometimes a character is really based on research that you do. Other times it's just based on your imagination or perhaps your conversation with the director. Or sometimes all of the above. It depends on the movie and character.

The characters in my stories, whether historical or fictional, usually prove to be a compilation of influences taken from differing sources, but never drawn from one model.

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.

There are bits of me in all my characters.

I love every character in the DC universe, except for Rampage. Rampage is a She-Hulk rip-off, and I like She-Hulk.

The most fascinating powers don't mean a thing if the guy's poorly motivated or dull, and the most generic powers won't hurt a well-motivated character. Personality and motivation are what make Magneto, Magneto and not Cosmic Boy. The powers work for him, but it's his motivation that makes him the character he is.

Creating characters is like throwing together ingredients for a recipe. I take characteristics I like and dislike in real people I know, or know of, and use them to embellish and define characters.

I don't base any character on a real person, and really don't do composites either. I make them up.

Very few of my characters are based on people I've known. It is too constricting.

Every so often when I'm writing, a character might actually be a distinct person in my head - often not an actor or a face, literally a person who just seems to exist in my imagination. Then the challenge is finding somebody who is close enough to that to make me feel like I've ended up where I wanted to be.

I think every character I've ever come up with has been based on someone or something I've known.

I am thrilled to get the chance to write comics - and to tell Forgotten Realms tales, to boot!

There are always certain things that you tap into, your own personal experiences, and I try to base my characters on someone I know or someone I've seen.

By the time I finished the first series, 'Marvel Universe vs. Punisher,' I knew that there was a lot more story to tell.

I met a bunch of comic-book writers at the Metropolis convention and there was such an interesting discussion about the story of 'Supergirl' and trying to get it right. It can be a challenge, because you don't want it to be the same as the Superman story.

The great thing about 'X-Men' is that it takes characters that are quite firmly established in the comics and puts them in new contexts.

Fortunately, the DC Universe is full enough and replete enough with every kind of character that you could want, that it's not that hard to find the right character. Sometimes it's nothing more than an Easter egg, or a name drop, and sometimes it's someone like 'Deathstroke,' who is a huge part of the DC Universe.

Creating characters is just another way to express a type and put that type to use.

A lot of times characters are combinations of people I come across in life. I people-watch a lot.