Ann Nocenti

“It always amazes me that Japanese comics have, like, 200 pages. How do they do that? They're fat books; it's a whole different kind of comic that's very close to their films. So I'm drawing from that history and bringing it here - bringing it to Katana.”

“Is it possible to run a big industrial corporation in a benevolent fashion? We see these days that even the hippest companies hide some rotten practices to make their profit margins work.”

“Rotgut was, to me, just this way to get into the underground of Manhattan where you have these little pockets a villain could rise from; a rot in the bowels of Manhattan. It led to these stories that were just very creepy.”

“I walked the streets of New York; I would feel the presence of Daredevil. I would see him up on the rooftop. What you are doing in your life, you start to see in your book. It all starts to merge together.”

“The Creeper in the 'Katana' series is the same Creeper that will be in 'Villains Month.'”

“I like talking about comic book process, and one of the things is that I have plans going ahead for years, and the plans constantly get thrown away and shifted. There's a difference between planning and what actually happens in life, and comics have a life of their own.”

“I have a fascination for extra-judicial societies and underground cultures, and in situations where justice can only be found outside the law, and how these societies have evolved over the centuries.”

“Mythology contains a rich history of legendary weapons, most famously 'Excalibur,' weapons that could only be used by the pure of heart.”

“Green Arrow has gone through so many changes; he's been right-wing, he's been left-wing, he's been rich, he's been poor, he's been a social justice guy, then when I got him, he was a rich playboy guy. So it was a lot harder to get into a character that has so many personas in the past, and I just looked at his anger.”

“There are a lot of Chinese comics, but the Chinese comics tend to be more historical and conservative. Japanese culture, just the comics are amazing. They're like films: very few words; they move so much in these books with hundreds of pages.”

“When I read Katana's run in 'Birds of Prey,' I was curious about her restraint. She didn't laugh, didn't loosen up, didn't seem to have a light side. I thought, well, that demure nature is what we believe of women of Old Japan, so she seemed not like a modern Japanese but from an earlier time.”

“Katana is a trained, disciplined martial artist. She removes herself from Birds of Prey to go on a personal journey in Japantown, San Francisco, and pursue a quest for vengeance against the Sword Clan, the men that killed her husband.”

“Green Arrow was a very complicated character to take on because he has archaic weaponry. Catwoman, I think is more of a simple archetype to grasp, so it will be about nuance. But I think you need three or four issues before you say, 'Ah ha! Now I really know how to write this character!' You're carrying them around with you.”

“I actually have a peculiar feminism that does not involve the idea that women shouldn't be sexy. Female characters written in comics have always been pretty damned sexy, and used their sexuality. And I don't have any problem with that.”

“I know my predecessors have written a Green Arrow who has a lot of thoughts about social justice, but that was a more evolved, older, wiser Green Arrow.”

“I'm very much about stories that are fast but character development that moves slow.”

“Catwoman isn't a 'joiner.' She's a solo operator. She isn't naturally heroic; she's fairly selfish.”

“I think writers process their own experiences through the characters and situations they write. So for Batman, I used my own experience of losing a loved one. Grief is a strange place; it's like an altered state. You might sleep too much, so you can see the dead in your dreams.”

“I wanted the new Green Arrow to somehow sense his long, brutal past. It's like someone who has past lives they can't remember but feels occasional flashes of.”

“I live in New York City, and one day many years ago I was with a poet, Gregory Corso, walking through Greenwich Village. He pointed to a doorway in an alley that he said led to a tunnel under Manhattan, a tunnel he'd use to run from the cops. I started learning about old Prohibition-era speakeasy tunnels under the city, for running whiskey.”