Ann Nocenti Quotes

Ann Nocenti

Profession : Journalist

Birth : January 17, 1957

I actually have a peculiar feminism that does not involve the idea that women shouldn't be sexy. Female characters written in comics have always been pretty damned sexy, and used their sexuality. And I don't have any problem with that.

Ann Nocenti

I don't think most people are all heroic or all villainous, so I find ambiguity of motivations to be a natural human condition.

Ann Nocenti

I believe in working with your morning brain - you have your coffee, and then maybe you'll start thinking about the grand plan and what's going to happen in the next arc, and then you write for a while, and then you get really dreamy, and over the course of the day or in the middle of the night, something comes, and you just throw it in!

Ann Nocenti

I've never written a character that wasn't burdened by years of pain and trauma. Let's face it: Most comic-book heroes have some serious baggage. Not Green Arrow. He's a healthy guy - imagine that? Carrying your hero around in your head, imagining the world through his eyes, is just a hoot.

Ann Nocenti

The things that churned inside Daredevil were deeply religious, somewhat guilt-driven traces of the messianic, with his powers being a compensation for and driven by the vulnerability of being blind. Green Arrow is not driven by dark forces.

Ann Nocenti

I am inspired by both Japanese Samurai films, in particular the films of Kurosawa, and how they share the spirit of American Westerns, with the influences running in both directions, and including the 'Spaghetti Westerns' and films of Sam Peckinpah.

Ann Nocenti

People struggle with moments of deep dread about life and moments of surety. Often within the course of the same day. Life is a roller coaster, especially if you take risks.

Ann Nocenti

Katana is a trained, disciplined martial artist. She removes herself from Birds of Prey to go on a personal journey in Japantown, San Francisco, and pursue a quest for vengeance against the Sword Clan, the men that killed her husband.

Ann Nocenti

I walked the streets of New York; I would feel the presence of Daredevil. I would see him up on the rooftop. What you are doing in your life, you start to see in your book. It all starts to merge together.

Ann Nocenti

I'm a huge, huge lover of weaponry, of Japanese martial arts movies.

Ann Nocenti

There are a lot of Chinese comics, but the Chinese comics tend to be more historical and conservative. Japanese culture, just the comics are amazing. They're like films: very few words; they move so much in these books with hundreds of pages.

Ann Nocenti

When my editor sent me the first two images of Joker's daughter, I was struck by how confident she looked despite her boney appearance and horribly scarred face. So I starting thinking, how did Duela gain such confidence in a world that prizes beauty?

Ann Nocenti

I think writers process their own experiences through the characters and situations they write. So for Batman, I used my own experience of losing a loved one. Grief is a strange place; it's like an altered state. You might sleep too much, so you can see the dead in your dreams.

Ann Nocenti

I'm very much about stories that are fast but character development that moves slow.

Ann Nocenti

When I read Katana's run in 'Birds of Prey,' I was curious about her restraint. She didn't laugh, didn't loosen up, didn't seem to have a light side. I thought, well, that demure nature is what we believe of women of Old Japan, so she seemed not like a modern Japanese but from an earlier time.

Ann Nocenti

There is an unspoken feminist layer to Katana. She's an aggressive modern woman with traditional Japanese roots. She was in love with her sword because she believed it contained her husband.

Ann Nocenti

When you choose the sword over a gun, just like Green Arrow chooses an arrow over a gun and Catwoman chooses a whip over a gun, you have to be highly skilled and highly trained. I can grab Green Arrow's bow, but I'm not strong enough to shoot it. I can grab Catwoman's whip, but have you ever tried to whip a whip? It's not easy.

Ann Nocenti

Green Arrow has gone through so many changes; he's been right-wing, he's been left-wing, he's been rich, he's been poor, he's been a social justice guy, then when I got him, he was a rich playboy guy. So it was a lot harder to get into a character that has so many personas in the past, and I just looked at his anger.

Ann Nocenti

Rotgut was, to me, just this way to get into the underground of Manhattan where you have these little pockets a villain could rise from; a rot in the bowels of Manhattan. It led to these stories that were just very creepy.

Ann Nocenti

I think the best collaborations in comics come from a lot of talks with the artists where you are finding out what they want to draw, what kind of villains they want to do.

Ann Nocenti