M O D E R N
M A S T E R S
V O L U M E
T W E N T Y - F O U R :
GUY DAVIS
By Eric Nolen-Weathington
M O D E R N M A S T E R S V O L U M E T W E N T Y- F O U R :
GUY DAVIS edited by Eric Nolen-Weathington front cover by Guy Davis all interviews in this book were conducted and transcribed by Eric Nolen-Weathington
TwoMorrows Publishing 10407 Bedfordtown Dr. Raleigh, North Carolina 27614 www.twomorrows.com • e-mail: twomorrow@aol.com First Printing • February 2010 • Printed in Canada Softcover ISBN: 978-1-60549-023-6 Trademarks & Copyrights All characters and artwork contained herein are ™ and ©2010 Guy Davis unless otherwise noted. Alice in the Land of Nod, The Marquis, Quonto of the Star Corps, Thugshots ™ and ©2010 Guy Davis. Baker Street and all related characters ™ and ©2010 Guy Davis and Gary Reed. Kago No Tori and all related characters ™ and ©2010 Jamie Rich and Guy Davis. B.P.R.D., Hellboy, The Christmas Spirit, and all related characters ™ and ©2010 Mike Mignola. Batman, Hellblazer, House of Secrets, Joker, Phantom Stranger, Sandman, and all related characters ™ and ©2010 DC Comics. Fantastic Four, The Judge ™ and ©2010 Marvel Characters, Inc. The Nevermen and all related characters ™ and ©2010 Dark Horse Comics. The Realm and all related characters ™ and ©2010 Gary Reed. Argent, Grendel ™ and ©2010 Matt Wagner. Zot! and all related characters ™ and ©2010 Scott McCloud. Aqua Leung and all related characters ™ and ©2010 Mark Andrew Smith and Paul Maybury. The Engineer and all related characters ™ and ©2010 Brian Churilla. Robotika and all related characters ™ and ©2010 Alex Sheikman Doris Danger and all related characters ™ and ©2010 Chris Wisnia. Space Usagi and all related characters ™ and ©2010 Stan Sakai. Lucien, Métal Hurlant, The Zombies That Ate the World and all related characters ™ and ©2010 Humanoids. Solomon Kane and all related characters ™ and ©2010 Solomon Kane LLC. Dick Tracy ™ and ©2010 Tribune Media Services, Inc. Aliens ™ and ©2010 20th Century Fox Film Corp. Terminator ™ and ©2010 Sony Pictures. Blair Witch Project ™ and ©2010 Artisan Entertainment. Pan’s Labyrinth ™ and ©2010 Picturehouse. Aberrant, Ghouls: Fatal Addiction, Vampire: The Masquerade ™ and ©2010 White Wolf, Inc. Rom ™ and ©2010 Parker Brothers. Editorial package ©2010 Eric Nolen-Weathington and TwoMorrows Publishing.
Dedication To Donna and my little Godzilla fanatics, Iain and Caper. Acknowledgements Guy Davis, for his time and generosity and for drawing the coolest monsters on the planet. Special Thanks Stan Sakai, Rick McGee and the crew of Foundation’s Edge, Russ Garwood and the crew of Capital Comics, and John and Pam Morrow
Modern Masters Volume Twenty-Four:
GUY DAVIS Table of Contents Introduction by Stan Sakai . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Part One: “It Was Always Art That I Went Back To” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Part Two: Entering a Realm of Possibilities. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 Part Three: A Night Out at the Mystery Theater . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 Part Four: Guy Gets More Adventurous . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39 Part Five: Frog, Zombies, and Other Assorted Pests . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60 Part Six: Storytelling and the Creative Process . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84 Art Gallery . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
Part 1:
“It Was Always Art That I Went Back To”
MODERN MASTERS: You were born in November of 1966 in Michigan.
MM: How young were you when he started instructing you on the basics?
GUY DAVIS: Yes.
GD: The youngest I remember was trying to learn it in junior high. I was probably taking an art class at school—very basic stuff. He was trying to teach me with oils, and I didn’t have the patience for it. “These oils never dry.” I was ready to move on to the next step, and I wasn’t interested in waiting around. I enjoyed drawing, and I played with those Prismacolor pencils as a kid, but that was the extent of any coloring I wanted to do.
MM: What did your parents do for a living? GD: My dad was a veterinarian, and my mom helped him. They had their own business, and it was kind of a family affair; all the kids worked with him for our allowances. We would clean dog cages, put labels on pill bottles—things like that.
MM: You experimented with other mediums, but you stuck mainly with a pencil and pen.
MM: So you had brothers and sisters? GD: One brother, one sister— both older. I was the baby of the family.
GD: Yeah, pretty much. I did other things as a kid. I built lots of models and scratchbuilt spaceships and weird things out of household objects and hung them up. For a while when I was younger I thought, “That’s what I want to do when I get older,” but it was one of those things that didn’t carry on. I did Super-8 stopanimation movies when I was young, too. Again, “That’s what I want to do.” But it was always art that I went back to.
MM: Being the youngest, were you doted on? GD: Oh, I’m sure I was. [laughter] I got into the usual sibling fights, but it was nothing bad at all. But I’m sure I was the spoiled brat of the family. It’s hard to be objective, because I like to think I’m an angel. [laughter] MM: Your father painted and sculpted as a hobby. Is that how you became interested in art, through watching him?
MM: Were you using clay models for your stop-animation?
GD: Probably, or just through being encouraged. He did it as a hobby—oil painting and things like that—so when they saw me scribbling they would supply me with old papers from the clinic and typewriter paper, and I would keep drawing and scribbling. They saved everything, as parents do. They were always very encouraging. I remember my father tried to teach me how to paint, as far as the tools and what colors to lay down, but I could never wrap my head around that.
GD: Yeah. I forget what I had seen on TV—I’m sure it was a Harryhausen film. MM: The Sinbad movies were shown on TV fairly regularly during the ’70s. GD: Oh, yeah. This was before cable, but in Michigan we get lots of Canadian channels, which show a lot of 6
British and French stuff. There was a show called Vision On which was made for deaf children, so there was no dialogue. They would show this group of people doing things, like drawing, painting or making something—it was more elaborate than that, but all just by showing them doing it. They always had skits and stop-animation with clay at some point in the show, and I think that stuck in my mind. “I’m not going to be able to do fighting skeletons like Harryhausen, but I can mold some clay and move it around one bit at a time.” That’s when I got the old Super-8 camera. There was no plot to these things at all. It would just be a clay monster moving from left to right, but when you’re a kid it’s like, “It’s alive! I made this thing move!” It was just for fun. I’m sure I learned more as I went along, and I looked into working with armature with ball-pean joints, but that was too advanced, and then I lost interest in it and went back to sketching. MM: I imagine with your dad’s interest in art there were probably a lot of art books around the house. Did you have any interest in those books as a kid? GD: I always looked at them as a kid, because they were picture books. I was very young when I started looking at those and National Geographic—which, as a kid, were interesting because they had naked
people in them. So did the art books. But I always liked looking at Bruegel and Goya and some Bosch, mainly because they had those scenes of Hell or scenes with tons of things going on. I just loved staring them and saying, “Oh, there’s someone in the background being torn apart. There’s someone over here being eaten by a bird.” It was like a seek-and-find of Hell. MM: Did you have any like-minded friends at school—kids who shared your interests? GD: I was part of the geek group—the scifi nerds. We all hung out and talked embarrassingly about movies and stuff. Some of them were artists, and later on in high school I hung out more with that crowd. But even with the art group, I was wanting to draw monsters and comics, and most of them were wanting to either draw flowers and landscapes or do technical design— things like drawing cars for advertisements. MM: You actually drew a strip for your town’s local newspaper. GD: I’m sure my father had a hand in getting it in there and promoting it. He knew the people at the paper. I had done this really awful comic strip called Quonto of the Star Corps, which is this little alien guy— because I could not draw people at all. I wanted to, but I just couldn’t wrap my 7
Previous Page: As a teenager, Guy didn’t limit himself to a school newspaper, he went straight to the big time. Guy had just recently turned 15 when this Quonto of the Star Corps was published in his hometown’s local newspaper. Left: In this earlier strip, our hero gets drafted into the Star Corps, hence the title of the strip. Quonto of the Star Corps ™ and ©2010 Guy Davis.
Part 2:
Entering a Realm of Possibilities They said, “There’s too much Japanese animation going on in your style,” which was a big influence on my early work. It was a story I wrote and drew in the EC style. It was pretty awful, so I can’t fault them for not liking it.
MM: How did you first get involved with fanzines? Was there a local group?
GD: There would be a comics show at one of the VFW Halls every weekend, and I would go there looking for comics and old monster magazines. This was around graduation or the year after. In my senior year I was reading more comics—Judge Dredd and things like that. At one of the shows I came across the people who put out Fantastic Fanzine, which later became Arrow Comics. They had a table set up, and I looked through their fanzine. It was all self-done, but it looked fun. I started small-talking with them, and they mentioned that if I had any art to go ahead and send them some samples and they’d see what they thought. I went home and mailed some xeroxes off the next day—or maybe I brought some drawings to the next show. But they said that if I had a story idea, they would run it. It was kind of like being back at the local paper. At first I don’t know that they really wanted me so much as, “If you come up with two pages of story, that’s two pages we can fill.” But they were always really encouraging when I started doing the comics with them.
MM: What was it about the anime you saw that grabbed your attention and influenced your art? GD: The first thing that grabbed me was on a FrenchCanadian station we picked up, and that was Albator, which was the French translation of Captain Harlock. At first I though it was a French cartoon, and I was really struck by it, because it was more adult in tone—even though I couldn’t understand what they were saying—than Kimba or Speed Racer. Growing up I didn’t realize those were Japanese either, but I liked them and Gigantor and Marine Boy. But it wasn’t anything where in my head I said, “Wow, I really enjoy the look of the art.” Captain Harlock was the first of those that sparked my imagination and drew me into liking that style. And growing up as an arcade kid, Dragon’s Lair and Space Ace— the Don Bluth video games—they never really worked right, but they were fun to watch. I loved his angular style, and that seeped into my early animation style, too.
MM: How often did they publish? Did they keep a regular schedule?
MM: How long did you work in fanzines before you started getting professional work?
GD: Not really. It was maybe quarterly. I was doing four to six pages quarterly for them. I did some other stuff, too. I did a very short story for this book called Whispers and Shadows. I forget who the publisher was. They didn’t like it, but they printed it anyway. [laughter]
GD: They did six to ten issues of Fantastic Fanzine, and with the last issue they said, “Whatever you’re doing with Quonto, just wrap it up.” They wanted to branch out and start their own comic compa10
Previous Page and Left: More model sheets for The Realm: the villain of the book, Lord Darkoth; and Diggoruss the dwarf. Two guesses which one is which. Below: 1988 pin-up art for The Realm, featuring the entire main cast. The Realm and all related characters ™ and ©2010 Gary Reed.
ny. This was just before the big black-&white boom. They wanted to do a fantasy book, because they were both—Ralph Griffith and Stu Kerr—into gaming. They had somebody who had drawn the first issue of The Realm, but he backed out and didn’t want to do any more. Since I was at least producing the work, and they liked my style well enough, they said, “Let’s see what you can do with The Realm,” and they had me redraw the entire first issue. Besides the Whispers and Shadows thing, this was really my first ongoing professional job, and it happened basically because someone else didn’t want to do it. They weren’t that crazy about my style, but it didn’t kill the book. I had this weird way of drawing noses at the time, which looking back doesn’t make any sense to me at all. Everybody said, “It looks like a bent paperclip.” I’d be like, “No, you don’t understand! It’s Japanese animation!” Even by Japanese animation standards, it’s wrong. I don’t know what I was doing. It did look like a bent paperclip, but I was just pig-headed. [laughter]
Realm. I was always butting heads with the inker. He was such a pain in the ass, because he wasn’t inking it the way I wanted it to look. He was like, “This is me
MM: By that point, were you using the correct tools and paper? GD: Yes. Well, I was using too hard a lead, and I wasn’t inking it, because at that point I was of the mindset that comics were done with one person doing the penciling and one person doing the inking— “Nobody does it all themselves.” They had gotten an inker for my Quonto stuff, because I wasn’t even inking myself for the fanzine, and that just carried over to The 11
Part 3:
A Night Out at the Mystery Theater that, “We could tie this in to Neil’s Sandman, and this would be a retelling of the old Sandman. Then they’d have two Sandman series.” And that’s what they went for. They saw a way of tying in to the Neil Gaiman Sandman, and they went with Sandman Mystery Theater. We went through a bunch of different names. I was sending them some logo designs for Sandman Chronicles and different things that made it sound like an old radio show. Matt thought up Sandman Mystery Theater, and that was great because it had the sound of an old-time radio show. Once that was done, Matt put me in contact with Karen Berger, and they wanted my take on the redesign of the characters. I did three giant character sheets. One was Wes and Dian, with the Sandman outfit complete with a real gas mask. One was of the Phantom of the Fair, because I thought that was going to be the first storyline since the first Sandman comic I looked at was the Roy Thomas’ Phantom of the Fair story in All-Star Squadron. I made the Phantom some obscene bondage/fetish guy. The original Phantom was just in spandex, but I looked at it and said, “You know, there’s a lot of that going on around that time period.” In between working on issues of Baker Street I had been doing fetish illos and sending them off to places looking for work, so I had a ton of reference. “Let’s make him a pervert. That’s darker than what they would normally do at DC.” [laughter] And I designed the gas gun. I sent that all to Matt and Karen, and they liked it. They bought the designs—I had to sign a work-for-hire form—and started working on the book.
MM: Why did Baker Street end with issue #10?
GD: That was the end of the second storyline. It was set up to be continued, but around that time I was contacted by Matt Wagner, who was a fan of Baker Street. It was very flattering, because I really loved Mage and Grendel. I think the first thing I did was a pin-up for him for the Grendel: Devil by the Deed collection. He wanted me to do a picture of Argent and Grendel, and I said, “Oh, sure. I’d love to.” Then he was contacted by Vertigo, which was just starting out. They were revamping a lot of DC’s stock characters. They had just had their hit with Sandman, and I think their thinking was, “Now let’s use these other characters. We need to renew the copyrights, so let’s see if we can get something new going.” Matt asked me to think of different characters and make a list of the ones I might like drawing. I went to Gary’s shop and dragged out the DC Who’s Who issues. I wanted something that was like the Green Hornet—a pulp character. I didn’t want anything with muscles, because I didn’t really like super-heroes. There’s nothing wrong with them, it’s just not a genre I ever liked. I came across a couple I liked. One was Dr. Mid-Nite, and I thought I could do something with him. Then I saw the Golden Age Sandman, and I liked that. He had this weird mask, and I could imagine, “We can get rid of the cape and put him in a trenchcoat and a real gas mask.” I put him on the list and a couple of others I can’t remember. I sent the list to Matt and said, “I’d like to do the Golden Age Sandman with a real gas mask. We probably can’t though, because of the Neil Gaiman Sandman.” But Matt’s smarter than me. [laughter] He saw 22
It seemed like it took a long time to get things going, because I was in pretty rough shape at that point trying to make ends meet. I was like, “When’s it going to start?” The numbers they were telling me I’d be getting for doing the pencils and inks, I was like, “How much do I get for doing this?” I was fine with working work-forhire, because I understood going into it that you’re getting paid to do an artist’s job the same as if I was designing Pringles packages—but it was a lot more fun. MM: You said you did the designs for the series, but you were originally only meant to be one of two or three rotating artists on the series. Did you think the money you made once every two or three months would be enough to make it on, or were you just grabbing onto anything you could? GD: My thinking at the time when they were doing the rotating of artists was that I would do my four issues of Sandman Mystery
Theater and then I would jump back on Baker Street. I was thinking, “Oh, I’ll have time, and the money I make from Sandman Mystery Theater will help keep me going on Baker Street.” I came up with a couple of other ideas I wanted to do as a one-shot comic, too. I was really feeling inspired then, because I felt I was becoming successful. It’s one thing to make a living as an artist, and it’s another thing to make a comfortable living as an artist. I started doing some design work for the next Baker Street storyline. Baker Street had a planned ending; it was never supposed to be ongoing. It’s all plotted out, so I knew what I had to do for the next part. But they knew early on that I would be coming back to Mystery Theater sooner than originally planned and that I would be drawing the book more frequently than the other rotating artists. One of the rotating artists was Vince Locke, and I ended up doing layouts with him doing the finishes for that storyline. They kept me 23
Previous Page: The opening splash page illustration for Sandman Mystery Theater #49, the plot of which revolved around a pulp magazine and their stories about the Sandman. Guy used the original look of the Sandman as a nod to the character’s history. Above: There’s just something about the gas mask that makes the Sandman an interesting character. The gas gun doesn’t hurt, either. And by putting him in a trenchcoat as opposed to a cape, Guy made Sandman a somewhat plausible hero. Sandman ™ and ©2010 DC Comics.
Below: An illustration for White Wolf’s slightly askew super-hero RPG, Aberrant. Next Page: With Terminator and Aliens, Guy was able to show editors he was not a two-trick pony. Page 2 of Terminator #0.
twin. [laughter] It was freaky. Ever since seeing Freaks growing up, I liked drawing that kind of stuff. It’s fun to draw weird stuff like that. I sent it in, he said it was great, so I toned it up and sent in the finished work. Years later I heard that he really had to go to bat for that. People were ready to walk, I guess because they thought it was underage material. It was a symbiotic twin, so it was the same age as the woman. It was just a deformed body. But people were really
Aberrant ™ and ©2010 White Wolf, Inc. Terminator ™ and ©2010 Sony Pictures.
bothered by it. Larry loved it because that was the type of thing they wanted to show that this line wasn’t like the others, and it got me a lot more work with him. When he left later on, I still did some work for White Wolf—covers and things. I started off doing this really bizarre stuff for them, and I loved it. I was designing monsters and weird vampires. I hate that whole sunglasses and leather jacket crap. I was drawing nosferatu like they had the plague. I wanted these things to look like they were beasts. But as it went on, I got requests to do full pages of a vampire boardroom meeting. “No monsters, just people in a boardroom.” It just kept getting more and more mundane, and I was getting burnt out. After Sandman Mystery Theater was cancelled, I still kept working for them because I needed the money, but eventually it was too much. I was not inspired, and I was turning out stuff I wasn’t happy with, so I just stopped accepting work from them. MM: How long did you work for them? GD: About seven years, and it was pretty steady work at times. It was a quick turnaround, too. You’d get a call, then you’d get a script, and two weeks later they wanted the illustrations done. MM: Did you look for similar work at other companies or did you have enough on your plate? GD: I did work for one other gaming company who screwed me—along with everybody else—out of money. I even said, “Do you mind if I work for this rival company?” and they said, “No, go ahead. It’s no big deal.” I did one job for them, which I put a lot into because it was more imaginative stuff with more freedom. But they screwed me, so I just went back to White Wolf because at least they paid me. [laughter] And they did give me some other stuff on the side. There was Aberrant, their super-hero RPG—I did a couple of illustrations for that—and they had a pulp RPG called Adventure!, which I did. But near the end it was just a lot of Vampire stuff, and I just wasn’t really happy with it. I’m sure they probably weren’t very happy with what I was doing, either.
38
Part 4:
Guy Gets More Adventurous in a pitch for Aliens: Survival, and that’s what started it— that and Terminator. Somebody bowed out of a Terminator job and they needed it done in a week or two. So I did Terminator #0, with the great Geof Darrow cover. It was fun to do, because, again, it was something that nobody else was asking me to do. Nobody thought I could draw anything besides 1930 period pieces, and here Dark Horse was saying, “Draw Terminator. Just don’t draw any nudity.”
MM: How did you get in with Dark Horse? Your first work for them was Aliens: Havok. Did Matt help you get in contact with them?
GD: Maybe. There were a lot of artists involved with Aliens: Havok. That was after Mystery Theater got cancelled, and I wasn’t able to get work anywhere. That was a rough time. Right before Mystery Theater got cancelled I decided I was going to buy a house. You can tell where this is going to go. [laughter] I called up my editor and asked, “Things are good, right? I’m going to buy a house. Sales are good? You still like me?” “Yeah, things are good. The book will be around for a while. You don’t have to worry.” And Vertigo actually helped me with the house purchase. If I needed a check a little early, they made sure I got it in time. I sunk every bit of savings I had into getting this house. I loved this house; it was perfect for what I wanted. I figured, “I’ll put everything I can into the payments, live lean for a couple of months, and I can make it up with the next run of Mystery Theater.” Two months after we got the house, they called saying, “After this next storyline, we’re cancelling the book. And it’s not going to be four issues, it’s going to be two. But we’re going to keep you busy. Don’t worry.” They gave me nothing. I was scrambling. I couldn’t really do The Marquis like I had planned, because I had nothing else to buffer it with. I was sending out stuff to everybody again. I was back in that line, basically. Somewhere along the way I got the one-pager for Aliens: Havoc, and that was great because every other company I was trying for was saying, “We don’t have anything set in 1930 for you. And you can’t draw pretty women.” I said, “Give me something with monsters in it.” “No, we don’t have anything with monsters in the 1930s.” [laughter] Then all of a sudden I got something that was just the opposite from that. It was monsters, but in the future. I drew that one page, and I loved it because I loved the movies and H.R. Giger and Ron Cobb’s designs. As soon as I did that one-pager, somebody sent 39
Part 5:
Frogs, Zombies, and Other Assorted Pests comfortable with B.P.R.D. the longer I worked on it. I think a lot of it with Dark Waters was that I really did not want to screw up and lose the job and have to go back to drawing other stuff. It was stiff. My Abe was really rough looking. Mike was walking me through a lot of the things I was doing wrong, which was great— things like, “Don’t give Abe two lips. Just show his upper lip.” He sent me a bust of Abe for reference on the markings. I got lots of free stuff for drawing it wrong. [laughter] “I drew it wrong again, Mike. Maybe you should send me some original art.” [laughter] But I did it, and I guess people didn’t hate it. Mike liked it, or at least saw that I could get better at it, because right after that we did Plague of Frogs. Again, that was rough, but near the end I was feeling a little more secure with it. And Mike never tied my hands. He never said, “Okay, this is how I draw Abe, so this is how you have to draw Abe.” He said things like, “Don’t give Abe two lips, because it looks too much like a cartoon fish,” but he wanted me to do it in my style. He didn’t want me to try to be him, which was nice. We worked back and forth designing stuff together, which was great fun. He has an amazing imagination, so I was loving that. I was having a ball. My fiancée, who’s been with me through the fall of Mystery Theater and everything leading up to B.P.R.D., said, “You’re actually having fun. You’re not bitching anymore
MM: Did you try to get more work from Marvel after Unstable Molecules or did you go straight onto B.P.R.D.?
GD: I probably said, “If anything comes up, keep me in mind,” which I say to any editor I work for. I had met Mike Mignola years earlier, and I would talk with him now and then and catch up. I was loving what he was doing with Hellboy. I had told him I was going to be working on Fantastic Four, and he said, “Oh, my God! You’re drawing Fantastic Four? You get to draw the Thing!” “No, I don’t get to draw Thing. I’m drawing them as real people at a grocery store in the ’50s.” He was like, “What? You’re drawing The Marquis with all these weird monsters, and then you have to draw the Fantastic Four as real people?” They weren’t giving me anything that I really wanted to do. I was showing people what I wanted to do in The Marquis, but I wasn’t getting those types of jobs. I wasn’t against doing Fantastic Four. I enjoyed working on the book with James Sturm, but I was still feeling pigeon-holed. I was bitching to Mike about it, and Mike said, “Well, you know, I was thinking of spinning off B.P.R.D. into an ongoing series. You should draw it.” I said, “I would love to draw it!” They were doing a series of single issues, and they gave one to me to make sure it would work and that it was something I really wanted to do. I almost screwed it up, because it was kind of weak. I definitely got more 60
about not getting to draw what you want.” I was happy for the first time, I think, since Mystery Theater. I felt like I was being appreciated for what I was doing. I don’t want it to sound like I was whining, because people were appreciating the work I did— Batman: Nevermore and Unstable Molecules and so on—but there is a kinship in what I like to draw and what Mike likes to draw. MM: But with Dark Waters, you didn’t get to draw any monsters. GD: That’s because it was a different writer, Brian Augustyn. I got to draw Abe and Roger—they’re monsters. Even if it was just them shopping at a supermarket, it would have been fun. Abe at the supermarket... I’d draw that. [laughter] MM: Did you have conversations with Brian or did you just get the script and start drawing? GD: Basically, yeah. I think I e-mailed him once about something, but I never heard back from him for whatever reason, so there was no dialogue. It was all through Mike and Scott Allie. MM: Since this was your first time playing in Mike’s sandbox, did you have to submit layouts and pencils as you were drawing them to make sure you were staying on target with what they were expecting from you? GD: No. I mean, I sent them the layouts and they approved those before I penciled the whole book, but I didn’t have to send them a page or two every couple days for approval. Just the big steps: all the layouts, then all the pencils, and then I made any changes they wanted before I went to inks. I think the cover was the one thing I had to make a lot of changes on, and that was just because it was the first image I drew. They needed it for solicitation, and I was trying to nail Abe down. MM: Around the time you were starting to work on B.P.R.D., you also did a serial for Métal Hurlant: “The Zombies That Ate the World.” How did you get involved with them? GD: That came about from Dave Stewart. He was coloring me on B.P.R.D. and was
doing some stuff for Métal Hurlant. They wanted to do this zombie short story, and Dave said to them, “Why don’t you use Guy Davis?” I was contacted by their editor on the American side of Humanoids, and I loved so many of the European books, so I was like, “Wow! Les Humanoïdes Associés!” They sent me the script and I started doing designs and layouts. And the script was great; Jerry Frissen has a hilarious and sick imagination. Great character pacing, too. I got a little more cartoony with it, especially as it went along. At first they wanted me to treat it very realistically. I didn’t think it worked that way, because it was a dark comedy. If you played it too straight, people wouldn’t get that it was 61
Previous Page: A recent illustration of Abe Sapien. Above: This cover image was done for Humanoïdes for foreign editions of The Zombies That Ate the World. Abe Sapien ™ and ©2010 Mike Mignola. The Zombies That Ate the World and all related characters are ™ and ©2010 Humanoids.
Part 6:
Storytelling and the Creative Process
MM: How do you generally start your day? I know you’re a night owl.
house I just kept those hours. It works out, because the people I deal with at Dark Horse are three hours behind me, so when I get up at noon, they’re just getting to the office at 9:00 in the morning.
GD: People always say, “What time do you get up? You freaking bum!” I get up around noon or 1:00 p.m., depending on how late I went to bed the night before— which is usually somewhere between 4:00 and 6:00 in the morning. That was a habit I got in back when I was living in an apartment, because it was always quieter in the middle of the night. Then when we bought the
MM: How does that work out with your fiancée? Do you get to see each other? GD: Oh, yeah, my fiancée, Rosemary Van Deuren, is aspiring to be a writer—she wrote her first book last year in fact—so she works out of the house, too. We keep the same hours. Once I’m up and I’ve had my coffee, I’ll check the e-mails to make sure there aren’t any emergencies. Then I’ll take care of the website and Facebook and Twitter—promotional stuff for The Marquis or whatever else I’m working on. I’m trying to get more of a presence out there. In the old days, if you didn’t have a book on the stands people forgot about you. Nowadays, it seems if they don’t read something about you online... out of sight out of mind. I started a blog to promote The Marquis, so I’ll try to add something to that and respond to any comments. Then I’ll take care of the day-to-day things around the house until around 5:00. That’s when I usually get settled in to draw for the rest of the night. I’ll stop to eat or look at books or check things online, but mostly I’m working from then until I stop for the night. I do that seven days a week until the deadlines are met unless something comes up. MM: Given that you’re working during prime-time viewing hours, I assume you don’t watch much TV. GD: No. I don’t have cable, and now I don’t have broadcast TV. I 84
don’t have a TV in the studio. I never liked that. I listen to old-time radio shows or music while I work, which I enjoy more anyway. We have a DVD player, and when we eat dinner we’ll put something on, but I watch maybe two hours of TV a day at most—usually less. Obviously, if there’s something I want to see or I need to take a break, I’ll watch a movie or something, but I could never have a TV in the studio. It was too much of a distraction. I learned that early on when I was working on Baker Street. At times I would listen to it in the background, but then I would start looking up over the table. That’s why radio shows are so great. You don’t have to stop and look up. You can keep working and not miss anything. MM: Do you have a favorite show? GD: I like various shows for various reasons. Obviously, I love The Shadow and The Green Hornet. I love Jack Benny and Phil Harris. I listen to Gunsmoke, Dimension X, X Minus One, Suspense, and Escape. Back before MP3s I was going broke buying these collections of shows. [laughter] And they saw you coming, too. They would milk you for tapes or CDs. Now it’s all on MP3, and you can get an entire run for five bucks.
MM: Once you sit down to start working, will you do warm-up sketches or are you able to just jump right into the work? GD: I can pretty much get right into the work. As far as how productive I am, it probably takes an hour or so before I’m going full tilt. I don’t do warm-up sketches, but I’ll do a little bit here and a little bit there. I’ll usually start with something that’s easy... maybe Johann pages. [laughter] When it gets to be around 11:00 and I’ve got a few pages under my belt, I can tackle the harder ones. MM: Earlier you mentioned doing layouts. Do you do full-sized layouts or just thumbnails? 85
Previous Page and Above: Thumbnails, pencils, and inks for B.P.R.D.: The Black Goddess #5, page 4. As you can see, Guy does four thumbnail pages on an 8-1/2" x 11" sheet of paper. His pencils are fairly loose, as he does most of the drawing in the inking stage.
B.P.R.D. and all related characters ™ and ©2010 Mike Mignola.
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Page 102: Uncropped pin-up art for Brian Churilla’s The Engineer. Page 103: Pin-up for Alex Sheikman’s Robotika. Page 104: Poster art for a store signing. Page 105: Pin-up for Chris Wisnia’a Doris Danger Seeks... Where Urban Creatures Creep & Stomp. Previous Page: Cover art for The Nevermen #1. Left: You can’t go wrong with a human head on a gorilla body. Inside front cover art for The Nevermen: Streets of Blood #2. Below: Page 11 of The Nevermen: Streets of Blood #2. The Engineer ™ and ©2010 Brian Churilla. Robotika ™ and ©2010 Alex Sheikman. Doris Danger ™ and ©2010 Chris Wisnia. The Nevermen and all related characters ™ and ©2010 Dark Horse Comics.