crime-comics

"(To an unconscious Batman) "[darn] you. Not going down. Not in front of you." - Batman: Hush"

"(To Batman) "So, nothing condescending to say about my new costume? You weren't exactly focused the last time you saw it. You're welcome by the way." - Gotham Knights #40"

""If there's a lesson tonight, it's that there's no room for chance in this "business." Lives depend on my being certain. Reason. Intellect. Skill. Nothing else must matter." - Batman 80 Page Giant #2"

""Maybe I have something to prove--to him or myself or both. Or maybe I care because I've been alone most of my life. Ever since I was a child. Alone in every kind of darkness. Hunting evil or just waiting for the dawn. It must be some kind of comfort to have a partner. Someone to trust at your back. So maybe when I see him with Robin I want to see me. He's like me--a loner--yet he and his partner somehow make a perfect team." - Batman 80 Page Giant #1"

""Actually - I play a little rough for Batman's taste." - Nightwing/Huntress"

""There were so many flowers. My mother had been shot in the chest. Her casket was open. But my father and my brother, they'd been shot in the face, and there was no way the mortician could repair that damage. I was eight years old and my family was dead and all I thought was that people loved us. It wasn't grief that brought the flowers. It was joy." - Batman: Huntress: Cry for Blood"

"(to Nightwing) "I don't want your help. I don't need your help. Now, get out of my home." - Batman: Huntress: Cry for Blood"

""You want justice served? You want vengeance taken? You want honor restored? Then do it yourself. That's omertà. When blood cries for blood, you answer the call. And you answer it alone." - Batman: Huntress: Cry for Blood"

""Any man can transform himself into something else, something beyond reason..beyond supermen.- Michael Setzer"

"Criminals are a superstitious cowardly lot. So my disguise must be able to strike terror into their hearts. I must be a creature of the night, black, terrible..."

"Did I finally reach the limits of reason? And find the Devil waiting? And was that fear in his eye?"

"And as the sun, that had been too afraid to show its face in this city, started to turn the black into grey, I smiled. Not out of happiness. But because I knew... that one day, I wouldn't have to do this anymore. One day, I could stop fighting. Because one day... I would win. One day, there will be no pain, no loss, no crime. Because of me, because I fight. For you. One day, I will win."

"(to the Joker) And when you're sitting here alone in the middle of the night, unsleeping in the dark, remember -- every breath you take you owe to me."

"(to Superman) Everyone looks up to you. They listen to you. If you tell them to fight, they'll fight. But they need to be inspired. And let's face it "Superman"... the last time you really inspired anyone -- was when you were dead."

"People think it's an obsession. A compulsion. As if there were an irresistible impulse to act. It's never been like that. I chose this life. I know what I'm doing. And on any given day, I could stop doing it. Today, however, isn't that day. And tomorrow won't be either."

"by Jeph Loeb with art by Jim Lee"

"I have been to too many funerals."

"They say that when you kill a man you not only take away what he was, but all he will ever be."

"Deep down, Clark's essentially a good person... and deep down, I'm not."

"Criminals, by nature, are a cowardly and superstitious lot. To instill fear into their hearts, I became a bat. A monster in the night. And in doing so, have I become the very thing that all monsters become - alone?"

"I made a promise on the grave of my parents that I would rid this city of the evil that took their lives. By day, I am Bruce Wayne, billionaire philanthropist. At night, criminals, a cowardly and superstitious lot, call me... Batman."

"Ladies. Gentlemen. You have eaten well. You've eaten Gotham's wealth. Its spirit. Your feast is nearly over. From this moment on -- none of you are safe."

"Without warning, it comes...crashing through the window of your study, and mine...I have seen it before...somewhere. It frightened me as a boy... frightened me. Yes, father. I shall become a bat."

"Batman: (to the Joker) Don't you understand? I don't want to hurt you. I don't want either of us to end up killing the other. But we're both running out of alternatives, and we both know it. Maybe it all hinges on tonight. Maybe this is our last chance to sort this whole bloody mess out. If you don't take it, then we're both locked onto a suicide course. Both of us. To the death. It doesn't have to end like that. I don't know what it was that bent your life out of shape, but who knows? Maybe I've been there too. Maybe I can help. We could work together. I could rehabilitate you. You needn't be out there on the edge anymore. You needn't be alone. We don't have to kill each other. What do you say?"

"Batman: (to the Joker) Hello. I came to talk. I've been thinking lately. About you and me. About what's going to happen to us in the end. We're going to kill each other, aren't we? Perhaps you'll kill me. Perhaps I'll kill you. Perhaps sooner. Perhaps later."

"That vase was from the Ming Dynasty. Alfred will forgive me... eventually."

"Criminals are a terror. Hearts of the night. I must disguise my terror. Criminals are cowardly. A superstitious terrible omen. A cowardly lot. My disguise must strike terror. I must be black. Terrible. Criminals are a superstitious cowardly lot. I must be a creature. I must be a creature of the night. Mommy's dead. Daddy's dead. Brucie's dead. I shall become a bat."

"Sometimes it's only madness that makes us what we are."

"[To Mutant Leader] You don't get it, boy... this isn't a mudhole... it's an operating table. And I'm the surgeon."

"[To Superman] I want you to remember Clark, In all the years to come, in your most private moments, I want you to remember my hand at your throat, I want you to remember the one man who beat you."

"I believe in Jim Gordon. I believe in Harvey Dent. I believe in Gotham City."

"I was fascinated by the Don Pendleton Executioner character, which was fairly popular at the time, and I wanted to do something that was inspired by that, although not to my mind a copy of it. And while I was doing the Jackal storyline, the opportunity came for a character who would be used by the Jackal to make Spider-Man's life miserable. The Punisher seemed to fit."

"Like Batman, he's motivated by direct personal tragedy, but unlike Batman (most of the time), the men that destroyed his family are alive, known and active criminals. Like Daredevil, Frank Castle looking to clean up the streets of Hell's Kitchen. But unlike Matt Murdock, Bruce Wayne or Clark Kent, Frank doesn't have the skills, influence or education needed to interact with the legal system in any substantive way. Instead, he's just very, very good at killing people, and very, very motivated to do so."

"Gerry Conway was writing a script and he wanted a character that would turn out to be a hero later on, and he came up with the name the Assassin. And I mentioned that I didn't think we could ever have a comic book where the hero would be called the Assassin, because there's just too much of a negative connotation to that word. And I remembered that, some time ago, I had had a relatively unimportant character ... [who] was one of [the cosmic antagonist] Galactus' robots, and I had called him the Punisher, and it seemed to me that that was a good name for the character Gerry wanted to write—so I said, 'Why not call him the Punisher?' And, since I was the editor [sic; Lee had been named publisher in 1972], Gerry said, 'Okay.'"

"Frank Castle has spent years exacting vengeance for the deaths of his family by punishing criminals everywhere. His skull insignia inspires fear throughout the underworld. But Punisher's appeal rests on more than his ability to do what the rest of Marvel's heroes won't. He's a tragic figure – even a profoundly selfish one in some ways. The sad truth is that Frank Castle can't survive without killing, and his new job fulfills him in ways his family never could."

"Heidegger, who took Kierkegaard's philosophy further, comes even closer to describing the Punisher: 'Since we can never hope to understand why we're here, if there's even anything to understand, the individual should choose a goal and pursue it wholeheartedly, despite the certainty of death and the meaninglessness of action.' That's sure the Punisher as I conceived him: a man who knows he's going to die and who knows in the big picture his actions will count for nothing, but who pursues his course because this is what he has chosen to do."

"To me, it's disturbing whenever I see authority figures embracing Punisher iconography because the Punisher represents a failure of the Justice system. ... The vigilante anti-hero is fundamentally a critique of the justice system, an example of social failure, so when cops put Punisher skulls on their cars or members of the military wear Punisher skull patches, they're basically sided with an enemy of the system."

"I'll say this once, we're not the same. You took an oath to uphold the law. You help people. I gave that up a long time ago. You don't do what I do. Nobody does. You boys need a role model? His name's Captain America, and he'd be happy to have you.... If I find out you are trying to do what I do, I'll come for you next."

"The problem is not staying on for 16 or 17 years -- I mean, theoretically anybody could do that. But the thing that made X-Men unique in its day was that the first iteration of the series that Stan and Jack created in 1962 had run its course. It wasn't a success. So when Dave Cockrum and Len Wein worked together to build the new X-Men, we were essentially starting with a clean slate. Aside from Charles Xavier being the mentor and Scott Summers showing up to run the shop, everything was brand new. And the way the industry is structured now, the way that Marvel or DC or Image are structured now, that's unlikely to happen again. You don't have that mainstream series that you can recreate in public before everyone's eyes and come up with something completely new and different. So I don't think that opportunity will come again. I just happened to have the ridiculous good fortune of being in the precisely great place at the precisely great time, and I got to run with it."

"Scott Summers: Hanks articulate as anything, but what people see is mostly ... well, a beast. Emma's a former villain, Logan's a [[thug. And me .. I can lead a team. But I haven't looked anybody in the eye since I was fifteen."

"Remember, the X-Men universe was created in the early '60s in the height of the American Civil Rights movement. So, these ideas of bigotry, tolerance, fear, war ... I think are perpetual ideas. We've had them for thousands of years, ever since man recognized his fellow man and that two people had two different color hair."

"Cyclops, Storm, Nightcrawler, Wolverine, Colossus. Children of the atom, students of Charles Xavier. MUTANTS-feared and hated by the world they have sworn to protect. These are the STRANGEST heroes of all! Stan Lee presents: The Uncanny X-Men!"

"Magneto’s an old terrorist bastard. I got into trouble—the X-Men fans hated me because I made him into a stupid old drug-addicted idiot. He had started out as this sneering, grim terrorist character, so I thought, Well, that’s who he really is. [Writer] Chris Claremont had done a lot of good work over the years to redeem the character: He made him a survivor of the death camps and this noble antihero. And I went in and shat on all of it. It was right after 9/11, and I said there’s nothing f*****g noble about this at all."

"I couldn't have everybody bitten by a radioactive spider or exposed to a gamma ray explosion. And I took the cowardly way out. I said to myself, 'Why don't I just say they're mutants. They were born that way."

"This was a period when we were experimenting with the atom bomb. People were wondering what the effects would be. Everybody worried ‘Would we all become mutants? We played around with this ‘mutation thing’ and I came up with the X-Men, who were associated with radiation and its effects on humanity."

"The X-Men, I did the natural thing there. What would you do with mutants who were just plain boys and girls and certainly not dangerous? You school them. You develop their skills. So I gave them a teacher, Professor X. Of course, it was the natural thing to do, instead of disorienting or alienating people who were different from us, I made the X-Men part of the human race, which they were. Possibly, radiation, if it is beneficial, may create mutants that’ll save us instead of doing us harm. I felt that if we train the mutants our way, they’ll help us - and not only help us, but achieve a measure of growth in their own sense. And so, we could all live together."

"I like the very large themes that are in this and the comic books which were originally kind of an allegory for the Malcolm X/Martin Luther King debate."

"For me, the whole idea was that the number was small enough that they could be expunged if the world got determined about it. You know, that it was something that the Avengers, if they wanted, could deal with. That was what gave Magneto so much of his passion and focus. In terms of defending his people, they really were dancing along the edge of extinction and they really did need someone like him. The difference, and the reason that the school was so intent on remaining clandestine, was that if they were exposed, they could be destroyed."