Scott McCloud Quotes

Art, as I see it, is any human activity which doesn’t grow out of either of our species’ two basic instincts: survival and reproduction.

I've always been very forward-looking, and it was actually kind of difficult to turn my gaze backwards to look at comics history.

Comic book readers are just as abandoned by the corporate system as the creators, despite the importance supposedly given their hard-earned dollars. The average comics shop can offer only a tiny fraction of an industrywide selection that is itself extremely limited in scope. And even when readers know exactly what they want, the search can be maddeningly futile.

Today, comics is one of the very few forms of mass communication in which individual voices still have a chance to be heard.

And what better way to reinvent the form than to toss virtually 99% of everything that's been done with it and start with a brand-new canvas, reinvent it from the ground up? Digital comics gave me the opportunity to do that, and producing things digitally gave me the opportunity to do that.

There's a very big part of me that just wants to take all of comics history and toss it on the bonfire. I'd sort of like to get on to the future.

When you're free of editorial control, you owe it to yourself to obtain feedback from friends and readers. Some take those criticisms to heart and incorporate it into their work, and some ignore them.

The idea that comics stores, distributors and publishers simply 'give the customers what they want' is nonsense. What the customers wanted they didn't get - and they left.

My dad was an inventor, and I think I've always had a rosy view of technology, or at least its potential.

Creator and reader are partners in the invisible creating something out of nothing, time and time again.

As I see it, mainstream comics now speak only to the hardcore few who stayed; conversing in a weird, garbled, visual pig latin only they can understand - rendering the term 'mainstream' a hollow joke - while the true mainstream, the other 99.9% of the populace, find enjoyment elsewhere.

I don't think the potential for comics in nonfiction has been exploited nearly as much as it could be.

By stripping down an image to essential meaning, an artist can simplify that meaning.

A medium is a bridge between two minds.

If a comic comes out on the scene and it's really knock-out brilliant, the community is pretty good about getting the word about good newcomers.

Space does for comics what time does for film!

To kill a man between panels is to condemn him to a thousand deaths.

It would take a lifetime to read all the webcomics published in one year.

It wasn't until I discovered comics that I actually began to approach drawing as a possible career.

I wouldn't necessarily have been making books about how to make comics if I'd really felt I knew how to make comics.

Learn from everyone. Follow no one. Watch for patterns. Work like hell.

My first influences were superhero artists.

All through my comics career, I was always trying to reinvent the form.

Webcomics are much bigger than any one scene can circumscribe.

My dad was an engineer and so I had this picture of science and technology and pursuits of the mind as being more impressive than artistic pursuits, which I saw a as kind of frivolous.

Nobody knows what will work until they try it. Some of comics' biggest success stories in recent years have explored subjects that no one was writing about at the time - stories no one had any reason to think would succeed. My advice? Write what you want to read. You'll have more fun doing it - and if all else fails, you'll always have at least one loyal reader.

The notion of getting under the hood and explaining how something works, that's fairly familiar territory to me.

The ancestors of printed comics drew, painted and carved their time-paths from beginning to end, without interruption, ... the infinite canvas.

If you just write the kinds of stories you think others will want to read, you'll be competing with cartoonists who are far more enthusiastic for that kind of comic than you are, and they'll kick your ass every time.

Form and content must never apologize for each other.