Draw! #30

#30

SPRING 2015 $8.95 IN THE US

The Professional “How-To” Magazine on Comics, Cartooning and Animation

CHRIS SAMNEE THE DAREDEVIL ARTIST ON EVERYONE’S RADAR

BUTCH GUICE

CREATING WINTER WORLD PLUS! REGULAR COLUMNIST

JERRY ORDWAY AND MIKE MANLEY AND BRET BLEVINS’ 01 1

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DRAW! (edited by MIKE MANLEY) is the professional “HOW-TO” magazine on comics, cartooning, and animation. Each issue features in-depth INTERVIEWS and DEMOS from top pros on all aspects of graphic storytelling, as well as such skills as layout, penciling, inking, lettering, coloring, Photoshop techniques, plus web guides, tips, tricks, and a handy reference source—this magazine has it all!

NOTE: Some issues contain nudity for figure drawing instruction.

INTENDED FOR MATURE READERS.

Other issues available, & an ULTIMATE BUNDLE with all issues at HALF-PRICE!

DRAW! #21

DRAW! #22

DIEDGITIIOTANSL E

BL AVAILA

DRAW! #18

DRAW! #19

Features an in-depth interview and demo

by R.M. GUERA (the artist of Vertigo’s Scalped), behind-the-scenes in the Batcave with 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 gives a demo and interview, pro inker and ROUGH STUFF editor BOB McLEOD offers a “Rough Critique” of a newcomer’s work, JAMAR NICHOLAS’ “Crusty Critic” column reveals the best art supplies and tool tech, MIKE MANLEY and BRET BLEVINS’ COMIC ART BOOTCAMP gets your penciling in shape, plus Web links, reviews, and more!

(84-page magazine with COLOR) $6.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95

(84-page magazine with COLOR) $6.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95

DRAW! #23

DRAW! #24

DRAW! #20

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, comic and book reviews, and more!

(84-page magazine with COLOR) $7.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95

DRAW! #25

Urban Barbarian DAN PANOSIAN talks shop about his gritty, design-inspired 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, and PATRICK OLIFFE demos how he produces Spider-Girl, Mighty Samson, and digital comics. Also, MIKE MANLEY and BRET BLEVINS’ “Comic Art Bootcamp”, a “Rough Critique” of a newcomer’s work by BOB McLEOD, art supply reviews by “Crusty Critic” JAMAR NICHOLAS, and more!

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!

LEE WEEKS (Daredevil, Incredible Hulk) gives insight into the artform, YILDIRAY ÇINAR (Noble Causes, Fury of the Firestorms) interview and demo, inker JOE RUBINSTEIN shows how he works, “Comic Art Bootcamp” with MIKE MANLEY and BRET BLEVINS, “Rough Critique” of a newcomer by BOB McLEOD, “Crusty Critic” JAMAR NICHOLAS reviews art supplies and software!

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

(84-page magazine with COLOR) $7.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95

(84-page magazine with COLOR) $7.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95

(84-page magazine with COLOR) $7.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95

(84-page COLOR magazine) $8.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95

TwoMorrows.

A New Day For Comics Fans!

DRAW! #26

DRAW! #27

DRAW! #28

DRAW! #29

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!

Top comics cover artist DAVE JOHNSON demos his creative process, STEPHEN SILVER shows how he designs characters for top animated series, plus new columnist JERRY ORDWAY presents “The Right Way, the Wrong Way, and the ORDWAY!”, “Crusty Critic” JAMAR NICHOLAS reviews art supplies, and hit “Comic Art Bootcamp” with Draw editor MIKE MANLEY and BRET BLEVINS!

FAREL DALRYMPLE shows how he produces Meathaus and Pop Gun War, director and storyboard/comics artist DAVE BULLOCK dissects his own work, columnist JERRY ORDWAY draws on his years of experience to show readers the Ord-way of creating comics, JAMAR NICHOLAS reviews the latest art supplies, plus more Comic Art Bootcamp by BRET BLEVINS and editor MIKE MANLEY! Mature readers only.

DAVE DORMAN demonstrates his painting techniques for sci-fi, fantasy, and comic book cover, LeSEAN THOMAS (character designer and co-director of The Boondocks and Black Dynamite: The Animated Series) gives advice on today’s animation industry, new columnist JERRY ORDWAY shows his working process, plus more Comic Art Bootcamp by BRET BLEVINS and Draw! editor MIKE MANLEY! Mature readers only.

(84-page COLOR magazine) $8.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95

(84-page COLOR magazine) $8.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95

(84-page COLOR magazine) $8.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95

(84-page COLOR magazine) $8.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95

TwoMorrows Publishing 10407 Bedfordtown Drive Raleigh, NC 27614 USA 919-449-0344 E-mail:

store@twomorrows.com

Order at twomorrows.com

THE PROFESSIONAL “HOW-TO” MAGAZINE ON COMICS & CARTOONING WWW.DRAW-MAGAZINE.BLOGSPOT.COM SPRING 2015, VOL. 1, #30 Editor-in-Chief • Michael Manley Managing Editor and Designer • Eric Nolen-Weathington Publisher • John Morrow Logo Design • John Costanza Front Cover • Chris Samnee Front Cover Color • Tom Ziuko

TABLE OF CONTENTS

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CHRIS SAMNEE

Eric Nolen-Weathington interviews the artist about cartooning in a photorealism-driven field

DRAW! Spring 2015, Vol. 1, No. 30 was produced by Action Planet, Inc. and published by TwoMorrows Publishing.

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 2015 by their respective contributors. Views expressed here by contributors and interviewees are not necessarily those of Action Planet, Inc., TwoMorrows Publishing, or its editors.

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 ©2015 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.

If you’re viewing a Digital Edition of this publication,

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RIGHT WAY, WRONG WAY—ORDWAY!

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Butch Guice

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comic art bootcamp

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The crusty Critic

From your mind’s eye to the page

Winter has come. Mike Manley interviews the artist about winter soldiers and winter worlds.

This month’s installment: Ear, ye! Ear, ye! Let’s hear it for the ear!

PLEASE READ THIS: This is copyrighted material, NOT intended for downloading anywhere except our website or Apps. If you downloaded it from another website or torrent, go ahead and read it, and if you decide to keep it, DO THE RIGHT THING and buy a legal download, or a printed copy. Otherwise, DELETE IT FROM YOUR DEVICE and DO NOT SHARE IT WITH FRIENDS OR POST IT ANYWHERE. If you enjoy our publications enough to download them, please pay for them so we can keep producing ones like this. Our digital editions should ONLY be downloaded within our Apps and at

Jamar Nicholas reviews the tools of the trade.

This month: A pen nib and a pocket sketchbook

www.twomorrows.com

DRAW! SPRING 2015

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-ING AHEAD

hey say 30 is the age of wisdom, or maybe that’s just when you get your wisdom teeth out?

Anyway, DRAW! has made it to the 30th issue mark! I owe much of this success and dedication to John Morrow and Eric Nolen-Weathington for being there through the hard days—and like any creative endeavor, there were hard, tough days.

There were times I thought this might be the final issue, but then an e-mail or letter would come in telling me how important the mag was to that reader.

I’d also like to thank my best buddy Bret Blevins for being there from the first issue’s cover to this issue’s charming little doodle of yours truly.

This milestone is also helped by Jamar Nicholas and Jerry Ordway for their great articles and support for the idea that the craft of cartooning needs to be shared, and the knowledge of all those who work telling stories should be collectively shared. That is the continued goal for DRAW! into the future: To share with you readers the knowledge of as many great cartoonists and illustrators as possible!

Now go DRAW! something!

NEXT ISSUE IN JULY! DRAW! #31 (80 FULL-COLOR pages, $8.95), the professional “how-to” magazine on comics and animation, busts some new moves, Philadelphia Freedom style!

This issue features how-tos and demos by Philly area artists J.G. Jones (52, Final Crisis, Wanted, Batman and Robin) and Khoi Pham (The Mighty Avengers, The Astonishing Spider-Man, The Mighty World of Marvel). Plus regular contributor (and Philly boy) Jamar Nicholas gives his reviews of art supplies, and we finish this jam-packed issue with Jerry Ordway (demonstrating the “ORDway” of drawing) and “Comic Art Bootcamp” by Draw! editor Mike Manley (yet another Philly resident) and Bret Blevins. Grab a side of cheese fries, and enjoy this artistic belly buster! NOTE: May contain nudity for figure-drawing instruction; suggested for Mature Readers Only.

SUBSCRIPTIONS: Four issues in the US: $34 Standard, $41 First Class, $11.80 Digital Only Outside the US: Canada: $43, Elsewhere: $52 Surface, $141 Airmail Subscribe Now at: www.twomorrows.com

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Chris Samnee

A LEAP OF interview conducted by Eric Nolen-Weathington and transcribed by Jon Knutson

C Daredevil © Marvel Characters, Inc.

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hris Samnee knew he was going to be a comic book artist at an age when most kids still dream of being firemen or astronauts. But he hasn’t always held that same strength of belief and determination in his natural cartooning style. Editorial resistance to his work led him astray for a time, but with the help of the right projects and the right editors, Chris has taken his cartooning to bold new heights. What do editors know anyway?

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Thumbnail cover designs and finished inks for a DCBS exclusive variant cover for the newly relaunched Amazing Spider-Man #1.

Spider-Man © Marvel Characters, Inc.

DRAW!: I don’t know if you remember this or not, but I first met you, I think it was 2003, at the Comic-Con International: San Diego. You came up to the TwoMorrows booth with, I don’t know if she was your fiancée at that point or just your girlfriend, and you were surprised I knew your name, because you really hadn’t had much published at that point.

CHRIS Samnee: Yeah, I was surprised.

DRAW!: You’d worked with Chris Irving, who’d done some work for TwoMorrows, on this little book that I don’t think had even been distributed, Blackbird.

CS: I know he printed some himself. I don’t know if they ever went out to anybody besides friends and family, and people that he hand-sold them to. I had a few copies.

DRAW!: I think the idea was to use that comic as kind of a portfolio. Were you doing a lot of that kind of spec work?

Whatever you could to get your work out there?

CS: I was doing samples all over the place, and I’d kind of gotten to the point where people would look at it and say, “This is good, but we don’t know where we would put you,” and I just kept doing more and more samples. I’d just create my own story that was three or four, five pages.

I met Chris Irving, and we got along really well, and he

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was going through pretty much the same thing on the writing side, and we said, “Why don’t we do a few things together?”

So, there were a couple of other things we did. I can’t remember what they were.

DRAW!: There was a G.I. Joe blog he had.

CS: Oh, yeah, I did some G.I. Joe head sketches that looked like the backs of the old cards. [laughs] You’re really digging deep. Most of that stuff I’ve forgotten.

DRAW!: Well, that was the early days of the Internet being a way to get your work out there. Were you trying to meet people on message boards at that point?

CS: I didn’t even have a computer back then. Chris told me about Batman: Dead End [a short fan film] and I was like, “Oh, that sounds awesome. I’d love to see that!” He said, “It’s on the Internet,” and I was like, “Oh, I don’t have a computer.” He had to mail me a CD he burned of the video. Oh, man, that makes me feel so old! [laughter] DRAW!: If you didn’t have Internet access, what were you doing to find these opportunities?

CS: I was just beating the bushes. St. Louis had a lot of conventions back in the day, and every time a convention

would come to town, I’d go with my portfolio under my arm and beg for work, show my portfolio, and try to get reviews from… it didn’t matter who, whether it was a letterer, or a penciler, or a writer. I was just trying to talk to anybody and figure out how comics were made. I wasn’t finding work anywhere.

Mostly I sent sample packets through the mail. I’d found a directory of publishers and their addresses, and I’d make tons of copies at Kinko’s and fill packets on the weekends.

DRAW!: Your interest in how comics were made started pretty early from what I can tell. I think you said somewhere that by age ten, you knew you wanted to be a comic book artist.

CS: Oh for sure, yes.

CS: There were certain artists that I liked, but it was so hard to find comics back then. It was like, “I like this guy,” and I’d write his name in my notebook. I had a whole list of names in a Trapper Keeper—it looked like a hit list of guys that I really liked. [laughter] But we didn’t have comic book stores where I lived.

Every couple of weeks, my dad would take me to the flea market, and I’d get to buy old comics. There were four-for-adollar comics, but it was random boxes of who knows what that people brought from their houses. So, I never got whole runs of anything, and every once in a while I’d run across something completely random and go, “I’ve never seen this

DRAW!: A lot of people say they want to become a comic book artist when they’re ten, but you really went after it.

CS: I started fighting for it early on. I was into cartoons, just like any normal kid would be into cartoons, but one day while I was waiting for Showbiz Pizza to open with my grandma, she said, “Let’s go into Venture while we’re waiting for it to open.” And they had three-packs of comics. And I said, “They made books out of these cartoons?!?” [Eric laughs] It was a threepack of Batman comics, and I was hooked right from the get-go.

DRAW!: Do you remember how old you were at that point?

CS: I was five or six. It was the Tom Mandrake run, really inappropriate for my age. There was a stripper in it, there was Two-Face… way too adult for a six-year-old. I think that’s why I liked it. I was like, “I shouldn’t be reading this stuff.” [laughter] I started copying Mandrake and [Jim] Aparo, and the guys from the mid-’80s.

Those were my way into comics. My grandma bought me a roll of butcher paper, so I’d look at the comic and try to copy it to the best of my abilities, which was awful, but it was fun.

DRAW!: You became familiar with the artists’ names early on. Were you following certain artists at that point, or were you just kind of grabbing whatever you could find?

Chris’ finished inks for the variant cover of Elektra #2.

Elektra © Marvel Characters, Inc.

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(this page) Layouts for a flashback sequence in Fantastic Four #5. (next page top) The tightened pencils for Fantastic Four #5. (next page bottom) And the finished inks for that sequence.

Fantastic Four © Marvel Characters, Inc.

before! What’s The Crow?” For an eight-year-old, it was like, “What? They make comics like this too?” Every weekend, it would be something completely different.

DRAW!: Did you ever find How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way? CS: I was probably twelve when I got a copy, and I looked at it so much it just fell to pieces.

DRAW!: Is that where you first saw what tools you’d need to use to be a real comic book artist?

CS: Probably. That’s probably where I started, if nothing else, trying to figure out panel composition, and trying to be dynamic with figures. Going to conventions since I was like eight or ten, that’s where people were really telling me what tools I needed to use.

I met Mike Docherty, who was drawing Conan at the time.

He gave me an old Marvel board, and said, “This is what I draw on.” He just gave me a blank piece of Marvel board that he had in his portfolio, and I never drew on it. It was this artifact of what people really used. Somewhere stashed away I have this old, yellow piece of board [laughs] that he gave me when I was a little kid.

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DRAW!: Were you seeing original art pages at that point?

CS: Yeah, he had a stack of stuff for sale on his table. I’d seen pages for sale before, but they just seemed so otherworldly, I never realized what size they were. It was like, “Oh, my gosh, this is from a real thing!” He said, “This is the actual size—11" x 17".” But all of the dotted lines and stuff it had on there—it was mind-boggling. I didn’t know what part I was supposed to draw on or not, so I used to get poster board from Walmart that was 11" x 14", and I’d just do the best I could with whatever materials were available to me at the time.

DRAW!: How early were you starting to try to use a pen or brush? Did that come much later?

CS: I never knew that I was going to be inking. I was always planning on being just a penciler. The first job that I did for Gary Carlson was for Big Bang Comics—Image published those in black-and-white. It was a Silver Age sort of book.

DRAW!: Where he did Knight Watchman instead of Batman, Ultiman instead of Superman, and so on.

CS: Right, yeah. I was way into manga at the time. I found a whole bunch of old Go Nagai books and things like that, which again didn’t seem age appropriate, but I was into it.

DRAW!: What kind of things were you seeing? That was pretty early on. Macross and Robotech, things like that?

CS: On TV, there was Robotech and Voltron and stuff like that, but when they first started bringing Japanese comics to America, there were very few being translated. You could find Ranma ½, or Devil Man, I think, or Patlabor maybe. It was very sparse, so if it was translated into English, you could get it all. I had a big collection of everything I could find. I was way into that.

So, I drew a story called, “Knight Watchmanga,” [in Big Bang Comics #10 (May 1997)] which was a very odd choice.

It was the first time I tried inking anything. I was using a calligraphy pen. I wasn’t using the right tools, I knew it, but I didn’t know how to use the proper tools. I was offered the chance to have something in print, and there was no budget for an inker. There was no budget for a penciler—I did it for free. It was just a chance to be in print.

DRAW!: I haven’t seen those pages, but with a calligraphy pen, you can still get thick and thin. Were you trying to use a thick-and-thin approach?

CS: Yeah, I was trying. There was more fail than win, [laughter] but, yeah, I tried it to the best of my abilities, which admittedly were not great. But you can’t get better unless you do it. I was really excited. I think I penciled eight pages in one night, and then I inked it over a week.

DRAW!: Wow! CS: Well, I was kid! What else did I have to do? I would go to school, and then I’d come home and that was all I’d do for the rest of the night. I’ve always been a bit of a homebody.

I didn’t go out and play. I lived back in the woods in a log cabin, so there weren’t a lot of kids to play with or things to do. I could go play basketball with my brother, but that didn’t sound fun at all. [laughter] So I sat inside for years and learned how to draw comic books.

DRAW!: You said you were going to conventions all the time when you were a kid. Were you going to three or four shows a year?

CS: Well, I think it was more than that. We were going every couple of months. There used to be the Great Eastern Conventions. Every couple of months, there’d be a good St. Louis show.

DRAW!: So you were seeing real professionals work. Were you able to watch them draw at all?

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CS: Some of them were doing sketches, like Rick Leonardi, right when Spider-Man 2099 started. I watched him doing some sketches for people, and that was pretty neat. Tom Artis, who passed away a few years ago, he was really, really great.

He was working on The Web for DC at the time. I watched him work. He was an amazing talent that nobody really talks about nowadays. He was really nice. His wife made cookies, and he was giving all the kids at the table cookies while we watched him work. There were a lot of guys like that, just really kind and giving with a couple of baby-faced kids staring at them trying to figure out how to make comics. It was

really easy to say, “Hey, come around this table, and see how we do it.”

DRAW!: You decided not to go to art school. Was it a financial reason, or something else?

CS: [laughs] Yeah, there wasn’t really a decision not to go. In high school, all of my art projects were meant to be stepping stones to the Kubert School. I would get a pointillism assignment, and I’d go, “All right, I’ll do a pointillism drawing of the front of the Kubert School.” [laughter] But I didn’t know how to get a grant, and we didn’t have the funds.

DRAW!: Well, art school isn’t cheap.

CS: School isn’t cheap. I went to community college for a few semesters, and I lost my grant at one point, and I said, “All right, I guess I’m done with school!” [laughter] I had a million crummy day jobs, but the whole time I was like, “I’m going to break in at any minute.” I was full of hubris. I was sure that I could do it. Looking back now, I’m like, “No, kid, you’ve got a long way to go.” But I was only thinking, “I’m not going to get a career, because my career is going to be comics. So, I’ll sweep up cigarette butts at the flea market, I’ll make pizzas, I’ll be a cable guy,” for a few years, I worked at Borders in the café, I shelved books… I did so many crummy jobs.

“Nope, I’m not getting a real job. This is just to hold me over until my comics career kicks in.” [laughs] I was so stupid!

DRAW!: You were meeting artists, but had you had a chance to meet editors yet?

At that point especially, meeting editors face to face was a big advantage to getting a foot in the door.

CS: Well, I think the first real editor I met was Bob Schrek in 2000. I didn’t get a chance to sign up for a portfolio review—I showed up a day late at the convention— but he’d always take anybody who asked him nicely outside whenever he was ready for a cigarette break. He’d take a look through a half-dozen guys’ portfolios and tell them the stuff they needed to work on.

I got a chance to do that. And I still had a long way to go in 2000, but it was nice of him to take the time. He was really helpful in telling me things I needed to work on.

Thumbnail cover designs for Wolverine #606.

Wolverine © Marvel Characters, Inc.

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DRAW!: What were the things you needed to work on in 2000?

CS: Everything? [laughter]

DRAW!: Was there one thing specifically that stands out, that’s being printed now, and characters in Eisner’s book are going to act, and there’s not a whole lot of that going around that really made a difference in what you were doing?

CS: I think in 2000, I still had a lot of manga influence, nowadays. You can get more across in something simpler and and he was just like, “Stop worrying about all these slanted brushier, than you can in something stiff and closer to realism.

I think Blackbird came from Golden Age comics Chris was panels and this crazy pacing and action lines, and worry about real storytelling. Do you know who Hugo Pratt is?” I showing me that he was really into. Porkpie was really a throwsaid, “No, I have no idea at all.” He said, “All right. Corto back to the Little Wise Guys from the Golden Age Daredevil Maltese, go into the convention, find that, study it, and next comics, and all the kid gangs Kirby used to draw, those ugly time you see me, you’ll probably be ready.” [laughter] So little kids from Boy Commandos, and stuff like that. that’s what I did! I went inside, I went to every dealer that was selling comics, and I tried to find Corto Maltese. I spent ten bucks on 50-cent and dollar copies of reprints of Corto Maltese comics.

That was one step along the way for me in figuring out how to really draw. I started going backwards with a whole lot of artists, figuring out who their influences were.

My family took a vacation to Colorado, and they asked me if I wanted to go, and I said, “Fresh air and trees? I’m good.” And they said, “If you come with, we can go to a comic book store out there.” While Chris’ drawing has greatly improved since the days of Blackbird, you can see similarities “What?!? Okay. If you take me to in how he handled facial expression and body language then and now. Inks by Chris Irving.

Mile High, I will totally go with Blackbird © Marvel Characters, Inc. you to Colorado.” [laughter] So we went to Mile High, and I stocked up on Comics Inter- DRAW!: But with your early professional work, it looks like view magazines—the stupidest thing for a little kid to get so you’re trying to be more… I guess “traditional” would be the excited about, but that’s all that I bought! I bought a short best word to use, in your approach. You toned back the carbox full of these interviews with comics creators, because tooning. Was that because you thought you had to draw that that’s what I was really into at the time, trying to figure out way to get work, or was that just a natural evolution in finding who artists’ influences were, and where they came from. It your way to your style? just made all these people who made comic books seem more CS: It was just editors telling me they couldn’t hire me with real, instead of just these gods who make works of art that are the work I was doing, and not being confident enough to stick so far from what I was able to do; it humanized them. I would with what I was doing. You can only be told, “This is good, read an interview with Jim Aparo, where he would say his but we don’t know where we would put you,” or, “This is too biggest influence was Milton Caniff, and I’d say, “All right, cartoony,” or, “We don’t know what to do with it,” so many who’s Milton Caniff?” And I’d go to the library, and find out times before it really starts to sink in, and you just start having who was who, and try to track down their work in reverse. All to try different things. This is really what I wanted to do for my influences from probably the age of 18 to 20 ’til now have a living, and being told that I couldn’t, “Well, I’m going to come to the fore from those magazines. have to try something else.” I just kept trying different things until I settled on something that felt right. I still am strugDRAW!: And that brings us back to 2003. I want to mention gling with that to this day, I’m still trying to find how I draw. something in Blackbird. There’s a character called Porkpie, My sketches feel like me, but my pencils, I can just see too and his design looks like it could fit in with what you’re doing many of the influences from my childhood popping in. “Oh, now. Would you say the type of cartooning you’re doing now that looks like a Caniff nose,” or, “That looks like so-and-so’s has been your natural tendency all along? ear,” or whatever. They all pop in. I’m still trying to excise CS: I’ve always been into the cartoonier stuff, and that seems some of that old stuff and just draw how I draw. easier to me. I think of myself more as a cartoonist than a comic book artist, because “comic book artist” just seems so DRAW!: Was that kind of a struggle to begin with? The stale. I’m trying to make the characters emote and act, and Capote book was probably your first big project of note. there’s more of that in old comics than current comics. You CS: Well, that’s probably where my career really started. It can look at a Will Eisner book, and then look at anything snowballed from there. 2005 was where it really hit.

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On the left, Chris tightening the pencils over his layout. On the right, the cleaned up results. Page 1 from Daredevil Vol. 4, #8.

All characters © Marvel Characters, Inc.

DRAW!: How did you get that book?

CS: I was taking around samples to every convention, like I had been doing my whole silly life, and I saw that Mike Allred was coming to town, and I asked my wife if she wanted to go with me to that show. We went together but Allred cancelled at the last minute; he was sick or had something going on in the family where he couldn’t make it. I was disappointed and said, “I guess we’ll just go home,” and my wife was like, “No, no, no, there are guys over here. There are other guys who make comics. Let’s go talk to them.” “Well, I just really wanted to see Allred.” “It took 40 minutes to get all the way into the city. Let’s just talk to the other guys here, see what they’re doing.”

It turned out to be Brian Hurtt and Cullen Bunn, who are now great friends of mine, though they were just a couple of local comics creators who hadn’t made a whole lot of stuff at that time. Brian was working on Hard Times for DC’s Paradox Press imprint. Every other book in the line had fallen away, and Hard Times was still going. Brian was working on that with Steve Gerber, and Cullen was still trying to work his way in. He had a day job, and he was writing horror anthology stuff, and just trying to make his way in as a writer.

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I went over and showed my portfolio to Brian. You could see on his face, like, “Ugh, I hate doing portfolio reviews!” but I asked him if he would look at mine, and he said, “You know what? This is really good!” He turned around to Cullen and said, “You should look at this guy’s stuff. I bet you’d work well together.” I got Cullen’s number, and a couple of days later we went out for drinks, and talked about comics.

We did a couple of pitches, and nothing ever went anywhere, but I got a couple of great friendships out of it.

I ran into Brian at San Diego, and he was friends with the guys at Oni. He said, “Come on over to the Oni table, I’ll introduce you to some folks. I know you’re trying to get work.”

They had a specific way they did their portfolio reviews, and I didn’t have anything Oni-related, or anything close to what they wanted. All I had was Fantastic Four samples, but they were like, “You know, this is really good. We have a book we need an artist for. Would you want to try out for it?” So, I tried I think five or six pages—it was all of the script that Ande had done for Capote in Kansas—and I turned that stuff in, and they said, “Yeah, this is it. It’s your book.” Those are the first five pages that are in the book.

DRAW!: Did working with Ande, an inker himself, make things easier for you in any way?

CS: Well, that was the first thing I’d inked with real tools. I took on the job thinking, “Well, Ande’s an inker. He can ink it!” And he was like, “No, I’m hardly getting paid anything anyway, I’m not going to ink it too!” [laughter] He was like, “You’re going to have to figure it out. You’ll figure it out.”

I started out inking with wedge brushes, and all of my brushes were the wrong shape, and I was using the wrong ink, but as I progressed through the book—there’s 120 pages; it took me about a year to do while working at Borders—by that time I had a computer, and we’d email back and forth. I didn’t have a scanner that worked very well; I only had an 8½" x 11" scanner, so I was mailing all of my pages to Ande, and Ande would scan and send them to Oni, and then mail me back my pages.

[Eric laughs] It seems so archaic now.

Ande was really helpful in telling me what tools I needed to use, and he used to do a column in DRAW!—his favorite white-out, or brush, or ink. I’d cut those out of the magazine and stick them on my wall as a reminder of what to get. I’d go to Dick Blick or whatever art supply store I could find, and I would get the stuff that Ande told me to get. [Eric

The finished inks, above, and gray tones, left, for Daredevil Vol. 4, #8, page 1.

All characters © Marvel Characters, Inc.

laughs] Well, he was the only professional inker, besides Brian, that I knew. Those two guys were my heroes in 2005, so whatever they got, I got. If Brian got Pitt pens, I would buy Pitt pens. If Ande says he likes Pentel white-out, that’s the one I would buy. I would go to Brian’s apartment, and I’m sure I was just annoying the hell out of him, but I’d be there for hours, and I’d ask why he made this choice on a page, or why he did this. What did he use to make this effect? I’m surprised he still talks to me. [laughter] I must have been so annoying, but to finally know somebody who made comics, it was so wild. I may have abused our friendship at the beginning.

DRAW!: Well, that book got you a nomination for the 2006 Russ Manning Award. Was that surprising to you? Did you feel like you had a shot at it?

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Two cover layouts for Magneto #2, both playing off the shape of Magneto’s helmet.

Magneto, Professor Xavier © Marvel Characters, Inc.

CS: To be nominated was bananas. I was proud of what I was doing at the time, but certainly didn’t think it was worthy of any sort of accolades or nominations or awards. But that was when my wife was like, “Maybe you can make a career out of this!” [laughter] I mean, she’d been supportive for so long.

When she met me at Borders, I told her I made comics—that’s what I wanted to do, I didn’t want to be at Borders forever.

We moved in together really soon after, we got married really quick—I was married at 23—and she’s been supportive all along, ever since the beginning. She was like, “If we can get you a regular job at Marvel or DC, and you can quit Borders, I’ll keep working here for the health insurance. If you can get an OGN or ongoing or something big, we’ll make it work.”

And we did!

After I finished Capote, I did a few little things here and there, and then in 2006, I was offered Area 10 for Vertigo while I was driving home from Borders one night. Jon Vankin called and said, “I’ve got a book here for you,” and I said, “I’ll take it!” “You want to know what it is?” “It doesn’t even matter. Whatever it is, I’m on it. I’ll do it.” I was just so ready

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to be done with Borders. I just wanted to be making comics.

That’s what I’ve always wanted to do, and that’s the only thing I’m really good at. [laughter] I would take any job that was offered to me. It took a while for the script to be ready, so I think for six months, I would constantly email Jon Vankin and say, “Is the script ready yet?” He’d say, “No, but while you’re waiting, here’s an American Splendor, here’s an issue of Exterminators, another story of American Splendor.” He was trying to keep me busy until the script was ready. In the interim, I got to do some really neat stuff.

DRAW!: How closely did you work with Harvey Pekar?

CS: Not at all, really. I never talked to him. He didn’t have email. I got really bad copies of pages from his notebook. That was his script, these stick figure drawings, and one of them had messy hair, and that’s how I knew it was Harvey. I just had to guess who the stick figures were. [laughter] It was rough!

This was all stuff that didn’t make it into the original American Splendor, and when Vertigo got hold of the rights to it, they said, “Harvey, whatever you have in your drawers, we’ll take

it.” It was basically Harvey’s slush pile, and they’d say, “Here, make this into a comic strip.” [laughs] Some of them were just one sheet of paper, but with 24 panels, and Jon would say, “Okay, can you make this into six pages?” “What?!? No!” I didn’t know how! That was jumping into the deep end on trying to do storytelling from bare bones.

It was cool. Otherwise I never would’ve gotten to work with Pekar. I mean, I know that we didn’t work hand-in-hand, but I did do his story. I don’t know if he ever saw it.

DRAW!: Your inking with that, you really went into chiaroscuro mode. What were you looking at to feel your way through that process?

CS: I was looking at the later Steranko stuff—the black-and-white stuff he did, Red Tide—and I found a bunch of scans of black-and-white “V for Vendetta” pages. I was really into David Lloyd at the time. All the blown-out line and stuff, that’s mostly from Steranko and David Lloyd.

page rate, and my wife and I were crunching the numbers, and we were like, “We could totally survive if I got this every month!” No, we couldn’t. [laughter] That was all I did then, so we could pay our bills in our little apartment. Oh, gosh, I’m thinking back to our tiny little apartment and working for Oni when Oni was a three-man operation.

I don’t know, I’ve always been into mainstream comics, so my style might have been more indie at the time, but that was because I was experimenting and trying to teach myself how to ink. Even after a whole graphic novel or two, I was still trying to find who I was. Area 10 looks totally different to me

DRAW!: Yeah, you weren’t doing a solid holding line all the time.

CS: I knew it was going to be in blackand-white, so I felt I was free to experiment. I was already trying some of that in Capote in Kansas, and I just carried it through into the next few things. All the American Splendor was in black-andwhite, I knew Area 10 would be in blackand-white, and I was just trying to get comfortable with inking and trying new things. I was never great at contour lines, I didn’t have a steady enough hand, and when I was trying to teach myself inking on Capote in Kansas, I went simpler and simpler, because I thought the less lines I had to draw, the less chance I would have to screw up. [laughter] I was just trying to make it as simple as possible so there was less of me botching things up.

DRAW!: After that you started getting more work from the big publishers. You did Checkmate, and in 2008, you got work from Marvel for the first time. Were you feeling more comfortable working in the more traditional approach? Did you ever really get to a place where you felt like that was something you could do forever?

CS: I did four issues of Queen and Country somewhere in there for Oni, and I remember it was a really, really low rate. It was a per-issue rate, not a

Pencils for the cover of Magneto #2.

Magneto, Professor Xavier © Marvel Characters, Inc.

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Finished inks for the cover of Magneto #2.

Magneto, Professor Xavier © Marvel Characters, Inc.

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than Capote in Kansas. To most people, they look very similar.

Queen and Country is the bridge in between those two. And then there’s a big shift between the first three issues and the last issue of Queen and Country, because I was learning so much in between. Greg [Rucka] was working on 52, the weekly book DC was doing, so between two issues of Queen and Country, he worked on that exclusively, and I was waiting on scripts. I did all of Area 10 in between issues of Queen and Country.

I’m trying to remember if I got the wrong paper, or if somebody sent me rough paper from DC by accident, and I was like, “No, no, no, I’m just going to draw it on my own paper.” But I ran out of paper, and I didn’t have time to buy more, so the last issue of Queen and Country was really, really rough-looking, and looked like Stefano Gaudiano [Walking Dead] inked it or something. I was fighting the paper for five or six weeks, and that was after a year of me trying to figure out how to ink on this other paper. It’s odd, but the last issue was just me fighting to get it done. But I’m kind of proud of that last one. I didn’t have to come back. I was already doing stuff at Vertigo, so I didn’t have to. Everyone was saying, “You’re already doing all this other stuff, you don’t have to finish Queen and Country,” but I said I would do it, so I wanted to stick to my guns. If I say I’m going to do something, I’ll do it, so I had to squeeze it in before my next job. I kind of cranked it out on the wrong paper—but it was interesting.

say. If it’s a MAX book, you know what you’re getting into.

It’s not my bag, but I did the best job that I could.

I did little things to make me laugh or try to turn something that was bloody and gory and horrible into things that’d cheer me up, because otherwise, I would get depressed and sunk down in miasma. One of the villains I turned into Tony Moore. [laughter] The main bad guy had these big muttonchops and glasses, and it was, “All right, that’s Tony. [laughs] I think I showed him after the fact, and said, “I hope you’re cool with this. I made this bad guy you.” He said, “You just made my day!” [laughter] I mean, that’s how I got through it.

Trying to picture Tony doing these things was just so funny in my head, that I could get through these imaginary people doing terrible things.

DRAW!: From that you went to The Mighty, so I guess that was a nicer change of tone.

CS: That’s where I felt like I started hitting my stride.

I still look at The Mighty pages and feel like, “I could’ve done that a couple of months ago.” It doesn’t look that far off from what I’m trying to do now. Pete [Tomasi] came to me because he saw my stuff on my blog, and he felt I had a tone close enough to Peter Snejbjerg’s— which it was. We weren’t polar opposites. But they embraced the cartoony in my style, and said, “Go for it!”

I sent them a few pages, and said, “I think I need more black on these pages. What do you guys think?”

DRAW!: Talking about how your style for my first issue, and they said, “You’re doing it. was shifting, Devil-Slayer you did at Whatever you want to do.” When I got that email Marvel was another shift. back, I was like, “Oh, okay! So I can do CS: Oh, yeah. It was more of a horror whatever I want to do!” So that’s where I book, and I’m not really a horror guy, so I finally felt like they accepted me enough was fighting against all of my wholesome to do cartoony, and I could just kind of be insides. [laughter] It was zombies, and me, and that’s where I felt like I arose, and Color sketch of Marvel gun-for-hire, monsters, and gross stuff, and Iraq. I’d really started to come into my own.

The Enforcer. already done so much Iraq war stuff with Enforcer © Marvel Characters, Inc. Queen and Country, I said, “I’ll never do DRAW!: You mentioned the blog as the another book that’s set in the Middle East. I can’t handle the initial point of contact. Do you think having the blog really research!” I would get online and do image searches, I was made the difference as to which way you went? like, “Oh, there’s another dead body in the gutter. Ugh. I can’t CS: Oh, definitely. There’re still jobs I get just because they look at it anymore!” [laughter] I’d get a script from Brian saw stuff on my blog. I did redesigns of classic Marvel charKeene, and it’d describe a dead body, “Do an image search acters for Thor: The Mighty Avenger, and they’re still up on for a dead body that’s been in the water for a week.” “Ooooh, my blog. Wil Moss, my editor at Marvel, dug the ones I did of Ant-Man, and that’s how I got the recent job I did, redesignthis is not for me!”

I’m not a zombie guy by nature. I’m not really into horror ing Scott Lang’s Ant-Man costume in the new comics. and gore, but I had to take what I was offered. Nobody came a-knocking. I was the one begging for work, so if I got some- DRAW!: At what point did you get involved with the Twart thing offered, I’d take it. I mean, it was for Marvel! They said guys?

“Devil-Slayer,” and I had no idea who that was. I looked him CS: Well, that was through Twitter. Some of those guys I knew up and said, “Okay, I can do this!” Then they sent me the cos- in person, most of them I didn’t, but I was a fan of online, and I tume designs, and it was just a U.S. soldier with a scarf, and think it was just sort of a mutual admiration society. We would they said, “Okay, this is his costume.” And I said, “Dammit! joke around. I think by chance, Evan “Doc” Shaner and I had It’s not tights, I’m not doing tights. This is something else.” It drawn Thor on the same day. We were all sort of talking in a was a Marvel MAX book. I think that’s all you really have to circle on Twitter, and it was like, “Ooh, I’ll draw Thor,” and,

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“I’ll draw Thor too!” Then someone said, “Okay, what are we going to draw tomorrow?” and one thing led to another.

We started emailing each other, and DM-ing each other, and it was like, “We should do this all the time! We should make our own blog, and post sketches, and we could come up with a theme every week!” “Yeah, that sounds great!”

My wife was trying to find domain names while everyone was emailing back and forth, and nothing was available.

We were like, “Comic Art Blog,” “Comic Twitter Blog,” “Twitter Art Blog,” and that’s where “Twart” came from, was from “Twitter Art Blog.” We just mashed it together.

I don’t know who came up with it; I know it wasn’t me.

My wife typed it in, and, “It’s available!” It’s the first one we came across that was available, and that’s the one we went with.

(above and below) Layouts for a preview teaser for the new Ant-Man ongoing series—variations on two themes.

Ant-Man © Marvel Characters, Inc.

DRAW!: That got all of you a lot of exposure. It was kind of like Tumblr before Tumblr.

CS: Yeah, I mean, just seeing where everybody is now and where we were then is just amazing. Everybody is a full-time comic artist—proper professionals. It’s bananas!

Most of us were still trying to break our way in back then.

I think Mitch Breitweiser was probably the biggest name when we started, and by the time we were done, Dave Johnson asked if he could join in. “What?!? Yes, please!”

We started with 16 or 18, I think we ended with 20-something guys. I think Francesco [Francavilla] is the only one who participated every single week. The longer it went, the more jobs we started to get, and it just got harder and harder to maintain. [Mike] Hawthorne, believe it or not, he’s busy enough on Deadpool, and he’s doing French comics, he’s busy all over the place, and he didn’t tell anybody, but he’s going back and hitting all the weeks that he missed, so the Twart blog is still updating.

DRAW!: I just went there last night, preparing for the interview, and I noticed a couple of you had just posted something within the past month. There’s about a twoyear gap there, but it’s still going. [laughs] CS: I drew Two-Face a week or two ago, and [Nathan] Fairbairn, the only guy who wasn’t trying to make it only as an artist—he was a colorist by trade, but he wanted to try to draw too—colored my Two-Face sketch, then “Doc” Shaner drew Two-Face, and Fairbairn colored a bunch of sketches, then started posting those back to the blog. “Should we go ahead and post this?” “Why not?”

Fairbairn still pays the dues every year for the domain, so we might as well post something there! Maybe someday we’ll all get back to it, but we’re all pretty busy these days.

It’s fun to think where we came from.

DRAW!: In terms of today’s artists breaking in, everyone’s got a Tumblr page, and a lot of people find work that way. Editors are scouring through Tumblr now, but like I said, this was kind of like Tumblr for you guys.

You got a lot of emulators out of that too.

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CS: There were already other art blogs starting, just a few months later. I think there were some that had maybe started before us.

DRAW!: Yeah, but you guys blew it up. I would see links to Twart everywhere. Can you equate that to all of those times going to conventions, and all the scrambling you had to do to find work in the early days, compared to that blog?

CS: I think I got more work from that blog than I ever did hoofing it. It’s kind of depressing when I think about it. I went to my parents’ house to grab some stuff, and there are still Manilla envelopes with sample pages stapled together. How many hours did I waste putting packets together, when really all you have to do is put some stuff up on a blog? Spend half an hour drawing something and posting it up.

Such little effort, and you could make a career out of it.

DRAW!: Now you’ve got a Tumblr, you’ve got your blog, you’ve got Twitter still. How much time do you spend these days doing social media to keep your name out there?

CS: Not as much as I should. I mean, I pretty much rely on the monthly comics to keep my name out there. I’m on Tumblr a lot, mostly just trying to pimp whatever book I’ve got coming out, and that’s pretty much what I do on Twitter too. I wish I had more time to be social, and I know it’s social networking, and I’m not using it properly. I miss being able to get on there and chat with people, but I made friends through Twitter, so for those folks, I just text them, or email them. There’s not a whole lot of doing that out in the public. I can’t send the newest Daredevil pages to people online, but I can text Brent Schoonover and see what he thinks, and we’ll bounce it back and forth.

It’s a friendship we made online, but I’m not spoiling any story points for anyone else.

I spend maybe a couple of hours here and there. For Inktober, I’m trying to post something every day, but I don’t get in front of the computer enough to scan it and put it on my blog, so I’m just going to have to do that at the end of the month. Most of what I do is I’ll spend ten minutes on a little doodle. I’ll draw Nick Fury, or whoever, and take a picture with my phone while I’m at my office, and from my phone I can post it to Tumblr, Twitter, and Instagram all at the same time. So, ten or 15 minutes a day, and for the full-size ones, about 30 or 45 minutes, and those are usually done in the morning if I’m feeling rusty, or mid-day in

Pencils for the Ant-Man promo (above), and Chris’ redesign for Scott Lang as Ant-Man (left).

Ant-Man © Marvel Characters, Inc.

between pages. If I really need to recharge my batteries, I’ll do a full-size 9" x 12".

DRAW!: Was it The Mighty that got you the job on Thor: The Mighty Avenger, or was it the blog?

CS: You know, I don’t know how I got Thor. I think it was probably—one of the first jobs I did for Marvel was Marvel Adventures Spider-Man with Paul Tobin. It was just a fill-in, but Paul Tobin and Nate, the editor….

When you’re young and you start something, everything is new and fun and fresh and exciting, and we were all just having a ball, and were emailing back and

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forth. It just was so much fun, and I made such good friends with them straight away. We got along so well that I think Nate was probably thinking of me whenever something came across.

“Maybe this would be right for Chris.”

Thor came across his desk, and they needed an artist for it. They tried out Gurihiru, the Japanese studio—they did Thor and the Warriors Four—but Roger thought it was maybe too far towards cartoony, and he wanted to do something a little closer to straightforward superhero Silver Age comics. I’m not sure how far down the list I was. Somewhere down the line, they came asking if

I would do it, and I was like, “Thor? I don’t know, am I the right guy for Thor?” Nate told me, “Don’t worry about it. It’s not the Thor that you are thinking of.”

There was already a Thor book, but I think they wanted to have another Thor book on the shelves for when the movie came out. Sometimes publishers just want more of a product because the more that’s out there, the more money they can make. I don’t think they were really worried about what the book was, they were just like, “Yeah, let’s just make another Thor book, and have it out there.” The more we started to work on it, the more we said, “We can kind of make this allages.” Nate was the all-ages editor, but I don’t think that was originally the intent. Roger had kids, I’d been wanting to do something that skewed more “wholesome,” and that’s just sort of where it went. A lot of folks called it allages. There were two different designations for 14 and under, and then another for 10–16. It was a really convoluted rating system, but this was supposed to be the one up for all ages. There was sex that happened off-screen, so that kind of bumped up our rating to a little older.

DRAW!: It was rated T. CS: Yeah, yeah. We got kind of lumped in with all-ages, and that’s why a lot of people didn’t want to read it. We were supposed to be a little above all-ages, but it is what it is. I mean, I think you could look at how cartoony my stuff was on that book, and see how it made a lot of people just jump to conclusions.

DRAW!: Well, as soon as that book hit the stands, it immediately became my favorite thing Marvel was doing at the time. They were in a particularly dark and gritty place then, and Thor: The Mighty Avenger shone out like a beacon of light against the darkness.

CS: Thank you very much. I do appreciate that.

Chris’ finished inks for the Ant-Man promo, along with the colors by Matt Wilson.

Ant-Man © Marvel Characters, Inc.

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DRAW!: Did you feel that it was an opportunity, in a way, to do something so different from everything else Marvel was doing?

CS: I don’t know if I was trying to do something different. We were all just having fun. We weren’t even thinking about

what the rest of the Marvel Universe was doing.

We had to create our own, and we were just talking about Silver Age Marvel, and how much fun that stuff was. I got a chance to redesign Ant-Man. I must’ve done a dozen different redesigns of him, and I ended up settling on almost what he wore in the ’60s, just slightly updated, because that’s what felt right for the book! It didn’t need bells and whistles, and nothing in the book was bells and whistles, it was all right there. It was what it was, and to try and, I don’t know, put a shiny sheet on it just didn’t feel right.

I’m still really proud of that book. I think that’s one of the books I could give to anybody, and they can read it without knowing any sort of backstory.

All these characters have such a long history, that it’s one of the few books where you don’t have to know anything before you jump in. It’s just good, classic comics. Roger did such an amazing job on that book.

On Daredevil with Mark Waid, we talk about story, and what the character is going to do, and who I want to draw, and what’s going to happen.

We get on the phone and talk a lot. With Thor, before the run started, Roger asked who I wanted to draw, what I wanted to do, and I said, “I want to draw Namor being a jerk.” And that was the only thing I asked for, everything else just came in. The scripts were perfect as is. I hardly ever added a panel or anything. Roger, being a cartoonist as well by trade, knew exactly what he needed, and how much space to leave. It was a great experience.

DRAW!: And it got a lot of critical acclaim too.

Obviously the sales weren’t fantastic, but they weren’t terrible. Did it make you feel good that the critics were responding to what you were doing?

CS: Well, critics or not, I was just happy when people would send me pictures of their kids reading it. It’s one thing for just a bunch of 30- or 40-year-old dudes reading comics, but to have started reading comics as a little kid, and seeing another little kid reading it…. It made me feel like I was doing good, you know, to see kids reading and enjoying something I did. I don’t know. It gave me the warm fuzzies.

Cover thumbnail layout sketches for Thor #2, featuring an all-new, all-female Thor.

Thor © Marvel Characters, Inc.

DRAW!: What kind of things were you looking at for visual inspiration during this time?

CS: Gosh, I think I’d gotten to the point where I was so busy, I wasn’t reading anything. Definitely there’s some Bruce Timm in there, and Shane Glines. There’s a lot of simpler stuff.

There’s a lot of Toth. I was just starting to get

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Pencils and finished inks for the cover of Thor #2.

Thor © Marvel Characters, Inc.

into Noel Sickles when I started Thor, so I was playing a little bit with the lighting, but Sickles was still pretty new to me at the time, so I hadn’t…

DRAW!: Internalized it yet.

CS: Yeah, I hadn’t broke it all down in my mind yet and figured out how he was doing it. Caniff has always been a big one. I was reading Meanwhile… the biography about Caniff

by R.C. Harvey, I found out about his studiomates, and that’s how I got into Sickles. I don’t think I had much time to look at anything else, because while I was doing Thor, I was also drawing Shepherd’s Tale for Dark Horse. So, that was six or eight long months of doing one book during the day, and then putting my wife to bed, and going downstairs and staying up all night drawing another book. Thor was drawn during the daytime, and Shepherd’s Tale was drawn at night.

DRAW!: Shepherd’s Tale is obviously a licensed property.

Was there a lot of hassle involved with that, as far as getting approvals?

CS: You would think there would’ve been, but Joss Whedon had a deal—I think it still works that way—where you draw the character once, and if his company thinks that’s close

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enough, that’s close enough, and that’s the only time they give approvals. If they sign off on your design, that’s it.

DRAW!: Maybe Whedon, working in comics himself sometimes, gets it a little more than a corporation would.

CS: Maybe. I think Joss had one note where he said, “Shepherd’s hair looks like Cool Whip in one panel,” and that’s like the only thing he said about the whole book! And that’s all that had to get changed. His hair was too white in one panel, and had to get changed.

DRAW!: Were you binge-watching Firefly during that period?

CS: Yeah. I downloaded the soundtracks from Serenity and Firefly from iTunes, and they were on my iPod running on random, and I was putting on the show, and fast-forwarding through shots trying to find specific locations I was trying to draw, or costumes you can’t find reference of online. I watched the show over and over again.

DRAW!: Did you ever try to match cinematography from the show?

CS: Maybe here and there. I was trying to draw it like a western, but since I’ve never drawn a western comic to begin with,

Cover art for another Joss Whedon project, Angel & Faith: Season 10 #2.

Angel & Faith © Twentieth Century Fox Film Corp.

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I was only thinking of western movies. I may not have done the job I intended when I took it on. But I’m still happy with the way it turned out. I don’t think I knew enough western cinematography to try tricks like that. It was mostly just what I read in the script. When I read a panel description, I get a picture in my head, and I’ll do a quick scribble of it in the margins of the script, and nine times out of ten, that’s what I’ll draw on the page.

DRAW!: Was it around this time that you moved out to Portland? Was it 2009, 2010, somewhere in there?

CS: Our first was born between issues of Captain America and Bucky. And that was in Oregon. I was still working on Thor: The Mighty Avenger when me moved to Portland, but I think I only had an issue or two left.

DRAW!: So it was late 2010, maybe?

CS: Maybe. That sounds about right. I’d finished all of Shepherd’s Tale, but hadn’t had a chance to scan it yet, and I remember getting emails from Dark Horse, and them saying, “We can come to your house and pick up the pages and scan

them if you don’t have time to scan them,” [laughter] because I was unpacking the moving van while I was getting emails. I was like, “No, no, I’ll scan all the pages. Just let me get them done, and I’ll turn them all in.” They were trying to hurry up and get pages to Dave, because Dave only had a small window to get all of his stuff done. I think he colored that entire OGN in a week.

DRAW!: Wow. CS: That guy is a workhorse. He can crank it out, and I didn’t have a single note. 80 pages, and it was just glorious He’s just a master.

DRAW!: Indeed. Was the move to Portland so you could be in an area with a lot of other artists?

CS: Well, we were looking for something different. We’d lived in Missouri our whole lives, and we were just… trying something different. We were looking for places to go. We went to Minneapolis for a weekend, and I really didn’t care for it. It was so cold when we went, that’s what I thought of when I thought of Minnesota. I sort of vetoed that.

A wraparound variant cover for Uncanny X-Men: Battle of the Atom #12.

X-Men © Marvel Characters, Inc.

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The next one down the list was Portland, and that’s really because I’d made friends with Jeff Parker through Twitter, and we did X-Men: Agents of Atlas together, and then I found out how many other people lived in Portland, and I thought, “Holy crap, that’s where I want to go!” My wife and I had made plans to go out there and look for houses we could rent, and I kept taking on more work, and the more work I’d take, the more we’d have to cancel plane tickets and reschedule. It got to the point where I’d taken on so much work that I couldn’t go at all, so my wife went out by herself and looked around, and she’s the one who figured out where we were going to go. Jeff drove her around his neighborhood, telling her what houses were good, and I think we rented out first house based on Parker saying which one was good, and then looking at photos online. We sort of jumped in with both feet. We just wanted a change of pace. The caliber of creator out there was really what pushed me over the edge. Then the weather and kids were the biggest reasons to get us back out of there.

DRAW!: Did you do much socializing while you were there?

CS: You know, we really didn’t! [laughter] It’s so awful. I moved out there so I could see folks, and then I’m always so busy, I don’t get to be as social as I’d like. I was part of Periscope after about a year. I was in Portland for two years, and after about a year, I asked if I could join the studio. They had to take a vote, but [Steve] Lieber and Parker and everybody were cool with me hanging out there. I got to sit at Kieron Dwyer’s old desk, and it was cool to be around other creative people.

DRAW!: Who else was there? There was Parker and Lieber, and I guess Sara Ryan was there, and….

CS: I’m not sure that she was. It was separated into two halves, so I really only saw most of the folks that were on the left side of the studio. Parker, Rich Ellis, Colleen Coover, Paul Tobin, Steve Lieber, Erika Moen, Ron Randall, and Karl Kesel were all on my side. I didn’t see a whole lot of Karl. I saw Ron there about every other time I was there—sometimes I’d use his desk. But mostly I was chatting with Parker and Colleen and Tobin, just because they were right around my desk.

And then on the other side, I talked to Ben Dewey a lot, my Portland twin. I got mistaken for him several times while I was in Portland. There’re a lot of bearded, hatted, bespectacled gentlemen in Portland. [laughter] We had a few mix-ups between folks.

Dewey does a webcomic called Tragedy Series. He’s really great; he’s going to be a household name before you know it. Natalie Nourigat worked next to Dewey, and I’d talk with them a lot in the mornings when I

Attention Marvel: Make this a real comic and not just a variant cover.

X-Men © Marvel Characters, Inc.

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went in and was still working on my first cup of coffee. Next to them was Dustin Weaver, who did the SHIELD book with Hickman. Who else? There were a few other people I didn’t see a whole lot of. There’s the guy who did the Sonic the Hedgehog books, but I never actually saw him in person, so I can’t remember his name. Ron Chan was there as well…. It was a big group!

DRAW!: There’re more people than I remember being there.

CS: There’re a ton of folks in there. There’re a lot of folks who do indie comics, or do web strips. It’s actually a working studio too, so they do storyboard work. Some of them may be doing more storyboards than comics, so that’s why they aren’t big comic names. There’re a lot of real talented people there.

More variant cover goodness, this time for New Warriors #1.

New Warriors © Marvel Characters, Inc.

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DRAW!: While you were there, did you get involved with any of that other studio work, or were you mostly just focused on your own stuff?

CS: No, I mean, they asked if I would do a few things here or there, but really, I usually overbooked myself with comics anyway, so it was hard to take on anything else. Even if it was just something offered straight to me through email, or on the phone, I would have to turn it down. Comics take up most of my life. It’s hard to take on anything else.

DRAW!: You mentioned hanging out with Tobin and Coover—you all seem to have the same sensibility as far as what Colleen and Paul are doing with Bandette now. It’s that same kind of joyous cartooning thing you did with Thor and carried into Daredevil.

CS: Well, it’s weird that you bring up Bandette. That’s one of those things where I got to be a fly on the wall while they were creating the book. They couldn’t come up with a title. They were talking about what to call it, and I feel like I was a little part of history as they were putting it all together. They were doing designs, and we were all talking about what the first cover was going to look like.

It’s really neat to think of what that book has become. They’ve won an Eisner. I got to be at the Eisners when Paul and Colleen won.

It’s cool. It’s comics.

DRAW!: Speaking of Eisners, you’ve had your share of Eisner recognition.

CS: Yeah, I’ve been nominated a couple of times, and I’ve brought one home. It’s pretty crazy! When you walk off stage, they take your picture. I was beet red and just had the craziest look on my face! [laughter] I looked like a wild man. I’m pointing at it, and my mouth’s agape. “I won this!” It’s just crazy.

From a kid begging to get his portfolio looked at to winning an Eisner is just… it still doesn’t feel right. I have my Eisner and Harvey in a little glass case in my office, and sometimes I look at it, and I’m like, “How is that even in there?” [laughter] DRAW!: You were in Portland when you did the three issues of Ultimate Spider-Man with Brian Bendis. What was that process like? Since you were both in Portland, were you able to actually physically get together and talk things over?

CS: Well, we’d been chatting a bit. I think we were joking on Twitter more than anything. He’d found out how close I lived, and I was the closest to him in Portland. I was just down the street, and he’d tweet about Cover art for Daredevil #0.1, printing the digital-first Daredevil: Road Warrior story. smelling something, and I’d say, “Oh, yeah, Daredevil © Marvel Characters, Inc. I smelled that five minutes ago.” And that’s really how we first started communicating, and I found out I you want to draw some of this?” and I didn’t even realize was so close. that’s what was happening. Before you know it, I was getting He rode his bicycle over to my house one day, and he told an email from the editor saying, “When can you start?” I was me his idea for Miles Morales, and I said, “Oh, that sounds like, “Start on what?” “Oh, Ultimate Spider-Man,” and I was crazy. That’s awesome. You’re going to really piss off some bowled over. I had no idea that the conversation I had with racists, but that sounds awesome. Good luck with that.” He Brian was actually going to lead to me drawing some of it. was like, “Is that something you’d be interested in?” I was Yeah, I did one issue of the Peter Parker Ultimate Spiderlike, “Oh, gosh, yeah, that would be great. That sounds cool.” Man, and then two or three issues of the Miles Morales, and I didn’t realize he was actually saying, “Hey, do you want before I was done with my last one, I’d already lined up a to draw this book?” I just thought we did that, “How cool. fill-in issue on Daredevil, and one thing led to another with Is that the kind of thing you’d like?” because that’s how we Daredevil. Paolo [Rivera] decided to do creator-owned stuff, are. We want to make sure what we’re talking about, other and I signed on for one issue, and started working on it, and people would be interested in. He was actually saying, “Do everybody seemed happy with it. Then I think we’d decided I

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would be the alternating regularly with Paolo, and then Paolo was like, “Okay, I’m getting ready to go,” so I went from the guy who was just going to be doing the fill-in to a co-regular to the full-on regular guy in just a matter of weeks, I think.

My sense of time is pretty messed up, but it felt like weeks.

Who knows? It may have been six months. Working at a desk all day, my sense of time really gets skewed. It felt like a really quick process, one thing led to another, and I’ve been the regular guy on it since, almost three years now.

DRAW!: When you’re preparing for something like Thor, where you’re creating the designs from scratch, versus something like Ultimate Spider-Man, where it’s a short stay, versus something like Daredevil, where you’re coming in for a long haul, how much design work, preliminary sketching, etc., do you do ahead of time, according to those factors?

CS: Well, Miles already had been designed. Sara Pichelli had designed him, so they sent me her turnarounds of Miles, and I’d already seen the first two issues of stuff that she’d been doing with the supporting cast, so there was really zero prep for Ultimate Spider-Man. I just jumped in. I already knew how he looked. My biggest problem was just trying to figure out how I was going to ink those webs. So, I did some notebook sketches testing out different kinds of white-out, because I knew it was going to take me forever if I was going to ink around each of those red webs. Then I tried maybe inking webs, and then inverting them in PhotoShop, but that seemed like it wouldn’t work for time. It seemed like it was going to take longer than just using white-out. But that’s really all the prep I did for that. I already had a pretty good idea of how I was going to draw him.

Chris’ “very specific idea” of how Matt Murdock should look.

Daredevil, Matt Murdock © Marvel Characters, Inc.

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For Thor I did a whole lot of cover sketches ahead of time.

I think we were originally approved for twelve issues, and Roger had an idea of who the villains were going to be in each issue. So I just sat down one day, and I think I did two or three options for all twelve covers, and that’s really where all my designs originally came from. I took maybe half an hour to an hour for each of the characters. The first designs I did for Thor are the ones we went with. It all just came tumbling out of me.

It was really natural. It felt like every time I did one, the first try is what we went with. Ant-Man was the hardest, and then I went back and did the Silver Age costume for the most part.

And I tried to redo Wasp, but there really wasn’t any need.

I liked her old costume, I just gave it a bit more high-techy earphone things.

With Daredevil, I’m mostly doing it on the page. I’ve been drawing Daredevil for years. He’s one of the first Marvel characters I was really into. I was exclusively a Batman/DC reader as a little kid. The first Marvel books I bought were reprints of when Daredevil met Spider-Man, and I was like, “These guys are awesome,” so those were my first two Marvel characters.

I started buying Gene Colan Daredevil comics. I think Romita Jr. was the artist at the time, but as I said, it was hard to get current comics when I was a kid. Most of the Daredevil I read was Colan. If it could come out of my hand that way, it would be Gene Colan and Wally Wood, but it ends up looking like me.

In my head, I picture Gene Colan’s Matt Murdock talking, but by the time it gets on the paper, it looks like I drew it. [laughs] DRAW!: Do you see things in your compositions that look like something Colan might have done?

CS: Composition-wise, I never think about what other artists do. I’m just trying to figure out what works best for the panel and for the page, and for the flow of it. Composition isn’t something I’ve tried to glean from other artists; my composition is just how I do it. People have tried to show me Wally Wood’s “22 Panels That Aways Work,” and that’s all well and good if you can use one of those in your story, but I feel like if you’re looking at that too much, you’re going to try to shoehorn those angles into your story, even if that isn’t the angle that you need. I’m just trying to service the story as best as I can.

But just the style of how Colan did it, like Matt Murdock’s features, how his hair looks. The first thing I did when I came on as the regular artist on Daredevil was to ask if we could cut Matt Murdock’s hair, and Ellie Pyle said, “No, I like his long hair! It looks like he’s too busy being Daredevil to cut it!” And I was like, “Well, it just doesn’t look like Daredevil to me. That’s not the Matt Murdock that’s in my head. He needs a sharp black suit with no highlights, and hair like a lawyer. It needs to be shorter on the sides and a little longer on top, and have some Brylcreem in it.” I just have a really specific idea of what it should look like. [laughter] I sent in some turnarounds of what my design for Matt’s new haircut would be, and I think I waited until the new arc for Matt to get a new haircut. I think it was like issue #23 where I could finally start drawing my Matt Murdock.

Daredevil character designs.

Daredevil, Stilt-Man © Marvel Characters, Inc.

But most of my designs are done on the page, which is why Foggy has really evolved over the years. I’d never drawn Foggy just for fun, but Daredevil I’d done dozens of drawings of long before I ever got the job.

after cancer treatment. I made the decision that Foggy wasn’t going to lose his eyebrows. It’s too hard to make him act without them. Some people do lose their eyebrows, some people don’t; some people lose all their hair, some people don’t.

Everyone is affected differently by chemo, so I had to make the decision that Foggy wasn’t going to lose them, because it’s just too hard to get anything across with a blank forehead.

DRAW!: With Foggy going through cancer treatment, did you have to do much research as far as how it was going to affect the way his face looks? Did you look at stuff like that?

CS: Well, a lot of Foggy is me. In my head, I DRAW!: What about the move from New York to empathize with Foggy the most. I identify with San Francisco? Was it a relief that you didn’t have to him as a character, so all of his facial acting and draw all those buildings anymore, or was it kind of a his posture, that is what I look like. In the latest hassle, because you had to build up a new photo referarc, he’s wearing a hoodie and a hat! [laughter] ence stockpile?

He’s wearing my uniform. I don’t know, I mean, CS: Well, New York has always been fun for me, Matt Murdock is sort of what I wish I looked because it’s all fiction. I’ve never been to New York, so it’s the New York Universe I’ve grown up reading like, and Foggy is what I feel like. [laughter] I was heavy as a kid, but I was never as heavy as in comics. It’s not a real thing. Hell’s Kitchen is just I’ve drawn Foggy in the past. Whenever I draw Hell’s Kitchen in a comic; it’s not the gentrified area heavy Foggy, I feel like I’m drawing heavy Chris, it is now. I don’t have that as a reference in my head, and when I’m drawing him with cancer now, it’s a because I’ve never been. I’ve always been drawing the little closer to my actual weight. grimy, dingy New York that Colan or Mazzucchelli or If I had to pick a face for Foggy, it would be Lee Weeks has built for me in the back of my mind.

San Francisco has been more of a chore, because Damien Jurado, who’s a folk rock musician. He used to be a heavier-set guy, and he lost a whole we’re trying to find real places and landmarks to lot of weight. I’ve seen pictures of him before and help set it for people. You can’t just say, “Okay, after, and that’s really where heavy Foggy/thin we’re in San Francisco now,” and still draw it Foggy is coming from. It’s an odd reference, exactly like I draw New York. So, it’s a little bit Serpent Society thug design for Daredevil. but that’s where it originally came from. more work, but hopefully it helps give people a You can do Google searches of before and sense of place. It was good for me to try and do © Marvel Characters, Inc.

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something a little different. It sort of feels like with volume four and the move, it gave me a shot in the arm, like I’m taking on a new book.

DRAW!: Does it feel more like “your book” now?

CS: It does, it does. When I did my fill-ins, Javier [Rodriguez] colored me like he’d color Paolo, and when I took over as regular artist on the book, I asked if he could color me a different way, how I would prefer to be colored. So, when he colors Paolo, it’s a little flatter, it’s a little more modeled, and there’s a little more airbrushy stuff going on, and I think that sort of flattens my stuff out, because I already don’t do a whole lot of shading. There’s a lot less to the color, so I asked him if he could do more like a cel animation cut line style. After a whole bunch of emails back and forth, between Javier and Wacker and I, I think we found a perfect marriage of what I want him to do and what he had in mind. Issues #14, 15, 16, I think he was still trying to figure it out. Allred came

in on #17, and I think #18 is when it really started kicking in. We were having conversations all along, and when it was decided I was officially going to be the go-to guy, that’s when we really made the big push for bright colors and cel shading.

DRAW!: It’s funny, I was talking to Paolo about this about a month ago, and he said that he really likes what Javier’s doing over you more than what he did over him. He said that if he ever went back to Daredevil, he’d want Javier to do what he does over you.

CS: Really? [laughs] That’s interesting! I mean, I think Javier said he was trying to color Paolo like Paolo would color himself. Javier being an artist himself, maybe he misinterpreted it, or maybe he was picking up on things that Paolo did but wasn’t crazy about? I don’t know. That’s amazing. I didn’t know about that. That’s funny, I was steering him in a different direction. I had no idea I was steering him in a direction that was actually what Paolo wanted him to do!

DRAW!: Yeah, Paolo was talking about when they first started with issue #1, Javier was doing a lot more of that modeling, and he asked him to tone it down, and tone it down. I guess they got to a place where they were pretty satisfied with what they were doing. It’s funny, when he saw what Javier was doing with you, he said, “Oh, that’s what I wanted.” [laughter] CS: That’s really interesting. I was a big fan of what they were doing from issue #1.

I was talking about it online, and telling people on Twitter they should buy it, and people were saying, “Oh, you could draw some of that!” I was like, “No, no, no, I’m a fan of it, but I don’t think I’m the right guy for that.” And then less than a year later, being offered the job to work on it. I was just like, “Whaaat? I don’t know. Yes, but… it’s a little odd.”

Chris’ design for The Shroud for Daredevil.

The Shroud © Marvel Characters, Inc.

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DRAW!: It seems like since you’ve been on the book—maybe this is just because of the way the stories have been—there doesn’t seem to be as much of that radar sense effect Paolo developed for the book.

CS: Oh, it’s a pain in the ass. [laughter] It’s my least favorite thing when I have to do it. I really like the ones where it’s the POV of sound. I really like doing the sound effects. All of the sound effects in Daredevil are hand-drawn. That’s a lot of fun for me to do, but the radar sense thing, it takes me two or three times as long to do each panel, because there’s the wireframe, and then there’re all the lines across the object. For a guy who’s way into less is more, that’s just

more and more and more. I curse Paolo every time I have to do one of them. [laughter] DRAW!: Paolo was approaching it as someone who’s also a sculptor, and he’s always thinking of that 3-D image. Your stuff is flatter on the page, but you’re also trying to give a sense of volume as well. What do you do to imply volume into your style?

CS: Well, a lot of it is just in spotting blacks, really, how I create the illusion of depth. I do a little bit of feathering—nowadays it’s a lot more than I used to do—and I use a lot of china marker and pencil. I do a lot more textures than I used to.

After a couple of issues of Daredevil without any feathering, I realized I could start playing with texture and it would still work. So I do a lot of texture stuff, and a lot of patterns.

But most of it is just spotting black, and changing up the outlines around things, and light sources. It’s the only way I can figure out to create depth. And just ripping off Toth. [laughter] DRAW!: You mentioned your markers, let’s talk about the tools you’re using now. I know your tools have changed over the years, as far as you used to use a lot of traditional brush and ink, and now you’re doing a lot more with markers and brush pens. At what point did you start switching over to what you’re using now?

CS: Well, the more shows that I did, at conventions with tools that would travel, is where I really started making the big switch. After Ande taught me all the proper tools I should be using, that’s where I really thought like, “This is what professional artists use. This is what I should be using.” So, I have my Raphael #3, and #4, and #2, and I have the right ink, and I was using what I was told to use, but whenever I would do a show, I’d bring out a Pentel color brush and my Pitt pens. I’d just use whatever was handy and traveled well, and didn’t spill ink on my friends. [Eric laughs] Because I’ve knocked over ink bottles, and spilled water on Brian Hurtt’s pages, and… I’m just too clumsy to carry around all of these things, because I’ve ruined other people’s work and my own. It just seemed a whole lot easier to just grab a pen bag and shove a few pens in it, and hop out the door. I realized that people were really liking my sketches more than they were liking my pages, and I was like, “Well, why am I fighting it? Why am I trying to use the proper tools, when I’m not using what’s comfortable?” I did so many shows and I felt so comfortable using these tools, it was slowing me down to use something else at home. So, what I use on pages now are the exact tools I was trotting around to shows with. It’s easier, and it made it so I could hang out on the couch and watch a movie with my wife while working on pages. I wasn’t trying to grab a bottle of India ink and make it to the couch. I guess digital would be the next step, but I am an old dog, and I’m not prepared to learn new tricks just yet.

DRAW!: So no Cintiq yet?

CS: No, I have one. It is gathering dust right next to my disk of Manga Studio. [laughter] I haven’t found the time to devote to trying to learn how to do something like that. I’m trying to

Chris does his best Toth for this variant cover for The Fox, a character Toth took a few turns at himself.

The Fox © Archie Comic Publications, Inc.

teach myself how to color in Photoshop, just because I feel like that’s a good thing to know. When I was a kid, I tried to learn everything so I could be able to do it if I needed to, but it helped me to see it from the other creator’s perspective. I like to do all my own sound effects so I know where the letterer is coming from, if I want to make a note. I feel if I don’t know my way around it, I shouldn’t be the one giving notes.

And I give a lot of color notes, so everyone who works with me, I appreciate their patience. Thank you very much to Bettie Breitweiser, and Jordie Belaire, and Dave Stewart, and Matt Wilson, and Javier Rodriguez. Everybody puts up with my really anal-retentive, “Hey, there’s a little bit of white on this eye that you didn’t quite get.” [laughter] I spent almost all of yesterday going through Daredevil #10 with a fine-toothed comb, because I’m anal-retentive that way. I can’t help it. I’m trying to make every issue the best that I can, and if a color is too bright here or there, and it’s not making the story read just right, then I’m going to try and steer the colors in the best way that I can, and trying to learn that stuff in my free time makes it so I don’t feel so bad giving notes, because I can sort of put myself in their shoes.

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DRAW!: Are you looking at maybe doing something creator-owned in the near future?

That’s the big thing right now with Image going gangbusters, and all these guys doing their own thing. Do you have any aspirations to strike out on your own?

CS: Yeah, I’ve got a couple of irons in the fire.

There’re a few things I’d like to do. There’re guys I want to work with, and there’re ideas, too. At some point, I’d like to do some creator-owned work. I mean, I can’t do mainstream superhero comics forever. I feel like at some point I need to own something. I mean, technically, Area 10 is creator-owned, Capote in Kansas is creatorowned; I own half of each of those. So when I’m asked, “When are you going to do creatorowned?” those are creator-owned, they’re just for bigger companies. You know, I’ll get there. It’s a goal, but right now, I’ve got bills to pay, and only so many hours in the day, so the creator-owned stuff is going to take a little while longer to come out, but I am slowly working on some things.

DRAW!: Speaking of hours in the day, how do you divide up your day? I think you said you work in two different shifts.

CS: I do, yes. My girls wake up between 5:30 and 6:00 every morning, so I get up with them, make breakfast, get everybody changed, and try and be out of the house between 9:00 and 10:00. I have a studio in the house I work in at night, and a studio outside of the house that I work at during the day. It’s just office space that I rent.

Samples of Chris’ coloring efforts done in his spare time.

Batgirl © DC Comics. Captain America © Marvel Characters, Inc.

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DRAW!: Is that just to keep your mind free of distraction?

CS: A lot of time in my house is downstairs, and with two kids bombing around up there, it’s hard to concentrate. I mean, somebody’s always screaming about toys, or they’re playing really loud. I can hear every single thing, and it’s just hard to concentrate. I hate to have to leave the house to get work done, but sometimes that’s just how it is. I wish I could be like Allred and be around my family all the time, but I don’t get any work done that way. So yeah, I work from 10:00 to about 5:00, then go home, have dinner with the family, put the girls to bed, have them both in bed by 8:30 or so, and hang out with my wife for a little bit, watch a movie or something, then I go back to work. I’m back down at the table usually from about 10:00 to 2:00, and that’s usually

when I try to get my scanning all done. I don’t have Internet access or anything in my office outside of the house; it’s just a closet to get my work done in. I have windows I can barely see out of, and some AC, and a desk and a lamp, and that’s it.

It’s really just my work hole. It’s where I go to cram as much work in as possible.

DRAW!: That’s a long day.

CS: Yeah, but getting to break it up makes it feel like it’s not like a super-long day. I used to do 16-hour days before I had kids, and that’ll take its toll on you. But if you can break it up, and give time to your family…. I fix breakfast in the morning and get to hang out with them, and I’ll see them for dinner, and I hang out, and then everybody gets to bed, and I get to see my wife. It’s not ideal, but unless I’m really fighting a deadline, that’s only six days a week, and then I can see all of them for a whole day. Ideally I get to see them for a day on the weekends, and I’m always trying to make time for—right now I’m taking my oldest daughter to bug classes, so we go to the butterfly museum, and we learn about bugs every day, and there’s zoo stuff that we do. We get to hang out, and the little one’s sleeping more than not. We try to hang out as much as we can. I’m trying to make it so comics aren’t my entire life all the time.

Before we had kids, I started to lean that way for a little while. Now that my career has gotten to a point where I don’t feel like I have to constantly punish myself to try to get all this work in, it’s gotten a little easier.

I’ve moved from a four-week schedule to a five-week schedule on Daredevil. I only have to do a book every five weeks, and that’s made it so I can take days off, and I’m not killing myself 24 hours a day.

that needs to be done, but then it’s just jumping right in to inks, and that’s where there’s a real discrepancy.

It’s really easy to pencil a page, it takes a little bit of slogging to get it inked. Inks can take anywhere from three hours to twelve hours, depending on how complicated the page is.

It’s a little rough, because we’re always just trying different things with pacing, and Mark lets me try things all the time.

Sometimes he’ll say, “Pages 12–14, here’s what happens,” and then it’s up to me to work out the pacing, and I’m my own worst enemy. If it’s up to me to do pacing, then we end up with a bunch of 12- or 16-panel pages. [laughter] I like to parse out as many beats as I can. I like to be the storyteller in

DRAW!: Good, good. On average, how long would it take you to pencil a page?

CS: Gosh, to pencil a page? About an hour and a half.

DRAW!: So you’re working pretty loose?

CS: They’re tight enough. I mean, my layouts are really tight. I do layouts that are about 4½" x 7½"—I can do two of them per piece of typing paper—and then I scan those and blow them up to 11" x 17" and print them out in blue, and I tighten them up in wherever I can in an hour and a half, things like laying in where panel borders went astray when I was doing them by hand so small, and tightening up some facial features. There’s always a little tightening up

Pencils for Daredevil #8, page 14.

Daredevil, Purple Man © Marvel Characters, Inc.

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Inks and Chris’ gray tone guides for Daredevil #8, page 14.

Daredevil, Purple Man © Marvel Characters, Inc.

balloons for Joe, so he can figure out how I cut things into pieces. That’s what slows me down the most.

that way. I like to slow down moments. I think that’s a lot of the manga influence bubbling back to the surface. I really like small moments, and there aren’t a whole lot of small moments in superhero comics—there isn’t the space for it, there isn’t the time for it, let’s get these guys punching—and I really like the beats in between. Especially with a lot of the Matt and Kirsten stuff, or Matt and Foggy, where they’re talking.

All the talking scenes end up with at least half a dozen extra panels. [Eric laughs] I’m always dropping in silent panels, or beats to slow down the conversation, so it feels like you’re living the conversation with them in real time. I really hate seeing too many balloons in one panel. I’m trying to catch the certain moment in the speech balloon, and I want you to be able to identify what they’re saying in the panel with the balloon that corresponds to it, and to do that—there are a lot of notes in my layouts, “I’m sorry, I cut this panel into two or three, and I cut this panel apart.” I number all of the word

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DRAW!: You might have one, maybe two half-page or full-page panels in an issue. You’re not like some guys where you throw them in all over the place. You really save them for that one moment. Is that something where Mark’s adapted his writing to fit what you like to do, or is it something he leaves up to you?

CS: We got so used to 22-page books, so we’re both still fighting for 22 pages. We only have 20 pages of content now, so we’re just trying to shoehorn as much in as we can into these 20 pages, and in doing so, we have to get as much bang for your buck as possible. So whenever there is a splash page, we have to really earn it. We can’t just have a splash page of a character getting punched, there isn’t the real estate for it. If it’s a really big moment, then sure, but we really have to earn it. There’re a few in issue #1, but the big splash page in issue #1 of volume four was a shot of New York. [laughs] It’s radar senses and smell POVs, and it’s just a giant circle radar sense of New York, and it took me like a day and a half to ink the whole thing. So yay, splash pages!

Even the splash pages that should be easy, I never take the easy way out. In the issue that’s coming out next week, issue #9, Mark wrote in the script that he wanted Daredevil on top of a roof, crouched on a gargoyle, and I was just like, “Ugh,

I’ve seen that shot a million times. Can I do something different?” And he said, “Yeah, man, do whatever feels right!

What would you rather do?” The script said, “The story of Daredevil, don’t get me started,” or something like that, and it’s supposed to be showing a depressed Daredevil, like a Sad Sack sitting on top of a gargoyle in the rain sort of shot. “Ugh, it’s been done, I don’t feel like there’s anything new I could bring to it.” It’s like trying to draw Dracula. I mean, it’s been done a million times, there’s no point in me doing it. So, okay, what really is the most awful part of the story of Daredevil?

He can’t save people, and all his girlfriends die. [laughter] So I have Daredevil kneeling down and screaming and a pile of 30 dead bodies all around him, and there’s a puddle of blood, and a looming Bullseye and Kingpin above him, and rain is coming down, and there’s a cityscape behind him….

I could’ve just gone with that gargoyle shot, and it would’ve been a fairly easy day, [laughter] but I had to fight myself, and do what felt right for the story. That one wasn’t a quick one.

But that was the first page I did for the issue. I usually do the splash first, because it’s usually the fastest, if there is one, and it’ll help get the kinks out, and I’ll just jump in with both feet the next day.

DRAW!: Okay, so you don’t necessarily work in order, but you thumbnail everything first.

CS: Yes, having everything in thumbnails makes it easy to jump around. I know when I need a costume change, I know when somebody had a bruise on their eye in one page that doesn’t have it on the next, so it’s easy to keep track of that sort of thing in thumbnails. It’s sort of like movie directors.

They don’t shoot in sequence, they shoot whatever they have available for that day. So when I know I have a short day, if I’m going to take my oldest to school and I’m going to start my day late, then I’ll try to do the pages that I already know I can get done faster, and save the ones I know are going to take longer for the days I know I’ll be at the barn longer. The barn is where I work; it’s a renovated dairy barn. I just say “the barn” when I’m going to work.

DRAW!: Going with the movie director analogy, a lot of the guys that you track back to, Toth and Colan and so on, were really big movie buffs. They would analyze the cinematography of movies. You’ve tracked back various artists and their artistic influences, but have you taken it where, “These guys like these movies, so I’ll study these films that influenced them”?

Layouts complete with color for the cover of Daredevil #9. Cover A ended up being used for the next issue.

Daredevil, Purple Man © Marvel Characters, Inc.

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CS: Not as much. I mean, when I first started trying to go backwards, I was really just trying to find stylistic influences, not so much storytelling influences. I think maybe some of it has come through subconsciously. I know that [Bryan] Hitch likes Michael Bay movies, but that’s really about it. [laughter] He’ll gladly own up to that. I’m not saying that like a smack on his big screen style. He says he likes Michael Bay movies.

Most of the stuff that I watch is “watching” with quotes around it. I put on things and listen while I’m working, but I

don’t watch a lot of stuff. When we get the kids to bed, I usually just watch a little TV with my wife, whatever’s on Netflix or Hulu, usually a TV show. She’s really into The Good Wife, but I don’t have the patience for The Good Wife. There are a lot of shows that she’ll put on, and I’ll give it an episode and say, “Well, I’m going to go to work.” The new season of How I Met Your Mother we’ll watch together, but there’s not a whole lot of meat in stuff like that. I’m not picking up storytelling from a three-camera sitcom.

DRAW!: You mentioned listening to the soundtracks when you were working on the Firefly graphic novel. Do you prefer to have music in the background rather than TV shows or movies?

CS: I probably listen more to music. Lately, I’ve been getting back into podcasts. I had a ten-year lapse with podcasts. I lost a lot of my patience with the machine of comic book podcasts and their reviews. They sort of blurred together after a while, and I wasn’t reading enough to keep up, so I started giving up on listening to comic book podcasts. But I’ve started trying to get back in and listen to a few of those again.

I listen to music that’s on my iPod that hasn’t been updated in ten years and whatever movies my wife has downloaded onto iTunes for me.

The finished inks for the Daredevil #10 cover—a play on the typical gargoyle pose.

Daredevil, Purple Man © Marvel Characters, Inc.

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DRAW!: Do you prefer working during the day, or do you prefer working at night?

CS: If I can get started really early in the day, that’s great. As soon as I roll out of bed, if I can get straight to my desk, that’s my best work.

The longer I go, the slower I go, and I start slogging through it, and start trying to beat the clock and get stuff done. But that doesn’t happen. I’ve got to get everybody up and fed and showered, and then I get to the barn, and my first couple of hours I’m a little rough, a little rusty, and that’s where doing pencils so fast, I can make up for that. That helps me shake off the cobwebs, so I’ll get a page done of pencils while I’m drinking my first couple of cups of coffee, and

Layouts for Chris’ contribution to Marvel 75th Anniversary Special, detailing the beginnings of the Marvel Age. All characters © Marvel Characters, Inc.

then jump right in and start inking away. Then I’ll get halfway through the day and have lunch, and I’ll sketch while I’m having lunch—that’s where my ten-minute doodles come from that I post online—and answer emails and all that junk.

That usually recharges me a bit. Then I’ll jump back in, and if I’m having a good day, I’ll start penciling my second page, and if I’m not, I’ll finish inking my first, then go home, get everybody to bed, scan that page, and get it cleaned up and uploaded to the FTP, and start the next page. Hopefully I can have that next page penciled and started by the next day.

DRAW!: You’re doing clean-up in Photoshop I assume?

CS: Yeah, I mean, there’s not a ton of clean-up, maybe a half hour to an hour per page. But I always end up getting behind, because the littlest one will be teething or sick or what have you. Every time I plan to be home and working on the computer, something happens. Somebody’s up, or somebody has a nightmare—there’s always something happening that keeps me from my desk. That’s why it’s important for me to try to get as much work crammed in as possible while I’m away from the house.

DRAW!: And you said you don’t have a computer at the office?

CS: No, there’s literally just a desk, a chair, and a lamp.

That’s it. I have a little refrigerator here with two bottles of water in it, because I keep forgetting to refill it, and that’s where I put my lunch when I get here in the morning. That’s about it. There’s nothing on the walls. It’s white walls all around, and a window that has so much stain on it over the years you can barely tell when it’s raining outside. [laughter] It lets in just enough light that I can see, and there’s a fluorescent light above me. It definitely keeps me focused; there are zero distractions. I can check Twitter or whatever, and I try to do that as little as possible when I’m at home, but being at the barn, staying off Twitter is a lot easier, because having no Internet connection, I’m using up my data plan every time I sign on to the Internet, and the more I do it, the closer I am to whittling down how much I have, and I start having to pay for it out of pocket at the end of the month. It accidentally works out in my favor. I shouldn’t be on the Internet anyway.

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The Right Way, The Wrong Way, and The

OrdWay !

CAPTURING THE PICTURE IN THE MIND’S EYE by Jerry Ordway

I

’

ll start out this time with an example that shows how things don’t always go smoothly from layout to finished art.

I had a straightforward assignment, to draw a Batman piece including Commissioner Gordon, as well as the Bat-Signal. I had an idea, and with my eyes closed, could visualize exactly what I wanted to draw. I rarely capture that mind’s eye picture on paper as perfectly as I see it in my head, but I keep trying, year after year, regardless.

I began to sketch out my image at a reduced size, 5½" x 8", on copy paper. I had my Fairburn System book (Set 1, Book 1) open as reference for a trench coat (see right), which Commissioner Gordon would be wearing. I could have made it up but wanted the added detail only a photo or the real thing could provide. The BatSignal spotlight is in the middle ground, easily cobbled together from various Google images, while the Batman figure is in the background.

The story to tell here, since every picture tells a story, is that Batman always has a way of sneaking up on Commissioner Gordon!

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In the finished layout (right), now tightened up, I re-worked the Batman pose. I was still not happy with it, but I committed to it because the other elements worked fine. I was ready to start light-boxing, or tracing the image onto my Strathmore 3-ply Bristol paper.

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I enlarged the small layout on my photocopy machine, up to 11" x 17", and proceeded to pencil in the Gordon figure, adjusting small details in the process, such as tilting his head back a bit more. I inked the main details of the spotlight without penciling, using a large ellipse guide, and a Pitt medium marker pen. While expensive, you’ll never regret having a set of ellipse guides in various sizes for jobs like these. The example shown here can draw an ellipse of six inches or more. You don’t need something that big very often, but when you do, you are happy to have this template.

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Using a new favorite tool of mine, a Japanese-made Tachikawa fountain pen filled with archival drawing ink, I inked in the figure of the Commissioner (left), not worrying over line weights or shadow areas. I then inked in the detail of the rooftop. The advantage of this fairly dead weight pen is that it does not bleed on Bristol paper, unlike the Hunt 102 quill pen I used for so many years. It also draws a very fine line, which is great for outlining over pencil lines, but requires more work at the last stage, adding blacks and adjusting line weights for depth. It’s a decent trade-off, though, to not have pen lines with spidery “veins” all over your piece.

As an aside, I have tried many varieties of paper, and none seem suited to a steel nib quill pen these days.

After much frustration, I have been switching over to Pitt pens and Pitt brush pens where possible. The Tachikawa pen was something I had purchased years ago and never used. There are other brands of fountain pens made for drawing available online if you care to try one. Just make sure the ink cartridge is filled with drawing ink that is archival, meaning it won’t fade or discolor over time.

The Batman figure gave me trouble from the start, so after trying to make it work, I erased it and sketched in a different pose (right). Now Batman has both hands holding his cape, as he is gliding in for a landing. I also reversed the angle so that we are looking up as he approaches, feet first.

After refining the anatomy, I was happy enough to proceed to inking.

I should advise you that despite all the planning, it still comes down to using your own judgment. I could have struggled with that figure as it was on my tightened layout, but I know from experience that had I inked it, it would have still bothered me.

Then I would have had to scrap the whole thing and start over. This way, I saved the elements I was happy with, the foreground/middle ground. My approach would have been much different if I was penciling this for another artist to ink. In that situation, I would have tried to resolve the problems in the layout stage.

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With the Batman figure inked in, I filled some of the space behind him with other buildings. Many seasoned pros are likely horrified at my approach here, adding background elements at this late stage, but to me, it keeps things exciting, and doesn’t affect the basic composition at all.

I like drawing directly in ink at times, in the same way a circus acrobat might work without a safety net. You could fail horribly, or survive to draw another day. Also, logically, Batman had to be descending from a taller building.

Finally, in adding black areas and enhancing line weights, I started with the figure of Gordon, proceeded to the Bat Signal device, then worked behind Batman, before adding shadows to the cape and figure. I knew I wanted a black sky, so that Batman would pop off the page, but if I had drawn in the shadows on the figure first, I could have had a muddy mess of conflicting shadows.

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The final piece with the addition of a little Pro white paint and razor blade scratching across the projected light of the signal, is finished. I’m a big fan of the effect you get with a razor blade, or an X-Acto knife, but it works best with a fresh blade, and an angle almost parallel to the surface of the paper. You have to do it quickly, and know when to stop, or you’ll have a torn up surface. Practice it on decent paper scraps, over inked in black areas before you try it on a drawing you care about!

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butch guice

Walking in a WinterWorld Wonderland interview by Mike Manley transcribed by Jon Knutson

F

rom the Microverse to the DC Universe, Acclaim, and now the frozen arctic of WinterWorld, prolific and versatile artist Jackson “Butch” Guice pulls back the curtain on his process and career.

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Butch’s rough sketch (above) and full pencils (right) for a cover for the recently reformed Valiant.

All characters © Valiant Entertainment, Inc.

DRAW!: You just finished the WinterWorld stuff, right?

Butch guice: Just finished WinterWorld, and currently, the main project is a book called Paradigms, which Nick Spencer and I are doing together for Image now. So, that’s coming up, and I’m also doing some work for Valiant, a backup feature in Ninjack of all things.

DRAW!: I’m trying to remember, you worked with them before, right?

BG: Yeah, in the Acclaim days. I worked for them for three years or so.

DRAW!: I worked for them for about a year when they did the big relaunch. Were you…?

BG: I was with them too, yeah. I was on Eternal Warrior, and then they yanked me off of that and I was all over the place. As people were going to other companies and stuff, I was filling in on Bloodshot, and Turok, and X-O—an issue here, an issue there kind of thing—for about a year toward the end.

DRAW!: Was that hard to jump from character to character if you didn’t necessarily have any feeling for the character?

BG: It definitely made it more of a job. It’s hard enough, you

step into the tail end of a storyline, or you just are there for the issue, and you don’t know who half the characters are, so you sort of fall back to—I’m sure you’re well aware—just focusing on the craft of filling in the story, but you just don’t have any inherent emotion involved with it from that standpoint.

DRAW!: Right, I’m kind of doing that right now. I’m doing a miniseries for DC, and I’m drawing the Justice League International, the Kevin Maguire days version….

BG: Yeah, it’s not like you have this history with the characters. You know how it is: the more you work with the characters, if you’re having a pleasant experience, the more you get involved with it, you start getting little personal touches in, and you develop personal characters you actually like drawing and try to make your own, as opposed to doing the standard costume designs of this character or that character.

That’s a real gravy for the job, is being able to do something special with it.

DRAW!: Yeah, exactly. Comparing that to when you were working on WinterWorld, and following the miniseries that Jorge Zaffino did, how did that compare to, say, doing an issue of Bloodshot?

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BG: I was working with Chuck Dixon on that, and Chuck and I had been friends since Birds of Prey at DC years ago.

We hit it off; we’ve been great friends ever since. I was aware of what Jorge had done, and like most artists, the talent that he had. And that was one of my personal favorite projects that Chuck had ever written. So there was a genuine appreciation, and sort of love for that property. I expressed it to Chuck any number of times how much I enjoyed what they had done with the miniseries, and was quite surprised when he contacted me and said, “Hey, I’m doing another WinterWorld, and I’ve put together a wishlist of artists, and I told them I’ll only do it if I can get some of these guys doing it, and you’re on the list. Are

The final inks for the Valiant cover.

All characters © Valiant Entertainment, Inc.

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you available?” And I was like, “I’ll make the time. I’ll find a way!” And then of course, when I started, I thought, “What have I done? First guy out of the gate, I’m following Zaffino!” [laughter] It was better to stand back and go, “Wasn’t that a great miniseries?” [laughter] DRAW!: I was wondering about that. You weren’t copying Jorge’s style or anything, but did you spend time drawing and sketching the characters and try to get your own feel for them?

BG: I did a bit, but thankfully—I did not know this at the time—but in talking with Chuck, Jorge and I both come from a lot of similar artistic influences, and so I was able to look at all that black-and-white stuff that he did, and it was gritty, and it was dark, and just awe-inspiring stuff, and I said, “Well, instead of focusing on trying to be the poor man’s Zaffino,” which would be a very poor man’s Zaffino, “Let’s just focus on the world as a whole, and just run with it.” And Chuck was very supportive of it, IDW was very supportive, and I had a great time doing it.

Honestly, if I had more time in the schedule, and I would have been around for more than the four issues…. It’s one of the things where I literally just had to block out some time and say, “Okay, I’m going to be doing this for a while.”

I’d already spoken to Nick about doing Paradigms, and he was gracious about, “That’s fine, I’ve got some other stuff to wrap up. Let’s take six months and you go do that, and I’ll do this, and we’ll go back to starting Paradigms,” which is a complete reversal in style, because it’s got fashion, and the latest cars, and the latest architecture, and all this stuff, so forget the rubble, forget hiding a multitude of sins behind the black shadow. I have to draw these very pretty women, and these high fashion clothes, and computer screens and all that stuff, and it also has a bunch of magic effects in the main storyline, so I’m trying to teach myself some new things, learn how to pull some things off in Photoshop so I don’t end up drawing a couple of lines extending from somebody’s hand, à la Doctor Strange.

DRAW!: Are you coloring this yourself?

BG: I’m not coloring it, but I’m trying to do as much as I can in the black-andwhite to set it up for the coloring, and then I’ll be working closely with the colorist, who as far as I know we still

Layout sketch, finished inks, and final cover for WinterWorld #1.

WinterWorld © Chuck Dixon and the Zaffino estate.

haven’t quite nailed down. We have somebody in particular in mind who I’ll be thrilled if we get. We’ll see what happens from there.

DRAW!: This is a creator-owned book for Image?

BG: Yes, it is. That alone holds a lot of appeal, and you want to get an emotional investment there, not to hopefully cut any corners or embarrass yourself too badly, other than my natural ability to do drawing! [laughs] DRAW!: How much pre-production time did you spend

on developing your ideas, and going back and forth, doing research?

BG: With Paradigms, Nick had a lot of it all worked out, but visually he left it entirely to me, so the six months I was working on WinterWorld were actually a real godsend, because, in my spare time, if I saw any imagery which worked into future plans, if I was online and saw these great old cars, or I was able to run out and get into a lot of the modern architectural styles and things—I’ve got four or five different folders of hundreds of images saved on the computer. I swore from the start I had it in my head, but I’m sure you’ve run into this

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too, in taking those impressions and then congealing them into something that actually works, you don’t spend your entire lifetime trying to solve the puzzle, but you can grab it and move forward.

DRAW!: I taught a visual development class earlier this year, and that’s one of the things we talked about: basically building your style boards, and how important it is to do the research part of a job and gather all the inspiration before you start on something.

BG: Know where you’re going.

DRAW!: Exactly. I think in the old days, guys like Kirby probably winged it. He seemed to make a lot of things up as he was going.

BG: Yeah, but in the old days, even if it was supposedly set in New York City, the fans didn’t necessarily expect you to draw Times Square as Times Square.

With the advent of the Internet, and Google Image Search, it’s become more of a thing in comics now. I’ve noticed even with the scripts I get, the writer will name a specific street in Brooklyn, and say, “They live here.” Sometimes they even include the images in the script. So we’ve got this hyper-realistic thing going on, which the fans have almost come to expect, at least a portion of them, I feel.

It’s like, if you just drew generic New York street scenes now, they would feel like you were cheating, cutting corners, because now they expect to have specific cars in the scene, and specific buildings, and all of this stuff.

DRAW!: When Kirby or Buscema or even Gene Colan would use photography, it was still very loose; the fantasy Pencils for Avengers: Age of Ultron #1, page 13. was looser. Now fantasy is very realistic.

All characters © Marvel Characters, Inc. I think it’s good and bad. The bad side of it is everything tends to look the same. If you take screen online to figure out the basic shape of this thing, and I realshots from the last 20 sci-fi movies, there’s a lot of stuff that ized we’ve got these interiors of this thing. I was driving you can’t tell, “Is that from The Avengers, or is that this?” I myself crazy trying to find shots online, stuff that the govthink that the fantasy was looser, and the artists could sort of ernment doesn’t necessarily want you to have a lot of photos play around with it more. But you’re right, the tech aspect of of! [laughter] it makes fantasy much more realistic.

BG: Right, I ran into this even on WinterWorld. Every- DRAW!: It’s more difficult now. I’m even experiencing that thing’s covered in snow and rubble, but we had a combat with this DC project, because I’m drawing the Justice League vehicle featured in the first part of the story—I think it’s International, and Blue Beetle has his little Beetle ship. There still in the storyline—that they’re running around in. They are lots of shots of the Beetle ship, and so I’m writing to find it in this frozen aircraft carrier and drive off in it. I went Marie, the editor, and she’s having to go and ask the librarian,

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DRAW!: I was helping my buddy Jamar on a little project a couple of weeks ago, and it’s a story that took place somewhere in North Philly. It was an old jazz club, and he actually had the address, so I was helping him do a little research. I went on Google Maps, and it’s the weirdest thing now, because you can actually go to the spot where the jazz club was supposed to be, and what we’re doing is going up and down the street, doing these Google Map views of the street! The club was not there anymore, because I think that part of the city, a lot of things had been rebuilt, so you had parts where some blocks were the same as they were 100 years ago, and the next block up, all new construction.

I remember when I did an adaptation of a Clive Barker novel in 1990 called Weave World for Marvel, I went to a convention in England, and spent for four or five days in Liverpool, where the book took place, and I had a couple of people who were friends with Clive Barker, including the guy who adapted it for Marvel, drive me around to the various neighborhoods, “Oh, this takes place here,” and I took a ton of photos.

Now you can go on the Internet and take screen captures, and see what a mailbox looks like in Liverpool.

BG: In the old days, the only time you needed to do any kind of steady research was if you were working on the DC war books. You were expected to draw a Tiger tank as a Tiger tank, and draw the M1 as an M1. But if you were drawing the superhero stuff, you just kind of faked your way through.

A perfect example is, I love the fact that Ross Andru, when he was on SpiderMan, drew New York, but it was Ross Finished inks for Avengers: Age of Ultron #1, page 13.

Andru’s New York. There was a lot of All characters © Marvel Characters, Inc. stuff that you’d recognize—I heard he who I imagine is some old guy from an old episode of Star would go out and take some photos on occasion and such—but Trek, who has access to the files to see, “Well, in this issue of he made the city a character, and he translated it through that such-and-such, there’s a steering wheel, but in the next one, filter of, “This is my New York.” Like when all the water towers there’s a joystick,” know what I mean? In the old days, Kirby started popping up in Frank Miller’s Daredevil. [laughter] never drew anything the same way twice.

BG: Exactly! If you had to draw the interior of the Beetle DRAW!: Well, I think it also depends on if you were a stylship, you didn’t think twice, you just made up your interior. ist. Miller’s very much a stylist, Kirby’s very much a stylist. I And the next time someone else had to draw the interior mean, that way he’d draw those buildings with those stylized of the Beetle ship, they may or may not be aware that you bric-a-brac was actually based on what he was seeing, but drew it. But now, it’s like, “Well, this was established in Kirby’s New York is not the same as Buscema’s New York issue #4.” is not the same as Frank Miller’s New York or John Byrne’s

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DRAW!: Yeah, that generic stock Marvel car that you would see in every issue of The Hulk with Sal Buscema drawing. When you and I were coming up, Neal Adams was super-realistic compared to everybody else, and that’s what sort of stuck out, but you still enjoyed….

BG: It certainly didn’t affect me as a reader growing up that this wasn’t a photo-representational view of Broadway. I’m caught up in the comic itself. Like everybody else, I had my favorite writers and artists and characters and things, but Jack Kirby drew a street scene that looked nothing like modern New York per se at that time, but it had no effect on my enjoyment of that book. I was caught up in what the FF were doing. Now it’s like everything is supposed to be this mini-documentary of real life.

DRAW!: Do you feel like there’s extra pressure now to bring all that to bear in the projects that you’re doing that you didn’t necessarily feel 15 years ago?

BG: It’s never really been stated, but I feel like the pressure is there. Most of my career, I’ve enjoyed this sort of non-superhero genre stuff, so I could actually go play a little bit. If I was going to draw a realistic New York street scene, I would want it to be 1930s or 1940s, so I would actually have the fun of working in a look that would be fun to reference, and decipher, and then take my cues from memories of certain movies, and work at something like that. As opposed to say, modern-day superheroes punching each other, and that sort of thing.

DRAW!: I can see that. When I’m looking at the field as a whole now, it seems like the mainstream Marvel and DC stuff is more homogenous as far as what we were talking about, the No generic cityscape backgrounds in this page from Captain America #600. look of the backgrounds being very photo-referAll characters © Marvel Characters, Inc. enced and photo-based, which in a way is sort New York. I think you’re right, when I think of people like of ironic, because I remember in the beginning, when I was Brian Hitch or Stuart Immonen, when they’re drawing a street starting to do stuff for Marvel, and I had been working with scene now, it looks like they really spent a lot of time getting Al Williamson, and I was very much into sort of the classic photo reference, because you see all the little street signs, and realist look, they were like, “No, no, no. Don’t do that.” It’s all the little things that you see when you’re in New York now. funny how everything’s sort of flipped. 30 years ago, it was BG: All the cars have individual license tags. [laughs] All the more, “Push it. Make it more like a fantasy,” and now it’s sort signs that are in the windows of the shops and the things, I’m of, “Make it look more like what it actually looks like.” just going, “Wow!” It used to be easier when you could just BG: You get the sense that the whole approach to comics go, “Here’s a car, sort of. It’s got four wheels.” is, “The world outside your window; it’s happening,” kind of thing. There are certainly some stylists working in comics, DRAW!: One of the things I’d laugh about—and I love all like Walt Simonson, for example. Walt’s going to draw the that classic Marvel stuff—but you’d see guys like Buscema way Walt’s going to draw, and it’s going to look pretty. You and Ditko still drawing guys wearing suits and hats, or they sort of know that going in. But I think for the vast bulk of would still always draw a Buick LeSabre or something. artists, I think we’re more sort of blocked in to providing a BG: The generic car. certain look now.

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No generic cars, either. A pencil panel from Captain America #610.

All characters © Marvel Characters, Inc.

DRAW!: Especially, now, I think, because of the movies.

BG: Yeah. That’s probably more pressure to bear. And you know, hopefully, I would like to see it flip back the other way more. I always planned on being a strip guy, not a comic book artist, growing up.

DRAW!: Oh, really? That’s interesting. What kind of strip did you have in mind?

BG: An adventure strip. I was reading all of them as a kid.

I loved the Caniff stuff, and the Frank Robbins stuff, and following [Leonard] Starr and [Alex] Kotzky on their soap opera strips… anything that had drawing that appealed to me, I was right there with it. I never developed that more cartoony side. My ten-, eleven-year-old self was, “I want to be a comic strip artist.” By the time I’d got to the point where I’d graduated and was trying to break in, the market had already started to close up, and the adventure strips in particular had pretty much had their day, and were starting to die off.

DRAW!: I think the only adventure strips that are left now are Prince Valiant, Spider-Man, and The Phantom. I don’t think there’re any other adventure strips left. When Fred Fredericks retired, they stopped Mandrake. When John Prentice retired, they stopped Rip Kirby. There’s only Rex Morgan, Judge Parker—which I do—there’s Apartment 3-G, which looks nothing like Alex….

BG: It looks nothing like Apartment 3-G! DRAW!: And there’s Mary Worth, with Joe Giella still doing that. I imagine I’ll probably be the last guy to do Judge Parker. I don’t imagine they will…

BG: …find somebody else.

DRAW!: Yeah. I think I’m the fourth or fifth guy on it. It’s funny, because the Silver Age guys all wanted to do strips.

BG: Apartment 3-G is the one that actually hurts for me the most, because if I could have the chops to pick anything, that would be Kotzky in his prime. I just love the way he drew people, with such a minimal effort, it seems.

DRAW!: That’s the illusion. He and Leonard Starr and those guys did fantastic work every single day, but they could never get off the treadmill. I think the biggest difference now is you can’t really afford to have a letterer, and you can’t afford to have Tex Blaisdell or somebody do your backgrounds.

BG: And you don’t have that much room left to draw in, because of the shrinking sizes, the lettering can only shrink so much, so you have to watch that. [laughs] DRAW!: I had a letter, I think it was last year, from someone who had been reading Judge Parker since the ’50s, and they were like, “You need to make the lettering bigger.” And I’m like, “Well, the lettering takes up a third or more in some panels, so you’d just be drawing the character’s eyeballs.”

BG: Eyebrows and eyeballs looking out from underneath the balloon! [laughter] DRAW!: We actually worked together, I don’t know if you remember, on a job for Harris Comics—something to do with a circus.

BG: I vaguely remember that! I remember doing it, but I don’t know how I ended up involved in the project, and wasn’t around long enough to know anybody there, or connect with the character or anything. Your saying it has something to do with a circus sounds familiar too, but I couldn’t tell you exactly what it was.

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DRAW!: The thing I do remember was that was a bad batch of pages.

BG: Yeah, as soon as you put ink on the paper, it bled all over the place. [laughs]

normally would and then shrink it down and paste it back in in Photoshop so it will hold up properly. You’re going for a bunch of thin lines, and stuff, and you just can’t do it on the paper that you’ve got anymore.

DRAW!: The quality of the paper has really declined, especially in the last four or five years. Are you going to be doing everything in Manga Studio soon?

BG: I still do everything, for the most part, on the boards.

Sometimes it turns into more of a patch-and-paste job, because if the paper’s bad, or the brush is just not working, sometimes I’ll have to draw it two or three times larger than I

DRAW!: What paper are you using now, Strathmore?

BG: I’m actually having halfway decent luck with some Tinson Bristol that I bought, the Foundation series. It’s the smooth, and that’s only because I was busy trying to find something. I kept buying pads of paper, and two or three pages in, setting the whole pad aside, because I was so frustrated with trying to do any kind of pen work. You almost are forced into using Microns and things like that. I’ve bought a lot of that stuff too, and I just don’t have the ability to comfortably make that stuff work with a life to it—the Microns and stuff. I really prefer the dip pens. As a matter of fact, most of the pen points I use, I go on eBay and buy vintage pen points from the ’50s and ’60s, pay extra money for them, but at least I know I’m still getting some good quality material on occasion.

The background for this Captain America pinup was imported digitally, but that’s about as far as Butch will go in his process.

All characters © Marvel Characters, Inc.

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DRAW!: I do the same thing, and I know other guys that do the same thing. Jerry Ordway switched over to using this old fountain pen, because he was having a problem with the 102 and 108 actually tearing up the paper. He’d get a little gob of paper at the end of the nib, so he was using the fountain pen, because that would give him the line, but it wouldn’t tear up the paper, and then he’d go in and use the brush. But Terry Beatty does Rex and The Phantom in Manga Studio.

BG: There are a lot of guys using Manga Studio right now, and there’s a whole debate about the future of inking going on as well.

I know a lot of people, particularly a lot of people trying to break in, are switching to it, and they’re doing the digital inking thing.

Honestly, it would take me the rest of my career to figure it out, to get a comfort level with it. After 30-plus years of doing it on the board, I just would not have the connect to be doing it digitally. The eye-hand coordination just wouldn’t be there. Depending on the paper, depending on the pen point, depending on the brush, your instincts will lead you, because that’s what you’ve done for three decades, going, “Okay, I’ve got to go a little heavier with this. I’ve got to watch that stroke, because the brush keeps wanting to split on me.” [laughs] DRAW!: What kind of dip pens do you like?

Pencils and finished inks for Captain America #613, page 8.

All characters © Marvel Characters, Inc.

BG: I’ll rely on Gillott 659s and 290s. And then with the brushes, it’s just haphazard; you just don’t know what you’re getting anymore. Some people swear by the synthetic brushes.

I’ve never really had any luck with them, so I still keep trying to revive and bring my Winsor & Newton Series 7s back to life. Or, adapt my style to take advantage of the fact that one brush is about shot, but it does a certain effect I like at times. [laughs] DRAW!: I’ve been using the Blick Studio synthetic, I’m using the 2s and 4s, because I’d buy a Raphael, or a Winsor & Newton, and the hair would not keep its shape.

BG: Yeah, even within 20 minutes of using it for the first time. It looks like it comes to a point, and then you start working on a page, and before you can get four panels in, suddenly it’s a mop, it just frays out, and you go, “All right, this one’s going off to the ‘fill in blacks’ pile over here.” [laughs] The growing pile.

DRAW!: You can end up having a whole range of old tips, old effects brushes that are great for doing dry brush or splithair inking or whatever, but that was not your intention when you bought the brush. [laughter]

BG: So the ones you’ve been getting are actually working for you?

DRAW!: Yeah, and they’re not that expensive, that’s the other thing. You would spend a fortune buying a Winsor & Newton brush, and then you get it home. I think the reality is that even people who do watercolor don’t require the constant point and the finesse in the line work in a way that a cartoonist does.

BG: And I think it’s also affected the general look of comics in a lot of ways. I’m surprised at how many professionals who have come in the last 10 to 20 years make comments like, “I need to teach myself how to ink with a brush at some point.”

What do you mean, teach yourself? You don’t know? [laughs] DRAW!: Well, a lot of people ink everything with markers.

There was a student I had, she was doing a very nice job on this illustration—it was a manga style—and she was using a .03 mm Copic, this little teeny marker, and she’s inking and building up the line, and I said, “No, here, why don’t use this number 08 Pigma, or better yet, practice and use the brush, because if you get good with the brush, you can do anything you can do with a marker.” And she was so scared of trying to use a brush, “No, I can’t use a brush!” I said, “Get a ream of

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as a kid, and you’d come across these occasional interviews where they’d be talking to a Frank Robbins or a Tom Palmer or somebody, and it would come up, “I use a blahblah-blah-blah pen point,” or a specific brush or something. “I’ve got to go get one of those!” [laughs] DRAW!: Now there are a billion interviews with people, and how-tos and all that stuff. As a young artist and young craftsman coming up, there’s probably never been a better time as far as being able to learn the craft, but the tools are not as good!

BG: The information’s out there, but the tools aren’t as good!

DRAW!: 30 years into your career, what would be the biggest difference in the way that you approach the job now from when you started?

BG: I think now, probably much more so when I first started, my mental focus is on telling the story first and foremost. I think early on I would get sidetracked with the picture or the great piece of reference, and “Oh, I’ve got to put this in here.” Even if it brings everything else to a crashing halt as far as story flow, it’s like, “I want to draw this really big shot of this girl in this dress because, hey, I like it!” [laughter] It has nothing to do with the story; she’s just walking down the street. Meanwhile way in the background is the character that I’m supposed to be drawing talking to another person. [laughs] Now, I find that even when I’m sitting there cleaning things up in Photoshop, I’ll say, “You know, I could punch that up and focus more,” or I don’t like something when I’m looking at it, and go, “No, “X” marks the spot. Though that is subject to change once Butch starts inking. that doesn’t lead the eye,” and I’ll go back Pencils (above) and inks (next page) for Winter Soldier #1, page 13. and take another piece of Bristol and draw All characters © Marvel Characters, Inc. an entirely new panel and scan it and paste it in, or I’ll flop the panel sometimes and go, the cheapest bond paper from Staples and just practice work- “Now it takes your eye where I need you to go.” ing with that. You do that for a couple of months….”

BG: Spend 15 minutes a day—that’s all it takes, you know? DRAW!: Do you do tight layouts, or do you do loose little There’s a feel there that, to me, you have to understand how to scribbles on the board? ink with a brush, to turn around and use those other instruments BG: I read the script once or twice through, and then a lot of to make the work properly. I guess I’m wrong, because there are times with the pages, “Okay, here’s page eight, what goes on plenty of people who make it without knowing how to do it. page eight? Okay, it’s five panels, this and this are important,” and you sort of see it in your head. I’ll slap a piece of Bristol DRAW!: I think it depends upon your attitude, as far as being up, I’ll do the panel layouts, as far as the basic panel compoa craftsman. Even when I was younger, I was always very old sition, and gather whatever scrap I may need that I did not school. You’ll never ink like Frazetta if you’re using a Pigma. necessarily have on hand or don’t trust. “Okay, they’re calling BG: Oh, yeah, I’m the same way. When I was reading comics for a DC-10 in this shot, so I’ve got to find a shot of a DC-10

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so I’m drawing a proper airliner.”

Then, because I mostly ink myself right now, and I did up until a few years ago when I went through a whole stretch where other people were inking me, my actual pencils tend to be anywhere from middling loose to suggestions. When I’m penciling on the board and I’m going to ink myself, it’s more about blocking in the major elements and figuring out how to lead the eye than anything else, and one of the advantages— as I’m sure you’re well aware—when you’re inking yourself, you can do a lot of things just in the way you decide to drop shadows, to lead the eye, or make something pop. That’s why pencils for somebody else to ink, I’m always a little frustrated by the end result, no matter how nice it is, because I don’t

always see those things when I’m penciling for someone else.

If I draw it for somebody else, they’re going to ink everything as I’ve penciled it, and they’re going to be faithful, and I’m going to trust that they’ll be faithful to what I gave them.

When I ink myself on the other hand, I’ll go, “I really want to make this foreground figure pop, so I’m going to just make this a silhouette back here,” and make those off-the-cuff judgment calls that hopefully create a better page.

It’s like you were talking about earlier, back in the FedEx days, before it was just scanning and sending off the files, once it left your hands, that was it. You didn’t know what you were going to get, and sometimes those things were colored overnight, the entire issue. [laughs] I remember a panel in Iron Man one time, Tony’s standing in front of a window, and one side of the curtain is one color, and the other side of the curtain was an entirely different color, and I thought, “Hey, Tony’s got a really weird sense of style!” [laughs] DRAW!: There were many jobs back in the late ’80s, early ’90s, when I was doing a lot of work at Marvel and DC, and you’d have “M. Hands” ink your stuff, which was basically anybody who was in the bullpen.

BG: Hey, that guy did a lot of work! [laughs] DRAW!: The aesthetics have changed, which does have a different effect too.

Jack Kirby just had a piece of paper and a pencil. Now you have to have the piece of paper and the pencil and the markers, and the scanner and the Internet, and you’ve got to have all this other stuff. Drawing comics is more complex now.

BG: You had more what I would think of as finishers in the industry, more inkers who in their own right could take a loose drawing and…. Kirby, with all the books he was drawing, he would turn in a job and it would be breakdowns, and the burden fell upon the inker or inkers to take those drawings and fix that wonky anatomy, and add some detail to pictures, and…

Butch invokes a bit of Kirby and Buscema in this flashback from Captain America #600.

All characters © Marvel Characters, Inc.

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DRAW!: …put some blacks on it.

BG: Yeah, and now a lot of the inkers I run into want to reproduce the pencil lines as you penciled them! I mean, they’re very proud of the fact that they reproduced this thing exactly, and I’m like, “No, no, no, no, no!” When I was working with Mike Perkins on Ruse at CrossGen, before he ever inked the first page of Ruse, I looked at him—we’d just met a few days earlier—

and he said, “Okay, is there anything specific you want to try to do with the inks?” I said, “You do your best job with the inks. I only have one request.” He said, “What’s that?” I said, “Ink my intent, not the line.” And he started laughing, and I said, “No, I’m serious! You’re an artist. You can look at it, and you know what it’s supposed to be. Don’t draw that fur and it doesn’t necessarily look like fur. I’m just drawing the page and moving on through and trying to do some storytelling and move all these characters around. So when you come to it, you make that a silky dress, or you make that mud in the street. Sell me the mud, don’t go, ‘Well, I inked what you gave me.’”

DRAW!: I think those inkers developed because the industry needed guys like Kirby and Buscema to produce two or three books a month. They were much more valuable doing that, so you had guys like, say, Sinnott or Giacoia or Palmer who were great at finishing, but maybe weren’t as dynamic with the storytelling. I look at Terry Austin as the premiere guy that all the modern inkers sort of sprung from because of the way he inked Byrne. It became inking pencil very tightly in the way the pencil was penciled. It was almost like laminating the pencil. I love Terry, and I’ve worked with him a lot, and Terry did have that cool way of interpreting something. If he inked Michael Golden as opposed to inking Bret Blevins, he would adjust, but I think the modern guys… I don’t know.

It’s so removed from that. Does anyone even do breakdowns any more?

BG: I don’t know.

DRAW!: I did breakdowns on Aquaman for Ricardo [Villagrán] to do finishes on.

BG: I did some breakdowns on my stint on Aquaman, because I knew I had Tony DeZuniga coming along behind me! [laughs] I wanted to get out of the way.

DRAW!: Well, Ricardo’s the same way. You give him a dynamic layout, and because he draws so amazingly, you don’t really have to draw that stuff in.

BG: I think the industry’s also created that problem, because we had that period where it was that era of the superstar penciler, and there was almost this demand of, “Don’t screw it up.

I penciled it down like I penciled it.” There was that transition with Terry on X-Men under Byrne, and then a little later on, there’s this whole push of, “Ink it as it’s penciled.” You’re almost telling the inker, “Don’t think anymore, just reproduce this.” I’ve never been somebody who penciled tightly, even when I was doing full pencils for somebody else, there’s still a certain play there.

DRAW!: Would you adjust if you knew who the inker was?

BG: I would try. I would often think that I had. [Joe] Rubenstein inked me a number of different times over the years. I remember one time he stopped me in the bullpen and said, “You know, the problem with you is, you stop three-quarters of the way in pencils, and you expect everybody to finish it

Pencils for Secret Avengers #9, page 1.

All characters © Marvel Characters, Inc.

off.” [laughs] I was like, “Those were full pencils!” [laughs] He was like, “No, personally I enjoy it, because I get to play a bit, but there’s a decision-making part that comes into inking you that I don’t always have inking someone else. I get these jobs, and it’s very clear exactly what they wanted. With you, you look at it, and at first glance, it’s all there, but when you get to inking it, you go, ‘Oh, I need to drop some shadows over here, and mold that out, and punch that up,’ there are things in there that have to occur.”

I’ve had some very skilled inkers that ink me that, honestly, the end result was disappointing for both of us, because they didn’t necessarily do that. I’m sure they felt they were being very respectful to my pencils, whereas I’m sitting there going, “No, do that thing you do!” I did one cover that Ordway inked, on a Rom or something, and I was just tickled to death because it looked like Jerry! [laughs] I was like, “Yes! Jerry’s going to ink this. I want it to look like Jerry!” [laughs] The same thing with Palmer, he did one cover of mine one time, it was more Tom than me, and I was like, “Yes, I love that!” [laughs] DRAW!: Yeah, I’ve had that experience. I inked Michael Golden on Birds of Prey, and I’ve always loved his stuff, but

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his pencils are so immaculate and so beautiful, I felt like there was really only one way to ink it: like Michael Golden. When I met him, he was very nice, and he’s very gracious, and he told me it was one of his three favorite jobs he ever had inked, but he said, “I was thinking it would look more like Mike Manley,” and I said, “Why would I do that? Why would I erase Michael Golden and make it Mike Manley?” But that job was a lot of work, because I didn’t feel like there was much to make any interpretation on besides maybe line weight.

BG: His stuff is there.

DRAW!: It’s so finished!

BG: At least with mine, I have the excuse that, “Well, I’m sorry, that’s the way I pencil!” [laughs] DRAW!: I think my buddy Ande Parks inked a Superman cover of yours back in the day, and it had Metallo in it? I remember you had large areas where you put “X” for blacks, leaving it kind of open for the inker to go to town.

BG: Yeah, even though it’s technically a full pencil job, I’ve never been able to break that habit. That was one of those things where I got tired of smearing lead on the page, so I fell to X-ing my blacks, even if there are a ton of little ones and stuff. I guess I’m not wired to sit down and do you this really nice pencil drawing that’s all there, like Michael Golden can, John Buscema, where it’s all there, just so much life and organic energy in the pencils. Mine tend to be, “Eh, here’s a drawing, and there’re some X’s over here, throw some black over there, and fix what you need to.” [laughs] X’s and scumbles abound in these pencils for Winter Soldier #1.

DRAW!: So you prefer to complete the drawing when you ink it.

BG: Yeah. Like I said, I’ve done so much inking of my own work over the years, so much of the finesse, for me, is in the inking side of it. That’s where I’m going to futz to get that hair right, the sheen to it, and the body to it. If I’m penciling that, it’s just lines and basic waves and that’s it. I just don’t have the temperament to sit there and work all that out for you when I feel like any competent inker should be able to sit down and go, “Oh, yeah, boom, boom, boom, boom. Here, get this nice sheen going. Throw it in there.”

DRAW!: If you were to pencil something now for somebody else to ink, you would still feel the same way?

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All characters © Marvel Characters, Inc.

BG: I would still do the same thing, but it’s more because I’m too stuck in my ways to… I mean, I will adjust what I can. If I know who’s doing it going in, or if I’m working with somebody on a regular basis, after a couple of jobs, you start to see where they take certain things, or where they lean, and sort of start meeting them in the middle, so to speak. Yeah, I’ll work in that direction on it.

On Winter Soldier with Brian Thies, by the time we were finishing up that run, I would turn the pencil on its side and just kind of scumble on the lead—just a real thick kind of broad stroke—and then I’d expect him to go in and work out the highlights and stuff, because he was going to anyway. I’d

DRAW!: In the old days, you wanted to have that long run. But nobody does the long runs anymore. It seemed for a while, they didn’t want you to do anything more than a couple of issues, and they’d actually take you off the book and go get somebody else, they’d come on, and they’d be on it for five or six issues. I did 27 issues in a row of inking Alpha Flight, and I don’t think anybody does that now!

BG: I consider the trade paperback mentality. You do five or six issues, that’s a nice story arc; it fits into a trade. Then you move over to this next book, and they’ll bring in a new team, a new penciler or whatever, and that can be announced and pushed online, and the fact that you’re moving to this other book, that’s also promotable. It’s one thing if you’re not happy on the book, and you request a change. I would get frustrated when I’d be working on something, and I’d get that call, and they’d say, “Well, we’re going to relaunch the book in two issues.

We’re going to move you here to this other thing.” Okay! [laughs] You’re thankful to have the work! “Was it my work, what’s going on there?” And then, you’d watch your old book, they’d get six or eight issues, and now it’s going to get relaunched again with a whole new creative team, and meanwhile, you’re being moved on again to something else.

DRAW!: Is that one of the reasons you’re looking to do your own thing at Image?

BG: That’s part of the appeal, yes. I mean, I don’t have the greatest track record of staying on books more than about a year anyway. Over the course of my 30-plus year career, I think that my longest run’s probably with Action Comics. I was on that for three years, and then probably my Several changes were made between the initial pencils and the finished inks. second-longest run is Ruse at CrossGen. All characters © Marvel Characters, Inc. I did 24 issues, roughly, of that. But you come to trust what he was going to do. He had deciphered my know, like you said, it used to be that was the goal: You’d shorthand trick, because everybody has one, whether they’re get on a book, and make it your own. You’d stick around. a penciler or an inker. There’re certain go-to techniques, go-to That’s where the fun for me is. You get comfortable with things that you do, and if you’re working with somebody else, your editor, your writer, your inker, the other team members, you get comfortable with the book, you play a bit with looks, the real trick is figuring that out.

The unfortunate thing with a lot of jobs today in comics is and it’s, “Okay, here’s Steve Rogers’ apartment. Let me put that just about the time you start getting the feel, you’re off this big piece of art on the wall, and I’m going to use it time the book. A six-issue run is a major run! It takes six issues, at and again in various issues, you’ll see it in the background,” least for me, to get a full grasp on the book, on the characters, that kind of thing. I enjoy the month-to-month connection to on the look, the inker I’m working with, all of that, and it’s the same project. With a creator-owned book, you have even like, “Now, you’re going to be moved over here to work on more freedom to make the judgment calls as far as the look, the approach, who the other team members are, and that sort this book instead,” and you start the process all over again.

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DRAW!: After all this, would you still prefer to do a strip?

BG: Hey, if I could make a living drawing Apartment 3-G, I would be happy to step in and draw those characters the way I remember them! [laughs] And that’s no offense to Frank Bolle, it’s just not the strip that I remember.

DRAW!: When I started doing Judge Parker, which I never read as a kid, I kind of loosely knew about it. It was one of those strips, because it didn’t have adventure in it, I didn’t look at. The style was kind of an Al Feldstein style. But yeah, I was looking at some Kotzky, and it’s hard to find copies of his work too.

They’re doing all the Leonard Starr, I wish they would do the Apartment 3-G. BG: Oh, yeah, I’ve been after them to do an Apartment 3-G collection. I know you own a bunch of strip originals, because I’ve seen you post your Frank Robbins collection on Facebook, [laughs] or at least a portion of it.

DRAW!: Oh, yeah, I haven’t posted everything.

BG: With Kotzky, I probably own three or four Sundays and probably 15 or 20 of the dailies.

DRAW!: So if you could be a strip guy, you think that would still be your ultimate…?

BG: I think that would still be very much the fulfillment of a childhood dream. The closest I came, I was 18 or 19. I’d graduated high school, and Vic Morris, who was drawing Gasoline Alley, lived nearby. I had met him a couple of times previously at a few conventions and things, and he was looking to basically bring on an assistant to help with his duties on the strip a little bit, and train somebody for the next A far cry from his work on Aquaman, but not bad for “mechanical aping.” stage.

He contacted me—we were 20 minutes All characters © Disney. away from each other—and he said, “Would of thing. That’s part of the driving force for it, yeah. It’s all you be interested in helping me on Gasoline Alley, and I’ll about me being comfortable! [laughter] show you how I do the strip. We’ll start off, you’ll probably ink backgrounds.” We went back and forth on that for a couple DRAW!: Well, that’s important, right? That’s why we’re of days, because the thing that’s the hardest for me is to do that doing it, right? basic kind of style. I’ve done Disney comics working off their BG: It should be fun; it shouldn’t just be work. There’ve style guides and things, but it’s a mechanical aping process for been enough jobs in the career that were just work, and you me, it’s not a natural…. I just don’t have that cartooning side took them for all the wrong reasons, and you knew that going nearly as deeply ingrained as the other side. I’ll go, “Oh, I’m in, subconsciously at least, and again, it was proven, by the just going to throw some heavy shadows in here, and I’m going time you were done with them, you were glad to be free and to have the spooky guy stepping in the castle.” moving on. [laughs] You definitely want the stuff that you can anticipate, “Yes, this is going to be fun! I like working with DRAW!: But you know, Frazetta worked for Al Capp…. this writer,” or, “I like working with this genre,” or, “I can ink BG: I should have. I turned him down. He brought Jim Scanthis myself.” Whatever the reasons are. carelli to do the Sundays around the same time, and Jim took

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over the strip, and it’s one of those where you look back and go, “I wonder, would I have inherited the strip and still be working on that?” I think that Jim has done a great job taking over the strip from Dick, and he’s carried it forward, but it’s one of those things that would’ve at least opened some doors to move sideways into another strip or something.

A year passed, and I got out of high school, I needed a job. I had to earn a living, so I’m doing patches and emblems and things, and Pat Broderick called me out of the blue, like, eight months or a year afterwards, and he said, “I know Bob McLeod, and he told me about you helping him out on a job, and I’m doing this Rom Annual, and there’s an eleven-page chapter in it, and I need to get this thing done. Do you want to take a shot at it as penciler?” I thought, “Yeah, great! It’s just my career!” [laughs] I helped pencil a few pages to help make a deadline, but it’s comics, hey! And this one, I knew, was supposed to be published.

So I did that, and time passes again. I’m still drawing patches and emblems. I’m not even trying to break into comics at that point, because I had one of those Marvel Try-Out things they sent out, and I sent my pages in and gotten this letter sent back from Jim Shooter saying, “Ehn, I don’t think so!”

DRAW!: Well, maybe, because one of the reasons I think I ended up inheriting Judge Parker was because I know Graham [Nolan], and I had worked with King doing some X-9 stuff for Europe, so they knew me, and they knew that I did that type of work.

When [Stan] Drake took over Blondie, I heard he was making something like $750,000 a year, because Blondie was second only to Peanuts at the time. So, I would imagine, if you were doing Gasoline Alley, which maybe isn’t Blondie, but I imagine you probably would’ve DRAW!: Really? made way better money doing that BG: [laughs] It was, “Nice try, but you than you did in comic books at the definitely need to put some more time time. into working on this,” and I hadn’t been BG: Yeah, yeah. Well, I wasn’t even happy with what I’d been sent anyway. trying to break into comics. I was I was so out of doing it on any kind of actually working for a company that regular basis, it was kind of here and designed patches and emblems for there and all over the place. police departments and NASA and stuff. And talk about monkey work, DRAW!: And like anybody, when they’d send you the basic request for you’re drawing for yourself, you’re the design, and you’d draw a circle, kind of loose, and now when you’re or rectangle, and you’d indicate the actually going to do something for…. lettering size, and simple line drawBG: And somebody’s going to look ing of the image, and indicate the at it and judge it…. [laughs] border area, and then another artist So another year passes, and then would take it and blow it up, and out of the blue, I came home from draw the actual thing for the looms. work and there’d been a phone call I was banging out 20 or 30 of those a from… I’m thinking it was Al Milday, but it was mostly mindless work. grom. Bill Mantlo had written the The previous year I had gone to Rom Annual the previous year, and Charlotte Mini-Con, or maybe it was the first Heroes Con. Bob McLeod he’d see the pencils, and I guess he’d was there. He was getting ready to inquired, they told him my name, and More “Little Mermaid” from the same story. start doing New Mutants, and I think gave him my contact information.

All characters © Disney.

I got invited as fan guest of honor Now there’s an opening on Microor something, because I knew Shelton Drum, and I showed nauts, and he actually, for whatever reason, put my name formy artwork to Bob, looking for some pointers, and he said, ward to Al Milgrom. I called Al back, thinking this was some “I’ve got this Iron Man inventory I’m penciling and inking. kind of a joke, and Al said, “We’re going to try out three difI really need to get out from under it, because I’m starting ferent pencilers on Micronauts. Are you interested in doing this new book, New Mutants. There’re seven or eight pages one issue as a try-out, and we’ll see from there?” I was like, left to pencil. Do you want to take a shot at penciling them? “Okay, all right.” I was head over heels, “Far out, I get another I’m going to be inking it, so I’ll fix it and make it all look shot at it!” I’m waiting on the script, I go out and celebrate, like me, and if something’s really off, I’ll just erase it out and and I fall and break my elbow on my drawing arm! [laughs] fix that panel, no problem.” And I was like, “Great!” “I can’t guarantee you’ll get any credit or anything, but I’ll pay you, DRAW!: Oh, man! and it would really help me out.” I was like, “Happy to do it!” BG: I’m working full-time with my arm in a sling, and now I So I did six, seven pages. It was an inventory story, so I don’t have to draw this issue! [laughs] So I draw the issue, and I turn know if the thing ever saw print, back in the day when they it in, and Al’s like, “Well, it’s good. It shows promise. We’ll give did inventory stories. [laughs] you another issue to try out on.” So I draw another issue.

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Layout sketch (above), pencils (right), and finished inks (next page) for the cover of WinterWorld #2.

WinterWorld © Chuck Dixon and the Zaffino estate.

DRAW!: Was he giving you feedback, like, “This works and that works. You need to work on that”?

BG: He was giving me certain things as far as the storytelling and stuff. Like I said, early on, I saw the pages too much as individual panels.

I didn’t necessarily design the page, “Okay, this scene is this and this and this,” and also I was young and unprincipled. “I like this character more than those other characters, so I’m going to keep throwing them in the foreground at the expense of everybody else,” that kind of thing. I hadn’t drawn enough pages, didn’t have enough under my belt then to have a full understanding of the nuts and bolts of the job.

DRAW!: I remember the first time I went to Marvel in the fall of ’83. I took my samples up, and I went around with my work, and I saw Mark Gruenwald—that tells you how different everything was, I actually saw all the people I made an appointment with—but I remember Mark sitting down in his office and going over every single panel in my samples that I submitted, saying, “This is good,” or “This isn’t good,” or “This works, this doesn’t work.” You don’t really get that, in a way, now, because the editorial staff is not that way. Most people start out in indie comics, and you kind of do your thing, and kind of bootstrap yourself up, and then you get the call to work for Marvel and DC. On the one hand, there’s

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more knowledge about how to do the craft out there now, but I also think you’re a little bit more on your own as far as how you interpret everything.

BG: A lot of the guys who were coming in as inkers would start out doing backgrounds or assisting somebody who already was working in the industry, so they would get a feel for working on pages, here’s the deadline, that kind of stuff, and some training.

DRAW!: That’s how Zaffino did it. He started as an assistant when he was 15 or 16 with Ricardo and Enrique Villagrán in their studio, and he learned by watching those guys work on their stuff, and he’d do the same thing, “Here, ink this rock, draw this background, erase this page.” You don’t really have the studio systems like that anymore.

BG: No. I mean, even Continuity was a boys’ camp for people trying to break in to the industry. They’d show up at Continuity and end up with a table, and assist on various things, and

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Pencils and inks for the opening page of Secret Avengers #12.

All characters © Marvel Characters, Inc.

then pick up work on their own. How many inkers came out of working with Neal or Dick alone, if you think about it?

How many people can turn around and cite Wally Wood as somebody they worked with early on?

DRAW!: Did you ever move to and live in New York, or did you live out of state?

BG: The longest I’ve lived anywhere in New York was for about six months, and that six months was basically spent sleeping on the floor of Bob Layton’s apartment. [laughs] I had a contract early on with Marvel, and they would pay you regularly, based upon the idea of a certain amount of work, and if you fell behind, then you had a problem. I had fallen behind, and I got this call saying, “You need to come up here and hang out for a few weeks or so. We’ll get you some cover work and some inventory work, and you can work off what you owe Marvel and get this all caught back up.” So, I went up there, and I had known Bob from bumping into him on the convention circuit. He was just a few blocks away from Marvel, and he was gracious enough to offer up his floor. So, I was going in every day, turning pages in, and picking up cover stuff.

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Actually, this brings up a very funny Mark Gruenwald story.

One of the things I got offered to work that off was inking an issue that John Buscema penciled of Squadron Supreme, the miniseries. I’d inked myself a number of times, but I’d not inked other people, per se. You know how John would pencil stuff at times—it’s all there, but as we’ve talked about, you really need to translate it, and figure out what the cues are.

DRAW!: You really have to finish it. I was in the studio when Al was inking Wolverine, and those pencils were probably the tightest that he had done in a long time, because he would do those loose things, but you’re right, it looks there, but then when you start inking, you go, “Whoa, I’ve got to make this fit on the body.”

BG: Well, this was one of those kind of jobs. Mark called me into his office and said, “You know, we’re kind of on a deadline crunch, so John’s penciled this issue as a fill-in.”

I think Bob Hall might’ve been penciling the regular mini.

John wasn’t the regular artist, he was just doing this one issue.

“If you want to ink this, that will really help get you back straight with Marvel, but here’s the thing: We really need a fairly quick turnaround on it.” And I’m like, “All right.”

If I remember correctly, there was some holiday coming up—I can’t remember exactly what it was—but I took the job, and I’m working away on inking on it there in Bob’s apartment. Bob would sit there and work on his stuff, and I would work on a drawing board propped up on a table. I’m working on these pages, and Bob said something about wanting to go upstate that coming weekend to see his daughter, and asked if I wanted to come along. I said, “Yeah, if I’ll be finished.” He said, “Bring it along. I’ll help you. I’ll do backgrounds on it, and we’ll pay you the last eight pages out over the weekend.”

So we go catch the train to go upstate, and right before we go, Paul Smith shows up from California, [laughs] looking to crash at Bob’s apartment! Bob says, “We’re going upstate, why don’t you come along with us?” So, off Bob and Paul and I go to upstate, and we’re sitting there, and I’m working on it, and Bob’s picking away at the backgrounds, and Paul looks in, and he starts picking away at backgrounds. Then Barry Smith comes over—he lived in the area, and he’d come over to see Bob— and says, “Hey, John Buscema!” And Bob’s like, “Yeah! Help yourself!” So I’m sitting there inking these figures, and I look up, and I realize, “I’ve got Bob Layton, Paul Smith, and Barry WindsorSmith doing my backgrounds!” [laughter] We get back to New York, and I turn the last batch of pages in to Mark. And he’s looking at them, “All right, this is wonky here,” and he gave me some instruction on it, and I really appreciated that. It was not a good job. It’s not one of those that I look back and go, “Hey, I did all right!” It was one of those I go, “Man, I wish that I could have tackled that now, instead of then!” [laughs] There’s a lot more understanding of what I should’ve been doing now than then. But, I’m talking with Mark, and you know how Mark was. He kind of baited me a bit, and I said, “Actually, I’m charging more.” And he says, “Yeah?” and I say, “Yeah, anybody can get some young kid to do their backgrounds, but I had Bob Layton, Paul Smith, and Barry WindsorSmith doing backgrounds on this pop job!” And he stopped, he put the pages down, and he looked at me and he said, “Actually, I just docked your pay.” I said, “What do you mean?” And he said, “I hired you to do the job, not them!” [laughs] Okay, do not pick verbal fights with Mark Gruenwald! You will lose! [laughter]

weekend where X-Men had to go to press or something, and they needed to get “Manny Hands” to come in and do stuff.

BG: It was amazing. You’d run right up against the deadline.

I mean, we were working on X-Factor #1, and we were inking pages, and it was me, and Bob, and Joe Rubenstein, essentially, in a broom closet at Marvel, inking pages as fast as we could.

They would come and collect pages every hour or so.

DRAW!: Run them off to the colorist or something?

BG: Yeah, they had a couple of colorists there in the bullpen who were coloring them. It had to go out by the end of the day! It was going to go out by the end of the day, no matter how many people we had to have work on it! [laughs] And we were told by Shooter, “You cannot leave until the job is done.” [laughs] “You are here until the job is done, and the

DRAW!: That’s a great story.

BG: I would occasionally ink people, but never… well, part of that is being in the office for those emergency turnaround jobs and stuff.

DRAW!: Yeah, there were a lot of guys who used to get work like that. They would just hang around the office, and there was always that

Pencils for Captain America #614.

All characters © Marvel Characters, Inc.

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job will be done by the end of the day, so snap to it.” We were just inking in a mad rush, and they were coloring them just as quickly, and proofing that stuff and putting it together. And it went out! Those are things that you look back on, and you laugh at, and you go, “Man, what a different sort of industry it was back then!”

DRAW!: I don’t think people hang around the bullpen like they used to in the old days, and now everybody seems late!

When we started, if you were late, you were afraid your editor would get mad and go, “Well, you’re not going to get the next issue. We’ve got a fill-in.” And now it seems like nobody lives in fear of the editor.

BG: You really have to repeatedly screw up, it seems like, before any serious action is taken, as far as that goes. I mean, books will just simply go on long delay until the job is done. I actually, unfortunately, ran into that with WinterWorld. I was busy trying to get the thing done, and just sort of got backed into issue #2 between things that were going on privately as well as feeling a bit of stage fright looking at this stuff and going, “This just doesn’t match up to what Jorge did.” It was probably the most intimidating art job that I’ve done. I told Chuck, “It’s not like there’ve been five or six guys that did WinterWorld, and Buscema was the best.” Say you end

up doing Captain America. Well, there’ve been great runs, there’ve been not so great runs. And so you look at it, and hopefully you’re not going to be one of the not so great runs.

With WinterWorld, it was just the one guy! Anything you do is going to be judged against this one guy, and this is one of those projects that everybody knows they did; it’s one of those career-defining books that he did! [laughs] If you’re already an admirer of his work, it’s even more intimidating, because you’re just like, “Man, how did he pull that off?” [laughs] DRAW!: I felt a bit that way when I did the X-9 stuff for Egmont in Europe, following in Al’s footsteps. I was good friends with Al, worked with him for a while in his studio. But if you don’t love the thing as much, it’s not like you don’t care…

BG: …but it’s a job.

DRAW!: Yeah. If you’re going to draw Fantastic Four, you’re going to have all that love for all the favorite issues by people like Kirby—that’s your starting point.

BG: Yeah, you build off of that. You’re not really thinking, “I’m competing against Jack Kirby on this book,” because that’s a childhood thing, or whenever you discovered it, and you fell in love with it, but that’s a motivator. “I’m getting to work on the same characters that Jack did.” [laughs] Yeah, WinterWorld, I would say, was probably the most intimidating job that I can remember.

DRAW!: If you were to go and do another run on it, would you feel much more relaxed?

BG: Yeah, because now I would go back and I would look at my stuff, those first four, and go, “All right, here’s where you went wrong all across the board on those four issues, so we’re going to strip that out, we’re going to stop being cutesy over here, and focus on this.” If I went back on it, I would at least attempt to do more of a solid kind of 1950s-era Frank Robbins inking treatment on it—the sort of punchy blacks that he’d throw in with a bit of pen work thrown on top.

DRAW!: I know Jorge was very heavily influenced by Ricardo and Enrique, but he was also very influenced by Sergio Toppi, Alex Toth, Frank Frazetta, and that whole school. Did you change your tools when you were doing WinterWorld? Did you say, “I want a certain look, so I’m going to use…?”

BG: In so much as I deliberately tried not to get too slick most of the time. If a brush started going on me, then that was fine, because Jorge would do so many textural things where he would draw it in, throw white-out on top of it, scratch back through it, throw more on top of it….

Layout sketch for the cover of WinterWorld #3.

WinterWorld © Chuck Dixon and the Zaffino estate.

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DRAW!: Oh, yeah, his pages are torn up! I have a bunch of pages from WinterWorld, and he did the razor blade thing, which he got from Ricardo. Ricardo would never use whiteout; he’d always use a razor blade. That stuff is also on a oneply, but it was very slick, so he could take the razor to it, and then he’d work back in with white-out.

BG: There’s stuff where you just look at it, just seeing the printed version, and go, “I sort of know what he did to achieve that technique, but for the life of me….” You have to be fearless to ink like that. I mean, you really have to be so comfortable to go in and do it, because if you’ve got a page, and you go, “You know what? I need to take a bunch of that back out in the background, so I’m going to take a razor blade to it and…” [makes scratching noises]. That takes a lot of confidence rather than, “I’ll just throw a Photoshop filter on this thing.” [laughs] DRAW!: Were you working back to it digitally, or were you working back to the original?

BG: Well, I was doing it on the originals. I’ve always tended toward using the razor blade and odd stuff when I could. For years! I did an X-Factor Special back in the ’80s, and there was some kind of weird creature in it. I can’t remember exactly what the creature was, but I actually got an assortment of different weave cloth, towels, and different things, and when there was the creature, I just grabbed stuff, and depending on how close the creature was, I’d sort of stamp the ends on top of it. Just a couple of years earlier, I had bumped into [Steve] Bissette and [John] Totleben at a show, and I had been talking to John, “How did you do that texture on Swamp Thing?”

And he said, “Elmer’s Glue.” I said, “What?”

He said, “Yes, you take white-out and Elmer’s glue, and you put it on Swamp Thing, and you let it start to get tacky, and you push through, so you have all these ridges showing up. You push it back and forth, before it’s completely dry, and you get these ridges.” “Yeah?” He said, “Now, you take black ink, and you put it on top of it.” “Yeah?” He said, “Then you take a razor blade and you scrape off the tops!

Then you have all this weird, organic squiggly lines stuff, that if you did by hand would take you six hours, and this way it’s an hour’s worth of effort.” I said, “Okay, that’s different!” [laughs] But he’s like, “You use whatever is going to achieve the look that you’re after.”

DRAW!: One of Ricardo Villigrán’s favorite techniques, and you can see it on his stuff, he would find a rag, which would have this texture on it, and he’d do that great crosshatching, or then he’d put the texture down. It would be something like a terry cloth that had a nap to it, and then he would ink into that. I know that Jorge got that from Ricardo, because they did that in the studio.

BG: I did not know that was something they were doing!

Like I said, it’s whatever works. You at least attempt it. You

Finished inks for the cover of WinterWorld #3.

WinterWorld © Chuck Dixon and the Zaffino estate.

don’t need to necessarily attempt it right on the page to start with—make sure it actually does work. [laughs] Like I said, I don’t know if I’d have the confidence to attempt it on somebody else’s work. With my stuff I have such little regard for it to begin with. I’m trying to do a good job, but I’m going to be judging it against the work of people I admire, and it’ll be found wanting. If I screw it up, I’ll just do the panel again. If I were inking Michael Golden or somebody like that, even John Buscema or somebody like that, I don’t know if I’d be comfortable going in and, “Oh, I’m going to take this rag, and….”

DRAW!: “I’m going to do all these Conan heads with a rag!”

BG: Something like that! [laughs] It’s bad if I screw up one of their pages. If I screw up one of my pages, well, what else is new? That’s the story of my career! [laughter]

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DRAW!: One of the things I’ve noticed and admired about your approach is that you change your approach depending upon the job. So you’re going from gritty to slick, and from slick to gritty.

BG: Yeah, I’m trying. Let’s put it this way: I’ve never felt like I had any style in the sense that the real stylists have, okay? I like a lot of the stylists, but in a way, I’ve never felt like, “This is my style,” per se.

DRAW!: But I can tell a job by you compared to somebody else. I don’t think you’re like Steve Epting.

BG: If tomorrow they said, “We want you to do Werewolf

by Night,” for whatever reason, I would be off and running, figuring out the way I was going to do Werewolf by Night, as far as the visual look. I wouldn’t just sit down and go, “Well, I guess that’s my Werewolf by Night,” and just transition directly from whatever the previous look was.

With WinterWorld, it was really easy to at least have the starting point, because here’s the one guy who’s drawn it, and run with it.

With Paradigms, in hearing the basic gist and just with the images I was conjuring in my head, I was seeing a certain look. My only problem is, it’s not always necessarily a look I can easily do! [laughs] Sometimes, you see a great look, and you actually employ it and go, “Oh, maybe I should go with something a little more achievable.”

DRAW!: Just the physical time it takes to do?

BG: Yeah, because sometimes you get in there, and say, “This would look great done in a Frazetta style, or whatever,” but for me, trying to do something in a Frazetta style, I would probably slit my own wrists by the time I got to page six, because I would just be so frustrated trying to do that look. In my head I might see it that way, but it’s going to be one of those things where when I’m doing it, I might never arrive there.

So, with Paradigms it’s going to be, to a degree, certain elements I’ve been trying to play with and incorporate into my general body of work the last few years, but as projects would shift, or I would have somebody else inking, so I wouldn’t be inking, it’s kind of gotten lost and abandoned in certain ways, and I really want to do a job where I go for this look! It’s got nods back toward that Williamson slickness. It’s got a bit of pop art and fashion design stuff in it. Its underpinnings are still going to be those old strip artists that I admire—whatever dose of Kotzky I can

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actually work in there. [laughs] It’s probably going to be a very small percentage by the time I’m done, but at least I’m going to try. Like I said, I go with my gut. I tend to know if I feel like it’s right, and if it’s not, I try to move it in that direction, at least closer to what I’ve seen in my head that it should look like. I don’t really do so much hard planning as I sort of follow the instinct and see where I arrive.

DRAW!: Maybe that’s the way your brain works, is wanting to have a certain flexibility to be able to approach things, or at least think of things in a different way, even if you actually don’t do it as much as you’d intended.

Pencils for page 9 of Captain America #613.

All characters © Marvel Characters, Inc.

BG: I think so, and I think that comes from such a weird mixture of people’s work I admire for various reasons. You know, you’ve got Toth, Zaffino, Kubert, Caniff, Sickles, Kotzky, Starr… you’ve got Frank Robbins, and all these people have certain common threads, but there are also some change-ups in there too—Toppi and some of the Europeans.

There’s all this that I consider influences, and people go, “I don’t see it in your work,” and I go, “Yeah, that’s the problem.” [laughter] But those are the guys I admire, and those are the guys who inspired that desire, that love of the work.

Hey, if I could affect it, I would want to draw like Robert Fawcett or something, have that skill, that technical ability.

Inks for page 9 of Captain America #613.

All characters © Marvel Characters, Inc.

[laughs] Or be able to ink like Kotzky or Starr, but hey, it just doesn’t happen!

DRAW!: All those guys are pulling from sort of the same root influences, too, in a way. Even if you’re a great mimic— John Prenctice was a great artist, but you still think of Raymond. The great strip guys don’t think of Prentice. Prentice was basically Alex Raymond in the end, know what I mean?

BG: He was basically hired to be Alex Raymond, and then he did a bang-up job on it. [laughs] When I mention certain people, much of what I admire about them is that they could do so much with so few lines, or they had a terrific sense of design and composition. Maybe the final product isn’t necessarily the look you’re going for, it’s how this person tells a story.

I love how this person dealt with natural mannerisms, and the way the characters act on the page. I love how this person spots blacks. Ultimately, your style is just a conglomeration of the things you most enjoy about those various individuals, and try to work back into your own stuff within the limitations of your own abilities. If you focus more on trying to be just that guy, then you probably could start to mimic it more closely, but I don’t think it’d be nearly as much fun. I’ve done jobs where I think, “This is my Leonard Starr inking technique.” I may be the only one who sees it! [laughter] If you showed it to Leonard, he’d go, “Huh? I’m insulted! Take that man out and shoot him!” [laughter] DRAW!: Do you use photography at all?

Do you pose or get your wife or friends to pose for you?

BG: If something’s really fighting with me, yeah. Most of the time, you can extrapolate from either basic image search stuff, or just fake it through. I think it was Caniff who said, “If it looks right, it is right.” It doesn’t necessarily have to be right according to anatomy, or perspective, as long as it looks like it’s supposed to be that way, then that’s where I’m going with it. There are times even there, it looks right on the page, and then I scan it and I’m looking at it reduced down, and I go, “Eh, it’s still wrong.” I’ll sit there with the panel itself, just kind of pushing it and pulling it in Photoshop, enlarging parts and shrinking parts, until I get a better version of what I was seeing, and sometimes it’s just distorted more than it was when I originally drew it, but now it looks right. You want that menacing figure on a hill that’s in silhouette, so you want him a little extra lean

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More pencils for Captain America #613.

All characters © Marvel Characters, Inc.

and wispy, that sort of Steranko “here’s the guy in a cloak, and he’s got one hand in silhouette” kind of thing. And yeah, I want him a little weird and distorted, but when I drew him, I drew him as a person with one hand up. Now I want to play with him so it’s more atmospheric. So, sometimes I go for the distortion even though I know it’s not necessarily right. Other times, I’m busy trying to fix that stuff—most of the time I’m busy trying to fix that stuff, because I look at it in the light and go, “Oh, man, that pose is terrible!”

DRAW!: Well, I think everybody has that feeling. When I see a job printed, all I see are all the things I would completely redraw now.

BG: Oh, yeah. Even just having 24 hours’ hindsight, going back and looking at it, and going, “Oh no. It looked fine when I did it yesterday. It looked fine when I inked it. Looking at it now, that’s slightly off over there,” and you kind of minimize it, where you don’t kill yourself as far as production, but if you can, you take a few minutes to fix something, go back again and take that shadow out of that person’s face because it looks splotchy when it’s reduced down. A lot of fixes are ten minutes in Photoshop now. Or, “I’ll do a little tiny head and I’ll paste it over the other head, and I’ll scan it in.” Some of my pages, you can tell I’m king of the error in production art. [laughter] DRAW!: Because of all the little paste-ups over them?

BG: It’s rubber cement. If they still made wax machines, when you used to put copy down and run it through a wax machine, I would have one! You mention wax machines now, and people have no idea. You had to have been connected to newspapers and journalism, and that type of stuff.

DRAW!: Well, you had to be born in 1960, 1961, like we were. I learned all that stuff in high school. I did all that before

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I ever got into comics. I worked in commercial art for eight years, so that was commonplace. I mean, frankly, I don’t miss my waxer, and I don’t miss using rubber cement, but what I will say is, the hand skills from doing that stuff still come in handy today; it trained your eye. So all that stuff you were doing, making the patches, that still has an effect, it does train your eye. If you let the computer make every judgment, you’re actually not making an informed decision, you’re just going, “Okay, looks good, whatever, next.”

BG: I agree. I think that’s part of the discussion with digital inking, is there’s so much that the computer’s just doing for you. “Well, I had to feather everything in.” “But every stoke is perfect!” [laughter] “It’s the same!”

DRAW!: Yeah, you can’t ink stuff like Frazetta digitally, because his ink was diluted. Wrightson’s ink was diluted. To get that certain type of feathering, it’s not a constant type of line, it’s not a preset type of line. You could ink something that you think looks like Frazetta until you actually look at a Frazetta piece, and you realize it looks nothing like Frazetta.

BG: Exactly.

DRAW!: I saw a bunch of originals that Al had, that he had drawn and Frank Frazetta had inked, and there’s definitely a different feeling when he would do something with a pen, and then something with a brush. When he would do that stuff with a brush, all that Untamed Love, when you see the originals, they don’t look like the dense, rich, solid black ink like you see in most originals today. It’s a lot looser.

BG: Aside from appreciating the artists in general, that’s one of the reasons I actively buy strip originals when I can afford them. I just love sitting there and looking at this stuff.

I marvel at, say, the Frank Robbins original, or the Kotzky original, a Starr. I look at it and I go, “There’s no white-out on this page!”

DRAW!: Are you an early morning guy or a late night guy?

BG: I’m an early morning guy. But that’s because I’m married to an early morning riser. We’re out of bed by 5:00, 5:30 in the morning. My wife goes off to work around 7:30, so I’m usually finishing off a cup of coffee, answering an email or two, and then hitting the boards, and then I’m there until 5:00 or 6:00 in the evening, and that’s five days a week if I’m lucky. I try not to get into a situation where I need to start robbing into a weekend, because… the wife gets mad, yes, there is that, but once you start robbing the recovery time, it’s like running a long distance race—you get winded, and you just never get back up to speed. Even with the hours I work, one bad night having trouble sleeping or something, okay, here comes the pile today, because now I’ve got to drink extra coffee and try to stay focused. [laughter]

was inking someone else. I inked Hitch on Captain America: Reborn, and by the time we got to the end there, we were literally climbing up on the deadline. I’d be sitting there—that was a case where I’d be getting pages FedExed to me, mailed from England—waiting for the FedEx package to show up, and knowing that if it contains three pages or whatever, they all needed to be turned in the following day, so once it showed up, you’re in the studio. That, to me, was just part of being professional at the back end. You knew the job was dangerous when you took it, and if they said, “We have to have it Tuesday,” unless something just completely jumped the tracks, that’s what you did.

DRAW!: Do you do any inking on blue lines?

DRAW!: So you try to do sort of 9:00 to 5:00, Monday through Friday, and then give yourself some time to—.

BG: I try to. My wife works in banking, and occasionally she works on Saturdays, so if she has a day off in the middle of the week, she’s going to be working on a Saturday. If at all possible, I’ll try to take that day to spend with her, and then work on Saturday as well. Occasionally, if deadlines are pressing, I’ll just tell her I can’t come out and play, and she goes and does her thing, and I’ll end up working at least part of the day that Saturday too. Yeah, pretty much a 8:30–9:00 to 5:00, but that wasn’t the case when I started. “Oh, the deadline’s the twelfth?

Good, I’ve still got a week and a half. I’m going to go do this,” and then you kick yourself because now you have to scramble, and you do sub-par work.

DRAW!: I’m much better now at pacing myself than when I was younger. When I was younger, you’d make it up with a superhuman effort, and fire all retro rockets. Maybe that’s one of the benefits of a strip, is you know every week you’ve got X amount of work to do.

With comics, it’s always harder to predict that, because you’re part of a team, you’re waiting for the script, the script never comes when they say it’s going to come, and you were supposed to have two months to do it, and you end up having a month to do it.

BG: And now they’re going to bump it up ahead a month. [laughter] When you’re young, you’re pretty indestructible, so you think, “Yeah, I’ll just work through the night,” and you do a couple of those.

I’ve had to do that in the last five or six years a couple of times, but it was always in connection with me being involved in a project where I

Inks for Secret Avengers #12, page 11.

All characters © Marvel Characters, Inc.

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BG: I did some inking on blue lines over Luke Ross on some Captain America stuff about five or six years back, as I remember. There might’ve been a couple of issues. I occasionally will ink some stuff of mine over a blue line, but only if the paper is giving me fits for some reason, or I need to just reproduce big chunks of it, and I don’t feel like drawing it all out. I’ll just go back and grab the scan and try to ink enough of a patch that I can place it back in there. I tend not to like to ink blue lines, just because of the eyestrain that sometimes gets involved.

going to be, in terms of initially laying down at least some of the form and the figure, and the background. I’ll jump around. I was never trained by anyone as an inker, it’s just things I’ve picked up from talking to inkers and watching inkers. Every ink job is different, but I’ll want to go through and take my pen and do all the faces, then I’ll do all the hands, and then I’ll move on to the next stage. I’ve never developed any kind of good production habits, as far as inking. I just kind of go in and fill a lot of the solid blacks in, and then I’ll feel like doing pen work. I’ll do some crosshatching and eventually it pulls together.

DRAW!: So you don’t make a layout, print it out in blue, and then pencil and ink it?

BG: No, I just work right onto the boards. If I’m on top of it, I’ll actually remember to scan that layout so I actually have a working file. [laughs]

DRAW!: Well, it’s what works for you. I tend to be much more machine-like. I have a formula for doing stuff. Again, depending upon the job, in general I go through and do all my pen work, and then I do all my brush work. Especially on the strip, if I do it that way, if I pencil it all, ink all the lines, and then bam-bam-bam with the brush, it seems to go faster than, “Oh, I’ve got all these little people’s heads back here, and I’m tired.” It’s easier to fill blacks when you’re tired than it is to ink a little face.

BG: Oh, if I would just adopt some better production habits, like waiting to fill in a lot of my solid blacks toward the back end instead of the front end, I’d probably stop having to take extra time to white out all those places where I dragged my hand through still-damp inks! [laughter]

DRAW!: Just in case you want to go back and look at it or start again?

BG: Yeah. I just want to rough it in, and then get to the brass tacks of inking it, which usually, for me, is doing a lot of the solid black stuff, and building up where those heaviest dark areas are

DRAW!: Well, I know other guys who ink all the big blacks first, and then work out of that, but I think it also probably depends on your style. It’s probably way easier to do that in a Caniff-y sort of brush style. Most styles now, as I look at things, are a pen style as opposed to a brush style. I think most guys draw in a very linear fashion now.

BG: True. There’s a lot of tiny little pencil strokes to indicate form and feathering and things now, but they’re very clean, precise line things.

At CrossGen we had all the cubicles in one large, big room in the back, and you had like six or eight people per cubicle, and you’d hear the inkers talking from cubicle to cubicle at each other. They would get to debating who has the cleanest pen stroke, and who can do the most razor-thin precise this and that, and honestly, as a penciler, I’m primarily thinking to myself, “It doesn’t matter; it’s about the final look. It’s not about the pen stroke.” I wasn’t appreciating the finer points of their conversation. They’d be admiring this guy or that guy’s work, and I’d look at it, and to me it looked like some very light partially faded-out hatching, or forms a lot of times, and I thought, “Man, I wish they’d pumped that up with a lot of blacks.” But on the other hand, the inkers were thinking, “Let it breathe for the coloring,” and this and that. I’d rather have some weight to it.

More pencils for Secret Avengers #12.

All characters © Marvel Characters, Inc.

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DRAW!: Again, looking at the more pen-based styles, the rendering isn’t the same. Most of the rendering now, the way the page reads, depends on the colorist. Most guys don’t use a lot of black, or not black in the sort of anchoring, chiaroscuro way, so most of the stuff doesn’t have the same weight. It’s

much more intricate, and there’re a lot of little details and stuff. Somebody would take a #4 brush and pop in some shadows on the side of the head. You rarely see that now. Or if you do, it’s sort of that rim light with the double cross-hatching coming out of the shadow. The only guy who still has blacks anchoring his work is Mignola. I think his work still has that.

BG: I agree. There’s an appreciation for that stuff that I didn’t necessarily possess at times. It comes from your own background—what inspired you.

The guys that came into the industry after Image first started have a whole lingo of inking style.

They were doing the crunchy line, and doing this, and doing that, and to me, it all looked sort of like Scott Williams’ technique. But they would sit there and debate who does the best this or that, and like I said, I’m trying to judge it coming from a whole different look half the time, so I’m looking at it saying, “Hey, throw some more blacks in there. Put some of this in there.” So I’m out entirely, there’s no reason you need any of that crap out there! [laughter] DRAW!: I know from showing my students stuff, we have people that have never seen those great Russ Heath issues of Our Army at War. They’ve never seen a guy who can do a fantastic drawing of a Panzer tank with a brush. Or they look at Moebius or someone like that, know what I mean? He fried my brain at 15, seeing those first issues of Heavy Metal. “Who is this guy?”

BG: Oh, yeah. It comes from where you come into it, and who is out front, and that’s what you’re being exposed to. There’re a lot of independent artists and online artists who I feel like I’m always playing catch-up with. The name sounds familiar, and I finally track down samples of their work, and I go, “Oh, okay. Now I know what they’re talking about.” There are definitely days I feel like a complete dinosaur. “Man, this super-talented artist is out there,” and they always have been, I just didn’t realize it! [laughs] I guess the thing that frustrates me, we have access to a lot of this older stuff in nice, bound volumes, and I just wish there was more of an appreciation for looking back at some of this stuff, because it seems like the only conversations I ever get to have about that stuff is with people my own age, or older. We’re the ones buying those volumes.

DRAW!: I try to show that stuff to my students, because I think what’s really important is to understand you don’t have to like it, nobody has to like Frank Robbins, but there are a lot of things that you’re doing today that are built on top of the superstructure of that way of thinking. I tell my students, “Well, you like this anime stuff, but the original guys that

The finished inks for Secret Avengers #12, page 15.

All characters © Marvel Characters, Inc.

came up this stuff, like [Osamu] Tezuka and [Tatsuo] Yoshida, are influenced by comics left by the American G.I.s after World War II. Those are the styles of the Fleischer Superman, Alley Oop, Dick Tracy, all that stuff. What you’re seeing is our comic strips’ influence being pushed through a different culture, and then coming back to us, but if you understand that, if you go look at Dick Tracy, then go look at Tezuka, you’ll see where these guys are being influenced.” If you say that to a student, then it’s like, “Oh!” If you become a student of art, of your craft, you might still like the guy that’s doing Death Note, but you might actually find an earlier artist that has something to offer you in a purer way that influenced the same person that you love now.

BG: “Who did that person get inspired by?” And you follow it back.

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T

he ear is one of the great defining features of a character or personality.

My mom used to say “little children have big ears” in regard to my ability to sometimes hear things I shouldn’t have been privy to. She also used to say I “heard what I wanted to” in regards to me suddenly being hard of hearing when it came to doing chores and cleaning up my room or piles of loose comic books.

We can see how important the ear was to great illustrators like Norman Rockwell and Albert Dorne in helping to define a character type, as well and other features that were often exaggerated, like the nose, head shape, hands, and feet to get a great character type.

To the caricaturist, the ear is one of the main features that gets exaggerated to push a likeness.

“The Shadow Artist” (above) and “The Gossips” (right), both by Norman Rockwell.

Artwork © respective owner.

The hallmark of a handsome head of a male or female are well-defined and well-placed features, including the placement of the ear in its proper place on the head and in its proper proportion. Too far forward or back, too large or too small, and the head will start veering towards caricature. While this might be true, there are well known actors and actresses who are thought of as beautiful or handsome that do have some features one might term “off model.”

Cary Grant is a perfect example of this. Certainly one of the most handsome and iconic leading men of all time, his features were striking and distinct, including his rather smallish ears in comparison to another rugged leading man, Charlton Heston, or Clark Gable, who was known for having rather large ears.

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If we take Clark Gable’s ears (center) and put them on Cary Grant (left), well, it just doesn’t work, does it?

Photographs © respective owner(s).

Anatomy of an Ear

The ear’s anatomy is actually quite complicated with many tapering and shell-like segments and cartilage. This is of course all designed to capture sound, and unlike many animals, the human ear is much smaller in proportion to the head, and for most people has little movement, though some are able to “wiggle their ears” via the Auriculares muscles.

The ear perches on the back of the zygomatic arch. The amount the ear is tilted back (angulation) varies from individual to individual, but the average tilt is about 20º (see the cyan lines on the male and female heads at right).

Helix canal Helix antiHelix

anterior Notch

concha

lobe

The ear breaks down into four main segments: • Helix • Antihelix • Lobe • Concha or cymba cavity, the deepest depression, which leads directly to the external auditory canal.

Sometimes the earlobes are attached and sometimes not. This little detail can also be played up to express a type of character and define their personality and look.

Women’s ears tend to be smaller than men’s, and the zygomatic arch on a female skull is much less pronounced than on a male. Their ears are also more delicate in general. I am stressing this here for the sake of drawing the ideal types of features and relationships. Almost no one has all the ideal features, and no one except identical twins has the same features as anyone else.

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A common mistake in head construction is drawing the ears out of place on the head, or drawing them at the wrong angle. To place the ear in the proper alignment on the head, it helps to use the eyes and nose as guides, sketching in guidelines for placement (see above). Simplifying the ear for cartooning should still be based on understanding its real structure. Nothing will make a pretty woman look ugly faster than drawing poorly set features.

Take some time and look at the often overlooked ear. Take a sketchbook and spend some time both drawing the ear but also drawing and observing different types and angles or views. The best way to commit these details into our memory bank is to not only look, observe, but to draw that information into your memory bank to use later.

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I

usually think of the ear as having three distinct parts when blocking in my drawing, as shown here:

When viewed from behind, the three shapes are raised from the plane of the head, set at an angle atop a shallow “cup” shaped support that is thicker at the back of the ear. This piece of cartilage is shaped somewhat like a lemon wedge, and is about the same size as one, too.

The four drawings below, showing the ear from various viewpoints, were constructed using the simplified concepts described—then I added a little more subtlety of form, based on much observation from life (and practice).

There are subtle undulations of form in addition to these three basic shapes, but these are useful for visualizing the initial structure and placing the forms correctly (see right).

The chart below shows the basic rhythm of the large defining forms as simple directional lines—very simple, but useful for grasping the overall shapes quickly and sketching them in.

Using these simple three divisions of form as building blocks, it’s easier to draw the basic shapes as seen from various angles (see below).

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These five sketches, at right, of different people show a few of the many variations of size and shape. Ears can be narrow, or rounded, or sharply angled, large, small, snug to the scalp, or protruding. If you make a point of studying ears all around you, the variety is surprising. In the drawing of the fellow wearing glasses, the ear is actually helping to define another form—the inner rim of the hat is made clear by the pressure it exerts on the top of the ear, pressing it in tight to the scalp and changing the ear’s overall shape.

Once you understand the ear it is easier to exaggerate it for effect. A standard feature of fantasy creatures is the elongated ear that rises to a point at the top, as seen in the two drawings below.

Manipulating the size, shape, and character of the ears is a useful tool for designing characters, as seen in the examples at right. Adding goat ears to the demonic character is extreme, but human or pointed ears wouldn’t be as effective in this instance. It doesn’t hurt to be informed about the structure of animal ears too. You never know when they might come in handy.

In cartooning the ear is often simplified, especially in animation, but the correct shape is still important. They must read clearly, and communicate character just as clearly. The designs at the top of the next page are from a project requiring a hybrid between an animated style and slightly more realistic proportions. Notice that each character has a different and distinct ear shape that suits them, even when reduced to a simple outline. Two-Face appropriately has two differently shaped ears.

Ears are often considered an unimportant secondary detail, and thus are often poorly drawn. It doesn’t take much attention to do them justice, and will add conviction to your artwork.

Till next time, Bret and Mike

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UNDER REVIEW

W

TWO-FER: OF PEN NIBS & WALLET/SKETCHBOOKS

elcome back, all and sundry, to the corner between the pages of DRAW! where the Commandant of Col-Erase, El Capitan of Eberhard-Faber, the person who puts the prestidigitation back in Presto! Correction Pens, returns! It is I, Jamar Nicholas, your Crusty Critic, back again to give you the what-for and why-izzit on art supplies, tools tricks, and (unfortunately, as the job entails sometimes) traps.

I’ve missed you all. During my absence I have traveled the world and back—literally, as I got to visit Tokyo last year and will be returning again, about which I will do a Crusty Debriefing in a future article. But this issue, a milestone issue for sure, the big 3-0, has me returning home to find a pair of treats for this write-up, in my studio mailbox. This column features reviews of two separate products: one is a blast from the past, the other a signal from the future. Let’s get started, shall we?

Ark-style archival vault, but there is some stock that exists out in the wild.

One of my Crusty Agents in the field hipped me to Brandon’s Etsy store, where he sells classic stock of Esterbrook nibs, and even though this Crusty Critic doesn’t use nibs in my daily practice, I jumped at the chance to buy these, which were affordable, and worth delving into the great history lesson.

THE “CRUSTY CRITIQUE” SYSTEM

These product reviews will be judged under my trusty beret scale—from one beret (not worth the time/money/effort) to five berets (a Crusty success! Buy it immediately, as much as you can carry).

ESTERBROOK RADIO PEN #914

First off, a tip of the beret to my new friend Brandon McKinney, a collector and history buff of the Esterbrook line of pen nibs who runs a top-flight Etsy store where I purchased the product.

Most cartoonists worth their salt know the legacy of the Radio #914: Charles Schulz, after his love affair with using the #914, bought out the entire stock from Esterbrook before the company was sold to a pencil company. Some say that whatever Sparky didn’t use is sitting in a Raiders of the Lost

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DRAW! SPRING 2015

The steel pen in the flesh—the infamous nib that made Peanuts pop.

DOES IT WORK? Even though this critic doesn’t expect to inherit the cartooning traits of Schulz, it is a nicely balanced nib, which works a little heavy, but is flexible and can take punishment on the page.

HOW MUCH DID IT COST? A steal at $4.00 a nib, and then Brandon was great enough to toss in some freebie nibs, the transaction highlighted by his personalized labeling in an elegant hand-written script, showcasing the descriptions of the new nibs in my Crusty Clutches which added a great touch of class.

WHAT DID YOU USE IT ON? As of this writing, I haven’t had a chance to use the product during a pressure-cooked project, but I did test the nibs in warm-up drawings and enjoyed the experience.

WHAT DID YOU THINK OF IT? More of a nostalgic purchase. Beyond the nibs, I’m more impressed with Brandon and his love of the history and collection of classic writing instruments. I want to go back and window-shop and perhaps have a sit down with him for a tool talk conversation.

Enter: JAWNS. Now, luckily for the DRAW! Readers, myself being a Philadelphian in good linguistic standing, I have a familiarity with the strange name of this product.

“Jawn” is Philly slang and a catch-all word that means anything and everything at the same time, people, places, and/or things, and though I found the name familiar, what this new company has produced is a wallet that is also a notepad.

The JAWNS wallet—an innovative My prayers have been solution to a Crusty Conundrum. answered… almost.

Read on about these JAWNS!

Taken from original stock. They don’t make ’em like this anymore.

Unfortunately, when I went back to see if he had any more of the #914s to sell, I couldn’t find them on his impressive store page, so perhaps he ran out. But I would be remiss to not recommend checking out his site. I’m sure you’ll find something that will catch your eye and make you hit that purchase button. Go to the White Apple Multimedia Etsy shop for the Radio #914s, stay for art history lesson, and fill your cart.

CRUSTY CRITIC SCORE:

JAWNS HYBRID WALLET/SKETCHBOOK

One of the biggest issues I deal with is finding and maintaining a way to collect thoughts, notes, and notes about thoughts.

Also, a place to put my Crusty Currency (when it’s a good month and I have some at all). I could fill an elephants’ graveyard with the tens and tens of wallets I’ve gone through over the years, always trying to find exactly the right vessel for my credit card(s), Crusty Credentials, and other urban ephemera. It’s never easy, no? One is the right size but doesn’t have enough card slots. What about a place to put my gym membership ID? What about the little plastic window thingy to hold the pictures of my cat?

Any man can explain to you how attached they are to their wallets, and how precious they can be. But what if you need that, and you also carry a notepad around town? Your Crusty Cohort has been known (on occasion) to jam his wallet, cellphone, comb (being well-arted and well-groomed is essential) notepad, and keys all in his pockets. When you’re about to attain man-purse status, it’s time to start paring down.

Inside your JAWNS wallet, you can stash your JAWNS, with extra space for even more JAWNS!

I discovered the JAWNS wallet on Twitter and contacted the cool guys over at JAWNSbrand and asked if they’d send me a sample for review. They did so with no hesitation, and were very eager for my input. The company seems pretty new and because they were open to critical review, I had some thoughts that I’d like to share, and hope they help.

DOES IT WORK? The wallet itself is made out of white Tyvek tear-resistant material, that same stuff that you sometimes get things mailed to you in, and it does what it’s supposed to do. This wallet is very sturdy, but I consider this to be a journal with a place to put things, rather than a proper, permanent wallet, so I may step back from describing it as such.

HOW MUCH DID IT COST? The JAWNS wallet retails on their site for $12.00 USD for either of their two designs, Incline, which I received, or Topo,

DRAW! SPRING 2015

79

which has differing designs on the outer and interior side of the wallet. Or make a commitment and buy both types at a discount for $20.00.

WHAT DID YOU USE IT ON? Since this isn’t an art tool, I used it as a wallet with a place to jot notes.

WHAT DID YOU THINK OF IT?—THE GOOD The JAWNS wallet is really ingenious, a smartly-designed carrier that has two slots for IDs or credit cards on the inside “cover” or front side, a deep pocket on the inside back cover, along with an area at the top of the booklet where you can stash your cash. The interior houses nice, smooth weighted paper with a faint printed design on each page for your notes, along with a JAWNS logo footer on each page.

WHAT DID YOU THINK OF IT?—THE BAD That was all great, but some speed-bumps: The slots made for your IDs is a little short, so you run the risk of having to jam your cards inside for the book to close properly. This Critic couldn’t put a business card in the slot without it scoring or bending when closing the cover. If they lengthened the cut by a quarter-inch, problem solved, but as of right now, it is problematic.

Also, I’d be happy with “plain” paper to bring the price point down. As of right now, the paper inside feels a little too “precious,” and if you’re like me, sometimes having “nice

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things” can deter you from creating in them. I do my best work in cheap sketchbooks and always shy away from expensive books that I don’t want to “ruin” by using. I’d rather knock the price down a few bucks and have cheaper paper inside. Don’t get me wrong—I like a well-made product, and understand it was probably created this way for durability, but if there was a way to keep it longer—such as an option for interior refills—that would be interesting. Also, if they created a third style with blank paper in it, I’d love that—so I could sketch uninterrupted by guidelines!

If there were three wallets for $20, I believe that would be a great price point, but I’m just being Crusty at this point.

I love the innovation, and can’t wait to see this young brand grow.

CRUSTY CRITIC SCORE: Great idea, just a little too expensive and precious for its purpose right now.

For more information on JAWNS, contact them on the net at www.jawnsbrand.co/, and to order those classic nibs, contact Brandon McKinney on his Etsy site at www.etsy.com/people/ WhiteAppleMultimedia.

Until next time, stay Crusty!

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KIRBY COLLECTOR #65

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“Flash and Green Lantern in the Bronze Age” (crossover with ALTER EGO #132)! In-depth spotlights of their 1970s and 1980s adventures, MARK WAID’s look at the Flash/GL team, and PAUL KUPPERBERG’s Lost GL Fillins. Bonus: DC’s New York Office Memories, and Green Lantern: Ganthet’s Tale by LARRY NIVEN and JOHN BYRNE. With BARR, BATES, GIBBONS, GRELL, INFANTINO, WEIN, and more. Cover by GEORGE PÉREZ.

“DC Bronze Age Giants and Reprints!” An indepth exploration of DC’s 100-PAGE SUPER SPECTACULARS, plus: a history of comics giants, DC indexes galore, and a salute to “human encyclopedia” E. NELSON BRIDWELL. Featuring the work of PAT BRODERICK, RICH BUCKLER, FRANK FRAZETTA, JOE KUBERT, BOB ROZAKIS, BERNIE WRIGHTSON, and more. Super Spec tribute cover featuring classic art by NICK CARDY.

“Bronze Age Events!” With extensive coverage of the Avengers/Defenders War, JLA/JSA crossovers, Secret Wars, Crisis’ 30th anniversary, Legends, Millennium, Invasion, Infinity Gauntlet, and more! Featuring the work of SAL BUSCEMA, DICK DILLIN, TODD McFARLANE, GEORGE PÉREZ, JOE STATON, LEN WEIN, MARV WOLFMAN, MIKE ZECK, and more. Plus an Avengers vs. Defenders cover by JOHN BYRNE.

“International Heroes!” Alpha Flight, the New X-Men, Global Guardians, Captain Canuck, and Justice League International, plus SpiderMan in the UK and more. Also: exclusive interview with cover artists STEVE FASTNER and RICH LARSON. Featuring the work of JOHN BYRNE, CHRIS CLAREMONT, DAVE COCKRUM, RICHARD COMELY, KEITH GIFFEN, KEVIN MAGUIRE, and more! Alpha Flight vs. X-Men cover by FASTNER/LARSON.

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KIRBY COLLECTOR #66

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ANYTHING GOES (AGAIN)! Another potpourri issue with a comparison of Jack Kirby’s work vs. the design genius of ALEX TOTH, a lengthy Kirby interview, a look at Kirby’s work with WALLY WOOD, MARK EVANIER and our other regular columnists, unseen and unused Kirby art from JIMMY OLSEN, KAMANDI, MARVELMANIA, Jack’s COMIC STRIP & ANIMATION WORK, and more!

DOUBLE-TAKES ISSUE! Features oddities, coincidences, and reworkings by both Jack and Stan Lee: the Galactus Origin you didn’t see, Ditko’s vs. Kirby’s Spider-Man, how Lee and Kirby viewed “writing” differently, plus a rare KIRBY radio interview with Stan, MARK EVANIER and our other regular columnists, unseen and unused pencil art from FANTASTIC FOUR, 2001, CAPTAIN VICTORY, BRUCE LEE, & more!

75 YEARS of THE FLASH and GREEN LANTERN (a crossover with BACK ISSUE #80)! INFANTINO, KANE, KUBERT, ELIAS, LAMPERT, HIBBARD, NODELL, HASEN, TOTH, REINMAN, SEKOWSKY, Golden Age JSA and Dr. Mid-Nite artist ARTHUR PEDDY’s stepson interviewed, FCA, MICHAEL T. GILBERT in Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt, BILL SCHELLY on comics fandom history, and more!

Gentleman JIM MOONEY gets a featurelength spotlight, in an in-depth interview conducted by DR. JEFF McLAUGHLIN— never before published! Featuring plenty of rare and unseen MOONEY ART from Batman & Robin, Supergirl, Spider-Man, Legion of Super-Heroes, Tommy Tomorrow, and others! Plus FCA, Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt, BILL SCHELLY, and more!

Celebrates SOL BRODSKY—Fantastic Four #3-4 inker, logo designer, and early Marvel production manager! With tributes by daughter JANA PARKER and son GARY BRODSKY, STAN LEE, HERB TRIMPE, STAN GOLDBERG, DAVID ANTHONY KRAFT, TONY ISABELLA, ROY THOMAS, and others! Plus FCA, MICHAEL T. GILBERT, BILL SCHELLY, and more! Cover portrait by JOHN ROMITA!

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Everybody’s Grandpa (Z LSKLZ[ º4\UZ[LY » 5L^ @VYRLY (S 3L^PZ ^HZ H KYVSS +YHJ\SH

Then there was Aurora Plastics Corporation’s infainfa mous guillotine model kit.

Aurora Witch kiit; the wifee posed) and Aurora’s

Aurora had been enjoying great successBama’s box art forr The Witch (for which his Voger Forgotten Prisoner kit photo by Mark Witch kit photo courtesy of Polar Lights; The Witch box photo by Kathy Voglesong; with its model kits based on movie monsters, themselves often based on classic literature. Its Hunchback of Notre Dame set depicted a scene of outright torture — a chained Quasimodo with whip marks on his exposed back — but no one batted an eye. After all, the Hunchback was a character from classic fiction (Victor Hugo, yo!) and the kit was based on a rel relatively recent Hollywood hit.

Buoyed by its monstrous suc success, Aurora brought out a decid decidedly gruesome kit: a working guil guillotine. “Victim loses his head!

Really works!” proclaimed one ad.

Added another: “Harmless fun!”

The kit worked like this: The blade came down; the head of the bound man was “cut off”; it landed in the basket. Kids across America painted blood stains on the kit’s blade, head and gener basket withsgenerAddam ’s “The a Milton ous Bradley dabs of Testors red enamel.

Game” offered FamilyACard colleagueto of minethe built the nity see kit,opportu way back when.

Said he of the rare in color. show of the of reliability the guillotine’s funcstars TV Productions © Filmways Addams Family” “Thetion: “It worked fine except that I covered and re-covered that poor little man’s head in so much red paint, it did occasionally stick.”

WITH HIS LONG BEAK, COMIC MANNERISM and distinctly Noo Yawk S accent, Al Lewis seemed the least likely actor to be cast as Count Dracula. But in some ways, Lewis was a better-known Dracula than his forebears Lugosi, Lon Chaney Jr., Bela John Carradine and Christopher That’s because even non-horror Lee. fans know Lewis’ thanks to his role as Grandpa Dracula, Munster.

Lewis with There is confusion over Lewis’ year of birth, apparently created stogie at his by the actor himself, who claimed to New York be older than he was (!). Many sources eatery in put Lewis’ birth in 1923, but he indeed 1989. told me he had been a circus performer Photo by Kathy in 1922.

Oh, that Grandpa ...

Voglesong Lewis died in 2006. I interviewed him at his Greenwich Village restaurant, Grampa’s Bella Gente Street, in 1989. Good conversationon Bleecker ... not to mention, good pasta.

Q: What happened during your audition for Grandpa Munster?

LEWIS: I never auditioned.

They just called me and told me they were pilot, and would I be interested? doing a They sent me some scripts, and then I flew out.

Q: Would you say you created Grandpa? For instance, did you elaborate on the character in the scripts?

LEWIS: Yeah. Of course I created it. Sure! I mean, there was no previous mold.

Forgotten Prisoner of Castel-Maré kit.

The clearest example of Bama’s use of a movie still was his Dracula box art, which mirrored a publicity photo of Bela Lugosi from “Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein” (1948).

Again, it seems odd didn’t go with a still that from the 1931 “Dracula” Bama yet again, Bama’s — and instincts were spot-on. © Universal Studios; box photo

by Kathy Voglesong

row for an hour and a half every night, and I’ll just watch movies. I’ll watch the horror movies in sequence, or Sherlock Holmes movies or whatever I’m in the mood for.

Q: Did you see your box art in stores at the time of release?

BAMA: I never saw them. and I wasn’t interested I was 35 years old at the time, in kids’ model kits.

They weren’t offered to me, and I didn’t ask for them.

I was 82 before I saw them! But almost everyone I know who says to me, “I put is in their 50s together those monster models when I was a kid.” So it was tremendous exposure. escape it. For all of But I can’t the beautiful Western paintings I’ve done since 1968, I’m better known for the monster kits and Doc Savage. I did 62 Doc Savage covers. That’s a lot of covers. I told my wife (Lynn), “The world will come to an end, but the monster models will still be know, my wife posed around.” You for one of my Aurora her, posing for The jobs. That was Witch.

Q: Was she prettier than The Witch?

BAMA: A little bit.

I always thought of her as an Margret, Lee Remick type. She was gorgeous. AnnAs I get older, my She still is. eyes get weaker, so she still looks beautiful to me.

“Harmless fun!” proclaimed a 1965 ad for Aurora’s Chamber of Horrors Guillotine model kit. Parents begged to differ.

Photo courtesy of Polar Lights

Disturbing as the guillotine kit was, Aurora seemed to think it had an “out.” The company hedged its bet by naming the kit “The Madame Tussaud’s Chamber of Horrors Guillotine.” In other words, this kit didn’t depict an actual beheading — it was a depiction of a depiction.

And that depiction was from a famous attraction at a respected wax museum. Madame Tussaud’s originated in London, you know. And London is a classy place.

It didn’t work. Parents freaked, and Aurora discontin discontinued the product.

Not that Aurora exactly dialed down the nightmarish thereafter. The Witch cooked rat stew. The Forgotten Prisoner of Castel-Maré kit implied torture of a most insidious kind — a poor soul chained by the neck and ankles to a prison wall, defenseless against non-human appar visitors (there’s a nearby snake and a rat), who apparently starved to death over a lengthy period.

Compared to that, a beheading sounds downright merciful.

Famous Monsters of Filmland made Zacherle its cover boy twice, with issues #7 (1960), in a painting by Albert Nuetzell, and #15 (1962), in a painting by Gogos. Zacherle’ Basil s national profile was also enhanced by coverage in Life, TV Guide and The Evening Post. © Saturday W arren Publishing

200 out of the first three designs So there were a track record. not too bad of news. That’s phenomenon? you a national Q: What made What broke “Big Daddy”? when ROTH: It was Revell said, “We a want to make your model out of cars.” And then, of course, they out made models , too. of the monsters into That broke me the big time. on the Q: You worked but did you model designs, 3-D realizawork on their tions?

ROTH: Yeah. them in clay?

Q: Did you do in clay, and ROTH: Did ’em at Revell the model-makers plasticarb. made ’em into different Q: How many had kinds of products on your monsters were them? There decals, T-shirts, patches …

ROTH: Emco of made a bunch ’60s. decals in the That was a big a lot one. There’s naof old parapher lia that I’ve licensed out through the years. you Q: Which do prefer, drawing monsters or working on cars? tosROTH: It’s a real worksup. I suppose where I ing on cars is but I’ve make good at, money with the gotta make the monsters. a car called Q: You designed the Druid Princess for “The Addams

that were bad

ever used? show. Was it never on the the next Family.” It was speculation. And use it, it for them on can’t ROTH: No. I built and said, “We called me up gonna quit the thing was, they because we’re I thought “The series.” And so successful Munsters” was Family” that “The Addams have I still would be. But the car. of the Rat Q: In the wake the Weird-Ohs Fink kits came r. Were and Freddy Flypoggestyle? of your those a ripoff es were three compani ROTH: There kits. One of them putting out monsterwith the (mascot) m, was Monogra There was Hawk Mouse’s stuff. models. It seemed with five or six company went like every model collection. I think into a monster had the best the Revell ones assembly. character called Q: There’s a

by Sid Big Daddy played a Bikini Haig in “It’s …

World” (1967) a couple ROTH: They had those in of Big Daddies Bingo” “Beach Blanket (Don) things, where the Rickles played Big Daddy. They need a Big Daddy those of in all movies to show y’s in that somebod charge, you know? make Q: How did you Did out in the ’60s? share of you get your pie? the Rat Fink lly, I ROTH: Financia statedon’t have any wealth ment, but my in the is in my wife, built all fact that I’ve the fact those cars, and the with straight that I’m These are my man upstairs. to dollars seem wealth, and the es, you take care of themselv d on any go overboar know? I don’t Life is drugs or stuff. you one thing. No affordable if watch your Ps and Qs.

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