Draw! #25

#25

SUMMER 2013 $8.95 in the US

LEE WEEKS INTERVIEW & DEMO

DC’s Rising Star

yildiray çinar inking legend

JOE RUBINSTEIN ROUGH STUFF’S

BOB McLEOD

PLUS MIKE MANLEY AND BRET BLEVINS’

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Characters TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.

CRITIQUES A NEWCOMER’S WORK

DIGITAL

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 $3.9 storytelling, as well as such DRAW! #4 skills as layout, penciling, inking, Interview with ERIK LARSEN, KEVIN lettering, coloring, Photoshop techNOWLAN on drawing and inking niques, plus web guides, tips, tricks, techniques, DAVE COOPER’s coloring techniques in Photoshop, BRET and a handy reference source—this BLEVINS tutorial on Figure magazine has it all!

Composition, PAUL RIVOCHE on the Design Process, reviews of NOTE: Some issues contain nudity for comics drawing papers, and more! purposes of figure drawing.

(88-page magazine) $5.95 INTENDED FOR MATURE READERS. (Digital Edition) $3.95

DRAW! #8

DRAW! #9

DRAW! #10

DRAW! #5

DRAW! #6

DRAW! #7

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!

Interview/demo by DAN BRERETON, ZACH TRENHOLM on caricaturing, “Drawing In Adobe Illustrator” demo

by ALBERTO RUIZ, “The Power of Sketching” by BRET BLEVINS, “Designing with light and shadow”

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

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DRAW! #11

DRAW! #12

DRAW! #13

Interview & demo by MATT HALEY, TOM BANCROFT & ROB CORLEY on character design, “Drawing In Adobe Illustrator” by ALBERTO RUIZ, “Draping The Human Figure”

by BRET BLEVINS, a new COMICS SECTION, International Spotlight on JOSÉ LOUIS AGREDA, and more!

WRITE NOW #8 crossover! MIKE MANLEY & DANNY FINGEROTH create a comic from script to print, BANCROFT & CORLEY on bringing characters to life, Adobe Illustrator with ALBERTO RUIZ, Noel Sickles’ work examined, PvP’s SCOTT KURTZ, art supply reviews, and more!

RON GARNEY interview & demo, GRAHAM NOLAN on creating newspaper strips, TODD KLEIN and others discuss lettering, “Draping The Human Figure, Part Two” by BRET BLEVINS, ALBERTO RUIZ on Adobe Illustrator, interview with MARK McKENNA, links, and more!

STEVE RUDE on comics & drawing, ROQUE BALLESTEROS on Flash animation, JIM BORGMAN on his daily comic strip Zits, BRET BLEVINS and MIKE MANLEY on “Drawing On Life”, Adobe Illustrator tips with ALBERTO RUIZ, links, a color section and more! New RUDE cover!

KYLE BAKER on merging traditional and digital art, MIKE HAWTHORNE on his work, “Making Perspective Work For You” by BRET BLEVINS and MIKE MANLEY, Photoshop techniques with ALBERTO RUIZ, THE VENTURE BROTHERS, links, and more! New BAKER cover!

Demo of painting methods by ALEX HORLEY, interview and demo by COLLEEN COOVER, a look behindthe-scenes on Adult Swim’s MINORITEAM, regular features on drawing by BRET BLEVINS and MIKE MANLEY, links, color section and more!

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DRAW! #14

DRAW! #15

DRAW! #16

DRAW! #17

DRAW! #18

DRAW! #19

In-depth interviews and demos with DOUG MAHNKE, OVI NEDELCU (Pigtale, WB Animation), STEVE PURCELL (Sam and Max), MIKE MANLEY and BRET BLEVINS’ COMIC ART BOOTCAMP on “Using Black to Power up Your Pages”, product reviews, and more!

Covers major schools offering comic art as part of their curriculum, in an ultimate overview of collegiate-level comic art classes! Plus, a “how-to” demo/interview with BILL REINHOLD, MIKE MANLEY and BRET BLEVINS’ COMIC ART BOOTCAMP series, and more!

In-depth interview with HOWARD CHAYKIN, behind the drawing board and animation desk with JAY STEPHENS, COMIC ART BOOTCAMP on HOW TO USE REFERENCE and WORKING FROM PHOTOS (by BRET BLEVINS and MIKE MANLEY), and more!

Interview and tutorial with Scott Pilgrim’s BRYAN LEE O’MALLEY on how he creates the acclaimed series, learn how B.P.R.D.’s GUY DAVIS creates his series, more Comic Art Bootcamp: Learning from The Great Cartoonists by BRET BLEVINS and MIKE MANLEY, reviews, and more!

Interview & demo by R.M. GUERA, Cartoon Network’s JAMES TUCKER on the hit show “Batman: The Brave and the Bold,” plus product reviews by JAMAR NICHOLAS, and Comic Book Boot Camp’s “Anatomy: Part 2” by BRET BLEVINS and MIKE MANLEY!

DOUG BRAITHWAITE demo and interview, DANNY FINGEROTH’s new feature on writer/artists with R. SIKORYAK, BOB McLEOD critiques a newcomer’s work, JAMAR NICHOLAS reviews art supplies and tool tech, COMIC ART BOOTCAMP on penciling & more!

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DRAW! #20

DRAW! #21

DRAW! #22

WALTER SIMONSON interview and demo, Rough Stuff’s BOB McLEOD gives a “Rough Critique” of a newcomer’s work, Write Now’s DANNY FINGEROTH spotlights writer/artist AL JAFFEE, JAMAR NICHOLAS reviews the best art supplies and tool technology, MIKE MANLEY and BRET BLEVINS offer “Comic Art Bootcamp” lessons, plus Web links, book reviews, and more!

Urban Barbarian DAN PANOSIAN talks shop about his gritty, designinspired work with editor MIKE MANLEY, DANNY FINGEROTH interviews “Billy Dogma” writer/artist DEAN HASPIEL, plus more 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 JAMAR NICHOLAS, and more!

Interview with inker SCOTT WILLIAMS from his days at Marvel and Image to his work with JIM LEE, FRANK MILLER interview, plus MILLER and KLAUS JANSON show their working processes. 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!

(84-page magazine with COLOR) $7.95 US • (Digital edition) $3.95

(84-page magazine with COLOR) $7.95 US • (Digital edition) $3.95

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THE PROFESSIONAL “HOW-TO” MAGAZINE ON COMICS & CARTOONING WWW.DRAW-MAGAZINE.BLOGSPOT.COM SUMMER 2013 VOL. 1, No. 25 Editor-in-Chief • Michael Manley Managing Editor and Designer • Eric Nolen-Weathington Publisher • John Morrow Logo Design • John Costanza Front Cover • Lee Weeks DRAW! Summer 2013, Vol. 1, No. 25 was produced by Action Planet, Inc. and published by TwoMorrows Publishing.

Michael Manley, Editor. John Morrow, Publisher.

Editorial address: DRAW! Magazine, c/o Michael Manley, 430 Spruce Ave., 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 2013 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, or historical purposes with no infringement intended or implied.

This entire issue is ©2013 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 China. FIRST PRINTING.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

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LEE WEEKS

Mike Manley interviews the artist’s artist on creating from the abstract and the process of discovery

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Joe Rubinstein

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Yildiray Çinar

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ÇINAR GALLERY

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rough critique

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comic art bootcamp

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The crusty Critic

Inker extraordinaire Joe Rubinstein offers advice and demos his approach to inking

Mike Manley talks with the Turkish sensation about making it big in the American comics industry

A gallery of Yildiray Çinar’s personal sketches and commissioned illustrations

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

Mike Manley flies solo this time out.

This issue’s installment: Color tells the story.

Jamar Nicholas reviews the tools of the trade.

This issue: Sensu Portable Artist Brush and Stylus

www.twomorrows.com DRAW! SUMMER 2013

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-ING AHEAD

op the champagne and throw the confetti— DRAW! has reached its 25th issue! I’d love to thank John Morrow and Eric Nolen-Weathington for being there all along and helping DRAW! look great and get out the door every issue. I’d also love to thank my regular contributors, Bob McLeod, Bret Blevins, and Jamar Nicholas. Regrettably, this is also Bob’s last issue as a regular contributor with his “Rough Critique” column, but we have a great new regular contributor ready to step up to the plate—Jerry Ordway! Jerry’s coming on board to give us plenty of shop talk and behind the scenes tips and tricks culled from his stellar career.

I’d like to dedicate this issue to several great Golden Age and Silver Age artists who have passed since our last issue, Joe Kubert, Carmine Infantino, and in the last week Dan Adkins. All of these artists put the “bricks in the building” as I call it. You can’t think of comics over the last 50 years without Kubert and Infantino—their work is still part of our foundation and language we use today as comic artists, and their work will stand the test of time.

Now go Draw something!

NEXT ISSUE IN OCTOBER! DRAW! #26 (80 pages, now in its new full-color format, $8.95 print/$3.95 digital), the professional “how-to” magazine on comics and animation, travels from the desolate Barsoom to the cold winds of Cimmeria to track down the legendary illustrator Joe Jusko! He demonstrates his process on creating some of the top fantasy art being produced today. Also, JAMAR NICHOLAS interviews JIM RUGG, the artist behind STREET ANGEL, AFRODISIAC, and THE PLAIN JANES. DRAW! is also proud to welcome new regular contributor Jerry Ordway with a new ongoing feature on his behind-thescenes working process as an industry legend. And there are the usual columns you know and love: “Comic Book Bootcamp” with Mike Manley and Bret Blevins and “The Crusty Critic” with Jamar Nicholas! Edited by Mike Manley.

SUBSCRIPTIONS: Four issues in the US: $30 Standard, $40 First Class, $11.80 Digital Only Outside the US: Canada: $43, Elsewhere: $54 Surface, $78 Airmail

TwoMorrows.A New Day For Comics Fans!

TwoMorrows Publishing • 10407 Bedfordtown Drive • Raleigh, NC 27614 USA • 919-449-0344 • FAX: 919-449-0327 E-mail: store@twomorrowspubs.com • See free previews and order at www.twomorrows.com

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the Art of Discovery Interview conducted by Mike Manley on Feb. 24, 2013 and transcribed by Eric Nolen-Weathington

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Lee’s thumbnail rough and finished pencils for the cover of Hulk Smash Avengers #2.

Hulk, Iron Man © Marvel Characters, Inc.

DRAW!: So you’re getting ready to go to Toronto?

LEE WEEKS: Going to Toronto in a little less than two weeks.

DRAW!: I know they have two shows up there. Which one are you going to?

LW: Apparently, they’re run by the same people. They have a big three-day show and a two-day show. I’m going to the two-day one, which he claims is about a 20,000-person attendance. Apparently that three-day one is pretty big. I don’t know if he’s exaggerating; a lot of times those guys will pad the numbers to get you to come. I went to Heroes Con for the first time last year, and that was about 20,000, maybe a little less. I thought that was a perfect show—the best show I’ve ever been to.

DRAW!: I’ve been to the Heroes Con before myself, and it reminded me of what conventions used to be like, where it

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wasn’t about all the celebrities or whatever. It was about people who liked comic books and wanted to come talk to people who draw and write comic books, and have that experience.

You go to most of the other shows now and if you’re a comic guy, you’re in the ghetto. You’re way in the back, and it’s all about the guy on whatever TV show—The Walking Dead or whatever show is hot now.

LW: Yeah, you seed the show, you grow the show, now we’ll move in and push you to the back of the bus and take over the show.

DRAW!: You’re back working on Daredevil now?

LW: Yeah, actually a small story arc I’ve been working on way too long. It’s the kind of thing where I work on it a little bit, then I step away from it for a few weeks at a time. It’s actually a story I came up with about five years ago, and it sat in a drawer a couple of years before somebody approved it. They told me to do it the way I wanted to do it. It’s a weird situation, but they

let me go away into my corner and do it the way I wanted. I’ve been doing a lot of stuff on the side—commissions, more convention appearances. It’s been a strange decade.

DRAW!: You’ve been posting some of the commissions on Facebook, and they look great. It’s not like the con head sketch, quick with a Sharpie before you go out the door. These are really nice, nice drawings.

LW: Thank you very much. It’s always my goal to make sure they get more than what they pay for.

Honestly, I don’t remember when I’ve had as much fun drawing, so it’s very easy to put more time into these. Something’s happened in the past year.

A lot of it has to do with connecting on Facebook, which I used to despise the idea of, but I signed up a year ago this month, and started stepping back into the convention scene a little bit. I’d been away mostly for nearly a decade, and totally away for about five years. I try to do the New York show each year. And then I added another one, and then last year was the most I’ve ever done in one year. I did six.

two regrets. “Oh man. I didn’t get over to see Jerry Robinson.

I’ve never met Jerry”—or whoever it was that particular year.

But I like connecting with the fans. I feel like I was too isolated for a few years.

DRAW!: I know there are a lot of negative things about Facebook, but I find as an artist it’s a great way to reach out to people and to stay connected to people. Blevins started doing that.

He has a fan page, and he’s really been posting a lot the past month or two, and he’s getting a lot of great responses and feedback. Because that’s where everybody is. Everybody is on Facebook, and I really enjoy it for that aspect.

I’m sure in five years it’ll be how MySpace used to be. As soon as Facebook came along, everyone said, “See you, MySpace!”

LW: I was waiting for Yogi Berra there.

“Nobody goes to the beach anymore; it’s too crowded.” [laughter] “Nobody goes to Facebook anymore; it’s too crowded.”

But for right now, gosh, I didn’t realize how much I appreciated the direct feedback. When you take a long time on a job, it’s a weird way to wait month to month to month to get feedback on something.

DRAW!: The last time that I saw you DRAW!: You and I might have been the were cutting our teeth last New York show around the same time.

I did, which might We both worked on that have been four or five Remo Williams, The years ago. I stopped Destroyer comic. going myself. I just kind LW: Yours was good! of got burnt out on having Yours was good! to haul all my stuff with me and everything. I did a little show DRAW!: You’re being up near Allentown back in August, and far too kind. that was fun. The people were very nice LW: That underwater and everything. But doing the whole selfstuff. I remember that; that publishing thing and the magazine, you was beautiful. would drag your comics, and drag all your artwork, and drag all your back issues, A Rocketeer convention commission piece.

DRAW!: The nice part of that was and set everything up, I found it became I got Al Williamson to ink some of that.

Rocketeer © The Estate of Dave Stevens. a diminishing return for my effort. And But that was one of those five pages a the part that I liked the most was seeing guys like you and other day kind of things. But I really liked yours. Even though I’ve friends I wouldn’t see very often. So I said, “I can sell my pages always admired your drawing, because you draw beautifully, on eBay. I don’t need to pull all that stuff with me.” I find the the thing I always admire the most about your work—that’s social aspect of the show much more enjoyable. gotten even better—is your storytelling.

LW: Yeah, at the show itself, I always promise myself that— LW: It was drilled into me that that was the most important there are all these great giants. We’re losing a few every year. thing. I always listen to my elders—try to listen to my elders.

I promise myself to get over there, but invariably I can’t get [laughter] I was only one year into Kubert School, but that away from the table, and I leave the show with at least one or was the thing that I remembered, that it doesn’t matter how

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(right) Lee’s thumbnail rough for Captain Marvel #2, page 3. He starts small with very basic shapes, then works a bit larger with a bit more detail added. Notice he tries a second approach for panel 3, but he ends up using his initial idea. (below) Lee’s finished pencils for the page.

All characters © Marvel Characters, Inc.

pretty the pictures are if you don’t tell the story.

And conversely, you can have some less than pretty pictures that tell a great story. It‘s the part that’s most interesting to me. I love all parts of it, but it’s the puzzle part I love so much about this—figuring out how to get all the right beats on the page or the scene, and when to go in for the close-up and when to pull back. I love all that stuff.

DRAW!: You went to the Kubert School. Did they give you any particular philosophy or way of digesting that, figuring out like, “Where should I pull back? Why should I go in?” I mean, Joe Kubert was the genius of that. I’ve never disagreed with anything I’ve read when I was looking at his work. It’s like Kirby— it’s perfect. You can’t think of a better way of doing it or a better solution.

LW: Yeah, to this day—I don’t think he’s the greatest comic book artist, but one of the greatest drawers ever—and John Buscema. And I ran into him once—I got to meet him a few times in the late ’80s, maybe early ’90s, in the Marvel offices—and I mentioned I went to Joe’s school, and he so sincerely said, “Oh, Kubert.

That guy’s perfect.” You just said he’s perfect, and that made me think of John saying he was the perfect cartoonist. He said, “Never one line too many, one line too few.” And he probably called him some name in an affectionate way. I think he did in fact. [Mike laughs] If it was spoken of as a philosophy, I probably didn’t even know what philosophy meant

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Lee’s pencils and inks for Amazing Spider-Man #627, page 20.

Juggernaut, Spider-Man © Marvel Characters, Inc.

at the time, you know what I mean? But I know we discussed those things. And certainly something like an establishing shot, the purpose of that is right in the name. I don’t remember specific conversations.

It’s weird, but one of the most comfortable things I heard about storytelling was before I got to the Kubert School. I went to a fine art school right out of high school. It freaked me out. I didn’t do well with it and dropped out after a year and then took a year off. In that year off, when I was figuring out what I was going to do, a couple of my friends—boy, I wouldn’t have never done any of this without these guys because they were the ones who were tuned into what was going on in the industry. I wasn’t; I just wanted to draw. We were up in Augusta, Maine, and Bob Layton was going to be at Moonshadow Comics in Portland, and they took me down there. He was going to be looking at portfolios and everything. Something he said, he talked about the importance of imagining yourself sitting in a director’s chair on a crane and being able to move around and visualize and imagine what you would like to see if you were watching this thing. It was such a simple idea, but the importance of using your imagination and picturing it the way you would like it to unfold, I don’t know. It seemed to unlock a place in my thinking.

DRAW!: Which fine art school did you go to?

LW: I went to Portland School of Fine Art, which at the time was getting quite a reputation as being an avant garde school where things were happening—cutting edge—but it was so non-representational. I’m still not sure of the value of going that far with it. For the first two years I had this thing called The Foundation Program. We were just discards who did anything representational. It was such a culture shock to me. I had no formal training. I couldn’t grip my head around what they were talking about for much of the time. I didn’t understand abstract concepts. It was very abstract. It was weird because one thing that unlocked part of the mystery for me was looking at a Kirby comic book one night [chuckles] and watching those gamma beams come through the ship in the origin. “Wow, there’s repetition in the type of shapes, and the variation.” I started to implement that into my abstract assignments, and all of a sudden they were the ones being hung up on the critique wall. [laughter] I’m thinking to myself, “Man, I’m just thinking Kirby when I’m doing abstract.”[laughter] DRAW!: What year was that?

LW: I graduated high school in ’81, so fall of ’81, spring of ’82.

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DRAW!: That’s what happened to me my first time in school. It’s funny, because comics were starting a little renaissance, but in art school it was definitely non-figurative, non-narrative. I did the same thing. I went for a year, and in my second year I dropped out. And I didn’t actually go back to school until I was 45, so there was a long stretch in between.

Your storytelling was always very good, very spot-on, and I think it’s much more sophisticated now. Do you approach it in a different way than even say 15 years ago?

LW: I don’t think it’s in any kind of cerebral way that I approach it differently.

I don’t think it’s a conscious difference in method, but I feel like I go more and more for the gut in my drawing and everything. I feel like that’s what’s happening in this past year. I feel there’s more and more improvisation coming into my drawing and into the way I’m doing things, even though it looks very constructed—and it is constructed—but I just know there’s this other thing that’s happening more and more that’s bringing more life into the drawing.

And it goes back to something I’ve known for a bunch of years, and I think I’m extremely blessed to have the two art school experiences, even just one year of each. And not just that, but the constant study of anatomy, constant study of different guys. But I’m so grateful for that first year. That stuff still filters in because the things that make great pictures are the abstract elements. If you don’t have the composition and design in those abstract elements, it will be a greatly drawn dead picture. I’ve seen with the paintings you post—just amazing. The compositions in your paintings always blow me away.

DRAW!: Oh, thank you.

LW: I wish I could find the lines in your paintings. I don’t know if that’s intentional or not, because that one with a roof that’s sloped on one side and straight down on the other—just the way the roof interacted with those lines in the trees.

A commission piece in its sketch, pencil, and finished ink stages.

Elektra © Marvel Characters, Inc.

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The finished piece was done in pencil, marker, and ink wash.

Batman © DC Comics

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DRAW!: I agree with you that the foundation for everything is strong abstract compositions, no matter how you tend to go and render it, whether you want to make it super-realistic or keep it very abstract. And that’s the thing that’s inexhaustible.

You can never exhaust having good compositions, especially when you’re telling a story. I call it the emotional composition. That’s what holds the whole thing together. When you’re younger, you’re very conscious of trying to juggle all the different balls. “I want to do this, and I want to show how I can do this, and I need to do this.” And I think it’s a natural path that as artists get older, they tend to work in a broader, or looser, or bolder way, so maybe that’s where you’re going if you say you’re working more from the gut. Kubert was a guy who worked very much from the gut. You could see he used his intellect as far as the layout and the design. And Kirby, obviously, was a guy that was all gut. Everything was gut— the way he drew fingers, the doorknobs, everything.

LW: Even somebody like Frazetta, who knew so much about the figure, but that’s gut. I mean, he’s just ripping it.

They both have to be present. I find a great analogy in—I’m a big student of the Bible—this idea of living by the law in the Old Testament and there’s some talk of living by the spirit in the New Testament. And it’s kind of like those two art school experiences, with the abstract and this more of a feeling thing, but you can’t do it apart from the rules and the law. It’s just that the rules and the law have to be so beat into your heart and your head that they’re part of the gut experience, so it’s not ungrounded.

As I’m drawing, I’ll be intending one thing as I’m beginning, but I’ll see it in another way as I’m drawing, and I have to make these split-second decisions. “Oh, it’s over here. The head’s over here.” Whenever I get the chance to teach, the first thing I say is that drawing is more about seeing than it is about how dexterous your hands are. It’s about

what’s in your head, in your heart, and what your audience is seeing, and how you’re responding to that. And if the line is a little less than perfect, who cares? It’s teaching yourself how to see. That’s how I see it anyway.

DRAW!: Where have you taught?

LW: Twenty years ago I taught a little night class. When I say, “Get a chance to teach,” I mean even just lecture for a day. I was actually down in your neck of the woods last year at Philadelphia University. They have a digital animation department.

I didn’t know how long they wanted me to go. After about an hour and a half and was like, “Look, I can stop here.” They said, “No, no, keep going.” We went for three hours formally and then another three hours informally.

When I’m blocking out a story, I group things in paragraphs. I don’t go crazy with insets, but if I can set something apart, if something feels like a thought on its own—I’m not doing this consciously, but I do that kind of stuff a lot just to give it clarity.

One of the things that stuck with me from my lettering teacher at Kubert School, Hy Eisman, was the importance of silhouettes. Silhouettes give a nice visual break if things get too busy. It’s a nice place on a page—I started calling it visual karma—to catch your breath. It functions in many other ways as well, but just in that sense, if everything has a certain level of gray-white balance, to have a nice, simple—it takes no effort to read or see. It lets you catch your breath before you get dive into the more busy stuff.

DRAW!: Wow! LW: We just went and hung out together. It was a blast. I love doing it. But even if it’s just a one-on-one thing, if I get a chance to mentor somebody a little bit, that’s the thing I try to stress—learning how to see. A favorite musician of mine growing up—I still listen to him, just not as much—a jazz guitarist, Pat Methany. I remember hearing an interview with him where he said the same thing, just from an audio side. “It’s about hearing. You have to hear it.” He talked about playing to that excitable part of him on the inside. Playing to listen. Drawing to see.

DRAW!: I was talking to Eric [NolenWeathington] today. You know Eric. We were talking about how there are all these schools you can go to for comics. When we were coming up, you could go to the Kubert School, maybe you could go to SVA if you lived in New York, and for a brief time John Buscema had that school, and now there are all these universities and all these resources for learning how to do comics and graphic novels. Every place you go there are classes.

It’s like this whole industry of education has grown up about how to do comics. That’s something within the past ten years that’s become this huge thing, but before that you kind of figured it out, or maybe if you were lucky you lived in New York and lived close to somebody and could be an apprentice and pick up a few things. Like you said, you were lucky you got enough of the information when you were at the Kubert School that you were able to take it and run with it.

LW: Yeah, absolutely. I also find lots of parallels between the storytelling of the drawing and writing. I think they’re very similar; we’re just using a different dialect.

A page from Amazing Spider-Man #627 featuring a nice use of silhouettes.

Spider-Man © Marvel Characters, Inc.

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Lee’s thumbnail layout sketches working out a sequence from Daredevil: Dark Nights #2.

Daredevil © Marvel Characters, Inc.

DRAW!: So you’re writing this Daredevil story too? You’re doing everything on this?

LW: Yeah, and actually we just got Lee Loughridge to color it.

DRAW!: Oh, that’s great.

LW: I wrote a few things about twelve, thirteen years ago, and the last big thing I wrote was really the most rewarding I’d ever done up to that point. I just never got around to writing other things until now.

DRAW!: As opposed to getting a full script or a plot, how do you go about doing this? Do you write it down first as a loose plot for yourself? Do you work it out in little visual notes?

How do you structure it for yourself?

LW: It’s back and forth. I’ll write it, then I’ll take an 8½" x 11" sheet and put 22 little rough panels on that and start targeting places where the beats have to go. But I work back and forth between the writing and thumbnailing. I kind of wish I had more of a method. It feels like it’s very organic.

This thing that I wrote a thousand years ago, I had this scene, and I built the story around the scene. This was similar, but it was kind of motivated by a sense of the loss of heroism

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in the hero. I saw a scene in my head, just one scene, of Matt Murdoch lying face down in the snow in this snowstorm and people were on the street walking past him. There’s more to it than this, but this was the visual that I saw.

DRAW!: And you just built out from that?

LW: Yeah, yeah. I don’t remember where the main spine came from. It’s a story about Daredevil—and, again, this idea came five years ago, way before these blizzards we’ve been having— having to truck through the mother of all blizzards. Everything is shut down, and there’s a donor organ that was being delivered to a hospital in Manhattan, and it went down near the Hudson.

Nothing is moving and nothing can get to it. Daredevil sets off on foot in a compromised situation with very little of his powers, so he’s not bopping around in a Daredevil-esque way.

DRAW!: When you start laying out the pages, have you already dialogued the pages, or do you dialogue it after you lay it out?

LW: I do both, because sometimes the dialogue will read to the picture, but then the picture will become something more specific and will dictate that to the dialogue. I really

Lee’s thumbnail layout and finished pencils for page 15 of Daredevil: Dark Nights #1.

Daredevil © Marvel Characters, Inc.

see the words and the pictures as two melodies, like a piece of classical music. Sometimes they run parallel, but there are these opportunities that come up for the two to intersect in a way to get those punchy moments. It’s like a collision of words and pictures. I can’t always—I don’t know what I’m doing. [laughter] Sometimes I can get that right off the bat and I know it in the words and I see it all at once, but a lot of times those moments happen in a back and forth way.

DRAW!: Is it different working that way than if someone gives you a plot? Is it affecting your process in any way?

LW: Yeah, I think it’s affecting it greatly, because it is more fluid. I’ve gone back and forth too much honestly. I’m exploring too much in places I think. But it definitely affects the process. When I’m drawing someone else’s story, I feel so obligated to that story I don’t muck with things; I don’t change things. I’ve worked with writers who say, “Man, you didn’t change anything.” I say, “Should I? I’m drawing your story.” If there’s something I’m inspired to do, I check. I say, “Hey, look, I have this idea.”

I hear about guys changing stuff, I go, “How can you do that?

Hasn’t the writer intended a path through this story? If he’s got Jerry doing this on panel three of page ten, how do you know that isn’t going to directly pertain to what’s going to happen in the next issue?” Again, it was something that was drilled into me at the Kubert School. But being the writer, I don’t feel that obligation.

DRAW!: Since you’re the alpha and omega, it’s different, because you have the ability to say, “Well, maybe visually something here will work better,” or, “Here I can have some interior dialogue that will be difficult to show through physical action.” I’m always interested in that process, because when you’re generating everything yourself or you’re in service of adapting someone else’s story—and we’ve both had enough experience on this point. You have some people who give you

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a plot, and it’s a phone book, and you have some people who give you a plot, and it’s a fortune cookie. [laughter] You have to make the whole thing up.

LW: I don’t know how many fortune cookies I’ve had, but I’ve had plenty of phone books. I remember early on when I ran into those plots, where it might be a page-by-page plot and page 11 goes on for three pages. “This will take 15 panels.

How can I possibly fit all of this on one page?” The tendency is to start drawing defensively. You can see some guys when they do pages like that, you see the panels start to get smaller and bunched up all over the page. I tried hard really early on to say, “Okay, if I’m going to do this, I’m going to make it look like it was my idea all along.” And I think it was the right approach. There are times when I take a block of nine panels and turn it into a tight, little block just to make it look intentional. I don’t want it to look like the thing was getting out of my control.

DRAW!: I’ve heard that happened sometimes with Gene Colan. He would do all that crazy, cool storytelling, then he would get to the end of the book and was like, “Uh oh, I’ve got to jam a bunch of pages in here.”

LW: That’s the guy! I mean, I love Gene Colan, so I feel bad picking on him. He’s amazing. But that’s exactly right! The early Daredevil stuff he did, with these big, breathy scenes, and then you get to the end and it’s squishing, squishing, squishing. But Gene’s great.

DRAW!: Yeah, his stuff really had that—I don’t know. You felt like you were being spun around the whole time. I always loved his stuff. It’s too bad too; the technology exists now where you could shoot now—as awesome as I think Tom Palmer is, there’s that quality you get in the pencils from somebody like that. A pencil is different than a pen-and-ink drawing. Such beautiful, beautiful drawings. Even Kirby—I love his drawings. As much as I love Joe Sinnott, I just love the quality of the pencils.

LW: When those Kirby Collectors started coming out, I had never seen Kirby’s pencils before, or if I had, it was only morsels of them. I can’t believe the level of subtlety in the pencils. There’s a real sensitivity I had no idea was there in Kirby’s pencils.

DRAW!: I always had the feeling that he was drawing very real, very distinct people as opposed to doing stylized drawing. I think the people who imitated him were imitating the stylizations, but his people had the feeling of real people even though he had a very kinetic style. His characters had a real feeling of life about them in the pencil drawings. There was a lot of naturalism in there and observed themes. Even though it was highly stylized, there were little bits of observed naturalism, little gestures and stuff he would put in there if you really paid attention to it.

LW: I totally, totally agree. And even in the action—maybe ten years ago I had to do a retelling of the Hulk’s origin. I went back to that first Kirby Hulk, and some of the stuff in there, in taking a closer look, it was like seeing it for the first time in some ways. The way those figures move is amazing.

There’s that page with a jeep full of soldiers crashing into the Hulk; it’s just beautiful. It’s just a little panel in the middle of the page, but it’s so naturalistic.

DRAW!: That’s a point, I think, that touches on your work.

Everybody has the big wow panels, but a lot of the panels I love by you are the panels of subtlety, like a guy sitting in an office. You posted one on Facebook a while ago. It was an interior of a guy sitting in a room, and it was just a beautiful little composition. And you’re right, Kirby could create such power and drama in those nine-panel pages he used to do in the early Marvel stuff, that had more weight, more power than other people using a double-page spread. Everything was in service of the story.

LW: Don’t you think that power has so much to do with—and not having painted very much at all, I’m sincerely asking you as one who has done a lot of it—when you’re painting some of those great reflective light areas in a shadow, and some of the color is coming forward, the appearance of the color that’s reflected isn’t what the color is going to look like if it’s sitting by itself, right?

For more in-depth coverage of Lee Weeks' working processes, don't miss Modern Masters: Lee Weeks, available now at your local comic book store, or direct from www.twomorrows.com.

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DRAW!: Right.

LW: I think that’s what guys like Kirby and Eisner got so readily that maybe guys going for the double-page spread miss, that you can get a lot of punch in something if you’ve

Wolverine © Marvel Characters, Inc.

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taken care with the pacing and the rhythm, the crescendos and the dips in the storytelling. If you throw everything but the kitchen sink at something on page two, what are you going to do come page 22 when you get to the climax? Every time I talk about this, I think about the Miller/Mazzucchelli “Batman: Year One.” I think that’s the most beautiful example of that—just holding back so you can just punch somebody in the face with something that’s not necessarily the biggest image or the craziest action, but it’s in the context of everything that comes before and after that makes it feels so great.

trying to do it big and dramatic, over and over and over again.

“It doesn’t look right. Maybe I’ve got to make it bigger.” But something happened, at one point after wrestling with this for a while, I turned it around. I went really small and left all the space around him. He was just tiny, and it was so much better. Because the story in that panel wasn’t how big he was, it was how small he was. It was the space around him that was important. If I drew him big, he was so close to the border of the page the reader unconsciously would think, “There could be something he can grab onto, something just off-panel.”

You didn’t get the sense of the situation he’s in if he was so close to the border. So I try to remember that when I get stuck on something. “Is there a way to turn this off inside and think completely opposite of the way I’ve been thinking about it?”

DRAW!: We all have those days when we get stuck, or the muse is not in the room. Do you have a way of dealing with that? Do you go pull a Kubert book out, or go for a walk?

LW: I don’t think I’ve done very well with that for a number of years. I’ve had a weird stretch the last number of years. I don’t know what the answer to that is. I’ve had some pretty bad stretches, so it’s been a struggle.

DRAW!: A struggle to work or to solve the problem?

LW: Yeah, to work. It’s been a weird decade of health stuff. I won’t go into all of it, but it’s a strange few years. And not being as inspired by the general tone of the industry, and struggling with my place in it, and coming to grips with not being able to do certain things anymore— and not wanting to do certain things anymore.

In years past sometimes the work would get hard to do—back in the early ’90s. It seemed like the thing that worked for me then was, when it got hard, make it harder. [laughter] DRAW!: Put more weight on the bar. I can’t lift 100 pounds, put 400 on. [laughter] LW: No, to make it harder meaning, I need to find something I do badly, which there’s plenty of, and break it down and challenge myself so it becomes interesting, so I get lost in the problem solving part again. And that would re-engage me. I don’t know if there’s a boredom that was setting in.

A breakdown for Lee’s Daredevil: Dark Nights #1, complete with margin notes.

Daredevil © Marvel Characters, Inc.

DRAW!: That’s true. And if you go back through comics history and you look at the iconic pages, they’re often not the big, giant, double-page splash pages, they’re the little SpiderMan costume tossed in the garbage can.

LW: That’s right. The moment. There are these kind of awakening moments when you’re working. I’m doing a book, and I’m struggling with this shot. It’s an important shot with Daredevil on a bus getting slammed into the dash. The bus crashes into a wall in the Port Authority, and when you turn the page, the bus is supposed to be outside and you’re seeing the bus crash through the wall and Daredevil plowing through the windshield. It just sounds so big and so dramatic, so I kept

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DRAW!: I’m sure everybody who’s done it a long time has to fight the feeling of boredom from time to time, because you’re retelling very similar stories a lot of times. You’re covering sort of the same ground very often—a lot of the same situations or scenarios—and you’re always trying to figure out, “How can I do a shot of the Batcave that’s different than all of the other shots of the Batcave that I’ve drawn?”

LW: Right, right. Guys that are much more productive than me, I’ve thought about that. “They’ve gone through so many more versions of the shots than me, how do they do it?” Because that happens. I don’t know how it’s done, but I know it has to be tried.

DRAW!: Do you find you lay out things two or three different ways and say, “Okay, this one is working better than the other one,” or, “This one’s too obvious. I need to find a different shot to serve the story more interestingly”?

LW: When I get a script, the first thing I do is reformat it a little bit in Word so that I have a nice two- or three-inch right-hand margin, and I go down and read through once and highlight the parts I’ll need to read the second time through to remind myself what it is, so I can read it fast. The second time through, I’ll go through with a pencil, and if something pops to mind, “This has to look like this,” I’ll scribble in the right-hand margin just a thought—an image or whatever to trigger my memory of what came to me when I thought of that shot. After reading a couple of times like that—if it’s something I’m really involved in, I like to read it three or four times—I’ll start thumbnailing. Often I do too many thumbnails, because I end up going back to one of the early ones.

The way I’ve been doing it for the past several years, is I do— probably a little less than half the size of a 8½" x 11"—I’ll do my tighter rough about that size, scan it in, print it back out at 10" x 15",

Lee was unhappy with the angle of the building, so he worked out a new perspective on a separate sheet of paper.

Daredevil © Marvel Characters, Inc.

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Daredevil © Marvel Characters, Inc.

For this Amazing Spider-Man page, Lee scanned in his rough and digitally added the black and the text .

Spider-Man © Marvel Characters, Inc.

and work from that. When I say “tighter,” something John Buscema used to say was, “At each stage, you’ve got to leave yourself something to do.” If I’m just tracking what I did, it’s life-sucking; it’s just going to take the life right out of the drawing. He had a similar process, but he did it full-sized and worked on newsprint to do the scribbly structures, then he put it on a lightbox to tighten it up.

DRAW!: Yeah, I own some of those, and I love them because there’s the story. You see everything there. He can make it prettier, but if it’s going to work, it’s going to work at that stage. They’re just beautiful, loose, gestural drawings.

LW: The lines that move through the page. You saw How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way years ago?

DRAW!: Yeah, I got that for Christmas when it came out.

LW: I had been out of comics when that came out. I got back in—five years as a kid is like forever—in ’79, around 17, I got reintroduced to comics and got so excited. Within that year I got that book. I remember going to the back where John talks about composition—it was kind of like abstract art which you and I talked about earlier. That tripped me out. “You’ve got to think

about this stuff? You’ve got to think about lines of action?” [laughter] I just started to feel stupid. “I don’t know how to do this.” What I didn’t realize is a lot of that is afterthought stuff. I don’t consciously sit there and go, “Okay, I’ve got to have this line move through the page in this direction so it goes left to right, and I’ve got to make sure that that lynch is laid through the panel so that—”. I don’t think that, but it happens. If you don’t do it, it feels like someone’s dragging their fingers across a chalkboard. It’s that gut thing. It’s coming from a rule, but it’s not a Bible rule.

DRAW!: So you take your little rough and you blow it up. Do you print it out in non-photo blue?

LW: No, I just print it out on copy paper in two pieces. Actually, what I’ll do often is—they’re like mannequins, but they’re very loose mannequins. Some of them have more than that. It’s very fluid. I’ll print them out at 90%, 100%, and 110%, because invariably there will be a close-up I didn’t do big enough, or something I drew too small, or a place where I need more room for copy. So I try to give myself a few options that way, but it’s still very fluid because there’s still a lot of drawing left to do on the finished board.

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DRAW!: Do you trace them off on a lightbox?

LW: I get that down on the lightbox, and I take them a step further on the lightbox than what’s on the Xerox rough. Then I bring them over to the other drawing table and finish them from there.

DRAW!: How much has your work process changed from when you first started 15, 20 years ago?

LW: I’ve done it a few different ways. I used to change my method more often. I’d do it one way for a while and then just mix it up just to try something different.

I remember that John Buscema method. I did that—I can’t believe they didn’t call it this. They should have called it The Busceminar. [laughter] Did you ever go to one of those?

DRAW!: No, I was never fortunate enough to attend one of his chalk talks.

LW: I don’t know if they did this every year, or if I just happened to be coming in the years that he did it, but it was a great idea, and I wish they would do stuff like that now because it was tremendous.

DRAW!: You’ll have to be the guy to do it now, Lee. You’ll have to be the guy coming in to coach the troops.

LW: Well, as long as they have another guy coming in to coach the deadline portion. [laughter] With John you got the whole package.

Lee then blew up the thumbnail and used a lightbox to get his pencils down.

Spider-Man © Marvel Characters, Inc.

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DRAW!: Deadlines don’t matter anymore, because everybody’s late all the time. People are turning things in two weeks from shipping. It used to be you were afraid to be late or you wouldn’t get the next job. Now everybody’s late.

LW: Yeah, it’s interesting how it’s changed.

In some ways—I’m not talking about quality of craft—there’s a greater degree of expectation of what’s on the page from the penciler.

It was simpler before. It was more of a deadline mentality 40, 50 years ago. I wish it was a little more like that today. I feel the expectation that there’s got to be a certain amount on the page. I like doing it the way I’m doing it, so I’m not complaining, but in some ways it’s not stuff that advances the story. It’s just detail or the amount of tightness or whatever.

I remember when we were kids, there were certain guys who were the butts of the jokes—the guys my friends used to call hacks. I think some of those journeymen were so far superior to a lot of the stuff we’re doing today.

DRAW!: One of the things I always say when I talk to younger artists is, in the old days, you had to be able to draw everything.

Because you’d go in to deliver pages, and the next thing would be, “Okay, we don’t have any more of this, but we have a western.”

“Okay.” And people were making, what, 35, 40 dollars a page? They weren’t making 500, 600 dollars a page like some top guys are making today. There was nowhere near that amount of money to be made, so they had to make it like Kirby or Ditko or Kane. They could do anything. They could do a western, or a romance, or a sci-fi. They just had to be more well rounded as artists in order to be able to function in the business.

LW: And they did it without the help of Google image search and Sketch Up.

DRAW!: That’s true. Coming from comics and going into fine art, the fact you have to draw on so much stored information, so much stuff that’s in your head—even in storyboarding or whatever—comics is a great training ground for that, because you have to be able to draw so many different types of situations and scenarios and solve so many different problems. Some people make careers out of doing one thing, and that’s great if it can happen for you, but it hasn’t been my experience. I’ve had to do a lot of different things.

A few years ago you were starting to get into the computer stuff.

Are you venturing forth with that, like Manga Studio or anything like that?

LW: No, the only area where I use the computer more is for certain effects on my pages. Like in my story there’s a blizzard and I want to do some really dense snow, and I don’t want to make the colorist’s life miserable, so I’ll do that on my end—stuff like that.

Also, I’m just catching up to a lot of things. I do feel like I’ve been kind of in a state of semi-retirement, so I feel like I’m relearning and learning anew a lot of things about what my capabilities are right now.

Just recently I wanted so badly to put some gray wash on some pages, and I remember it being drilled into us that if you’ve got a black line, every pixel has got to be black—it has to be a bitmap. But that’s no longer the case, I’m learning. It is new to see how much possibility there is within a page than I realized. There are more things to do and to try.

DRAW!: That’s the real upside of digital technology. It used to be, if something was going to be black, it had to be at least 40% gray for it to read black. There were certain colors you couldn’t use on certain books unless they had the K-tones. None of that matters now. You can draw with a crayon on a 2" x 4". As long as you can scan it, they can print it. It’s funny because I came across my old color charts the other day—the 64 colors plus the K-tones, so you could code it. Now the computer separates all that stuff out. You don’t have to do your color guide then go back and code it.

Lee’s finished inks.

Spider-Man © Marvel Characters, Inc.

LW: Amazing, too, some of the great coloring jobs done with such a small palette. Now the computers are made to color, but unfortunately, some guys feel they have to use every color.

DRAW!: I think it’s great you’re getting to work with a really good colorist, because we’ve both had the experience of setting up the page to create a certain tone or atmosphere, and then the colorist comes along and seems to work 100%

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© Lee Weeks

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against you. The worst is when they try to airbrush every little highlight or muscle so that it’s competing with your rendering.

LW: Oh, absolutely. It’s a competition; that’s exactly right.

Any of the guys who use a lot of light source where there’s black creating form, well that’s the language they set up. “Form will be defined by this.” Well, the way color defines form is completely different, so it’s two different languages, and that’s exactly what they do—they compete, unless you have a guy who knows how to do it subtly enough that it kind of harmonizes with the form established by the black-and-white. It’s like, “Why did you do form there? I just did that form, and now you’ve had to move the light source in order to render that form in color. Now there are two competing light sources.”

DRAW!: When Buscema did that Weird World—I think it was one of the last things he did where he seemed like he was excited about it. I remember seeing the pencil drawings and liking those a lot. I was lukewarm with some of the stuff Rudy Nebres did on him as an inker, and then they put that guy on him who colored it, and it was the most garish coloring ever in the history of the world, and it so competed with the artwork you couldn’t even look at it.

LW: You know what I think might be his best work? Did you ever see that thing he colored himself, that Conan graphic novel?

DRAW!: Yeah, yeah. I did say hello to him once, but I never really talked to him. He’s one of the guys I regret not knowing better.

LW: Going back to that abstract conversation, I called him once—I called him more than once, but one time I called him I asked him, “How do you do these big battle scenes with all the horses and all the people?” He had that Tony Soprano kind of thing going—not quite, but total New Yorker. Gruff, gruff voice. “I just see the page, and I take my pencil,” and he described putting in these vertical lines, but not parallel lines. He would bounce them up and down and across the page.

He would create this abstract relationship of these lines going through the panel, and he’d start looking at it. He said, “It’s about feeling. It’s about feeling.” He would just try to create a rhythm of these lines bouncing up and down and across. “That one would make a good tree. That would make a good sword.” [Mike laughs] He would start to see it come through out of the lines.

This is what I try to do now. “That one’s got to go.” Some of them gave him ideas, and some didn’t work, but through that he drew to the abstract rhythm.

DRAW!: That’s like a version of informal subdivision that Loomis would talk about in Creative Illustration—a way of breaking up the space.

LW: I’ve never studied that well. I would love to. I’ve heard people talk about his books, but I don’t have them.

DRAW!: You can even download a copy of Creative Illustration online. When I was younger, that was above my pay grade, but back in the early ’90s I revisited that book again.

I was wiser and more experienced then, and I used that book to come up with ways of breaking up and creating cool compositions.

I guess it’s like reading tea leaves. You look at these shapes and go, “Oh yeah, that’s a face, and that’s a tree, and that’s a guy on a horse.” And I would imagine for a guy like Buscema who had done thousands of pages, and how many hundreds of pages of guys with gangs of horses and guys chopping each other up,

This piece relies more on light to define the figure rather than shadow.

Hulk © Marvel Characters, Inc.

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(left and below) Thumbnail sketches for the first issue of the Hulk Smash Avengers mini-series. Lee liked the first pose and developed it further, including scanning it in and digitally adding dummy text to get a feel for how it would work within the design. (next page) However, by the time the cover was inked, poses were changed yet again. The Hulk is now in a more active pose, and the Avengers are more clearly readable.

Avengers, Hulk © Marvel Characters, Inc.

he probably had to have a way of keeping it interesting for himself just so he wouldn’t get bored. “Oh, here’s another standard shot of a guy’s head,” or, “Here’s another standard shot of this.”

LW: Yeah, absolutely. I also think there’s something about the idea that drawing is about discovery. It doesn’t come from me, but I kind of find it on the page. Even before I started thinking like this, there were times when I’d be wrestling with a panel and erasing it for the tenth time, and I’d say, “Darn it, I know you’re in there. I’m going to find you.” Well, that’s a weird thing to say, but I feel like the potential for every drawing is sitting there on white paper. To me it’s almost like a window in the yard and there’s a big, big tree, and in the shadows and shapes of the trees, you see faces—just like when you look up at clouds—and I can see them better than I’ve ever drawn them. “Whoa! There it is!”

I think so much of drawing really does come down to seeing, recognizing, and discovering. Because if it’s just what comes from me, it’s going to be an intellectualized, scaled version of what I want it to be, but if I’m responding to the drawing and seeing things as they pop up, I think that’s where the life is. For me, it’s where I find more life in the drawing, where I’m finding it rather than trying to impose it on the page.

DRAW!: Do you have any particular likes when it comes to the technical side of it. Do you like certain types of leads or mechanical pencils or carpenter pencils?

LW: I’m using a lead holder. Not the seven or nine millimeter ones—it’s thick. I don’t remember the size of the leads, but they come in a blue and white slide box, and they’re big.

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DRAW!: Do you like a soft lead or a hard lead?

LW: I jump around a little bit, but mostly I use an F. It’s between an H and an HB.

DRAW!: Are you still working on Marvel and DC paper, or do you use your own paper?

LW: Gosh, if you could recommend some good paper, I’d appreciate it. Marvel paper was perfect back in the late ’80s to mid-’90s. It was a Strathmore Series 400, double-pressed. Romita would send them to print the blue lines on them. I think they started with a kid or a rough finish, but that second time through the printing press would knock it down to—not a plate, not a smooth—.

DRAW!: Yeah, it would have just a little bit of tooth on it—just a teeny bit.

I still have some.

LW: You still have some left?

DRAW!: Yeah, a little. What I use for the Judge Parker strip is the Canson for the dailies, but for the Sundays— because I draw them bigger—I’ve been using the Strathmore 400 three-ply. I found if you bought the two-ply, it just wasn’t as good as it used to be. I don’t know if they’re not using as much rag content as they used to—and that’s what it comes down to is if they don’t have enough cotton or rag content, when you ink with a pen, everything will bleed.

LW: How long ago did you switch from the two-ply to the three-ply?

DRAW!: I guess when I started doing the strip. I had a supply of the old Marvel twice-up paper, and I used that for a while. Then I ran out, but I liked that size, and of course they don’t sell pad paper that size, so I would buy the sheets and cut them up at home. I’ve been doing that for a couple of years, and I really like that. The paper isn’t that expensive, and you can get two, maybe three pages out of it, depending on what size you’re working at. I’m working at 12" x 18" for the Sundays.

LW: I’ll definitely be trying the three-ply. I’ve been using the packs of 24 sheets you get through Blick.

DRAW!: That’s the stuff I use for the Judge Parker dailies, which is okay, but if you like to use a 108 or a nice pen on it, it doesn’t have a high enough rag content. If you want to ink with Pigmas or whatever, it’s okay.

LW: It seems like it changed again just in the last year and a half. It was iffy sometimes before that, but this last year, year and a half, I find the bleeding on the Series 400 two-ply has gotten worse.

DRAW!: That’s why I went to the three-ply. It feels like you’re working on a piece of illustration board. This is a hard enough business as it is just to do the volume of work at the quality you want. You don’t need your paper fighting you or bad pens on top of the deadline.

LW: It doesn’t erase very well for me. I don’t know what you’re using for ink, but I’ve been using Pelikan, and it grays out.

DRAW!: Bret talked to Walt Simonson yesterday, and Walt said they’re making the Pelikan ink again like the old Pelikan ink. They’re selling it through Blick, so maybe if you order some new Pelikan ink—the great old Pelikan was awesome.

That was the best stuff ever.

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LW: I think that’s what I have, because I ordered it through Blick. It flows really nice, but I don’t think it’s quite as black.

And the erasing—I don’t know if that was a paper problem or an ink problem, or maybe I’m just erasing too hard.

The ink is five or six bucks for a one-ounce bottle now. I think the suggested retail is something like seven dollars for a one-ounce bottle of Pelikan, but you can’t get the big one-liter bottles anymore. But I was searching online recently, and I found somebody in the UK that sells the liter bottles, so I went back and got a liter bottle.

DRAW!: Yeah, there’s stuff you can get overseas. You also may want to try some of the manga inks, like Deleter. You can still get Zip-a-tone from them and stuff like that that they don’t make in the States anymore.

LW: Something I’ve just learned in the last two weeks that I haven’t ordered yet, because it’s not cheap, is there are some places here you can get the liter bottles: tattoo supply places. They use Pelikan drawing ink. The UK guys sell it here because of the tattoo parlors. It’s not approved to be used for tattooing, so places here only sell the small bottles. I’m going to place an order; I think it’s 80 bucks for a liter bottle, but that will last me for a couple of years.

(this page and next) Thumbnail, pencils, and finished inks for a Hulk origin story.

Hulk © Marvel Characters, Inc.

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Joe Rubinstein racters, Inc.

nking is the act of applying ink over someone else’s or your own pencils/graphite drawings with brush, pen, marker, fingers—even digitally—so the drawing becomes dark enough to reproduced. While modern printing can and does more and more often reproduce directly from the pencils, I feel there is something desirable missing (but then again, I would).

Inking is not tracing, but like an actor with dialogue, or a musician with composed lines not of his own making, an inker has to make an art of interpreting the penciled lines very well, or at the very least do no harm.

Inking can be a lot of fun and also very boring. Fun and exciting because I’ve gotten to work with artists who were childhood heroes of mine, and also to work with some new, hot artist who’s making a splash in the industry at the moment.

Exciting when I have to rise to the challenge of finding a new way to work. Boring when it’s the same old style and the same old characters with the same old tools.

My mentor Dick Giordano taught me that it’s important to respect the penciler whom you are inking over and to change

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your approach to accommodate their philosophies and thinking while doing what you can to amplify that approach. Give them the respect you’d want from an inker. Not every inker is right for every penciler, and not every job is right for the tools that you may always use. I can use as many as four different kinds of pen nibs during a job and as many as two to three different size brushes. The pens can go from small and flexible to large and stiff.

I whittle the back tip of my brushes down and jam the barrelshaped points on them or tape the other shaped points on to it.

That causes a firm hold and a natural grip for me. I use thinner ink for pen and thicker for brush work, never mixing them up.

My approach is to draw with the ink using pen or brush to establish the shapes (muscles, noses, shoes, etc.), then the light source with the shadows, and then find the rendering (how to make hair, skin, and textures convincing). I can ink an entire job with just one brush or with just one pen, but there are some things that are just plain easier to do with the pen and others that are easier to do with the brush.

Wolverine © Marvel Cha

. rvel Characters, Inc

All characters © Ma

I

...on Inking

Batman © DC Comics

STEP 1—INKING WITH PEN: This Batman piece by the late Al Rio was about 75% pen

work because I wanted a harder, clean kind of line to get the subtleties of Al’s work.

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Batman © DC Comics

STEP 2—INKING WITH BRUSH: I used the brush to get the long, sweeping lines of the cape, which would’ve been far more difficult to do using the pen.

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Batman © DC Comics

STEP 3—FILLING IN BLACKS AND TOUCHING UP: This step is pretty self-explanatory.

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J. Scott Campbell’s Pencils

step 1—inking the figures with pen

On this J. Scott Campbell piece, I wanted to use a more contemporary, kinetic kind of line right for the energy of the pencils. So it’s 95% pen to get a snap, and 5% brush to get sensualities of the black areas.

X-Men © Marvel Characters, Inc.

Even though this and the Rio Batman piece are in different styles using various proportions of tools, I always have the same approach: to respect the art and do what it takes to get the best out of the work.

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X-Men © Marvel Characters, Inc.

step 2—More inking with pen

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X-Men © Marvel Characters, Inc.

step 3—Inking with brush to add texture

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X-Men © Marvel Characters, Inc.

step 4—filling in blacks and touching up

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Istanbul , not New York City

Yildiray inar Ç

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Batman © DC Comics

Y

ildiray Çinar is one of the few Turkish comic book artists who draw superhero comics. In fact, the publishing house he co-founded in 1997 with some like-minded artists— Capa Comics—was the first Turkish publisher to produce original work in that most traditional of American comic book genres. After nearly ten years spent producing his own comics, as well as working in animation and film, Çinar finally broke into the American comic book scene, quickly coming into prominence for his work on Jay Faerber’s Noble Causes. Now he’s one of DC’s brightest stars, having worked on Teen Titans, Legion of Super-Heroes, The Fury of the Firestorms, and now Earth 2.

Interview conducted

by Mike Manley via e-mail

Draw!: Tell me about what you are working on now.

Yildiray çinar: I am working on Earth 2 #13 right now. I did a couple of fill-ins on this book, and my new ongoing will be starting after I finish this issue.

Draw!: How involved are you in the storyline, or are you more of a hired gun on this project?

Yç: I’d say I am a hired gun for this book.

Draw!: Does that have any effect on how you feel about a project? I know sometimes in my case working as a hired gun can be a little difficult if I don’t have any affinity for the character. There are money jobs, or the jobs you do because you want work, and then the jobs that are passions and you do them for that first and pay secondary. I did layouts last year on a project that had the Teen Titans in it, and I have no “feeling” for them as opposed to the Fantastic Four, who exist as fully fleshed personalities in my imagination. Does this happen to you at all?

Yç: The situation is a little bit different on this one. On my Earth 2 fill-ins, I draw single-character issues. It is still the same storyline, but about introducing a new character for the readers. I got to draw Wonder Woman’s daughter Fury and Captain Steel’s DC New 52 versions. It is new world-building in this book, so I feel lucky.

Draw!: How do you go about working with new characters?

Do you do a bunch of sketches to work with them and get a feel for them before you start drawing them?

Yç: Definitely. It is so hard to get yourself into the story if you don’t study the character. I usually try to start sketching as soon as the script arrives. You should be consistent with characters in an ongoing book.

Draw!: There has been a fairly long history of artists from Asia working in comics since the early ’70s, and in those cases they were recruited by DC Comics and also Warren.

Were you aware of that? Did that have an impact on you at all in wanting to work for American companies?

Yç: Honestly, no. When I started reading comics in the early ’80s, I wasn’t aware of who is who in comics, mostly because the credits sections didn’t exist in the Turkish editions. As for wanting to work for American publishers, I was in love with superheroes, and it came out naturally with time. There is no way you can do this for a living here producing superhero comic books [only for the Turkish market].

Draw!: So you were reading American comics in Turkish reprints? Were they mostly Marvel or DC? Did you later find out who the artists were that you liked? I assume you also had

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access to work produced in Europe, like the graphic albums, etc. What about manga, did you get that as well?

Yç: Yes, mostly. They were Marvels and DCs all printed in black-and-white and in smaller sizes. My first book was a Conan drawn by Gil Kane. In the late ’80s, most of the publishers were printing the credits, and I started to learn who was drawing, writing, etc.

We had Tintin, Asterix, and some other European stuff printed here and there as well. For example, Thorgal did see print as a serial in a weekly children’s magazine.

Other than cartoons, there was no manga. Actually, mangas started to see print just in the past couple of years here.

Draw!: Did you have favorite artists that were your “school”—your favorites that you studied and emulated?

When did you decide you wanted to be a professional cartoonist?

Yç: John Buscema, Ross Andru, and John Byrne are the first names that come to my mind. I had a huge Conan collection back at that time. Also we got to see a big part of John Byrne’s Fantastic Four and Ross Andru’s Spidey runs in ’80s. In those days, there were few books I was able to follow.

Yildiray’s rough and finished pencils for page 10 of Earth 2 #8.

All characters © DC Comics.

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Draw!: I think Ross Andru is one of the more underrated artists of the past 40 years. His work was always so good, and the layouts and storytelling top notch. José García-López told me Andru was a big influence on him, and you can tell that if you look at some of the figure posing and especially his layouts.

Yç: I agree. Andru is great. His Spider-Man was something else. I loved his extreme angles and his use of backgrounds.

He used to rotate backgrounds so they were opposed to Spidey’s poses, which gave the character swinging from the tops of buildings a fresh look.

I was always drawing and attached to comic book art.

My world turned 180 degrees when my art teacher in 8th grade did something very important for my life. Here is the story:

In 1990, the government decided to open Fine Arts High School in my city. My art teacher heard about it, and she filled out and sent in an application for me without asking me. She came to me and said, “You are going to selection exams for the Fine Arts school tomorrow.” I went home and told my family, and I got in. Suddenly, within a few days, I was in an art school. Those are the days when I decided I wanted to be a professional comic book artist.

Draw!: That’s a great story!

She was really a great person and teacher in your life. Are you still in contact with her? Has she followed your work and success?

Yç: Sadly, I lost contact with her because I had to move to another city for university….

Draw!: Did you work in Europe first?

Yç: If you mean Europe, no. But if you mean Turkey, yes. My career started here with self-published fanzines back in 1997.

Draw!: How old were you and what titles did you work on? How did you go about getting training?

Were there other cartoonists you worked with or hung out with?

How did your education in craft come about?

Yç: At age 15, I went to Fine Arts High School. After four years, I went to college at Cartoon Animation Department. Starting painting at an early age really widened my vision about art. Putting animation as a plus on it worked really well.

Yildiray’s contribution to a recent volume of the Turkish comic Deli Gücük.

Draw!: How did you learn the craft of comics? Were there any teachers at the school who taught classes on subjects like storytelling, etc.?

Yç: The comic side I learned on my own. There were no specific storytelling classes, but at Animation Department we had Cinema class where we had a chance to do our short movies. I guess it helped a lot. Also, we were doing storyboards and layouts. To top it off, there was 2-D Animation as a main class in my time there. Now they focus mostly on 3-D and computer graphics….

Deli Gücük © its respective owners.

Draw!: I can see the animation in your work, in your line, and maybe that’s why your work stood out to me, so this makes sense. Doing storyboards can really hone those storytelling skills. I think my comic work got better after doing a lot of boards myself, and there is a lot of cross-training. Did you formally study storyboards at school? Did you use any texts?

Yç: Yes, I did, but I can honestly say I learned more drawing more functional storyboards as a professional. Storyboarding also gives you speed, as the clients usually give you extreme deadlines, so you have to find the solution to tell the story in a short time, which is good practice.

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(above) An inked drawing from Yildiray’s sketchbooks that he calls “Search in Ruins.” (next page) Another moody piece from Yildiray’s sketchbooks. © Yildiray Çinar

Draw!: What are some of your animation influences?

Yç: Glen Keane, Chuck Jones, Tahsin Ozgur, and Kristof Serrand are the names that come to my mind….

In 1997, at college, me and a couple of friends—including Mahmud Asrar, Hakan Tacal, and Suat Efe Us—banded as Capa Comics and started producing our own comics. They were all photocopies and self-published, and I can clearly say it was the first Turkish superhero line. We did almost 40 issues if I remember correctly. Our best known works are Karabasan, Gorajun, and Cekirdek, later produced professionally after 2003.

Draw!: Did any of your buddies break in to professional comics as well?

Yç: Yes. Mahmud Asrar is in the business too. He was recently drawing Supergirl. Hakan is doing his own creator-owned stories locally.

Draw!: Did you plan on going into animation, and did you or have you worked in animation? What animation classes or artists were you studying? It’s funny because I came into animation from comics, but I always loved animation as a kid, and I think I have been so highly affected and imprinted by work in the animation field like Maurice Noble’s and Alex Toth’s.

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Yç: Yes, I worked in commercial films as an animator for some time. I also did a lot of storyboarding stuff for the same field. It is impossible to live here only drawing comics, so storyboarding took a lot of my time. Between jobs, I was drawing for smaller publishers doing short stories.

In university, our classes were mostly for 2-D animation, drawing from life, cinema, and basic art training, where we got to work with different mediums. The most important thing animation gave me is the feel of movement.

Draw!: So which films did you work on? Did you do key frame or just in-betweens? I agree, I think animators really have such amazing drawing ability. I just saw the Snow White exhibition in San Francisco at the Disney Family Museum, and the level of drawing ability of those original Disney animators was equal to anyone in history, and better than most.

To understand the figure so well to make it move and act….

Yç: I was lucky enough to see Glen Keane exhibition in Paris, which was extremely beautiful. His drawing from life pieces were amazing besides his usual movie work.

As for the films I worked on, they were mostly TV commercials for known company names in Turkey. I did both key frames and in-betweens.

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(previous page and above) Yildiray’s four sketch ideas and his finished pencils for the cover of Earth 2 #8.

Earth 2, Fury, Steppenwolf © DC Comics

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Yildiray’s layout rough and finished pencils for page 12 of Earth 2 #8.

Earth 2, Fury, Steppenwolf © DC Comics

Draw!: Do you still follow animation at all?

Yç: Not really, but I am trying to see the films. I still love the medium.

Draw!: Do you still work in Europe?

Yç: There are some reprints that have been published here as archive editions lately. Other than that, I can’t find time to do local work as my schedule is pretty busy with DC right now.

Draw!: What’s your work schedule like?

Yç: I like to do long runs. I stayed over ten issues on each of my runs at DC. Right now, I’ve done four fill-ins for Earth 2 and will be starting on Adventures of Superman afterwards. I work five to six days a week.

Draw!: How do you go about organizing your work day?

Yç: I used to work at night, but I’m trying to change that.

Lately, I wake up early, have a good breakfast, and finish a penciled page before 3:00 p.m. Then I go out, meet friends, run errands. I leave two to three hours to work in the evenings. I like to leave one or two panels unfin-

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ished for the morning because it helps me get into work fast when I wake up.

Draw!: That’s interesting. You leave something to sort of kick-start you the next day.

Yç: Definitely. It is like I just pick up where I left off. You know the horror of a blank page. This way, it helps me get in the mood.

Draw!: How do you work breaking down the story? Do you go through and lay the whole story out or do you work in chunks or sections? Do you do thumbnails and layouts, or do you go straight to the final page?

Yç: Well, it depends on the editor. Some editors don’t mind seeing layouts sequence by sequence, and some want the whole thing at once. Personally, I like to lay out the pages sequence by sequence. Because when I get to the end and— for example, when I reach page 17, I usually won’t like what I did in the sketch and I’ll change the panels, etc. If the layout was already approved, it means another e-mail exchange asking permission to change the set-up.

Yildiray’s home studio, where he makes the magic happen.

In Comic Book Creator #3:

Batman TM & © DC Comics.

Neal Adams and His Odyssey COMIC BOOK CREATOR #3 spotlights NEAL ADAMS' BATMAN: ODYSSEY, in a unique, comprehensive examination of an artist and a singular work, in this case one of the field's most renowned creators and his recent 13-issue, 339-page DC Comics mini-series written and drawn by the comics legend. We grapple with the question: is the book a masterwork for the ages or an epic fail of mythic proportions? CBC goes in deep with the creator to examine his intent with Adams vigorously responding to critics, as we balance the successes and weaknesses of the quintessential Batman artist's ultimate take on a beloved character — all behind a new Neal Adams Darknight Detective cover and lushly illustrated throughout with a bodacious bevy of Batman art by the master illustrator. Plus we interview SEAN HOWE about his hit book, MARVEL COMICS: THE UNTOLD STORY; chat with DENYS COWAN about his dynamic artwork and what's to come; honor CARMINE INFANTINO; check in on Harbinger writer JOSHUA DYSART; take a wide look at the biggest comic book of them all, WHAM-O-GIANT COMICS; present the final installment of our LES DANIELS remembrance; and, as always, check out HEMBECK! Be here in October for CBC's tremendous third ish!

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I like keeping the art fresh. Going back is not a good option in my book. I’m always trying to look forward. If I am working on a creator-owned story, I go straight on the page after I do a tiny, two- to three-minute thumbnail. Because I am inking it, I don’t need to tighten the pencils.

Draw!: So if you are doing all the art, you have the ability to alter it, but otherwise you have to keep to what you sent in and was approved?

Yç: Yes, and the approval process does not depend on one person usually, so I have to be sure of what I send them. But

like I said, I catch my mistakes after some time and decide to change things.

Draw!: How does working long distance affect you? Are you sending scans of the pencils and inks, or sending the actual artwork? Does DC send you their paper to work on, or do you make up your own?

Yç: With the Internet, it is not hard anymore. I send my scans, and inkers use blueline prints. Actually, I would like to send the originals to the people I work with, but the schedule doesn’t allow that to happen. I’ve tried to ink blueline print myself, and I have to say it is tough. I have huge respect for the inkers who work that way. Last year I had a chance to work with Dan Green, and I sent him the original pencils. We had time to do that. I wish I could always send the inkers original boards.

DC sends me artboards. They have good quality for pencils. But in first issues of Fury of Firestorm, I inked my own work. I used markers and ink washes for that, so I did pick blank art boards that had more quality.

In the early issues of The Fury of the Firestorms, Yildiray inked his pencils himself.

Firestorm © DC Comic

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Draw!: Do you prefer doing all of the art yourself? Do you have a preference for plots versus full scripts?

Yç: Like most artists, yes. Inking is a tough job, but when you let yourself in, it is getting better. Also, there are some nice accidents and textures that you can’t get with penciling. People often ask me why my usual monthly work is not as dynamic as my personal stuff. This is why. Penciling has limits.

Also, you should be tight for the inker.

During that progression, the drawing loses some dynamism. In my personal drawings, I use lots of material from old brushes to toothbrushes… I let myself go.

I’ve worked with a lot of great writers in the time I’ve been in the industry.

The plot/ full script choice depends on the collaboration you are doing. If you have a good match with the writer, you trust each other. For example, when I was working with Jay Faerber on Noble Causes, he let me do the action and fight scenes. We tried plot-style on the fourth issue of Firestorm with Ethan Van Sciver and Gail Simone. I think it worked pretty well. In the end, to be honest, I prefer plots which gives the artist more freedom.

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Firestorm © DC Comics

Draw!: How does working digitally affect what you do?

Yç: I don’t do digital work in comics. I use digital for my thumbnails from time to time. Sometimes, if I want to have some fun, I sketch with my Cintiq.

Draw!: You mentioned doing personal work. How much time do you get to do that, and how would that either be different from or inform your usual comic work?

Yç: As much as the monthly work allows me. For me, it is a must. When I feel like doing those, they are not commis-

sioned work. I do them just for myself. It is a way for me to have fun where I don’t have to hold myself back. Sometimes I need to get away from all the stress and deadlines. I love drawing comics. Most of us think it is the best job in the world, and I agree with that. But I try to allow myself time as soon as I finish with my daily work. At least an hour. It can be at home or in a coffee shop. It doesn’t matter. Every time I start doing it, I say to myself, “Okay, this is all yours. Draw something you can enjoy and have some fun!”

DRAW!: I noticed on Facebook that you’re doing a lot of experimental work as well as doing commissions.

Yç: Yes, I love working with different mediums. It keeps your eyes open. Sometimes it feels like walking on a path that you have no idea where it will take you. The result might be good or bad, but the trip is fun. That is one problem most beginners have: being afraid to try. We have to realize we are not in a school exam. We are discovering, so why be afraid?

As for commissions, I don’t have much time for those anymore. But I do pre-show commissions before conventions.

DRAW!: Since you are in Turkey, does Facebook help you stay connected with the fans and other artists in the professional community?

Yç: Definitely. It is hard to get yourself keep on track with messages online while working, but I like interacting with colleagues and fans.

A recent cover done for the Turkish online comic magazine Gölge e-Dergi.

Gölge e-Dergi © respective owner

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DRAW!: And lastly, do you have any big plans for personal work? Where do you see yourself in five to ten years?

Yç: I always do. I try to do local work from time to time. That is mostly work I do for free to support some local scene.

In five to ten years, I want to see myself at least doing a few graphic novels. I hope I can reach my goal. We are cooking up some cool projects with my fellow writer friends.

Yildiray inar Ç Sketchbook Gallery

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Batman © DC Comics

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© Yildiray Çinar

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© Yildiray Çinar

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© Yildiray Çinar

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© Yildiray Çinar

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© Yildiray Çinar

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© Yildiray Çinar

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Colossus © Marvel Characters, Inc.

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constructive

ANALYSIS& CRITICISM of a newcomer’s work by

BOB McLEOD

W

hat I usually try to do in this column is to try to help some aspiring comic book artist improve his samples enough to get a job drawing comics.

That’s a tall order, of course, but I believe that if we’re able to look objectively at our art, we can take constructive criticism and make adjustments to what we’re doing. Very often, adjustments are all that’s necessary. People who can’t draw don’t usually take the time and trouble to do sample pages, so talent is a given, and it’s just a matter of using that talent productively rather than expending energy in the wrong areas, and learning what not to do, as much as what to do.

This issue, however, I’m critiquing a page done by one of my students last year in my Sequential Art class at the Pennsylvania College of Art & Design in Lancaster, where I teach part-time. Andrew McKinney is an excellent artist, and it’s been very interesting to watch him improve his skills over the last couple of years. But comic art is neither his main interest nor his strong suit, and I don’t think he has any plans to work in comic books.

He had several other core class assignments to do at the same time as this elective assignment, so I doubt he was able to put as much time into it as he would have liked (but, hey, I could say that about practically every job of my career).

I already critiqued this page in class when he submitted it (although not this extensively), so this critique is not so much for him, but for you.

I’m using it here with his permission. Many of the problems he’s struggling with here are probably the same problems you struggle with in your pages, and by seeing how his page can be improved, you should be able to apply the same lessons to your own art.

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Andrew McKinney’s sample page.

First, let’s look at what McKinney did well. He opened with a good establishing shot, shown from an interesting viewpoint, and fairly well composed. His storytelling is clear and easy to follow with or without text. He moved the camera around very well, and made good use of close-ups in panels 2 and 5. He was creative in his panel shapes and placed his centers of interest to lead the eye from panel to panel. He put in interesting backgrounds. These are all very important, so I think he did very well given his limited experience.

The most obvious difference between McKinney’s version and mine is probably the coloring, so let’s talk about that first. Just as when composing a page you don’t want to have anything competing with your center of interest, when choosing colors you want to complement your center of interest to make it stand out, not choose similar colors that blend in with it. Andrew chose yellow for his center of interest, the robot.

Bob’s revision of the page.

Putting a dark red carpet behind the light yellow robot in panel 1 works very well, and the light colored walls help “frame” him, directing the viewer’s eye first to the robot, and then to the near door. This is a very good start, but the dark paneling is too similar in value to the floor, flattening the depth above the robot’s head. Lighter paneling gives a little more clarity and better frames the robot.

For panel 2, why choose a brown background? I think there are far too many drab browns overall. The robot hand is yellow, so a contrasting color like blue is better. Blue also contrasts better against the reddish-brown door above it in panel 1. Why have a yellow spoon with a yellow hand, and why have yellow food in the pot? Reddish food balances well against the red carpet in panel 1, and a cooler, whiter stove leaves the hand the only yellow in the panel, and spotlights it much better. See how the overall cool bluish coloring in my panel 2 focuses the eye on the warm center of attention, the hand stirring the food, while in McKinney’s the orange burner grabs the eye more than anything. His brown burner in the lower right corner flattens into the brown dirt in panel 3, as well.

In panel 3, the robot should again be the only yellow, and the background colors should be cooler colors to keep them in the background. So we need a cool, greenish brown for the tree rather than a warm yellowish brown, and cool blue-green grass rather than warm yellow-green grass. The sidewalk, too, should be a cool color, not a warm color, and certainly not another yellowish brown.

In panel 4, a cool blue-green background contrasts better with the yellow robot and red bricks than a warm yellow-green. Making the bricks darker and redder balances with the red carpet of panel 1, and adds needed visual weight to the lower left corner of the page.

More value contrast on the bricks also adds depth and form, where McKinney’s close-invalue pink ones look fairly flat.

Panel 5’s sound effect should be anything but yellow, for goodness’ sake. I’m going to go out on a limb here and guess that yellow is McKinney’s favorite color. Making the sound effect red helps balance against the reds in panels 1 and 2, and really jumps out from all the pale colors behind it. And panel 6 once again needs cool colors behind the robot, not warm colors. A blue sky balances well with the blue tones I used in panel 2 and really helps his head pop out. A dark on the side of the tree comes forward away from the distant trees better, and adds needed visual weight.

So to sum up, remember cool colors recede, warm colors come forward, and you should usually use contrasting colors around your

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FIGURE 1

Fencepost Method 1. Draw lines from the top and bottom of the nearest door to the vanishing point on the horizon.

2. Establish the width of the nearest door.

3. Find the vertical center (an X from the corners works well).

4. Draw a line from the center point to the vanishing point.

5. Draw a line from A through B to C. 6. Draw a vertical down from C to get the second door width.

7. Repeat the process from Point D, etc., on into the distance.

FIGURE 2

center of interest. As in all things, more variety adds interest.

If you remember those simple guidelines, color should greatly enhance your art rather than weaken it. Of course, color is just one tool in the box. Let’s go back and see what other improvements we can make.

They don’t tell you this in art school, but in addition to all the artistic stuff you need to learn, there are also some basic rules of building construction you need to know in order to draw comics! Things like where doorknobs are placed on doors, which is usually a couple inches away from the edge, and three feet from the floor. Doors are usually surrounded by a doorjamb, or frame, and raised slightly off the floor (to leave room for carpeting). They also have hinges in the room the door opens into. Doors aren’t generally built up against a corner. The jamb is usually at least an inch or more away from the corner. Standard bricks are about 2" x 4" x 8", much smaller than McKinney drew his.

His doors are a bit of a mess in many respects. He clumsily eyeballed the shapes on the distant door, left the shapes off the middle door entirely, misplaced the doorknob, shoved the far door into the corner, and made them all different widths. How, pray tell, can you accurately make doors the same width as they recede into the distance? There’s actually a fairly simple way, using what’s known as the fencepost method (see Fig. 1).

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Perspective always rears its pretty head when drawing backgrounds of course. We’re looking down from above at the robot in panel 1, and when looking up or down, threepoint perspective is needed. All verticals should recede to a common vanishing point directly below the main vanishing point (Fig. 2). This creates diagonals out of the verticals, and diagonals are always more interesting anyway.

The receding horizontals all recede to a common vanishing point at our eye level above (VP1). The horizontals of the open door recede to the same horizon, but they get their own vanishing point (VP2).

The robot in panel 1 is okay, but perspective affects figures as well as backgrounds, and if we move his vanishing point closer in, his shoulders tilt at a more interesting diagonal. And I think it makes a more interesting page when there’s greater variety in the size of the figures (and other main shapes). So why not make the robot larger, bringing us closer to him and getting us more involved in his problems?

The closer we are to people (and robots) the more we care about what happens to them. His head now overlaps the rear wall, creating better depth, where in McKinney’s version he could be floating in empty space with the walls above him rather than behind him. I think he’s noticing that little piece of panel rail that McKinney neglected to add on this side of

FIGURE 3

the near door. His large shape also now adds needed visual weight to the page. All of that empty background space in McKinney’s panels 1, 3, and 4 is weak in visual weight.

You don’t want a lot of unutilized space in comic panels for that reason.

Perspective is also needed in panel 2. We’re obviously well above the stove to be able to see so much of its surface, so the horizon/eye level is high, and the lines of the stove should recede to vanishing points on it (Fig. 3), which they don’t do in McKinney’s version. Of course, many good comic book artists eyeball perspective rather than finding vanishing points, but it always bothers me, and I think it weakens the art. Most of the top artists use proper perspective. McKinney’s ellipses are also off. It’s easy enough to get the proper ellipses if you create the rectangles they reside in using the vanishing points. And, oh, how I wish I could get my students to add shadows to their art. See how the shadow in mine balances with the arm? I enlarged this panel a bit to take up some of that empty space in the panel below it, and indented it to match the indentation of panel 3 on the right.

In panel 3, the tree is competing too much with the robot, and there’s too much empty space. Why the heck is he so small? Isn’t the point of this panel that he’s weeding? What

are we showing all that space above him for? The grass sprigs in McKinney’s seem to be floating up into the air.

Just drawing grass blades around objects, like the base of the tree, works better. Otherwise, you need to more gradually diminish them into the distance. When cropping figures, never crop at a joint, such as an ankle or knee, or the limb can appear amputated. And again, how about some more shadows?

In panel 4, there’s again too much empty air. Making the figure larger uses that space better, and makes him at least a little bigger in relation to the bricks. It’s better to make a clear value change on the side of objects such as these bricks to give them the illusion of real 3-D form. The darkness on the right bottom half of the panel helps balance and frame the figure on the upper left, as well. Squint at it and you’ll see what I mean. You need to decide if you’re going to use highcontrast lighting in the inks, which means black shadows, or if you’re going to basically just outline the drawing in black and use color for shadowing. You don’t want to do both, and for an open style like this, it’s best to use color. So I changed the black shadowing in these last panels to dark color. And once again, perspective is needed to get the bricks right (see Fig. 4 on next page).

In McKinney’s sample on the left, the main figure is too small, and there is too much empty space.

In Bob’s revision on the right, he zooms in on the robot so the reader’s attention is placed squarely on the robot and what he is doing.

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FIGURE 4

FIGURE 5

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In panel 5, I don’t know why McKinney has the sound effect disappearing into the robot’s leg in the panel above. You want sound effects to be clear and unobstructed. I enlarged his left foot so it doesn’t appear to be bumping up against the panel border, and added some clearer shadowing. I also moved the brick so that it’s hitting his foot. In McKinney’s, it’s actually landing next to the foot (Fig. 5).

In panel 6, I indented the panel to match panel 3, which I think makes a better graphic panel layout. I reduced the size of the bricks to be more consistent with the previous panels.

I added a limb to the tree to keep it from being a vertical echo of the panel border, and to better balance against the diagonal wall on the lower right. I slightly raised the bottom border so the leg isn’t cropped at the ankle. I also moved all of the captions to direct the reader’s eye better. McKinney’s caption in panel 3 is too close to the one in panel 1, and begs to be read before panel 2. Captions and word balloons need to be carefully placed to ensure that they’re read in the proper sequence, and they should also be placed to aid the composition when possible, which is why the last one in panel six.

So, as I said at the beginning, adjustments were all that was needed to make this into a first-rate page. A lot of adjustments, granted, but nothing McKinney or you can’t manage with a little thought, study, and effort. And most of these lessons can be applied to whatever kind of art McKinney decides to pursue with his talents, and whatever kind of art you decide to pursue with yours.

Bob McLeod is a veteran comic artist who’s worked on all the major titles for Marvel and DC, and is the author/illustrator of Superhero ABC, published by HarperCollins. He also teaches at the Pennsylvania College Art & Design.

COLOR

tells the

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here is one thing I have observed over the years working in comics and animation—everybody thinks they are good at coloring.

Maybe it comes from the fact we all colored in coloring books or used vast amounts of finger paints as kids, broadly splashing bright colors across the paper. It was a happy time, and we were all nothing but encouraged for our creative efforts—our artwork was taped up all over the classroom as well as mom and grandma’s refrigerators. My grandma even made an ashtray with one of my drawings on it of a train as a kid. Children work on instinct and emotion in their color choices, which can lead to amazing and unconventional results. I think color is primal. It’s emotional, and while color theory can be taught—and is in art schools as students diligently mix little swatches of color and make charts galore—in the end I think it still comes down to an artist’s emotional instinct when it comes to color. Some artists seem to have better instincts than others, and that will remain one of the many mysteries of art.

As we grow as artists and become much harsher critics of the world, and the world a harsher critic of our efforts as artists, most give up on drawing, but many still feel they can get in there and color with the best of us. My thinking on coloring in regards to comics and illustration have changed in recent years as the computer and modern printing has allowed a much wider range of formats, colors, and techniques than undreamed of even ten years ago and certainly back in the old days of color coding and hand separations. Looking back at how

the best colorists of the past often worked with a big handicap compared to what we have today as a result of the computer and the revolution in the printing process, I still think that often the older colorists and artists were more effective than most modern colorists because they understood the emotional impact of coloring. And because they had to work with those older limitations, they were more creative; coloring was more of an actual handmade craft. Craftsmanship cannot be won as easily on a computer. Too many modern colorists use too much rendering and modeling and garish coloring which competes and often overpowers the drawing. It does the worst thing—it makes the storytelling and drawing often less clear.

Below is a simple set of basic colors, similar to the Crayola box of eight crayons we all spent a lot of time with as kids.

Each one of these colors tend to automatically have a “feeling” or “mood” attached to them. Sunny, violent, happy, love, death, sad, etc.

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If we start to make even the simplest pictures—such as the icons to the right— the simple variation of colors starts to give us a specific emotional response or feeling with the specific color combinations.

The set of illustrations at the bottom of the page shows how we can carry this idea a bit further and explore the emotional and expressive psychological power of these color combinations.

With this in mind it is easy to build much more complex pictures that cast a clear emotional impact or feeling.

Below is a study I did a few years back in gauche on cardboard. By playing around with the colors here, each version of this piece now gives you a different emotional feeling about the piece. Certain color combinations really give us a certain emotional feeling because we have been so socially conditioned to read certain colors as good or evil, friend or foe, sexy or sinful, delightful or healthy.

This gives us as artists a lot of ammunition to play with the emotions we want to convey in the work or manipulate in the viewer.

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As much as the story, the drawing, inking, lettering, and balloon placement have on the reader’s emotional reaction to a comic or a cover, the coloring in a comic has sometimes just as much or more of an emotional impact on the viewer. The color pulls the eye, sets the mood, or greatly helps support it, and a bad colorist of can ruin the emotional impact of a panel, a page, or sequence.

In my experience, the colorist is like the anchor of a relay race team; they are often the one who must race from behind and make up the time lost by the rest of the team in order to win the race against the deadline. This often leads, I’m sure, to very rushed choices that don’t always help the look of the art. Comic colorists have a much wider selection of colors today than the old basic 64 colors (plus what were called K-tones, which were the colors mixed with a percentage of blacks). K-tones were something I noticed right away with certain artists like Neal Adams who used them to great effect as seen in this classic Detective cover featuring Batman versus Man-Bat.

on newsprint, which dulls everything down. My default is to make the web version look great, as that is the area growing in readership, but I know to not oversaturate the colors so the print version will look okay. I can easily see if any color is not going to work in print with a quick check in Photoshop with the sliders set to CMYK; if I see a little “!” warning, I know that color will not print accurately in print.

4) Keep it simple! Limit the coloring to two to four main values to start, and then work out from the strong base blockin and change temperature or value. I also make up a quick color chart for the main characters’ colors that I can use to Paint Bucket the block-ins to keep the colors consistent and make the job a bit easier.

Batman, Man-Bat © DC Comics

This is a commission I colored as an example of the emotional impact coloring can have on a piece of art:

1) What is the mood—happy, sad, scary, romantic, etc.?

2) What is the light source—the sun, the moon, interior, exterior, artificial, multiple light sources, etc.?

3) What is the media: print or the Internet? The colors that work great in an online illustration or comic cannot exactly be reproduced in the four-color world of traditional print media.

I deal with this with the coloring on the Judge Parker Sunday strips which I color. The strip appears in color in both the print and web versions, so I can’t use colors that will work in only the online and not the print version. The web version looks better because it’s pure light—the light of the computer screen—so it’s much more vibrant and truer to the version I color on my Mac. The print version is reproduced smaller and

Azrael, Batman © DC Comics

Here is a little checklist of questions I ask myself when coloring any piece of art:

Employing the basic colors as simple block-in masses, I can establish the hierarchies within the piece: the figures versus the background, the foreground versus the background, and the emotional range of the colors, which of course take into account the colors of the costumes of the figures and what the environment might be. All the small modulations of color come later; the big masses come first.

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Now that I have an idea of how I want the piece to head in a specific direction, I block in the main figures and the basic colors of the background. I decide since this was a fight, or the end of a fight, that coloring the sky red even though it’s night will give the emotional feeling I want. The complement to red is green, so casting the building in a greenish color which is slightly neutral will make the figures stand out.

(above) Two color comps with only the large masses blocked in. This allows us to see the hierarchies clearly and more easily determine the best path to take. (right) Choosing the first comp as the basis of the coloring, the palettes can then be modulated for lighting, emotional impact, etc.

Azrael, Batman © DC Comics

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On the next page is the final piece. I worked back and forth on the figures and the background to harmonize the colors, and often worked with a lowered opacity with the pencil or brush too to let colors bleed through to warm something up or cool something down. I think you’ll see that sometimes making an unconventional choice, like the red sky, makes the emotional impact stronger than a more literal choice, in this case a night sky blue, would.

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Azrael, Batman © DC Comics

The Phantom, Rex © King Features Syndicate

I employed the same approach with this Phantom commission I did for a fan overseas. With this piece there was the obvious issue of the local color (actual color of the object) of the Phantom’s purple jumpsuit. This is an issue you deal with all of the time with the classic heroes. Their costumes were bright and mainly made up of primary colors because of the era in which they were created and the fact that the books were printed on newsprint—a cheap form of pulp paper which pulls down the colors because it is absorbent—and not a bright white paper. Today, with the higher quality printing and much better paper, the colors of the old days can seem a bit garish.

I am also dealing with the idea that sometimes, for emotional effect, the emotional need of a piece may triumph the literalness of local color.

The Phantom’s cave is a pretty dull and dusty place from what I was able to find. I tried making the walls much warmer, but it didn’t work. But what I could play with was a warm grey versus a cool grey, keeping most of the color on the figures of the Phantom and his wolf. By making the wolf warm, he stands out. The simple “Glow” effect, I felt, was a good way of applying a Photoshop effect without destroying the line art or form.

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The Phantom, Rex © King Features Syndicate

Learning from the Past and Present Here are some examples of what I consider to be great comic-book coloring in an emotional sense that helps boost the impact of the artwork:

G.I. Combat © DC

Comics

In the era of the Silver Age, I think it is hard to beat the coloring on DC Comics’ line of war comics. From Sgt. Rock to Our Fighting Forces and G.I. Combat, these comics as a whole were some of the best drawn and colored comics that to this day have rarely been equaled, much less surpassed as a line of books from one publisher.

Sgt. Rock © DC Comics

What an iconic cover by Joe Kubert.

What could be better than WWII and dinosaurs together? This cover would read from across the room, which is what good coloring should do on a cover. The emotional coloring here separating the war of the current time versus the war of the past is clearly illustrated by the color choice of the cool blues versus the cadmiums and orange of the soldiers battling the Nazis. But the green of Rock’s uniform and the rosy flesh color pull the figure forward. It a very clever bit of coloring on a iconic cover.

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Bucky, Captain America © Marvel Characters, Inc.

Steranko hits it out of the park here. The neutral grey of the statue of Cap is set off against the greenish-brown background sky. The bright coloring on the memorial sign and Bucky focus your eye on what’s emotionally important. The coloring of the Hydra figures merge them into the shadowy background. Your eye goes where you eye should go and makes this a stellar and highly emotional cover color-wise as well as in the drawing—everything works hand-in-hand.

Nick Fury, S.H.I.E.L.D. ©

Marvel Characters, Inc.

Another great Steranko cover, maybe his most iconic for the series. By coloring the moon in a wash of grey, it’s pushed back and its details are reduced in importance so we can focus on the figure and the exploding Earth. Simple ideas such as warm versus cool work so well here. There is modeling of forms, but it is kept to a minimum and supports the drawing—not overpowers it.

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X-Men and all related characters © Marvel Characters, Inc.

The classic X-Men #141, “Days of Future Past.” In the lexicon of modern or Bronze Age comics, this is one the most popular and important Marvel comics of the past 30-plus years. I think the coloring emotionally spotlights the characters greatly, and by making the dead X-Men a light blue, it gives them the emotional appearance of being ghosts. It also puts them clearly behind the figures of Wolverine and Kitty.

The later recoloring casts the entire scene into a warm light, and to my thinking, by making the dead characters warm, they compete or come forward. The warm colors don’t read emotionally as “dead” as well to me.

It can be a simple thing like temperature of a color that can change the entire emotional read of an illustration, and I think this piece showcases the differences between the “old school” and the new ways of coloring.

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Judge Parker

Judge Parker © North America Syndicate, Inc.

The strip isn’t as dramatic as what I am used to in superhero comics. It’s a soap opera strip, so the action is limited, and the environments and backgrounds, as well as the characters, are well established and had a history before I came onto the strip. My motto is to keep it simple with the color and make it read easily and always try to support the story with the color. In the February 24th strip, I had a time difference between Abbey in the barn and Cedric in his Paris flat. Again, a simple idea like warm versus cool is the basis here to cut the figures out from the background. If I can help set some mood lighting in the panels with Cedric to make the return of Neddy to the farm as bit of a mystery, it can help keep the strip visually interesting, especially when you have people just dialoguing each other.

The cool greens and blues of the women on horseback are a separate palette from the warm colors of the restaruant with Sam and the Judge. This was a very conscious decision to clearly separate the two environments and the different emotions of the two situations. The scenes on the ranch involved me thinking a lot about cool teens versus warm green. The human eye sees more green than any other color but I also wanted to keep the coloring emotionally supportive of two friends getting to know each other.

So it’s a light palette with warm greens mostly as the background along with a happy blue sky— mostly pastel colors, nothing heavy or too intense except for the middle panel on the third tier where I pushed the contrast of the foreground to create more space.

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Judge Parker © North America Syndicate, Inc.

Here the colors of the environment were mostly used as a framing device to focus your eyes and create a bit of a feeling of mystery visually as it starts to build in the storyline. Sometimes a color works well because it looks good, but it can also good emotionally.

Frank Frazetta, “Cornered” Frank Frazetta was the most important fantasy artist of the 20th century. His work was so important and influential you were influenced by him whether you knew his work directly or not. The key to the success of his work was not just his bravura drawing, but his fantastic color choices which helped deliver the emotional punch to his work. Reduce his work to the size of a postage stamp and you can still read it and tell what’s happening. This painting by Frazetta, which was done while still at his peak in the ’70s, clearly shows how well he employed the use of color to get the greatest emotional impact on the viewer. The character with the greatest movement and action, the female figure, is the brightest and warmest colorwise; the male figure recedes just a bit with the cooler blues mixing into his flesh.

Cornered © The Estate of Frank Frazetta.

There are clearly two worlds here: the foreground figures and the background of the mountains.

The delicate color harmony of the figures and the dinosaur relate to colors in the background.

The world of action is warm set against a neutral cool background. Frazetta employed this thinking in every piece he did, and his work resonates with emotional impact as a result. Study his work beyond the grandeur of his drawing and look at his color and that of artists like Howard Pyle and N.C. Wyeth who both greatly influenced him.

There are grand lessons we can take from artists like this and apply to our own work.

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White is a color

White is the most overlooked color on the average artist’s Photoshop palette, and too often the most overused color on the amateur painter’s palette. In this great classic Fantastic Four cover by Jack Kirby and Joe Sinnott, the use of white to distance the clutter and density of the city makes the heroes really stand out. So often today, because we can use Photoshop to zoom in and color every facet of a drawing, the temptation to do so is great. This cover would be hurt by that approach, as so many comic covers are today by poor art direction on the coloring.

Fantastic Four © Marvel Characters, Inc.

This FF cover by Alan Davis and Mark Farmer shows how you can still use some rendering with color and not overpower the line art and retain a strong emotional impact.

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Hellboy © Mike Mignola

Dave Stewart's coloring on Hellboy is always excellent. His coloring poetically meshes with Mignola's drawings perfectly. Any rendering of the forms here in the coloring would drastically clash with the linework, as would a vibrant palette.

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All in a key This page from 100 Bullets colored by one of comics’ best colorists, Patricia Mulvihill, is done all in cool blues. This is a very effective way to create a mood and can set the emotional tone for a scene or page that is very cinematic in feeling.

Some guy named Picasso was also fond of working this way.

100 Bullets © Brian Azzarello and DC Comics

Hold it back In another great example from 100 Bullets, Mulvihill holds back the use of yellow except for the sound effect in the last panel. Its use in the sound effect, as well as lightening the background while keeping the violent red on the figure, drives home the emotional impact of the art of that panel and the payoff of that page.

See you next time, Mike

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UNDER REVIEW STYLIN’ AND PROFILIN’

T

hrough the art store fog-of-war comes a shadow through the smoke—a hero sent to you in your moment of need with a medical supply kit full of information, a tourniquet for your wallet, bandages for your bucks, and morphine to stop the pain—the Crusty Critic has returned! My mission is simple—to help you, the time-strapped, cashstrapped, quality-starved artist save more coin by reviewing creative supplies and other tools so you don’t have to take art shrapnel out in the trenches.

Man down! Medic!

So hold onto my hand, soldier; it’s going to be alright. The Crusty Critic is going to help you through this.

As many cartoonists have made jumps into working digitally, it’s hard to find any artists working in the field that don’t do something digitally, be it coloring in Photoshop or lettering in Illustrator. For the longest time, these tasks were relegated to a desktop computer, but as technology creates things smaller, lighter, and easier to work with, we’re now at a point where the same exact job it took a big honking desktop tower to do can now be completed on a laptop. That old Mac G5 tower in your studio that you couldn’t live without is now outpaced by computers that can fit inside a zipped jacket, and which are powerful enough to complete complicated projects from the living room couch. And as artists become more mobile, they crave

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the same creature-comforts of the studio on the go. The modern tablet is precisely what the digital-doctor ordered.

After you’ve found the perfect tablet art program (of which there are several, which I’ll address in a future Crusty column), the next question is: How am I going to draw on this thing? The digital stylus, which seems counter-productive after the producers of the iPads and Kindles and Nooks and Crannies of the world spent all this time making touch-capacitive devices, have been in high demand by artists.

Most styli are the same in theory—a pencil-sized tube, with a rounded-ball styled rubber edge, which interacts with the tablet’s special sensitivity. Not sure exactly how all of that works— I’m not a scientist!—but you catch the Crusty drift. I’ve had several styli over the years, and there’s not much difference between the $15 jobbies you can find in Target or Best Buy, and the $5 versions you can pick up in the impulse purchase racks near the checkout counter at your local T.J. Maxx or discount clothier. But the digital painter (especially) wants more. More options, more sensitivity, more painter-ness.

Why don’t they make a paintbrush for the tablet/smartphone market?

In this entry, I review the Sensu Portable Artist Brush and Stylus (for Touchscreen Devices) (go to www.sensubrush. com for more details).

(left) The Sensu Brush in its “collapsed” state. (below) The brush in its two parts—when not in use, the brush is housed inside the hollow aluminum frame. (bottom) Close-up of the synthetic bristles – coated with science that makes this brush ‘kinda-sorta’ work on your tablet or smartphone.

WHAT IS IT? The Sensu Brush is a collapsible-style brush with an aluminum “steel” frame, which at first sight looks like a smart and stylish ink pen with the business end belonging to a common rounded edge stylus nib—the same kind you’ve seen a million times. There is a nice balance to the weight of the tool, and it feels good in your hand. The other side of the stylus is tapered, and bares the Sensu brand name on its hilt.

With a very easy pulling motion, the Sensu pulls apart to reveal the star of this review, the remarkably-great looking brush—a capacitive-fiber “hair” brush which isn’t necessarily creating a fine point, but it’s pretty amazing to imagine a paintbrush made for a touchscreen, so I’ll let it go that it’s not shaped into a sharp tip. And I’m not going to lick it!

DOES IT WORK? This critical critic was almost immediately disappointed.

The brush looks great; it feels great. The problem is that it simply doesn’t work very well. Have you ever used a new tool and been so aggravated with the results, you thought that you were maybe doing something wrong? This critic felt like he missed something. You don’t expect a user’s manual for something so simple, but, frankly, this tool doesn’t do what it’s advertised to deliver.

I tested the brush on my iPad (it is admittedly a first-gen, so possibly there’s something to that), my Kindle Fire using Autodesk Sketchbook, and, in a last-ditch effort to find something nice to say, I used it on some app on my Android Smartphone as well.

After fiddling with brush strokes on a very easy-to-use program like Sketchbook, in feel, this brush would probably be a size 7 brush. To test the pressure-sensitivity of the tool, I tried to make smaller brush sizes to try and “thick/thin” my strokes—to find some variance in brush strokes—but every mark I made with this tool looked like a size 7 brush. Not much of a “reaction” to the marks I created. I got thinner lines off of flipping the tool around and using the stylus end. After ten minutes, I became frustrated, and began feeling like I got gypped on this. Not Happy!

I read several reviews online, almost looking for a FAQ or

someone to tell me that his brush wasn’t as bad as I thought it was. What I found was people claiming that their brushes deteriorated after time—supposedly the capacitive element on the brush wears off after a while, but that seems understandable to me.

HOW MUCH DOES IT COST? I picked up the Sensu at my local Utrecht’s branch, and it retailed at 40 bucks. I think I had a coupon, but it still stung.

I can understand why it’s priced at this point, but if the brush worked the way I expected, I wouldn’t mind.

WHAT DID YOU USE IT ON? I tested the Sensu brush on an iPad, a Kindle Fire, and my Android Smartphone using various versions of AutoDesk Sketchbook. The Sensu website has lots of YouTube clips of people using it on new apps like Paper, ArtRage, and Procreate, but your Crusty Critic isn’t made out of money, and wasn’t going to investigate further for this review. From what I gleaned from the clips, the users were “making it work,” but I didn’t see anything I couldn’t have done with a stylus.

DRAW! SUMMER 2013

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THE VERDICT Don’t get me wrong—the brush is made very well. The design is smart, and it feels great. Again, I just wish it had even a remote amount of sensitivity in relation to how I manipulated the brush against the surfaces. If you buy this and run it across your iPad, yes, it will register a mark—it’s not completely broken—but that doesn’t save it from the fact that it simply didn’t give me what I was looking for.

Also, be careful when you “cap” the brush—thread this needle carefully! It’s easy to split hairs here and ruin the br—oh wait! It’s already ruined because it doesn’t work anyway!

— This tool gets one beret from the Critic—perhaps I’d get a different result if I tested it on more devices, or tweaked things more, but let’s face it, you don’t have time to fuss over minutiae when you need to create not later, but now. This tool, out of the box, at $40 USD should make me feel like I spent my money wisely. I cannot

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DRAW! SUMMER 2013

(left) The Sensu failing to give me the effect I was looking for. The touch calibration is wonky on the Kindle Fire. (below) The tool with extender/ case attached. This simulates the feel of holding a traditional brush.

recommend this tool at this time.

If you have one of these brushes and love it—or if, like me, you aren’t feeling it, I’d love to hear your story! You can always touch base with me on twitter @jamarnicholas.

Until next time, stay Crusty!

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COMIC BOOK CREATOR #1 COMIC BOOK CREATOR #2 COMIC BOOK CREATOR #3

Former COMIC BOOK ARTIST editor JON B. COOKE returns to TwoMorrows with his new magazine! #1 features: An investigation of the treatment JACK KIRBY endured throughout his career, ALEX ROSS and KURT BUSIEK interviews, FRANK ROBBINS spotlight, remembering LES DANIELS, WILL EISNER’s Valentines to his beloved, a talk between NEAL ADAMS and DENNIS O’NEIL, new ALEX ROSS cover, and more!

JOE KUBERT double-size Summer Special tribute issue! Comprehensive examinations of each facet of Joe’s career, from Golden Age artist and 3-D comics pioneer, to top Tarzan artist, editor, and founder of the Kubert School. Kubert interviews, rare art and artifacts, testimonials, remembrances, portraits, anecdotes, pin-ups and miniinterviews by faculty, students, fans, friends and family! Edited by JON B. COOKE.

NEAL ADAMS vigorously responds to critics of his BATMAN: ODYSSEY mini-series in an in-depth interview! Plus: SEAN HOWE on his hit book MARVEL COMICS: THE UNTOLD STORY; DENYS COWAN on his DJANGO series; honoring CARMINE INFANTINO; Harbinger writer JOSHUA DYSART; Part Two of our LES DANIELS remembrance; a big look at WHAM-OGIANT COMICS; ADAMS cover, and more!

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PATRICK OLIFFE interview and demo, career of AL WILLIAMSON examined by ANGELO TORRES, BRET BLEVINS, MARK SCHULTZ, TOM YEATES, ALEX ROSS, RICK VEITCH, and others, 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!

GLEN ORBIK demos how he creates his painted noir paperback and comic covers, ROBERT VALLEY discusses animating “The Beatles: Rock Band” music video and Tron: Uprising, plus Comic Art Bootcamp on “Dramatic Lighting” with MIKE MANLEY and BRET BLEVINS, Crusty Critic JAMAR NICHOLAS reviews art supplies, BOB McCLOUD gives a Rough Critique of a newcomer’s work, and more!

MEDIEVAL CASTLE BUILDING! Top LEGO® Castle builders present their creations, including BOB CARNEY’s amazingly detailed model of Neuschwanstein Castle, plus others, along with articles on building and detailing castles of your own! Also: JARED BURKS on minifigure customization, AFOLs by cartoonist GREG HYLAND, stepby-step “You Can Build It” instructions by CHRISTOPHER DECK, and more!

X-MEN SALUTE! 1963-69 secrets, rare ‘60s BRAZILIAN X-MEN stories, lost ‘60s XMen “character sheet” by STAN LEE, ROY THOMAS on the 1970s revival, art and artifacts by KIRBY, ROTH, ADAMS, HECK, FRIEDRICH, and BUSCEMA—plus the MARVELMANIA fan club story, interview with Golden Age writer ED SILVERMAN, FCA, Mr. Monster, BILL SCHELLY, and JACK KIRBY’s unused X-Men #10 cover!

GOLDEN AGE JUSTICE SOCIETY ISSUE! Features on JOHN B. WENTWORTH (Johnny Thunder), LEN SANSONE (The Atom), and BERNARD SACHS (All-Star Comics inker), art by CARMINE INFANTINO, PAUL REINMAN, MART NODELL, STAN ASCHMEIER, BEN FLINTON, and H.G. PETER, plus FCA, Mr. Monster, and more! Cover homage by SHANE FOLEY to a vintage All-Star image by IRWIN HASEN!

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KIRBY COLLECTOR #61

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JACK KIRBY: WRITER! Examines quirks of Kirby’s wordsmithing, from the FOURTH WORLD to ROMANCE and beyond!

Lengthy Kirby interview, MARK EVANIER and other columnists, LARRY LIEBER’s scripting for Jack at 1960s Marvel Comics, RAY ZONE on 3-D work with Kirby, comparing STEVE GERBER’s Destroyer Duck scripts to Jack’s pencils, Kirby’s best promo blurbs, Kirby pencil art gallery, & more!

“Bronze Age Team-Ups”! Marvel Team-Up and Two-in-One, Super-Villain Team-Up, CLAREMONT and SIMONSON’s X-Men/New Teen Titans, DC Comics Presents, SuperTeam Family, HANEY and APARO’s Batman of Earth-B(&B), Superman/Captain Marvel smackdowns, plus art and commentary by BUCKLER, ENGLEHART, GARCÍA-LÓPEZ, GIFFEN, LEVITZ, WEIN, and a classic GIL KANE cover inked anew by TERRY AUSTIN.

“Heroes Out of Time!” Batman: Gotham by Gaslight with MIGNOLA, WAID, and AUGUSTYN, Booster Gold with JURGENS, X-Men: Days of Future Past with CHRIS CLAREMONT, Bill & Ted with EVAN DORKIN, interview with P. CRAIG RUSSELL, “Pro2Pro” with Time Masters’ BOB WAYNE and LEWIS SHINER, Karate Kid, New Mutants: Asgardian Wars, and Kang.

Mignola cover.

“1970s and ‘80s Legion of Super-Heroes!”

LEVITZ interview, the Legion’s Honored Dead, the Cosmic Boy miniseries, a Time Trapper history, the New Adventures of Superboy, Legion fantasy cover gallery by JOHN WATSON, plus BATES, COCKRUM, CONWAY, COLON, GIFFEN, GRELL, JANES, KUPPERBERG, LaROCQUE, LIGHTLE, SCHAFFENBERGER, SHERMAN, STATON, SWAN, WAID, & more! COCKRUM cover!

TENTH ANNIVERSARY ISSUE! Revisit the 100th, 200th, 300th, 400th, and 500th issues of ‘70s and ‘80s favorites: Adventure, Amazing Spider-Man, Avengers, Batman, Brave & Bold, Casper, Detective, Flash, Green Lantern, Showcase, Superman, Thor, Wonder Woman, and more! With APARO, BARR, ENGLEHART, POLLARD, SEKOWSKY, SIMONSON, STATON, and WOLFMAN. DAN JURGENS and RAY McCARTHY cover.

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AMERICAN COMIC BOOK CHRONICLES: The 1950s

BILL SCHELLY tackles comics of the Atomic Era of Marilyn Monroe and Elvis Presley: EC’s TALES OF THE CRYPT, MAD, CARL BARKS’ Donald Duck and Uncle Scrooge, re-tooling the FLASH in Showcase #4, return of Timely’s CAPTAIN AMERICA, HUMAN TORCH and SUB-MARINER, FREDRIC WERTHAM’s anti-comics campaign, and more!

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JASON SACKS & KEITH DALLAS detail the emerging Bronze Age of comics: Relevance with Denny O’Neil and Neal Adams’s GREEN LANTERN, Jack Kirby’s FOURTH WORLD saga, Comics Code revisions that opens the floodgates for monsters and the supernatural, Jenette Kahn’s arrival at DC and the subsequent DC IMPLOSION, the coming of Jim Shooter and the DIRECT MARKET, and more!

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NEAL ADAMS vigorously responds to critics of his BATMAN: ODYSSEY mini-series in an in-depth interview! Plus: SEAN HOWE on his hit book MARVEL COMICS: THE UNTOLD STORY; MARK WAID interview, part one; honoring CARMINE INFANTINO; Harbinger writer JOSHUA DYSART; Part Two of our LES DANIELS remembrance; a big look at WHAM-O-GIANT COMICS; ADAMS cover, and more!

RUSS HEATH career-spanning interview, essay on Heath’s work by S.C. RINGGENBERG (and Heath art gallery), MORT TODD on working with STEVE DITKO, a profile of alt cartoonist DAN GOLDMAN, part two of our MARK WAID interview, DENYS COWAN on his DJANGO series, VIC BLOOM and THE SECRET ORIGIN OF ARCHIE ANDREWS, HEMBECK, new KEVIN NOWLAN cover!

DENIS KITCHEN close-up—from cartoonist, publisher, author, and art agent, to his friendships with HARVEY KURTZMAN, R. CRUMB, WILL EISNER, and many others!

Plus we examine the supreme artistry of JOHN ROMITA, JR., BILL EVERETT’s final splash, the nefarious backroom dealings of STOLEN COMIC BOOK ART, and ascend THE GODS OF MT. OLYMPUS (a ‘70s gem

by ACHZIGER, STATON and WORKMAN)!

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KIRBY AT DC! Kirby interview, MARK EVANIER and our other regular columnists, updated “X-Numbers” list of Kirby’s DC assignments (revealing some surprises), JERRY BOYD’s insights on Kirby’s DC work, a look at KEY 1970s EVENTS IN JACK’S LIFE AND CAREER, Challengers vs. the FF, pencil art galleries from FOREVER PEOPLE, OMAC, and THE DEMON, Kirby cover inked by MIKE ROYER, and more!

JOE JUSKO shows how he creates his amazing fantasy art, JAMAR NICHOLAS interviews artist JIMM RUGG (Street Angel, Afrodisiac, The P.L.A.I.N. Janes and Janes in Love, One Model Nation, and The Guild), new regular contributor JERRY ORDWAY on his behind-the-scenes working process, Comic Art Bootcamp with MIKE MANLEY and BRET BLEVINS, reviews of artist materials, and more! Mature readers only.

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“Incredible Hulk in the Bronze Age!” Looks into Hulk’s mind, his role as a team player, his TV show and cartoon, merchandising, Hulk newspaper strip, Teen Hulk, villain history of the Abomination, art and artifacts by SAL BUSCEMA, JOHN BYRNE, PETER DAVID, KENNETH JOHNSON, BILL MANTLO, AL MILGROM, EARL NOREM, ROGER STERN, HERB TRIMPE, LEN WEIN, new cover by TRIMPE and GERHARD!

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“Bronze Age Fantastic Four!” The animated FF, the FF radio show of 1975, Human Torch goes solo, Galactus villain history, FF Mego figures… and the Impossible Man! Exploring work by RICH BUCKLER, JOHN BUSCEMA, JOHN BYRNE, GERRY CONWAY, STEVE ENGLEHART, GEORGE PÉREZ, KEITH POLLARD, ROY THOMAS, LEN WEIN, MARV WOLFMAN, and more! Cover by KEITH POLLARD and JOE RUBINSTEIN.

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Farewell salute to the COMICS BUYER’S GUIDE! TBG/CBG history and remembrances from ALAN LIGHT, MURRAY BISHOFF, MAGGIE THOMPSON, BRENT FRANKENHOFF, “final” CBG columns by MARK EVANIER, TONY ISABELLA, PETER DAVID, FRED HEMBECK, JOHN LUSTIG, classic art by DON NEWTON, MIKE VOSBURG, JACK KIRBY, MIKE NASSER, plus FCA, Mr. Monster, and more!

DENNY O’NEIL’s Silver Age career at Marvel, Charlton, and DC—aided and abetted by ADAMS, KALUTA, SEKOWSKY, LEE, GIORDANO, THOMAS, SCHWARTZ, APARO, BOYETTE, DILLIN, SWAN, DITKO, et al. Plus, we begin serializing AMY KISTE NYBERG’s groundbreaking book on the history of the Comics Code, FCA (Fawcett Collectors of America), Mr. Monster, BILL SCHELLY and more!

We spotlight HERB TRIMPE’s work on Hulk, Iron Man, S.H.I.E.L.D., Ghost Rider, Ant-Man, Silver Surfer, War of the Worlds, Ka-Zar, even Phantom Eagle, and featuring THE SEVERIN SIBLINGS, LEE, FRIEDRICH, THOMAS, GRAINGER, BUSCEMA, and others, plus more of AMY KISTE NYBERG’s Comics Code history, “Sea Monkeys and X-Ray Specs” on those nutty comic book ads, FCA, Mr. Monster, and more!

Golden Age “Air Wave” artist LEE HARRIS discussed by his son JONATHAN LEVEY to interviewer RICHARD J. ARNDT, with rarely-seen 1940s art treasures (including mysterious, never-published art of an alternate version of DC’s Tarantula)! Plus more of AMY KISTE NYBERG’s exposé on the Comics Code, artist SAL AMENDOLA tells the story of the Academy of Comic Book Arts, FCA, Mr. Monster, and more!

Second big issue on 3-D COMICS OF THE 1950s! KEN QUATTRO looks at the controversy involving JOE KUBERT, NORMAN MAURER, BILL GAINES, and AL FELDSTEIN! Plus more fabulous Captain 3-D by SIMON & KIRBY and MORT MESKIN— 3-D thrills from BOB POWELL, HOWARD NOSTRAND, JAY DISBROW and others— the career of Treasure Chest artist VEE QUINTAL, FCA, Mr. Monster, and more!

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $8.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95 • Ships Dec. 2013

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $8.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95 • Ships Feb. 2014

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $8.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95 • Ships April 2014

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $8.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95 • Ships May 2014

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $8.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95 • Ships June 2014

Ambitious new series documenting each decade of comic book history!

AMERICAN COMIC BOOK CHRONICLES: 1960-64 & The 1980s

JOHN WELLS covers comics in the 1960-64 JFK and Beatles era: DC’s new GREEN LANTERN, JUSTICE LEAGUE and multiple earths!

LEE and KIRBY at Marvel on FF, SPIDER-MAN, HULK, and X-MEN! BATMAN’s “new look”, Charlton’s BLUE BEETLE, CREEPY #1 & more!

AMERICAN COMIC BOOK CHRONICLES: The 1950s

1960-64: (224-page FULL-COLOR HARDCOVER) $39.95 (Digital Edition) $11.95 • ISBN: 978-1-60549-045-8 • Out now!

1980s: (288-page FULL-COLOR HARDCOVER) $41.95 (Digital Edition) $13.95 • ISBN: 978-1-60549-046-5 • Out now!

(192-page trade paperback with COLOR) $27.95 ISBN: 978-1-60549-051-9 • (Digital Edition) $9.95 • Ships July 2013

All characters TM & ©2013 their respective owners.

(256-page FULL-COLOR HARDCOVER) $40.95 (Digital Edition) $12.95 • ISBN: 9781605490540 • Ships Aug. 2013

THE STAR*REACH COMPANION

Complete history of the influential 1970s independent comic, featuring work by and interviews with DAVE STEVENS, FRANK BRUNNER, HOWARD CHAYKIN, STEVE LEIALOHA, WALTER SIMONSON, BARRY WINDSOR-SMITH, KEN STEACY, JOHN WORKMAN, MIKE VOSBURG, P. CRAIG RUSSELL, DAVE SIM, MICHAEL GILBERT, and many others, plus full stories from STAR*REACH and its sister magazine IMAGINE. Cover by CHAYKIN! MATURE READERS ONLY.

KEITH DALLAS documents comics’ 1980s Reagan years: Rise and fall of JIM SHOOTER, FRANK MILLER as comic book superstar, DC’s CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS, MOORE and GAIMAN’s British invasion, ECLIPSE, PACIFIC, FIRST, COMICO, DARK HORSE and more!

BILL SCHELLY tackles comics of the Atomic Era of Marilyn Monroe and Elvis Presley: EC’s TALES OF THE CRYPT, MAD, CARL BARKS’ Donald Duck and Uncle Scrooge, re-tooling the FLASH in Showcase #4, return of Timely’s CAPTAIN AMERICA, HUMAN TORCH AND SUB-MARINER, FREDRIC WERTHAM’s anti-comics campaign, and more!

DAN SPIEGLE: A LIFE IN COMIC ART

Documents his 60-year career on DELL and GOLD KEY’S licensed TV and Movie adaptions (LOST IN SPACE, KORAK, MAGNUS ROBOT FIGHTER, MIGHTY SAMPSON), at DC COMICS (BATMAN, UNKNOWN SOLDIER, TOMAHAWK, JONAH HEX, TEEN TITANS, BLACKHAWK), his CROSSFIRE series for ECLIPSE, DARK HORSE’S INDIANA JONES series and more, with rare artwork, personal photos, and private commission drawings. Written by JOHN COATES.

(160-page trade paperback) $19.95 • (Digital Edition) $7.95 ISBN: 978-1-60549-048-9 • Now shipping!

(104-page trade paperback) $14.95 • (Digital Edition) $4.95 ISBN: 978-1-60549-049-6 • Now shipping!

SUBSCRIBE! • Digital Editions: 3.95 each, or save with a digital subscription (digital editions are included FREE with a print subscription)!

• Back Issue, Draw, Alter Ego & Comic Book Collector are now all full-color!

• Lower international shipping rates! $

2013 SUBSCRIPTION RATES: (with FREE Digital Editions)

Media Mail

MODERN MASTERS: CLIFF CHIANG

Spotlights the career of CLIFF CHIANG (artist of DC’s New 52 breakout hit WONDER WOMAN series) through a career-spanning interview, and loads of both iconic and rarely seen artwork from Cliff’s personal files. There’s also an in-depth look into the artist’s work process, and an extensive gallery of commissioned pieces, many in full-color. By CHRIS ARRANT and ERIC NOLEN-WEATHINGTON. (120-page trade paperback with COLOR) $15.95 (Digital Editions) $5.95 • ISBN: 978-1-60549-050-2 Now shipping!

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JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR (4 issues)

$50

$68

$65

$72

$150

$15.80

BACK ISSUE! (8 issues)

$60

$80

$85

$107

$155

$23.60

DRAW! (4 issues)

$30

$40

$43

$54

$78

$11.80

ALTER EGO (8 issues)

$60

$80

$85

$107

$155

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COMIC BOOK CREATOR (4 issues w/Special)

$36

$45

$50

$65

$95

$15.80

BRICKJOURNAL (6 issues)

$57

$72

$75

$86

$128

$23.70

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TwoMorrows. A New Day For Comics Fans!

TwoMorrows Publishing • 10407 Bedfordtown Drive • Raleigh, NC 27614 USA • 919-449-0344 • FAX: 919-449-0327 E-mail: store@twomorrowspubs.com • Visit us on the Web at www.twomorrows.com

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THE BEST OF ALTER EGO, VOL. 2

This sequel to ALTER EGO: THE BEST OF THE LEGENDARY COMICS FANZINE presents more vintage features from the first super-hero fanzine, begun by JERRY BAILS & ROY THOMAS. Editors ROY THOMAS and BILL SCHELLY reveal undiscovered gems from all 11 original issues published from 1961-78, including features on Hawkman, the Spectre, Blackhawk, the JLA, All Winners Squad, the Heap, an unsold “Tor” newspaper strip by JOE KUBERT, and more!