Modern Masters Volume 24: Guy Davis Preview

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

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.

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: 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?

MM: You actually drew a strip for your town’s local newspaper.

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

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.

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

MM: How did you first get involved with fanzines? Was there a local group?

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.

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

Below: You can definitely see the anime influence in this page from The Realm.

Next Page: Guy took a decidedly more realistic turn in this cover for a reprint issue of The Realm published by Caliber.

The Realm and all related characters ™ and ©2010 Gary Reed.

expressing my work.” “You’re making my work look like crap, though.” [laughter] I was always fighting with him.

Eventually, half-way through The Realm, I ran into Sandy Schreiber, an artist who was doing fantasy conventions—I would go to fantasy conventions to show my Realm art, as well as being there as a fan—and I approached her because I liked her coloring work. At first she started coloring covers for The Realm, but after time I said, “Let’s see how you ink it, too, because I really want to get rid of my current inker.” [laughter] I talked Ralph and Stu into letting me hire her to ink it, because it was closer to what I wanted for the finished look.

Looking back it sounds awful and pretentious. I look at how rough my art was, and at the time I was saying, “No, it has to look

this way!” My art was so flawed and rough, but it was the wrong inking style for it.

The first inker was big into Terry Austin, and he was just adding stuff that wasn’t making it look like a Japanese cartoon, which is what I wanted it to look like.

MM: You said you were going to fantasy conventions. Were you still going to comic conventions, as well?

GD: Mostly science fiction/fantasy. I never went to comic conventions outside of those VFW Hall shows. During The Realm, I was still attending those. When I was promoting it more during the black-&-white glut when sales were going crazy for anything anybody did—everybody was looking for the next Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles—we started doing Chicago Comic-Con, and I would drive with them to shows in New York and other places. Before that it was just the Creation Conventions for fun though. They used to always come this way into Michigan, and looking back putting names to faces, I used to see Bob Schreck at those shows all the time.

MM: Would you try to make contacts with other publishers at the conventions? Did you have any interest in trying to get in with Marvel or DC at that point?

GD: At the beginning, probably not, because there was nothing there that I was wanting to do. It’s not like I was wanting to draw Spider-Man. I was happy drawing my own stories with The Realm, where I was designing the characters and drawing them the way I wanted. And I was making good money. During the glut, sales were at 40,000 for this small comic, so everything seemed fine. “It will never end.” [laughter] The following year, it was like, “Boy, was I wrong.”

When everything crashed, I tried to branch out more and do some sort of workfor-hire. I did a short Speed Racer story and a couple of Ghostbusters posters for Now Comics. But I couldn’t get regular work. I would stand in those long lines at comic shows to show my portfolio. A lot of them said, “This Japanese animation stuff, nobody wants to look at that.” Back then they didn’t like it. Now it’s all over the place. They would always ask, “Why are you drawing like that?” like I had a disease

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Part 3:

A Night Out at the Mystery Theater

MM: Why did Baker Street end with issue #10?

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.

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.

busy, and it became harder and harder to go back to Baker Street. It was hard to turn down the work. It was nice to not be hungry and worried.

own boss. When you’re missing your deadlines, you’re just hurting yourself—well, yourself and your publisher.

I could say, “I’m going to take an extra month on Baker Street.” But with Sandman Mystery Theater, they would have tossed me and got someone else. So I had to make decisions on layouts and finishes, and I had to get them done for the deadline. It wasn’t like, “Should I ink it this way? Nah, let me try it this way.” It was, “I’m inking it this way. If it’s wrong, I’ll do it better next time.” I wasn’t hacking it out. I was putting thought behind it, but I was having to make the decisions right then and there and move on. I made tons of mistakes. I cringe looking at Mystery Theater every time I see the reprints that are coming out now, but it was a very fast, harsh schedule, especially once I started doing more of them.

DC Vertigo was pretty hands-off. They might say, “Well, you’re making Dian too fat. Can you make her less fat?” They didn’t say anything about how everybody had potato heads. [laughter] They were like Mole People the way that I was drawing them. [laughter] “You’re not the best at drawing attractive women.” I thought they were attractive, but I guess I had different tastes.

MM: Did they offer you the Phantom Stranger one-shot before you finished your first Sandman Mystery Theater arc?

GD: Come to think of it, that might have been what stopped me from going back to Baker Street the first time.

I think they offered me Phantom Stranger right after I finished “The Tarantula.” That was fun. It was flattering that they were trying to put me on more work. It made it feel more like job security in a way. And being quick and making deadlines while giving them the level of quality they expected was what kept me getting more and more work from them.

MM: You mentioned how slow you were while doing Baker Street. Is this when you started working at a faster pace?

GD: Yeah, definitely. Sandman Mystery Theater is the series that taught me the most about discipline as an artist. When you’re doing your own book, you’re your 24

Secrets story? The story is set in the past, but that was still unusual, even for Vertigo.

GD: I don’t know. It wasn’t a cost issue. I was never happy with the colorist I had on Mystery Theater, so maybe I was asking to do a black-&-white story. The grays were done digitally by the colorist, so it must have been Vertigo was doing it to make the story different.

MM: You were also doing the dream sequences for Mystery Theater in black-&white. You went pretty wild with those sometimes.

GD: Those were fun. He had twisted dreams. I think I suggested, “Let’s do that in black-&-white and tone like I did in Baker Street, just to set it off from the regular story.” It didn’t mean he was insane, it was just a way of saying when you turned the page, “Okay, this a dream sequence. This is not part of the story.”

MM: Did you have any problem when the super-heroes started creeping into the stories? There was Hour-Man, the Crimson Avenger, and an origin story for the Mist.

GD: I didn’t have any problem with that. It was fine by me, because they were treated like the old heroes and villains. They were the guys dressed in the goofy capes which seemed to fit in more with the 1940s than now. When Mike Mignola did Gotham by Gaslight, I loved that. That made sense. I could see someone dressed up like that running around in Victorian times more than I could now, where they’d just get mugged. Since it was a different setting, it seemed fine. You think of people being more innocent back then, even though they weren’t. And I drew them in my rumply style, where everybody looks like they’re wearing cosplay outfits. I’m not showing huge, muscled chests under the Hour-Man costume.

It’s kind of ill-fitting. And the Crimson Avenger was akin to drawing the Shadow, which I’ve always loved, so I didn’t have a problem with any of the stories or ideas they had for Mystery Theater. They were all fun.

I was doing pulp stories rather than Green Lantern or something. I have no interest in that genre, and I wasn’t really interested in moving past Vertigo and doing that type of book.

MM: Around this time, 1997, you also did a story for Negative Burn with Neil Gaiman.

GD: Not really with Neil Gaiman. They had a story from Neil Gaiman, and I adapted it for two pages over a weekend.

MM: So there was no direct collaboration?

GD: No, no. It probably was approved through Neil Gaiman’s agent, if anything, but it was fun. It was a short job I could fit in beside Mystery Theater. I was doing a lot of illustrations for White Wolf Games around that time, too. Those were easy to fit in.

35

Previous Page and Above: Twisted dreams, indeed! In this sequence from “The Butcher” Wesley seems to be falling to pieces [SMT #27, page 17], and in the final dream sequence of the series Wesley gets a more direct message from that other Sandman [SMT #50, page 37].

Sandman ™ and ©2010 DC Comics.

Right: This fetish illustration became a cover for Negative Burn.

Below: Illustration for White Wolf’s Ghouls: Fatal Addiction RPG. White Wolf decided to “push the envelope,” and Guy’s work certainly fit the bill.

Next Page: Vampires take a train. Okay, it’s a pretty freaking cool train, but after the freedom he had doing illustrations for Ghouls, it must have been difficult to have to go back to drawing the more mundane things they wanted for Vampire: The Masquerade.

MM: That was during White Wolf’s peak, I think. They did the Vampire: The Masquerade roleplaying game and a bunch of spin-offs from that. Were you just doing illustrations for their game manuals?

GD: Spot illustrations, some color work, character designs for the character sheets—things like that. I met one of the editors at a convention while I was doing Mystery Theater. It might have been the same convention where

Ghouls: Fatal Addiction, Vampire: The Masquerade ™ and ©2010 White Wolf, Inc.

I met Gary Gianni. I was with Vince Locke, and I said, “We should try doing this stuff on the side.

It could be fun.” He said okay, so I got up and went by their table and introduced myself. The editor, Larry Snelly, read comics and knew of Sandman Mystery Theater. He said, “Oh, yeah. If you’re interested in doing some illustration work for us, that would be great.”

When I got back from the con, he had called and given me a small project for one of their darker lines, Ghouls: Fatal Addiction.

I didn’t know about this ’til later. I had still been doing some fetish illos on the side. He wanted some weird stuff, so I sent him some drawings.

He said, “Oh, that’s great. Sure, we’ll push the envelope.” I was like, “It’s not that weird.” But one of the illos I did was this woman in fetish gear with a symbiotic twin sticking out of her stomach. Her ghoul slave was in front of her looking like he was about to go down on her symbiotic 36

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

I went back and forth with them on that. I said, “Are they like Barbie dolls? Can I draw them without any junk?” They said, “No, they’re fully equipped like real people, just don’t show it.” I had to go through and take out the butt cracks, because Twentieth Century Fox didn’t want them to be seen. So everybody has these weird, flat butts. [laughter] MM: Did you have to get into a different mindset when working on Aliens or Terminator?

GD: No, not really. I referenced it heavily. I had the laserdisc for Aliens, so when I was designing new interiors for the settlement I knew what the design sense was for that universe. Looking back, it’s very rough. I was very unsure at the time, because I was insane with worry. You can tell I didn’t have a clear head for a lot of the stuff. I was getting it done, but it’s not the best job I’ve done. I wish I could look back at it the way I do with Mystery Theater, because I was hitting my stride there, but Dark Horse seemed happy with it. As far as drawing it, I enjoyed the story and getting to draw the monsters.

MM: How did the Batman: Shadow of the Bat job come about?

GD: I think that came about because nobody wanted to draw a Batman story that didn’t have Batman or anything really fantastic in it. “You want me to draw Batman: Shadow of the Bat?” “Yeah.” “Batman’s in it?” “No, it’s all about this one old man in this house, and the story is from his perspective.” It was a neat idea for a story, but I heard later that nobody else wanted to draw it. There’s a shot of Joker at the end and other little things. It was funny, though, for the first page I drew this panoramic shot of Gotham City spread out behind the old man’s house. I got a call from my editor saying, “You drew Gotham City in the background.” I said, “Yeah. Batman, right? Gotham City?” I’m thinking I screwed up and drew the wrong city or something.

He said, “Well, it’s destroyed. There was an earthquake.” He had just assumed that everybody in the world knew Gotham City was in ruins. [laughter] “Why don’t people tell me these things? I didn’t know Gotham was destroyed.” So I took out the white-out pen and took chunks off the buildings and roughed them up. [laughter]

The other thing I had to change was the Joker’s chin. Loving old movies, I said, “I’m going to draw the Joker looking like Conrad Veidt from The Man Who Laughs. That’s who has was based on, anyway.” I drew him with the big grin, but no chin, which I think looks more freaky. “No, he’s got to have a chin.” So I went back, drew a chin, and fax it back to them. “No, he’s got a big chin.” So I went back and redrew the chin. We went through that four times. At the end I put this huge, pointy chin on him, and they loved it.

MM: How did you get involved with Oni Press?

GD: It was in between work when I was looking to do other things. I met Bob Schreck, who was in charge of Oni, at a convention. I had just finished dinner and was leaving the restaurant. I said hi to Matt Wagner on the way out, and he introduced me to Bob. Matt said to Bob, “He’s got a new book. You should look at it for Oni.” Caliber had been having problems and I was looking to take The Marquis someplace else that was a more secure fit.

Caliber had already solicited the first couple of issue of The Marquis, but there was no way I could do it through them. There were no bad feelings or anything, it just wasn’t working out. So I worked up a pitch to send to Oni, but by the time I sent it in 41

Previous Page: After a one-page contribution to Aliens: Havoc, Guy penciled and inked the three-issue Aliens: Survival mini-series.

Above: While there was no Batman and a mostly destroyed Gotham City, at least Guy was able to draw two pages of the Joker—though not as Conrad Veidt as he had hoped. Panel from Batman: Shadow of the Bat #86.

Aliens ™ and ©2010 20th Century Fox Film Corp. Joker ™ and ©2010 DC Comics.

Above: Model sheet for a Nevermen agent.

Next Page: Cover art for Dark Horse Presents #148, which featured the first appearance of the Nevermen.

The Nevermen ™ and ©2010 Dark Horse Presents.

Tracy. He sort of saw it as a cross between L.A. Confidential, which I hadn’t seen, and Dark City, which I hadn’t seen, either. I said, “That’s cool, but let’s make it really bizarre looking, too.” I didn’t want it to be like Mystery Theater, where people would think, “Oh, he’s going back to drawing people in hats.” “Let’s treat this like Dick Tracy. Let’s really get bizarre with these villains, and not give any reason why they look that way.” I wanted it to be eye candy. The editors at Dark Horse were asking, “Why does he look like this? What’s wrong with him? What’s the story behind this?” I said, “No, no. Don’t even think about it. The thing is that no one bats an eye that these guys look like freaks, whether they have a fish head or whatever.

What the people are scared about is that they are organized crime. They’re scared that they’re thugs and they might shoot them. Treat it like Dick Tracy. They just happen to have those looks, and that makes 44

it interesting.” They went with that, and we never really had a backstory. It is its own reality, and the Nevermen are crime-fighters against these bizarre monsters.

Phil gave me pretty much free rein to go nuts. All of his descriptions were too derivative at first. There was Manboulian, who had the top part of his head as just a skull. Phil originally wanted him to be like Two-Face, where part of his face is disfigured and the other part is normal. I said, “You can’t do that.

It’s been done. People will think it’s a rip-off.”

I had a lot of works on old anatomy exhibits, and sometimes they would show a slice of someone’s skull in formaldehyde. That looks really freaky. It’s one thing to see a skull. You see so many skulls throughout your life that they kind of lose their spookiness. But halfskull, half-meat, where you don’t have to worry about how it stays fresh.... I would do things like that, where I would take his basic description and turn it around.

Right: The Devil makes his grand entrance.

Below: Cover art for The Marquis: Hell’s Courtesan #1, the first issue of a two-part series—one of the “side stories” of The Marquis.

Next Page: The Marquis tracks down a devil in pages 6 and 7 of Hell’s Courtesan #1.

The Marquis and all related characters ™ and ©2010 Guy Davis.

I started collecting horse skulls once I got one. You know, once you’ve got one, you’ve got to get two more. [laughter] There’s something about horse skulls. They aren’t like human skulls, but there’s an identity and a face to them. But it doesn’t really make you think of a horse. I just find them kind of creepy looking, and they have character to them. I was thinking, too, that when they escaped Hell, the horses represented freedom. All of those things just sort of came together.

I was sketching out different ideas for the main Devil, and I didn’t want it to look like a devil because it was basically representing Hell. It wasn’t really an entity, all of Hell was him. I needed something to be his figurehead, and something clicked that it should look like this thing they taunted Vol with in the first issue, which was this horse’s skull sticking out of a living horse’s rear and wearing the Marquis’ mask. He changes from that, but that’s his basic form.

My Hell was not going to be shy.

It wasn’t designed for the censors, where everybody has loincloths. I wanted it to be rude, because that’s the fun part of being sinful.

I sent it to Oni, and they said, “Well, that’s different.” I asked them if they had a problem with the Devil being a very anatomically correct horse, and they were fine with it, no problem at all. When the issue came out, I was waiting to hear what people had to say—if I had gone too far with it and if that bit of graphicness of the design was distracting from it overall—but people liked the design. A lot of the responses were along the lines of, “It’s different. A little disturbing.” And that’s just what I wanted it to be: 50

being much of a super-hero fan, did you know much about Len’s background?

Above: The final page of Batman: Nevermore underwent some changes between the penciling and inking stages.

Next Page: Here comes the Judge, here comes the Judge! Guy hasn’t done much work for Marvel, but he had a hand in creating a character for them: The Judge! Deadline #1, page 20.

Batman ™ and ©2010 DC Comics. Deadline, The Judge ™ and ©2010 Marvel Characters, Inc.

GD: No, which makes me sound like a jerk.

I didn’t really know who Len Wein was.

Once they told me who my writer was, I looked up his credentials, which sounds awful, now knowing what he’s done. No one should have to look him up, but that was a genre I didn’t really read growing up.

The story was good, and it was bizarre to draw Edgar Allan Poe fighting crime.

I think Jamie Rich might have planted the word in Bob Schreck’s ear that I was looking for work, because I was having a rough time making ends meet. Bob called me up and asked if I wanted to do this, and I said, “Yes! Drawing a Victorian Batman and Edgar Allan Poe sounds like fun.” Bob was great to work with on it, and he made me realized how I was drawing Poe wrong.

He said, “You’ve got to draw him like his head is a light bulb. Exaggerate it.” [laughter] He had this huge forehead, but every 56

time I drew him he looked like Basil Fawlty from Fawlty Towers. I only found two photos for reference, and they both looked the same, but once I started exaggerating the forehead it worked.

It was a fun book to draw. I had to draw Batman to where they would think he was a raven, Batman fought a giant orangutan, and there was violence and gore throughout it, so it was different. I was trying my best to get the look of Gotham by Gaslight and failing miserably.

Mike still did it the best.

MM: Did you work closely with Len or were you just working from the script?

GD: I worked with him a little bit when I sent in my first layouts. After that everything was through Bob Schreck.

MM: The next year, 2002, you did your first work for Marvel: the Deadline miniseries. How did you get involved with that project?

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.

though there is a narrative of Abe moving throughout his Victorian past.

I got to design the submarine and the Victorian diving suit—although, the diving suit was based on a real Victorian diving suit. It looked bizarre and great, so I had to throw it in.

MM: The next series, The Dead, introduced a new cast member: Benjamin Daimio. Did you design him?

GD: Yes. I mean, I did the design with everybody’s input. There was a huge back and forth with the design—probably more than there should have been. Because he was a major cast member, they wanted to make sure it was right. My worry was that it would end up looking too much like Jonah Hex. I wanted to make sure it was different, and I sketched out different ideas that were pretty gross. When you’re missing half your mouth, you’re going to be drooling, and if you smile wide, it’s going to look really grotesque when that mouth splits open. I was over-thinking it, and we finally got it down to a nice, simplified scar that makes him recognizable. You never see it working like it probably should actually work. One of the things we did to make sure it didn’t look like Jonah Hex was to get rid of any connecting skin so that it was just a huge gash.

MM: When John Arcudi came on as cowriter, did that change the process of how you worked? Were there any extra steps for you?

GD: He and Mike would work out all of that stuff before I saw anything. I’d known John for a few years, and we got along great. He had been trying to find something we could work on together at Marvel or DC. If he had a project come up that he thought I’d work out on, he’d put my name in with the editor, but it never panned out to a job. So it was great that Mike brought him in, because we finally got to work together.

Instead of Mike’s handwritten scripts, I got tighter scripts from John with dialogue.

Beforehand, they would talk over what they were going to do and what would be coming up. Then I’d get a call from Mike or John or both, and they’d say, “You’re going to need to design this thing that’s coming up, and this is the story.” Then the script would come, and I 70

as addition to the detail. When I ink Panya, I ink her normally, but I put in some harsh lines. A lot of the finer lines around her mouth are brush. I can do that. If they said, “Why don’t you ink Liz’s face with a brush?” I’d be like, “No, no, no.” I couldn’t do that. I don’t have the hand for it. But I love the way brush looks when other artists do it right. [laughter] It’s something I only use for certain things, like rocks and trees and mummies’ faces. [laughter] MM: It seemed like you had a lot of fun drawing Johann in Edward’s body.

GD: Oh, yeah, that was great.

MM: Were you drawing on your experience drawing “Zombies” as far as his facial expressions and acting was concerned?

GD: A little bit. It was a little more exaggerated. When they told me Johann was going to get this new body, I thought, “Great! I’m going to keep Johann acting the way he always acts, but in this new body.” I wanted him to keep Johann’s mannerisms so he’d still be doing those weird, upturned gestures with his hands and tilting his head.

It was drawing the body language as Lightbulb Johann, but in a human body, which gave him a lot of character over Edward, who was more stoic and aggressive.

MM: Do you get involved in the plotting at all? Do you know what’s coming up and where the series is heading?

GD: Yeah, I know what’s coming up. I don’t get involved as far as saying, “Well this is what I think you should do.”

Everything they have planned is great as far as I’m concerned. There’s nothing for me to interject; it all sounds wonderful and fun. They usually tell me things two or three series ahead of what I’m working on.

I knew Roger was going to die early on.

They had that planned out by the beginning of The Dead.

MM: When you actually sit down to pencil, will the drawings sometimes make you think of different ideas for the series?

GD: Not so much when I’m penciling.

When I’m starting to lay things out I might think of something. Like in Black Goddess

we had this scene where the frogs’ tongues bloated out and became dragons that fought for Memnan Saa. Originally, that was just smoke that was coming out of their mouths. The frogs were supposed to cough out smoke and the smoke would become the magical dragons. I wanted to do something more horrific and biological.

I said, “Let’s make the frogs’ tongues, which are these long things anyway, bloat out of their mouths and turn into the dragons, turning the frogs inside-out.” My contributions are more concerned with the imagery than with story direction.

MM: With War on Frogs #1 you inked Herb Trimpe. Were you familiar with his work?

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Previous Page: Guy pulled out the brush a bit more than usual for this page from B.P.R.D.: Garden of Souls #5, as the hulking Edward searches for Abe. Above: Johann enjoys his new body. Notice how he still makes broad gestures with his hands.

B.P.R.D.: Killing Ground #1, page 13.

B.P.R.D. and all related characters ™ and ©2010 Mike Mignola.

This Page: Pencils and inks for page 2 of “Solomon Kane: All the Damned Souls at Sea” for MySpace Dark Horse Presents #27.

Next Page: Godzilla’s got nothing on this guy.

Luckily for our heroes, Johann is in control of this behemoth.

B.P.R.D. and all related characters ™ and ©2010 Mike Mignola.

Solomon Kane ™ and ©2010 Solomon Kane LLC.

I just did a two-part Solomon Kane story that’s on Dark Horse Presents now.

MM: I assume you’re a fan of Robert E. Howard?

GD: Yeah. I mean, I haven’t read everything he’s done. I’ve probably read more Burroughs than Howard, but I like the character of Solomon Kane. It was fun to actually draw Solomon Kane himself, because I had done some monster designs for the regular series, that Mario Guevara got to draw.

MM: With The Warning there was a Godzilla/kaiju/mass destruction feel to the story. That had to be fun to draw.

GD: Oh, yeah. It was great having those giant robots come out and tear up the place.

MM: You had to draw a lot of rubble, too.

GD: It’s a lot easier to draw rubble when deadlines hit. [laughter] And I get to play with the brush more, because it doesn’t have to be straight. I love Katsuhiro Otomo’s Akira. He draws the best destroyed buildings in the world. I don’t have the patience for that. Going into it I was thinking, “Oh, boy! I get to do Akira-type destruction!” Then when it comes down to it, it’s like, “No, it’s brushwork destruction, I’m afraid.” I don’t have the patience to draw every level of a building that’s been destroyed.

MM: Well, he probably had a lot of assistants helping him.

GD: That’s a good excuse. [laughter] 80

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.

GD: I lay out the script on notebook paper as thumbnails. I have four pages on each sheet, and it’s roughly breaking down the action.

Below and Next Page: Pencils for pages 2 and 3 of The Marquis and the Midwife.

The Marquis and all related characters ™ and ©2010 Guy Davis.

MM: Do you work out the thumbnails while you read the script, or do you prefer to read the script all the way through before thinking about that?

GD: I’m working on thumbnails as we speak. I get the script for John and print it out. I’ll read it through once just for enjoyment and to get all the images in my head.

I’ll draw very tiny thumbnails on the edge of the script pages as I go. Then I’ll go back through and lay out the more finished thumbnails on notebook paper for

them to approve. That usually takes a day to do—an easy day. And they are really rough looking, too; I have to put notes all over the place so that it’s somewhat clear.

The scribble with an A above his head is Abe—that type of thing.

MM: Do you blow up your layouts and lightbox them when you pencil, or are they just a guide you refer to?

GD: They’re just a reference. I have them next to me as I pencil. Once they’re approved I rule out the panels and gutters on the backs of the boards. Then I’ll make a note of roughly where and how big the word balloons will be. I do that for all 22 pages before I pencil anything. That sort of production line way of doing it is something I got into the habit of doing when I was on Mystery Theater. I found it easier to get things done that way. Instead of struggling with a page that I just couldn’t get past, I was moving all the way around.

That way if time was running out, it wasn’t looking rushed at the end. That happened to me when I was doing The Realm. I would start out with all this detail, and near the end it was, “Oh! I’ve got to get this thing done!” and it got kind of loose. I started to mix it up, so if a page is rushed or looks loose, it’s stuck in the middle. Like I just had a bad day that day or fell off the stool or something.

Once that’s done, if I’m warming up I’ll draw Johann doing his thing. If there’s something I really want to draw, I’ll go ahead and do that—but just the figures. I’ll draw all the figures throughout the book, then I’ll go back in and rough in all the backgrounds.

MM: Do you go back and forth between penciling and inking or do you prefer to get all the penciling done before you start inking?

GD: Once the layouts are approved I’ll pencil the entire book—and maybe two or three books, depending on the schedule— before I do any inking. I don’t usually mix it up unless I’m working on two things at once. Now that I’m doing the new Marquis series, sometimes at night if I get done with the pencils I’ll start inking The Marquis or do some work on a digital file. But as

86

Art Gallery

91

92

Left: Rom gets his Spaceknight on.

Right: Calling Dick Tracy. Come in, Tracy. Guy’s homage to the greatest of newspaper strip detectives.

Below: Metaluna Mary was drawn for a Fist-a-Cuffs online art competition, but Guy scrapped it for another design.

Below Right: Pin-up art for Mark Andrew Smith and Paul Maybury’s graphic novel, Aqua Leung.

Page 98: Hellboy commission piece.

Page 99: Art for the Hellboy II: The Golden Army DVD comic.

Rom ™ and ©2010 Parker Brothers. Dick Tracy ™ and ©2010 Tribune Media Services, Inc. Metaluna Mary ™ and ©2010 Guy Davis. Aqua Leung ™ and ©2010 Mark Andrew Smith and Paul Maybury. Hellboy ™ and ©2010 Mike Mignola.

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Modern Masters:

Guy Davis

Guy Davis is a master of the macabre, the mysterious... the just plain creepy.

But underlying the eerie quality of his artwork is a remarkable sense of storytelling. Emotion drips off his brush, filling his work with life and energy. From his breakthrough hit, Baker Street, to the pulp noir Sandman Mystery Theater, to his current work on the Hellboy spin-off series, B.P.R.D., Davis has shown time and again that he is one of the best in the business. Join us as we lift the veil on the career of another Modern Master—Guy Davis! This book features a career-spanning interview with the artist, a discussion of his creative process, and reams of rare and unseen art, including a large gallery of commissioned pieces, and 8 pages of full color work.

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