ink destroyed my brush

Sketch A Day #17 - Punk is as Punk does

2011-12-27T23:35:00.000-08:00

Inspired by a couple different photos in the sunday Times, including a review of the Reznor Girl with the Dragon Tattoo soundtrack i created this punker, a punker that likely wouldn't so much identify as a 'punk" but as someone who chooses subculture simply because that is how she sees herself, not simply as an act of rebellion.

Mirado Black Warrior #2 on tracing paper

I'mm old enough to remember the original punks, 1977, before it all fizzled out and the rebellion was co-opted into corporate tie-ins and snide jokes on lame sitcoms. Twenty years later when i trailed the punks walking down St Marks Place in New York I had to laugh. they were infants when the Pistols flamed out and Sid OD'd over in Chelsea. Did they think that they were becoming part of a tribe or expressing their individuality by copying someone elses' Mohawk and safety pin ridden jeans vest? Part of a tribe, yes, part of a rebellion whose best days were by the legacy of scattered needles and spit upon bodies? It was a tribe whose elder members spent time on methadone and let the piercings heal up before they moved on. you can stay angry, but, shockingly, what you're angry about doesn't always stay the same.

Sketch A Day #16 - The Shadow Knows

2011-12-24T22:01:00.000-08:00

The weed of crime bears bitter fruit.

The Shadow knows.

If Alex is going to keep posting Shadows, then so will I.

Hope that everyone had a good holiday weekend.

Mirado Black Warrior 2.5, Lumorcolor "F", colors in photoshop

Sketch A Day #15 - George C.Scott as Scrooge

2011-12-24T20:57:00.000-08:00

Sketched as my family watched "A Christmas Carol" with the great George C. Scott as everyone's favorite boss to hate.

Scott, of course, doesn't chew the scenery as so many Scrooges do, and of course he's scarier all the more for it. This was done with the ghost of Christmas Past, as he looks whistfully back upon the love of his youth when he worked for old Fezziwig.

I know, what a Jewish program to be watching.

Sketch A Day #14 - Loomis figure studies

2011-12-24T20:45:00.000-08:00

Some figure studies from the Loomis' Figure Drawing For What its Worth, one of the two or three greatest books ever published in its class. Beautiful text, beautiful illustrations, excellent about actually teaching you this stuff.

With the holidays I've been working a bunch and falling behind on posting my sketches, but I've been working and will do some catch up posts.

has anyone else fallen behind a bit on their blogging?

Sketch A Day #13 Dickens Fair Lass

2011-12-19T11:19:00.001-08:00

Inspired by my visit to the Dickens Fair in San Francisco comes this quick sketch. smoother paper than the last one, so less texture for the pencil to pick up.

Mirado Black Warrior 2.5

Sketch A Day #12 - The Old Man and the Sea

2011-12-13T23:50:00.000-08:00

On sketchbook paper, which has a nice tooth to it. You can get good texture with the pencil on this paper.

Mirado Black Warrior 2.5

Obsolete Inkers, Fading Away & Jason Pearson

2011-12-13T16:57:00.000-08:00

You know, we've talked about this before, and asked all these questions before: what do comics owe us? Do they owe us a living? Do we bleed hours and talent and fingers onto the page that is glanced at, and then discarded with nary a backward glance?

Why, yes, yes we do.

The post by Jason Pearson on Facebook about his financial and personal situation highlights the difficulties in being an artist, especially a work for hire artist, in these difficult times. I don't know Jason, we've simply never crossed paths at conventions or anything like that, but I do know where he is. I've been to that place. Mid-90's, comics going into freefall like its 1954 all over again.

And what makes it worse? Watching lesser lights, people you know who aren't as good as you still churning out monthly work, and you know that they're submitting vouchers for it and getting paid. While you're not. And you're running out of food. And rent. And the salt in the wound? Jason tried to do creator owned work, tried to create the property that could have been something really big, except that... for all the varied reasons in the world, it didn't get the movie money. Didn't hit the brass ring. Jason didn't just depend on the thinking that he could stay on the monthly treadmill forever and that Marvel and DC would continue to send him work, he tried to do more.

And yet here he is, an exceptionally talented and uniquely styled individual in a precarious situation with seemingly no way out. And it is awful to to read that.

I don't know Jason, but I find his work inspired and original and while his Facebook post reads like a suicide note, I fervently hope that its not and that others can show him the revenue stream to get out of his trap. If he had a Kickstarter project, I'd contribute now, and clearly so would a hell of a lot of others.

Artist Gerry Alanguilan was inspired to write about the future of comics and inkers in particular, and wondering just who and when it all becomes obsolete and we end up in situations like Jason. I was right there in 2000, finishing off the biggest project in my comic career, a Batman series with Doug Moench and Paul Gulacy, two of my idols, and I walked away. I had finally gotten my career to the point where I was working with "A" list pencillers, so i didn't have editors blaming my inks for construction problems that the penciller couldn't solve. Except that digital inking was looking and I could see pencillers being angled to doing such complete work that they wouldn't need inkers. I realized that sooner rather than later inking and inkers would be made, on the mid-end level, obsolete, and to continue to rely on that was stupid. Sean Godron Murphy has his thoughts on it as well, and I agree with him. My analogy is the same as his: for years I said that it was like wanting to design buggys for horses to pull at the dawn of the automotive age. You may make the best buggys ever, but if the world is pulling against you, then you're going down. Better to diversify as much as you can and not get locked into a support position. When the people you support get laid off, you're getting laid off first.

The only thing that Sean talks about: if they don't want to pay for inking, he'll raise his pencilling rate. Perhaps we should be asking why, given that Marvel and DC should be rolling in money from their recent movie successes, they're laying off people right and left. If what they want are properties to cherry pick, why kill off the people creating the properties? I'm glad that Sean has the DC direct work, but why is DC struggling? Even if the publishing arm isn't moving units, its putting butts into seats at $12 a pop for a 3-D movie.

Why did Kick-Ass get made into a movie and Body Bags didn't? No one knows.

When are us artists going to get better about living in the real world and making a living instead of living inside of these cool worlds inside of our heads?

Answer: Never.

We gotta take care of each other and ourselves. Diversify people, make friends, make connections, make sure you got more than one skill.

Get lucky.

Sketch A Day #11 - The Shadow

2011-12-13T00:55:00.000-08:00

Ok, some odd technical difficulties with the computer, as well as my daughter's 11th birthday party and a Joe Bonamassa concert... but mostly technical difficulties with the damn computer.

Inspired by Alex Sheikman's Shadow piece the other day, I pulled out some of the pulp material that i have and got inspired. Still not happy with the inking in part with markers, but it is for speed. also some brush work on this one as well, which i'm much happier with. Looking back at the published covers, i realize, again, how much i love George Rosen's work.

Hope this one was worth the wait.

Mirado Black Warrior #2.5 pencil, Lumocolor, Deleter #4 ink, colors in Photoshop

In Review Of: Parker: The Martini Edition by Stark & Cooke

2011-12-08T08:30:00.000-08:00

With an almost jet black cover and spine, and the embossed figure of parker himself, the cypher of a criminal, on the front, we see the perfect analogy for the anti-hero: he is embossed, stuck forever in fabric of the book, but it lacks detail, lacks anything other than the outline and basic details of who he is. It tells us nothing about what motivates him, nothing about his comings and goings, nothing about his past or future. Its is both timeless and of its time.

We live in a banner time for crime comics. And, like the pulp era before, a time of anti heroes born out of a time of horrible economic disparity where the poor are on the streets and the rich live like robber barons, we find solace in the man not afraid to live in fear of his mortgage being ripped out from under him by Bank of America, or of losing his job to China; he is a criminal with a moral code of being true to himself in all that that means. We admire him because he's not afraid even as we recognize what a bad man he is. As Cooke continues to work on adapting the Westlake Parker novels for comics, it is easy to take for granted just how good these books are.

The Martini Edition hardback version of the first two adaptions does a great case for making sure that you not only get the story but get the art as well. reproduced right around original size, you get to really see the unyielding swath of ink that makes up the actual weight of Cooke's art. As well, you get to see more of the texture in the monochromatic treatments that Darwyn is working with. They're not overlays dropped in on the computer but actual brush strokes and marker strokes.

I have the two original hardbacks, as well as the larger one shot "The Man with the Getaway Face", and it was IDW publishing Getaway in the larger format that convinced me how much better Cooke's art would be at that size. There are plenty of considerations of why this is, mostly address above, but here is a small one that was bugging me: the lettering that Darwyn uses simply doesn't reduce as well as the rest of the artwork. not that it was unreadable, there were very few dropouts or close-ups on reversed out lettering, but it lacked a certain crispness really makes reading the books enjoyable.

The Hunter is good. The Man with the Getaway Face is good, the Outfit is superb. Cooke feels full of himself and is settling in enough to change styles three different times within the book, each time taking a chunk of the story and decisively changing his approach both storytelling wise and illustratively. This is only happens with creators that really are feeling at the height of their powers, and it is here.

The new story, The Seventh, picks up stylistically where the Outfit leaves off, and there is no mistake about it, this is not a little filler story, just one more brilliant little bit of Westlake/Stark crime noir that both thrills us and makes us quite happy that we're not living in that world. One small quibble: on the bottom of the pages, we have the story title carried over, and pages 322 & 323 both have "The Hunter" on the bottom, when they should have "The Seventh" like 326 & 327. Its a typo, but you think that someone would have caught it.

The extras? A gallery of Cooke pieces and notes on different movie Parkers, as well as an excellent Comics Reporter interview with Cooke, Spurgeon and Ed Brubaker. Its freely available online, but the sort of thing that might be hard to find 10 years from now, and so worth having in print.

And one final, appropriately labelled Parting Shot: a one page passage from Butcher's Moon, one of Westlake's favorite pieces of prose, and a full bleed black and white illustration that kicks as hard as anything Toth ever drew up.

All in all? Well worth the price of admission in just about every way. As always, one wonders if and when the crime story gets above itself. Its highly likely that the crime story prefers to drink its booze in dark, seedy dive bars instead of brightly lit TGI Fridays, and prefers to be published in dog-eared paperbacks as opposed to deluxe edition. Screw it, I want to read it in this edition. Fortunately, it has no say in the matter.

And yes, I made myself a vodka martini before starting on this review.

Sketch A Day #10 - Robert Fawcett Study

2011-12-07T22:13:00.001-08:00

Pencil study from a 1946 illustration by the brilliant Robert Fawcett, the illustrator's illustrator. The book about him is just genius in that it gives lots of room for the art to speak, and certainly reproduces it larger and on better paper that it ever had the first time around.

We should all be so lucky, to have our best art presented in such a fashion.

After we're dead, and not getting paid for it again, and not around to enjoy it. But still, there you go. Fawcett kicked serious butt with his talent and, lets face it, hard work.

Sketch A Day #9 - Cooke-Inspired Gangster

2011-12-06T22:20:00.001-08:00

Pencil sketch inspired by my Darwyn Cooke Parker: Martini Edition by IDW Publishing that I picked up today.

#2 Mirado Black Warrior, nuttin' else

OK, its pretty bad ass. Lets talk martinis in the next post.

Sketch A Day #8 - Golden Age Green Lantern

2011-12-05T11:46:00.001-08:00

OK, I fully admit that not only do i have no affinity for the Golden Age DC heroes (outside of Bill Finger/Bob Kane Batman), I really don't even like Green Lantern.

Of course, in going through the Levitz DC book again, I found myself sitting down to do tonight's sketch with an aim todo something different.

So there you go. The Alan Scott Green Lantern. Deliberately tried to ape some of the Golden Age "simplicity" but I don't think that i comes through at all except for the face. Ah well, they're not all winners.

I really get dissatisfied with inking with markers. There is a flatness that i can't stand to the line, and it makes me think of all the artists who went to them in the '80's and '90's and just how much got lost in the art. Obviously they're fast and easy, but they lack nuance in all but the best of them.

Pencils, inks with markers (Staedtler Lumocolor, Pigma Micron, Sharpie), color in Photoshop

So what kicks butt in the golden Age DC books? The first Hawkman story, totally off the rails crazy and pulp with great art, the early Batmans with their great nior world and Kane's stiff, representational art, and the early Spectre's, which are incredibly tame compared to where he would go later, but they're interesting in their own way.

Sketch A Day #7 - Rorschach and the fork

2011-12-03T20:30:00.001-08:00

If you don't know this moment, then i'm not sure that I can explain it to you.

pencil sketch, Mirado black Warrior #2.5, Sharpie & Staedtler Lumocolor on Vellum, tones in Photoshop

Sketch A Day #6 - The Invincible Iron Man

2011-12-01T21:44:00.001-08:00

Although, if you look through the George Tuska issues, Tony was pretty vincible when it comes down to it. Over in the Avengers he totally kicked ass, and then in his own book he was being whipped, melted, shot at, had chunks of his armor falling off at any provocation, constantly running out of power and falling to his knees and having his butt handed to him by the likes of Mikas, the Soulfather.

Yikes. Being an Iron Man fan was not easy.

Marker sketch, Copic Markers, Sharpie and Micron on Vellum

Sketch A Day #5 Lord Morpheus

2011-11-30T23:12:00.001-08:00

Was rereading some of the old Sandman comics, and marveling at all the balls that Neil kept juggling through the series. Of course he bit off a bit more than he thought for the final Kindly Ones storyline, but it was one hell of a ride.

For the record, my favorites in the series: The Dolls House and Inn at the End of Time arcs.

Perhaps one day I'll find the pencils from the final issues that Dringenberg drew and scan them for you all to see.

Sketch A Day #4

2011-11-22T23:09:00.001-08:00

pencil (Mirado Black Warrior if you must know) from the sketchbook. Two people at the dentist's office. Sexy, I know.

Two heads for the price of one!

Totoro memes: inkwells and plushes

2011-11-21T23:17:00.001-08:00

Never underestimate the creative spirit out there. While checking in with Comic Tools blog for an update on brushes I happened to scroll down to post on inkwells.

Yes, inkwells, you know, the sort of thing designed to keep a small mammal, like, say, a cat from knocking things over in their insane desire to get pets.

a totoro among the apples

So, of course, katrina decides to make her own, which is just about as cute as these felted critter from Pussycat Crafts. While you're over there, make a crafter's day and purchase one. Those Totoros are really frikkin' cute.

Sketch A Day #3 Who is this guy?

2011-11-21T17:34:00.001-08:00

marker sketch, colors in photoshop

Was house sitting the last couple of days, so i'll be scanning sketches/drawings today to catch up. Hope that you like some of them.

Sketch A Day #2: Steranko-esque head

2011-11-18T00:51:00.001-08:00

Not a clue as to why this head reminds me of the '60's Jim Steranko, perhaps because i had pulled out that collected Captain America book to scan...

I dunno, sometimes this stuff just comes out of your brain and on to the paper.

Using the Koh-I-Noor Woodless Colour Pencils that
I've fallen in love with. I grab them when I go out into the world with the sketchbook.

I want to eventually post a review of the monstrous Paul Levitz DC coffee table book, but I realize that I'm reading it with a completely different criteria than it was written with, so the review is essentially moot. I can't square the sanitized version of the events presented in the book with the back story that we know from all the principals involved. Quite frankly, the back story, well covered in Men of Tomorrow and other places with the true originals of National Periodical Publications (Siegle and Shuster, Bob kane and Bill Finger, the Moulton menage a trios) are far more fascinating than the published comics.

I at least want more background, more artwork that we've not seen, want the editors of the book to simply take even more advantage of the sheer spectacle of size that they were working with.

sigh

I'll get to it, I promise.

In Review Of: Overkill by Tomer Hanuka

2011-11-16T12:08:00.001-08:00

The figures are lithe, twisted in action, reaction, ecstacy, despair, and the choking out of a death rattle. The colors could redefine garish, subtle; there are whole new qualities to the definition of "mauve" than you've ever appreciated. In the narrative of each piece, there is nothing written, and certainly nothing illustrated, on the nose. The book is likely the first ever in hot pink with an ax on the cover.

Overkill: the art of Tomer Hanuka

Deliciously, Tomer has shown us his working process on Tropical Toxic for years, which, instead of de-mystifying the process, has only made me appreciate his stuff more, especially seeing the pieces printed larger, where i can start to appreciate the liveliness of his holding lines and the inexactness of with which they're being applied.

And, of course, its all commercial work, and interestingly enough, the book holds together by technique and approach, not subject matter. We know that we're looking a myriad number of commercial assignments, not even in chronological order, so the glue here is viewpoint. And what a viewpoint it is. In every piece the camera is tilted or the figure is twisted or the light or fabric is shifted so that there is nothing settled, nothing at rest within the single panel narrative. Tomer mentions in sole text page in the back of the book about wanting to do slick American work, but it ended up with a middle easterner's anxiety underneath. And what anxiety it is. The contortion of limbs whether in violence or sexual climax mirrors the rending of cloth or flesh in decidedly non-linear fashion.

And the colors? Well, yes, the colors. tomer uses color in a very different fashion than most. There is a new palette that we see this generation using, James Jean and a whole bunch of others in Juxtapoz. While we initially saw everyone with Photoshop immediately go full color in every direction, Tomer has gone the opposite, limiting the work to four or five colors. It is interesting to note in the back that he mentions that he colors up a "regular" version, before experimenting with what are some of the most amazing combinations of shades, combining fades, dropped holding lines and sillouettes into astonishing menageries of single panel narratives.

And, yes, the final ingredient is that everyone of these pictures was the weight of narrative to them. they exist not just as that single frame, but encapsulate some of the story or article that they accompany. That we need not see the story to begin to guess from the clues shows how much visual communication is happening here. From the scattered wrapper on the floor to the line of coke on the woman's naked torso, story is unfolding everywhere you look.

I've been clipping the small accompanying illustrations that Tomer used to do for the New yorker before realizing that, after a few months, i was clipping pieces by the same artist. Clearly his aesthetic was working for me. Luckily, now i have hardback to go to over and over. You should to.

Sketch A Day #1, Hugo Cabret & Steranko's Cap

2011-11-15T23:19:00.001-08:00

Leonard from the Big Bang Theory episode with paintball was frozen on the TV screen when i picked up the pencil, so he got immortalized in this sketch thanks to the magic of the DVR. Not what I imagined opening the 365 Day challenge with, but sometimes you have to go with it.

A number of years ago The Invention of Hugo Cabret ended up on my daughter's book shelf. I've no idea where it came from, but i scooped it up to read. Enjoyed it, thought that as long as you didn't try to make sense of it, your could let the plot flow along because, well, the writer was taking it where he wanted it to go. It was filled with a child's sense of wonder at the world, and a distinct lack of grown-up inflicted logic to ruin the experience. Appropriate, since the protagonist is a child, one who lived in a fairy tale world behind the clock works of a busy Paris train station. It is appropriately viewed as both staging area and metaphor since Hugo and his deceased father were the ones that kept the clocks running on time, and now that his father has passed away, the completion of the clockwork man, the finding of the missing key and the discovery of his orphanhood are coming to a head as his time runs out.

Yes, I hear you complain, I know all that. I've read the reviews and I've seen the trailer. But what you want to know is: is it a graphic novel? Or a Big Little Book on steroids?

Now that's a good question. There certainly are a huge number of illustrations (284 to be precise) as well as prose, and if we're going to argue that graphic novels can be Blankets or Cages or Goodbye Chunky Rice, but not the latest collection TPB of Fables, then we have to consider Cabret a novel. Yes, it has prose sections and employs not a single word balloon in its pages, but it does use images to advance the narrative sequentially, something that pure prose work would never do. Its an inventive use the form, and while a purist might argue that it doesn't fit, i've gotten tired of purists over the years, especially when the person breaking the rules comes up with a solid entertaining read.

And, of course, I just had to share the joys... the joys of the hard cover collector's edition of the three Steranko Captain America issues... and the quality printing that they used on the special edition.

You don't find that kind of care and attention to the registration of color these days.

Ack.

I'm back with the 365 Day Challenge

2011-11-14T22:49:00.001-08:00

Of course, the funny thing is that I've been away for a while, but I can't keep away anymore, and hope that we'll all find some great things (in the true tradition of the blog-o-sphere) to argue about. Robert Fawcett, the Parker books by Cooke, whether Hugo Cabret is actually a graphic novel, Jim Shooter's blog, instructional books on storytelling and more. Anyone interested in coming along?

Here are a few sketches from the Vivian DeMilo session at Dr. Sketchy's SF last month. The wife and I went, sketchbooks in hand, and had a great time trying to shake the rust off of the pencils.

Now, I've never done the 24 hour comic, but my good friend Alex Sheikman has done the sketch a day challenge over at his blog, although I can't recall how long he kept it up. But given that i've never been known to be prolific, i've used some of the time away to try some different approaches and hope to force myself to play with them while knocking out some work, as well as laying out and starting on some new projects. There are a couple in mind that i can't wait to do. How long it will take to get to them is another story.

Closing Up Shop - Goodbye to all

2011-01-20T12:45:00.000-08:00

A big goodbye, for now, to all of those who have followed, read, or argued with me over the last 4 years of this blog. I find that real world tragedies make it such that to continue to post here would be a dilution of my time and energy, something that i can no longer continue to do.

I've really enjoyed it, much more than i thought that i would have even. Dirk over at the late lamented Journalista gave me all sorts of traffic, and i was really thrilled to have readers in Bosnia, New Zealand, Italy and other spots all over the world. I mean, this one of those times when you say, "This is what the interwebs is all about."

I hope that my archives will continue to amuse someone or another out there. Should time and circumstances permit, I'll reopen the doors and begin again. Perhaps.

Ta. Must dash.

Dr Sketchy's Black Cat

2011-01-19T09:34:00.000-08:00

One of the drawings from Dr. Sketchy's last night in SF. A rather fetching Black Cat sketch here.

The room was packed at 111 Minna, and they did admit that they've outgrown the space. This was done sitting on the floor with my pad in my lap and a single Mirado Black Warrior HB.

I'll post up one or two others in the next day or so. Looking forward to the February Steampunk themed one!

2011-01-18T20:36:00.001-08:00

Sketching at dr sketchys sf

Dr. Sketchy's in San Francisco Tonight!

2011-01-18T12:21:00.000-08:00

Tonight I'll be with pencil/pen/brush in hand at Dr. Sketchy's SF event on Minna St. Any of my comic book peeps has the evening free, that's where i'll be, so come by and say "hello" and bring your sketch pad!

If I get anything good, i promise the scan and post up soon!

In Experiment: Santiago in Color

2011-01-05T00:00:00.001-08:00

Another experiment in colors - using Photoshop and modifying the opacity among other things. Whoever came up with "multiply" in the menus was a genius.

I typically think of Photoshop as the ocean. Depending on where you use it, you can get really good at 1% or maybe 3%, but its so deep and so wide and the potential applications of it so vast that no one, not even the programmers, will know it all. Learn to do what you want with it and move on.

I still prefer real paper, with real ink and then scanning and moving on to the final version. There is a pressure/texture feeling that the tablets can't mimic, and i think of it as the ultimate level of "undo". Should all else fail, harddrive wise, there is still the original art!

In Experiment: Girl #1

2010-12-30T01:00:00.000-08:00

Been a long time since i've experimented with color, but getting the new Robert Maguire book (Dames, Dolls and Gun Molls by Jim Silke) for Chanukah, i've felt the need to play around a little bit.

Comments?

Event Marketing vs. - gasp- Actual Stories

2010-12-27T16:05:00.000-08:00

So its come to this has it? The Event loving chickens have come home to roost and sales are down at retailers for 18 months straight and suddenly the retailers and publishers are wondering where the readers have gone. And they both have different ideas of who to blame.

Johanna Carlson comes in with a short but succinct post about it, comparing quotes from Brian hibbs and marvel's Tom Breevort concerning cutting back the publishing line, since Brian believes that it is just such a glut of overlapping titles that has sapped the will of the consumer to buy. The Robot 6 post puts the two of them head to head.

Now, I know that i'm not the average superhero consumer. Quite the opposite it seems, since i tend to despise the event marketing and feel that it simply disrupts the actual writing of good stories, since there is so much crap that each issue has to do to make sure that it links in with the other issues properly. And, as we all know, they NEVER interlink properly.

So i've been buying Thor and Fantastic Four AS LONG AS THEY DON'T INTERLINK WITH THE REST OF THE MARVEL UNIVERSE. And because there were some interesting stories going down there. But now I'm seeing multiple Thor books and FF appearsl to be coming out sporadically and Marvel is, once again, pissing me off. So yes, the local retailer is going to have a harder time getting my money because they are once again making my life difficult.

Why is it that hard? Because nothing succeeds like copying success, and if the event strategy has worked in the past, you're not going to convince the heads up at marvel with their sales charts not to do it again, despite the general blog-o-sphere showing that the public is tired of the events. Companies, constantly looking ahead by checking out the past are notoriously bad at taking the temperture of the general public. otherwise we wouldn't have seem so many Disco albums released after 1980. Or so many Secret Wars after the wars were no longer... um... secret.

So here's the deal guys: I don't quite believe in Brian's hypothesis that the event marketing has conditioned me to ignore titles that weren't part of the cross over, it has done the opposite. It has made me want to only look at titles that weren't part of the crossovers. But he's right in that the missing ingredient in comics right now is that they're not giving me my series heroin: a series so good that i'm there for it each and every damn month and if I don't get it I'll explode. And while Tom is busy asserting that sale don't aggregate if you were to consolidate the different Spider Man (and I'm sure that he has the data to back it up), i wish that he would answer the other unspoken question of whether or not sales would go up if you had a dedicated writer and artist creating a better product rather than a product noted for simply interlocking. Or a comic noted for being a great read rather than a comic noted for crossing over to other cross overs.

Either way, in a shitty economy, you're lost readers and that's never good.

Ever.

Blown Away: the Tanuka's Hard Apple

2010-12-27T15:02:00.000-08:00

I hate them.

The Tanukas that is. Asaf and Tomer.

I first fell in love with their work in small spot illos in the New Yorker. I was clipping them and putting them up on the idea wall in my studio. I soon realized that i totally dug their aesthetic. It was Jewish and unorthodox with regards to color and visual viewpoint.

Now I've been working on crime comics now for about 2 years and made some progress, but then Asaf and Tomer come along with some bad ass character designs and stunning panels on a Jerome Charyn adaption and blow me the fuck out of the water.

I hate them. Go check out their blog Tropical Toxic.

Colleen Doran and Techdirt redux

2010-12-22T17:40:00.000-08:00

There is an excellent follow up to my Colleen Doran post on live journal that effectively says it all, in a fairly short period of time:

What sort of fandom demands so much from creators without being willing to meet them halfway, or in fact, to even so much as click a link or type a URL? Whatever Colleen Doran's failings may be as an Internet entrepreneur, how much more the failings of the fans who let their own apathy and greed prevent them from supporting things they say they supposedly like?

and its interesting that, in the comments section of my post, the writer of the Techdirt post, Tim Geigner, tries to get out of how harsh he was to Colleen. Tim tries to get people to back off by saying, in effect, "look, I write fiction too. I'm in the same boat as you guys." Except that its not the same boat. Never will be. Different people have different levels of financial commitment and time commitment, and there simply isn't an excuse for the level of anger towards Colleen in the comments section, nor for the level of snarky sneering towards someone who hasn't somehow "monetized" the internet properly.

There is no single justification for hating on an artist who is tired of getting ripped off. None. They have a right to be angry. And a right to want to be paid for their hard work. Because it is hard work, and it takes time, and there are only so many hours in the day and so many years in an artist's life to do the work.

Why does everyone want to try to defend the pirates and not the artist? No one else here has potentially been wronged, not the scanner of the work in question, not the person who downloaded the jpegs, not the server host, not the website owners. No, the only person with any skin the game at all is the artist and no one at Techdirt wants to stand up for them. "Well, what we write can be posted anywhere and we won't have a problem with that."

"I can't be a racist. I have lots of black friends."

Defend the person who is getting hurt here, without mealy mouthing about losing your free download privileges. Go download someone else's work who doesn't care that you're doing it. Go buy something from their store. You like to consume content over the internet? Put you damn money where your mouth is and go buy something to support the artist. For once.

Oliva: in sketch form

2010-12-21T23:50:00.000-08:00

We interrupt this Starlin-fest to bring you something from my sketchbook: my youngest daughter reading my wife and me a story.

I kinda like this one.

We'll get back to the Starlin art orgy soon, and I want to start to put down some thoughts on Levitz's Coffeetable DC book. No, its not a book for the coffeetable, it IS the coffeetable.

I also want to welcome new visitors from Belgium, Sweden and Uruguay!

Captain Marvel #29: Starlin & Milgrom - The Real Cover!

2010-12-15T17:07:00.000-08:00

And in honor of the review of the Starlin book, here is the ORIGINAL cover to Captain Marvel #29: one of the most iconic covers in Marvel Comics history.

Not owned by me but by Len Gallo. Don't be jealous of me. I've only seen it up close once.

...and I think that Len either has, or knows the guy who owns the splash to issue #29. He had it at San Diego a few years ago. I should have asked him if he wanted to trade for the splash of issue #30.

In Review Of: Jim Starlin - A Life In Words and Pictures

2010-12-14T16:31:00.000-08:00

This is an interesting book to be reviewing, given that its finally a retrospective by one of the two major influences in my artistic life. Starlin and Gulacy were to the two men who really changed my life by providing art and stories that I was dying to try and compete with. The irony, of course, is that you'll never top those formative stories. They tend to take on far greater significance in your head than just being issue #30, or #40.

Now, having worked with Gulacy on and off since 1996, I have less issue with making comments on his work. I guess having pages that i inked included in his art book gives me the chance to be making those comment for a place of knowledge.

Starlin, on the other hand, is a whole different kettle of cosmic fish. We've met a few times, but he wouldn't remember me from any other artist/fan, so I've no other connection with him other than continuing to read over his work on the periods that i've enjoyed. I was looking forward to a "Behind the Music" approach to some of my favorite comics. What i got with this book, both fed that desire, but also left me terribly hungry for more. I'll be curious to see if other Starlin-ophiles like my buddy Alex Sheikman feel the same.

Gems to be found here: Jim admitting that we started the whole Thanos story with a bunch of characters in mind and nothing resembling a plot. That Roy Thomas wanted Captain Marvel to have the glittering trail behind him. He added the guest stars on the book (Iron Man and the Avengers) on a whim. He demanded to have a say over the inkers on Captain Marvel and the resulting demand got him off the book.

And now the quibbling on my part: We are treated to a number of panels of artwork and even full pages being reproduced here, but very little original artwork. Now, i know that after all this time the art has been long since sold, but lets look at who this book is for. Not the casual fan. No, this book is entire for the long devoted, cosmic cube loving Starlin fan. So why print a number of panels that we already know and love and give us more original art to look at? The only original of the entire Captain Marvel run reproduced here is the cover for #30, which Jim sold only recently. And its the size of a postage stamp. Why not put the call out to the artistic community? I alone could have provided a print read version of three different pages from issue #30, including two splash pages. I've seen the unaltered cover for issue #29, Jim's original version without the Romita head. Why isn't that in there, as large as could be? (The original artwork for Captain Marvel is concentrated primarily in the hands of about about 6 individuals, and we're all fairly well known, it wouldn't have been that hard.)

And why is there a ton of art from the late 1970's printed before the chapter on Captain Marvel 1973-1974? It comes at exactly the wrong point in the book. Its out of chronology and even messes up the narrative flow of the text.

Warlock fairs better, with a couple of great scans of original art, and a more precise storyline of exactly how working with Marvel went on that series. What is missing is a dissection of just how the Universal Church of Truth came from his being in a strict Catholic school growing up, and how the inventive time travel story ending came about. Its a deep storyline, one with more emotional gravitas and thought than most superhero stories. I guess that i'd love to hear Jim go deeper into the work.

Metamorphosis Odyssey comes off better here than it did at the time in the Epic books, I think partly because the art isn't a complete and utter muddle in the printing, and it comes off less as "The Grand Artistic Statement" and more as someone stretching out and trying something new.

Another gem: Jim dislocated his finger playing volleyball and had to tape a felt tip pen to his hand to ink the book. Which is why it looks different. And why the originals have all turned blue and purple over time. And that the book was part of the game changers on royalties to artists. As was Dreadstar.

Jim goes on to delineate any number of other projects over the next 20 years, many I'd seen, and some that i hadn't, but i won't spoil your chance to dig into the book for yourself. Certainly it does an excellent job of spelling out the much more of the editorial insanity that continually pushed Jim away from comics, or completely scuttled series that would have been worth reading. Why? No idea other than it was something that i saw in the comics industry every damn day taht i worked there. Now, this is just Jim's side, and he is nothing is not at opinionated figure, which was presented to me when i showed him a portfolio of work back in '89 or '90 and he told me in fairly straight forward terms to keep my day job. Always.

Jim makes the point of saying on page 294 that he doesn't want to come off "like a bitter old man, ranting about all the things that went wrong with his final job in commercial comics", but after a while it hard to make excuses for why so many creative people constantly have to do interviews to explain how editorial messed up their most recent project. I have no problem believing Jim when he writes, "There was no longer any fun in the job (working for Marvel or DC)." And that's so sad.

Jim came in when comics were chaos, and an ex-viet nam vet who would still get drunk or loaded could go home and create a bunch of crazy fun shit that has clearly stood the test of time. And that time is long since past. Rock and Roll has moved on.

I appreciate the reprint of more obscure short stores in the back, at least one that i hadn't seen. And I like the few pages of proposals that didn't go through as well. I suppose that none of the sketches from back in the day could have been used to round out the pages from earlier in Jim's career. Are there no long lost sketches from Captain Marvel or Warlock for us to check out? No old script pages? Nothing else to let us peak behind the curtain? After all, we're the die hards; we'd appreciate stuff like that.

And, unlike many other popular comics figures, Jim's best work deserves that level of dissection. At his best, Jim posed philosophical questions of his villians, and existential queries about not just his heroes but all his protagonists. He used off-handed Kirby creations like the cosmic cube in throughly creative ways, and did so in a time when the use of corporate comics as a means of personal expression was becoming the norm for the young mavericks of the 1970's. The proof of Jim's genius is rooted in the fact that there have been very few legitimate additions to the cosmic pantheon of Marvel that haven't been branched off of Jim's ideas. With two failing heroes, Jim created a storm of ideas around them. Ideas that are still being traded off even today.

Soul Gem? Check. Titan, a hollow moon of Jupiter? Check. Cosmic awareness? Check. Thanos. Gamora. Pip. Infinity Gems. Inbetweener. Chaos. Order.

Thanos. Villian who didn't want to knock over banks. No, he worshipped Death. Try saying that over in your head a few times. He was Darkseid done better.

I'd have loved for Jim to address some of his own, reportedly, dissatisfaction with his art, and his switch to writing in the 1980's. What prompted his change in style? Other than Kirby and Ditko, who else influenced his early art? The change of only doing pencils instead of inks in the mid-1980's? Who got him to have the vast majority of his characters constantly ready to pounce? Where did this delicate inking style on his book plate illustrations come from? Inquiring minds want to know on a $50 book.

i've been meaning to do an appreciation post on Starlin, as i had Gulacy for the blog. As a nice history piece. Perhaps this will be a good push to do that. In the meantime, this is one fun book. And while shorter on substance that i would have liked, I still enjoyed it quite a bit, even if it wasn't quite the behind the scenes look that I would have loved.

Is It Really A Bomb If It Goes Off And No One Knows It?

2010-12-07T15:50:00.000-08:00

If the tastes change, can we all start to complain that the general public likes our little college indy band? Retorically, I feel like that is a little of what Frank Santoro is lamenting in his Comics Comics column. Frank riffs on how the general public has taken over what used to be our little corner of the world and, a little annoyingly, moved on without us. And that's OK.

A few points that he makes along the way:

So, I thought I’d riff a little bit on what I think Evan is getting at – because I definitely remember when the L ’n R Sketchbook came out and how big of a deal it was for many of us at the time

Really? Perhaps it was in your comic shop at the time. I was reading Love and Rockets from issue #5, and when the sketchbook came it, it was like, "Cool, an artbook with Jamie's work." I don't know why it would have been seen as a "minor bombshell", but clearly both Frank and Evan Dorkin saw it at the time, so it just goes to show how different the reaction was. But it makes the point that, given the scarcity of the material back in the day, that each new work that WASN'T superheroes was a revelation, something to be held up and examined by the light from all angles. There was that little out there.

(edit: It has been pointed out by Evan Dorkin, who originally started this chain of thoughts that I was trying to be totally snarky, which points out that tone is damn hard on the internet sometimes. I meant to come off as a bit surprised by the comment, which i was. No nastiness intended in this post. In general, I was quite in agreement with Frank's original thoughts on his post.)

And now... well, now there isn't. Now we've become what we always wanted: practically mainstream, and respectable. Wow, who would have thunk it? We're in book stores, in sometimes big numbers, we have entire conventions that feature monographs and graphic novels and objects d' art like MOCCA and APE, we get reviewed in legitimate publications like the NY Times book review and even win Pulitzers.

And we're so large that there is no longer the one "Book of the Show" that everyone in talking about. Which is great. It does mean that our audience is so fractured that there can no longer be consensus within the community, something else that Frank brings up:

It was a bitter pill to swallow when I had to “sell” Love and Rockets to a new reader when I worked at a comics shop. It is hard to remember a time when I thought Los Bros.’ star would dim in the hearts of new fans. But I would just do just my best Bill Boichel impression and would explain that it was like The Beatles, insomuch as they changed everything. “Well, I never liked The Beatles,” said the twenty-year-old college sophomore. And as a retailer or a guy working for a retailer, what am I supposed to say to that?

and its a good analogy, given that you could make the case that The Beatles kinda changed everything within rock and roll, fracturing the audience so much that it was no longer easy to say which kind of rock and roll you liked.

But if you take it back to 1990, you had a real dearth of work. There was so little out there. And now its easy to have a book shelf full of complex, fascinating work that you can show off. Remember, as a retailer you can work with what the person likes to introduce them to all sorts of things. Every record store owner had a kid who loved Led Zeppelin who eventually got turned on to Willie Dixon because they wanted to work their way back to the roots. All Star Superman can lead a reader back to Doom Patrol and Flex Mentallo.

Finally there are roots and levels of strata to dig down to. Prior to this there was nothing. Nothing at all. To paraphrase Frank Miller, "Everyone wanted to believe that we had this long tradition to talk about, when all we had behind us was 50 years of shit." The Hooded Utilitarian had a long post about a lost Toth Enemy Ace story that made me realize that while i loved Toth's design sense, the vast majority of stories that Toth had to illustrate were utter dreck. Its not's Toth's fault that he was an artist with a capital "A". He never had an audience that would have read his work next to Asterios and Big Numbers and Sacco and Tomine, and now he would have. Its a shame. I would have killed to have Alex Toth work on mature material worthy of his talent level!

I feel like I meet people who are new comics readers all the time – and when I ask them what they like, they invariably say, in one form or another, “all kinds of things.” They like Sin City and they like Ghost World. They like Naruto and they like Barefoot Gen.

And its that short of range of material that, hopefully, can keep things going for graphic novels: that there is a degree of love for the artform and all the different types of things that it can present. And while we can never put the worms back in the can, never re-piece together our audience like it was in the old days, we'll still have our memories of seeing R.E.M. with about 10 other people in a coffee shop.

Ah the good ol' bad days. Long may they be gone. (edited to add: Bad in that it was superheroes and more superheroes and very few avenues besides the direct market, which was flourishing in the period before the B & W collapse put some many shops under. While no one is happy with current economic climate, i.e. Colleen's post in The Hill that i commented on recently, certainly we can agree that comics are finally no longer just "Pow" and "Bam" and "comics aren't just for kids, Batman!" in the local paper anymore.)

TechDirt vs. Colleen Doran: Angry, Angry, Angry

2010-11-29T11:12:00.001-08:00

I don't know where to begin regarding a post that Techdirt has, savaging Colleen Doran for her column in The Hill regarding comics piracy and digital "theft". There is a level of vitrol here that is hard to quite get, except for the fact that Tim doesn't like people upsetting his little digital "everything for free" model. And its even worse when he makes a good point or two along the way.

For one thing, the comment section is full of extremely angry readers and writers, with a hell of a lot of anger directed at Colleen for no good reason. Seriously, lets look at the situation without a lot of snark: Colleen Doran writes an opinion piece about how hard it is to make a living as an artist in this day and age with everyone wanting free content, and gets hit with asshole comments like this:

You may have lost business to the internet, but that's only because, as I was coming of age, there was so much more interesting content being generated for free, by folks who made it for free, on the Internet than in your paper and ink, overpriced pamphlet.

as if Colleen was the one who was doleing out assignments and pricing and packaging the stuff herself over at Marvel. Perhaps that particular author should have been checking out her own work, A Distant Soil instead of assuming that the only comic out there was the latest X-Men crossover.

Saying that if she's having a hard time making a living is her own fault is like the rich telling the poor to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps and get going. Perhaps less than 1% of the webcomics out there are making money, making enough money to support themselves, and yet everyone holds them up as the ideal for surviving as artists. Listen people, making art is hard and time consuming, and the reality is that very few people are going to pull the discretionary income necessary to keep themselves going.

Certainly I would have thought that people like Colleen and Terry Moore would have been the poster children for making this work, given a strong fanbase and name recognition, but perhaps not. Perhaps there simply isn't enough time in the world for them to actually spend hours creating art and then marketing themselves on the internet.

I'd love to have an actual ratio of artists vs. consumers in the world. I'd love to know what would happen if all the webcomics people just quit producing for a week or two, would people get as twitchy as if their daily newspaper page with comics suddennly went blank? Or if no new comics showed up in the store for a month? Would people be angry, or would they simply click to yet another site? And what about having all the television shows go to repeats? Remember how it was when Lost would go to reruns? I thought that you'd have riots like the streets of Detroit.

I'd love to know how twitchy people would get when all their favorite stuff to consume would go away. And then all the artists could lean back and say, "Sorry, you'll need to pay me so that i can get back to work." Expect that people don't like strikers, do they? The same people are angry that ARTISTS THAT ACTUALLY PRODUCE MATERIAL THEY LIKE want money, and if those people STOPPED PRODUCING, then the people would get... even angrier? How the hell does that work? Colleen is nailed to the cross with the phrase "Creator Entitlement" as if everyone on that board doesn't work for a living. What if we impaled their crass comments on wanting a paycheck as "Employed Entitlement". Fools, wanting to be paid for working in an office, filing paperwork, answering phones, doing anything. Such Entitlement, wanting a "paycheck". Go home and tell your wife or husband that they're withholding your pay that they really would just "like it for free".

It only enhances the odd relationship that people have with artists and the things that they produce. We assume that the art just comes out: That actors like to act and make movies, musicians write our favorite songs over breakfast and that comics are made by people who just doodle. The best ones look so easy that we assume it just exists, poof!, out of thin air.

If we go back 15 years ago, AOL, the huge heavyweight on the block, went and bought TimeWarner because it understood that content was king. The internet user has an insatiable, vampiric desire to consume content at a higher rate than ever before. Feeding that beast is becoming Uroboros, the eternal snake eating its own tail to consume and conquer the hunger, but with a greater global economy, that hunger shows no sign of abating. The best point in the Techdirt anger are the truest: that Colleen is one of the few that needs to figure out, or have someone else figure out, how to leverage some money out of that fan base. The should be able to do it better than most, and it may take a person that sees the micropayments and other, more inventive ways to market her on the digital ecosystem so that fans of hers will come and spend.

JMS Leaves The Floppies: World Yawns

2010-11-12T11:40:00.000-08:00

Tom wonders, in his usual way, over at the Comics Reporter, whether J. Michael Straczynski leaving the monthly Wonder Woman and Superman is a vote of no-confidence in the monthly books. Other, of course, have picked up on this and will make it a small meme for about 5 minutes.

I mention this because, really, most of us have given up on the monthlies in a big way. Marvel and DC regularly put out story arcs designed to be collected into the trades which have a longer shelf life anyway. So, of course, the format is dictating the content. Which is always has done. All of us older comics readers got addicted to the monthly format of 22 page stories from an early age, and that's how we "see" comics. It pushes our buttons for what we're used to. People who came to alterna-comics via Groening or Carol Lay are going to look for the weekly comics fix in their local paper. Unlike the writer of books, who are going to write chapters solely on how long the chapter needs to be, the comic writer chapter is going to have to give you 22 page chapters for their story arc.

And you know what? There is a reason that more sophisticated work is being done long form in the Graphic Novel format. While I'm annoyed that Straczynski can't finish his damn work, but that he keeps getting work, I loved his Thor. Best version of Thor in 20 years, so yes, I put up with it to get a comic that i enjoyed the hell out of. But the pacing for the story that he was writing would have been better outside of the 22 page format. Each month we ended at a strange place in the rhythm of the story and had to pick it up 30 or 60 days later. I would much rather have read a great Thor Graphic Novel.

Yes, the floppies are dead, they just don't know it yet. No, Straczynski's leaving has to do with his inability to make deadlines. Yes, his parting bon mot is just about right. Leave your comments below.

Aging Out of Comics: Why Does It Happen?

2010-11-11T17:47:00.000-08:00

Here is a good question, why do people abandon something that they like? Why do readers of comics stop reading comics? Why do people who like a certain type of music stop purchasing that music? Or seeing a certain type of film?

Jason Thompson ponders the age old marketing question of how to hold on to an audience, one that, in prior years, would have been reliable readers of a certain type of manga. There is a lively discussion below the initial Live Journal post that I’ve pulled a little bit out of.

What is interesting is watching Jason write about something that I’ve approached many times on this blog. Where are the comics for my age? I had almost stopped buying 7 years ago when, in my late 30’s, nothing spoke to me anymore. Jason wonders why you can’t sell more adult oriented manga to former readers and fans of shonon and shojo manga. And it’s the same with American comics. Marvel and DC have always wondered why they lost readers when they moved on from that “I love the Avengers” phase. Those same people don’t decide, “I’ve grown past Little Mermaid, so I’ll stop going to movies now,” so why not move them to more mature manga?

For the longest time, there was nothing to move to really. Jason is picking up Alan Moore as the natural follow up to reading superheroes, since his work dovetails from Swamp Thing and Superman into Watchmen and Promethea in a natural progression. People stop reading, I believe, because there was no follow up, and there was a social pressure to “move on to adult things”.

What is striking is how all the things that Jason says in regards to “aging out” of manga are the same for the United States and superhero comics if you just replace the words.

And I was exposed to Anime early on, and fully believed that, while Americans were being subjected to Star Trek 3: The Search for Chris Lloyd, the best space opera being made was Be Forever Yamato and Captain Harlock. I saw the adult implications in the kids series even if they were being used as subtext.

I do think that there were bids for the medium to grow up in the 1980’s within American comics, but man it was a hard sell. And I wouldn’t have wanted to have been a pioneer trying to stay in business back then. While DC was foistering Camelot 3000 as a supposed more adult comic, Love and Rockets was starting to come out, if you knew where to look. American Flagg had 10 whole issues of greatness in that series.

Rushthatspeaks has a couple of interesting comments part of the way down:

First, it was difficult for me to find things that suited my tastes as I got older. They turned out to be out there, but I really had to look. Shounen and shoujo get the splash ads in the magazines, the pages at the back of other manga, the bookstore displays and the clever catchphrases….

…it cannot be overemphasized how much American comics shops, who have the adult readers of Watchmen etc. and sell the indie comics meant for adults, used to hate manga. I am not joking nor overstating when I say that at the place that used to harass me, I would come in and ask for manga and be told 'We don't order that ridiculous girlie crap and your boyfriend should know better than to send you in to ask for it'.

At this point my household just goes into the local comics shop, they give us their distributor catalogs, and we do all our ordering ourselves because they have no idea what we are talking about. There is no marketing force behind manga for adults. When we ask company reps at cons, they say it's because it doesn't sell, but I think there may be a bit of a catch-22 loop going there: it doesn't sell because it isn't marketed because it doesn't sell because it isn't marketed...

How is this different than the superhero reader who has decided to move on? How many women were attracted by Sandman to comics only to find that there was… well… nothing to go to? It is a Catch-22, and this goes straight to the heart of the problem here: if you don’t have a market, you need to make one. Somehow. Locally. I spend all of the Alternative Press Expo looking for books that would entertain and appeal to the 44 year old comics lover: me. I found some, but I didn’t find a ton. But that is better than it used to be.

Why aren’t there a lot of adult comics? I’ve blogged before about the fact that I think comics excel at the large moments and fail at the small ones. Subtlety doesn’t play well in comics generally, which makes it less suited for many of the adult themes that you might explore, so it does seem easy to ignore certain stories for lack of ability to pull them off. (Like having a sophisticated script and the worst actors in the world at your disposal. At a certain point, don’t you just give up and go back to doing “Once Upon a Mattress”?)

Rushthatspeaks again:

I don't think any young fans (or at least not the majority of them) actually go around thinking "Aah, Bleach is the shit, but when I turn 21, I am never reading manga again." They may gradually succumb to societal pressure not to do such weird stuff, but I don't think any fandom actually thinks within itself their fandom is something that must be "grown out of." There will always be some people who grow out of it naturally, and some people who go on cosplaying into their 20s and 30s, no matter how embarrassing and awkward it is for everyone else at the anime convention.

Jason seems to think that the 1980’s audience for Alan Moore was willing to move from DC to From Hell in one fell swoop because they were hungry for more adult fare. I think that he’s giving us more credit than we deserve honestly. Some of us were hungry for more, but it was a long ugly discovery process. But I can say there it is a complete lack of modesty that drove the 1980’s comic convention goer. Those great unwashed masses in X-Men T-Shirts went to the conventions again and again because they were impervious to being awkward and embarrassed. They insisted that they were right, and slowly but surely, pop culture came back to them an apologized.

You could read that X-Men trade on the subway and have it look normal. We didn’t grow out of it. Not entirely.

In Review Of: True Loves by Turner & Botma

2010-11-04T16:14:00.000-07:00

Just finished off True Loves by Jason Turner and Manien Botma, a sweet, predictable alterna-love story that i found at APE at the New Reliable Press table.

I mean, c'mon, who could resist such a charming and beautiful little cover like the one on the left?

I'm reminded that my wife continues to rent Romantic Comedies, when both of us know the plotlines, we know the resolution, so why go rent another? Because, occasionally, just occasionally, they do one that gets the little details correct along the way to the predictable finish. Somehow the writer will slip in enough clever lines that actually have some emotional resonance or interesting details and you find yourself sucked into the movie despite knowing that these two actors are not going to spend the rest of their lives deliriously in love.

True Loves fits that description to a "T". I knew where the plot was going from about page 4, but that was ok. Jason and Manien were doing a detailed true-to-life-in-Vancouver-in-your-20's story, and they sold me on these characters. True, Eliza, Dirk, Zander and Herb all ring note-perfect for who they are, what their characters do, how True and Zander end up falling for each other.

I mean, c'mon, we know that True and Zander will end up together, the question really how they'll get there. Its from that that we start to appreciate the book. Jason and Manien do an excellent job juggling their small cast of characters and making them stay true to themselves.

I think that much of the pacing stems from Jason's weekly schedule while originally putting the strips out. There is a pacing to it that is subtly different than it might have been had it just been done for a book. It keeps Jason from extending some scenes, which in turn keeps the action a little punchier. I think that it works to his advantage. The art definitely gets looser as the book goes on. The first few pages of True at the clothing store and at dinner with Dirk are much cleaner and tighter than the final pages of Zander shaking cherry blossoms all over True, but the looseness works and almost never intrudes on the storytelling. My one quibble: that Zander looks almost a little too happy, almost a little too stoned through out the story.

And, of course, now i have to go get True Loves 2 so that i can see where they went with the story from there. Cause, yeah, now i like these people and now i want to see where they go from here. And isn't that the best part? We all want characters to fall a little in love with from stories like these.

In Review Of: Street Angel by Rugg & Maruca

2010-11-01T23:38:00.000-07:00

Not only is it the coming of Jesse Sanchez, but it’s the coming of The Afrodisiac! How could I miss out on that? But I digress, I’ll back up to the sweet pink cover of the digest trade “Street Angel”.

Forget where I heard about “Street Angel”, but it was another review that was good enough that I ended up bugging my LCS Blue Moon Comics to order me a copy. What I got was a good read, but one that shows the tricky part of collecting the learning curve. Its steep and not entirely smooth and in one place it shows up, bumps and all.

The early stories are a black and white hoot, showing Rugg and Maruca running roughshod through enough comic book tropes that we instinctively know just what their stunted childhood was spent doing. The aforementioned street angel, Jesse Sanchez, is a fun character that doesn’t need to make any other sense that doing all the cool stuff that we can’t do in our world: being the world’s greatest homeless skateboarder and ninja destroyer while having a legless skateboarding buddy to boot. Its fun, totally goofy shit that looks like the old Wally Wood 1960’s Thunder Agents in places. Its also totally forgettable beyond the laughs.

But by the 4^th story in the compilation, Down in the Dumpster Blues, writer Rugg is growing by leaps and bounds and a lot of the goofy ninja shit is gone, What we’re left with is some growing emotional honesty about jesse’s homelessness and lack of food and the embarrassment from a single stare for a classmate as Jesse stands in a dumpster. The interaction is both light and heavy in equal measure and crackles with low volume/high emotional resonance. Artist Rugg is also growing, relying less on solid blacks alone and pulling out the quill and brush to add a ton of texture and grey to a less black and white world.

It is my best guess that the artwork here was originally meant to be printed at regular comic size but has been reduced to digest size, which tightens up the linework, but can start to drop out smaller details as well. In this case, the scans seem solid, but there is a real lack of impact with it’s small size that I bet was in the originals. Dumpster blues would be something that I know that I would be impressed to have sitting on my drawing board at 10 x 15 size.

Hero Time, the direct follow up story continues the impressive artwork, as well as a far more cohesive story. The pacing is excellent, as are the pastiche’s of 1970’s marvel comics included in the story. Suddenly, Jesse and an older, wiser Afrodisiac are fighting an almost impossible battle, and we get a great little comic gem of a story.

Rugg's layouts and composition have improved greatly by this issue. Did i mention that learning curve earlier? Hero Time is far more mature in its storytelling and its aims, veering from the sardonic to the serious to the revelation that all the Afrodisiac's efforts to save the Earth have long since been lost by the next generation, a slightly bittersweet view of the aftermath of every other issue of the Fantastic Four or the Avengers circa 1972. Gerber as one of the few to try and address this with his classic Howard the Duck issue, "What do you do, the day after you saved the Universe?"

Of course, in the back are the covers, a great collection of Rugg doing lots of visual pastiche: Harold Grey, rob Liefeld, and Dan Clowes to name a few. And the obligatory sketchbook pages. But the meat? Its in issues #4 and #5 here. A fun read, and worth searching out or getting your local guy to order!

New Reviews Coming...

2010-11-01T22:42:00.000-07:00

for a variety of books that i've picked up.

Swallow Me Whole by Nate Powell

Street Angel by Jim Rugg & Brian Marluca

Umbrella Academy by Way & Ba

The Invention of Hugo Cabret

Bombshells by Terry Dodson

and The Outfit by Darwyn Cooke!

Yoakum Interview on Comic Book Resources

2010-10-26T11:39:00.001-07:00

I'm showing up in the press a bit more these days, and here are a few links. Comic Book Resources did a mini-interview that appeared yesterday, along with the cover of The Human Hourglass, which them for including! When I was writing this story and thumbnailing it out in one 7 hour stretch on a plane flight from Paris to Chicago, I don't think that i would have imagined not only having it out int he world, but the cover showing up on CBR's site.

But that's why we create things. To get them out there.

Also a review of Time Bomb #1 & 2, which is the first one to note that I did ink on issue #1 and include me in the review, for which I thank them kindly. Its the first time that I've inked Gulacy in about 10 years outside of some sketches, so doing the work was fun. I'm enjoying the story as well. I have no idea how it all ends, so I'm waiting for issue #3 to show up so that i can find out the ending along with the rest of you.

And lastly, but by no means least, Enter The Dark, Todd Miro's killer short horror film that I co-star in, is up for three awards at the Dark Carnival Film Festival: Best Short, Best Editing and Best Supporting Actor (my co-lead, Rob Sandusky). We had a great California premier at Sacramento's Horror Fest with family and some of the crew in attendance as well, so we had someone to laugh at our jokes during the Q & A.

Robot 6 on APE 2010

2010-10-21T20:25:00.000-07:00

JK Parkin of Robot 6/Comic Book Resources just posted some of his thoughts on APE, along with some pics and artwork. Mr Parkin was good enough to pick up the initial issue of The Carnival, which you can see peeking out from the bottom of his stash pile in the final photo. Thanks for coming by JK!

Pic stolen from JK Parkin's post. That's me, in the black hat and white shirt. Man, my sign behind me was falling over. How did i not notice that?

And, damn, Sin Titulo STILL isn't updated yet.

APE 2010 Round Up

2010-10-19T16:30:00.000-07:00

Got to walk around the Alternative Press Expo on Sunday morning and pick up a few new books, books which I promise I'll be reviewing here soon. I know, its been forever since i was doing reviews, but i promise that i will. I'm kinda curious to see if anyone bothers to review The Human Hourglass online. But I have a likely looking stack of books in the studio to start reading, which is a good thing.

Got to meet Erica Moen, whose Dar webcomic I've enjoyed for a long time. Picked up the second edition of that book and got a little sketch. I'm always happy to tell cartoonists that i enjoy that they're being read and appreciated. We all operate in our own little worlds and sometimes it helps to hear that all those hours are worth it. Erica's work is so open and autobiographical and so damn real that i feel like we're pretty much getting it the way she saw it. And its raw. I wouldn't have the guts to be that open about my relationships. I enjoy her work since it so different that mine. While she's ended Dar, there are still the archives and, happily, she's working on two new graphic novels.

Walking around I was stuck by how I felt like i'd been at this con before, and then i realized that i had, San Diego, 1988. Similar vibe, same number of people, just with superheroes. And it struck me that i hadn't been this happy about being at a con in years. Even without the superheroes I still got sucked into the art porn booth that is Stuart Ng and bought a book (just one!).

Had the chance to meed John Fleskes, who has a number of great art books for sale. My personal favorite is the Steve Rude one. John, who knows my boothmate Alex Sheikman, and I got to artgeek over originals for a while. John has a great eye for this stuff as well, and it was good to share ideas on original art and talk great artists long gone.

Had a discussion with Comic Con Executive Director Fae Desmond. I applaud Fae walking around and chatting with the artists, given that when you are in her position, someone will always find something to "discuss" with you.

Just starting to read True Loves by Jason Turner and Manien Botma. I'll report back when i'm done.

APE: Day 1 - The Round Up

2010-10-16T21:36:00.000-07:00

Home after a day of chatting and selling and NOT walking around and looking at all the other books on the other tables on the first day of the Alternative Press Expo.

It was cool. Sold a decent number of books, considering that pretty much no one knows me, knows my work and certainly isn't anticipating picking up the first issue of The Carnival.

Alex and I had a good time talking comics and storytelling. Its a good pairing since neither of us is Manga, Underground or Mainstream Superhero. We are, I guess, Ground Level. And, perhaps, moderately interesting. But we come from a similar past in terms of artistic influences. Thats Alex in the hat, myself in the red shirt. Table 655.

Next to me: Spain Rodriguez the legendary underground cartoonist. S. Clay Wilson also stopped for a minute to chat with him. It was cool next door company.

The convention reminded me of San Diego 30 years ago, with less superheroes. And thats a good thing since I twice today had the conversation with people who had decided, as i did this year, to stop going to the Mega Fest that is San Diego. There looks like a wealth of interesting ideas and books mixed in among various levels of skill and talent. Tomorrow I hope that pick a few diamonds out of the rough and blog about them.

Come on by if you've been on the fence about going: apparently this year's APE is larger than ever and at a much higher level that ever before. 8th and Brennan, South of Market, 11-7pm. See ya there.

The Human Hourglass wraps up at APE

2010-10-12T00:17:00.000-07:00

Finally will be finishing The Human Hourglass and presenting it in Ashcan form at APE this weekend in SF. If you love alternative comics you owe it to yourself to come on by.

Alex Sheikman, of Robotica fame, and myself will be sitting Sat and Sun at booth 655, so swing on by!

Here is a panel from the last two issues of The Human Hourglass as I work on it just to tide you over til the last two pages are done. The final panel is actually in and done, but i never work on the pages in complete sequence, so jumping around allows me to work on a different place while the ink is drying elsewhere. I know that most artists do that. I also know that Jack Kirby didn't. Bastard genius.

APE, booth 655, be there.

Fiction, Meta-Fiction and Heroes in Grey

2010-10-09T22:47:00.000-07:00

I sometimes wonder if other people have the problem that i have: that the stories come too frequently to put down, not in pieces but in whole and complete downloads from elsewhere, well, from somewhere, and then they wait for you to try and figure out what to do with them.

and the best of them need craft to make them better, to sand the rough edges into fitting, making the whole thing make sense. I sometimes wish that i didn't sit at this drawing board working away listening to music and reveling in the direct feedback that comes from hearing a beautifully played chorus. Is there anything in our medium that comes across as succinctly and directly? (current example playing as i right this: Green day's "Holiday") I don't think that there is. We're the medium of quiet comtemplation and hours of lonely work, in direct opposition to the performing arts. our work is to be digested over time and the in the peace and quiet of the reader's mind. If we do our job right then hopefully the scene that we create will play over and over in their head upon subsequent rereadings. We can only hope.

Did any of the writers and artists that were cranking out some of my favorite comics from the 1970s ans 1980s realize that they were creating works that lasted? I doubt it. When i brought up to Alan Weiss just how reverential i was to those issues of Jim Starlin's Captain Marvel, he wasn't surprised, but neither did he betray that Jim had idea that they would be as profound a piece of fiction as they became. I have the idea that Marshall Rogers knew, just fucking knew in his bones that his Batman was practically definitive, at least definitive to him, but as he was a Batman fan down to his DNA, it was work that carried weight of truth to it.

There is fictional truth and then there is TRUTH. This is the same truth that Kirby alluded to in his scattered work in Fourth World series. Jack wanted to create an entire mythology without a master plan spread out over the three books, and he went at it full bore and it was a mess, a glorious mess that contained kernels of greatness like the final fight of Terrible Turnpin, and others like the Black Racer and the hippy nonsense of the Forever People. There was truth in Englehart and Roger's Joker, and chilling horrible nihilistic truth that fueled heath Ledger's performance. (It was here that Englehart and Rogers out Kane'd Kane: In understanding the depths of the Joker as the agent of un-logic, he moves into the realm of myth and terror as the embodiment of horror that cannot be reasoned with. A jewel thief? A man under a Red hood? Are you kidding me? he is the horror of the Un coming to get you and you're never going understand him.)

I tried to explain the idea of what makes good fiction to my 9 year old daughter the other day. The idea that conflict was the necessary content to make the story happen. She understood almost immediately, having read more than enough fiction to realize that perfect people make for a boring story, and that the protagonist has to have obstacles in his/her path to make it interesting. Explaining characters that are shades of grey was a little harder. And while its true, I do still enjoy that idea that there are some heroes left somewhere out there, so that we can occasionally hang our hat on the idea of the morally simple ending rather than the murky grey toned one.

I'm writing the last page of The Human Hourglass and working on the layouts right now. It ends as messily by the next to last panel as i originally thought, with no real winners and only losers and its far more like real life. and I have to keep from making a happy ending. It doesn't deserve it, nor does anyone who's read the first 21 pages. They deserve the ending that is supposed to happen.

McKee was right: you have to be brutal to your characters. And it hurts.

New Artwork & "Enter The Dark" by Todd Miro

2010-09-16T00:02:00.001-07:00

Two new panels from The Human Hourglass from page 18. Nothing crazy here, but I like these two in sequence.

Enter The Dark. Scary film. 18 minutes long, already going to be making it's premier at the Chicago Horror Fest and then showing at Thriller! Chiller! film fest in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Its funny and scary and messed up, as all good horror films are.

My good friend Todd Miro wrote and directed and its pretty cool. I'm one of the two lead actors and while I cringe every time that i open my mouth on screen, for exactly the same reason that we all hate hearing our own voices on answering machines, I don't think that we do a half bad job.

Some reviews:

- Brutal as Hell review:

… a fun little fright flick that effectively showcases Miro’s filmmaking and editing abilities.

- HorrorNews.net review:
Enter the Dark is a clever, scary, fun piece that delivers with a punch and a cool ending.

- All Things Horror review:

… Enter the Dark proves once again a good ghost story simply needs to put emphasis on the story and not flashy effects or big budgets in order to provide some fun and scares.

Todd and I will be attending the Chicago premier so if you're not doing anything on the 26th, come by and check out the film. We're playing right before the feature presentation at 9:15 or so, which may be like having your band open for Van Halen once. We'll see.

Check out the bad ass trailer here. Enjoy.

Doctor Who Lego - Two Great Tastes in One!

2010-09-15T00:21:00.000-07:00

This is just pure awesomeness, and I have no idea who did this. but I love it. and I'm sharing.

Anyone who can send me that attribution, please do so that i can extend the proper art credit.

wow. Love it. Can't wait for more of Matt Smith's Doctor BTW.

Copyright, Greater Culture and the ever lovin' Business Model

2010-09-01T23:15:00.000-07:00

Scott Kurtz of Plaver Vs Player, one of my favorite online comics BTW, relates an incident at the Harvey awards that is probably best described in his original post, so I'll only excerpt a bit here:

After delivering his keynote speech, in which he discussed the issues of copyright and ownership versus contributing to the greater culture, Mark Waid attempted to return to his seat. But he never made it. Because cartoonist Sergio Aragones confronted Waid face to face, right there during the award ceremony, to argue the point.

obviously the main point of this is not to call attention to the arguement between Waid and Aragones, both men that i have respect for, but to the larger picture: the notion of copywrite and its place in society. And the comic industry's refusal to embrace new forms of payment or potential business models.

Any anyone who has been reading this blog knows, I've been a proponent of the different busienss model for the longest time, in a large part because the old one isn't working. Much. At all.

How not working? Let me count the ways. Artists operating under feudal system that robbed them of the ability to profit off of their creations in the manner that artist under almost every other system are able to. Sales on pamphlets so low that the general malaise under which the book industry is suffering cannot be to blame for them. A business that simply eats its young and never gives back to more than a few individuals. Stan Lee will retire well. Jack Kirby did not. How is that equitable?

Waid's assertion that eventually copyright should wane, and that creations should open up to the general public, given taht he's a businessman is an interesting and bold one. His main idea of the file sharing genie being out of the bottle is right on the mark.

Look, the recording industry and movie industry haven't been able to stop file sharing with all their money and lawyers and resources, how the hell is the comic community going to do so? Just as i want to castigate the BBC for being stupid enough to not take my money so that i can watch Doctor Who when its been broadcast over in the UK, I want to thank them for making it available in America with only a 14 day delay. Just as the manga industry is getting tough on unlicensed scanlations, they also have to thank those scanlators for making a built in audience for them.

you can't go back. Marvel can't stop the kids from putting the Avengers comics on the scanners and uploading them. Perhaps it would be smart, life saving-ly smart, in fact, to embrace any new business model that would allow for revenue. Especially when new authors are bypassing the Direct Market in pretty much every possible way. Scholastic is marketing Bone and Amulet directly to the kids, kids that don't even know that comic shops exists. kids that don't have the monthly comic habit that those of us older folks do, and they're not missing a thing except our nostalgia.

Embrace micropayments, embrace original graphic novels, embrace marketing everywhere, and using new format to do so. Embrace digital markets as well with different platforms such as cell phones and tablets.

Do something. Because Waid is right. You can't stop it. And like holding back the tide from washing up on the beach, you'll die trying.

Edited to add: Mark has posted the text of his speech, albeit a bit better organized in his opinion, here!

Changing up Studio Yoakum

2010-08-18T00:34:00.000-07:00

Spent a little time to change up the wall in Studio Yoakum. here is a quick pic of the wall o' artwork after changing out the art in the frames. Now up are:

- A George Perez/Pablo Marcos page from Avengers #167

- A two page spread from Sandman Mystery Theatre by Guy Davis

- the final page of Wardancer #3 by Weiss and myself

- A Rusty and the Big Guy sketch from Darrow

- an Invisibles page by Fegredo

- an old Iron Man page by Tuska and Johnny Craig

Inking page 19 of The Human Hourglass as we speak. Almost done!

Here's Hoping For: Ben Caldwell's Manga Wonder Woman

2010-08-17T15:48:00.000-07:00

Is there any format or new idea that DC won't retreat from? Odd, isn't it, that DC decided not to do the stand-alone series of Wonder Woman that Darwyn Cooke and J Bone were offering to do, when they're put so much muscle behind New Frontier? Odd that DC is more remembered for putting out The Dark Knight in the 1980's than the '60's TV show finally, a comic that was a radical departure from anything that they had ever done with the Batman franchise?

And now here comes bits and pieces of Ben Caldwell's Manga Wonder Woman pitch and i'm stuck thinking that, given their recent retreat from anything that was DC "go-go" checks approved, its just all wasted time and energy. Carmine Infantino must be running the company again.

Caldwell's stand alone Manga series makes so much damn sense both in format and art that there is no way it will go forward. The sense of retreat and retrenchment at DC seems simply to be too much to overcome.

And I love the samples. They're great fun and I would buy this in a second for my daughter. Who, by the way, has totally been put off Wonder Woman by the endless crossovers and retrenchments on the character. DC lost her, and they totally had her during the Gail Simone run. How can I addict my daughters to comics if the companies that put out the comics continue to not give me anything for them to read?

Format, format, format. It has so much to do with how we perceive the material. The success of Scott Pilgrim should be a perfect example that the digest format can work, especially when you don't have to flip the pages and translate them. How better to break into an entire market that should love WW?

Man, I get so tired of saying the same thing over and over. I'd love to know what the sales figures were for Wednesday Comics...

In Review Of: "Cathy's" retirement

2010-08-13T14:14:00.001-07:00

Cathy is dead. I type those words with joy in my heart. Seriously.

Not since For Better or Worse threw salt into the eyes of all its regular readers has a comic needed to bow out, go away and be as forgotten as the Gumps.

It may not be a stretch to say that Cathy set the women's movement back by years as well.

There are a notorious number of things to hate about Cathy: her ending up with Irving, the poor state of the drawing, the limited number of punchlines that were regurgitated over the decades... its rather mindboggling. Even Lynn Johnston made some interesting strides in her artwork, as the reprinted early FBOFW strips show. Not Cathy Guisewite. Her generously proportioned stick figures had the same level of incompetence 20 years later. When the old Cathy jokes were aged and yellow and peeling off of the office cubicle, they could be replaced with identical fresh ones and no one would ever be the wiser.

Did Cathy end up with Irving simply because Ms Guisewite was unable to come up with a single other male character? Sure looked that way. In her own way, Ms Guisewite hit the jackpot. With nary a bit of artistic talent on the page, she was able to craft a career that many far more talented cartoonists would envy, if they weren't working at convenience stores or driving UPS trucks.

Rest in Pieces Cathy, you will likely be forgotten as soon as the final strip goes into the recycling.

DC and the Format Wars: Giving up before the first shot is fired

2010-08-10T00:48:00.000-07:00

I was fascinated by th3e idea that DC would be doing original graphic novels next year on superman and batman as a way to introduce new readers to the continuity without having them struggle with just where to begin. Overall, i was willing to wait for what i was sure was going to be a spectacular failure.

As Johanna Draper Carlson points out, DC is already backing away from the original version of the OGNs, which brings us right back to a subject that i feel i've covered ad nauseaum over the last few years: the format wars.

How to present the material hat you have to a diverse clientele is a tricky one, especially since you have such different markets with Borders and Barnes and Noble in competition with the Local Comic Shop.

But how many cross over customers are there? The large bookstores that are in my area essentially eschew the weekly pamphlet format in favor of TPBs, while the LCS tends to carry a mix of both. How many people are really shopping both at this point?

DC has become, with the cancellation of essentially every experimental line that they have, from Minx to their manga line, relentlessly conservative. They have retrenched physically and mentally, deleting the new versions of their heroes in favor of the silver age versions, why should it surprise anyone that they've also deleted all the different formats that they've experimented with?

DC Comics has returned to the Silver Age. Unfortunately, their audience is living in 2010.

Doing manga? nope. Digest books? nope. Diversity in heroes? nope. Comics for girls? nope. Keeping Vertigo running? barely. Original Graphic Novels? nope. Monthly pamphlets about white males? Yup.

How's Milestone doing these days?

What's fascinating is that pretty much everyone else is able to make interesting things happen with the OGN market except a company with the greatest outreach and resources to do it. If necessity is the mother of invention, then perhaps corporate resources are the father of conservatism here.

Work In Progress: The Human Hourglass Page 18 part two

2010-08-10T00:27:00.000-07:00

This panel is coming along nicely. page 18 is almost done and, as always, art surprises you. panels that i thought were somewhat boring are turning into far more interesting bits and pieces.

A few more pages to go...

Work In Progress: The Human Hourglass Page 18

2010-08-06T21:48:00.000-07:00

Working away, and was rather pleased with this top tied of page 18 about to be inked.

I'm not fast, but i think that i'm getting better.

For those in the SF Bay Area, i'm trying to get into APE in October. Haven't heard whether or not I've got the table, but I'll let you all know the minute that I know!

New Work: The Carnival - The Human Hourglass page 17

2010-08-05T01:13:00.000-07:00

a new page posted at Yocomics.net as I get closer to the finale of the first Carnival story. Of course you can click the link and go straight to it, or you can do what my friend Sam is doing, which is simply wait til i finish the damn thing, then go read it all at once.

But then you miss a bit of the voyage doing that. I suppose.

The Human Hourglass has been running around my head for a number of years, but i lacked a few of the pieces to pull it all together. Odd how life works, it finally came together on a plane, far from anything even resembling noir. More like small inedible dinners served on biodegradable plastic. Inspiration comes from weird places. Being a mere 5 pages from the finish is rather invigorating.

Also, the first issue of Radical Publishing's TimeBomb is out on the stands as off last week, so go take a look. I ink the first 21 pages of Paul Gulacy, and you'd have thought it was 1999 and we were working on Batman: Outlaws. Except this time with a really cool story and killer coloring. Take a look and let me know what you think. Been ten years since i've had anything out on the stands.

For Olivia: Do Something!

2010-08-02T12:27:00.000-07:00

My youngest daughter threw the blank 8.5x11 paper at me with the title (in her mind) Do Something! so I whipped up a strip over breakfast about our usual breakfast time during school.

I'm not the average house husband, but i usually do the morning ritual, this the pretty damn true to life. Olivia cracked up when i gave the artwork back to her.

Enjoy.

In Preview Of: Space Battleship Yamato 2010

2010-07-27T23:43:00.000-07:00

My old friend Dave Hillman turned me on to this trailer via Facebook and my jaw just hit the floor.

You see, while the rest of the United States thought that this was Starblazers, some of us with the bootleg Japanese originals at hand knew that this was the series of movies with the Space Cruiser Yamato. And while the US science fiction series still struggled with little things like Twiki saving the day AND delivering the best one liners on Buck Rodgers, we were watching planets getting blown up, crew members dying, a drunk saki swilling doctor, moral dilemmas of adult complexity, and Dessler, one of science fiction's most interesting villians.

Whole civilizations dying? Pollution and ecological themes? A freakin' Wave Motion gun? Check, check and check.

Be Forever Yamato and the others were epic.

Fucking Epic.

Seeing this translated into the real world makes my year.

Not in San Diego part 2

2010-07-23T01:04:00.001-07:00

So i'm celebrating not being in San Diego (see prior whining post) by... creating comics. Sitting down at the board and getting back to work. A quick new scan of panel 3 page 17 to the left.

My Wife and Sister-In-Law also have a new blog, that I've added to the blogroll on the right. Surrogate Cities is the name and while i doubt that comics will ever, ever appear in that blog, the writing is great, so go take a look.

back to work. After all, if all of the comics creators in north America are in southern California, who is creating all the stuff that we want to read?

A San Diego Hangover Without Traveling

2010-07-22T00:47:00.000-07:00

without travel this time. So, for the first time in 23 years i'm going to be missing the San Diego Media Con and, not to put too fine a point on this, I have utterly mixed feelings about it.

Let me try to explain.

There are rituals and there are rituals. Long after Iron Man #72 introduced me to the idea of attending the convention, then still located in the old San Diego Convention Center in the middle of downtown, I attended my first convention in 1988. I was an unpublished neophyte sleeping underneath my leather jacket on the floor of the Westgate Hotel thanks to the generosity of Ron Lim. I believe that i picked up the splash page to Master of Kung fu #40 that year, as well as watching the classic Gil Kane cover to Iron Man #66 get sold right before my eyes.

Did i mention that it was a heady experience? Oh, and i would have to wait a whole nother year before meeting Jack Kirby for the first time.

This set a pattern. For the next two decades plus I've journeyed each year down to SD for a variety of reasons. And I recall them all for the touch points on my life: meeting Jack for the first time in 1989, hanging with Dringenberg and buying Sandman #8 pages in '91, meeting David Lapham in '92, drinking with Wrightson, Russell and Kaluta at the Omni in '94, signing at the DC booth with my Batman book about to hit the stands two weeks after the con in '00, taking the chance of missing my wife going into labor with our second child in '03. I've been going down there longer than i've been married, had children, pretty much longer than anything.

And this is the first year that i'm not going down. And I'll miss it. But there are a ton of things that i'm not sure i'll miss. I'm going to miss all my long time contacts that i see once a year on that packed convention floor. I'm going to miss the ease with which i navigate those aisles to get where i want to go. I'm going to miss taking down a new pitch as i did with lis fies in '08 and taking meetings. I miss the smell of belonging.

but I'm not going to miss not belonging. This business is merciless, and despite inking part of Palmiotti and Gulacy's Timebomb for Radical, I'm not part of their marketing on the book. No one gives a shit that i did those pages. I got paid well for them, but, lets face it, my ego isn't getting stroked for helping to get the book out.

I want to matter more. I love this medium and as i sip some tequila and draw a bunch of new pictures on paper hoping that some will care and yet caring not because it feels so good to be drawing and having something cool appear out of nowhere on a blank sheet of paper, I miss the getting on the plane with my portfolio tomorrow morning, as i have for 23 year, and landing in the humidity of SD.

I want to contribute to the graphic novel market that i swore would come back in 1996 when i sat in the bullpen at Valiant and tried to convince everyone that the day would come. That the market would eventually accept us. I SAW this, I saw this all. And i wish that i had the time to make more pages, to convert the stories ion my head into physical books faster.

I want to matter more. And its hard not to.

So I won't be be walking aisles of SD this year, critiquing the new hardbacks, trying to figure out which party to crash, which packed san diego restrauant to slide into. Dick's Last Resort will have to do without me.

I want to matter more. And its hard not to.

Fuck.

The Return of the Carnival: The Human Hourglass

2010-07-12T23:53:00.000-07:00

you know what i love?

When this little thumbnail...

turns into this, page 16.

Missing In Action - Charles Yoakum

2010-06-30T22:52:00.000-07:00

OK, I've been a bad blogger. I admit it. I've not posted much in the year 2010, especially in the last couple of months.

Its not that I've not been reading comics, or thinking about comics, or doing some sketching on my recent trip to New York. I just haven't been motivated to talk about comics. In most any way shape or form.

I simply haven't had the energy to talk about finally getting down to reading the entire run of Planetary up to the final trade (when it comes out), or getting to read Madame Xanadu, or getting my Adam Hughes cover parade book or sitting back down to finish up the Human Hourglass pages.

Sorry. My bad. Although I'm not sure that anyone really missed me. There are just so few minutes in life and I wasn't spending any of them constructing great and funny thoughts about storytelling or artwork or anything. Perhaps if I was a faster and better typist it would be easier to get them out, but that would preclude the editing process.

I need to be a Dragon software adoptee. Seriously.

Recent trip to New York: me with an old friend from the Acclaim days to discuss what he's publishing these days. Should anything work out I'll let you all know. Took time in the Met and the MoMA to pull out my sketchbook and draw a little Modigliani and Klimt. The heat and humidity felt wonderful and having my daughters lead me through the subway passages at Union Square made me proud.

New York inspires me and makes me want to do art. There is some vitality in the people and the energy that makes me want to work. You walk around and see everyone and think that somewhere in that naked city area a million visual ideas and they're just bouncing around in your head and you need to get them out.

Stay tuned. Above sketch of my daughter playing on my wife's iPhone on the flight to NYC.

In Memory Of: Al Williamson 1931-2010

2010-06-15T18:10:00.000-07:00

It is sad that just a short time after Frank Frazetta passes from this earth, one of the few men whose touch with a brush was as good would also succumb to illness. Al Williamson was a giant of an artist in his skills, but somehow he was primarily an artist who dazzled other artists but didn't have his name transcend the work the way that Frank's did.

Coming up at a time when illustrators were able to be inspired by some of the classic american comic artist such as Raymond and Foster, as well as seeing Lyendecker and others create what we now know as the classic age of American illustrators, Al had a facility with a brush that was matched only by Frazetta and Wood as his contemporaries. It was technique along with the eyes to saw, really saw, the compositions and the structure necessary to make the whole piece work. There was no trick to it other than bloody hard work.

His work on EC remains my favorite, while some prefer Rip Kirby or Secret Agent Corrigan. Even his work on the Blade Runner adaption in the 1980's is stellar.

Of personal reflections, I have none. I had dinner with him in a group once or twice and I don't think that i ever got the chance to sit next him. Mores the shame. I was just happy as could be to be in the presence of such a great man. I'm sorry that there was no chance to one day wrangle the chair next to Al so that i could discuss brushes with him, or, well... just anything.

The great ones are great and we all just sit back and get mesmerized by their work. Al influenced generations of inkers and artists. As it should be. Rest in peace Al.

RIP - Frank Frazetta

2010-05-12T17:58:00.000-07:00

It took me a day or two to consider what to write in the wake of Frank's death two days ago. Here is what comes to mind.

We use the words like "Genius" and "Master" pretty loosely. After all, there are a number of fabulous artists around that we can get impressed by, and those words trip off the tongue pretty easily.

Very rarely should we consider someone to be utterly in a class by themselves, and with his paintings, Frank was that. Illustration magazine has been making a good case for us to fall back in love with many of the early 20th century illustrators and pulp magazine painters, yet for the most part, their work has a nostalgic appeal. It has skill, yes, but for all the George Rozen Shadow covers that i find briliant and iconic, they simply aren't a Rockwell. Or a Leyendecker.

Frazetta's approach, technique, color sense and, very importantly, composition were game changers in every sense of the word. For all those that had worked in the fantasy genre before him, we see almost no precedent to his Conan, to the sense that he brought to those paintings.

He was a true artist in that, once you saw the piece, it appeared as if he had shown you another world that should have always existed, but that you simply hadn't seen before. The best artists show us things that should have been obvious and yet, somehow, we had never seen them.

His comic work prior to that is pretty well known, although i doubt that many have poured over Johnny Comet as much as the Death Dealer. I personally enjoy, as a single piece, this Buck Rodgers cover from the 1950's, with a peer in skill, Wally Wood, inking Frank's pencils. Not only is it a gorgeous piece in terms of technique (at his peak, Wood was an astonishing technician with regards to texture and light), but the composition is magnificent.

As an artist, I can look at this piece and start to dissect it, look at how it was achieved, look at the choices that Frank and Wally made along the way. Same thing with the aforementioned Johnny Comet newspaper strip. When i get to Frank's Conan covers, I get lost. Completely and utterly lost in the colors, the textures, the circular compositions that make you want to look at everything all at the same time and don't allow you to concentrate on any one thing. They don't have to be perfect (although I defy you to have the balls to tell me ways to improve any of the Conan pieces) to mesmerize. They helped to define an era of art, of shrinking genre paperback books that we trapped in a world that was busy trying to pretend that it didn't need them. Like the Beatles or Elvis, there is pre and there is post and we are now utterly post-Frazetta.

Your younger reader who is used to seeing graphic novels and trade paperbacks in the book store will have a hard time understanding that there was a time when you would walk into the Brentano's bookstore and in the "cartoon" section would be some of the oddest books imaginable smashed up against each other. Back in the glorious days of 1978 one would find the Garfield collections next to Doonesbury collections next to Peanuts next to The Art of Frank Frazetta. Astonishingly, they wouldn't put his art book in the "art" section many times but in the "cartoon" section since, obviously, it had barbarians and other fantastical worlds, so it couldn't be ART. Therefore it was cartoon, right? I dare anyone to look into the eyes of a Frazetta female and tell me "that come hither so I can kill you" look is cartoony and should be next to Garfield.

Rest in Peace Frank.

In Review Of: Doctor Who - The Eleventh Hour

2010-04-04T11:13:00.000-07:00

From the costume, I thought that we might be looking at a performance quite a bit like Patrick Troughton, the second Doctor.

But I would have been wrong.

Watched the new Doctor Who episode last night at Wonder Con and was blown away by a couple things. Given that I've been with this franchise since 1980, I wanted to share a few thoughts on the new direction of the series.

First - it feels different with Moffat in charge. Just as "Rose" was such a departure from the JNT series with Sylvester McCoy, and the abortive TV move from the 1990's, this is a departure in tone from the RTD era. After 5 years, its time. Doesn't matter that Moffat wrote most of the best episodes during the RTD era, they were shot with Davie's sensibilities in mind. Makes me wonder how much better the series could have been if JNT had left at the end of Davison's run, instead of being pushed to stay. Colin might have been, would have been a completely different Doctor.

The episode spins in a number of different directions, almost too many, as if, with the biggest and best toy in the universe to play with, Moffat can't help but doing a few spin-outs in the parking lot now that he's been given the keys. That's ok, I like the energy.

Second - Matt is out of the box great as the Doctor. Eccleston is a Doctor that i enjoyed tremendously, simply because he's such a good actor that his emotionally scarred Doctor is all kinds of manic and unpredictable. Much in the same way that Tom Baker was in his first couple seasons, you never knew which way he was going to turn, or how he was going to react. He is, after all, an alien and i prefer him to be unpredictable. Tennant's Doctor, while given some excellent scripts, took a while to grow on me. His early turns in the Christmas Invasion and New Earth weren't quite my taste.

Matt works for me right out of the Tardis... er... box. Now, I'm trying to remain spoiler free, so we'll see how the rest of the season plays out, but right now Matt has something that I've not seen since the second episode of Robot: someone who looks like they've dropped right into the role so quickly that they're already doing all the small things that sell the part.

2010-04-03T18:54:00.001-07:00

Waiting for the second showing of matt smith's Doctor Who at wonder con. Just missed getting into the first showing by 13 people in an 800 person room.

Dick Giordano and Wonder Con

2010-04-02T10:42:00.000-07:00

When Dick passed away last week I found myself thinking back to the slightly sepia toned days of Valiant Comics/Acclaim Comics and of Dick coming by to hold impromptu inking/advice clinics up in the bullpen area.

As naive as it may seem, it really sounded like fun when Shooter decided to remake a comic company with a bullpen area that might actually be like Stan used to make Marvel sound in his Stan Lee soapbox pages. Naive in that artists now live all over the country as opposed to being cloistered into the few square miles of Manhattan, but in the pre-internet being everything days it rather was a good idea.

Being an inker at Acclaim was a little scary, since Bob Layton eventually took over the EIC chores, so you knew that every page he looked at he must have seen with a, "Oh I can do better than that." Bob never particularly liked my work, although there were times on my best jobs that he did come through with a nice compliment or two.

It was a big deal when Dick would come into the office since most everyone there knew his reputation, who he had worked with, what he had done. (He was one of the few that Andrew Wendell would get off his high horse and talk to.) So what was nice is that no one was defensive about his or her work, after all you couldn't be with Dick his resume was impeccable, but he was simply so nice and affable to deal with that the criticism always came off as helpful. It was great to listen to old school comic fans now professionals ask Dick, "What is the secret of getting that Wonder Woman sheen on the hair?", "Why did Sekowsky do this on his pencils?", "How did Joe Orlando get that look to his brush work?". Dick answered all of the questions to best of his ability and was thoroughly entertaining really. Layton was usually in a good mood those days as well, they seemed to get along well.

Do I recall any one thing that i learned from Dick's visits? It wasn't a specific brush technique (although, now that i think about it, he did show a certain pen line out of a spotted black that i think i do use), but it was more about giving back and sharing the wealth of skills and approaches that can work in comics. He was a great guy and, like Archie Goodwin, one of a few guys who were very good at getting the best out of the people around them. We'll miss him.

I'll be at Wondercon on Sunday wandering around, hope everyone has a good time there. I won't be sitting and signing but I'm hoping that Radical Publishing might have some of the TimeBomb work at their booth! I'll be live blogging any good stuff that comes up. Saturday night, however, is the big deal: the premier of Matt Smith as the new Doctor! I'll be surprising my two daughters by bringing them in to watch the episode... and they have no idea its coming. Should be fun.

Will we finally get a new Red Tide?

2010-04-02T00:19:00.000-07:00

Neil comments on my long ago post on Steranko's Red Tide that the originals were recently exhibited in the Geppi Museum, and that a new version might finally be in the works.

That is good news indeed.

i know that Mike Richardson of Dark Horse was talking about a new version as long ago as 1999, and that, somehow, nothing ever came of it. So it would be something if it were to finally happen.

For one thing, I could finally replace these crappy scans with crisp new scan of Steranko artwork properly colored and separated. Hopefully without breaking the spine of my new book.

This is Steranko at his game changing best folks. This will be a revelation to people if given the same treatment that Dave Steven's Rocketeer was just given. In the era where it was finally time for someone to step and take the next step after Jack Kirby at his 1966 heights, not one but two people came up: Neal Adams and Jim Steranko. The two of them came at the work from different approaches and, like rock and roll in the post-Beatles era, divided all who came after them. Neal, with his highly illustrative approach, took Batman into a new level of iconography by going the opposite of Kane: his Batman, and Green Lanterns, were populated by real people, with clothing that folded realistically over forearms containing arm hear and fingernails that needed to be trimmed. Steranko took Nick Fury to new heights of symbolism, bringing in pop art influences and different production techniques, but more inportantly, taking the vocabulary of comics to a further extreme than Jack did. If jack's Captain America leap with his feet 6 feet apart, Steranko's Captain America was almost 12 heads tall and had his feet 8 feet apart. All while defeating the hordes of Hydra while a jet black dyed Madame Hydra gesticulated hypnotically in the overlay.

Yes, Chandler was Steranko reigned in, but in service of the story, and adapting his prodigious talents to the form that he himself set up: 8 lines of text broken to under two panels per page.

A Big Little book for adults.

Haiku detective fiction.

And unlike other artist whose blank canvas projects stare back and defeated many an artist, Jim had a work ethic and brought his storytelling talents to bare and nailed the book. Even for a conservative 1976 audience.

Hopefully he will restore the text to the original form that had been intended before, as i understand it, moderate censoring by original publisher Byron Preiss.

More info as we go...

Bill Jaaska RIP 1961 - 2009

2010-03-18T12:02:00.000-07:00

The comics community is an interesting one, one of names, not faces, that flit in and out of our awareness with extreme rapidity. We end up discussing artists and writers and inkers as though we're on a first name basis with them, because, well, we kinda feel that after we read their work enough. How easily the names trip off of my tongue like I know these people! Loved Sam Rosen's lettering in that issue, enjoyed Bill Everett's work on that issue, or Jim Lee's on this issue. And I've met none of those people.

I can say that i worked with Bill Jaaska, but I never met Bill. Did one issue of Turok: Dinosaur Hunter and that was that. Bill was doing a rather strange over-rendered pencil style that did not mesh well with my inks at the time. But that was what needed to be done so I did it. Since it was only a single issue I didn't have the editors give me his phone number so that i could call him. I turned it in, submitted my voucher and moved on to an issue Eternal Warrior.

Welcome to the disconnected world of comics. I've inked plenty of people that i've never met, and any one of them could easily be have died, alone, in a rented room like Bill did, and no one in the comics community or myself would ever know. And thats sad.

As artists, much of what we do it solitary. Many of us aren't great socially and so we retreat into the quiet shelter of our drawings. Its part of what makes us artists, being able to visualize alien worlds in our heads and bring that out on the paper. The internet has been a huge boon to us however, allowing us to communicate at 3 in the morning with people around the world via email and become more connected without having to be over connected.

Still, it took a very long time for the comics community to realize that Bill had died. The story, as it is, is in the blog here, and it makes for interesting and sad reading. While I didn't follow his career, it seems that Bill, after working on some fairly high profile gigs with Peter David on The Hulk, dropped off the radar, and stayed off the radar.

And that's pretty easy to do in comics back then. After inking Batman:Outlaws with Gulacy in 2000, I decided to stop inking professionally and do some other art, so it would have appeared that i dropped off the radar as well. But you could have found my graphic design on the web by Google, and then the blog, and then the web comic. Bill didn't do that, not that anyone can find.

And its sad. Go read. And think about all the comics that you've read and re-read, and start to wonder where some of those people are now.

Englehart: The Point Man and beyond

2010-03-17T13:11:00.000-07:00

Great interview with Steve Englehart over at Newsarama today by Zak Smith, and I wanted to highlight it so that people will know that not only is the Point Man going back into print, but that the sequel, 30 years in the making, will be out next month.

Englehart is one of the great lights of the 1970's comic movement, and while less flashy than a piece of Jim Starlin or Mike Grell art, his stories, along with Steve Gerber's and Don McGregor's helped to truly take the next step from where Marvel was in the 1960's with Stan and Roy. People are still going on and using his concepts, especially his ideas for Captain America. Brubaker is his soul mate with the series that he's been writing for years now. His Batman, in both my eyes and in the eyes of DC Comics obviously, remains definitive.

Its comments like this that just confirm what we thought about how they approached the comics "back in the day":

The last stuff I did for Marvel and DC had way too much editorial back-and-forth. Once upon a time, editorial said, “These are your books, do whatever you want to do.” The story I’ve told a zillion times is that Roy Thomas said, “We’re giving you Captain America – if you can make it sell, we’ll keep you on, if not, we’ll fire you and we’ll get somebody who can.”

That was the sum total of the editorial influence! What I did and what Steve Gerber and those other guys did came from that. Now, editorial says “Here’s what we’re going to do with the line and the major books, and we’ll just get people to fill in the blanks.”

And from an editorial standpoint, I can see how that would make sense when you're doing a huge Secret Invasion crossover. From a writer's standpoint, that would simply suck unless you were the one behind Secret Invasion. Its one of the reasons that the only Marvel comics worth looking at are ones that are divorced from the current continuity: Guardians of the Galaxy, Nova, FF. They even ruined the fun read that was Thor. Thanks a lot guys. You had me there for a little bit.

I still have my copy of the original pressing of the Point Man, and while its a bit tattered from the years, its still a fairly good read. I followed Steve to the paperback market after his Avengers and Batmans and enjoyed the novel. Not perfect, but i kept thinking, "That was just the first book, wait til he hits his stride." But he never did another novel until now. I'm looking forward to it.

The Unvarnished Horror of "Spook Hunt"

2010-03-13T10:10:00.000-08:00

A shout out to local filmmaker and good friend Todd Miro who is, over at his blog, detailing the process of shooting and producing and putting all the pieces together for his movie short Spook Hunt. Go over and take a look. He's got a great idea and and a great script and if any of the execution doesn't come up to snuff its only because he's got a amateur in front of the camera.

Yeah, I'm in the movie. sheepish grin.

This acting thing is hard. I can hear the inflection in my head that i'd like to use, but the voice, like any instrument, is only as good as the musician playing it, and as a bit of a novice I can't always get the instrument to do EXACTLY what I want it to.

As much time as I spend thinking about layouts and storytelling and variations of shots and all the different ways to present information on the comic book page, its fascinating to have someone else direct and edit and be the sole arbiter of how to tell the story. I'm a prop. I'm trying to be a damn good prop, but i'm still a prop nonetheless.

Todd is spending a great deal time documenting both the technical means that he's using to shoot the piece, as well as the aesthetic choices in picking shots, angles, takes. Its a great way, other than director's commentary tracks and deleted scenes, to see how a film comes together.

So pop on over to see some of the early scenes as we shoot them and he starts to assemble the footage into something resembling a real film!

The Book of Genesis by Crumb: A Review

2010-03-03T18:48:00.001-08:00

I was unaware that Crumb had his entire book of Genesis on display for a time at the Armand Hammer Gallery at UCLA, but I'm glad that Charles Hatfield was there to report back with text and photos. I've stayed away from reviewing Crumb's Genesis for a while to let the work sink in. With 4 years of illustration behind it, it deserves to be marinated on for a while as opposed to a simple quick reaction.

Hatfield comes in with a number of points in his review of both the exhibition as well as the book itself. One of the interesting ones was this:

The pages were traditional inked originals on Bristol board, maybe (I’m guesstimating) not quite half again as large as their printed counterparts, so minute attention was needed. I was able to seek out marks of correction, or adjustment, in the inking: for instance, Crumb’s subtle use of white-out, sometimes for texturing, sometimes because he apparently changed his mind about minute elements of the text. Evidence of “mistakes” or second-guessing was pretty minimal, though; Crumb’s facility and focus remain mind-blowing.

So all that ink detail is literally at a denser, small size in the originals? Wow. More impressed than i was a few minutes ago. Put that in your pipe and smoke it.

Crumb's work has always been problematic. Growing up in the San Francisco Bay Area, in the dirty aftermath of the hippies, I've had no illusions at the golden era of peace and love. I rode my 10 speed past the burn outs on the sidewalk all the time growing up. So reading the Zap comics that were floating around? Revering Crumb and Sheldon and the rest? Difficult to read pot jokes when you're surrounded by people who got used to being stoned and lost the capacity to do anything with the rest of their lives.

Of course Crumb, like him or hate him, continued on to make statement after statement in the world. Like him or hate him, he's an artist down to his DNA. And he's a sequential artist to boot, which is an interesting difference to him, something that many artists can't say for all the interpretations that we've seen of biblical stories.

In the end, after reading through the entire Genesis book, I was struck that the project is one that stands more on its own merits as simply being completed, a four year marathon, than on being the sort of book that you can comment on in the usual terms (story, art, characterization, plot, etc.) Yes, it did get done, and I'm not certain how many artists would have taken those years to synthesize the different texts down to a single, cohesive graphic text. Crumb spends a great deal of artistic energy differentiating the faces and characters, so that he and we can have a visually identifiable Cain and Abel, but, and i suppose this is crucial to your enjoyment of the story, does he add anything to the fable to Cain and Abel? Should he add anything might also be a question that, depending upon your interpretation of the Bible, you might wish to add.

For me, I don't think that anything was really added. Yes, his women look rather like Crumb women, but that doesn't bother me. It doesn't add anything to my appreciation of the text either however. For all of my time invested in the reading, I only came away with an appreciation of the sheer amount of work involved, but not any new ideas towards the text of Genesis. Again you could argue that perhaps I shouldn't be asking anything to be added to stories, given that they alternate, in odd fashion, from the beginning of the Hebrew tribes to the creation stories, to parables, to extended family trees (intent most likely upon making sure that certain families allied themselves directly the originators of the 12 tribes). But,yes, I did want a little something more there. What more, I don't know, but a regurgitation or distillation of various texts in a graphic format doesn't really have a place in the "books I've been looking forward to".

I read a number of reviews of the book and have yet to run across one that really mentions a distinct benefit of having the book. And that bothers me. I'd like there to be a reason for it to exist, beyond just "I wanted to see if I could finish it." Is it an artistic statement to just finish the marathon?

Genesis will sit upon the bookshelf, but, like many bibles I'm afraid, will continue to gather dust rather than being referenced frequently.

The JLA by Bruce Timm & Yoakum

2010-02-25T18:37:00.000-08:00

The second Bruce Timm commission inks, following the Batgirl of two days ago. you know what i learned from inking this one?

Hawkgirl is bad ass. She's fun to draw. Why don't we have a monthly Hawkgirl comic?

Corporate Comics: bad art or bad direction?

2010-02-23T12:03:00.000-08:00

We interrrupt the posting of a new bruce timm /yoakum piece for this bit of snark.

Is this professional art, or is this professional coloring? 'Cause it ain't professional drawing.

Recently I had linked to a black widow page of art work that was simply so boring and incompetent that i had to hold it up as an example of bad comic art. This piece is a totally different example of bad comic art. this one is far better about pointing the direction of where corporate comics might be going.

And its scary as hell, if thats the case. Someone channeling James Jean with no structure to the drawing at all.

I mean, look, we all started out apeing someone. But it used to be that you would be told to quit drawing like Kirby or Gil Kane or John Byrne and go learn how to draw. This seems like the perfect example of... well, just about everything bad.

Batgirl by Timm and Yoakum

2010-02-23T09:20:00.000-08:00

Bruce Timm. Love his stuff.

Was given a couple of his pieces to ink over for commission. Had no idea how hard it would be to get something that i liked.

How about 5 tries?

I ended up doing this Batgirl 5 times before i was happy with the result. The commissioner of the piece has been extremely patient what i fiddled with them to my satisfaction, and had to delay finishing the work while i took on the Gulacy job.

And then I came back to them and hated them again. So I redid this piece, and the JLA piece that i'll post tomorrow, again.

So what was the problem? Well, Timm's stuff has its own cartoony logic to it, and if you don't nail the line thickness right off the bat, then you're basically dead in the water. There are no little rendering line that might take you eye away from the holding line, nothing to distract you. And maybe i'm being overly picky with my work, and no one else would have had a problem with them, but i did, and since there is no deadline on these, i continued to work them again and again.

And now i need to get them out of my studio before i start to harsh on them again.

BTW - saw some of Rain's colors for Timebomb over my inks and was totally blown away. TIMEBOMB will likley be the best looking book color and production wise that i've ever been involved with and I'm really psyched to see how it all looks in print.

Cross-Over Craziness vs Single Issue Fun

2010-02-10T11:34:00.000-08:00

Todd Allen at Publisher's Weekly does a good job of summing up the recent Cross-Over Craziness that is happening at Marvel and DC, and pointing out just how difficult it is to actually find something that isn't part of being tied in to 7 other titles.

This is exactly how I, as the doting father of two girls, who has spent a great deal of time and money over the last 6 years trying to get my children addicted to comics, see the market place. And it sucks.

i hate the idea that my 9 year old will say to me, "What is actually happening in Wonder Woman?" because she can't just pick it up and read a single great storyline. I've started to not pick up the books if they're so convoluted that i can't understand them. And if I can't, there's no way that she can.

Sadly, the Green Lantern series has long since descended into zombie nihilism and i'm not going to subject my kids to the over the top nastiness of Blackest Night. Is it any wonder that they've moved into reading Simpsons Comics over DC in the last 7 months? I was actually buying Superman for a while, enjoying Robinson's run onthe series with Guedes' art. I dropped that when the cross destroyed whatever interest i had in the storyline.

And that sucks again. I would like to love comics again on a regular basis, but almost none of the series will give me a fun reason to show up in the store month after month. As my hands stay covered with small black ink stains as i finish up the Gulacy pencilled pages for TIMEBOMB, I would love to relax with a small stack of enjoyable comics.

And they keep letting me down. And they're letting my kids down. And its pissing me off.

Tired! Putting the Brushes Away for Tonight

2010-01-23T22:54:00.000-08:00

You want to know the truth? I'm halfway through my initial commitment to TIMEBOMB, and the truth is, I'm tired and nothings working tonight. i'd love to show you some of the new inks over Gulacy, but I can't, so I'll save the scans til after the book is released and then you can check it out without color.

I'm just a little beat.

Out of Print: Out of Sight, Out of the Bookstores

2010-01-20T12:03:00.000-08:00

One circular topic of discussion about superhero comics concerns the jumping on point: In the now common long story arcs, it seemed that things were so convoluted that it was necessary to figure out how the make the story accessable to an average reader. Do you only do short contained stories? Do you have a precis page to recap the prior issues?

Jum Shooter's oft repeated adage has been, "Every issue is someone's first issue." True, but where do you subvert the story to the format? After all, the entire comics industry was built on disposability. You never had access to any of the prior issues if the newsstands had their way with returnability.

So we move to the graphic novel, obstensibly because it is easier to keep on the bookshelf, will last much longer in print and can continue to gain readers as time goes by. Great idea.

Except when you have a two part graphic novel and the publisher is letting part one go out of print before part two comes out. Why you, as a publisher, would want to have this happen unless you were basically bankrupt, is beyond me. No wait, its not. Its the typical short sighted thinking that has ruined more than a few books along the way in this industry.

I have just finished reading my youngest daughter Amulet, a long continued story that has only, to date, two volumes out. you can tell by reading it that this could be a 7 or 8 volume story, and given the thickness of the books, plus the lavish full color artwork, that this is going to be a long project. That's ok. My kids were mesmerized from the first chapter. They'll continue to read the books when they come out. And, like Bone, Scholastic is likely going to have a long running serial that future generations can come to and fall in love with. Just so long as they keep it in print.

After all, what good is Two Towers without Return of the King? Or Two Towers without the Fellowship? Or, in manga terms, Nana pt 12 without part 11?

Kudos to Kean Soo for a solid piece of work and my hopes for better publishing days ahead. And to Disney/Hyperion? Aaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrggggggggggg.

New Project! TIMEBOMB by Palmiotti, Gulacy and Yoakum

2010-01-12T15:43:00.000-08:00

Hey there folks, wanted to let you know that I'm hard at work on 20 pages of TIMEBOMB, a new three issue series for Radical Comics. Here is the press release:

From comic superstar Jimmy Palmiotti & Justin Gray comes a time travelling adventure!

A group of international scientists and archaeologists on a publicly funded dig discover a hidden city beneath the streets of Berlin. Constructed as a failsafe option for the Nazi party should they lose the war, the city is also home to Hitler’s ultimate doomsday weapon- an Omega bomb designed to wipe out the human race- and it’s just been activated. Now, crews of scientists with state-of-the-art weapons and equipment must travel back in time to 24 hours before the disaster to stop the bomb from going off. However, they soon discover that, rather than going back in time for 24 hours as intended, they’ve been sent back 65 years to the height of Hitler’s Germany.

Please note that I do not resemble a "comic book superstar", but i have played one on TV.

Can't show you any artwork yet, but its cool stuff, and I'll be curious to see what the pages look like with the full process color that Radical uses. More updates as the project moves along!

The Miracleman Copyright Case pt. 17

2010-01-09T09:52:00.000-08:00

Its been a bit since I blogged about the Miracleman/ Marvelman fiasco and certainly been a while since I pissed Dez Skinn off enough to post a comment, but things just keep popping up and adding fuel to the fire. And because its a legal issue, instead of every getting simpler, it just keeps getting more and more complex.

Sigh.

Rich over at Bleeding Cool has brought up two graphics, a reprint of a 1958 story that has a copyright affixed to it, and the original version, which does not. Shown here is the original panel, lacking the attribution. And all this because Pádraig Ó Méalóid keeps digging around to get to the bottom of the controversy.

Now we have to wonder if the copyright notice on the reprint has any claim, see what English law from the time that the original publisher went out of business says about rights becoming either public domain or reverting to the original artist, and see when Dez Skinn put in his claim of use on the property if they were public domain.

And I may owe Dez an apology.

But we'll see. The problem here is that the real world is messy and complicated and Pádraig Ó Méalóid will likely keep unearthing new material that will just certify how messy it all is. Certainly when Len Miller & Co, the original publisher, went out of business no one in the world would have considered that they property would have become so valuable so many years later. Moral high ground still goes to Mick, however, and his 1978 claim shows that he wanted ownership to something that he had put his time and love and hard work into.

Whither the Fun?

2010-01-06T11:03:00.000-08:00

Got hit by this one twice in the last couple days, the Comics Journal's quote of the day with Pat Boyette missing fun comics, and Jennifer De Guzman talking about a comic that perhaps should have been another Scott Pilgrim: Street Angel.

And I don't think, from her column, that Jennifer is having a lot of fun right now either.

...SLG began publishing the comic book series Street Angel by Jim Rugg and Brian Maruca, about a homeless twelve-year-old with extraordinary martial-arts skills that she uses to fight ninjas, pirates, rednecks—anyone that needs a butt-kicking.

Now, that sounds like a fun comic. You pull off the right balance on that story and you have a comic that can be enjoyed by a huge audience, male or female, young or old. Good ol' fashioned silliness.

I don't remember ever seeing it, but then, there are so many damn comics that it is easy for stuff to fall under the radar no matter how much it gets the press. If I have a hard time going and picking the thing up off the rack, and I do have a hard time with that since the LCS is somewhat small, then its just too damn easy to forget. I'm still missing a Rocketo trade and i LOVED that series. I'll try to get this one at WonderCon.

So that takes care of the fun comic, but more importantly are the questions that Jennifer is rhetorically asking herself about Street Angel these first days of 2010:

Why didn't hype translate into more orders and sales? Was it the quarterly schedule? A need for even more outreach to retailers? A need for outreach to a different audience? The book itself? Do retailers even look at advance hype from third sources when they place their orders? ... A project can give every indication of being wildly successful or a niche-audience sleeper and turn out to be just the opposite.

And those are great questions. Look, I feel for the publisher and retailer here: there are only so many square feet in a shop to display things, there are only so many dollars to put out there for product, and if you happen to have a few dollars left over for non-X-men/Batman product, how the hell do you decide which to order? And if you primary customer is the X-men/Batman person, do they care about Street Angel? probably not. So how do you get that customer?

I wouldn't want to have to go through the dreaded Previews catalog to decide what to order. There's just too much there. The reality is that there are a lot of good comics these days. If you were to only wander the aisles of the small press area of San diego, skipping Marvel and DC, you could walk home with an armful of fun, interesting, occassionally great little books. So I do wonder if the average comics retailers looks at 3rd party recommendations. They should, although I have to wonder. Travelling to San Diego last year I was seated directly behind an artist, and across from a retailer who said that this was likely to be her first time just walking the aisles in years. In reality, that should be a necessary function for just about all retailers to keep theirs eyes open for the next big thing, and yet the reality of manhours are that they're not likely to have that time.

I'll be looking for Street Angel. I could use some fun in my life.

And i'm working on a new project for Radical Comics. More later when I can say something....

Why Do Adults Read Comic Books?

2009-12-30T17:36:00.000-08:00

Why do they indeed? R. Fiore ponders the question from the viewpoint of someone who has been writing about comics since he first joined the literary heathens at the Comics Journal in 1979, the dark distant days of 1979. I had started reading comics in 1973, and grew up with all the various starts and stops that he talks about in his article, but with a different viewpoint. Perhaps because he was integrated into the comics criticism culture, or perhaps because his natural inclination was to prefer classic newspaper reprints at the time, but i had a slightly different take on the situation, as well as that question: Why would a grown man read comic books?

A question that has occupied my mind ever since I began writing about comics: “Why would a grown man read comic books?” I was never satisfied with the conventional answer, which had to do with the potential of the medium to be a great art form. While it does have that potential, and part of the reason to champion the medium is to give it the prestige it would need to one day attract the caliber of artist that could fulfill it, the potential doesn’t explain why you’re reading them now. You don’t eat hot dogs because you think they’re going to turn into steak someday.

Classic last line that. No, would answer, I read comics because they gave me a type of escapist fiction that i'm not getting anywhere else. To further R's analogy, I didn't give up hot dogs for steak, I happen to like both at different times. I was absorbing the acutely developed melodrama/roller coaster ride that was the Claremont/Byrne/Austin X-Men at the same time i took an entire 3 days of summer vacation and read Sophie's Choice by Styron. And I knew that one day there would be comics that matched that same punched-in-the-gut feeling that i got from that book. As holocaust literature, I will certainly read Sophie's Choice as well as Weisel's Night as well as Spiegelman's Maus. I don't need to pick and choose one as better or more relevant. Al three are powerful works.

The same collections that interested Fiore, such as The Hyperion Library of Classic American Comic Strips, were both interesting as artifacts and boring as examples of how much the current form HAD NOT advanced to me back then. They also pointed out a time, and perhaps reinforced a time, that believed in comics as juvenile art when i was sure that you could do so much more with the medium. I argue that Smith's Red Nails was as good as the damn Frazetta covers that everyone fell in love with. Certainly the newspaper artists knew how to advance a narrative slowly, keeping the tension as long as possible, which was just the opposite of the DC artists who had one panel in Superboy to portray a mind numbing interstellar war. I knew that somewhere in the middle of all that were artists that would both give us a narrative with greater consequences and more acute insights, and I was willing wait while enjoying some cheap fun with the Avengers or Iron Man or The Teen Titans.

We didn't have long to wait really. When Fiore started to write, Sabre was already out by Eclipse, and Detectives Inc by the masterful Marshall Rogers was soon to be out, as was A Contract With God. Maggie and Hopey and Luba were also right around the corner. American Flagg teased with becoming the great American Satire for a moment or two before Chaykin succumbed to the needs to produce 22 pages each issue and things went flat. His far greater work, Times Squared, was never appreciated and should be revised any day now if there is any justice.

As to why comics created by grown adults to resonate with children should still attract us, in to parse the adult from the child in each person, and that's bound to be difficult with the sharpest of scalpels. Many of the same things that we expect to attract children: a silly but well timed joke, an imaginative other world, interesting and unusual characters, should certainly attract adults as well. Adults appreciate well done comedy and drama, and it would be the rare movie goer who didn't appreciate dropping into a totally new world for two hours for their ticket money. Early comic strip creators knew that their work was going into the family home and would be read by Dad and Junior alike, and as the later Looney Tunes cartoons, so that work that could be enjoyed on more than one level would have the greater chance of staying in papers. There is also the nostalgia factor, which is always difficult to predict.

We think about them [omic books] and write about them because we perceive we like them not in the way we like, say, chocolate ice cream or pictures of naked women, but because they mean something to us that we can’t readily define.

Why did a grown man read comics? Because it is a unique medium, a combination of words and pictures that operate on both two or three different visual levels at once of meaning that, in skilled hands, can convey more together than separately. And because there are a host of stories to be told, and now, more than ever, more ways to tell them. I can readily define why i've been reading comics for 36 years: I enjoy then tremendously when they're well done, and I've seen a lot of well done ones, regardless of genre, regardless of critical acclaim, regardless of format in that 36 years. If the creation of critical language means anything (and the Comics Journal has played a huge role in that) then it has given us the means to describe why enjoy certain comics so much. Explaining why I like chocolate ice cream is actually a lot more difficult once you get beyond the word "yummy".

And for the record, in the original piece, Fiore does an excellent job on the next paragraph of explaining exactly why he does love comics as a medium, and I suggest that you take the time to read through the piece.

Happy New Year all.

Meditations on Women's Faces and Difficulties Thereupon

2009-12-29T16:46:00.000-08:00

How do we represent the faces of women? Are we culturally bound to try to duplicate what pleases our eye thinking that it will please the eyes of others? But isn't it culturally different when we compare standards of beauty?

The Illustration Art blog has a discussion on the difficulty of protraying women's faces, along with a number of fairly current examples of comic art (and one illustration piece) to give us visuals to discuss.

Comparing comics alone from the 1950's to today should point out just how different the make up that is generally accepted is, not to mention hair styles. How many lines can you put on a woman's face before she looks like she has crow's feet? Well, the answer is, how old is your character supposed to be?

My wife hates it when i put heavy shadows on my female character's faces, and my arguement is thus: if the men have heavy shadows on them, it will look awfully weird to not have shadows on the woman's face. If i am doing nothing by drawing beautiful women in the mid-20's then perhaps I should be drawing nothing but very idealized features with minimal shadows. But to do so leaves the reader with a far more vaccuous presence: you're not allowing the female characters to participate as fully in the story by making them always be beautiful and well lit. Screw that. Let them get hit by shadows and be a part of things. Life in not built around standing pretty and looking pretty, and the characters shouldn't be stuck in that role either. Besides, some of the sexiest stuff that i've ever seen in both illustration and photography has features hidden in shadow, cheekbones or lips lurking beneath the darkness.

If your character is a woman in her 30's or 40's, both of whom has basically vanished from both your movie screen and TV set, then its likely she has a few wrinkles and its up to you as the artist to show that. And make it work.

Besides, it was only 100 years ago that Charles Dana Gibson was drawing some of the most beautiful idealized women of his time, and creating them out of linework!

The beauty and intelligence of this woman have been captured for an entire century, and through beautiful use of delicate lines the structure of her face is delineated, including her cheekbones. That this very linear style has fallen out of favor says something about our media (what will and won't reproduce) as well as art tools being used.

Could Leonard Starr have created a number of delicate sweeps of a crow quill to further render his artwork? I've no doubt, but it wouldn't have played in the newspaper reproduction room, so Starr, just like Caniff, developed a style that could reproduce well. Within comics, there was a distinct shift in ability to print line work when the metal plates started to get thinner and thinner before being replaced by plastic ones in the late 1970's. Vinnie Colletta's Thor linework simply wouldn't have been reproducable only a decade later, let alone Gibson's.

Here's your homework: find a way to produce emotion on the face of a 17 year old girl. How many lines do you have to do that? And still make her look 17? A quiz will follow later! Class dismissed!

The Carnival: The Human Hourglass page 13

2009-12-27T01:11:00.000-08:00

Just posted three new pages up on The Human Hourglass storyline. This is the largest single update that I've done yet! And it contains some of the work that i'm most proud of, so go take a look when you've got a second.

Only 7 pages to go on this first Carnival story. When finished, it will be available on print on demand. Best suggestions for who to go with? Anyone? Bueller?

http://www.yocomics.net/thh/page13.html

Avatar and Into The Abyss

2009-12-23T17:41:00.000-08:00

My short review of Avatar: I never thought that i would see Michael Whelan's fantasy covers brought to life. Not like that. Cameron is the only director that has a solid 2 hour and 40 minute formula that doesn't feel padded, and he's done it on Terminator 2, Aliens 2, Titantic and Avatar.

Floating mountains. Right. Straight out of Metal Hurlant.

Longer review later. Still processing.

Indy filmmaker and Horror aficionado Todd Miro is blogging over at Into The Abyss. Very few people are as good at ripping apart a film to see why it works or why it doesn't work as he is. The man also sports some cool Hendrix Sienkiewicz artwork in the studio. Go do a little reading.

Reviews to come: Marian Churchland's Beast!

New Work: The Human Hourglass!

2009-12-19T00:06:00.000-08:00

...up and ready to be clicked on! Only here and at Yo Comics.net

More Human Hourglass!

2009-12-15T18:49:00.000-08:00

The next page is up!

Hell, if I'd known that it was going to go this fast i'd have ditched the tones a while ago.

No, seriously, I just really wanted everyone to actually read the thing.

Editorial Jibing: Who Edits the Watchmen?

2009-12-15T16:21:00.000-08:00

Among the creators that we can term as "very influential", I doubt that anyone would argue with me about having Dave Gibbons and Frank Quitely on that list. I was perusing their conversation over at the Comics Journal when I was struck by their comments regarding editors among the comic book set.

Specifically, as I've noted before, just within my time in the industry, I've watched interns who became interns simply because they really, really, REALLY loved comics, become assistant editors and then editors because, well, they stuck around. Not because they may have learned anything aobut what makes good storytelling, but because they survived the fall out along the way.

Quitely: ...Only 10 years later, by the time I got there, there was no real editorial input at all and there have been very, very few editors that I have worked for who really have much more of an idea about how to go about telling a story, visually, than your average artist who’s only been working for a few years. I think in the past — before royalties and the rest of it — artists and writers who became very good at their craft then went on to become editors. I think one of the things that’s changed is that there isn’t actually this mentoring or this apprenticeship any more; it really is just learning by your own mistakes.

Gibbons:
Yeah, it’s true, I was lucky enough to come in at a stage — which you were there at the end of — when the editorial staff was much older and much more experienced than the contributors. But now it’s kind of funny to be working for DC or Marvel and somebody maybe a third of my age, certainly half my age, is telling me how to do it. I must say, though, that if you’ve got a really good editor — no matter what their age — it’s a really, really valuable thing.

Now, part of this, I can understand. If I'm at DC, I probably have a Watchmen Absolute on my shelf in my office. How easy is it to then tell Dave that his page isn't working?

But, how much of this (for the rest of us ordinary mortals) is the reason that we have the schlock that we have now? I feel like i'm wading through it as I work my way past pamphlet after pamphlet trying to find something to read. Is this because no one is editing anything anymore? Its not that these people don't have a love of comics, but who out there has the training or the ability to get the best out of people, to push them past their mistakes into doing better work?

I recall the level of the critiques that i used to get from the submissions editors of the comic companies, where the same thing that one would praise you would be slammed for unmercilessly by the other. As long as your ego could take it, you'd move into the next phase: realizing that you learned very little along the way. It is rare to receive solid, constructive criticism and have it take you to the next level. That is the sad part.

New Pages Up at YoComics.net

2009-12-14T00:55:00.000-08:00

Here is reality: there are only some many hours in the day, and while i've been concentrating on making art, i've been not doing some of the things that i need to be doing in the real world. I'll be posting the rest of the pages as they exist up to the point that i have to stop production, just to get them out there. Just in black and white, no tones. That way you all can at least see how far it went. Hopefully i'll get to finish things later. http://www.yocomics.net/thh/page9.html

sadly, the real world with a terrible economy is calling right now.

Earth One Initiative Launched: Earth Prime Yawns

2009-12-08T19:04:00.000-08:00

Superman and Batman make new inroads to the book stores with the DC Comics EarthOne Graphic Novels, modern retellings of the origins and yet again, we say, so? Joanna over at Comics Worth Reading makes her comments known here. Lets, once again, talk formats and what they want to put into that format. DC continues, yet again, to try different things, although it will likely come to no avail. Kudos to them them, they keep trying to do something, anything different, and it always seems to come just a little wide of the mark.

Oh you can see the marketing meeting: "Lets do something that will cost some money and maybe soemthing brand new for the book stores. Lets play it safe and use our most popular characters and we've got a better chance for sales." And yet, doing Batman's origin AGAIN or Superman's origin AGAIN is precisely the wrong tact to take. Anyone who cares about the characters knows the origins and doesn't need to buy the book. You new superhero reader, someone younger perhaps, isn't going to go for that price tag. Their parents will likely buy them a regular $3 comic. You average bookstore buyer is far more likely to walk buy and pick up the new Fables book or Sandman trade than grab the long underwear hero. Its DC going the safe route and coming out with, yet again, that wide of the mark product.

Try Minx, for instance. Once you get past the name, there was the lack of fantasy in the line up, a mysterious omission given that the manga market had long since given you all the demographic and story data that you needed. And yet, based in NYC, and looking over at the Tomine graphic novels and the Spiegelmans, they decided to go with urban books, and ones that were'nt all that good to begin with. You know what graphic novel i see in every book store i go into? the new Rapunzel one. Smart use of the name, a good story, some fantasy and a great heroine and the kids will have no problem devouring the story again and again, and convincing the parents to buy them the damn thing.

The best thing that DC did was the wednesday comics format from this summer, but unfortunately it didn't get into enough hands, into prime space in the stores. Once again a promising format change that got stuck into the Direct Market ghetto.

It should be noted that my Borders shelves their graphic novel area into: Cool stuff alphabetical, then DC alphabetical and then Marvel alphabetical. Tell you truth, its realllllllly easy to stay in that first section.

Work In Progess: Page 14 of The Human Hourglass

2009-12-06T01:15:00.000-08:00

Just about done here, except for the background work. Can't wait to tone this one so that i can really direct the lighting the way that i see it in my head.

Mostly brush, #1 sable Rafael 8404, #4 sable for big areas, Koh-i-noor .35 technical pens.

Giving Tuska His Due: of Inkers and Editors

2009-12-04T16:12:00.000-08:00

It is not a stretch to say the George Tuska, during his long run on Iron Man, was never accorded first class treatment when it came to his artwork. While he could and did pencil superheroes for many decades, his work was stronger in the crime genre. Like Don Heck, he was an artist who simply didn't have superheroes as his strong point. But he could do, and did, them.

Marvel never gave him the best inkers however. Kurt Busiek supposes that perhaps it was because while not flashy, his work was sturdy and workmanlike and they didn't need to fix things up too much. I'm not sure about that. Perhaps he's right. My supposition, however, is that back then Marvel saw Iron Man as a "B" level hero, and they gave him what they conceived of as a "B" level artist. There wasn't anything flashy about him then, from sales on up, and saw no need to have a Joe Sinnott or Tom Palmer work on the book. The real tipoff is that we never saw Tuska covers on the books that he did by 1970. There was always a Kane/Esposito or Kane/Giacoia or Kirby or Starlin piece if we were lucky on the front. That right there tells you what the powers that be thought of George's work really.

I also think that, by the 1970's, George's work had settled into a certain rut, certainly the stories that he was drawing in Iron Man #60-75 had little of the verve of issues #10-18, when they introduced The Controller and Midas and a mad Stark LMD. Shockingly, his work looked great then; he was being inked by EC veteran Johnny Craig. Search my blog for "Tuska" to see a copy of an original from Iron Man #18 that has some real beauty to it.

Where was the Terry Austin inks on a Tuska cover in the 1970's? Terry had become the preeminent inker in the biz by 1977. Why not give him a Tuska cover to ink? Oh yeah, the didn't do Tuska covers.

This then is the conundrum that has faced inkers for years: you're a "B" level inker, and you keep getting put onto "B" level pencillers who don't draw as well, and, shockingly, your work doesn't look as good as the "A" list guys. You have to luck out to get to ink someone who can draw really well. And in most every case, it will be a rush job since the superstar inker will likely blow the deadline and still get work, you can't take that chance. So your opportunity to do really outstanding work will be compromised by the deadline. Welcome to comics. Kurt's story of what happened to the first story that he and Tuska were working on is a horrible example of what happens. I feel bad for the new kid who was rushed into it, and sorry for Kurt having his plans scuttled and sorry for the readers who ended up with a severely compromised product.

It's a shame that they chose to do that, because it would have been nice to have seen Tuska's pencils with a nicer sheen on them. I had George do an Iron Man sketch for me years ago strictly with the idea of inking it properly and showing it to him. Sadly, I never got the chance to do so.

Work In Progess: sketches for The Carnival

2009-11-29T22:30:00.000-08:00

Not having a good time trying to make this figure work. Not sure why, I "saw" the body language in my head, but when I tried to draw it, the figure simply didn't work, making me wonder if I had perhaps exaggerated the movement in my head... resulting in a stilted and unnatural figure on the paper. The second scan if a more finished version of what i went with.

Anyone else ever have this trouble?

Why Do We Care: Do We Never Learn?

2009-11-24T17:52:00.000-08:00

I'm reminded of the old Oingo Boingo song while I read through this series of messages on Live Journal and found myself thinking, again, about the level of emotional investment that we get in what are, lets say it out loud, CORPORATE PROPERTIES.

Hell hath no fury like the scorned fan, and yet, should be surprised? We put all this love into these characters yet they don't love us back. No matter how much the authors love them, even, one day they will have to turn them over to someone else, someone else who will retcon everything that you love out of existence. Jean Grey fans I'm talking to you. Birds of Prey fans, I'm talking to you too.

It should come as no surprise to anyone that suddenly girls read comics, especially now that there are more options other than superheroes out there (not that they don't read superheroes as well). And it should come as no surprise to anyone, although I think that it has, that women fall in love with well written characters and they blog and write shipping stories and they email and they communicate far more than men do about these characters. They care passionately about the characters they love and they get PISSED when those characters are doing things that make them look idiotic, or make them fall back into the morass of poorly written characters, or perhaps worst of all, marginalize them. That last seems to be particularly galling given the lack of strong female characters in the two majors.

Is that why they hold onto Birds of Prey and Manhunter? Given that Wonder Woman, the only strong female character with her own marketing plan of the Holy Trinity at DC is a cypher that has been rebooted so many times that she should have footprints in her logo, no wonder they hold on to the few books that have actually had characters taht they can care about and believe in.

Please note on that LJ thread, when one poster basically tells another "to relax", it sets off a whole chain that the original poster is basically never going to talk his/her way out of, whether they wanted to troll or not. If they're not a troll, then on one side i can agree with them somewhat. "Yes, I know you care, but its a comic and its a property and they're subject to editorial whims that can derail even the best characters and the strongest storylines. Try not to have a heart attack." And yet, they're on a board where the people care passionately about these stories and these characters and saying that is like waving a flag in front of a bull. Its the wrong audience and a very, very bad idea.

I alternately care and don't care as much as i used to. Working in mainstream comics and being part of the assembly line, you just do the work and move on and you try to care and control the part that, basically, you have control over. I cared too much and it made me a pain to deal with because I wanted to the work to be better, and that was pushing against the editor's inflow and outflow. And because they didn't think that the work NEEDED to be better. You go back and look at some of the Acclaim Comics and let me know what you think. Did they need to be better?

And this is why I quit working in mainstream comics. I could sit there with a new book on my board ready to ink and I desperately wanted to work to suddenly become the Byrne/Austin X-Men and for all the sweat that I put in to reflect in the final product. And it didn't. And I got a mental ulcer getting as angry as the people on Live Journal to no avail. It didn't make a damn thing better.

Now I care deeply about the art that i do on the webcomic and it can be reflected in the finished product. You may not like it, or care, or you may, but at least its worth having an opinion about. When i see my friend Tim Perkin's work on his graphic novel World's End I don't have to wonder if its what he wanted his work to be, I know that it is. And then its worth investing some emotional energy into. Personal work, love it or hate it, usually is.

Shang Chi: The Rising and Advancing of the 6-Cylinder

2009-11-18T12:47:00.001-08:00

Sweet Christmas! This would be baaaaaaaad ass.

Irene Vartanoff and Romance Comics

2009-11-17T11:52:00.000-08:00

Over at Sequential Crush Jacque Nodell has posted a wonderful interview with Irene Vartanoff who had worked at both Marvel and DC back in the early '70's. It covers a variety of topics and is just great reading both from the sociological aspect as well as the comic aspect!

DC Comics made a heroic effort to produce modern, relevant romance comics. But they never dared cross the line into the sexual revolution (or even the social revolution) that was the key to reaching the mass of women. All the comic book heroines were still crying over men and living soap opera lives and hanging out at the country club.

and Irene goes on to make her case as to why the romance comics died in a very conclusive manner. Comics could not approach sex, premarital sex, whatsoever, and so lost the little relevance that they had.

What I have always rather discounted was the effectiveness of the Gothic Romance culture from the 1960's, something that Irene brings up:

A strong line of female-oriented Gothic romances might have worked a few years earlier to transition the romance comic audience, but the Gothic comics eventually produced were mostly male-oriented weird mystery tales. And they were all started too late, after the subgenre had peaked, and after the romance comic audience had wandered away.... This would be like doing vampire love stories à la Twilight (but from a male point of view) five years from now. Too late.

Ah yes, this is comics all over. Late to the party and poorly done even when they finally show up.

The discussion in the comments section then veers off of this question from Pat:

One question I would have asked her is whether she feels that the reason comics are so male-dominated is that men are much more visually oriented.

And that is an interesting question. My personal take, without having the time to go research things on line and see what studies might or might not have been done: men are more visual when it comes to sexually oriented material, but certainly not more visual over all. Far from it. I think that women are extremely visually oriented, and that there is a likelihood that they will process visuals differently, taking different cues from them.

I believe that romance comics suffered from being stuck in a male oriented industry: male writers, writing from a male point of view, with male artists doing their level headed best to do comics that they might want to look at (and thus with a male-centric point of view when it comes to storytelling as well as character design). Certainly 40 years ago you wouldn't have had a huge stable of female artists with the chops and skills to draw from when putting together your gothic romance comics, even if you could have found a distributor. You only have to go find a collection of female written porn edited by Suzy Bright to see that there while there are certainly similarities to porn written by men, there are clearly differences as well.

The reality is that, had you founded a magazine (so as to get around the comics code) in 1972, and found someone to print it and distribute it, you'd have had a tough sell to put enough sex into the romance to have found an audience.

I also think that very few artists in comics excel at the smaller moments which are easy to describe as a writer, but harder, much harder, to pull off in a comic format. Anyone who has read Love and Rockets thinks it looks easy because Los Bros. pull it off so easily... and pretty much everyone else fails miserably. Since comics oriented towards women wouldn't be about people punching each other through walls, you really would have to find artists who could communicate on a more sophisticated level as well as making art stylish enough to intrigue the readers. Some of the Filipino artists in the 1970's that DC employed certainly had enough style to do that (although everyone looks a bit swarthy, but the women were always very sexy.).

Manga sales demographics have shown us that the old chestnut that women don't buy comics, don't like comics or aren't visually oriented is just that: an old cart before the horse myth brought to you by the old men of comics who couldn't figure out how to sell comics to girls. Way to go guys, way to go.

Figure Study: The Carnival page 14

2009-11-17T00:57:00.000-08:00

A marker and pencil study for a panel of The Carnival: The Human Hourglass page 14. If you've not gone over and read the story, click here and submerge yourself for a bit in some future nior.

Let me say it right here and now: the regression on the head for this shot is incredibly difficult to do. Gil Kane made it look way too easy.

Gil Kane was a badass.

Unused Layouts

2009-11-12T01:06:00.000-08:00

They got this far before i started to rethink the information on the page. How much did i really need to show? Was this the most effective use of the third of the page?

I decided it wasn't. Partly because the action is in pantomime, and partly because it doesn't set up what happens to Lauren in the following pages. I do like the upshot of that would have been the second panel... but it was not to be. This is one case where the thumbnails that I was so sure would work really didn't once i got the page to full size. That hasn't happened too much recently, but this certainly is the case here.

Work In Progress: The Human Hourglass page 12

2009-11-08T23:52:00.001-08:00

...not finished, but getting there. Added the trash can in the lower left foreground to create an additional layer of depth that i saw in my head, but realized that i was missing in the pencils. I tend to want to creat a three level depth system every couple of panels or so as a visual orientation system. Gives you a sense of spatial identity, especially when you're asking the environment to be one of your characters.

Also started to change the shadows on the gunman. Certain things that worked in pencil aren't working in ink, so, well, you start to make the changes as you go. Original pencils are a few posts back if you want to compare.

Was doing an interview on inking and, more specifically, the work that I did in the 1990's on the Black and White series The Grackle: Doublecross with Paul Gulacy. Answering the questions certainly made me think of the aesthetic choices that I made over 10 years ago and also got me looking at my current work through those eyes again. Looking over some of that artwork made me see some fairly ballsy choices that Paul made with spotting blacks. But then, thats why he's a master at this stuff.