Jeff Lemire

“'Plutona' is the story of five kids who find the body of the world's greatest superhero in the woods after school one day. It's about how this discovery, and the decisions they make, affect them as a group and individually.”

“There are so many books I love for different reasons. For superhero stuff, I always go back to Alan Moore's 'Watchmen' or his 'Swamp Thing' run. Those are my two favorites, and there are indie books that I really love, like Eddie Campbell's 'Alec' books and 'From Hell.'”

“You can write a script, but that's just a starting point as a cartoonist. The heart of the process comes when you start to draw it, and you work out how to lay the page out, how best to tell the story.”

“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.”

“For me, Bloodshot was the least appealing character that Valiant had. He was so cold.”

“Why not take a science fiction comic and put the characters in a small town to gain their particular perspective? A lot of that comes from me growing up in a small town on a farm, so that's what I know and what I'm comfortable with. My drawing style is also very sparse and minimalist, so a rural setting complements that.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“There's a lot of mystery just inherent in the story of 'Descender.' There's sort of a central mystery that runs throughout it.”

“I feel like there are comic book artists who are comic book artists, and then there's comic book artists who are cartoonists.”

“I've always enjoyed teen characters, and kids as well. For whatever reason, I seem to have an ability to do it sort of well, and I enjoy doing it.”

“I don't play video games because I know that if I ever started, I'd never be able to maintain a career again.”

“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?”

“I grew up in a pretty religious house. My family was Roman Catholic, and I couldn't wait to get away from that. But that doesn't mean I'm not a spiritual person.”

“I never thought I would work in mainstream superhero comics or Valiant or Marvel. I just set out to make the kinds of stories I wanted to make, which at the beginning was small personal stuff like 'Essex County.'”

“I am sort of pessimistic in that way where I often think the worst of people.”

“I've found I sometimes have the best success working on characters I didn't really connect to right away.”

“Sony is looking at 'Descender' as a franchise of films rather than just one movie.”