Comic-Con 2007
it all fell into my understanding of what a short story would be to a modern reader. When Will was doing the 8-pagers, it was the norm. These days, a 6-issue arc is the norm. I thought psychologically for a modern reader, the 8 pages and the 22 pages equate. By the time you put in all the character beats that people expect these days, it works out about the same. But I’m telling short stories and in this format I can take two pages for the splashes. In that regard, I can at least not compositionally duplicate anything Eisner did before. And frankly, we have the room to have the artwork shine there. CCI: Frank Miller is writing and directing The Spirit movie, but if you were going to cast The Spirit, who would you cast? DC: Gosh, I really don’t know, that’s a tough question. I know I’m going to sound old now, but I guess in my head I always pictured a young James Garner. My girlfriend, Marsha, thinks Josh Cooke’s take on DC’s classic heroes in this cover painting to DC: Duhamel (from the TV show, Las The New Frontier Volume 2 Vegas). Maybe Chris Noth (Law a strip about it. He wasn’t looking at the good old and Order) would have been great ten years ago. days, he was dealing with the here and now. The character needs to have a certain familiarity, but also an almost other worldly calm. To think he CCI: How daunting is the monthly schedule (Denny Colt, The Spirit) is running around with no for you? ID, people think he’s dead, and he’s just getting into crazy stuff ... it would take a very particular person DC: You know, in regard to things like the schedule, to pull The you’re only as good as the crew you’ve got. I mean, Spirit off. it’s the guys you work with who are keeping it together to be quite honest. I work with the most talented people in the business. My artistic partner An extended J. Bone, is so much more than an inker really, now version of after so much time of working together. (Colorist) this interview Dave Stewart, Jared Fletcher, our letterer, and Scott appears on Dunbier and Kristy Quinn in editorial, they’re our website at keeping it together, so we’re not going to ship late. www.comicAnd yeah, it’s pretty thrilling, I can sit down with con.org this book and I don’t get stuck. CCI: One thing we’ve noticed ... you’ve kept the Eisner tradition of splash pages and evocative title treatments. DC: I wanted to continue that tradition, and I think
32 Art ©2007 DC Comics