I was sort of on a mission with 'American Splendor.' I wanted to try to prove that comics could do things. I wanted to expand them beyond superheroes and talking animals. And I knew that was going to take a long time. But I just started writing an autobiography about my quotidian life.
As a master of graphic creation, as teacher, historian, and roving ambassador of comics, Jerry Robinson has ensured that future generations of talented kids will continue to imagine and then put marks on paper.
The thing about 'Watchmen' that people should know is that when it came out there was absolutely nothing like it. Up until then, comics were about the same thing: a guy in tights fighting another guy in tights and saving the girl - that was it.
I'm not the comic innovator that Bill Murray and Eddie Murphy are. I can't just come out with an incredible line.
The great opportunity with Deadman was that you had a character that nobody had really done anything with - Arnold Drake and Carmine Infantino created the character, which is terrific, but Carmine only did one issue with him - and it gave me a chance to do things that I hadn't seen done in comics all of my life.
Howard Chaykin was one of the few who dared to make mainstream comics different back in the eighties; it was guys like him, Alan Moore and Frank Miller who made sure there'd be no going back. Howard's work on The Shadow is amongst his very best: razor-sharp character work, sizzling dialogue and an unsurpassed sense of layout and design.
Nick Cardy's work helped define some of the things we see in comics today and take for granted. He broke out of the mold in terms of covers and layout and created a truly interactive experience for the reader that directly points back to his time with the Eisner studio.
I was influenced by autobiographical writers like Henry Miller, and I had actually done some autobiographical prose. But I just thought that comics were like virgin territory. There was so much to be done. It excited me. I couldn't draw very well. I could write scripts and storyboard style using stick figures and balloons and captions.
I have 40 years of unpublished material, the ones they don't pick, and the reason I don't redraw them or use them again is that I like to use my brain every day and come up with new jokes.
ComicsAlliance asked if I wanted to do some holiday comics using a new layout and I said ‘HELLO, NEVER IN MY NEAR-DECADE OF MAKING COMICS HAVE I EVER DONE THIS, so actually I’m really glad you asked!’
