Creativity Quote by Gil Kane

There’s a dry, almost prosecutorial neatness to Gil Kane’s phrasing: “In other words” isn’t clarification so much as a verdict. Kane is taking aim at one of publishing’s evergreen alibis - material scarcity as an excuse for creative or editorial decisions - and puncturing it with the kind of insider bluntness only a working artist can deploy. Paper shortages (most famously during wartime and later supply crunches) were real; Kane’s point is that DC’s machinery was insulated enough that “shortage” functioned less as a constraint than as a story publishers told freelancers and readers.

The intent is corrective. Kane, who spent his life inside the industrial realities of comics, is reframing DC not as a vulnerable cultural workshop but as a corporate system with leverage: deeper pockets, stronger distribution, better access to printers, the ability to plan and stockpile, or simply the clout to get served first. The subtext is class and power inside a supposedly scrappy medium. When resources tighten, who gets protected? Not necessarily the artists hustling page rates, and not necessarily smaller competitors. The big brand survives, often by letting everyone else feel the austerity.

It also carries an artist’s irritation at institutional mythmaking. “Never harmed” doesn’t mean unaffected; it means never forced into meaningful sacrifice. Kane’s cynicism lands because it’s spoken in the language of accounting and logistics, the unglamorous stuff that actually determines what culture gets made. In one line, he demotes “history” from epic narrative to supply chain.