inspired by the stories he was assigned to illustrate, and how, in his illustrations, tried to suggest the story’s theme or give a clue if it was a mystery. But, in my work, I was trying too hard. In any case, very few of my science-fiction illustrations—and there were only a few, anyway—but only one or two of them were successful by my definition of “successful.” The thing about science-fiction illustration, too, is the money is so bad. Artists do it solely for the love of it. Even more so than comics, the money’s not very good. You’d spend a day or two drawing illustrations and you’d get a check for $25 and you’d say, “Maybe this isn’t a good idea.” But if I’d been better at it… if I had actually felt better about it, I’m sure I would have done a lot more of that stuff. I think it was my failure. Similarly, when I first started drawing in comics, I didn’t really find my way for a few years. I just did some terrible work. CBA: How did you break into Marvel? Did you hit Marvel first when you were doing your freelancing thing? Hilary: Yes. I was submitting illustrations to things like Rocket’s Blast/Comicollector, an old fanzine, and meeting other artists through the fan field. That led to comic book conventions, because I was going to comic books stores where I would hear about these shows. I just presented my work to Al Milgrom, at a Chicago convention, and he was nice enough to get me some work. Like I said, everything I did for the first few years was pretty bad, so I was always amazed when I realized that I would get another job! [laughs] CBA: You never felt comfortable when you were doing your stuff at Marvel? Hilary: It wasn’t that I didn’t feel “comfortable.” I was doing things like trying to ink brush strokes with pens, because I hadn’t seen any comic book artists working, I didn’t know how they did things. I just learned a lot of really bad habits early on that took a long time to get rid of. CBA: Did you aspire to be a super-hero artist in the ’80s? Hilary: I don’t think I’ve ever drawn a real super-hero strip. I drew super-hero parodies, and that’s probably the best stuff I’ve done at Marvel (besides inking a few different people where I liked the results). CBA: Didn’t you ink a story or two by Rob Liefeld? Hilary: Yes, I inked Liefeld on a few issues of New Mutants. I inked Jon Bogdanove for a long time on Power Pack, and that was a lot of fun. Jon and I really work well together. I just loved his drawing. As an inker, I’ve always felt, if you like the art you’re given, you just want to do it justice. I’ve never been someone who would try to change stuff too much. I try to bring out the strengths of (or at least not screw it up too much) whatever I’m given. Bogdanove is one of those guys who just inspired me. There would be these beautiful drawings of Franklin Richards in Power Pack. Jon would use his own son as a model, drawing him sleeping on the couch, for instance, and they were just the most vividly rendered drawings. I realized, “Oh, God! I’ve got to ink this perfectly! I’ve got to nail this!” So that was a blast. Here I was, inking for years, doing very little drawing of my own. So I don’t think I really knew what I wanted to do. I was having fun, depending on who I was inking, but it was more like marking time, I suppose, trying to discover what it was I wanted to do. CBA: The Plastic Man mini-series was one of your first assignments as a penciler? Hilary: That was definitely one of the big things for me. I’d done some pencil and inking at First Comics, and that led to work at DC. I got that job sideways through Doug Rice and Phil Foglio, because Phil was living in Chicago, and they asked Phil if he wanted to do Plastic Man, and he said, “I don’t know if I want to do Plastic Man or not.” And I had heard about it and I said, “Oh, you gotta do this! He’s this great character!” But he didn’t want to pencil it or didn’t have time, so he ended up writing and co-plotting with Doug Rice and me. It was fun. It was kind of a strange experience, because I felt that the worst that could happen in drawing Plastic Man was that I could only fail. [laughs] Because the standard is so great, and there was no way we could even hope to approximate the work of Jack Cole—and, by no means did we—so that realization took off the stress. But we definitely were not trying to modernize the character in a way that would hurt it. We were under orders to modernize it and to sort of explain Plas. It was kind of weird because they said, “You’ve gotta June 2003
COMIC BOOK ARTIST 25
come up with some reason why this is cartoony.” We were like, “Huh?” So our idea was that the acid that turned Plastic Man into Plastic Man also sort of distorted his perspective on the world, but he saw the world in a cartoony way. And as lame as that is, it would have been better than, say, coming up with an Earth-Cartoony or some other science-fiction explanation. Unfortunately, we were saddled with that, and we did the best we could with it. CBA: Did you model for Alex Ross for Marvels? I was looking at it today and noticed your name. Hilary: I’m trying to remember who I was: I know I was holding up the sign that said “The End Is Near” in the park. Alex used me for crazy old dead guys and stuff. In Kingdom Come there’s a Civil War Army prison, and I’m every single guy in that scene. [laughter] I have this long, lean face, with dark circles under my eyes most of the time: maybe it’s just Alex’s joke. But he’s very good at casting with people he knows. Whenever he needs somebody who looks a little bit insane, or at the end of his rope, Alex will hire me. CBA: Why are there so many great cartoonists from Chicago? Is there something going on over there that we don’t know about? [laughs] There’s Chris Ware, yourself, Ross, Bill Reinhold. Hilary: There are more. Ivan Brunetti lives here, and Gary Gianni. CBA: Jill Thompson. Hilary: Jill and Brian Azzarello. Actually, I don’t know if we have more great artists than New York City per capita. New York obviously has a bigger population of artists given it’s the center of publishing. So does the West Coast, because there’s a lot of animation and publishing there. I don’t know how it happened, but there is a neat little group of people here. We used to have meetings. This was a few years ago now, but we had a Thursday night thing where we’d meet at this certain comic shop and then all go drinking at this bar afterwards. I guess it’s sort of the “good old days” kind of syndrome. I guess none of us can drink as much anymore (with the exception of Brian perhaps, who is always talking about doing his research in bars). But that was a blast. I’m going to forget everybody who was there, but there were probably a dozen people, and we’d do these comic book wars. Someone would start a fight in the first panel, and then you’d pass the drawing back and forth and do these panels. It is rather juvenile, but you’d find a hundred different ways to kill the other guy or whatever, and then he’d come back from the dead and attack the other guy. I dunno, it sounds pretty silly, I suppose, but it was a blast. CBA: Your first work with Alan Moore was Supreme #44 with Bill Wray. You told me that happened by accident?
Below: Artist Hilary Barta first gained prominent notice in the field as doing a damn good job penciling in faux Jack Cole style for the four-issue Plastic Man mini-series. Here’s the cover of #2 (Dec. ’88). ©2003 DC Comics.
Below: The wiley artist himself, Hilary Barta. Courtesy of H.B.
89