Draw #21

#21 URBAN BARBARIAN

DAN PANOSIAN

Fall 2011

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AND MIKE MANLEY TALK SHOP &

INTERVIEW WITH BILLY DOGMA’S WRITER/ARTIST

DEAN HASPIEL

BY DANNY FINGEROTH ARTIST/INKER

BOB McLEOD CRITIQUES A NEWCOMER’S WORK

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82658 27764

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Plus: MIKE MANLEY & BRET BLEVINS’

Power Man & Iron Fist TM & ©2011 Marvel Characters, Inc.

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NS DRAW! (edited by MIKE MANLEY) is the professional EDITIO BLE A “HOW-TO” magazine on comics, cartooning, and IL AVA NLY animation. Each issue features in-depth INTERVIEWS FOR O 5 and DEMOS from top pros on all aspects of graphic $2.9 storytelling, as well as such DRAW! #1 skills as layout, penciling, inking, “Penciling” by JERRY ORDWAY, lettering, coloring, Photoshop tech“Computer Layout and Drawing” niques, plus web guides, tips, tricks,

by DAVE GIBBONS, “Secrets of Drawing Sexy Women” by BRET and a handy reference source—this BLEVINS, lettering by JOHN magazine has it all!

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MIKE WIERINGO interview, BENDIS and OEMING on how they create “Powers”, BRET BLEVINS shows “How to draw great hands”, “The illusion of depth in design” by PAUL RIVOCHE, art books reviewed by TERRY BEATTY, plus reviews of the best art supplies, and more!

Interview & demo with BILL WRAY, STEPHEN DeSTEFANO interview, BRET BLEVINS shows “How to draw the human figure in light and shadow,” Photoshop tutorial by CELIA CALLE, inking tips by MIKE MANLEY, reviews of the best art supplies, links, and more!

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by PAUL RIVOCHE, reviews of art supplies, links, and more!

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DOUG BRAITHWAITE demo and interview, BOB McLEOD critiques a newcomer’s work, JAMAR NICHOLAS reviews art supplies and tool tech, MANLEY and BLEVINS’ COMIC ART BOOTCAMP gets your penciling in shape, plus Web links, reviews, and more!

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FALL 2011

CONTENTS

VOL. 1, NO. 21 Editor-in-Chief • Michael Manley Designer • Eric Nolen-Weathington Publisher • John Morrow Logo Design • John Costanza Proofreader • Eric Nolen-Weathington Front Cover Illustration • Dan Panosian

DRAW! Fall 2011, Vol. 1, No. 21 was produced by Action Planet, Inc. and published by TwoMorrows Publishing.

Michael Manley, Editor, John Morrow, Publisher. Editorial Address is P.O. Box 2129, Upper Darby, PA 19082. Subscription Address: TwoMorrows Publishing, 10407 Bedfordtown Dr., Raleigh, NC 27614.

DRAW! and its logo are trademarks of Action Planet, Inc. All contributions herein are copyright 2011 by their respective contributors.

Action Planet, Inc. and TwoMorrows Publishing accept no responsibility for unsolicited submissions. All artwork herein is copyright the year of production, its creator (if work-for-hire, the entity which contracted said artwork); the characters featured in said artwork are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners; and said artwork or other trademarked material is printed in these pages with the consent of the copyright holder and/or for journalistic, educational and historical purposes with no infringement intended or implied.

This entire issue is © 2011 Action Planet Inc. and TwoMorrows Publishing and may not be reprinted or retransmitted without written permission of the copyright holders. ISSN 1932-6882. Printed in Canada. FIRST PRINTING.

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DAN PANOSIAN Mike Manley interviews the Urban Barbarian

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ROUGH CRITIQUE

48

DEAN HASPIEL

68

THE CRUSTY CRITIC

70

COMIC ART BOOTCAMP

Bob McLeod gives practical advice and tips on how to improve your work

Danny Fingeroth interviews Brooklyn’s Renaissance Man

Jamar Nicholas reviews the tools of the trade.

This month: Fanboy’s comic book art boards.

“Designing Hair”

by Bret Blevins and Mike Manley

DRAWING AHEAD

Artistic Interpretation

by Bret Blevins

ummertime. Sweltertime.

As I type this the radio says it’s 103 degrees outside in hot, hazy Philly, and by the vibrations my air conditioner is making in the struggle to keep my studio cool and the Judge Parker strip I’m inking from sticking to my arm, I’d agree. I wonder how the old school guys did it? How did they beat the heat before the age of air conditioners?

S

By the time you all read this we should be heading into the fall and the buckle-down time of the year. I’d like to thank my buddies Jamar and Bret, my main partners in crime, along with Danny Fingeroth and Bob McLeod for turning in great articles for this issue. I’d also like to thank Dan Panosian for his great cover and interview, as well as Emmy Award-winning Dean Haspiel for his participation this issue. DRAW! is only as good as the talent we showcase. They make it possible to bring this magazine to you.

And so, the usual tips of the hat to my main man Eric for the production end and to publisher and man of much patience John Morrow.

Make sure you drop us a line on our blog, too, and monitor it for updates and more art at http://www.drawmagazine.blogspot.com.

Go DRAW! something,

E-mail: mike@drawmagazine.com Website: www.draw-magazine.blogspot.com Snail mail: PO Box 2129, Upper Darby, PA 19082 2

DRAW! • FALL 2011

DRINK AND DRAW DRINK AND DRAW DRINK AND DRINK AND DRAW DRINK AND DRAW DRINK AND RAW DRINK AND DRAW DRINK AND DRAW DRINK ND DRAW DRINK AND DRAW DRINK AND DRAW D INK AND DRAW DRINK AND DRAW DRINK AND DR W DRINK AND DRAW DRINK AND DRAW DRINK AN DRAW DRINK AND DRAW DRINK AND DRAW DRIN AND DRAW DRINK AND DRAW DRINK AND DRAW RINK AND DRAW DRINK AND DRAW DRINK AND D AW DRINK AND DRAW DRINK AND DRAW DRINK A D DRAW DRINK AND DRAW DRINK AND DRAW DR K AND DRAW DRINK AND DRAW DRINK AND DRAW DRINK AND DRAW DRINK AND DRAW DRINK AND RAW DRINK AND DRAW DRINK AND DRAWDRINK ND DRAW DRINK AND DRAW DRINK AND DRAW D INK AND DRAW DRINK AND DRAW DRINK AND DR W DRINK AND DRAW DRINK AND DRAW DRINK AN DRAW DRINK AND DRAW DRINK AND DRAW DRIN AND DRAW DRINK AND DRAW DRINK AND DRAW RINK AND DRAW DRINK AND DRAW DRINK AND D AW DRINK AND DRAW DRINK AND DRAWDRINK A D DRAW DRINK AND DRAW DRINK AND DRAW DR K AND DRAW DRINK AND DRAW DRINK AND DRAW DRINK AND DRAW DRINK AND DRAW DRINK AND RAW DRINK AND DRAW DRINK AND DRAW DRINK ND DRAW DRINK AND DRAW DRINK AND DRAW D Interview conducted

by Mike Manley NK AND DRAW DRINK AND DRAW DRINK AND DR and transcribed by Steven Tice W DRINK AND DRAW DRINK AND DRAWDRINK AN DRAW DRINK AND DRAW DRINK AND DRAW DRIN DRAW: Why don’t you tell me what you’re working on right

DP: Yeah, exactly. It was a tough one. I would be working with pencilers at Marvel and DC, and I’d go, “Oh, my God, I can draw better than this person, and I gotta fix them in my inks.” And what you don’t realize is that they’re starting with a blank page, and it’s always easy to critique something that’s already drawn.

You could probably critique Michelangelo, I guess.

now? I know you’ve started moving over from being mainly an inker the last couple of years to doing everything, penciling and inking your own work, mostly for Marvel, right?

DAN PANOSIAN: Well, actually, these days, for DC and now Dark Horse, so... Yeah, I was doing tons and tons of advertising work. I got out of comics for about ten years or so. I thought I was learning how to draw, because I did inking, and I was learning a lot, and I was working with a lot of really talented pencilers, and thought I was absorbing more than I really was. But then I started doing advertising. It was kind of a wake-up call doing the storyboarding, and design work, and commercial jobs.

’em.” I’m sure there are lot of talented artists that I’ve inked that would like to break my fingers today.

DRAW: In what regard? In the fact that you feel like your

DRAW: I remember meeting you in Howard Mackie’s office

drawing—?

DP: The whole blank page thing, starting with a blank page. [laughter]

DP: Yeah, that’s one of my favorite stories I tell people. How I

DRAW: So you didn’t have something already existing there.

DRAW: Aw, Dan, you shouldn’t. [laughs]

DRAW: Yeah, you can come in and be a plastic surgeon with the

pen or the brush and go, “No, that nose is just a little bit too big.”

DP: Yeah, “What are they thinking? I need to fix that. I’ll show

because we were working on Quasar. landed that job, and working with you on that project.

DRAW! • FALL 2011

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(above and below) Cap and Red Skull sketch cards for the Captain America: The First Avenger trading card series. (next page) Page 7 of Marvel’s Chaos War: God Squad (Feb., 2011) one-shot, penciled and inked by Dan. ALL CHARACTERS ™ AND © MARVEL CHARACTERS, INC.

DP: Well, no, that was, like, my first actual Marvel book, you know?

DRAW: That’s funny, because that was my first Marvel book.

DP: Really? Your first regular series.

DRAW: Yeah, as a regular series. I had jumped around a lot, and

then I think Paul Ryan had done the first several issues, and then he left, and they were looking for somebody.

I guess Gruenwald and Mackie liked my work, so they hired me. That was also a time when there were a lot of changes and people jumping ships and everything.

DP: Oh, yeah, that was just the very beginning of Marvel and DC and all the comic book companies really making those big fortunes.

DRAW: Right, right. I remem-

ber being in the office one day and the rumor was, “So-and-so just got enough money in a royalty check to go buy a house!”

DP: Yeah, those were the days. We popped in at the perfect time.

DRAW: Right. So I remember meeting you in Howard’s office.

Had you worked in advertising or anything before that, or were you just coming straight— DP: When I was 14 years old, I got that Marvel Comics Try-Out oversized book.

DRAW: Right, with the John Romita, Jr., stuff.

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DRAW! • FALL 2011

DP: I sent Marvel an inking sample—obviously the inking stuff

was better because I’m inking over John Romita, Jr. I sent the samples in, and at the time, Len Kaminski was the submissions editor. He got them, and I didn’t include my age on there, and he sent me back all these letters, “Great job. You need a little bit more work, but this is what you can expect from Marvel in the future. Here’s our health plan, here’s how much money you’ll make.” [Mike laughs] I’m 14 years old.

DRAW: “Wow! I’m 14 years

old and I have a health plan!” [laughter] DP: Yeah, right, “Wow, I’ll be making more money than my dad.” So, at 14, I had it in my mind, “Oh, I’ll be working for Marvel,” so my grades ended up slipping, I ended up goofing off a lot in class. And I started getting published by smaller companies like Blackthorne when I was a junior in high school, and Malibu—I think it was Malibu—with Evan Dorkin on Wild Knights and things like that, thanks to Mike Turner, who passed away recently, but he got me the job there. But I bumped around, and when I was 21 I finally decided that, “It’s now or never, if I’m ever going to make this happen with Marvel Comics, I have to move to New York.” So I moved to New York, and everything changed.

DRAW: Where did you move from?

DP: I was living in Indialantic, a city in Florida. Which is right

next to Cape Canaveral, where they shoot the space shuttle off.

DRAW! • FALL 2011

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DRAW: Oh, okay. So you bootstrapped yourself up to New York

and you showed up in the offices?

DP: Well, I showed up at a convention. I had done this indie comic book for Joe Naftali. I had a little mail-order RPG art business, and he asked me to illustrate a comic book idea of his. Once it was published, he said, “Why don’t you come up and sign at one of those Fred Greenberg shows?” So I went there, and I met Neal Adams and Walt Simonson that day. Neal decided to hire me—I don’t know why—so I stared working for Neal that week!

DRAW: He saw that eager glint in your eye. [laughs] DP: I think so. I don’t know if it was pity, if he was being a

humanitarian. And then Walt Simonson saw the samples I had brought, and thought I was already working at Marvel. So he asked, “Which book are you on?” “I wish I was working on a Marvel book!” I said. So he called up Ralph Macchio and I got back-up stories to ink that same week.

DRAW: Oh, that’s awesome.

DP: Yeah, I was inking Captain America and Thor back-ups. I

was in heaven. So, basically, Len Kaminski was now Howard’s assistant editor, and he had remembered me from when I was 14, because I sent him back a “thank you” drawing. He had it on his office wall near his desk. He had saved it for about seven years.

DRAW: Wow. DP: And that’s how I got that job inking you on Quasar.

DRAW: I guess that tells you, also, really, how different the business was back then. It was smaller, and editors lasted in their jobs more than six months, you know?

DP: Yeah, and they actually had a submissions editor who could one day be your actual comic book editor.

DRAW: So you did start out doing your own stuff, so inking sort

of happened as— DP: I thought, “Oh, I’ll get my foot in the door, inking-wise, and then I’ll start my tremendous penciling.” I wanted to be John Byrne. I wanted to have that legacy where, “How many books has that guy drawn over the years?” I wanted to do that. [laughs] Now, at age 42, I’m thinking, “Wow, that’s never going to happen.”

DRAW: No, you’ll just have to work until you’re 82.

Come on. [laughter] DP: Yeah, exactly. And do two books a month. [laughs] DRAW: Along the way, how did you go about training yourself?

DP: Oh, well, my dad helped in a lot of ways. He was a commercial artist and he loved comic books. I think the way I went about getting my father’s attention was by attempting to do all the things he enjoyed. He was also a professional boxer when he was young; he loved boxing. And he loved and studied illustration and he loved comic books. So I thought if I could do those things well, he would approve of me.

DRAW: So did you become a professional cartoonist instead of a boxer?

DP: Well, I tried the boxing route. That’s not an easy route... After too many shots I wouldn’t be much of an artist!

DRAW: Kind of hard on the old head after a while.

DP: Yeah, after a while. Nobody realizes how much

(above and next page) More pages from the Chaos War: God Squad one-shot.

ALL CHARACTERS ™ AND © MARVEL CHARACTERS, INC.

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DRAW! • FALL 2011

training goes into that, how many shots you’re taking in practice and sparring. It’s not just the matches where you get knocked around the ring. That’s a tough life. But, I don’t know, I wanted to do everything he did. He used to come home from work and he would draw one page, or just like, basically, one splash page of a Batman book. I was, like, five years old, and by the end of a month, I would have a whole Batman book that he had written and illustrated for

DRAW! • FALL 2011 7

(above and next page) Inks and finished colors for a two-page spread for an as-yet-unpublished creator-owned story. © JONATHAN DAVIS, DAN PANOSIAN & ANDy BOURNE.

me. It was kind of inspiring, and so I was always doodling as a kid, inspired by that. Always drawing. He never wanted me to be an artist, though. I don’t know if you’re going to agree, but it’s a tough life. [laughter] It’s a very tough life being a commercial artist, or any kind of artist. So when I started taking an interest in drawing, he didn’t want to give me drawing lessons. He would only critique me. He would say, “This is wrong, and that’s wrong.” But he wouldn’t sit down and give me art lessons or anything.

DRAW: Because you started working when you were 21 as a

DRAW: Were you also studying on your own at that time?

DP: Yeah. Basically, the only lesson he gave me was how to draw

DRAW: “Thanks, Dan Panosian, you really do great super-

the stick figure and then applying the geometric shapes on that stick figure, like a triangle for the torso, and rectangles for the legs and arms, a square for the head, or circle. That was the drawing lesson I got. After that, he was like, “I don’t want you to get too interested in this.”

DP: Yeah, it was horrible. [laughs] No, I kind of trained myself

DRAW: But too late, too late.

DP: Yeah, too late. Yeah, exactly.

cartoonist.

DP: Yeah, until I was 21, I was doing construction, waiting

tables, driving trucks, all sorts of jobs I didn’t fit well doing. I was horrible at construction. I always felt bad for every single condominium I worked on. [Mike laughs] I was like, “People are going to move in here, and they’re going to pay hard-earned money, and this place looks awful.” The work I did was terrible.

I was part of a big construction team, and, um, awful. Just awful.

heroes, but my shower sucks.” [laughter] from that Marvel Comics how-to-draw book. Everything’s in there, more or less. I’m an avid comic book collector, and I would read those “Marvel Bullpen Bulletins,” everything I could manage to get my hands on to learn about the business. The fairy-tale business that you kind of hear about through the pages of what used to be the “Marvel Bullpen Bulletins,” which—you thought Marvel was like, everybody playing practical jokes on each other and no-prizes being handed out everywhere.

DRAW: So how did you go about training yourself, since I take

it you didn’t go to art school, right?

DRAW: Did you also go to conventions and meet other profes-

DP: No, I didn’t go to art school. I went to a little bit of commu-

sionals before you—?

nity college, because I thought, still, in the back of my mind, I thought maybe I’d get a business degree to fall back on. I never finished that, by the way.

DP: Yeah, I was lucky enough to meet John Beatty pretty early

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DRAW! • FALL 2011

on. He lived at Daytona Beach at the time. There was a thing called Orlando Con that Bill Black put together, and I think even

Jerry Ordway was there, but I didn’t know who Jerry was at the time. He was still doing work for Americomics, which was Bill Black’s publishing company.

stayed on the book. Joe Quesada started penciling it, and he already showed a lot of promise. So I was working for Marvel and DC, primarily.

DRAW: Oh, okay.

DP: Coincidentally, I think Erik Larsen did some work for

DRAW: You weren’t really penciling then, though, you were

Americomics, and I think Erik may have inked my very first comic book page. Bill Black let me draw a few pages in one of his Americomics comic books. I was about 14 years old, 15. And I think Erik Larsen inked them. It was only two pages, and they weren’t calling me to do any more. They were horrible pages, obviously.

DRAW: Guys breaking in today don’t have the same type of opportunities, because the business is really different. You don’t have as many small companies now, just because of the minimum orders you have to have from the distributor or whatever. But back then, you had a lot of guys who would get together and— there was a guy in Michigan who did Power Comics, and...

DP: Exactly.

DRAW: So you meet people, you start seeing the other side. You start doing work. You’re finally up in New York, you’re working with Neal Adams, and then you’re working at Marvel.

DP: Yeah, and I also worked for DC, and that was with Joe Quesada, his first comic book for them. He worked for Valiant prior to that. But he started out penciling a TSR-licensed book called Spelljammer. I think I started on issue #1 with Mike Collins penciling. Mike left the book after a few issues and I

mostly inking.

DP: No. I was inking, and then I’d beg for the occasional pin-up or short story which I would pencil and ink. Man, it was hard. I could always ink a lot of pages, because I had been doing it since I was so young, but a blank page, and the script, and you’re not drawing the stuff you want to draw, you’re drawing stuff that serves the story. So you may have never drawn an elephant before in your life; now you’re drawing an elephant.

DRAW: Right. Again, I think that’s one of the crucial barriers

that we all go through, becoming professionals, going from drawing what you like, how you like it, when you like it, if you like it, to all of a sudden, “What? I have to draw four pages of a guy wearing a suit talking to somebody in an elevator?”

DP: Yeah. “And I’ve gotta make it work, and I have to—” DRAW: Yeah. “I would never choose to ever draw that, but,”

yeah.

DP: Yeah, and a good artist can take that and make it the most interesting man talking in the world. That’s the challenge.

DRAW: So you went from working on such illustrious titles as Quasar, and then it wasn’t too long after that that the whole Image thing started happening.

DRAW! • FALL 2011

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(above and next page) More page for the as-yet-unpublished creator-owned story. © JONATHAN DAVIS, DAN PANOSIAN & ANDy BOURNE.

DP: Yeah. You know, I didn’t know how to ink with, like, a paint

brush, and crow quills, and Rapidographs, or anything like that.

I used markers, because I read in the back of a Fantastic Four issue that John Byrne used Mars Graphic 3000 brush pens, so I could only ink with that stuff. Then, when I was working with Neal Adams, he had a great philosophy. He said, “It doesn’t matter what tools you use, it matters how it prints.” So, if you’re using markers, or you’re using this or that, if it can print in black-and-white, you can use this tool to ink. He was like, “If that’s what you like to ink with, ink with that.” He was using these Pentel pens, pretty much, when he inked stuff.

When I got on Quasar and Marvel stuff, I wanted to turn in pages that had real ink, so I picked up a brush. This is the Quasar story where you came in: I think you noticed that I really wasn’t handling the details as well as you would like. So I started getting pages from you with inked faces occasionally. Well, I didn’t even know how you inked it. I couldn’t comprehend how you got a line that delicate and fine. That blew me away. I think I called you up or something and you explained to me you had used a Rapidograph technical pen.

DRAW: Yeah. I think we met in Howard’s office, because I think

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what it was is that, with a marker, you could only get so small.

Markers are way better now than they were back then.

DP: Oh, yeah, they’ve got all sorts of great markers, you know, .005 markers.

DRAW: So with those Pentels, or whatever you were using then,

you could only get so small. So I figured, “Well, if I’m putting the detail into the work, I’ll just ink the little head.” I remember talking to you in Howard’s office, and I said, “Well, I inked that with a Rapidograph.”

DP: I know. You got in trouble for it. You got in trouble, but I was thrilled about it. I thought, “This is amazing.” I think I called up Howard or Len Kaminski to kind of ask questions, “How did Mike do that?” and, “That’s awesome.” And they were like, “Wait a minute, Mike should be penciling out pages, not inking them,” or something to that effect.

DRAW: Well, you know how the editors want everybody to be in a little box.

DP: Yeah, but honestly, Mike, that really opened my eyes to a whole other world. “Oh, you can really put some work into these things!” And that kind of blew me away. And, of course, I ran out

DRAW! • FALL 2011

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and bought Rapidographs after that and started making sure I got as detailed as I could. I’m sure I ruined pretty much all those pages for you.

DRAW: No, actually, I’m very fond of that stuff. I looked at

some of that recently. I had somebody interested in buying some of those pages. And I was also going through a lot of stylistic changes at the time, too, because when I came in, I was doing much more straight-ahead stuff, and then styles suddenly started changing, and then they were saying, “Well, we want the stuff to be more exciting.” It was a very weird time, too, because Todd [McFarlane] was coming along and doing his thing.

DP: Oh, yeah. Rob Liefeld came out doing New Mutants then.

DRAW: Yeah, and I was good friends with Bret [Blevins], who

was drawing the book before Rob, and then Rob comes on, and he was really popular, and you’re looking at that stuff, going, “I can’t figure this stuff out! I can’t figure out why people like it so

much.” During that time, working on Quasar, you know, he’s sort of like a second-string guy; he’s not Spider-Man or anything.

They started doing that thing where every once in a while they would want to have Jim [Lee] or Todd draw a cover, because they thought that that would cause sales to go up. Which, of course, it never did; that never caused sales to go up.

DP: Mignola did a cover, too, I think.

DRAW: Right, yeah, yeah. So I was moving around, stylistically.

The nice thing about a book like that, I think, when you are starting out and you’re sort of cutting your teeth, is, because it’s not Spider-Man, they don’t really care what you do. You can kind of experiment, whereas, on Spider-Man, or if you’re drawing Batman...

DP: Yeah, the whole world is watching.

DRAW: Right, yeah. And they’re like, “Oh, I don’t know about

this. Maybe we’re not so hot about that.”

DP: Yeah. Well, I mean, all those pages looked super-professional. The pencils were perfectly tight. You know, back then there were some guys who penciled tight, but the majority of them left a little bit of interpretation to the inker. But your work was very tight. A publisher could just shoot from your pencils, basically. Everything was there, including line weights. Everything was perfect—perfect-looking pages.

DRAW: Yeah, I guess that’s the way I

learned to pencil. Now I can pencil things much looser, but I always figured that, you know, if you pencil the stuff and you give everything to the inker, then the inker is going to have a much easier job. It takes a while. You look at guys that have been penciling for 20, 30, 40 years, like Buscema— he knew exactly how much to put in.

DP: Oh, yeah. Well, he also knew his inkers. Guys like Ernie Chan or Tony DeZuniga, those guys were always putting in extra work. Alfredo Alcala and Tom Palmer definitely put the love into those pages whenever they were inking or doing finishes on him.

DRAW: Yeah, well, those guys ended up mostly being inkers, but most of those guys that they would pair up with a guy like Buscema, those guys were fantastic artists on their own.

DP: You know, you’re right. It’s like a Kevin Nowlan. You can’t say Kevin Nowlan’s an inker. The guy is probably one of the best comic book artists. He has that status.

Character model sheet of the gun-slinging Dirk Daring.

DIRk DARINg ™ AND © DAN PANOSIAN.

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DRAW: Exactly. So those first early couple years working at Marvel were a learning curve for you.

(above) Pages 5 and 6 of an upcoming Jonah Hex story for All-Star Western.

JONAH HEx ™ AND © DC COMICS.

DP: Oh, yeah.

DRAW: But then you started penciling stuff when you went to Image, right?

DP: Well, yeah. I got a good break. I used to hang around Ralph Macchio’s offices like crazy. I would just hang out there, in his office, and he had a book called Legion of the Night that Whilce Portacio was penciling and Scott Williams was inking, and I would stare at these pages like crazy. And then, all of a sudden Whilce, Jim, Scott, all those guys started taking off with their careers on the X-Men titles. Whilce couldn’t really finish much of Legion of the Night, and Scott Williams was working his ass off on all the X-Men titles, and no one was inking like Scott Williams at Marvel, but that style was becoming really popular.

And so I think, because I was always studying those pages in Ralph’s office, he said, “Well, let’s give them to this guy.”

Meanwhile, I can barely use a brush. So I inked and did finishes on the last couple of pages of Whilce’s Legion of the Night, and I think the X-Men office saw that and wanted to continue that new linework style and keep that going, so I got thrown into the X-Men office right off the bat, which was great.

Shortly after that, Image Comics started, and all the Image guys wanted to bring all the guys that they had worked with over

with them. So I was working at Image doing double-duty inking for them and still inking for Marvel. Then Rob Liefeld asked me to pencil and ink Prophet for him, and that got me back into penciling.

DRAW: Was it rough to go from mainly being an inker back into doing the storytelling and all the other stuff?

DP: Oh, yeah. It was really tough. And, like you mentioned, all of a sudden those comics were selling like crazy, for whatever reason. Everybody was looking at your stuff, and I was basically a brand new penciler, who never really had penciled a full book in my life. So it’s a rough way to launch a penciling career, but it was trial by fire.

DRAW: And we all know the glorious rise and then the evening

out in the ’90s, with Image and the speculator market and all that stuff. You mentioned that you then kind of got out of comics and actually went back into your dad’s field, back into advertising.

DP: Well, what happened was, the money fell out of comics, or was starting to. I could have gone back to Marvel, and I think I did for maybe one or two issues after I got done drawing Prophet. But I don’t know what it was. I’d moved out to California to join up with Image Studios out there, and there are DRAW! • FALL 2011

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DRAW: Because he kind of got you into comics. Well, I can see that.

There’s probably a big emotional connection there.

DP: Yeah, I kind of connected the two, and he was no longer there to see what I was doing. Every time I would accomplish something in the comic book world, even though I didn’t have the greatest relationship with him as a teenager or as an adult, he would be the first one I would talk to about it. And he understood the business to some degree, and he knew who the artists were. He knew who John Buscema was. He knew who Neal Adams was. I could show him a Frank Miller comic book and he would understand why his storytelling worked so well. He got it. It was kind of interesting. What was funny was, I used to show him the current styles during the X-Men boom. I would show him the Jim Lee, and Whilce, and Rob stuff, and I would say to him, “Here’s what I’m inking, and here’s how I’m doing this stuff.” And he would look at some of the faces and he’d go, “Well, what are these scars on these people’s faces?” [Mike laughs] And I’d say, “Dad, that’s that guy’s cheekbone.” And he goes, “Well, it looks like stitching. It looks like they’re stitches like in a Frankenstein movie.” And it’s because you have that linework, you’d go over in one line, then you’d hatch over it, then you’d come back in with white paint.

DRAW: Right, yeah.

DP: It was so funny, and it really

annoyed me. I remember going, “Well, you don’t get it. This is the rage now.” And, looking back, yeah, I guess that looks a little strange.

Every line you put on a piece of paper is supposed to represent a Page 7 of Dan’s upcoming Jonah Hex story for All-Star Western. form or a shadow, and it’s a stylistic JONAH HEx ™ AND © DC COMICS. way of doing it, but I think, after a a lot of opportunities in California, work-wise. So there was the while, if that style becomes more distracting than what you’re lure of all sorts of big money doing design work for trying to accomplish with the illustration, you’ve lost. videogames and Hollywood stuff, and I guess I got sucked into it. My dad got really sick and passed away, and it kind of took DRAW: Right. So when your dad passed, you started looking at the wind out of my sails, I think, a little bit, for the comic doing some of those other things, like advertising, storyboards, books. I don’t know, I’m not the most introspective guy in that and videogames? way; I don’t like wasting time thinking about that stuff. But, DP: Yeah. I wanted to see if I could do it, also. I wanted to see if I looking back, probably getting out of comics had something to could do what my father did. I think everybody goes through a phase do with my dad passing away. where they get a little disillusioned with the comic book industry to 14

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some degree, and I had a lot of success early on, and... I don’t know.

I was a little disillusioned, I think, about the whole business.

DRAW: If you lived through it, it seemed like it all sort of blew up in a flash. By 1994, the whole thing was starting to fall over, and the air was coming out of the balloon pretty fast, I mean, every month. When anything starts making a large amount of money, I don’t care whether it’s comics, or animation, or you’re selling jackets, or fashion, or whatever, it always distorts things.

It makes some things good, but then it also distorts things on the other side; it distorts things to the bad side. But I would imagine that, having worked as a penciler and all that other stuff, when you went into advertising—I mean, one thing about comics is that you have to draw all kinds of stuff, and you definitely had drawing chops by then, but you were saying earlier that you still found it a little difficult?

DP: I found it difficult. I’d only done a handful of comic book issues, and they were done mostly for Image and drawn in, for lack of a better term, that Image style that was popular in the ’90s. I was drawing guys in spaceships with a hundred guns, and pouches, and swords, and now I’m drawing stuff for a Morgan Freeman movie, or something like that. So it was basically two different worlds.

DRAW: What, Morgan Freeman didn’t have pouches and a hun-

dred guns? [laughter] DP: Nah, just a great-looking mug! I also went to a few classes, or sessions, with this guy, Jeff Watts, who, if you’ve ever been to ComicCon, you’ve seen he’s got that life-drawing studio in San Diego.

DRAW: Right, yeah, I’m very familiar with the Watts Atelier down there.

DP: Yeah, and I had people like Bill Wray constantly saying, “You need to do some life drawing.” Bill Wray recognized right away that I had no clue to what I was doing, and constantly let me know about it, so I thought I would go there. I was living in Laguna Beach at the time, and it was about an hour-and-a-half to get to San Diego. I guess, if you’re back East, an hour-and-a-half is like going to the grocery store, probably, but in L.A. and Orange County, everything is five minutes away.

DRAW: Yeah, it may be five minutes away, but it may take an hour to get there because of the traffic.

DP: That’s true. Now I live in downtown L.A. But I went maybe four months, on and off. Drawing from life as opposed to from comic books was a big leap for me. I had an idea of a nose based on shapes that I’d learned from guys like John Byrne, primarily, and John Byrne understood what those lines meant, but all I understood was the lines I saw there. When I put the lines in this combination, that creates a nose.

DRAW: It was like you were drawing a symbol of a nose,

sort of.

DP: Yeah, basically, I was drawing a symbol of a nose. And Neal Adams explained it to me once. He said, “Do you know those three wavy lines that people use to illustrate water? A child can make these lines. These are symbols that represent water. You’re drawing and inking with symbols. The difference is—” and he’d show me, like, “Here’s how you draw a rock.” He goes, “If you’re going to draw a rock the way Artist A draws a rock, it’s going to look like lines, but if you start thinking about a rock, or looking at a rock, looking at the shapes and incorporating that energy or those jagged lines into that rock, it’s going to look more like a rock. Even if it looks wrong, it’s going to feel right, somehow.”

Artwork for Bloody Elbow, an online news and commentary site that focuses on Mixed Martial Arts (MMA). ™ AND © BLOODy ELBOW

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And that made an impression, but going to the life drawing classes really drove it home, because you’re looking at people’s features, and not everybody has the same nose. Even when you look at body builders or something like that, one body builder’s abs are completely different shapes than another body builder’s abs. It’s just amazing. And yet, in comic books, everybody has the same biceps, everybody has the same pectorals, legs, and everybody’s flexing at every moment.

DRAW: Yes, everybody’s muscles are constantly being flexed.

You can see their abs, the separation of their abs, through their costume.

DP: Yeah, exactly. [laughs] Which I like and I don’t like at the same time. It’s funny. So even that little bit of life drawing, starting to look through a different lens, helped my drawing.

Combining the life drawing with a lot of storyboard work, I recognized that what I was doing needed improvement.

Sometimes you’re doing up to 30 panels a day of storyboarding, and I started thinking, “You know what? Each one of these panels

could be a comic book panel, and I’m doing about 25, 30 of them a day.” And I was still doing them fairly tight, by storyboard standards. Storyboards are not like the kind you usually see in an Art of... whatever movie book. Those are more the show boards or the key frame boards that they show in those books. Most storyboards are extremely loose. But I would still turn in tight stuff because of the inking training, and I thought, “Well, you know what? I could easily do six panels on a comic book page.”

That was the thinking.

DRAW: And the other thing is that it’s different doing a live action or movie storyboard than doing a storyboard for a cartoon, where you’re actually drawing the characters the way they look.

DP: Actually, I don’t know. That’s a whole different animal than drawing live action, just a whole different set of challenges.

DRAW: And then you look at Rodolfo DiMaggio.

DP: Oh, man!

DRAW: He does these boards that are beautiful illustrations.

DP: Yeah, he is amazing. He is amazing. He’s one of those guys

you wish would at least do one 22-page comic book a year or something like that. The guy is just incredible. Especially now— he’s really good at Photoshop, also, and his coloring’s great. That guy is insanely good.

DRAW: Again, he’s just another example of how comic books is

such a good training ground for doing all these other forms of visual storytelling.

DP: Like you were saying, it teaches you to draw everything.

DRAW: Right. And to be able to tell a story. So, if you’re doing an ad for Campbell’s soup, you have to draw upon your knowledge and your skill to make that an interesting commercial, to make the images clear, to sell the product in a good or entertaining way, as well.

DP: Yeah, where you’re putting that camera. Exactly.

DRAW: When you were doing the boards, did you have an agent,

or were you doing it yourself?

DP: I somehow lucked out. I think that comic book cache followed me around a little bit, and I would have agencies that I would work with but I was never exclusive to. Most guys have an exclusive agent. I never did anything like that. I had enough advertising work, and videogame design work, and storyboard work, that it all worked out.

DRAW: How many years were you doing that? Because you kind

Character design sheet for the Spectacular Spider-Man animated series.

SPIDER-MAN ™ AND © MARVEL CHARACTERS, INC.

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of dropped comics for a while.

DP: Yeah, I dropped comics entirely, and the first thing I did was I went over to Dreamworks Interactive. I wanted to do some design work for one of their videogames. They were a brand new company at the time, and I went in with all my comic book pages and samples and stuff like that, and showed it to them. They had this videogame called T’ai Fu that they were working on, and they didn’t like how it was coming out, or they were having troubles on it. So I showed them my stuff, and they say, “This is wonderful stuff, but we need someone to do character design, and your work doesn’t translate to what we want.” So I said to

(left) Each week a member of the Comic Twart web collective (www.comictwart.com) will pick a theme and each member will submit a drawing based on that theme. One of Dan’s picks was “Alfred Hitchcock,” and this was his submission. (below) The kendo cowboy.

THE BIRDS © UNIVERSAL PICTURES. kENDO COWBOy © DAN PANOSIAN.

them, “You know what? I really want this badly. How about we pretend that I got the job and you gave me the assignment. I’ll come back in a week, and if you don’t like it, don’t pay for it, and I’ll just chalk it up to experience.

But, if you do like it, obviously we can go somewhere.” So, reluctantly, they said yes. And I worked my ass off. I did everything. I did background designs, I did character designs, I brought in so much stuff in one week that I ended up becoming the lead character designer on that videogame.

DRAW: I think I remember seeing some of that stuff.

DP: The funny thing is, they got a great response on it internally at

Dreamworks. It was a kung fu fighting game, basically, like a kung fu adventure fighting game, and it had all the animals of kung fu—pandas and all these things. So Stephen Spielberg comes in the office, and he sees all these designs. They put all the drawings up in the conference rooms and Spielberg was looking at them all and says, “We’re going to make this into a movie or an animated TV show or something.” Months later they playtested the videogame, and it playtested awful, because all the characters are about seven pixels high, so you can’t see any of the detail that we slaved over for months and months designing this game. You can’t really see what the characters look like. It was a martial arts fighting game adventure, but they were concentrating more on the story, so the actual kung fu that they were doing, it was almost like Double Dragon, where you could kick, and you could punch, and you could jump. So the game playtested horribly, the game sold horribly. Fast forward ten years later, I’m doing some storyboard work, and I see this panda, and I’m like, “I drew this panda. Where—?” And it’s DRAW! • FALL 2011

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Kung Fu Panda. They changed the whole thing into Kung Fu Panda.

DRAW: Wow. I think we talked about that. And

that’s funny, because that’s one of the other things people don’t realize is that when you work with these big corporations and you create something, you could draw a character in the background that somehow they decide, “Wow, that’s exactly what we want.” You may create the next billion-dollar franchise, but you’re not going to get any more than your page rate out of that.

DP: No, I mean, I got paid great when I was working for Dreamworks on that project, but you think I’d be a rich man with Kung Fu Panda 1 and 2, but it was just work-for-hire. So all that design work and everything— DRAW: Well, here’s what I think you should do: I think you should get a Kung Fu Panda costume, get stinkin’ drunk, show up at the premiere, and start yelling, [slurred voice] “I created Kung Fu Panda!” [laughter] DP: That’ll go over well. No, I’d love to be one of those guys that get a slimy lawyer to somehow say I created The Matrix, and finally they pay you off just to shut you up.

DRAW: Yeah, yeah.

DP: But I’ll never be one of those guys. I know

exactly what the business is and what I got into, and I had a great time working on that thing, and it was work-for-hire, and that’s what it is. Until you do a creator-owned book and you are behind it, then that’s just the nature of the business.

DRAW: Right, that is the nature of the busi-

ness. Did you continue to work with them, or did you start jumping around more?

DP: From there I started working on Duke Nukem Forever. I didn’t do the Duke Nukem ini(previous page and above) Dan’s pencils and inks for DC’s Doc Savage #15. tial design, but I redesigned all the Duke Nukem DOC SAVAgE © ADVANCE MAgAZINE PUBLISHERS, INC. D/B/A CONDE NAST. characters for that year-and-a-half, and as you know, that production stalled out. I think it took 14 years or more, a lot to deal with, and not only was I seeing everybody’s best and now Duke Nukem Forever is out, so that property has been put work, and I was seeing all sorts of fun things happen, but I through the wringer. I don’t know how well Duke Nukem Forever knew so much about the business, and it was always kind of is doing, sales-wise, but it had a loyal following at the time, and pulling me back in. That’s where all my passion and all my love is. The reason I started drawing in the first place was to draw people still know the name. comic books, and I equated the advertising and even the design, DRAW: Did you miss comics when you were doing this other everything outside of comic books to drawing refrigerators. I didn’t start drawing pictures of Conan when I was a little kid stuff?

DP: Yeah, well, I’d go to San Diego Comic-Con, and it was so because I wanted to draw a refrigerator for General Electric. I inspiring when you see it. What people don’t understand about was saying to myself “Man, I’m just doing this for the money. this convention is, you go there, artists have booths everywhere, I’m not having the fun. I could have made more money if I was and they’re displaying the best of everything they’ve done that a restaurant manager.” Unless you’re doing something with a year, or years prior, and so you walk around and see every- passion, you’d better be making a lot of money doing it. That’s body’s amazing “best of ” album. And it’s crushing. [laughs] It’s the way I look at it.

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Sketches of MMA competitors for the Bloody Elbow website. © BLOODy ELBOW.

DRAW: So you started thinking about how you wanted to get back into drawing comics?

DP: Yeah. Dave Johnson saw some drawings I did for Muscle and Fitness magazine, and it was in a completely different style. I don’t think Dave had the highest opinion of my Image or X-Men work [laughs], or too many people’s work that were popular Image guys at the time, and he saw this stuff, which is completely different from anything he had seen from me before. He called me up and said, “Dude, you’ve got to draw comic books like this.

That other stuff you were doing was crap! But I’d buy a comic book drawn like this!” And I thought nobody would want a comic book drawn like that. But it got me thinking, and I think, between Dave Johnson pushing me to draw the way I was drawing now and Ivan Brandon asking me to do a story for one of his 24Seven anthology books is what pushed me forward. I drew maybe four or five pages for him. So I thought, “Wait a minute, I’m drawing comics again,” and it was a lot of fun.

that’s just too good to pass up. But, you know what? I looked to my wife, and I said, “I’m not happy doing what I’m doing, and I miss comic books. And I don’t know what the business is going to be like. I’m pretty sure the money will be less, but I can’t keep doing what I’m doing. I want to draw comics.” Oddly enough, I’m working worse hours than I’ve ever worked in my life, but I’m having more fun. I had to draw some sample pages for Marvel to get back in, which I didn’t have a problem with doing, because I didn’t want Marvel to think I was just going to draw the way I used to. I didn’t expect them to hire me based on work I had done ten years prior.

DRAW: Over the last year or two you’ve been drawing a lot of

DRAW: I guess the other thing, too, is that most of the people

comics.

DP: It’s been about two years, and it’s about all I’ve been doing, almost exclusively. Every now and then an ad job will come in

that you and I started working with back on Quasar, besides Ralph, are gone.

DP: Ralph is the only one still there.

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DRAW: Well, that’s actually an interesting point, because you’ve been working in the business 20 years or something, and the idea that you’d have to sit down and do sample pages, some people would be like, “Screw that! I’m Dan Panosian!”

DP: [laughs] I don’t like throwing that around.

DRAW: Ralph knows what you do, everybody else is brand new in my eyes. One of the first things I learned when I started working in comics—I think it was Tom Palmer, actually, because it was right around the same time I met you that I met Tom Palmer for the first time, and he told me that people in comics forget what you do within six months.

DP: It’s probably true.

DRAW: He did a lot of advertising work on the side, and I think

there was a stint where he didn’t do much comic book inking for a while, and then he came back to do more comics, and they were like, “Who is this Tom Palmer guy?”

DP: Yeah. I bet that’s exactly what happened. And Tom Palmer is one of the all-time greatest inkers in the business.

doing the Image stuff penciled like people ink. They put line weights in— DP: Oh, yeah, it’s amazing.

DRAW: —all the crosshatching. If you look at, say, Dale Keown’s stuff, it’s like the inker is redundant in some ways, because everything is so highly finished.

DP: I’ll look at some of the stuff that you post where you’re doing ghost layouts for someone, and I’m sure in your head you’re like, “Oh, my God, I’m giving these guys the bare minimum,” and I look at some of those things that you do, and I’m like, “Man, if I had that to go on, the pages would look just sick. They’d be amazing, because that’s so much more information than I usually give myself when I’m drawing.” And I know, for you, that’s almost the bare minimum. You have a real solid drawing base.

DRAW: Right, yeah. So you did

your samples— DP: I did my samples, and they gave me an Ultimate X-Men Annual—I think it was an annual that Brandon Peterson was drawing half of, or he was doing the cover and a few pages, and then Mark Brooks and I split the issue.

Danny Miki was inking. I was really nervous about this, because no one had ever inked me before, and I didn’t want to be inked in the style people previously connected me to.

My pencils are extremely loose, and they’re just done in one light weight since I’d never penciled for someone else to interpret. When I pencil, they’re just very loose breakdowns, and I pretend that I’m doing finishes on a terrible artist.

DRAW: I’m sure, in the beginning,

like everybody, you start drawing, and you draw tight, but then you try to draw in the way that the people that you are emulating pencil or ink.

DP: Yeah, exactly.

DRAW: So I’m sure you were drawing tighter in the beginning. Are you still doing it as loose for your own stuff?

DP: Yeah, I just do it super-loose, and I realize my influences have kind of remained the same, but the focus is different. I grew up reading comic books; I loved Conan. The first stuff I think I picked up was the Savage Sword of Conan by John Buscema, and I loved it. But I was more drawn, as a kid, to, say, John DRAW: [laughs] So it’s interesting, A fun sketch of “Mad Cyril.” though, you, as an inker who inked a Byrne’s X-Men, or his Fantastic © DAN PANOSIAN. lot of people’s pencils over the years, Four run. But now when I’m when you pencil stuff for yourself, you actually pencil very loosely? drawing, I realize that that John Buscema influence is more promiDP: You know that Marvel Comics how-to-draw book where nent, I guess because that’s more of what I was actually reading at the John Buscema has a Thor drawing and it just looks like a ball of time, and looking at—stuff like Sergio Toppi and all these other influstring? That’s what I ink. [laughs] And he goes, “You’ll find the ences that I recognized when I was younger, have popped more to the one line in there that represents the arm or the torso,” and that’s forefront. And those guys have a completely different style than what what I do with the inking. is found in ’80s and ’90s mainstream comics. So now I’m looking at line differently, and feathering doesn’t mean the same thing as it did DRAW: I think that’s interesting, though, because one of the before. I’m like, “Whatever lines I can put down to represent this things about being an inker is that you’re perfecting little things, form best is what I’m doing,” instead of going, “Well, rocks have to you’re interpreting things. You’re saying, “This ball of string, I’m be rendered this way. Flesh is always rendered this way.” There are all going to put a thin line here, and a thick line here,” or, “I’m going these set, fast rules, and if you look at someone like Sergio Toppi, and to do a little rendering or crosshatching,” or something. And, you see how he’s rendered the shadows on somebody’s arm, if you having inked guys all those years, and I know the guys who were use a magnifying glass and you just cropped a small section of his

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work you might say, “What the hell am I even looking at? How does this represent this form?” And yet, somehow, it does, and it’s because he actually really understands what he’s drawing.

DP: Exactly. I resisted that for so long, and it was thanks to guys

DRAW: Right. When I came up and I was learning to ink, you had the two big house styles. You had Joe Sinnott for the Marvel style, and Giordano was sort of the DC style.

DP: And you were lucky enough to have Al Williamson, too. You can’t do much better than that.

DRAW: And Al was exposed to a lot of stuff back in the day by

DRAW: Right. So what happened was, I think I was more influenced by Sinnott and Giordano, and they definitely had a very specific way of rendering everything. You render hair like this, you render rocks like this, you turn the form in a certain way. And then, when I was working with Al, I always liked illustration, but when I would see him and then his collection, you would see— DP: Oh, God. Amazing.

DRAW: Yeah, you would see the history of pen-and-ink illustra-

tion, and you would realize that the comic book guys sort of had one sort of formula, but if you look at pen-and-ink illustration as a whole, there are all kinds of different ways of using lines to denote texture or form.

like Bill Wray and Mark Pacella who would constantly show me stuff, all those good guys.

guys like Roy Krenkel, who knew about all the classic pen-andink illustrators and artists, so that’s why, I think, his work always had that illustrative bent.

DP: Yeah. He came up in that generation. Roy Krenkel and all those guys, you see everything in Al’s work—Frazetta, all that stuff. Al was just in a different class of artist than most mainstream working artists, the comic book guys.

DRAW: Right, right. So now we jump forward to the year 2011.

DP: Oh, God! [laughter] DRAW: And you’re penciling Conan now, you’re doing XFactor...

DP: I was doing X-Factor Forever, which was written by Louise Simonson. At the time, I was going through a couple moves. I moved twice within that five-issue period, which was kind of rough on me, but I somehow managed it. My dream, in the comic book field, is to draw Conan, and now I’m illustrating two issues of Conan: Road of Kings! Thanks in part to Chris Warner and Mike Hawthorne and Mark Irwin putting in a good word for me over there at Dark Horse. I’m doing covers over at DC for Green Lantern, and I just finished up two issues of THUNDER Agents.

DRAW: So you’ve had your comic book renaissance.

DP: Yeah. And, in two years, I’ve penciled and inked the hell out

of everything. Oh, yeah, I was going to go back and say about that Ultimate X-Men thing with Danny Miki, I realized after that, if I want my stuff to look the way I want it to look, I’m going to have to ink it, because I can’t expect an inker to read my mind and create magic where there isn’t any magic.

DRAW: Wow. Now you’ve really become a penciler. Look at

you. You’re like a prima donna. “These guys can’t ink my stuff!”

DP: “Nobody understands how great I am!” No. Danny Miki is one of the premiere inkers, but he can’t read my mind. I want tons of linework right here, and I want this to be accented. If I hand him garbage how can I expect brilliance?

DRAW: You’ve become a line queen. “Look at these fingers!

These aren’t right!” [laughter] DP: Now, if I could get Bill Reinhold and chain him to the board, I think I’d be pretty happy. But that’ll never happen. I aspire to ink like he does!

DRAW: Well, never say never. I never thought I would be laying

out a couple issues of Magnus for Bill to do finishes on.

DP: Oh, wow. Did you post any of those?

DRAW: Yeah, I posted a bunch of them online. So did Bill.

DP: Yeah, I’ve got to see those. I think I went offlist for a little

Cover inks for Green Lantern: Emerald Warriors #12. gREEN LANTERN ™ AND © DC COMICS.

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bit trying to get some deadlines, and I must have missed some Magnus stuff. I saw some of the stuff you did for Ordway, the Lobo stuff, I’m like, “Oh, God,” because I could almost see the Ordway on top of it before he even got to it!

A series of quick sketches. © DAN PANOSIAN.

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DRAW: Well, thanks. One of the great things about working with

DRAW: When we started, it was a pencil and a brush, and peo-

somebody like Jerry or Bill is that they’re such great artists that you know that anything they’re going to do is going to lift up what you did.

DP: Yeah, everything. Bill Reinhold’s always going to plus everything, and so is Jerry Ordway.

MM: Right. And when you’re working with them, and I know them and they’re friends, and that makes it different, too. But when you’re working with somebody you know who’s going to plus everything, it gives you a completely different feeling than if you’re like, “Well, they’re going to give it to this problem,” or, “It’s going to be ruined over here,” or whatever. It’s really hard for it not to take the wind out of your sails. You’re sitting there at two or three in the morning, and you’re having to draw a page. If you knew that page was going to go through the meat grinder, it’s kind of hard to keep your jones for stuff like that.

DP: Oh, yeah, totally.

ple were still using stat cameras.

DP: And a lightbox.

DRAW: You’ve gone through a great process as far as being a penciler, and a thinker, and an intellectual in your approach to your work.

DP: [laughs] I love that!

DRAW: I still use a lightbox occasionally, but now you’re coloring stuff, you’re doing stuff on the computer.

DP: I use the computer a lot. The computer has really sped things up for me. I also have a Wacom Cintiq monitor, which you can draw right on. I learned how to color after I left comics, because I got tired of having to job out all the color, and I’m such a finicky, picky guy that I would get coloring back, and then I would rework it in Photoshop, in my own ham-fisted way.

DRAW: So you’re using Photoshop?

DP: A lot of Photoshop. I taught myself Photoshop. I basically

got the equivalent of my father’s stick figure art lesson from former DC colorist Patrick Martin. He was coloring covers and he was a former Extreme Studios guy, so he taught me a little bit: how to set up files, and how to use the lasso tool, basically. And then the rest, just over the years, like most comic book guys, you just learn by doing. I do thumbnails on regular paper, I scan those in, and then I pencil the actual page on the Cintiq, which saves a lot of time, because you can use layers. If you don’t like something, you can just draw over it. And then I print out that page and then ink it traditionally, and then scan it back in, obviously.

DRAW: You could ink it on the Cintiq, right?

DP: I could ink it on the Cintiq, and I don’t think anybody could tell the difference, honestly. But, I don’t know why, there’s something about inking an actual page, for me, that wouldn’t be the same.

DRAW: So it’s actually quicker for you to

do your little layout, blow it up, and tighten up your pencils on the Cintiq?

DP: You know why? I think the problem with the inking is, it’s a very detailed process, and if you have a computer that you can enlarge something 300%, you can get lost in those details. I think inking it on the computer would take three times as long.

DRAW: I guess there’s all that going in, and going out, and going in.

DP: Yeah. I guess, eventually, like anything, you’d develop a process, but for me, I’d go, “Oh, let me fix that tiny line in the background.”

© DAN PANOSIAN.

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DRAW: And then you don’t have any art to sell.

DP: Yeah, you have no original art to sell.

That’s one of the things about Brian Bolland. Every time he’d do a cover, it

was three thousand dollars, six thousand dollars, or something like that. And you’d look at these originals and they were insane. And now, you can’t tell that he does them on the computer, but he inks them on the computer. I wonder if he misses the art sales? I ink blueline pages.

I like to ink on slicker paper because I’m back to using a Japanese brush pen, and all those brush pens, on regular paper, it slows them down. The paper soaks it up, and it slows down the process.

TOOLS DRAW: Let’s talk a little bit, specifically, about the technical stuff. What kind of brush pens do you like?

DP: There is a Pentel brush pen that’s made in Japan. I pick them up at a manga bookstore out here. You can also order them from JetPens. I ink with that. It’s a refillable, permanent-ink brush marker.

And that thing looks great.

DRAW: It has a nylon tip?

DP: Yeah. It actually has individual hairs.

Most brush pens use a felt tip, and eventually they wear out. This thing has nylon fibers, so it is a brush. It can split, you can do split stuff, you can do dry brush with it. It has an authentic brush feel to it. But, because it’s a pen, if you’re inking on regular Bristol board and you drag that brush across it, it’s going to turn into a dry brush very quickly.

DRAW: So you’re using a super-smooth plate finish paper?

DP: Yeah, super-smooth. It’s almost like gloss finish board. I put that brush pen down on it, and I can do the same things I could do with a regular brush.

DRAW: Who makes the paper?

DP: You know what? I don’t know. I think

Mohawk makes the paper.

DRAW: Does it come in a pad, or are you buying the sheets and

Page 6 of the as-yet-unpublished creator-owned story. © JONATHAN DAVIS, DAN PANOSIAN & ANDy BOURNE.

resale-wise, it may do a little bit better.

cutting it?

DP: It’s a big ream of paper, and they’re 12" x 18". I just trim the

tops of them using the old ruler-tear method, and then they fit perfectly in my scanner.

DRAW: Oh, okay.

DP: But I think, from a collecting standpoint, people aren’t used

to seeing slick paper. They want to see that Bristol board, for the most part. I’m really considering going back to doing traditional inks with a brush and a crow quill for the Conan stuff, just because I’m putting a lot of work into these pages, and I think,

DRAW: In the end, if that is your original... I know that people have the aesthetic of looking at the paper in the old days; it would say “Marvel Comics” on the top, and it would be the Marvel paper, or the DC paper, and you could maybe see a little bit of the pencil underneath if you didn’t erase it all the way.

DP: That’s interesting that you say that, Mike. I mean, that’s like Geof Darrow. You look at his originals and they’re all on vellum, and I would still pay top dollar for a Geof Darrow original. And the same thing, like, Gil Kane would ink in markers. Unfortunately, all that stuff is fading because it wasn’t permanent ink.

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DRAW: Yeah, he was using those Flair markers or whatever.

They’re a dye, not an actual ink. Now they’re all going green and purple.

DP: Yeah, they’re all purple, and eventually they’ll be gone. But I’d love to have an original of Gil Kane.

DRAW: Yeah. I saw a couple of Star Hawks somebody was selling on eBay a while ago, but that was the same thing. They were all fading away.

DP: Yeah, and then you have the Zip-a-tone on top of a marker, and then you get that bleed.

DRAW: Right, yeah. I have a lot of stuff from when I was a

teenager, when I would work with a Sharpie, and then you’d slap some Zip on top of it, and now it’s like this weird art experiment.

DP: It’s the Gloss and Blur tool in Photoshop. [laughter] DRAW: Yeah, exactly!

DP: I actually have a Gil Kane original from Blackhawk, too. It’s

not one of the better ones, but it’s still great. Any Gil Kane page is a great Gil Kane page, in my opinion. But, yeah, it’s interesting. Maybe that’s just the way I do it, and that’s the way they are, and if a collector likes them, they get them. Who knows?

DRAW: I don’t know. We look at the craft, or we look at the

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artwork in a different way than the average comic art buyer does. I would buy a page that wouldn’t be a splash page or something iconic because I like the way a guy rendered a shirt, or trees in the background, or something, where I think, in general, the comic art fan wants a nice, iconic page. “That’s the page where Gwen Stacy dies,” or, “That’s the page where two guys are punching each other,” or something, or a sexy girl, or whatever. I remember some very blah, average John Byrne page that Klaus inked on Wolverine, just because I went, “Wow, look at the way he did this,” or, “Look at the way he did that.”

DP: Mm-hm. The first comic book page I ever bought was Klaus Janson inking Walt Simonson, and it was for Close Encounters of the Third Kind, the movie adaptation.

DRAW: Oh, wow. Yeah.

DP: And that kind of blew my mind. I’d never really seen comic

book pages like that before, or Klaus’s inking up close. I was a huge Walt Simonson fan, and having someone like Klaus ink him is a completely different look than when Walt inks himself.

DRAW: Right, or in the case of when somebody like Bob Wiacek inks him, it’s much— DP: Oh, yeah, Bob Wiacek used to ink him quite a bit. I forgot about that.

DRAW: Yeah. That’s the other thing, for me, anyway, I can do digital stuff, but I still prefer to have the actual artifact. And there’s something about inking on a sheet of paper that I can’t get off of inking on a digital tablet. I’m sure I can do a good job, and it’ll look professional, but there’s just something...

DP: I ink better on actual paper, I think. I draw better on actual paper. I wish I could cut out the Cintiq stage of penciling, because if I have a piece of paper in front of me, it’s a much

better drawing than on the Cintiq, for some reason. I don’t know what it is.

DRAW: Yeah, I think there always is that stage where you want to keep the energy of your layout. Then you go into the penciling stage. But if you look at a lot of guys like Walt Simonson or people like that, their penciling stage is very loose, so most of the drawing is done really in the inking stage. And it sounds like that’s basically what you do.

DP: It’s kind of my method, but I think that even my layouts would be better on regular paper. I always got a kick out of the way Erik Larsen works. He just starts on panel one and then goes to panel six. He pencils right on the board. Maybe in some cases he has a thumbnail, but he just draws.

DRAW: In the old days I had much more of a laborious method.

I would do the small layouts, like on 8-1/2" x 11", I’d put them in my Artograph, I’d project them down, then I’d tighten my pencils up that way, then I would ink. And when I was laying out that stuff for Bill and Jerry, I would sometimes do a quick, little thumbnail, but other times I would sit there, and I would read the script, and I would just draw straight ahead on the sheet of paper and figure that if I didn’t like what I did, I’d just erase it and draw it again.

DP: Man! Very bold.

DRAW: And I found that all those years of working the other way, now I figure, if I’m going to draw a face and I don’t like it, I’ll just erase it and draw it again. If I don’t like the way this page is flowing, I’ll just erase it and draw it again. I just found that going on my instinct then allowed me to capture more of that energy that I liked that would be in my layout, that I would lose when I would go from layout to projecting it. Because you always lose energy when you project anything, y’know? And I remember when I was working with Al, and Al had this way where he would do these great, little layouts. He would do these drawings on tracing paper that were just amazing. Then he would transfer that, he’d lightbox it, or he’d put it in the projector, and he’d trace it, and then he’d draw it. And then he’d go back and he would loosen it up again when he would ink it. And it’s like, well, why don’t you go with the drawing you did the first time? That’s, like, ten thousand times better, and you’re done. But I think it’s a confidence thing.

DP: It must be that, because Mike Zeck is the same way. For every finished Mike Zeck pen-and-ink, there are seven drawings that look like they could be finished drawings. The stages that that man goes through is insane. I own some of the original layouts that he does. His page roughs on an 8-1/2" x 11" sheet of paper for the page, you could practically print that these days. For an indie comic, that would be perfect. All the information is there, the blacks are all spotted perfectly, all sorts of drama. Then he goes and tightens that up, and then he tightens it up with ink—and by “ink” I mean

Drawing based on a live model. © DAN PANOSIAN.

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“marker”—and then he tightens up a tighter version of that marker thing, and then he goes to ink. At least, that was his process in the late ’90s. I don’t know what his process is now, but that first page of ink, that could be a comic book, and it would be a great one.

DRINKING AND DRAWING DRAW: We should talk about your cause célèbre, your Drinking and Drawing.

DP: Oh, the Drink and Draw.

DRAW: Did that come out of your doing the life drawing and everything?

DP: You know, I was single, and I’d be in bars, and it was a great way to meet girls. I hate to say it, but it was. “You have to be excellent at something” is one of the rules from The Tao of Steve.

So I’d sit there with a napkin and I’d start sketching someone or something, and everyone’s in a bar to meet someone, and it’s just a conversation starter. A girl would come up, “Are you an artist?”

And then I’d go, “Yeah.” And they would inevitably say, “Oh, could you draw a picture of me?” And all of a sudden you have permission to stare at a girl [Mike laughs], draw her, and then have something to talk about.

DRAW: Without a restraining order or some guy coming after

you and beating you up!

DP: [laughs] And then the girl will go, “Oh, my God! I’m not that pretty! Do you think I’m that pretty?” And then you go, “Oh, yeah, of course!” So I was married, and Dave Johnson was like, “Dude, we should hang out and let’s drink and draw.” Jeff Johnson, Dave, Steve Jones, and myself were at the very first one. Steve Jones was a former comic book artist for Marvel and DC who got into animation. I think you worked with him on—what was that one cartoon? That kind of Kirbyinfluenced cartoon that was kind of a spoof on comic books?

DRAW: Oh, the Minoriteam?

DP: Minoriteam, yeah. Steve was on

Minoriteam. So the four of us all went out and started doing it, and then Steve Jones was just starting a family at the time, so he couldn’t come out any more, so it was just me, Dave, and Jeff.

And Dave was like, “Dude, we have to keep doing this!” Dave was really the leading force behind us getting out on a regular basis. And it’s a great excuse.

Like, “Oh, Elena?” That’s my wife.

“I’m not going out to a bar. I’m going out to Drink and Draw.” [laughs]

(above and next page) Drink and Draw sketches of two lovely ladies. © DAN PANOSIAN.

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DRAW: Suuuuuure you are. Suuuure you are. Yeah.

DP: As long as I come home with some drawings, I’m good. If I just come home from Drink and Draw stumbling, then I’m in trouble. But Drink and Draw also kind of helped my style, because I would start drawing looser. “Oh, it’s never going to be printed. I’ll just draw however I feel.”

One of our rules is you don’t bring work to Drink and Draw. You’re just drawing for fun, because that’s how you started drawing. The only fun drawings I do these days are for Drink and Draw.

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29

You’re drawing something you actually want to draw any which way you want to draw it, and nobody’s telling you what to do. So my drawings became looser and looser, and I started liking the energy in those drawings more and more. And, when I started doing comic books again, I started bringing that inking that I’d been doing at Drink and Draw into my comic book work, and I’m much happier with it. But it took off like Fight Club. Everybody’s starting up little chapters in their own cities. And it’s fantastic. I can’t believe it.

DRAW: So you’re the Tyler Durden of Drink and Draw.

DP: Yeah. [laughter] That’s funny. But it’s great. It’s becoming a part of the comic book language at this point, or even illustration language. You Drink and Draw, you know?

DRAW: It’s funny, comic book artists have come around when

you started doing that, but the fine artists...

DP: Yeah, people have been doing it for years. Dave just gave it a lovely name and assembled the band!

DRAW: Yeah, the fine artists always drank and drew. I mean, the Impressionists and those guys were always getting smashed, y’know? Look at Jackson Pollock, all those guys. They were drinking and painting! I think the real difference is that painting is more of a social occupation, where in cartooning, you’re in your studio, by yourself, at your drawing board, working.

DP: Yeah, you’re lucky if you remember to put music on sometimes. You get so wrapped up in it that even music, it’s on or it’s off, or I’ll say I want to turn on the radio, and then two hours will go by because you’re drawing something and time escapes you.

DRAW: So putting out a book based upon the Drink and Draw?

DP: Yeah, Image Comics contacted us. Eric Stephenson called

me up and said, “Why don’t we do a coffee table book with this?”

And I was like, “Man, that sounds great.” You know, we never made a dime off a Drink and Draw book, but—” DRAW: You drank it all away. [laughs] DP: Yeah, we drank it all away. Any money we ever made

was from when we do book signings and we sell the original artwork, and then we take that money and put it right back into buying T-shirts, or coasters, or things like that. There’s a Drink and Draw tonight. I mean, Robert Crumb has shown up at Drink and Draw. It’s insane.

DRAW: This one tonight?

Inked sketch done in a live model drawing session. © DAN PANOSIAN.

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DP: No, Robert Crumb showed up for one about a year ago. Just

out of the blue, he’d heard about it and he showed up. Mike Mignola has been to one. Bill Sienkiewicz used to come quite a bit when he was downtown in L.A. Just seeing Bill Sienkiewicz there, of course, Bill brings a whole different element to his work. And what’s funny is, a lot of these younger comic book guys or animation guys, they don’t even understand who’s sitting next to them.

So it’s pretty funny. If they only knew that that’s Bill Sienkiewicz.

DRAW: Well, I guess it’s sort of a great democratic way, a leveling playing field that everybody just sits around and draws.

DP: Yeah. There’s no ego at Drink and Draw. Everybody’s really kind and gracious. I’ve given freelance work to a lot of younger artists there. If I can’t do a job, I go, “Well, I know somebody who can, and somebody who’s hungry to do it, and has the facility to do it.” So I’ll pass that on. It’s not meant to be a business networking thing, it’s just inevitable, if you get along with someone and you recognize their talent, certainly it has the potential for that.

DRAW: You know, why not? I think that’s one of the big differ-

ences now in comics is that, when we came along, you didn’t have the Internet, you didn’t have all this social network stuff, so if you really wanted to network, you kind of had to move to New York.

DP: You had to move to New York. Out of sight, out of mind. You had to be in there, you had to show up at the offices, you’d walk your pages in, ideally.

DRAW: Right, and then they would say, “Oh, nice,” and then

maybe somebody would see the stuff you did and they’d say, “Oh, are you interested in doing something else?” And then you go, “Oh, yeah,” you know?

DP: Yeah, they’d always be scrambling in the offices. You’d deliver your pages to Howard or Ralph, and then another editor, like Don Daley, would say, “Oh, could you do this?” And of course you’d say yes.

DRAW: So where’s Drink and Draw going to go from here?

DP: We never did it for money. There’s a thing called Dr. Sketchy’s,

which is similar but different. What they do is they bring in live models, and they monetized it, where you’re charged a fee when you come in. I’ve been to a few of them, they’re a lot of fun. It’s just a different animal. We just want to get more and more people to come to these things, and the more people that are at Drink and Draw, the more of a fun night it is, obviously. But we’re going to come out with a book that’s exclusively the coaster illustrations, and probably at least one more big volume, and then collect all of them into a slipcase edition. And we’ll probably go back to Image for the next one.

DRAW: So you’ll have this Drink and Draw tome?

DP: And we always have different artists and showcase dif-

ferent people. And Volume 2, it’s like, leaps and bounds above Volume 1. The book is so much better, and the art is so much better, and you look at guys like Dave Johnson, one of the top comic book cover guys in the business, and his artwork from Volume 1 to Volume 2 is insane. Now Dave will show up every night to these Drink and Draws and he’ll do something there that is the equivalent of the amount of work you’d see in one of his comic book covers. Sometimes even more.

Another life drawing using a model. © DAN PANOSIAN.

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(above and next page) Inks and finished color for the cover of Green Lantern: Emerald Warriors #13.

BATMAN, gUy gARDNER ™ AND © DC COMICS.

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(above) Character designs for the Spectacular Spider-Man animated series. gWEN STACEy, MARy JANE WATSON ™ AND © MARVEL CHARACTERS, INC.

DRAW: How often do you guys do it?

DP: Once a week, every Thursday. We start at eight, the serious

drawing stops around midnight or so, and then some people will hang on. Sometimes people stay until closing. We have a great relationship with the bar. It’s an old-fashioned Irish pub called Casey’s down the street, and they have a huge room for us. It’s where they filmed some of the bar scenes for Mad Men and It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. The bar, itself, has a lot of characters. They turn the lights up slightly, a little bit more than they would normally, so we can actually see what we’re drawing.

DRAW: So you can see through the alcohol-blurred vision to what you’re actually drawing. “Oh, wait a minute.”

DP: “Wait a second, there.” Yeah. It’s a pretty nice turnout.

Anywhere from 25 to upwards of 50 people a night show up, depending on the night or whatever the occasion is. You know, sometimes we’ll say, “So-and-so’s in town.” It varies.

DRAW: Well, the next time I’m in L.A., I would be very happy to join in.

DP: Oh, that would be awesome, Mike.

DRAW: I haven’t been to L.A. in a couple of years. You did one

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in New York recently, right?

DP: Yeah, and there’s a regular one that Khary Randolph does in New York. Robert Crumb was supposed to do one there. He kind of sponsored it, and did all the press for it, and did everything, and then he didn’t show up. [Mike laughs] It was “Drink and Draw with Robert Crumb.” He had a fun time at the one here in L.A., but then something got messed up. Either he got the date wrong or something like that, and he didn’t show up for the Drink and Draw in New York. I’m sure he had a reason. It’s Robert Crumb. He could come up with almost any reason and it would be acceptable. So what?

DRAW: Well, it sounds like you’ve got a good mix there, where everything is kind of feeding into everything else. The comics feed into the Drink and Draw, the Drink and Draw feeds back into the comics. This whole social networking aspect of it, which is actually very different from what I’m sure your experience was in the beginning of your career.

DP: Yeah, that’s one of the neat things about Drink and Draw, as you were saying, that unless you were in a studio—and even then it’s not a very social occupation. So getting out with a bunch of people, and drawing, and sharing ideas and beers and everything, it’s a good thing.

© DAN PANOSIAN.

DRAW! • FALL 2011

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36 DRAW! • FALL 2011

(previous page) Another Comic Twart challenge, this time with a Preacher theme. (above) This live-model drawing was done with color pencil and ink on Canson paper.

PREACHER ™ AND © DC COMICS ARTWORk © DAN PANOSIAN.

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(this page) Sketch cards for the Captain America: The First Avenger and Marvel Beginnings trading card series. (next page) Promotional ad using Dan’s cover art for the X-Men Origins: Sabretooth one-shot.

ALL CHARACTERS ™ AND © MARVEL CHARACTERS, INC.

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(previous page) Dan’s variant cover for Dynamite’s Red Sonja #27. (above) Dan shows his love for Conan in this illo, and in the upcoming Conan: Road of Kings series from Dark Horse.

CONAN ™ AND © CONAN PROPERTIES INTERNATIONAL, LLC. RED SONJA ™ AND © RED SONJA CORPORATION.

DRAW! • FALL 2011

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Constructive analysis and criticism of a newcomer’s work by

BoB MCLeod

T

his issue, my rough critique features a somewhat different space or time, so I may not be as tactful as I’d like with regard to kind of submission. I normally critique a comic book sam- compliments versus criticism. This column is called “Rough ple page drawn by an aspiring artist hoping to get work at Marvel Critique,” after all. I’ll do my best to keep my comments conor DC. But this time, our sample page is from a currently online structive, but sometimes I do need to be blunt to get my point web comic called Odyssey being drawn by Samantha Gough and across. Remember that you should be your own harshest critic. written by Eric Guindon. You can read part one (and some of part Let’s start with the most fundamental, important things and two by the time this is published) online at dreamoutloud- progress to the relatively less important. comics.com/index.php?pagenum=1. If you don’t know who I The main practical difference between web comics and comic am, if you’re in fact thinking right now, “Well who does this books is the page format. Most web comics are in a horizontal McLeod guy think he is, to be critiquing anyone,” I invite you to format, because our computer monitors are horizontal, whereas visit my web site, www.bobmcleod.com. comic pages are more vertically formatted, like books. This Samantha admitted to me that she was confident to the point affects the layout options you have, making it more difficult to of arrogance until she actually started to draw this web comic... draw tall, vertical panels, but easier to draw long, horizontal and then she realized there is a lot more to it than she thought. scenes. Of course, there’s usually really no actual format restriction That was exactly my own experience when I first tried to get into at all for web comics. The comic can change format from strip to comics. “A comic book?” I thought, strip, because we can scroll down and left “How hard can that be?” Heh. Sequential “I’ll do my best to keep my or right. But most web comics choose a art requires many more skills than simple horizontal format just because comments constructive, but consistent drawing ability. At least in comic books, it’s easier. You don’t get paid more for sometimes I do need to be those requirements are usually split up making your job more difficult, and many among several people: the editor, the blunt to get my point across. web comic artists don’t get paid at all. writer, the penciler, the letterer, the inker, Either way, though, you need to conRemember that you should and the colorist. But many web comics are sider your panel shapes and sizes. Good done entirely by one person! It’s very be your own harshest critic.” graphic design would suggest that you much like making a movie all by yourself; make some panels wider than others, if imagine producing, directing, writing the script, working the only for variety’s sake, and stagger the gutters (the space between camera, doing the lighting, designing the sets and costumes, and panels). Samantha’s doing that here, but her panels on the far acting all of the roles yourself! What kind of egomaniac would right are a bit too evenly stacked. Her last panel could have been ever even attempt that? Well, hundreds of us, as it turns out. wider, and the one before it thinner. That way, we could get the Samantha is a talented artist, and she is doing a lot of things blonde into the panel. For some reason, she chose to extend panel well, of course. She’s varying the camera angles, using close-ups, one on the left and top. We do this in comic books so the art long shots, down shots, up shots; she’s even using silhouettes, “bleeds” off the page rather than remains enclosed within the and trying to do dramatic high-contrast lighting. She’s working panel borders. But that can’t happen on a computer monitor, so it hard and putting in a lot of detail, with good, convincing back- makes little sense. If you want to bleed a panel of a web comic, grounds. But she’s making a lot of the usual mistakes we all make the thing to do would be to bleed it behind the adjacent panels, early on. Some of these mistakes are easily fixed, so I think I can turning them into overlapping or inset panels. She also used an help her solve a lot of her problems right away and make a huge oddly shaped, handdrawn border for panel three. I’m guessing she leap up to a new level on her very next strip. I don’t have unlimited did this to emphasize the character’s shock at her partner’s burns.

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Page 17 of Odyssey, a web comic drawn by Samantha Gough and written by Eric Guindon.

ODySSEy ™ AND © ERIC gUINDON AND SAMANTHA gOUgH.

But it’s not clear that that’s her intent, so the panel shape becomes distracting and takes the reader out of the story while they ponder its purpose. The number one rule in all aspects of comic art is clarity. Don’t confuse the reader unintentionally. The odd shape doesn’t add enough dramatic effect to compensate for the distraction, so it’s better to just use a standard border. It’s good to vary your layout from a standard grid of rectangles, but give it some more thought and try to make it more effective. Look at other artists to see how they’re doing it. Too often, beginners try to re-invent the wheel rather than learn from their predecessors.

The next most obvious and easily corrected things are the lettering font and word balloons. Contrary to what you might think, lettering is very important in comics. And by very important, I mean extremely important. It’s right there, integrated into the art, and therefore becomes part of the art. Hand lettering is really the way to go if you want to add a real personal, artistic touch. But what am I, a dinosaur? Even very few comic books or newspaper strips use that anymore. Computer lettering is simply much faster and easier. However, the choice of font still makes a big difference.

You want to use a font that has some visual appeal, and a comic art feel to it. What you don’t want to do is what Samantha’s done here, and use the dreaded Comic Sans MS. It’s on everyone’s computer, and because it has the word “comic” in the name,

everyone thinks, “Aha, here’s a good comic font.” Well, no, it isn’t.

It’s borrrrrring. There are a few other, more attractive free fonts available if you take the trouble to look. But if you’re going to go to the trouble of doing a web comic, go ahead and spend the 20 bucks and buy a real comic font from www.blambot.com. After all, you’re not drawing the strip with crayons, are you? Do you want it to look professional or not? You’re putting a lot of time and effort into the art. Don’t negate that by skimping on the lettering.

Sound effect fonts can be purchased, too, or you can draw them. They really add interest, so don’t miss this chance to be artistic. People love sound effects. Have fun with them. And don’t forget to use boldface italic to emphasize certain words, instead of making every word the same, like a monotone computer voice.

There’s a lot of text in this strip, so make it as interesting and fun to read as possible. And then, of course, there’s the problem of the word balloons. It’s easy enough to use the ellipse tool in Photoshop, but see how that creates a balloon that’s often either too tight around the lettering, or has too much empty space at the top and bottom? You need to spend some time creating balloons of various shapes and sizes by piecing together different ellipses.

It takes some time at first, but you can then copy and paste them as needed, and manipulate them to make them just right. As my mother always said, “Anything worth doing is worth doing right.”

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FIGURE 1

FIGURE 1A Two-point perspective is used when we see two sides of forms, as we do here. The near railing and far wall should recede to the same point as the rest of the room. The floor tiles should also recede to the same points. This is actually a three-point perspective shot, since we’re looking down, but the third point is too far below to show in this example. All vertical lines should recede toward a central vanishing point below. The line with the question mark is too slanted, however.

With the perspective corrected, the scene looks quite different, and hopefully more correct.

Notice that I also made important changes to the coloring and lighting.

Placing word balloons is also somewhat of an art. You need to make sure they’re read in the correct order, which can sometimes mean awkwardly long pointers or connectors, as in panels four and six. Ideally, either the artist should compose the panel to fit the balloons, or the writer should write the dialogue to fit the art. In practice, the writer and artist often have competing goals and work at cross-purposes. It’s pretty obvious and logical that figures on the left in a panel should generally speak before figures on the right. This is not rocket science, although I’ve even seen many Marvel and DC writers seemingly unable to grasp it. Real effort should be made not to cover up too much of the art with balloons. The art, not the balloons, should dominate the comic. If you’re having trouble fitting in the balloons, you’re overwriting.

And place balloons with the same design sense you use to place objects in your art. In panel three, don’t put the balloon on her chest like an emblem, place it off-center. Don’t have the edge of a balloon bump against the panel border as in the last three panels here, or the edge of anything within the panel either, for that matter.

Lastly, try to make the balloons fit within the panel if possible.

Having balloons overlap panel borders makes them too dominant.

Okay, moving on, I guess the next most important thing is how you choose to show us each scene: composing the panels and choosing the camera angle. Variety is the spice of life and comic art. Everything is a shape, and you want to balance large shapes with small shapes in equal measure. You want to balance medium shots with close-ups and long shots. I try never to do two close-ups in a row. In fact, I usually try to only do one per page.

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If you do two, as in panels two and three, make the heads more obviously different in size. Try to make the figures different sizes in each panel, as well. In short, don’t do anything the same anywhere on the page. The two down shots on the left are repetitive and particularly with them both angled in the same way, they begin to bleed into each other, seeming like the same panel and yet not. Again, don’t confuse the reader. Yet another down shot in panel five is then a poor decision, but it’s really panel four that should be shown from a different angle. Either panel five or panel four could have been an up shot. Down shots also usually look better when they’re not so extreme (as in panel one, for example). When the viewer is directly overhead, the figure is so foreshortened that it can look awkward. It’s unclear whether Piotr is sitting or standing, and the blonde looks too small next to him.

You also need to use your space better. In panel six there’s way too much empty space, and he’s being pulled up by detached arms. It would be much better to get the blonde into the panel more. She’s speaking, too, so it would be nice to see her head.

Why is she off-panel?

Linear perspective is a favorite of mine. Most comic artists don’t take it as seriously as I do, but you at least need to understand the fundamentals, because otherwise your scenes look awkward, and the reader may not know why. They just know something doesn’t look right. So, in the simplest terms, when we look directly at something so that we only see one side of it, everything we see peripherally around us is receding toward a single point in front of us on the horizon where it vanishes, a.k.a. the “vanishing point.”

FIGURE 2 Take more care when inking and let the color do the heavy lifting. Don’t freehand long curves.

Pump up the saturation in your colors.

FIGURE 3 Black shadows don’t work as well with gradated coloring as they do with flat coloring. It’s much better to use color for shadows. Darkening closer forms adds depth. Darkening the background adds to the tense mood.

All horizontal lines above, below, and to left and right recede to this point. But all vertical lines and horizontal lines directly in front of us remain vertical and horizontal. That’s called one-point perspective. But when we can see two sides of an object, the horizontal lines on each side recede to two different points, on the same horizon, but again the verticals remain vertical. This is called two-point perspective. Three-point perspective is when we see two sides and also look up or down, rather than straight ahead. The third point is then above or below, and the verticals would then recede toward that point. Perspective is more complex than that, but comic artists need to understand at least that much. In panel one, the bars of the railing in the foreground should recede to a point on the left along with the lines of the floor tiles below and air duct above, but instead they’re angling off to some lower point (see Fig. 1). That means the railing isn’t parallel to the rest of the room, as it would and should be. The floor tiles have evidently been created in some computer program, rather than by hand, and they don’t quite fit the art exactly. Various software programs like SketchUp and Poser can be very helpful, but you still need to know what you’re doing to use them properly. They should be an aid, not a crutch.

Next up is lighting and inking. You don’t necessarily want to be a stickler about it, but try to be fairly consistent. In panel one, you’re throwing shadows off to the left, suggesting a light source on the right, and yet your floor is lighter on the left. And if the figure is casting a shadow, the door she’s holding would also cast a shadow, right?

You might notice I added a shadow from the railings in panel one.

Cast shadows are always interesting, and I use them as often as possible. High-contrast lighting can add drama and depth of form, but you need to be careful. Do it wrong, and it just looks like the character has dirt on their face, as in panel six. Even in panel three, which is handled a bit better, it looks too extreme. This is because it isn’t consistent with the rest of the figure. If a light was harsh enough to throw the entire far side of her face into black shadow (doubtful in that brightly lit room), her right arm and shoulder would also be black, and probably the gray shadow in panel two would be black.

With computer coloring, you have a full range of gradated values.

There’s no need to go to black like this. Comic artists used to use black a lot because we only had flat four-process color. Today’s comic artists are using less and less black, which only makes sense. If you do want to use black shadowing, you need to make it consistent.

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FIGURE 4

Silhouetting only half the panel makes no sense. Always try to keep the word balloons fairly close to the person speaking and within the panel whenever possible.

FIGURE 5

Darkening the wall creates a lot of depth, and you don’t want a black shadow next to a black costume. Spice up the art with more varied colors.

FIGURE 6

Avoid cropping off arms and hands. Get the figure into the panel whenever possible. Also avoid having characters speak from off-panel. I’m not going to ask about the six fingers...

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Similarly, the silhouette back in panel four is odd, because the objects at the top aren’t silhouetted (see Fig. 4). Silhouettes work best in a straight-on view, because in a down-shot like this we expect to see shadows on the floor. Or if the figures are in such dark shadow, why isn’t the floor around them also in shadow? And what are those marks at the bottom of panel four? Are they supposed to represent a gradation into darkness? Really? Again, why not just grade the color darker? Why attempt to do it in ink, particularly when you obviously don’t know how to do it correctly? Hours of effort can be sadly undermined by a few seconds of laziness like this.

Whenever I see things like this, I wonder why the artist hasn’t looked to see how more experienced artists handle a similar problem. We have about a hundred years of comic art we can study to learn how to handle this problem. Doing your homework will really pay off.

Inking is an art in itself, and is vastly underrated by most people. Until you spend a lot of time (years, really) studying the work of other master inkers, it’s best to keep your inking as simplistic as possible, particularly when you can do so much now with color. Keep rendering to a minimum, and make whatever linework you do as clean and controlled as you can if you have a straightforward style like this.

More scratchy styles can get away with messy linework, but this style is too clean for that. When inking curves like the glass of their helmets, use the ellipse tool if you’re doing digital inks, or an ellipse guide or French curve if you’re inking on paper.

Samantha’s apparently inking digitally, and having a rough time of it. I find inking on paper much easier, but either way, you need to take more care with every line you make.

Figure drawing is something we all struggle with, and only a lot of study and practice can make you competent and comfortable creating figures without reference. Samantha will continue to improve with each strip, if she works at it. Here are some easy tips: I think it’s usually better to draw some teeth in an open mouth. Avoid that unibrow look, especially on women. Avoid or minimize the cheek line on faces, because it makes the character look older, fatter, and less attractive. Generally, the fewer lines on the face, the better, especially on women. The butt line in panel two should come from the inside of the leg, not the outside. The heads in panels three and six are too large for their bodies. I left the space in Fig. 3 to show you how much I reduced the head. Actually, comic artists usually make heads deliberately a bit smaller than real life to make the figures look taller and more powerful.

Think of the difference between a 5' 2" girl and a supermodel. So head size is relative, but these two heads look particularly oversized. The expression on the face in panel five doesn’t match what Piotr’s saying, and the blonde is too small. She looks like a

And here is Samantha’s strip after all of Bob’s suggestions and corrections have been made.

ODySSEy ™ AND © ERIC gUINDON AND SAMANTHA gOUgH.

child next to Piotr. If you get in the pose of the figure in panel six, I think you’ll find his right shoulder would be lower.

Digital coloring has ushered in a whole new level of expectation. We now expect the color to be impressive and add a lot to the art. It’s often taking over a lot of things the inker used to do, such as rendering and lighting and special effects. This coloring is far too limited, repetitive, and uninspired. For example, gray spacesuits don’t have to be the same gray in all scenes. They can be darker or lighter if they’re nearer or more distant. They can be bluer or redder depending on the needs of the scene. The same applies to skin tones and everything else. Don’t fall into the trap of the “grass is green, sky is blue” method of coloring. These colors are also very subdued. Subtlety is good, but you want the color to enliven the art, not make it drab. I think you should punch up the intensity a bit and use more varied colors. There’s far too much pale purple and gray here. But be careful not to use saturated color on unimportant things, like those pipes in panel five, because it grabs too much attention from the center of interest.

It’s okay to vary the color in the background, even if it’s the same room. But be careful, because radical changes can make it look like the background has changed. In panel one, we’re in a dark green room, which suddenly becomes light yellow in panels two and three, then dark green again in panel four, and then purple

in panel six, and the figures apparently haven’t moved. I’ve made my version more consistent, so the reader won’t be confused. I made the duct in panel one redder just for variety, and I made the box in panel five red just to add some color. I darkened the background in panel six just to add some mood. Remember, you can change the mood and atmosphere of a scene just by how you color it, so you probably want to keep tense scenes like this darker overall. I brightened the blonde hair just to add color, too.

Under-saturated color can be just as bad as overly saturated color.

And, finally, you should generally make a value change between walls, floors, and ceilings to show depth, so I darkened the walls in panels one and five. I also darkened the elevated floors in panel one to bring them forward away from the main floor.

That’s it for this time. Samantha, the very fact that you submitted your art for a critique speaks volumes about your courage and your desire to improve. I know you’ll go far, and I hope my comments have been helpful. Every word in this column has been written solely to help you become a better artist.

Readers equally courageous and desirous of improvement who would like to get a rough critique of their own sample page should email me at mcleod.bob@gmail.com.

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SPOTLIGHT

BROOKLYN’S RENAISSANCE MAN

the deAN HASPIeL interview Interview conducted via phone by danny Fingeroth on March 22, 2011 and transcribed by Steven Tice

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SPIDER-MAN ™ AND © MARVEL CHARACTERS, INC.

E

mmy award-winning artist, Dean Haspiel, is a native New Yorker who created the Eisner Award-nominated Billy Dogma, the semi-autobiographical Street Code, and helped pioneer personal webcomics with the invention of ACT-I-VATE. Dino has collaborated on many great superhero and semi-autobiographical comic books published by Marvel, DC, Vertigo, Dark Horse, Image, Top Shelf, Scholastic, Toon Books, and The New York Times, including collaborations with Harvey Pekar, Jonathan Ames, and Inverna Lockpez, and draws for HBO’s Bored to Death, for which he won an Emmy for his contributions to the opening title sequence. Dean is a founding member of Hang Dai Studios in Brooklyn, NY and steeps in psychotronic movies, cosmic electronica, and Jack Kirby pulp.

His website is www.deanhaspiel.com.

DANNY FINGEROTH: Let’s start with some of the basic ques-

tions, Dean. Where did you grow up, and were you a comics fan as a kid?

DEAN HASPIEL: I was born in New York Hospital, so I’m a true-blue New Yorker, and my first address was around 71st Street on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, and I believe, a year or so later, when my brother arrived, we moved to 79th Street and Broadway. There were two competing newsstands catty-corner to each other that sold comic books, and I don’t know if somebody gave me a comic book, or I saw it on the newsstand because they were so prominent and colorful, but I remember at age twelve declaring that I was going to become a cartoonist no matter what, because I loved comics so much. I think my very first memories of having loyalty for comics, or certain titles, were Fantastic Four, and what at that time was called Shazam!, because I believe that DC didn’t have the right to call it “Captain Marvel” because of the word “Marvel.”

And, of course, I read Spider-Man, Iron Man, Marvel Twoin-One, maybe some Batman and Green Lantern, but I also remember becoming much more of a Marvel fan over DC. I don’t know why.

Maybe I was getting my Batman from the Batman TV series, and I thought it was kind of corny.

DH: Like lunch and gym, there was a basic art class in my elementary and junior high school years, but I majored in art at Music & Art cum LaGuardia High School where the teachers always shunned comics. Comics weren’t “real” art. Real art was painting, and sculpture, and photography. And I remember, at that point, feeling a little rebellious. Like, “Really? You don’t like comic books because you have this perception that they’re only power fantasies for twelve-year-old boys?” And, y’know, to be frank, a lot of them were.

DF: Of course, you were a twelve-year-old boy at the time.

DH: And I was a twelve-year-old boy. But, a few years later, I

remember having another kind of milestone moment when I went down to Soho, and there was a store called Soho Zat. It was largely a clothing/hipster kind of store—jewelry and all this kind of stuff. But I remember they had comic books and records and maybe some movies. That’s where I discovered Harvey Pekar’s American Splendor and Chester Brown’s Yummy Fur.

DF: Where would you have seen the

Batman TV series? You were born after the Batman TV series.

DH: If you remember, there was a deluge of reruns. Like, how could I have watched the original Star Trek series? Batman was being rerun all the time, and, ultimately, there was horror from the Chiller Theater reruns, as well, late at night. So I grew up on Hammer horror, Universal Pictures, Godzilla, Planet of the Apes, The Abbott and Costello Show—the Saturday morning cartoons. That was my “Golden Age” of pop culture.

DF: Were you drawing before you saw comics, or did comics make you want to draw?

DH: I was drawing before comics, and I also distinctly remember seeing ads, maybe for toy soldiers, or a battleship—painted ads of people going into battle or something like that. I would take the gauntlet that had been thrown down in these images and tell these little stories of these soldiers going off to war. I drew little mini-war comics as a kid, but I never read war comics, which is odd. I guess, again, I was kind of reaching out for the things that weren’t always in my life. So if I saw a Batman TV show, it didn’t necessarily encourage me to go read a Batman comic, because I was already getting my stories of Batman that way. But then, I’d pick up other stuff in other mediums just to kind of get a collective whole, as it were.

DF: So, with that declaration at age twelve, did you take art classes

in school?

Panels from Harvey Pekar’s American Splendor.

AMERICAN SPLENDOR ™ AND © HARVEy PEkAR.

DF: So they had underground comics there.

DH: I had heard of underground comics, and I was probably

aware of R. Crumb. Maybe I didn’t know his name at the time, but I remember on the Upper West Side there was a tobacco store that sold funny-looking paraphernalia in the back with these little clips with fur and these weird glass tubes and stuff, and I think they might have sold some oddball comics behind the glass case.

But I never reached my hand over and asked to see them. Maybe I was just more locked into the superhero mode, at the time, as a kid. And those comics behind the glass case felt like adult comics when I looked at them, so I kind of respected that was for grownups. I mean, I came to [novelist] Charles Bukowski in my late 30s, so I was not diving into that kind of thing as a kid—although my father, who is a movie buff and film aficionado, would show me adult films. And I don’t mean porno, but stuff that maybe kids weren’t necessarily watching, like old Hollywood noirs, spaghetti westerns, Marilyn Monroe, and musicals. That’s where my love for film comes from, my father. So, going back to comics, my declaration, it kind of made me unemployable in that DRAW! • FALL 2011

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Cyclops faces off against classic Captain America villains, Baron Zemo and Batroc in this panel from 2011’s Cyclops #1.

ALL CHARACTERS ™ AND © MARVEL CHARACTERS, INC.

often because my father knew a bunch of people, Hollywood actors. My godmother was Shelley Winters. My mother was the deputy director for the New York State Council of the Arts. My father knew Marilyn Monroe. My brother was going to the Actor’s Studio to study acting. So I was always around really good storytellers.

DF: Didn’t you go to school with Larry O’Neil?

DH: High school is where I met Larry O’Neil, who is the son of famous comics writer/editor, Denny O’Neil.

I was fixated. When you’re weighing your options of who to be and how to be—I was fixated on storytelling, on becoming a cartoonist.

DF: So you went to SUNY [State University of New York] at Purchase, which is an arts-oriented school, right?

DH: Yeah. I basically rejected college after high school for about two years, and I worked odd jobs like construction management.

I was a takeout manager at a health food restaurant, stuff like that. And I wound up almost every weekend, or every other weekend, going to the college that my best friends went to that was close by, and that was SUNY Purchase. So, in a weird way, by proxy, I started to become the “fifth Beatle” of my friends in the university to the point where I finally broke down and said, “All right, I guess I’ll try to get into college.” But, of course, I couldn’t afford anything, because, at that point, my parents had split, and my brother went to live with my mom in Brooklyn, and I stayed with my father in the Upper West Side of Manhattan, so money was tight. But once I expressed interest in going to college, both my parents decided they would figure out a way to get me into SUNY Purchase if I could get in. And I did, and luckily, SUNY Purchase at that time was one of the more affordable colleges to get into. I obviously got in for art, but at that point, when I was about 20 years old, I loved comics and I still kind of drew comics and dabbled in the form, but my interest had transitioned to film.

Again, storytelling. If it’s not static fiction, it’s moving pictures with sound. Yes, they’re completely different mediums, but a light bulb went on over my head and I decided, “Oh, I want to show stories.” So, whether comics or movies, television or theater, it was something I’d been interested in. I grew up in a household where my parents were great orators. My dad could spin a good yarn, my mom told great stories, we were surrounded by actors

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DF: Did you go to one of those specialized high schools?

DH: We went to Music & Art. And then, in our senior year, Music & Art got married to Performing Arts and became LaGuardia High School. That was 1985. In 1985 Denny alerted Larry, who was also a budding cartoonist/filmmaker, that Howard Chaykin was looking for an assistant. Howard shared a studio in the Garment District of New York with Walter Simonson and Jim Sherman. Previous studio-mates were Frank Miller and Jim Starlin.

DF: Bill Sienkiewicz was in that building, also?

DH: Well, this is what happened. Larry got the gig as Howard’s

assistant. He started working, when he got wind that Bill Sienkiewicz had moved down the hall with Denys Cowan and Michael Davis, and Bill said he wanted an assistant. I remember walking into the office and getting the gig with Bill and thinking, gosh, my art style at that point was nothing like Bill’s, and I was wondering, “How is this going to work out?” But Bill was very kind and allowed me to do a bunch of backgrounds on New Mutants. I was honored to be working on something that I felt I really wasn’t ready for.

I aired my frustrations of working with Bill, because, on the one hand, he was allowing me to do backgrounds, but he wasn’t necessarily teaching me anything, and he was often either not at his own studio, or on the phone talking to writers or whoever. So I would go hang out with Larry and Howard, especially on days when Bill wasn’t there, and I was just working on stuff. And then, eventually, Howard took pity on me. He was working on a monthly book, American Flagg!, and I think the schedule was getting tough. So he decided to hire me away from Bill.

Eventually Bill split from his own studio, anyway. I think he was coming in from Connecticut all the time. He wanted to be in Manhattan and feel the vibe, as it were, get energized by the

whole tradition of making comics in New York City, but I believe that he just split back to Connecticut, and then eventually I think he moved to California. Anyway, I had become friendly with Denys Cowan and Michael Davis, and I remember Denys was working on V, the comic for the TV show, and on Vigilante, both for DC Comics.

DF: Were you doing the same kind of things for Walt?

DH: I was in a room with Larry, Howard, Walter, and Jim

Sherman. Jim was a really cool, mellow dude. So, we’re working with Howard and getting friendly with Walter, who, for all intents and purposes, I dubbed the “Mr. Rogers of comics” because he’s just so giving and sweet. But I think what happened is that he had had a couple of assistants and they had left to go to college or DF: Were you aware of how groundbreaking and how different something like that, or maybe they weren’t working out or something, but once in a while I would help Walter, who is so stylized American Flagg! was when you were working on it?

DH: I was. I really was. In fact, when I even look at it in today, and has a very particular way he draws. There’s this machine it’s still groundbreaking. American Flagg! is still ahead of its called an Artograph. The Artograph basically would take a time. It’s magical. It’s incredible. And, yes, I do remember thumbnail layout, let’s say, that could be a few inches tall, or it feeling honored to be working on a book that was going to prob- could even be as large as an 8 1/2" x 11" piece of paper, and you ably stand the test of time. And Howard actually taught me by could use it to draw the same thing at a larger size. Walt would proxy how to make comics. He’s the master of the inset panel, have me transfer his layouts to two-ply Bristol board paper. At and I remember seeing insets before, but never really employed that time, he was working on Thor. My job was to try and capthem in my own work ture the energy of what until working on he was going for in his American Flagg! for own thumbnails, which, Howard. And then there again, was really hard— was the whole art of to wrap your hand and Craftint, which was a your mind around another whole other thing. It’s artist’s sensibility and kind of a lost art, especialjust be able to transfer ly now, with Photoshop. that. So the idea was to So Larry and I were take those thumbnails, painting Craftint, doing transfer them to the boards backgrounds. And we’d so that he could then go have to get reference for to full pencils, and make the backgrounds. And, whatever tweaks he had you know, back then, we to make from there. That didn’t have Google and was about the extent of the Internet, so Howard my helping out Walter. and Walter both had these It’s possible that I did a huge file cabinets of clipbackground building or pings they would have in two or something, I don’t folders. recall now. But I remember feeling like I did a lot more heavy lifting for DF: That’s what they used to call “swipe files.”

Howard on American Flagg! with the backDH: Exactly. And if you didn’t have a book that grounds versus Walter, had a lot of good referwhere he had truly created Billy Dogma receives a message from his girl, Jane Legit. ence in it, there would be a visual lexicon. It was BILLy DOgMA ™ AND © DEAN HASPIEL clippings from magahis toaster, it would be zines. Back then, they would subscribe to a bunch of magazines, his person, his Thor, his frog, his fantasy, and his reality. It was and whenever they could get a piece of good reference, it would really hard to ape that, especially as a student. be filed away under a specific title. It was a really exciting time.

I remember learning perspective. You know, this was always DF: Did you help either one with writing at all, or plotting? after school, during my senior year of high school, so we’d split DH: I might have thrown an idea or a reaction or two. Nothing school around three o’clock. Larry and I would split school substantial. I mean, Howard is so specific, his characterizations together, grab a slice of pizza, hop on the subway from, like, and his ideas, his “totalitarian utopia.” [laughter] And then there’s 67th Street or whatever it was in Lincoln Center, down to the Walter doing his groundbreaking run on Thor that he’d been Garment District—I think the studio was on 29th Street—and wanting to do since high school. Walt was doing his riff on Jack work for, say, three hours, until Howard and/or Walter would split Kirby and much more. I think at the time I was aware of Jack Kirby, for the night and balance their career with their home life. but I hadn’t become as impacted and loyal to Kirby as I am now.

Nowadays, geez, I wish I could leave my studio at seven o’clock So I was still reading whatever my peers were reading and digging at night. I’m usually leaving around ten or eleven, sometimes one the likes of Ron Wilson, Kerry Gammill, and Keith Pollard, the superhero artists of my youth. This British-Canadian, John Byrne, in the morning.

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was taking over all the titles, and he was really good, too.

Uncanny X-Men was a huge deal, the Chris Claremont/John Byrne run. And then Marvel went to Paul Smith, and John Romita, Jr., and at that point Frank Miller had already made his name on Daredevil, and I think he was tackling Ronin and Dark Knight Returns. There was a real Renaissance of comics in the mid-’80s.

DF: Around the same time, Maus had come out. Was that on your

radar?

DH: Maus was on my radar, and I remember thinking, in a weird

way, that that was good for comics, but it was not a comic the way I knew comics to be, because it was literary, and it dealt with topics that had not been dealt with, ever, not really. Not in America. A few things were happening. I was discovering American Splendor and Yummy Fur, and then graphic novels or books like Maus were coming out. And I remember Howard and Walter introducing me to this really cool Japanese comic called Akira that blew my mind. I mean, I knew that I was an assistant for a Howard, or a Walt, or a Bill Sienkiewicz, but then they were discovering that this guy, Katsuhiro Otomo, he had, like, 20 assis-

tants. There was a guy who only did cars; there was a guy who did buildings; there was a guy who did backgrounds. They used this method in Japan because they were cranking out so many pages and placing them into these phone book-sized anthologies that were weekly, there’s no way one human being could do that.

I remember thinking, “Wow! Comics are really thriving in Japan, and yet I’m trying to defend my love for this form here in America. This is my tribe, and I’m going to stick to it.” And that was kind of the kernel of what’s happened to me to this day, where I feel like that’s one of the things I do, champion the form.

Luckily, I don’t have to champion it as much, because it’s been largely embraced and accepted.

DF: What was your first published comics work?

DH: Well, it’s possible that I had inked somebody for a little, self-

published horror comic. But I remember feeling like my real first step into the arena was with a comic called The Verdict, and that was written by Martin Powell and co-created by me. The first issue cover was painted by Howard Chaykin. That was in 1987, and it was published by Brian David-Marshall at Eternity Comics.

It was a black-and-white mini-series, and I was experimenting with a Chaykin-esque type of style. I think I used Craftint for the second issue and it looked terrible. All four issues came out and, I believe at the time it sold, like, 7,000 to 12,000 copies each, which was not good. Today, that’s a hit—which is tragic. But, obviously, everything’s changing between digital and the way we obtain and consume our stories, and what kind of stories, and the mediums we use now. But that’s a whole other conversation.

The Verdict was a black-and-white book with color covers, and it was critically acclaimed. Again, I’m embarrassed by the artwork, but, you know, I should be. It was 1987. I hope I’ve gotten better. It was kind of like our vigilante book, like a cross between a tragic Iron Man, an Art Deco Batman, and a sad Boba Fett. [laughter] DF: Did you use that as a calling card to go

around to Marvel and DC? DH: I tried. I definitely used being published and having cranked out the work to try to score other gigs. I would get a pin-up here, or a one-page thing over there. And this is where it gets kind of fuzzy. I think what happened is that that’s where I entered college. So ’87 was when The Verdict comes out, and I think that’s around the time, around ’88, that I went to SUNY Purchase, and I kind of abandoned the thought of working in comics because I thought I just wasn’t good enough. But I still loved the medium.

Some of Dean’s Kirby influence shows itself.

BILLy DOgMA ™ AND © DEAN HASPIEL

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DF: Was there anyone who told you your work wasn’t good enough?

DH: Oh, no. I never had that kind of moment where I was completely discouraged. What I like to do sometimes is to project myself into the astral plane

like Dr. Strange and look down at my own character and kind of hover and criticize myself. I think I was pretty aware of my artistic virtues and demons. So, I went to college. I was placed in the Fine Arts program. I found myself, again, rejecting painting and sculpture, which was what the college considered fine arts. Luckily, we had a college newspaper, and I created a comic strip for it called “Tommy Rocket,” and I was able to do a new strip every two weeks.

DF: You wrote as well as drew that?

DH: I wrote it with a co-writer pal named Chris

Cliadakis. Chris was a high school chum who had also gone to that college, who was one of the people that I pursued, including Larry O’Neil and a bunch of other friends. Chris would help me come up with ideas. I had created the premise, and then it got into the paper, and he would help me come up with ideas. So I still dabbled in comics because of that.

DF: But you were a film major?

DH: Well, I went to college, but I kind of went

to party, like a lot of college students do. So, I’m there, having rejected Fine Art, dabbling in comics, with a true love for film. I’d be working on all my friends’ films, and I had my own video camera, I was making my own little minimovies and whatnot. Eventually, in my third year, I was about to split, probably because I felt like, “I’m not getting what I want from this.”

And I realized that, even if I graduate college as an art major, the most that will give me is a degree so that I can go teach it to other people somewhere else, and I wasn’t interested in that.

I wanted to do comics.

There was a great teacher there named Tom Gunning, who’s kind of famous, and he taught film theory. That was a really compelling time for films at SUNY Purchase, real good, forward-thinkers who also respected the history and tradition of films. They definitely champiDean finally got to draw the Fantastic Four in “Four Shadowing,” part of Spider-Girl #1 (2001). oned the auteur, and that’s something I’ve ALL CHARACTERS ™ AND © MARVEL CHARACTERS, INC. always championed, as well. You know, when I was twelve, my dream was to be able to one day pencil Fantastic tive or underground. I always had that superhero kind of groundFour. By the time I left college, I realized I would either have to ing. But I wasn’t doing R. Crumb, I wasn’t doing Chester Brown, create my own Fantastic Four or take over the book. That’s where and I wasn’t struggling to do a comic like an American Splendor. my attitude shift changed. I wasn’t a good enough penciler, so I’d So what happened is that Josh Neufeld, one of my good high either have to have a sensibility that I could sell or rely on, school pals, who had gone to Oberlin College, and I were mainbecause I wasn’t a formidable cog in the machine. I’d have to be taining a relationship through letters. I would draw a comic, because I had a character, and he had a character, and I would the machine. draw this narrative melee and throw down the narrative gauntlet DF: Once you realized that, what did you do with that knowl- with a cliffhanger ending and challenge Josh. He would respond with another cliffhanger until it became insane. It was kind of edge? Did you go knocking on the doors at DC and Marvel?

DH: I skirted the Marvel/DC doors only because I knew, looking like this informal “exquisite corpse” through the mail. at what I was producing versus what was being published, that they and I were not in the same realm. And it wasn’t that I was DF: Please explain what an exquisite corpse is. an indie cartoonist, necessarily, and it wasn’t that I was alterna- DH: If I draw a panel or two on a piece of paper and I hand it DRAW! • FALL 2011

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Another sample of Dean’s work on Harvey Pekar’s American Splendor series.

AMERICAN SPLENDOR ™ AND © HARVEy PEkAR.

over to you for an illustrated response, that becomes an exquisite corpse. It only takes two people to play and experiment with narrative like that. When you add more than two people it starts to become chaotic as evidenced at many a comics cohort bar gathering. Years later, Josh and I would do the same thing with another exquisite corpse that we called “Lionel’s Lament,” which we eventually posted online and also made a mini-comic out of it.

DF: Everything you’re doing now, comics-wise, you’re writing and drawing? You’re not drawing from somebody else’s scripts?

DH: No, not my own personal stuff. It was just my own little thing, published for the school’s paper. So what happened then is that Josh had gotten a gig with Harvey Pekar in American Splendor, and he had also gotten a story from David Greenberger’s Duplex Planet Illustrated. Josh and I had a friendly rivalry, and I had declared to him that I was a much better artist than he was, and how could he possibly be getting these jobs and not me? I was just giving him a hard time. So I reached out to David Greenberger, and, lo and behold, I got a one- or two-page story. And what was interesting about that is that he would send the actual text—the dialogue—of the piece. No breakdown of that piece. It would be a paragraph or two of the actual text that had to be in the comic. So he wasn’t telling you what to draw, how to draw it, how to pace it, nothing. It was a really good challenge as an artist back then, to use your own sensibilities and figure out

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how to stage this thing and how to draw it.

And David really loved it. I did three of those.

So, because I was kind of going the independent route and doing these alternative black-and-white comics, I decided to send Harvey Pekar some artwork of mine, a combination of stuff I had done in The Verdict, Duplex Planet Illustrated, and maybe a superhero story or something. I sent it to him thinking, “Okay, I’ll hear back in about a week or so and have a script to draw.” And Josh Neufeld is already drawing for him, and I’m obviously the better artist, so... [laughter] I never heard from Harvey, and my ego got busted because of that. I was like, “Really?” I didn’t hear from him for about two years before he actually did call me and threw me a bone and gave me a one-pager. That’s the famous story I’ve told where I didn’t believe it was him on the phone, and then he told me to f*ck off and hung up on me, and I realized it might really have been him, so I asked Josh Neufeld for his phone number, and I called up and apologized, and Harvey gave me the gig. It was after doing a few short stories with him and having concurrently been working as [producer] Ted Hope’s assistant that I mashed Ted and Harvey together so they could go make a great movie.

DF: So you were pursuing the film stuff, as well?

DH: I was still interested in film. One of the first things that hap-

pened to me—and it sobered me, because you get drunk on the idea of the stuff—I remember after college going, “All right, I’m going to be a filmmaker. I’m going to be a writer/director.” A lot of my friends were dabbling in doing that very thing, and they were making feature-length films. They were way-low budget and not getting into theaters or anything like that, but they were making movies. And I wanted to pursue that, even though I had only had one year of experience, my freshman year of film experience. So I bit the bullet and decided, “All right, maybe I need to get some film gigs.” At the time I was dating a girl who started as a second AD [assistant director]. She was working in the real trenches of independent film, working on Ted Hope’s films and stuff like that. And I started to get some gigs as a PA, a production assistant.

DF: Who is Ted Hope?

DH: He’s famous for being, if not the producer, a co-producer of

Good Machine Films, which included directors Hal Hartley and Ang Lee. He’s done a ton of great films. In fact, he started off as Alex Cox’s assistant on Repo Man. Anyway, Ted Hope has done a bunch of movies that were formidable and alternative and indie.

And, again, now that I think about it, everything was telling me, as I was going down my road, to be independent, to not rely on,

DH: I decided, “All right, I’ve got to take my own reins if I’m

(above) Pencils for a panel from American Splendor. (below) One of the Billy Dogma mini-comics published by Top Shelf.

AMERICAN SPLENDOR ™ AND © HARVEy PEkAR BILLy DOgMA ™ AND © DEAN HASPIEL

necessarily, a corporate structure, or even an editorial permission-based comic. That’s another thing. I felt I couldn’t meet the demands of an editor. Now I can, but, at the time, you have an ego, and you want to do things your way, and I don’t know if I could have made all the revisions that I probably would have had to have made had I dabbled in franchise comics at the time, the late ’80s, early ’90s. So I tried to be a PA on several films. Hated it, sucked at it. Then I realized PAs are a godsend on a film set when they remove their ego and can do the job, and my ego kept pounding at the back door, going, “You can’t do this, Dean. You need to be a writer/director/artist.” So I gave up that dream of working in film. I still have the dream, but I think it was this sobering moment where I realized, “Wow, I may never make a movie.”

And it was hard to accept, because I love film.

DF: Why did you think that if you couldn’t be

a PA you couldn’t make films? How’d you make that leap in your mind? Just because you couldn’t schlep film cams?

DH: Right. I couldn’t schlep film cams, and how dare I think that I could then figure out a way to command a set and actors and collaborate with so many people to actually just finish a minute of film. I think the other thing that happened was I saw how much money was spent, even on low-budget films, how much money was spent, even down to craft services. And I realized, when I would sit at my art table, I would stare at the blank page, that cost nothing but my time and my ideas.

DF: So this must have been in your early 20s. It’s interesting. You

closed the Hollywood director door, and you closed the drawingthe-Fantastic-Four door, but then some other doors opened in the independent comics world.

going to do any of this.” I have to do this on my own, in my own way. And at that point there is no formula, no template. You just have to struggle, and challenge yourself, and experiment. Josh had gotten back to Brooklyn and was working at The Nation magazine, and I was working probably either as a shipping clerk at a glass and pottery store on the East Side somewhere, or I was doing any number of jobs that I didn’t love because I didn’t want it to invade my passion for comics. Anyway, we decided to collaborate on a two-man anthology. We pictured it as kind of a cross between Love and Rockets and Eightball. He would do his comics, and I’d do mine. We called it Keyhole, and we scored a publishing deal with Millennium Publications, a small independent publisher, and created an imprint called “Modern Comics.”

Modern Comics debuted with Keyhole, as well as a comic called Lovely Prudence by Maze, and another comic called Bathroom Girls, by Yvonne Mojica. Keyhole did okay. We knew back then that you had to send copies to your favorite authors, auteurs, to see if you could get a reaction, and I remember sending it to Adrian Tomine, Dan Clowes, Jessica Abel...

DF: So, at this point, you were already on the independent path.

DH: We were definitely taking the independent road, and maybe

that’s the first inkling of thinking about our demographic in marketing. But the problem with the book was that there weren’t any consistent characters in it. Josh was largely just doing either autobio travel stories of going abroad and/or this little strip he did called “Titans of Finance.” And I would do a Billy Dogma story, and I would do a crime story, and I would do some other kind of genre-oriented thing. Keyhole was very schizophrenic. We did four issues at Modern until we felt like the publisher wasn’t really marketing it in any way. This is before Facebook and the Internet and blogging. In other words, this is before now where we are kind of forced to market ourselves like we have to these days, where I spend a lot more time marketing myself than creating content, and that’s a shame. Back then you relied on the publisher to do all that, and we felt like it wasn’t really working. So we quit, took a hiatus, and at that point we had been going to cons with our books and had made relationships with other small publishers and become very chummy with Chris Staros and Brett Warnock at Top Shelf who decided they wanted to publish us. So, we did Keyhole issues #5 and #6 at Top Shelf, and they had a different look, a different focus. And, again, it didn’t do that well, and at that point, Josh and I were kind of tired of doing little stories and trying to compile issues together, so I decided I was going to focus on this character I created called Billy Dogma.

Now, to rewind just a little bit: when I was living in Alphabet City [a section of New York’s Lower East Side], which was, about a year after I got back from college, I lived with Larry O’Neil in the very place Denny O’Neil used to live. That’s where he wrote his famous Green Lantern/Green Arrows, and drunk Iron Man, and where he did Batman, and all that stuff. So I felt like the DRAW! • FALL 2011 55

(above) Pencils for Jonathan Ames’ semi-autobiographical graphic novel, The Alcoholic. (right) A watercolor illustration of author Jonathan Ames. (next page) Ink and crayon head sketch of the Thing.

THE ALCOHOLIC © JONATHAN AMES THINg ™ AND © MARVEL CHARACTERS, INC.

place had a really good energy. We’re talking now about the late ’80s to early ’90s.

As I was learning and growing as an artist, I felt like I knew how to tackle a scene or exploit the virtues of a script, but I never felt confident in my own actual writing. I think a lot of it had to do with the fact that a lot of the reading I was doing was from comic books, to be frank. Then I discovered Raymond Carver, Mickey Spillane, Jim Thompson, Joe R. Lansdale, and other writers like that, and then, eventually, [novelist] Charles Bukowski. Then I was reading local newspapers like the New York Press, and that’s when I discovered Jonathan Ames, who later on I was to befriend and collaborate with on The Alcoholic and on HBO on Bored to Death. I had discovered another local paper when I lived over in Alphabet City called The New York Hangover, which was kind of like a DIY-put-together monthly tabloid produced by a bunch of local writers and artists. I really 56

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dug the idea behind that, and I eventually met one of the co-publishers, Tim Hall, who was also a writer, and became really good friends with him. He’s another writer who I really respect and admire, who I am collaborating with on an original webcomic called The Last Mortician for tor.com in a few months. But what happened is I was actually meeting writers, and reading novels and books, and learning, and discovering prose, and discovering other ways of how to write a story. So I was dabbling between comics, reading screenplays, and reading novels, and I started to write my own. Well, I wouldn’t say I was writing. I was typing. [laughs] But sometimes typing can turn into writing. And so, by the virtue of just practicing, or just typing and divulging my life online, on a LiveJournal account, and getting some kind of small audience that was responding to it, I think I started to feel a little bit more confident about my ability to write.

But if an editor calls me up and says, “Hey, Dean, could you write me a Spider-Man story,” I’d, at that point, definitely freeze. I’d go, “Oh, my God! What’s Spider-Man up to these days? Who is he, and can I write a franchise character?”

So, anyway, I think what happened on the Internet is a few things. It really created a confidence for me as not only a writer, but also as an artist and an auteur. So I could show my artwork and get a response. I could write stuff and get a response. And, because it was so immediate, it was almost like my own virtual focus group of sorts, where, if something is working, great. If it isn’t, then work on what isn’t working.

DF: You would show work-in-progress on your website?

DH: Oh, the Internet is one big great sketchpad, it really is. You’re allowed to make all these mistakes online—and get called out on it, of course, sometimes. For instance, when I created ACT-I-VATE, one of the reasons I created it was because I had these ideas I wanted to experiment with and see if they flew, see if they worked. So I’d be working on a revamp of Billy Dogma, and I was putting it up online. It was kind of like beta-testing ideas, and I can make tweaks, and edit, and fix any problems. But, you know, you can fix something for the rest of your life. That’s what’s behind the mantra, “Don’t let the perfect get in the way of the good.” That’s why having an actual deadline is a good thing.

I’ve learned that I’m, as John Romita, Jr. says about himself, “a deadline artist.” Yeah, you can work something to death, but what’s the point of that? I think it’s good to have a deadline because it challenges you. You know, comics are about reduction, and boiling down, and coming up with shortcuts. It’s a shortcut art. So, by doing that often, it creates a skill of storytelling on a rapid basis.

DF: When you were working at a restaurant after you left college,

were you doing comics in your spare time?

DH: I was doing comics on the side, and I had actually written a bunch of screenplays because I was still conflicted between pursuing movies and comics. Do I want to do movies, which at the time cost a lot of money? Nowadays, you could get a high-def camera and edit it at home. But, back then you were still using film. It was still being edited on an editing machine, not on computers. And it became too daunting. So I decided I’d write screenplays that could eventually maybe be filmed, or I could sell them, or try to become a director, or buddy up with a producer like Ted Hope or something. But I was losing my confidence in film, as much as I cherish the form. And so, I looked at that blank page again and realized, “Gosh, I’ve got to try this again.”

So I had done some American Splendor. I had done the occasional comics series. I was hanging out with Evan Dorkin once in a while at conventions, and we both had a passion for old Marvel comics and Jack Kirby, and we had a mutual friend in a Marvel editor at the time, Andrew Lis, and Marvel was looking for a Thing miniseries. In fact, they published about three or four of them at the time. They were publishing all of these Thing comics, and I had come up with an idea for a Thing story, but I had only gotten as far as the end of issue #2 of a four-issue miniseries, and I was talking to Andrew, and I said, “I don’t know if I can figure this out. I’m having a problem.” And I think it was either his idea or my idea, “Why don’t we bring Evan Dorkin in on this? He understands the history; he can tell a story.” So I called up Evan, he was into it, and he took my idea and fleshed it out and wrote this other story called, “Night Falls on Yancy Street,” and we sold it. I think the reason why I got published by Marvel was because Bill Jemas was publisher at the time. Bill was throwing everything at the wall to see what would stick, so I think I got approved because of Bill Jemas. That was also the era of Peter Milligan and Mike Allred on X-Statix.

So we sold that series, Evan had to write it. Andrew got me a couple of gigs doing a Captain America: Red, White, and Blue story that I collaborated on with a writer named Karl Bollers. I did a Spider-Man’s Tangled Web, written by Zeb Wells, that was the origin of J. Jonah Jameson, that Axel Alonso edited. And I got a couple little gigs like that. Actually, my very first Marvel assignment was an issue of Muties, which was a mini-series written by Karl Bollers, who was yet another guy I went to college with. Actually, at one point, because I worked with Karl before we collaborated together, he got me a job one day a week for several months working in the Marvel Bullpen, partly with Romita’s

Raiders [the art department], but I was really more Karl’s art assistant for a short while on some of the Marvel Music books with Editor Mort Todd.

DF: So were you thinking, at this point, “Wow! I’ve got my foot in the door. I’m going to get to realize my Marvel fantasy after all?”

DH: At this point, I was probably, like, “Well, I’m kind of writing and drawing my own comics in Keyhole...” I also did a collection of my semi-autobio stories called Opposable Thumbs, and, lo and behold, it got nominated for Talent Deserving of Wider Recognition in 2002. And then, years later, I would get another Eisner nomination for my Billy Dogma web comic.

DF: So were you thinking, “Okay, I can do this Marvel thing,” and/or did you realize that wasn’t your desire anymore?

DH: I think that, you know, I just don’t draw in a “Marvel style.”

I draw kind of a pastiche of ’60s Silver Age and ’80s alternative comics.

DF: You know, that’s an interesting

way to describe it, because, to me, your style is your own distinct one, midway between indie and mainstream, if those labels have any meaning anymore.

DH: Right, which means no one knows how to peg me. I don’t know how to peg me. I also hopscotch, meaning I don’t try to peg myself.

So no one knows how to approach me and go, “Oh, we’ll get that Dean Haspiel guy to do that thing he does.”

What I do is... I don’t even know what I do, y’know? I’ll draw a Harvey Pekar story like The Quitter, and then I’ll have done something with Jonathan Ames like The Alcoholic and then, recently, Cuba: My Revolution.

Meanwhile, a few months ago I’m writing and drawing something for Deadpool #1000, “Woodgod” in Strange Tales, a “Spider-Girl” back-up feature, and now, a Cyclops one-shot. And next I’m doing an Amazing Spider-Man story. So how is that the same guy?

DF: In an ideal world where money was no object, what would you be doing? Although, as I ask the question, I realize that maybe you’re pretty much doing that already.

DH: Luckily, I do what I love, which a lot of people can’t say.

I’ve always thought about, if I wasn’t artistic, what would I be doing? And the only other jobs I believe I could do, because I have passion for them somewhat, is to either be a cook, like a chef in a restaurant, because I like the restaurant world and I like food, or... I toggle between a paramedic, a fireman, and a cop.

Some kind of situation where I’m being semi-altruistic, but I’m also brandishing some sense of authority. [laughs]

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Preliminary sketches for Dean’s back-up story in Spider-Girl #1.

SPIDER-gIRL, THINg ™ AND © MARVEL COMICS, INC.

DF: You’re a very social person, starting with the Internet, and then in real life. How big a part is the Internet in your social interaction, and how big a part is just getting along with people important to a career in comics?

DH: Well, getting along with people is important, but, then, I’ve never been a pushover, and so that can get me in trouble. I mean, my mom was the deputy director for the New York State Council of the Arts, so you’d think I would have learned a thing or two, because she knows how to be formidable yet diplomatic.

Meanwhile, my dad was the opposite. He was egocentric, and he is very auteur-oriented and mono-fixated in what he knows. Very authoritative. So I had this pendulum between being diplomatic, and then also being authoritative. I think I toggle between the two, and I feel, as I get older and gain confidence, I realize that, actually, when you’re really good at something, don’t be a d*ck about it. [Danny laughs] Try to actually be confident in the work.

I also realized later, as I was writing stories and was in my rebellious phase, I would probably tell dark stories, or humorless stories, or stories that had no message. I realized that what I’m trying to do nowadays when I write something, even if it’s one page long, it should have some sense of hope, or a sense of message, or delivering a testimony of life, because that’s the stuff that I’d want to read. And, also, it’s really important to entertain. As much as the truth is important, entertainment is as important.

DF: And you’re even doing some editing, aren’t you?

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DH: Well, I edit people, but there are some people you don’t have to edit. At most, you just put up a goalpost.

DF: But knowing that is part of being a good editor.

DH: My word for what I do now is “curate.” So, sure, if I’m

working with somebody on something, and it’s just garbage, or it just derails, I have to decide, “Okay, am I going to sit here and insert my sensibility, or do I have to look at what they’re trying to achieve and talk to them about that, and make the answers come from them?”

DF: What’s your role in ACT-I-VATE? DH: ACT-I-VATE is more of a curated thing. But, on the other

hand, I created this idea called “Next Door Neighbor” for Smith magazine, and I edited all those stories. But some of that “editing” was basically me saying, “Send it to me at the deadlines.”

DF: Would you go over somebody’s script, in some cases?

DH: Oh, yeah. Absolutely. Regarding “Next-Door Neighbor,” it

started with, “Send me an idea before you draw it.” And we build it from there. Some people need more handling than others, but story and clarity thereof is what is key and it’s my job as editor to insure the success of the author’s intent. So, to answer the question of what would I do if I didn’t do comics... maybe I’d become a 21st Century Harvey Kurtzman, a cartoonist who curates and edits. My favorite process of comics is layouts. Once

we figure out the story, how’s it going to look? So the challenge for me is to figure it out in the layouts, and once I feel happy with my layouts, after that it’s just craft and execution. So, in a weird way, I hate to say this, it becomes a little boring for me after the layouts because I’ve figured out the main solutions. The challenge has been met. Now I have to go make it look good. And, I’ve got to say, there are so many better artists out there, and this is a tip of my hat to Josh Neufeld, who can execute the story once it’s been figured out much better in rendering than I can. And I’m very aware of that. It’s not a competition.

Going back to the indie versus mainstream thing, do you want me to draw your franchise character?

Maybe not, but I also have my own characters that nobody else should draw. That’s the balance between, “Okay, I’m going to do my own thing,” and “I’ll try my hand at other people’s things.” So, in a weird way, a trajectory of my career, if I were to be so bold, is like a Frank Miller or Paul Pope. You know, Paul Pope has his THB and upcoming Battling Boy, but when he does Batman, you’re buying a Paul Pope comic. You’re not buying a Batman comic. And the same thing with Frank Miller. He has Sin City, but then, when you buy Dark Knight Returns, you’re buying Frank Miller’s Batman. You’re not buying, necessarily, the perennial Batman, but you’re buying a great story, a great yarn, by Frank Miller.

(above) A page from “Bzzt,” Dean’s contribution to Smith magazine’s “Next Door Neighbor” webcomic series. (below) Pencils from “Bring Me the Heart of Billy Dogma,” from ACT-I-VATE Primer.

BILLy DOgMA ™ AND © DEAN HASPIEL

DF: If somebody offered you a job as an editor, either at Marvel, or at Dark Horse, or wherever...?

DH: I would consider it. I see myself almost as a book packager in some ways, sometimes, more than an editor, because I think an editor has to go along the lines of poking guys, “What are we doing this year with all our characters?” And you sit in a room, and you battle it out, and then you go and make it happen.

DF: Well, that’s one kind of editing. At more independently-oriented publishers I’d think it’s different.

DH: Sure, yeah, I would absolutely. I actually would like to do that.

DF: I think you’d be good at it.

DH: Thanks, Danny. I do it anyway, behind the scenes. I might as well get paid for it and

get a credit. [laughs] DF: Who or what is Billy Dogma?

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Pencils for the opening page of “Bring Me the Heart of Billy Dogma,” Dean’s contribution to ACT-I-VATE Primer, a book designed to promote the website.

BILLy DOgMA ™ AND © DEAN HASPIEL

DH: Billy Dogma is this sort of surreal, bombastic, romantic

comic strip. And, although it’s allegorical, to me it’s, in a lot of ways, very autobiographical. The best way I can describe him when I boil it down is that Billy Dogma is my love letter to the insanity of love. And the reason why it’s more autobiographical is because, when I actually do semi-autobiographical comics, I’m doing reportage of sorts, and I have to be acutely accountable, and there isn’t so much room to fudge the facts. Because, when you’re reading someone’s true life, you have to be accountable to the truth. But, with a Billy Dogma, it can be more emotionally true, and I believe that you remove the sense that you are a voyeur in someone else’s life by creating an “avatar,” and with the avatar, the reader can now invest more into the story and the characters. And, meanwhile, I don’t have to be tied down to how I got from Point A to Point B, realistically. I can do it fantastically and metaphorically.

DF: Do you tend to do Billy Dogma more when you’re in a rela-

tionship, or when you’re not in a relationship?

DH: You know, it’s funny. The Billy Dogma stories are definite reactions to my relationships. And the only reason why I know this is because I’m currently in a relationship where I’m dating 60

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an angel, and I have less desire to do Billy Dogma only because I’m happier. So when I’m struggling and in pain is when art comes knocking, you know? When you’re happy, the jokes aren’t as funny, let’s put it that way.

DF: But you’re always working on something, or several some-

things.

DH: I’m always working on something, and I have written two

new scripts for Billy Dogma. One is short, called “The Last Romantic Antihero,” and one is epic, called “As Big As Earth.”

The epic one is bananas, and it definitely is a reflection on my last relationship that ended badly. So, yeah, I definitely have the stories, and I’m actually trying to accrue a bunch of work right now that will pay me to invest in myself in the near future to take off from working on other jobs so I can write and draw these stories.

DF: When you write and draw your own stuff, do you write a script first, or do you make it up as you go along?

DH: I usually make it up as I go along. When I write a script first and go to draw it, I can’t change it. In other words, I’ve already figured it out. When I worked on Billy Dogma online at

ACT-I-VATE, I didn’t have a script. I didn’t know what was going to happen next. Which is why, at a weekly clip, it was really fascinating even for myself, and hopefully the fans, because I don’t know what’s going to happen next. Of course, after a while, I had to figure out what’s been happening so that I could figure out an ending. But that experiment of drawing first and writing second, in a weird way, is what made it pure comics, for me.

DF: We’ve been talking about it, but for those who don’t know, what is ACT-I-VATE? DH: ACT-I-VATE is a web comic collective that I founded with seven other artists in February of 2006, where we produce what I dub our “DNA comics,” our signature works, stuff that a publisher may not want to publish, or it would be too risky to publish, because they’re not necessarily franchisable or don’t have a mainstream sensibility. And the other reason why I created it was because I was working on a project like, let’s say, The Quitter, with Harvey Pekar, for about a year, and, for all intents and purposes, I would disappear from the grid and be working on the book.

So what I was doing with ACT-I-VATE was, I was showing up once a week online and giving you a free portion of a comic in hopes of creating not only a fan base for that work, but all my work. And doing the same for other artists.

I had abandoned semi-autobio comics for stuff like Billy Dogma, I was still drawing semi-autobiographical comics in my professional, paid career, through The Quitter, American Splendor, The Alcoholic, and Cuba: My Revolution. I was actually becoming more known as the guy who draws memoirs.

So when I pitched Zuda three different ideas, one of them was Street Code, which is semi-autobiographical, and they chose that.

And I’ve got to say, it was pretty cool to be getting paid to do a web comic that people could see for free. I remember there was one month where I dubbed myself “the Dean of Web Comics” because I had done an online comic for Marvel, a “Frankenstein’s Monster versus Werewolf by Night”; I had just done an online comic for The New York Times; I was doing Street Code; I was editing Smith magazine’s “Next Door Neighbor” comic, which I created; and I was also posting a comic on ACT-I-VATE. I’m looking at four or five different comics online in one month, and getting paid for that, and you could see it all for free.

DF: How do you define “collective” in this case?

DH: Collective? Geez. [laughs] A group of

self-progenitors.

DF: [laughs] Your definition is more complicated than the term I asked you to define!

DH: It’s like-minded artists who are people who show up and walk the walk. There are a lot of artists who will kind of crank out a bunch of work and then disappear because of something in their life—depression, or a competence issue, or because they got another job. But what was cool about ACT-I-VATE’s genesis was that these were people that already had work; it was Panel from Dean’s Street Code, a webcomic done for DC’s short-lived Zuda imprint. a cross between rookies and veterans. So you STREET CODE ™ AND © DEAN HASPIEL had people who were currently working in comics professionally, and then you had some new guys that had DF: Now, Marvel and DC pay good rates, but something like The never been paid a dime to draw a comic who had other kinds of Quitter or The Alcoholic, how does that pay? Do you get an gigs. So, in a weird way, you had rock-and-roll and punk, with a advance, like with a regular book deal, and does that come out to, little bit of rap thrown in, but it was all grassroots. It was a really ultimately, the equivalent of, or better or worse, than a Marvel or good mix of different sensibilities collaborating in an effort to DC gig? Did your page rate for The Quitter average out to your page rate for a Marvel job, say? make a dent in the World Wide Web. DH: I think Vertigo paid a little bit less than a Marvel page rate, but it was good. I’ve got to say, when you get paid by HBO, DF: Where did DC’s Zuda Comics site fit in?

DH: When I first heard about Zuda launching at DC, their web suddenly Marvel and DC rates don’t seem like so much. And comics initiative, I basically said, “Hey, guys, I know this is new that’s the realm I’m dabbling in right now. I thought I was kind for you. If you have any questions or want to ask me what I’ve of getting up to a good page rate where you have to do, like, gone through, I will happily give you information, because I between one and six drawings per page, right? And suddenly I’m want this to work. I want web comics to become formidable.” doing one drawing for HBO and getting paid five times what I And this was before the term “digital comics” happened, where would get for six drawings on a page. But, at the same time, the “digital” is about downloading versus just putting something profits of comics are much less than the profits of even a online for free or for subscription. And, at one point in our early low-rated TV show, so the pay rates between publishing and Zuda talks, I had other ideas, like I usually do, and even though television are vast.

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(right) Pencils from Inverna Lockpez’s semi-autobiographical Cuba: My Revolution. (below) Color illustration from Cuba: My Revolution. (next page) Pencils from Billy Dogma: Sex Planet.

CUBA: My REVOLUTION ™ AND © INVERNAL LOCkPEZ BILLy DOgMA ™ AND © DEAN HASPIEL

DF: When you worked on The Quitter or The Alcoholic, you were given a page rate, not an advance?

DH: Well, the advance is the page rate.

DF: If the book sells phenomenally, do you get a royalty?

DH: If it sells phenomenally, you get a royalty. But I

have to say, the three graphic novels I’ve done for Vertigo have not yet yielded a royalty check. But the American Splendor collections that I did for Vertigo, or the franchise comics I drew that then got turned into collections, have made me royalties. And maybe it has to do with a different deal structure. I’m not sure how it works, because one’s work-for-hire or something, and the way they sell things—I don’t understand how it works. I know that once a year I get a little bit of a royalty for a Batman comic I did, because Batman sells. But, actually, my best year was last year. I made approximately 50 grand. But that’s because I did a lot of work on HBO’s Bored to Death, and I hopscotched publishers and did a lot of gigs. But I spent a lot of money on my projects, too.

DF: Among your peers—not the people who have monthly Marvel or DC comics assignments—do you find that you’re one of the higher-earning comics artists?

DH: Among my indie peers? Probably, although... I mean, there’s a different way of looking at it. I work five to seven days a week, often until about midnight.

DF: Starting what time?

DH: Well, one o’clock in the afternoon.

DF: So a twelve-hour day, seven days a week.

DH: Right. And several of my peers are married, and if

they have a child, they’re going to pick up their child at school, they take their kid back home, then they go eat dinner around six or seven o’clock, and that’s their day.

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DF: They may start before noon, though.

DH: They start, like, nine in the morning.

So they’re probably putting in six to eight hours. And some of them, like me, are on the Internet and creating the mythology of their own persona [laughter] in order to get someone to click on their link. So my twelve hours could be reduced to six to eight concentrated hours if I didn’t have to promote, if I didn’t have the Internet.

DF: With the Internet in front of you, do you find yourself just randomly web surfing sometimes?

DH: Not as much as I used to. Actually, I was quite disappointed in myself the other day. I sometimes will look at what I look at on a regular basis, and it’s just comics sites. I hardly look at the news because it’s too depressing. I go to the same five or six websites several times a day. Meanwhile, I’m juggling a lot of emails, phone calls, and so on, as well as my mini-altruism of actually helping other people out by either editing or collaborating for free and all that kind of stuff on the sideline. So my quality of life is not balanced, whatsoever.

DF: If you had a wife and kids, do you think you’d do less work, or would the work you’re doing adjust to fit the allotted time?

DH: Another future desire is to figure out a kind of “visual lexicon,” a kind of layout-to-finishes style so that I’m not worried about the details of the pencils. That would allow me to tell more stories, but quickly, and in a six-to-eight hour day range, so I could have dinner with friends and with a girlfriend, or watch a movie, not starting at one in the morning, like I did last night, and passing out at three in the morning. I need to have a better balance in life. So the 50 grand I made last year, sure, I had to spend a lot of it because I live in New York City, and, unfortunately, especially as a person who loves to cook, I usually have to order takeout food and eat at my art table.

DF: Are you tempted with the money you made from HBO to get on a plane and move to L.A. and go, “Here I am!”

DH: Nope. Because I don’t think I could work in an environment that was always nice every day. I’m not used to that.

DF: Well, let’s say you moved to a basement apartment in down-

town L.A. so it wouldn’t be too nice.

DH: Well, first of all, it’s a car culture. Even though I got my driver’s license three years ago, I kind of abhor cars, and I don’t like car culture. I love that I can ride my bike everywhere.

But I’m writing a pilot right now. I have a couple of screenplays I would love to produce and direct. They’re oddball, they’re my sensibility. I mean, when I dabble in working for Marvel or DC, I try to do my thing with their characters as if I’d created them. Otherwise, if I’m drawing someone else’s story, I serve the story, as best I can, with my art. If I pitch an idea of my own, though, it’s going to be a little off-the-wall or different.

Otherwise, what’s the point? I can’t compete with Brian Michael Bendis and Matt Fraction and Ed Brubaker, all these people who are writing five or six books a month, because they’ve figured out a formula that works for them, and they know how to appeal to readers in a way that I haven’t. I mean, they do read the newspapers. They are reacting to what’s happening in the world right DRAW! • FALL 2011

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now. And I think I’m more reacting to the personal and the emotional, which keeps me in a niche.

DF: It sounds to me like, in many ways, you’re perfectly positioned for a modern storyteller.

DH: Well, I’d love to think that.

DF: You’re not putting all your eggs in one basket,

which is a thing that a lot of people do. It’s only human nature. “This has worked, and I’ll do more of it.” But, if suddenly the reality of the situation changes, that leaves them high and dry. So you may not be getting rich today, but I think you’re setting a good example for other creators. Speaking of which, do you have assistants and/or people you mentor?

DH: No one right now.

DF: But you work in a studio setting?

DH: I’m at my studio right now. It’s called Deep Six in

Gowanus, Brooklyn.

DF: What’s the appeal of that as opposed to just working in your living room?

DH: The reason why I did that was because I was going insane working at home alone for five years. I did have an assistant during those five years, a guy named Michel Fiffe, who has gone on to be his own great alternative cartoonist, underground or overground, or digital, whatever they are these days. But I don’t have anyone now because I guess I’m too hands-on in a lot of ways, and what I had him largely do was erase pages and fill in the blacks on my original art, and now you can do that easily with Photoshop. (above) Preliminary sketches of Woodgod for “The Left Hand of Boom,” a story which appeared in Strange Tales II #3. (right) Dean’s thumbnail layouts for pages two and three of the four-page story. (next page) Pencils for page three of the story.

ALL CHARACTERS ™ AND © MARVEL CHARACTERS, INC.

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DF: Now, I know you said you were getting tired of collaborat-

ing, but I think you were being at least partly facetious. It sounds like you still collaborate with people.

DH: I’m still collaborating, because I’ve not established myself as a writer.

DF: I beg to differ. I think your writing is excellent.

DH: Thank you. Well, the Paul Pope/Frank Miller model of bran-

dishing your own sensibilities is the route I desire, and I have a bunch of ideas that, if I can sell them and actually establish myself, more than as a guy who wrote a random Deadpool or Spider-Man and a four-page Woodgod story in Strange Tales. I need more substantial examples like Street Code that will make fans and editors say, “Oh, I want that guy to write something.”

And, you know what? Maybe what I’ve got to do is write some stories that other artists draw.

DF: Have you ever done that?

DH: Not really. I did it once for Michel Fiffe on a short story. But

I do want to put out graphic novels that are all mine.

DF: I have to believe there are publishers who would want you to

do that.

DH: Well, I have to take the “no permissions/no apologies” policy, because if I’m waiting for a publisher and editor to either knock

(above) A colored sketch of Marvel’s goofy villain, Deadpool. (right) Pencils from Deadpool #1000.

DEADPOOL ™ AND © MARVEL CHARACTERS, INC.

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on my door or accept a proposal, and it’s this waiting game, I often have rebelled by just doing it on my own, like I did with ACT-I-VATE, or I’ve done since. I mean, who knew I would have gotten three graphic novels out of Vertigo? That’s unprecedented, you know? So I somehow have bucked the system in some way.

And, again, no formula, no template. It’s all a risk, it’s all a gamble. And it’s anxiety-inducing, but I guess that’s the way I thrive.

DF: Let me ask you some nuts and bolts art questions. What kind of pencils and pens and brushes do you use? And do you use different tools for online stuff than for print?

DH: I use the same tools that I use for print as digital. I use a blue pencil, a Col-Erase blue pencil, as well as some lead. And I tend to like 3H or 4H lead pencils. I use Prismacolor or a Col-Erase type blue pencil. There are two colors of blue that I like. One’s a light blue and one’s a dark blue. The light blue might be called the “non-photo blue,” and then there’s the regular blue. As far as inking tools, for many, many years I’ve used—and I don’t remember the name of the pen, but it’s kind of like a brush pen with an ink cartridge. It’s a 40-dollar or so pen and it’s Japanese.

And then, for straight ruled lines, I use a Micron pen, and I either use the .05 or the .08 for those lines, and otherwise regular erasers. I don’t use gummy erasers. I don’t understand them. I have a white “Staedtler Mars Plastic.” And circle templates, and triangles, and a measured ruler.

(right) Billy Dogma goes cosmic in this watercolor illo. (below) Another of Dean’s color Spider-Man sketches.

BILLy DOgMA ™ AND © DEAN HASPIEL SPIDER-MAN ™ AND © MARVEL CHARACTERS, INC.

DF: What do you use for color work?

DH: Once in a while I sketch with a red or blue pencil, or even crayon. Everything else I color

in Photoshop. And I use the basic colors. I barely know how to use Photoshop properly. What I like to do is set a flat color and then go in—I kind of devised a fake brush in Photoshop, where it gives it a little bit of a brushy kind of tone look. When I color, I’ll do the base colors, and then maybe I’ll go in with a tone color and occasionally come in with a third version of that color just to kind of highlight stuff. My coloring is inspired by the limited palette of 1960s Marvel.

DF: Do you do your own lettering? I know the personal stuff you hand-letter.

DH: I hand-letter my comics on the boards. I have not created a font, and when I do use a font

on some comics that I letter, which is not always, but when I do, it’s a Ben Oda, one of my favorite letterers. He created a font.

DF: That’s very cool. Finally what’s coming up that you want to plug for the second half of 2011?

DH: Right now I’m doing lead character designs for eleven interstitial motion comics for

Season 3 of SyFy Channel’s Warehouse 13 television show.

DF: That’ll be on their website or on TV? DH: I believe on their website. Maybe a little bit on TV, in advertising for the show, but I

think it’s an online thing. And I’m working, currently, on art for Season 3 of Bored to Death, that’ll be out in the Fall, and I was just made a consultant to the show. And I’ve written and drawn an eight-page Spider-Man story that’s not been scheduled, and, just to give you a sneak peak of what it is, I asked Spider-Man editor, Steve Wacker, for a gig, and he returned and challenged me and said, “Hey, remember when Peter Parker quit being SpiderMan, in issue #50, and he walked away from the garbage can which he left his Spider-Man costume in? What happened to the costume that night?” So, I wrote and drew that story. It hasn’t been scheduled yet. Oh, I’m also working on a one-pager for Vertigo’s Scalped #50, my favorite monthly comic. And the next gig is a 16-page webcomic called The Last Mortician.

It was an idea that’s been bothering me for a couple of years and I commissioned my friend, Tim Hall, to write it, and we sold it to Tor.com. So it’ll be online and free for all to see and enjoy sometime soon.

DF: Excellent. Thanks for all the info and insights, Dean.

DH: Thank you, Danny.

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W

elcome, once again to all and sundry! Your Crusty Critic has returned to give you my take on the world of art supplies, places, and things that every artist needs to know or procure in his toolbelt. This time, my article will shine light on a popular line of art supplies under the French Canson product umbrella.

As cartooning and manga has gained notoriety in the States, companies have begun to diversify their product lines to attract and service this niche artist, and the Fanboy line of comic supplies was created to fill this need. The Fanboy brand has recently changed its packaging. Its original mascot was a cartoon nerdy kid with buckteeth and glasses and its tagline, “Get out of the Basement!” rudely inferring that this product line is directed at a population I’m not sure exists as perceived by the company— that comic book nerds want to draw comic books hasn’t been proved as far as this critic is concerned—and that this line of paper will help them attain that goal. Instead of that backhanded diss at the consumer, Canson now has new packaging, showing dynamic comic art, much like the new line of Strathmore comic illustration products. You shouldn’t have to be insulted by the paper you use, so I’m glad they have addressed this.

There is something for every comic-drawing discipline in this line: Canson carries everything from a “Create Your Own Comic Book” beginner’s kit that includes a small set of Micron pigma pens, two 11" x 17" comic cover pages, 10 art boards, some layout sheets, and more, to special-sized Manga Comic Board, which mirrors the smaller drawing area that manga-ka utilizes for Eastern art creation. I will focus on the official Comic Book Art Board, which comes in pads of 24 sheets of 150-pound Bristol, pre-lined with blue-line guides and borders.

The practice of buying pre-ruled comic board has now become more widely accepted with comic creators, though a lot of older pros are still married to the process of buying 14" x 17" board, then trimming it to size and ruling out their own borders.

As we all know, sometimes your biggest enemy is the clock, so any way you can shave some time off of your day helps.

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WHAT’S BETTER? There are several Bristol papers on the market that come in 11" x 17" size and pre-ruled for comic art. Some of the major manufacturers are Eon, Blue Line, Strathmore, and now Canson.

I know that the Blue Line and Canson brands carry different paper weights and surfaces, so if you enjoy a heavier stock, there may be other brands out there that speak to you besides Canson.

As of this writing, Fanboy comic board is only available in 150pound weight, while Strathmore’s board is labeled in “Series,” such as 300 and 400—which translates to 100- and 140-pound weight, respectively. You may be confused about what paper is the right fit for you, but Fanboy eliminates the confusion by not offering choices.

PROS ■ Even though the board is fairly thin, it’s workable and can hold blacks well with technical pens and some heavy brushwork, which may come close to bleeding through the back of the board, but stops short.

■ It responds well to pencil work.

CONS ■ The pads are usually held together with weak glue, so the boards usually detach themselves from the pad before you’re ready to use them. This isn’t necessarily the worst thing in the world. In the past I have ruined pages of Strathmore Bristol because I ripped them trying to get them free of the pad they came in. Nothing’s worse than that!

Odd as this sounds, it’s hard to find this particular product in most of the major art stores, as Strathmore has a lot of the shelf space shored up, and I see a small marketing misstep in that most art stores may stock the Manga Art Board and not the 11" x 17" Comic Book Board.

My best source for picking up pads is Jerry’s Artarama, an online art supplier [www.jerrysartarama.com] with brick-and-mortar locations, which sells the pads for a nice discounted price. Better yet, Jerry’s sells it in bulk packages—in packs of 50 or 100—for under $50.00.

SUMMARY An old saying goes that a good craftsman never blames his tools, and that rings true with my review. Your tools also shouldn’t get in your way. The best part about the Fanboy art pads is that they are cheap (enough), and make great stock board for your studio. Many of my comic compatriots feel like this art board is just a little too “cheap” in its feel, weight, and quality, but I have enjoyed this product and feel it is a good quality for the price, which usually retails around $20.00 a pad.

NEXT ISSUE: DRAW! #22

BATMAN ™ ANd © dC COMICS.

DRAW! #22 (84 pages with COLOR, $7.95) presents an indepth interview with one of the top inkers of the modern age, SCOTT WILLIAMS! From his days at Marvel and Image, to his work with JIM LEE on such pivotal series as “Batman: Hush”, Scott discusses his working process with editor MIKE MANLEY, and shows he’s an accomplished solo artist in his own right (as evidenced by this issue’s striking cover). Then, we get webbed up with top flight penciler PATRICK OLIFFE, as he demos how he produces such comics as Spider-Girl, his recent revival of Dark Horse’s Mighty Samson, and digital comics for Marvel. Plus, there’s another installment of MIKE MANLEY and BRET BLEVINS’ “Comic Art Bootcamp”, a “Rough Critique” of a newcomer’s work by BOB McLEOD, product and art supply reviews by “Crusty Critic” JAMAR NICHOLAS, and more!

SUBSCRIBE TO DRAW! Four quarterly issues: $30 US Media Mail, $40 US First Class Mail ($43 Canada, Elsewhere: $54 First Class International, $78 Priority International).

We accept US check, money order, Visa, Mastercard, and Discover at TwoMorrows, 10407 Bedfordtown Dr., Raleigh, NC 27614, (919) 449-0344, E-mail: twomorrow@aol.com, www.twomorrows.com NEXT ISSUE’S COVER BY SCOTT WILLIAMS

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by BReT BLeVINS and MIKe MANLeY

hether it’s the curled lock of a hero’s mane, the sultry locks and tresses of a superheroine or bad girl, or the oddly spiked do of the typical anime character, hair is a big part of a character’s look, design, and appeal. So drawing hair well is very important to the cartoonist or animator. It’s especially important when drawing the female characters, as it plays a big part of their sexiness and appeal.

W

A lot of characters can be identified by their hair alone—or lack thereof. Lex Luthor and Homer Simpson share a lot in common. So in this Bootcamp installment, Bret and I will focus in on the curls and locks and the how-to of illustrating the hairdos of comics and animation.

To start with, I think we need to really get into the historical angle on this drawing issue. The illustrating of popular hairstyles has always been a very important item for the artist to keep up with. From the days of the golden age of illustration, artists have always tried to keep up with, and in many cases set the trends of fashion. The Gibson Girl and the Arrow Collar Man are just two examples where the artist actually helped set the fashion trends of their day and were hugely influential.

Both J.C. Lyendecker (the Arrow shirt ads) and Charles Dana Gibson (The Gibson Girl) were leading illustrators whose work was seen by millions of readers, as well as probably thousands of artists. Their influence was immense, and you can see their stylistic influence on the early artists who emulated their style in the comics of the ’20s, ’30s, and on.

Their success in illustration came from real life observation of the models and the stylization based on that observation, and 70

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that will be a key principle we will operate with here. In order to have a true understanding of something like hair, it is not enough to simply copy the style of other artists who do hair well and to give it your own twist, you need to do some drawing from observation as well.

In this case, working from photos is great, and I suggest buying the current fashion magazines. There are even magazines devoted only to hair styles. It’s essential to stay up with the current fashion in styles to keep your work looking contemporary. It’s all too clear when looking at an artist’s work if they are running on a default model of drawing hairstyles based on old comic work.

We can sometimes forget that when so many of the iconic characters were created or the important work was done on a series the artists behind that work were drawing contemporary styles of fashion and hairstyles. Who knows if Siegel and Shuster would design Superman today the same way that they did in the late ’30s.

However, no matter the decade, there are guiding principles that will help when illustrating hair: ■ Hair conforms to the planes of the head.

■ Hair reacts to gravity at all times, even in motion.

■ Women’s hair flows away from the head; it’s not pasted on.

■ Simplify: Break the hair down into simpler strands or bands of hair. Less is more, and it looks sleeker and sexier. (In animation, simplification of a character’s hair is essential to keep the drawing easier and consistently on model. Also, unlike comics where you can cheat things more, the hair has to work in all views for the complete character turnaround.)

■ Wavy or curly hair is like a wave in the water. There is a peak and a valley to each curl, the highlight occurring at the peak that is facing the light source.

■ Highlights in hair, dark or light, reflect the light source.

Keep a consistent light source across the form. This rule applies no matter what the drawing style, be it anime or more realistic illustration.

■ Texture: The detail of a character’s hair can vary. The texture in the hair can really add spice or lushness, especially when illustrating women or monsters, witches and other strange characters. With comics and illustration, the amount of texture or middle tone rendering can show the difference between a blonde and a red head without the use of color.

Draw hair as overlapping bands or strands.

light source

Think of hair as flowing waves. light source In cartoony or anime style drawings, the highlights can be a simple band of reflection.

Highlights are at the top of the wave, or where the form/plane turns.

In visual art the appearance of hair is usually most effective if treated primarily as an arrangement of shape(s) that suggest its nature and character, rather than attempting to render it naturalistically. There is simply too much detail to cope with if one holds in mind the literal fact of so many separate, extremely fine forms; thinking of the problem as an uncountable mass of individual hairs conforming to create an overall shape is more difficult and confusing than conceiving the hair as a solid shape in which an occasional strand or lock is discernible. The second approach also has more visual appeal. It reads quickly, doesn’t draw attention to itself, and more clearly defines other important information: the shape and direction of movement (or stillness) of the head; the distinction between a breeze, wind or gale; and the character of the specific hair itself—wet, oily, dry, thin, thick,

naturally hanging or stiffened and shaped into a specific style/effect, and so on.

Hair is a necessary and useful device in a purely aesthetic sense as well. The flowing shapes of long hair are useful for creating a peaceful, alluring, gentle or mysterious mood. Wildly blowing hair can suggest action, wildness, fright, instability, nervousness. Tight, rigid coiffures can suggest inhibition, lack of empathy, cruelty, severity. Loose, casual hair might suggest an easy-going nature, relaxed comfort, a friendly attitude—or perhaps a careless, slovenly, distracted, or absentminded personality. In short, the hair is another tool for storytelling, for creating and communicating character, beyond the obvious factual information of setting, time, and place via its particular style or fashion.

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HELPFUL REMINDERS WHEN DRAWING HAIR: 1. The hair does not emanate uniformly from the scalp. As the sides of the head drop steeply away from the crown, the angle of the follicles change, as seen in these diagrams. This is why the hair rises up from a part along the top plane of the head, then hangs closer to the surface as the downward planes drop toward and past the ears.

2. In this chart you can see how the mass of hair lifts from the top of the head, then gravity and the turning angles of the follicles cause the hair to hang steeply downward.

3. The arrow here describes the flow of her hair—up from the scalp, then curving over, down, and curving again forward towards her face. This can be a natural tendency of an individual’s hair or shaped by conditioning. Also indicated here is the highlight, which always follows the most protruding plane (usually where a form or plane changes direction).

4. The arrows here trace the direction of the form, showing the highlight on the foremost edge of the plane, nearest the light source.

5. The diagrams here show how the fluid masses of the hair react to the force of wind. The hair is much lighter than the head, of course, but its own weight does dictate how it behaves. The undulating wave pattern and interlocking, overlapping large “grouping” of massed hair described by the arrows reveals not only its own character, but the direction the wind is blowing.

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A. Here I’ve charted the big directional changes in the hair’s mass and rhythm. Notice how the complicated sequence of braids has been simplified into large, easy to “read” shapes.

Once the main shapes have been clearly established, any amount of detail can be added (though usually the simpler the better).

B. Here the complex patterns have again been simplified, but in the second drawing the hair has been reduced almost to a silhouette and still reads clearly. Always think of this contour shape first, and your work will be stronger.

C. The key here is the straight drop caused by gravity. The hair is thin, close to the scalp. It hardly rises at all from the top plane of the head, then drops down, curving only slightly as the lower part is pressed forward by the planes of the upper chest.

D. This hair style is more contrived than the others shown here.

The neat shape of the central mass and bangs form an aesthetic contrast with the loosely gathered masses on top. Then carefully “plucked” strands are pulled free. The same has been done to create the strands falling from around her ears. The entire silhouette easily reads as a mass, though, because the shape has been accented by an awareness of attractive rhythm. Don’t include every stray or wild strand that would likely be there in reality. Choose each mark you make for visual clarity.

E. The large sweep of hair rising, then following the underlying shape of the scalp is simply but clearly indicated here. The hair is combed back from the face and allowed to lay down over the head. If thick enough and with the proper wave, it may behave this way naturally, otherwise it can be held by gel or hair spray.

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EXAMPLES OF WAYS ACCOMPLISHED ARTISTS HANDLE HAIR:

HAL FOSTER

PRINCE VALIANT © kINg FEATURES SyNDICATE, INC.

These panels from Prince Valiant show Foster’s thorough knowledge of form and rhythm, beautifully drawn and rendered with his characteristic attention to detail and visual clarity.

FRANCIS MARSHALL Look closely and notice the astonishing brevity and lively verve Marshall uses to indicate the various types of hair in this crowded scene. It would be difficult to find a way to achieve these effects more simply—yet all the information is there.

74 DRAW! • FALL 2011

J.C. LEYENDECKER Here the forms have been sharpened almost to the point of ceasing to look like hair. The shapes and surface resemble curved metal, but the rhythm is convincing, and is in keeping with Leyendecker’s angular design and crisp stylization of all forms. The exaggerated highlights make the direction and pattern crystal clear.

ALPHONSE MUCHA Mucha has pushed the character and natural rhythms of hair into abstract elements of design—especially in the JOB poster. We accept this because his knowledge of real hair enables him to make his aesthetic distortions convincing.

Any element can be exaggerated to create an artistic effect, as long as the underlying principles of its construction and appearance are understood.

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© FRANk FRAZETTA.

FRANK FRAZETTA (above) In this Edgar Rice Burroughs prehistoric fantasy illustration (left), Frazetta has used the woman’s hair as a completely abstract mood-setting device. I can’t imagine any natural weather condition in this scene that would realistically create the shape her hair takes here, but that shape does a brilliant job of suggesting ferocity, excitement, danger, and action, while contributing an indispensable “punch” to the rhythm and harmony of the entire composition. Observe how the piece suffers if the hair is changed to a more naturalistic arrangement/ shape (right)—the entire image loses energy, becomes quieter; the composition feels “bottom heavy,” not as consistent in mood.

© RESPECTIVE OWNER.

(left) This page from one of Frazetta’s romance comic stories from the ’50s is one of the most influential pages in comics for the rendering of hair. It set a young Dave (Rocketeer) Stevens on fire. Everything here is sexy and lush, and Frazetta employed both the brush and pen to achieve variety in the women’s hair.

Compare the inking of the blonde’s hair in Panel 2 to the brunette’s “Betty Page” hairdo—one of the best examples of hair inking in comic books ever.

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CHARLES DANA GIBSON The hair here is sumptuous and alive with the powerful penmanship that set Gibson at the head of the pack in his day. You can also clearly see the wave-like flow of the hair in the way Gibson rendered the flow of the planes into each other, the highlight coming at the peak, or turn of the planes.

MOEBIUS Moebius is the pen name of French cartoonist Jean Giraud, one of the most popular and influential cartoonists from the last 100 years.

He has won many awards for his work on Lieutenant Blueberry, The Incal, and Arzach.

This example displays his great pen inking, almost etching style which hails back to the turn of the century pen-and-ink illustrators like Gibson. This artist changes his inking styles at times depending on the project and whether he is using his Moebius pen name or his surname, Giraud.

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FLASH gORDON © kINg FEATURES SyNDICATE, INC.

ALEX RAYMOND (left) A fantastic example of Raymond’s brush inking at its peak, the lushness of Dale’s hair compared to the giant’s shaggy mane and pelt of hair is a great example of how a variety of textures and skill with the brush can covey a lush and illustrative feel and convincingness. (right) Another great example of Raymond’s lush brushwork that made him one the most influential cartoonists of the past, and one of the most emulated. His ideas and techniques (line language) are still being used by cartoonists today.

RUSSELL PATTERSON The extreme simplification and stylization of the Patterson drawing are instructive. You can count the lines he has used to indicate the differences in hair of these five characters, yet each reads beautifully and immediately, again, because his knowledge of structure allows him to caricature the forms.

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PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN ™ AND © DISNEy. ILLyANA, INHUMANS, MEDUSA, NEW MUTANTS ™ AND © MARVEL CHARACTERS, INC.

PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN The hair of the various characters on this page (above left) is handled mostly by controlling shape and contour. This was printed small and in color, so I planned the hair to work as silhouette—any interior detail could be lost without destroying the clarity.

NEW MUTANTS In this cover (above right) the hair is used primarily as a composition/storytelling device—the bursting spill/flow of the lines, rhythm, and shapes accent the wild, angry emotion of her face and hand.

INHUMANS The hair shape is the center of this composition (right). The absurd amount of hair identifies the character as Medusa, and the soft, swirling rhythms echo her own curving form, contrasted against the angular podiums and shapes of the judges. The enveloping flow of the hair also conveys the protective gentleness she feels for her infant.

—Bret DRAW! • FALL 2011

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SUPERgIRL ™ AND © DC COMICS. JUDgE PARkER ™ AND © kINg FEATURES SyNDICATE, INC.

SUPERGIRL ANIMATED This page from Supergirl Adventures #1 (above) is an example of the extreme simplification of form required by animation design—yet the underlying principles still hold.

JUDGE PARKER

© BRET BLEVINS.

In these panels from a Judge Parker Sunday strip (above right), the main characters, Abbey (the adult) and Sophie (the teenager), both are like TV soap opera stars—at least that’s how I imagine the strip. I try to make the hairstyles lush and styled in that fashion; I even do research and study actresses’ hairstyles. After I pencil everything in, I start inking the hair by inking the main lead lines as I call them, the longer lines that indicate the long strands or bands of hair. After that I add in the halftone rendering, depending on the color of the hair. Abbey is a redhead so I add a bit more mid-tone rendering on her hair compared to Sophie, who’s a blonde. I study the great strip artists like Stan Drake for inspiration.

—Mike

DRAWING HAIR FROM LIFE

© BRET BLEVINS.

These portraits from life drawing sessions (left and above) show that pertinent information about particular arrangements of hair can be indicated very quickly. These images were all created in moments, but in each case the large main shapes and rhythms are clearly communicated. With just a few lines the sense of hair is conveyed. The lines don’t read as aimless scribbles; each mark is describing important observation of form, character, and direction.

See you next time, Mike and Bret 80

DRAW! • FALL 2011

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BACK ISSUE #52

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• Digital Editions available: $2.95-$3.95!

• Back Issue & Alter Ego now with color!

• Lower international shipping rates!

Bronze Age Mystery Comics! Interviews with BERNIE WRIGHTSON, SERGIO ARAGONÉS, GERRY TALAOC, DC mystery writer LORE SHOBERG, MARK EVANIER and DAN SPIEGLE discuss Scooby-Doo, Charlton chiller anthologies, Black Orchid, Madame Xanadu art and commentary by TONY DeZUNIGA, MIKE KALUTA, VAL MAYERIK, DAVID MICHELINIE, MATT WAGNER, and a rare cover painting by WRIGHTSON!

“Gods!” Takes an in-depth look at WALTER SIMONSON’s Thor, the Thunder God in the Bronze Age, “Pro2Pro” interview with TOM DeFALCO and RON FRENZ, Hercules: Prince of Power, Moondragon, Three Ways to End the New Gods Saga, exclusive interview with fantasy writer MICHAEL MOORCOCK, art and commentary by GERRY CONWAY, JACK KIRBY, BOB LAYTON, and more, with a swingin’ Thor cover by SIMONSON!

“Liberated Ladies” eyeing female characters that broke barriers in the Bronze Age: Big Barda, Valkyrie, Ms. Marvel, Phoenix, Savage She-Hulk, and the sword-wielding Starfire. Plus a “Pro2Pro” interview with JILL THOMPSON, GAIL SIMONE, and BARBARA KESEL, art and commentary by JOHN BYRNE, GEORGE PEREZ, JACK KIRBY, MIKE VOSBURG, and more, with a new cover by BRUCE TIMM!

ORDER AT: www.twomorrows.com

(84-page magazine with COLOR) $7.95 (Digital Edition) $2.95 • Ships Oct. 2011

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THE BEST IN COMICS AND LEGO MAGAZINES!

ALTER EGO #105

ALTER EGO #106

ALTER EGO #107

ALTER EGO #108

DRAW! #22

See comic art and script BEFORE and AFTER the Comics Code changes, with art

by SIMON & KIRBY, DITKO, BUSCEMA, SINNOTT, GOULD, COLE, STERANKO, KRIGSTEIN, O’NEIL, GLANZMAN, ORLANDO, WILLIAMSON, HEATH, and others! Plus: FCA, Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt, BILL SCHELLY, JIM AMASH interviews Timely/Atlas artist CAL MASSEY, and a new cover by JOSH MEDORS!

DICK GIORDANO through the 1960s—from freelance years and Charlton “Action-Heroes” to his first stint at DC! Art by DITKO, APARO, BOYETTE, MORISI, McLAUGHLIN, GIL KANE, and others, Dick’s final convention panel with STEVE SKEATES and ROY THOMAS, JIM AMASH interviews Charlton artist TONY TALLARICO, FCA with MARC SWAYZE and ROY ALD, MR. MONSTER’S COMIC CRYPT, BILL SCHELLY, GIORDANO cover, and more!

Big BATMAN issue, with an unused Golden Age cover by DICK SPRANG! SHEL DORF interviews SPRANG and JIM MOONEY, with rare and unseen Batman art by BOB KANE, JERRY ROBINSON, WIN MORTIMER, SHELLY MOLDOFF, CHARLES PARIS, and others! Part II of the TONY TALLARICO interview by JIM AMASH! Plus FCA, MR. MONSTER’S COMIC CRYPT, BILL SCHELLY, and more!

1970s Bullpenner WARREN REECE talks about Marvel Comics and working with EVERETT, BURGOS, ROMITA, STAN LEE, MARIE SEVERIN, ADAMS, FRIEDRICH, ROY THOMAS, and others, with rare art!

DEWEY CASSELL spotlights Golden Age artist MIKE PEPPE, with art by TOTH, ANDRU, TUSKA, CELARDO, & LUBBERS, plus FCA, MR. MONSTER, BILL SCHELLY, cover by EVERETT & BURGOS, and more!

Interview with inker SCOTT WILLIAMS from his days at Marvel and Image to his work with JIM LEE, and PATRICK OLIFFE demos how he produces Spider-Girl, Mighty Samson, and digital comics. Also, MIKE MANLEY and BRET BLEVINS’ “Comic Art Bootcamp”, a “Rough Critique” of a newcomer’s work by BOB McLEOD, art supply reviews by “Crusty Critic” JAMAR NICHOLAS, and more!

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LEE & KIRBY: THE WONDER YEARS (KIRBY COLLECTOR #58)

Special double-size book examines the first decade of the FANTASTIC FOUR, and the events that put into motion the Marvel Age of Comics! New interviews with STAN LEE, FLO STEINBERG, MARK EVANIER, JOE SINNOTT, and others, with a wealth of historical information and Kirby artwork!

(128-page tabloid trade paperback) $19.95 (Digital Edition) $5.95 • Ships Nov. 2011 (Subscribers: counts as two issues)

KIRBY COLLECTOR #59

BRICKJOURNAL #17

BRICKJOURNAL #18

BRICKJOURNAL #19

“Kirby Vault!” Rarities from the “King” of comics: Personal correspondence, private photos, collages, rare Marvelmania art, bootleg album covers, sketches, transcript of a 1969 VISIT TO THE KIRBY HOME (where Jack answers the questions YOU’D ask in ‘69), MARK EVANIER, pencil art from the FOURTH WORLD, CAPTAIN AMERICA, MACHINE MAN, SILVER SURFER GRAPHIC NOVEL, and more!

LEGO SPACE WAR issue! A STARFIGHTER BUILDING LESSON by Peter Reid, WHY SPACE MARINES ARE SO POPULAR by Mark Stafford, a trip behind the scenes of LEGO’S NEW ALIEN CONQUEST SETS that hit store shelves earlier this year, plus JARED K. BURKS’ column on MINIFIGURE CUSTOMIZATION, building tips, event reports, our step-by-step “YOU CAN BUILD IT” INSTRUCTIONS, and more!

Go to Japan with articles on two JAPANESE LEGO FAN EVENTS, plus take a look at JAPAN’S SACRED LEGO LAND, Nasu Highland Park—the site of the BrickFan events and a pilgrimage site for many Japanese LEGO fans. Also, a feature on JAPAN’S TV CHAMPIONSHIP OF LEGO, a look at the CLICKBRICK LEGO SHOPS in Japan, plus how to get into TECHNIC BUILDING, LEGO EDUCATION, and more!

LEGO EVENTS ISSUE covering our own BRICKMAGIC FESTIVAL, BRICKWORLD, BRICKFAIR, BRICKCON, plus other events outside the US. There’s full event details, plus interviews with the winners of the BRICKMAGIC CHALLENGE competition, complete with instructions to build award winning models. Also JARED K. BURKS’ regular column on minifigure customizing, building tips, and more!

(84-page tabloid magazine) $10.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95 • Ships Feb. 2012

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $8.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95 • Ships Dec. 2011

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FALL 2011 EDITION Hype and hullabaloo from the company celebrating the art & history of comics, LEGO®, and other fun stuff

Big Book Update You can always check our website for updated release dates of items you see listed in our full Catalog, but here’s some more specifics on some of our most highly anticipated new items: LOU SCHEIMER: CREATING THE FILMATION GENERATION We’re close to finished with this one, and hope to have it out by the end of 2011. Stay tuned!

MODERN MASTERS: DARWYN COOKE Perhaps the most asked-about book we ever announced but haven’t yet produced, this was originally scheduled to ship a couple of years ago. We’re happy to announce that, as of this writing, we’ve just completed the last of the interviews with DARWYN for the book, and are close to announcing the new release date for it. Watch our home page for ordering info!

THE QUALITY COMPANION Co-authors MIKE KOOIMAN and JIM AMASH are working feverishly to make the planned October release date for this look at the history of the classic Golden Age comics publisher!

MATT BAKER: THE ART OF GLAMOUR This lavish book is progressing nicely as ERIC NOLEN-WEATHINGTON’s schedule has cleared up, and you should see it out for the holidays!

Please stay tuned to our website (www.twomorrows.com) for current release dates on all our upcoming items, and thanks for your patience.

by publisher John Morrow

THE LATEST & GREATEST!

By now you’ve seen ALTER EGO: CENTENNIAL, the 100th issue of ROY THOMAS’ acclaimed magazine, which we produced as a double-size BOOK instead of the usual magazine format (complete with extra color pages). You’ve also encountered BACK ISSUE #50, which for the first time presented all 80 pages in FULL-COLOR (with a corresponding $1 cover price increase, but no extra cost for subscribers). We’ll be adding more color pages to our mags (with some issues completely full-color) over the next year, as the subject matter (and reader preference) demands.

Speaking of Roy Thomas, he and Bill Schelly are working on a follow-up to their book ALTER EGO: BEST OF THE LEGENDARY COMICS FANZINE. It’ll feature the “Best of the Rest” of the original 1960s and ‘70s run of A/E, and should be out in 2012 from TwoMorrows.

KEITH VERONESE lets you get PLUGGED IN, in our new book on comics greats who work in the video game industry. It features GERRY CONWAY, ROY THOMAS (him again!), and ELLIOT S! MAGGIN candidly talking about the early days of Atari along with comics pros JIMMY PALMIOTTI, CHRIS BACHALO, MIKE DEODATO, JOSHUA ORTEGA, and RICK REMENDER discussing their work on the current generation video game hits!

There are interComics Professionals Working in the Video Game Industry views with other artists and writers who made the leap to working in video games full time, including an in-depth interview with TRENT KANIUGA (CreeD) about working as one of the architects of the long awaited Diablo III! Look for PLUGGED IN in early 2012.

New (& Old) Digital Editions Coming! Back for a limited time:

We’ve made available economically-priced Digital Editions of most of the back issues of our mags, but haven’t gotten to the first 49 issues of ALTER EGO yet. Going back and recreating each issue in digital form is taking more time than we anticipated when we produced our 2011 Catalog, but we should have those final ones posted later this year, so stay tuned! Also coming soon are new and improved Digital Editions of sold-out books in our Catalog, like TRUE BRIT, MR. MONSTER VOLUME ZERO, and others. We’re working on adding additional pages and MORE COLOR than in the original print versions, and those should be up soon as well. And now available are Digital Editions of two sold-out MODERN MASTERS volumes, on ARTHUR ADAMS and WALTER SIMONSON! Stay tuned for even more in the coming months.

www.twomorrows.com has FULL-COLOR DIGITAL EDITIONS of our magazines for $2.95-3.95!

Print subscribers get the digital edition FREE, before print copies hit stores!

A distributor just discovered a couple of boxes of two of our sold-out books: THE ART OF GEORGE TUSKA by DEWEY CASSELL and the acclaimed JUSTICE LEAGUE COMPANION by MICHAEL EURY. If you missed either, now’s your LAST CHANCE to order the print editions, available at www.twomorrows.com.

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TwoMorrows News Today

EISNER DOC ON DVD & BLU-RAY NOW! Our old buddy JON B. COOKE and his brother ANDY of Montilla Productions have produced the award-winning documentary WILL EISNER: PORTRAIT OF A SEQUENTIAL ARTIST. It’s the definitive look at the life and art of the godfather of the American comic book, which premiered at the prestigious Tribeca Film Festival. It includes interviews with KURT VONNEGUT, MICHAEL CHABON, JULES FEIFFER, ART SPIEGELMAN, FRANK MILLER, STAN LEE, GIL KANE as well as the never-before-heard “Shop Talk” audio tapes featuring JACK KIRBY, HARVEY KURTZMAN, MILTON CANIFF, NEAL ADAMS, JOE KUBERT and others! It’s 96 minutes with plenty of bonus features, and TwoMorrows is proud to be able to offer it to our customers! The DVD is only $20, while the Blu-ray is $26, and both are available now at our website.

Pros@Cons!

In 2011-2012, you can find us exhibiting at these conventions: COMIC-CON INTERNATIONAL (San Diego, CA, July) BRICKFAIR (Washington, DC, August) BRICKCON (Seattle, WA, October) NEW YORK COMICON (New York City, October) In 2012: WONDERCON (San Francisco, CA) HEROES CON (Charlotte, NC) BRICKMAGIC (our own event!) (in both Raleigh, NC and Orlando, FL) BRICKWORLD (Chicago, IL)

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