Ann Nocenti

Professions :

There was a Japantown in San Francisco, but after the internment camps that locked up all the Japanese, Japantown shrunk down to just a couple tourist blocks.

tourist down just up

I am inspired by both Japanese Samurai films, in particular the films of Kurosawa, and how they share the spirit of American Westerns, with the influences running in both directions, and including the 'Spaghetti Westerns' and films of Sam Peckinpah.

american i-am how spirit

I'm a huge lover of 'Seven Samurai' and anything Kurosawa ever did. The comedic work out of Japan in terms of martial arts movies, some of them are hilarious.

movies anything some work

I don't think most people are all heroic or all villainous, so I find ambiguity of motivations to be a natural human condition.

human find think people

I'm dying to fool around with the distance between Selina Kyle and Catwoman. And, you know, the whole double identity thing is endlessly fascinating. I mean, you can always find another riff for it.

know you fool identity

I've never written a character that wasn't burdened by years of pain and trauma. Let's face it: Most comic-book heroes have some serious baggage. Not Green Arrow. He's a healthy guy - imagine that? Carrying your hero around in your head, imagining the world through his eyes, is just a hoot.

face eyes hero character

I have a fascination for extra-judicial societies and underground cultures, and in situations where justice can only be found outside the law, and how these societies have evolved over the centuries.

only how law justice

When I first started writing comics, in the way-back days, Typhoid Mary was my explosive response to women characters in comics - I made her an innocent virginal type, a clever, dark, liberated woman, and as Bloody Mary, a feminist bent of punishing men - all in one character. She was an instinctual rather than a calculated creation.

woman women character men

I live in New York City, and one day many years ago I was with a poet, Gregory Corso, walking through Greenwich Village. He pointed to a doorway in an alley that he said led to a tunnel under Manhattan, a tunnel he'd use to run from the cops. I started learning about old Prohibition-era speakeasy tunnels under the city, for running whiskey.

city day village learning

I walked the streets of New York; I would feel the presence of Daredevil. I would see him up on the rooftop. What you are doing in your life, you start to see in your book. It all starts to merge together.

feel you together life

Rotgut was, to me, just this way to get into the underground of Manhattan where you have these little pockets a villain could rise from; a rot in the bowels of Manhattan. It led to these stories that were just very creepy.

me you villain way

I think the best collaborations in comics come from a lot of talks with the artists where you are finding out what they want to draw, what kind of villains they want to do.

best think you want

There are a lot of writers who just want to do their own thing and avoid the rest of the Marvel Universe. But for me that was one of the things I loved about Marvel: that shared universe. So of course you would run into a mutant in Manhattan. You would run into another hero in Manhattan. For me, I figured why not? Why not have that fun?

rest me you hero

I believe in working with your morning brain - you have your coffee, and then maybe you'll start thinking about the grand plan and what's going to happen in the next arc, and then you write for a while, and then you get really dreamy, and over the course of the day or in the middle of the night, something comes, and you just throw it in!

day you coffee morning

I like talking about comic book process, and one of the things is that I have plans going ahead for years, and the plans constantly get thrown away and shifted. There's a difference between planning and what actually happens in life, and comics have a life of their own.

process talking life book

I'm a huge, huge lover of weaponry, of Japanese martial arts movies.

lover japanese movies martial-arts

There are a lot of Chinese comics, but the Chinese comics tend to be more historical and conservative. Japanese culture, just the comics are amazing. They're like films: very few words; they move so much in these books with hundreds of pages.

words amazing historical culture

When you choose the sword over a gun, just like Green Arrow chooses an arrow over a gun and Catwoman chooses a whip over a gun, you have to be highly skilled and highly trained. I can grab Green Arrow's bow, but I'm not strong enough to shoot it. I can grab Catwoman's whip, but have you ever tried to whip a whip? It's not easy.

you green gun strong

The Creeper in the 'Katana' series is the same Creeper that will be in 'Villains Month.'

month villains same will

Comics shouldn't be 'tools' for anyone's agenda except for the characters. And I am speaking only of super hero action comics. I love many of the alternative comics that are like journalistic stories. Documentary comics, a mix of reportage and fiction. Those are just great.

i-am great hero love

Irving Bacheller

Bill Keller

Bob Woodward

Bolesław Prus

Buzz Bissinger

Burton Rascoe