When you have a novel set in a fictional history, you still should get your history right. Kurt Busiek More Quotes by Kurt Busiek More Quotes From Kurt Busiek What really matters is not how well a character fits a definition, but how strongly he or she resonates. Characters with strong, resonant ideas at their core will have more of an impact on the cultural consciousness than a character who's just an empty collection of attributes. Kurt Busiek impact strong character I tend to think that the best face of humanity is that we learn. We explore, we study, we think. Kurt Busiek humanity faces thinking I could name you a dozen superheroes whose powers I'd like to have. But if I could have any power in the world, it would be the power to read or watch a creative work and absorb the technical skill of the people who made it. Because then I could have even more fun writing. That's my core identity. Kurt Busiek skills writing fun Youve got to leave the reader with more than just a name and a costume - they need to know who the character is, what theyre like, what kind of attitude they have, what sort of role they play. Kurt Busiek play attitude character Dracula, if he could see modern corporations, wouldnt like them much. He took care of his people, at least as he saw it. They had very little freedom, but they had a protector. Kurt Busiek care littles people At one point, I worked up a list of five requirements for a superhero: superpowers, a costume, a code name, a mission, and a milieu. If the character had three out of the five, they were a superhero. But that's just my definition. Kurt Busiek superhero names character "Superhero" is a term that's been borrowed in order to say "big and larger than life and loud and active and dumb." And I don't think that's a useful definition. That's more a dismissal. Kurt Busiek superhero order thinking I'm a writer. I just love telling stories. Kurt Busiek telling-stories stories I like superheroes. I like the drama of it, the stirring, larger-than-life aspect. Kurt Busiek larger-than-life superhero drama I don't view Twitter as a promotional tool but as a really, really, really cool cocktail party. Kurt Busiek party tools views The metaphors exist for the stories. Kurt Busiek metaphor stories Maybe I had a 'secret identity,' but then when you think about it, don't we all? A part of ourselves very few people ever get to see. The part we think of as 'me.' The part that deals with the big stuff. Makes the real choices. The part everything else is a reflection of. Kurt Busiek real reflection thinking It strikes me that the only reason to take apart a pocket watch, or a car engine, aside from the simple delight of disassembly, is to find out how it works. To understand it, so you can put it back together again better than before, or build a new one that goes beyond what the old one could do. We've been taking apart the superhero for ten years or more; it's time to put it back together and wind it up, time to take it out on the road and floor it, see what it'll do. Kurt Busiek simple wind years The characters are, by their nature, archetypes that can serve different metaphors. Kurt Busiek metaphor different character If there's ever a character who can only serve one metaphor, I'll probably tell one story with that character and be done with it. Kurt Busiek done stories character The metaphor is the story, not the character. Kurt Busiek metaphor stories character I seem to like playing with form, and the superhero genre has an awful lot of formula to it. It has a lot of formula to it that I don't think it should be limited to. Kurt Busiek superhero awful thinking It's fun to take a piece of formula and go someplace else with it and see what happens. Kurt Busiek formulas pieces fun If I won the lottery tomorrow - which would be a real trick, since I haven't entered - and was independently wealthy for the rest of my life, I'd write comic books, because it's what I like doing. Kurt Busiek real writing book I'm not building each one character around one metaphor, so much as trying to build a heroic archetype that can be used to express the kind of metaphors that I find in each story. Kurt Busiek stories trying character
