Kurt Busiek Quotes

• It strikes me that the only reason to take apart a pocket watch, or a car engine, aside from the simple delight of disassembly, is to find out how it works. To understand it, so you can put it back together again better than before, or build a new one that goes beyond what the old one could do. We've been taking apart the superhero for ten years or more; it's time to put it back together and wind it up, time to take it out on the road and floor it, see what it'll do.

  Kurt Busiek

  Simple, Years, Wind

  Kurt Busiek (2011). “Astro City: Life in the Big City (New Edition)”, p.9, DC

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• What really matters is not how well a character fits a definition, but how strongly he or she resonates. Characters with strong, resonant ideas at their core will have more of an impact on the cultural consciousness than a character who's just an empty collection of attributes.

  Kurt Busiek

  Strong, Character, Impact

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• At one point, I worked up a list of five requirements for a superhero: superpowers, a costume, a code name, a mission, and a milieu. If the character had three out of the five, they were a superhero. But that's just my definition.

  Kurt Busiek

  Character, Names, Superhero

  Interview with Tasha Robinson, www.avclub.com. February 14, 2001.

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• Superhero creators who engage in deconstruction fall into two categories: There are the guys who do it because it's easy, because it gets an audience reaction if you point out that superheroes must be a bunch of psychotic nuts. And there are the guys who do it because they're actually interested, and they're trying to get at what's going on underneath. They're interested in the process and the results.

  Kurt Busiek

  Fall, Nuts, Two

  Source: www.avclub.com

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• Youve got to leave the reader with more than just a name and a costume - they need to know who the character is, what theyre like, what kind of attitude they have, what sort of role they play.

  Kurt Busiek

  Attitude, Character, Play

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• I tend to think that the best face of humanity is that we learn. We explore, we study, we think.

  Kurt Busiek

  Thinking, Humanity, Faces

  "Creator's Commentary: Kurt Busiek and Alex Ross on 'Kirby: Genesis' #1". Interview with Charles Webb, www.mtv.com. June 17, 2011.

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• I don't view Twitter as a promotional tool but as a really, really, really cool cocktail party.

  Kurt Busiek

  Party, Views, Tools

  "Mtv Geek Interview: Kurt Busiek And Brent Anderson At The Barcelona Comicon!". Interview with Janna O'shea, www.mtv.com. April 22, 2011.

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• It's fun to take a piece of formula and go someplace else with it and see what happens.

  Kurt Busiek

  Fun, Pieces, Formulas

  Source: www.avclub.com

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• I like superheroes. I like the drama of it, the stirring, larger-than-life aspect.

  Kurt Busiek

  Drama, Superhero, Larger Than Life

  Interview with Tasha Robinson, www.avclub.com. February 14, 2001.

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• I'm a writer. I just love telling stories.

  Kurt Busiek

  Stories, Telling Stories

  Interview with Tasha Robinson, www.avclub.com. February 14, 2001.

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• Maybe I had a 'secret identity,' but then when you think about it, don't we all? A part of ourselves very few people ever get to see. The part we think of as 'me.' The part that deals with the big stuff. Makes the real choices. The part everything else is a reflection of.

  Kurt Busiek

  Real, Reflection, Thinking

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• The Hulk is rage personified, just, "I don't like something. Break it." And that's a great concept for a seven- or eight-year-old.

  Kurt Busiek

  Years, Eight, Rage

  Source: www.avclub.com

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• Dracula, if he could see modern corporations, wouldnt like them much. He took care of his people, at least as he saw it. They had very little freedom, but they had a protector.

  Kurt Busiek

  People, Care, Littles

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• When you have a novel set in a fictional history, you still should get your history right.

  Kurt Busiek

  Should, Novel, Stills

  "To Be Kurt, Not Short: A Three-Part Interview with Kurt Busiek". Interview with A. David Lewis, www.popmatters.com. July 9, 2002.

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• The characters are, by their nature, archetypes that can serve different metaphors.

  Kurt Busiek

  Character, Different, Metaphor

  Source: www.avclub.com

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• I'm not building each one character around one metaphor, so much as trying to build a heroic archetype that can be used to express the kind of metaphors that I find in each story.

  Kurt Busiek

  Character, Trying, Stories

  Source: www.avclub.com

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• I wanted to be a writer, but the idea of writing novels or movies seemed really intimidating. I never got more than a few pages into one.

  Kurt Busiek

  Writing, Ideas, Pages

  Source: www.avclub.com

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• I think the Hulk has always appealed very strongly to much younger readers than Spider-Man, because Spider-Man is an adolescent character, and the Hulk is a very childlike character.

  Kurt Busiek

  Character, Men, Thinking

  Source: www.avclub.com

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• I think that the superhero-as-metaphor involves a superhero being some sort of intellectual, emotional, or other such concept writ large. But I don't know that it's a necessary part of the appeal that the superhero be superior.

  Kurt Busiek

  Emotional, Thinking, Superhero

  Source: www.avclub.com

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• "Superhero" is a term that's been borrowed in order to say "big and larger than life and loud and active and dumb." And I don't think that's a useful definition. That's more a dismissal.

  Kurt Busiek

  Thinking, Order, Superhero

  Source: www.avclub.com

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• I think the purpose of deconstruction is to take something apart and see how it works. If you're not going to put it back together again and watch it go, what's the point?

  Kurt Busiek

  Thinking, Together Again, Purpose

  Source: www.avclub.com

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• I could name you a dozen superheroes whose powers I'd like to have. But if I could have any power in the world, it would be the power to read or watch a creative work and absorb the technical skill of the people who made it. Because then I could have even more fun writing. That's my core identity.

  Kurt Busiek

  Fun, Writing, Skills

  Source: www.avclub.com

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• There are a lot of discussions where people will decide that James Bond is a superhero, because he's a larger-than-life hero who beats the bad guys by doing larger-than-life things. And I don't think that's a useful definition.

  Kurt Busiek

  Hero, Thinking, People

  Source: www.avclub.com

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• The metaphors exist for the stories.

  Kurt Busiek

  Stories, Metaphor

  Source: www.avclub.com

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• I've always been positive about superheroes.

  Kurt Busiek

  Superhero

  Source: www.avclub.com

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