Douglas Wolk > Quotes

“As you explore the Marvel story, it becomes another world you can call your own, one that's constantly expanding and full of unfinished wonders. You can no more exhaust its possibilities than the real world's. (I have tried.) And spending time in that world can make you better equipped to live in the real one: more curious about how its systems fit together; more willing to explore what you don't yet understand, and accept that you can't know everything; more open to hope in the face of catastrophe; more aware that no matter how overwhelming your own life may seem, it's only part of a much bigger picture.”
― Douglas Wolk, All of the Marvels: A Journey to the Ends of the Biggest Story Ever Told

“There's a certain kind of rain that falls only in comics, a thick, persistent drizzle, much heavier than normal water, that bounces off whatever it hits, dripping from fedoras, running slowly down windowpanes and reflecting the doom in bad men's hearts. It's called an "eisnershpritz," and it's named after the late Will Eisner, one of the preeminent stylists of twentieth-century comics, who never drew a foreboding scene that couldn't be made a little more foreboding with a nice big downpour.”
― Douglas Wolk, Reading Comics: How Graphic Novels Work and What They Mean

“If he does find himself back in the mountain of Marvels, or if he never leaves it, I hope he finds its glorious imaginary world changing all the time, keeping pace with the real one in which he lives, and I hope he appreciates it for changing. I hope, too, that what he cares about is the story itself -- the characters, the images, the imaginative leaps and eleventh-hour improvisations that hold it together -- and its creators, rather than the business entity that stamped a logo everywhere on it. A story can never leave you; a corporation can never love you back.”
― Douglas Wolk, All of the Marvels: A Journey to the Ends of the Biggest Story Ever Told

“(Marvel belongs to Disney, DC to Time Warner) that are the kingpins of superhero comics.”
― Douglas Wolk, Comic-Con Strikes Again!

“What happens when we grow up? (We may try to put away childish things, but we can't, or shouldn't. The best thing that can happen is that we turn those things into something bigger and more beautiful.)”
― Douglas Wolk, All of the Marvels: A Journey to the Ends of the Biggest Story Ever Told

“More broadly, it's the place where people who really love stuff go to express that love, and where people who want to sell them stuff try desperately to woo them.”
― Douglas Wolk, Comic-Con Strikes Again!