I came to think that nobody from England could draw American comic books, because they were clearly all done by this sort of Mafia, all these guys with Italian and Irish names who had the whole thing sewn up. It was actually seeing a comic book drawn by Barry Smith, who was about my age, and English. Dave Gibbons Read Quote
I vividly remember my first ‘Superman’ comic, which my granddad bought me when I was about 7. From that point on, all I wanted to do is draw comics. And specifically, superhero and science fiction comics. Basically I used to copy comic books, and draw my own comics on scrap paper. Dave Gibbons Read Quote
With the ‘Watchmen’ comic, we attempted to tell it in an accessible way. I deliberately made the artwork very clear, deceptively so. You think you’re sucking on a sweetie, but it turns out to be a sugar-coated chili. Dave Gibbons Read Quote
I think readers are always patient. Look at the ‘Harry Potter’ series. Some have given up on this generation of kids as game and TV addicts, but lots of people spend lots of time patiently reading through hundreds of pages of dense prose. I think reading a comic by comparison is a lot more immediate. Dave Gibbons Read Quote
In comics, there are depths that don’t reveal themselves immediately, and the stuff that you might consider anal about ‘Watching the Watchmen’ – like the notes where I plot the rotation of a perfume bottle through the air – might not be particularly obvious to anyone who reads it. Dave Gibbons Read Quote
People unacquainted with graphic novels, including journalists, tend to think of ‘Watchmen’ as a book by Alan Moore that happens to have some illustrations. And that does a disservice to the entire form. Dave Gibbons Read Quote
One of the things when you’re drawing a comic book is that you’re spending four or five times as long to draw it as the writer takes to write it. In my career I’ve had to spend a week drawing something that a writer has thrown out in an hour. And there’s nothing worse than having to work on something that no previous thought has gone into. Dave Gibbons Read Quote
When you’re drawing something, you kind of run a movie in your head. You might close your eyes or stare into the distance and kind of see a movie unfolding and, you know, grab a certain moment or think, ‘Oh, yeah, that’s when we need just the point that he appears around the corner but just as she’s getting into the car,’ you know? Dave Gibbons Read Quote
Comics is all about making it believable and helping people to get completely lost in a fictional world. Dave Gibbons Read Quote
I generally like very visually striking films. I love a lot of Stanley Kubrick’s films. I would have to say ‘Dr. Strangelove’, which of course has got resonance in ‘Watchmen’. It’s a favorite movie of mine. Dave Gibbons Read Quote
