Top 121 Quotes & Sayings by Mark Waid

Explore popular quotes and sayings by an American writer Mark Waid.
Last updated on September 17, 2024.
Mark Waid

Mark Waid is an American comic book writer best known for his work on DC Comics titles The Flash, Kingdom Come and Superman: Birthright as well as his work on Captain America, Fantastic Four and Daredevil for Marvel. From August 2007 to December 2010, Waid served as Editor-in-Chief and later Chief Creative Officer of Boom! Studios, where he also published his creator-owned series Irredeemable and Incorruptible. In October 2018, Waid joined Humanoids Publishing as Director of Creative Development before being promoted to Publisher in February 2020. In addition to that, Waid has written for a variety of comics publishers, including Fantagraphics, Event, Top Cow, Dynamite and Archie Comics.

I respect people of faith, but I'm not one.
When they first asked me to do 'Hulk,' my first instinct was to say no because I didn't think I had anything to say with the character, especially when they said, 'Please do what you did with 'Daredevil,' whatever that was.'
It's Marvel's toybox; I'm just glad I'm able to play with the toys and have some impact on what goes on. I didn't create Daredevil, so I'm not about to stand here and say that I'm the only one who gets to play with the toy.
I like being able to have a conversation. I like being able to do a vocal interview. — © Mark Waid
I like being able to have a conversation. I like being able to do a vocal interview.
You don't want to hit readers over the head like they're completely incapable of picking up on subtlety.
By coincidence and not design, 'Everstar' is written and drawn by an all-female creative team, and it makes me smile to think that there may be young female readers out there, future writers and artists, who get to see that comics doesn't have to be a 'boys' club.'
I know my 'Archie' history.
I do like Hank Pym.
When I first did 'Empire,' it was a severe break from everything I'd written up to that point, which is all very continuity-driven, super-heroic, and ethics and morals-infused. 'Empire' was a chance to break away from that.
I'm a great salesman when I believe in a product that somebody else is producing, but I always feel very awkward and clumsy asking for money for my work.
Anyone can write a detective story about a detective who fails, for Pete's sake. That's pretty unambitious.
I don't write stories about despair. I write stories about hope.
I'm a big fan of when you model a character as someone with a biological origin, doing deep dives and a lot of research.
There's a reason Archie didn't go the way of Betty Boop or Davy Crockett or Woody Woodpecker, forgotten relics of a bygone era, and it's because when 'Archie' stories are at their best, anyone of any age can see a little bit of themselves in them.
To my mind, a mix of veterans and rookies is number one on the list of 'things that make a good Avengers team.' — © Mark Waid
To my mind, a mix of veterans and rookies is number one on the list of 'things that make a good Avengers team.'
I broke into comics by working as a press reporter for the industry, for a trade press in comics, and reporting on events and reporting on books and so forth, and I got to know some of the editors at DC Comics in the mid-'80s.
We have a lot of supergeniuses in the Marvel universe, but very few of them are women.
I love writing comedy.
I'll still do print comics; as long as there's a market, I'll still be there. I just have a hard time believing that's the future.
What sets 'Archie' apart from the many, many times I've reworked and rebooted long-standing characters is that this time, it was really scary.
Certainly, your characters - whether they are superheroes are not - should have foibles. They should have problems; they should have things that their powers can't solve. That's what makes them nuanced, interesting characters. They can have intense motivations. They should have intense motivations to do what they do.
What I need is for comics to not cheapen out and just do what they think a bunch of bloodthirsty 15 year old fans want.
Maybe this is because I'm a comics historian as much as anything else, but I really have a deep-seated respect for the characters that have been around since before I was born and are probably going to outlive me.
Everyone knows what it's like to make the wrong decision for the right reasons. For me, wrong decisions are the heart of drama - a character who's always making the right decisions is boring.
I'm not a big fan of the George Lucas school of meddling and tinkering. That's a slippery slope.
A superhero is someone who, at some point or in some way, inspires hope or is the enemy of cynicism.
I'm a big veteran of being able to, in one comic, explain to you everything that you need to know to get forward in the story without you having to refer back to years of continuity and a universe in these superhero comics.
I knew I really wanted to work in comics in 1979.
I love Jughead. I love his one-step-removed perspective on everything in Riverdale. And I love the fact that he wears that stupid hat.
The first rule of new media is nobody gets rich, but everybody gets paid, in a perfect world. Maybe you don't get fabulously wealthy doing your webcomic, but as long as you can make a decent living.
I think superheroes are about flying. They're not about moping.
If you go back and look at the first issue of 'Indestructible Hulk,' if you have a sharp eye, you'll catch something that I totally forgot to put in there. In my horror, I only realized after the fact that I took totally for granted that everyone in the world knows what triggers the transformation.
When you're a kid, regardless of the age you grew up, everything is high opera. With hormones raging, you have to fight external and internal battles that you've never had to deal with before. Unlike Tony Stark and Steve Rogers, who have seen it all and been through it all, everything heightens the drama.
What's interesting is that younger characters just have a more vibrant, exciting point of view on the world. They are more emotional, they are more dramatic, and they are just electric.
I love 'Archie' comics.
For me, it's infinitely more interesting to read or watch a character making decisions they think are right, but the audience knows differently, and seeing that disconnect. The only way characters can grow and learn is by making the wrong decisions and then learning from them.
When I was a kid, what captivated me about detective fiction were the puzzles more than the detectives or their enemies. And as I've gotten older, I see a lot of merit in setting your investigative sights higher than figuring out how someone stole Encyclopedia Brown's bicycle.
Every ongoing character has to start somewhere.
The fun of writing established characters is that there's a rich mythology to draw from - you get to play with toys you loved as a kid. — © Mark Waid
The fun of writing established characters is that there's a rich mythology to draw from - you get to play with toys you loved as a kid.
Hulk fans are impossible to please.
In Marvel Comics, the worst thing was always that your loved ones could be attacked, or you could be horribly beaten in a knock-down, drag-out fight, but in the Superman comics, you would be run out of town with people throwing rotten vegetables at you and waving a sign that said, 'Superman, Who Needs You?'
Serial fiction is a conceit of comic books and soap operas. As one goes, so goes the other in terms of public consciousness.
We're brought up to believe in a fairytale-romance sort of way that true love is out there and true loves don't care about what you look like and stuff, just what's down inside. And that's probably true, but what's also true, sadly, is that true loves are very rare and very hard to find.
Especially in the digital age, people want everything now, now, now.
Juggling a huge cast is a bear.
If you're ruling the world, you can't trust anybody. Because even those who profess to be working in your interest - those are also villains in and of their own right.
I wouldn't mind taking a stab at... I'd love to take a shot at 'Doctor Strange' at some point.
Younger characters are just much more emotional.
There have been many days when I have had to work up to writing 'Irredeemable' because I just didn't feel like wallowing in that world, feeling those emotions... but that's the process.
The idea of lasting consequences isn't your usual 'Archie' trope. — © Mark Waid
The idea of lasting consequences isn't your usual 'Archie' trope.
Know what your characters want, know what they need most, know what they fear most, and don't be fearful of facing it, no matter how unpleasant it may be.
I don't know if you'd do a Marvel story on Ferguson, because it trivializes what the real flesh-and-blood people on the ground are doing there. But you can make an allegory and deal with the bigger questions.
There is a reductive nature to the Internet, and it's not limited to comic book news sites and stuff: it's everybody. There is a reductive nature of it, by which anything that's said very quickly gets reduced down to the next. Reduced, reduced, reduced to the point where rumors with some sense of nuance to them just become fact.
If I wanted to write a bunch of comics about 50-year-olds sitting around having a conversation about politics, that would be realistic, but it'd be the dullest comic in the world.
I love the challenge of taking established, iconic comics characters and showing readers why they remain contemporary.
Heroism is heroism, regardless of the timeframe or the backdrop.
Indestructible does not mean utterly invincible.
Style and entertainment tastes change, but the core emotions of being a kid - which, not coincidentally, are the core foundations of any good story - are constant.
Find me anybody in comics who has a longer history of yanking defeat from the jaws of victory than Bruce Banner.
I'm not as good a prose writer as I'd like to be, but I never aspired to that.
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