You spend so much time writing a character the way I did with Buddy Baker and then Green Arrow that you start to care about them. And you almost think of them as people, you know? – Jeff Lemire
There’s something so arrogant about us creating robots that are more and more human-looking or acting. It’s like we’re playing God. Let’s create something that’s a reflection of us, but it’s inferior. – Jeff Lemire
You run the risk, whenever you build your story around a central mystery, of either letting it go too long, or revealing it too soon and then taking the wind out of the sails of the narrative. – Jeff Lemire
One of my favorite things about the DC Universe, growing up as a reader, was just how big it was and just how many characters and superheroes there were. And how many odd characters there were. – Jeff Lemire
I never really approach any project or story thinking of themes first or what a certain character ‘represents.’ Maybe other writers do, but for me, it just starts with the characters and a certain emotion I want to convey. It usually isn’t until I get deeper into a book and look back a bit that I start to see the themes, etc. – Jeff Lemire
Self-publishing worked for me. Being able to put your work in print, even if it’s a tiny print-on-demand print run of a dozen or so copies, shows publishers and editors a completed piece of work and that you can follow through on a project. – Jeff Lemire
I think when science fiction is at its worst, it’s just spaceships flying around shooting at each other. There has to be a lot more going on than that… science fiction is about exploring new worlds and new ideas, not about ray guns and action, necessarily. – Jeff Lemire
I look at my son and his relationship to technology, and I think back to when I was six and how wildly different the world is in that regard. I see him using an iPhone and all this stuff, and then I think back to when I was six. We didn’t even have computers in our houses at all yet. This is a huge gap between our experiences as children. – Jeff Lemire
When I first seriously decided to become a cartoonist would have been ’99/2000, right before 9/11. I’ve been writing and illustrating stories in the world post-9/11 since then, watching the world change around me. – Jeff Lemire
I’m not a big fan of introducing a bunch of new mysteries into a story without really knowing where they’re going because you just end up struggling at the end to make sense of them and make it all seem like you planned it all along. – Jeff Lemire
When I approached ‘Animal Man,’ I approached it as if it wasn’t a reboot, as if the Grant Morrison and Jamie Delano stuff happened. I mean, as much as I could make it all make sense, it still all happened. – Jeff Lemire
I write and draw from the gut. I often don’t know what my stories are about until they’re done. – Jeff Lemire
I think America’s obsession with guns and with violence in media and society is a horrible sickness. – Jeff Lemire
I started in comics in 2005, ten years ago, and at that time, I didn’t have a cell phone. I don’t even think I had a computer myself, you know. And just in those ten years, how much technology has changed. – Jeff Lemire
The Green Arrow stuff that I’ve responded to from the past is the Mike Grell stuff. I’ve liked a lot of other stuff, but I think for me, the direction and the mood and the tone that I really want is something much darker and more aggressive and really fast-paced action. – Jeff Lemire
It’s not hard to look at our own world and draw parallels between 9/11, for example, and how Muslims are viewed or treated by North American culture since then. Just to see the way fear can breed hatred and intolerance for people who aren’t the same as us – and that’s certainly part of what’s at the heart of ‘Descender.’ – Jeff Lemire
I never – when I go into a project, I don’t think too much about if there’s a lot of other sci-fi books out there or horror books or whatever. I just tell the stories I want to tell, and I think that is evident on the page. – Jeff Lemire
‘Bloodshot,’ for me, was unlike anything I’d ever done before, which was really the draw of it. In addition to trying to reconnect with my earlier work, I also wanted to try to do something that was completely new and different. – Jeff Lemire
When I write Superboy and other DC characters, it’s about boiling them down to core concepts. – Jeff Lemire
If you read the whole Vertigo ‘Animal Man’ series of 89 issues or whatever, each writer has a completely different take on his origin. If you try to put them all together, they contradict one another. I had to pick and choose to make up a new origin that makes sense to new readers. – Jeff Lemire
I can handle a lot of work. I’ve always been able to. I’m a very focused individual. I come to my studio at about 7:30 in the morning and exit almost 5:00 P.M. In that time, those eight or nine hours, it’s kind of laser focus on whatever I’m working on. There aren’t really any distractions or anything. – Jeff Lemire
Sometimes, if you have a lot of history with a character and a lot of affection, it’s hard for you to do anything with that character. Like with Swamp Thing, for instance, I revere the Alan Moore run so much that it would be hard for me to do my own Swamp Thing. I care too much about the way it was done before. – Jeff Lemire
There is definitely a thematic lineage between ‘Descender’ and my previous work, like ‘Sweet Tooth’ and ‘Trillium.’ – Jeff Lemire
Specifically, in Canada, the First Nations are often overlooked in pop culture or in general, and when things are reported about our First Nations, it’s often negative things – about the hardships they face and what-not. – Jeff Lemire
In general, I feel so much of pop culture is set in the generic big city, particularly comics. I feel like there are so many other stories to tell. – Jeff Lemire
I’ve always been attracted to themes of isolation in my work – in my independent work and my DC work. – Jeff Lemire
