The idea of lasting consequences isn't your usual 'Archie' trope. Mark Waid More Quotes by Mark Waid More Quotes From Mark Waid Socrates should have written comics. Mark Waid written should should-have Super-heroes were created to represent the best in all of us. We should aspire to match their nobility, not their ability to shoot big chrome guns. Mark Waid chrome gun hero Comics are expensive. Don’t make me resent the money I spend buying yours. Every single moment in your script must either move the story along or demonstrate something important about the characters — preferably both — and every panel that does neither is a sloppy waste of space. Mark Waid single-mom character moving A superhero is someone who, at some point or in some way, inspires hope or is the enemy of cynicism. Even if you bog it down with political allegory, or even if you're doing celebrity allegory. You still need to take the cynical out of it. Mark Waid superhero cynical political One of the greatest sins in any story is false suspense. The kind of 'suspense' that disintegrates the moment you give your reader one second to think about it. And it's an easy trap to fall into, so watch carefully for it. If your story hinges on the question, 'Will Superman be pushed so far in his battle against Lex Luthor that he'll have to kill him?', or if your big cliffhanger moment is, 'Wow, is Spider-Man really dead this time?', then I understand Food Lion is hiring. Mark Waid men book fall It's not often that I get to remember and use phrases like "on out my farm" or "powerful ugly" in modern scripts. Mark Waid phrases powerful use Not since Walter Gibson has anyone been better suited to The Shadow than Howard Chaykin Mark Waid shadow When you give me something that I love, then I spend a long time drilling down on it and figuring out what it is I love about it. Mark Waid drilling giving long Gillen and McKelvie shared their upcoming The Wicked + The Divine with me, and its amazing. Please tell your retailer this week to order! Mark Waid wicked week order Does Batman ever NOT have a plan...? Mark Waid plans doe In the long run, the quality of your work is all that matters. That is your only resumé. Be professional. Make sure your editor or publisher can always reach you. Do what's asked of you if your conscience can bear it. Mark Waid editors running book Marvel has always been to a large extent the world around us. It has to be evocative of the world around us, the feelings people are feeling. You take real-world concerns and you put a Marvel face on it. Mark Waid feelings people world Artists are not helper monkeys; they’re not in it to visualize 'your' story, because it stopped being 'your' story the moment you engaged in a collaborative medium. From here on in, it’s also the artist’s story, and if you’re working with an illustrator who’s any good at all, you as a writer have to tamp down any control-freak tendencies you suffer under and relax into the process. Mark Waid relax artist suffering Twenty-two pages is not a lot of space. Believe me. Having written a bazillion comics, I still find myself more often than nine pages into a script and realizing to my horror that I'm only about a quarter of the way through the story I wanted to tell, and the next thing you know, I'm making fresh coffee and tearing up the floorboards to rewrite. Mark Waid coffee believe book In a 22-page comic, figuring an average of four to five panels a page and a couple of full-page shots, a writer has maybe a hundred panels at most to tell a story, so every panel he wastes conveying a.) something I already know, b.) something that's a cute gag but does nothing to reveal plot or character, or c.) something I don't need to know is a demonstration of lousy craft. Mark Waid couple cute book I was a teenager, and I went to see the Superman movie, and up to the point I walked into that movie, I was a kid with no direction and no real purpose and no strong parental figures, and kind of aimless. I walked out of that movie knowing that whatever my life was going to be from then on, it had to have something to do with Superman, because something touched me emotionally with Christopher Reeve's performance. Mark Waid teenager strong real Each time I think I've made a connection with someone... once they find out what I can do, whether it's hours or days later, everything changes. Invariably they freak. They get retroactively paranoid, wondering what else Clark Kent is hiding from them. Mark Waid freak connections thinking In the world of comics, Jack Kirby and Will Eisner may have been more influential artists, but Joe Kubert was its most influential man. Even if he were to be remembered solely for his body of illustration work, he’d still be one of the greats, but by opening the Kubert School in 1976, he was able to personally mentor and educate literally thousands of successful artists who owe their careers to his teachings. Mark Waid successful teaching school The most basic definition of a story is 'Somebody wants something and something's in his way,' and I'm more likely to be engaged if I at least think I know what those two 'somethings' are. They can be simple, they can be complex, but - particularly if you're a beginning writer - I'd rather you err on the side of revealing too much than too little. Mark Waid simple two thinking I like the brighter, shinier, happier comic-book material on a personal level, but I also think the best stories are told where you just don't know from page to page or moment to moment when the sucker-punches are coming. Mark Waid pages book thinking
