Steve Dillon Quotes

I aim to find time in my schedule for a decent night's sleep without cutting into my drinking time.

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.

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!

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.

[Preacher is] funny, dirty, a little bit frightening, but, ultimately, very satisfying—a bit like losing your virginity.

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.

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.

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]'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.

[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 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.

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.

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 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)

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.