In Process: The Avengers by Granov & Yoakum

Posted this "in process" piece, simply to blow Alex Sheikman's mind, since we approach inking completely differently.

This one is coming along I think.

What have you been doing? Glad you asked...

A little of this, and a little of that. working a freelance whiteboard animation project that more than doubled in scope along the way. I'll post more on that.

Wanted to do a little housecleaning in the studio however, between projects. Found this experiment mixing ink and gouache and trying, in vain, to find the right paper. Finally emails J.G. Jones who directed me, in about 2 seconds, to the right stuff. While I never finished this one, I like what i learned from it.

Planning ahead is the key. Know what your values are and stick to them. Cap works completely with teh light source, which i could have dimmed if i needed to. the Skull does not work, as i let the values bleed into each other and the entire head flattened out. bleh.

Plenty to talk about with comics over the last 5 months, no question, but for now i'm trying to jump back into the second issue of The Carnival and dive back into my usual stuff, as opposed to whiteboard markers.

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

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.

Englehart: The Point Man and beyond

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.

Captain America: Kirby & Yoakum for SuperCon

This is the second Kirby piece that i've inked via lightbox (the first one for the Heroes and Villians black book) and blue pencil (this one). The first i tried to do this Syd Shores thing (ala Captain America #100-103) but this time its a Frank Giacoia thing, albeit with a bit more delicacy on the brush. I suspect that Frank used a much larger sable brush than i'm using. I'd use a larger on if I was working twice up as well!

This piece could be yours if you want to win that auction for it at SuperCon in San jose in two weeks!

Captain America: Kirby & Yoakum for Super Con

I seem to be back in inking mode again right now, with the two Adam Hughes pieces out of the way, I've moved on to a 1982 Kirby piece for San Jose's Super Con 2009.

There are some other interesting pieces that will be blue line inked for the auction on Sunday, so keep your eyes peeled as I post mine here as I work on them. You'll also run across others on Comic Art Fans as well.

How to approach Kirby, and not prime Kirby (lets face it) either? I'm not a fan of the Royer method of giving Kirby what he drew with his pencil. I'm much more a fan of how Sinnott, Ayers, Giacoia, and Wood worked with Jack's pencils: you interpret them, not treat them as gospel. Those slashing pencil lines don't just mean slashes, or misplaced muscles, the're indicating a flow of force as much as anatomy. Giacoia did some great things over Jack on some fairly forgettable stories in the Tales of Suspense days, and that has been my inspiration on inking this. Perhaps you'll see it somewhere in there....

New Work: Captain America and the Red Skull

I'll admit it, I have been pretty ambivalent about the Captain America character for a lot of years, especially when he's been divorced from politics, which isn't terribly appropriate for a character created by two Jews who was punching out Hitler before the United States declared war upon Japan and Germany. The character, supposedly a representative of "American Ideals" (and I put the quotes around that phrase for a reason), is not only steeped in the current political climate, but also in your own personal version of what those "Ideals" mean.

N one has actually excited me about the character since Steve Englehart had his Cap watch Nixon commit suicide pretty much on camera back in 1973 (wish fulfillment for that generation). And all that being said, Brubaker has absolutely made the character relevant and interesting with his run of Cap, currently collected in the the Winter Soldier trades, as well as the follow ups (which I've not finished reading yet). Which is why I found myself putting together a Cap piece for the local comic shop that I go to: Blue Moon Comics in Novato, CA.

And for someone who actually found the Red Skull scary when Kirby drew him, that craggy brow, the madman mouth, for someone who didn't seem to see through his mania that activating the next generation of the Sleeper probably wasn't in his best interests long term, the Skull is pure hate masquerading as a reasonable villian, which makes him all the worse. Doom thinks that he's a reasonable dictator, rationalizing himself as a positive force in Latveria, but the Skull is pure hate, pure evil, pure calculating evil. Brubaker recognizes this, and makes the best addition to the canon that we've seen in 30 years: that those who use the Cosmic Cube do so at their own risk: the Cube never promises happiness, never delivers either. The Cube is pure Genie of the Lamp without Robin Williams, it will always bring the worse of endings to user. The motto, that Kirby may have never intended: Be careful what you wish for, you may get it.

Thanos at least had an abstract reason for obtaining the Cube: to become a God. But the Skull is pure meglomania. You can't reason with him, you can't logic your way around him, you simply are stuck with a human that would never deny the holocaust, but would rejoice in the genecide of 6 million humans, and would simply fret that they didn't finish the job.

Captain America rides a thin line between the unwavering patriotism of idealism and realism, which definitely makes him a victim of the current writer's biases. If you 're in tune with that writer, then you'll enjoy his take on the character: i.e. he'll represent your America. There is the America that wants to invade Iraq, and his no qualms about being there, and then there is the America that thinks that invading Iraq is like watching japan bomb Pearl Harbor and deciding the invade Spain: it simply makes no sense. My Captain America would never have to worry about hanging chad, and would never have seen the logic of going to Iraq. Brubaker has made his Captain America the idealist on the tightrope: he understands the politics that exist, he's not stupid, but occasionaly he wants to do thing the old fashioned way: by force, by moral imperative, by his moral imperative. Steve Rogers would have no problem acknowledging this truth: history is written by the winners. The Cap in the main book, as well as the one in the Ultimates, would not have a problem with this: both of them want, expect, to be the winners.

Civil War: Thoughts on the Aftermath

Over Amy Reads we have a post that does a great job of analyzing some of the thought behind Marvel's Civil War series.

This argument, that people must be locked up not only for the good of the citizens, but for their own good, as well, has deep roots in Humanity's deepest pits of racism, hatred, xenophobia, anti-specific-religious sentiment, sexism, the list goes on and on.

(Now, mind you, I could easily e accused of an Anti-marvel Bias for some of my prior posts on the series (not that I've posted that many mind you), but the reality is that Marvel, more that DC, was the comic universe of my childhood, and the very best part of that. and that alone makes me pay attention, and increases my outrage when I see characters like the FF and Captain Marvel being misused and abused. So, YES, I care in a sense because I think that I want another generation of kids to have the same fun growing up reading FF that I did.)

But Amy touches on the plot points of WHY we would be upset over the registration act, and that metaphor, while fairly obvious, i hadn't done a whole lot of deep thinking about. It's a good read, and dovetails with what I was going to blog about: Captain America giving up.

As ddeply flawed as any of the character destruction that existed during the series, I'm far more afraid of the symbolism of Cap's giving up the good fight. In a metaphor of modern political forces, the forces that were scared enough to agree with the erosion of civil liberties that has existed in the post 9/11 world vs those that opposed the Patriot Act, believing that trampling the Bill of Rights and the Constitution essentially lets our enemies win anyway, Captain America giving up the fight is tantamount to the letting the terrorists win. Stark and the initiative are a fascist state, which is the strict definition of any government that conscripts its own citizens into a fighting force and imprisons those that don't.

I refuse to give up, and the Captain America I believe in wouldn't. Those that think we should let the government rule without checks and balances haven't looked at the country's financial balance recently: unchecked spending, war on false pretenses, and no oversight of the ruling branch of the government have led us to a point in 2006 when the majority of Americans voted "No." and threw many of the bums out. The fight that, for want of a better term, more "liberal" Americans have been fighting is to keep our civil liberties, to keep our freedoms, freedoms that were won by the blood of our Grandfathers, by my grandfather in the Second World War as a first generation American. They knew, back then, that they were being sent over to fight invasion by fascists. And now the fascists have won, both in the comics, and, for a while, in the real world. Being attacked by terrorists should not, not now, not ever, make us give up the ideals that make this country what it is.

This country is far from perfect, but if Captain America is the ideal of America, the I cannot stand to see that ideal give up. Ever.

And if you're Jewish, don't even get started on the "registration".