He comic page is dying; I didn't want to go with it.
I hope that 'Gambit' doesn't take ten years, but it takes a little honing to get that tone and that voice exactly right. The character has such a specific voice in the comic, in the same way that Deadpool has a specific voice in the comic, that we want to make sure that we capture that voice on the page.
I want to be known as a funny comic not just a funny Latino comic. I want to be able to go everywhere and anywhere.
Most established comic writers have a fixed style or methodology, so what you get on page one of the first issue is about the same for the last page of the series.
A book is something that young readers can experience on their own time. They decide when to turn the page. They'll put their arm right on the page so you can't turn it because they're not ready to go to the next page yet. They just want to look at it again, or they want to read the book over and over because they really enjoy setting the pace themselves.
You can't teach someone to be funny, but you can teach comic timing. If you listen to a good comic, you can learn how to put it on a page.
Once I get over maybe a hundred pages, I won't go back to page one, but I might go back to page fifty-five, or twenty, even. But then every once in a while I feel the need to go to page one again and start rewriting.
I love my editor, but that would be the definition of hell to me to live with someone and have them go page by page through my manuscript. That I want to avoid at all costs.
So many people want to live their lives and their dreams through their own Facebook page or their Twitter page. They want to show every detail of their life to everyone in the world. That scares me because I don't have any Facebook page or Twitter I don't like it, I don't want it.
I'm not a natural comic, I don't think. That's why I gave up stand-up. It was hard. It involved a lot of death. Dying. Dying on stage. But it's one of those jobs you can only learn by doing it.
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.
Comics are not theatre - there's a very important difference in that the reader controls the page. You can linger on a page of comics as long as you want. You can read and go forward and then move back; you can reread, in one sitting or at your leisure. You can take as much time as you want to take in that story.
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.
I used to go to the comic store all the time. I was into comic cards, which are essentially baseball cards for comic book heroes. They have these cool stats on the back. I had collections of these things. I still have a lot of my collection at home.
I think the thinking is, in the comic books, I should pack as much onto a page as possible, because, you know, it's kind of the cheaper format, and you want to give readers as much as you can for their dollar.
I can't go on to page two until I can get page one as perfect as I can make it. That might mean I will rewrite and rewrite page one 20, 30, 50, 100 times.