Steve Dillon
61 quotes
Biography
Steve Dillon was a British comic book artist, best known for his work with writer Garth Ennis on Hellblazer, Preacher and The Punisher.
"[Preacher is] funny, dirty, a little bit frightening, but, ultimately, very satisfying—a bit like losing your virginity."
"I aim to find time in my schedule for a decent night's sleep without cutting into my drinking time."
"[Creator-owned projects] give you the chance to do your own ideas. But there's a lot of fun to be had working on characters that somebody else owns. I mean, before I die, I'd love to do a Batman [story]. I won't get as much money for it, unless it sells really really well. But it's something I'd like to do."
"I think a lot of mainstream comics don't appeal to women, because that's the male fantasy of superheroes. [...] Preacher's more character-driven than it is action-driven."
"Superheroes, the best superheroes, tend to be more soap opera-ish -- like the X-Men, and the old Spiderman stuff. But, that's for a continuing-forever sort of series. We've got a definite [Preacher] story that's got a definite finish, so soap opera is a bit of a disjointed term. But we do have the character subplot stuff going on."
"[I]'ve got so much workload that [I] work about 12 hours a day. The last thing [I] want to do when [I] finish is read comics. It's like what Garth was saying. [I] work and then do something completely different. [...] It's part of the job really to keep aware of what other people are doing. But I just really haven't had the time to do anything else, anything else rather than the comic."
"I was more than happy to do [Hellblazer] as I ended up not being that happy on Animal Man, as it wasn't the book for me. Because I hate drawing animals, so it was rather silly of me in the first place to say yes. But it was the first offer of a regular (ongoing) comic book, which, for me, was a big thing."
"When I start work with a new writer, they often ask "What do you like to draw?" and my pat answer is always, "A good story". I'm not one of these artists into drawing giant robots or soldiers or big-titted women. Because for me, it's all about the story."
"The acting side of comics is quite important to me. The facial expressions, how they interact and all that sort of thing. [...] I can [draw big fight scenes] if I need to, but not as good as some, because some people have a love for it, so that love shows through. I have a love for drawing people sitting in the pub talking. My specialised subject!"
"I haven't re-read [Preacher] yet. [...] Occasionally I see pages from it, and probably like most comic artists, the moment you see a drawing you did – no matter how many years ago – you can remember exactly how you did it, what the situation was when you were doing it, what time of night it was, whether you were drinking coffee or whether you were half-pissed! It all comes flooding back, just like smells or music bring back memories."
"I've changed my technique a few times in my career. [...] Sometimes you just change to challenge yourself. But also over the six years of Preacher, [my] style [changed] a bit. It's unusual to have a run that's so long that you can actually notice how the characters change. If I'd only done it for a year it wouldn't have changed that much. The characters just evolved naturally."
"Paul was a great help to me. He saved me a lot of time because one of the problems I had was that I used to draw comics when I fancied it, and suddenly now I had to draw comics when I had to. So I had to do three pages a week whether I wanted to or not. That'd be a luxury now, just doing three pages a week. But at the time it was a bit much for me to handle and Paul helped me make a quantum leap which would have taken me months longer if I'd been doing it myself."
"I did a long series that I did on my own, Cry of The Werewolf. [...] I spent a whole summer drawing werewolves and there was my girlfriend and her mate sunbathing topless in the back garden, but I was there drawing werewolves. And there was nothing I could do about it because I had to do six pages a week. (laughs)"
"It's hard when you've done [something] yourself to step back and look at it but hopefully [Preacher] does have some sort of timeless quality because of the universal themes that are tackled, so that many years later people can still connect with it."
"I always end up working with writers with a twisted sense of humour and a fine sense of warped violence. And that's right up my strasse."
"It's been ironic, really, because I got into comics wanting to draw superheroes. I used to draw superheroes for fun when I was a kid but in my career, from the earliest days, I wasn't drawing superheroes. Nick Fury: Agent of SHIELD wasn't really a superhero. The first thing that I did, the Hulk, wasn't really a superhero either. If you look at the Doctor Who stuff, what I did for Warrior, then if you look at the work I did on Hellblazer and Preacher as well, that's not superheroes either. The closest I ever got to doing a superhero comic was Wolverine: Origins."
"I suppose [the apex of my work] would have to be Preacher. It's the thing that's the longest lasting, it's the thing that's seemed to have had the most effect on people. It's also something that me and Garth came up with ourselves."
"I drew a lot of scenes [in Preacher] of people vomiting. I'm probably the world's leading expert on drawing vomiting now."
"I've been lucky to have worked with some really good writers on Punisher. There's been Garth Ennis, Daniel Way, Jason Aaron and now Becky. I just look forward to seeing the scripts come through. When a writer knows what they're doing and know[s] the story they want to tell, it makes life a whole lot easier."
"As [Garth and I] talked it over, I thought [Preacher] was a great idea for a story. I was very conscious that nothing like it had been done by a big, mainstream comic publisher before and I wondered if we’d get away with the stuff we wanted to do. As it turned out, DC, and Vertigo's Karen Berger in particular, were great. There were a few battles but, for the most part, we managed to get it done the way we wanted it."
"It's not like watching a car crash. It's like watching people setting fire to their own cars and ramming into school buses at high speed."
"Steve Dillon was the finest of artists [and] finest of people. Working with him was an honor."
"Most of you already know there are few in the history of comics [who] could touch Steve for storytelling, and I fear I [might] have picked his brain ad nauseum on the subject - but this is the point, and why I loved Steve - he made me feel like an equal, a colleague in "the trenches". [...] His work has been a huge influence on mine, and his kindness and frank wisdom even moreso."
"I was immediately impressed with his talent, and we gave him a script without hesitation. [...] His style was like a muscular version of Brian Bolland's work. He always made sure to tell the story first and he made the process look easy."
"Steve was an inspiration to us all, and a big brother to so many. [...] He and Brett Ewins inspired a whole generation of us to start making comic books."