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" That's all the Joker is. It's Batman without love. The Riddler is the opposite of that. It's the detective in him. "
Tom King
Joker
Him
Detective
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" You throw sadness, you throw depression, you throw horror at Batman, he's like, 'Yeah, yawn, I've done that.' You throw happiness at him? That's something that riles him; that's something that he's not used to. "
Tom King
Sadness
Him
Happiness
" If you're a writer, you're constantly doubting yourself. "
Tom King
Doubting
Writer
You
" I've said this before, but I don't like putting captions in my comic books. I feel, for me, they become a crutch, a way to ignore the essential fact that our medium is a visual medium, and the greatest pleasures to be derived from comics are how stories can be told with pictures. "
Tom King
Way
Ignore
Feel
" I don't believe in writing for goals, or else I'd write essays. "
Tom King
Essays
Believe
Writing
" It's funny, you know: my mother-in-law, who doesn't have an ounce of nerd in her, is just so excited by the fact that I write 'Batman' because she'll see an article about me in the 'Washington Post' or 'The Wall Street Journal' or something. And that means so much to me. "
Tom King
You
She
Me
" If you actually read the 'New Gods' tetralogy, this epic without an ending, it's like dipping your head into madness. You feel a little bit like the Joker for a little while. And I mean that in the best way possible. "
Tom King
Joker
You
Ending
" I'm a firm believer in putting your experiences in your writing, of bleeding into the page. "
Tom King
Experiences
Writing
Firm
" I wanted to look like the most diverse writer in comics! Spy genre, space genre, crime genre, and then you realize that it's all actually the same thing. "
Tom King
Look
Space
You
" When I was dealing with a lot of Iraqis, lies were constant; people constantly lied to you. It's a part of their culture. They wanted to please you so much, they were willing to lie to you to please you. "
Tom King
Culture
You
People
" My first book is called 'Carry the Three.' It's definitely in a drawer, and it's terrible. I never sent it to anybody. My wife read it, but nobody else. "
Tom King
Three
Wife
Book
" My scripts, they're pretty serious. I basically just describe stuff. I don't put too many notes and letters to the editors. But when I wrote 'KGBLT,' in parentheses I wrote, 'Well this is the best thing I've ever written. It will all be downhill from here. I'm so sorry for the rest of my career.' "
Tom King
Career
Rest
Sorry
" I served my country; I did that. I was in the C.I.A., and I served in Iraq and Afghanistan, and I love this country with every part of my body, and I was willing to risk my body and my family for it. But I wake up in a country I don't understand anymore. "
Tom King
Wake Up
Love
Family
" I love comics for comics' sake. Always have. Always will. "
Tom King
Sake
Will
Love
" Batman gets close to the insanity of Gotham, to the craziness, to what drives that city mad, and not be driven mad himself - or, at least, most of the time he isn't. That's most like the mission of the C.I.A. We get into the heads of our enemies without becoming our enemy. "
Tom King
Mission
Insanity
Enemy
" Writing is weaponized empathy. It's putting yourself in someone else's head. It's finding what's in them that relates to you. "
Tom King
Finding
Empathy
Writing
" I try not to push characters too close to myself because they get harder to write, but as a writer, you try to find odd little personal experiences that you hope are universal or think might be universal. "
Tom King
Push
Find
Hope
" I'm a comic book writer, so I work with a lot of artists. Sometimes, you get art back, and you're like, 'Oh, no.' Sometimes, you get art back and you're like, 'That's exactly what I imagined in my head,' and you're happy about that. "
Tom King
Book
You
Work
" I grew up in a weird environment. My mother's head of the home video division, basically. She played a big role in the invention of DVD - she won an Emmy for it. Or rather, she's part of a group that won an Emmy for it. "
Tom King
Home
Environment
Group
" I've been the desperate writer before. I wrote a novel, and they paid me for it, and I've had those calls from my agent, and I'm like, 'Do you need me to ghost-write a vampire novel? What do you need? I'll do Transformers... tell me!' "
Tom King
Me
Like
Need
" I grew up your classic nerd who was not good at throwing balls or kicking them. I was good at reading stories by myself. That was my specialty as a child. "
Tom King
Myself
Good
Classic
" I love continuity. I was a continuity nerd growing up. I loved buying a comic in the middle of something and loved digging for back issues or going forward and trying to figure it all out. "
Tom King
Loved
Trying
Growing Up
" You can't tell a Batman story without the Joker, and you can't tell a Joker story without Batman. They're just the symbols of the best and worst of humanity. "
Tom King
You
Worst
Story
" I always felt like the 'outsider' kind of kid. "
Tom King
Outsider
Always
Felt
" It's hard to find a unique look for a Batman villain. Everything like a scar on the face, or a skin condition, there are so many unique signifiers taken. "
Tom King
Look
Face
Unique
" The idea of doing a buffer, sexier Riddler - I like that. I think he's a reflection of Batman, and I think of him like a scary, evil Batman. Like Bruce Wayne without a conscience. "
Tom King
Doing
Reflection
Scary
" I went to college in New York. I interned at Vertigo, and then I interned at Marvel working for Chris Claremont. Just to age myself, this was in 2000. "
Tom King
New
Age
New York
" What eventually you find in comics is the only thing unique you can bring to a character who's been around for 80 years is yourself. "
Tom King
Find
You
Yourself
" Batman's not mine. He doesn't necessarily belong to me. As a character, he belongs first to the audience and second to the hundreds of writers who have been writing him in comics for 75 years. "
Tom King
Me
Him
Character
" Sometimes I understand how Bruce Wayne feels. When you take down a terrorist or something, there's always six guys to take their place. Everyone is Hydra. But you still have to do it. "
Tom King
Understand
You
Sometimes
" It's good to be a cynic. I'm a cynic. But the best part of being a cynic is somebody proving you wrong. "
Tom King
Proving
You
Wrong