Gerard Way
Gerard Way
Gerard Arthur Wayis an American singer, songwriter, musician, and comic book writer who was the lead vocalist and co-founder of the American alternative rock band My Chemical Romance from its formation in September 2001 until its split in March 2013. His debut solo album Hesitant Alien was released on September 30, 2014. He also wrote the comic mini-series The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys and the Eisner Award-winning comic book The Umbrella Academy...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionRock Singer
Date of Birth9 April 1977
CitySummit, NJ
CountryUnited States of America
I have so many books to write now. So I'll write from home. Sometimes I'm writing in the office too, in my cubicle. It looks like a mess. It doesn't look like anybody uses the spot.
I start my process hand written, and then I dump it in. It's like you're getting a second draft 'cause when I put it in the computer, I fix it and change stuff. That's my process. I picked that up from speaking to Neil Gaiman and Joe Hill. I was messing around with the idea of starting to write more, writing a book and doing things like this, and I reached out for advice. They were like, "Oh, we hand write, and then we dump it all in." I was like, "Great! There's no more blank pages."
Thinking visually is my starting point, and then the writing happens.
Sometimes it can be really exciting, but I avoid the blank page now. What I do is hand write everything. When you're hand writing, there's never a blank page, really. There's so much you can do with that.
I have schedules that separate everything.
I knew that I always wanted to keep making music, but I knew that comics needed to be a part of my life.
I think everybody's book is about somebody's daughter, in a lot of ways. I dig that.
I went to art school and interned at DC, and then did the band. When that stuff comes up, you've gotta embrace it and run with it for as long as you can, and I did. I did that for as long as I felt I could.
It's cool if people want to make movies of stuff, but I'm really interested in the comics.
The way I write is that, every time I reintroduced a character, I'd have to face some kind of inner demon.
I'm a visual thinker, so I think of everything visually, first. A lot of what an issue will become for me starts with me thinking, "What's a great cover?," or "What's the splash image?," or "What is the title of the issue? How do I see the text?" I think about all of that stuff, and then the story comes out of that imagery.
Jody Houser, who writes Mother Panic, has this noir-ish superhero style. She's very adaptable.
It's interesting, there are a lot of similarities with being in the music business or being in a band, where a lot of it is business work you've gotta do, like emails. It's weird, I don't feel like I'm in charge.
For Cave Carson, I have a co-writer, so that takes off a lot of the pressure.