“I want to write stories about people,” Dwayne McDuffie said. “Things happen to people. I think my disappointment with the current superhero comics is that, mostly, they don’t have supporting casts; superheroes only interact with other superheroes and supervillians; and they don’t seem to have lives outside of their work. It’s hard for me to connect, as a reader, to people who go out and save lives every week but don’t have lives and have anything in common with me.”

Dwayne is sitting in the Ritz Carlton lobby in New York City, the day before Valentine’s Day, leaning his tall frame in towards. Tomorrow, he’ll be at a screening of All-Star Superman, his animated adaptation of the Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely comic book. Eight days from now, he’ll unexpectedly die of complications from surgery and the comic book world (at the very least) will be without one of its most distinctive and talented voices.

“Any time I’m doing any kind of story or book, I’m thinking of myself as a storyteller first,” David Mack says in a Japanese restaurant in the East Village. “Really, when doing a comic book, I think of myself as a writer first, and the art as another arsenal in your toolbox of writing. If you’re not completely identified to a certain style or medium, it gives you that liberty as a writer to ask yourself of each individual project ‘What’s the best way to communicate this particular story?’ 

“With Kabuki especially, I like that each volume (as well as each chapter within a volume) has a different atmosphere and feel to it. I feel like that gives me extra strength as a writer.  If I was working with another artist, I don’t want to insult them by saying ‘You’re known for a certain style, but can you change this, and try this?’"

“One of the nicest things about predicting the future is you can always say ‘I will be right’,” Scott McCloud elaborates in a Brooklyn café in the present. “If it hasn’t come out the way you wanted it to, you can go ‘It’s still about the future.’ I’ve been wrong about a few things, and I may have been right about a couple of things. Right now, everybody is rewriting that history, that future history. I can just leave it alone. You can never go back and change these things."

“I was a creature of the newspaper comic strips, which I worshipped, and they were iconic,” Jules Feiffer says from his studio in the Upper West Side, a corner room in his apartment, with windows affording a view of the city. Built-in bookcases line the walls, packed with an assortment that includes some copies of his own work, as well as the work of the classic cartoonists he grew up on. “This was extraordinary talent doing extraordinary stuff, and with comic books, it was more like early rock ‘n’ roll – we felt anybody could do it. These were artists, particularly in the early days, who drew very crudely, particularly Joe Shuster (who I loved, particularly in his early Superman and before that Slam Bradley and Spy), whose stuff I could imitate and almost do as well at. It was that way with others: Bob Kane could barely draw. 

“There was more of the possibility of a future for yourself, because these guys were in print and so could I be. Easily, the outstanding one in comic books from the very start was Will Eisner."

“I wasn’t sure what I was going to do in college,” Becky Cloonan admits from the lobby area of her Brooklyn studio. “I thought I was going to be an animator, but then I dropped out. I started making mini comics and bringing them to conventions. One of the first people I gave a mini to was David Mack. He read it, and thanked me for it. I was floored, here was a professional creator who I looked up to, and who thought my comic was worthwhile even though it was photocopied. The next year I went to another con, and he remembered me and asked if I made a new book. It was great to feel like you’re part of a community where everyone is pretty cool.”

"I have to make a confession: I’m really just a journeyman. I make a living. I don’t look to legacies, and I don’t see long-term value. I never saw long-term value to any of my work. I think I feel the way a newspaper journalist feels, that it’s just for today or tomorrow, and then I forget about it. I never thought I’d create anything that anyone would remember.

"I would just try to do the best job each day. I know it sounds simplistic, but that was the attitude I had. Now, it’s pointed out to me."