Modern Masters Vol. 21: Chris Sprouse by TwoMorrows Publishing

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 - O N E :

CHRIS SPROUSE By Todd Dezago and Eric Nolen-Weathington

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Modern Masters Volume Twenty-One:

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- O N E :

CHRIS SPROUSE edited by Eric Nolen-Weathington and Todd Dezago front cover by Chris Sprouse all interviews in this book were conducted by Todd Dezago proofreading by Fred Perry

TwoMorrows Publishing 10407 Bedfordtown Dr. Raleigh, North Carolina 27614 www.twomorrows.com • e-mail: twomorrow@aol.com First Printing • June 2009 • Printed in Canada Softcover ISBN: 978-1-60549-013-7 Trademarks & Copyrights All characters and artwork contained herein are ™ and ©2009 Chris Sprouse unless otherwise noted. Ber-Mander ™ and ©2009 Chris Sprouse. Fantastica ©2009 Chris Sprouse and his friend Bobby. Nathan Kane, Ocean and all related characters ™ and ©2009 Warren Ellis and Chris Sprouse. Batman, Blue Beetle, Cosmic Boy, Ferro Lad, Ice, Justice League, Legionnaires, Live Wire, Martian Manhunter, Metamorpho, Mr. Miracle, Mon-El, Poison Ivy, Saturn Girl, Shadow Lass, Superman, Ultra Boy, and all related characters ™ and ©2009 DC Comics. Global Frequency and all related characters ™ Warren Ellis and ©2009 Warren Ellis and DC Comics. Engine Joe, Gen 13, Jakita Wagner, Midnighter, Number of the Beast, WildC.A.T.s and all related characters ™ and ©2009 WildStorm Productions, an imprint of DC Comics. Dhalua Strong, Pneuman, Solomon, Svetlana X, Tesla Strong, Tom Strong, Val Var Garm and all related characters ™ and ©2009 DC Comics. Banshee, Bishop, Phoenix, Wolverine, X-Men ™ and ©2009 Marvel Characters, Inc. The Spirit ™ and ©2009 Will Eisner estate. New Men, Prophet, Supreme, Youngblood and all related characters ™ and ©2009 Rob Liefeld. WildStar ™ and ©2009 Al Gordon and Jerry Ordway. Ex Machina ™ and ©2009 Brian K. Vaughan and Tony Harris. Grendel ™ and ©2009 Matt Wagner. Hammerlocke, Phase and all related characters ™ and ©2009 Misc. Mayhem Productions. Armorines, Ninjak, Timewalker ™ and ©2009 Acclaim Entertainment. C-3PO, Darth Vader, Leia Organa, Luke Skywalker, Padmé Amidala, Star Wars ™ and ©2009 Lucasfilm Ltd. Aliens ™ and ©2009 20th Century Fox Film Corp. Micronauts ™ and ©2009 Mego Corp. Zaphod Beeblebrox ™ and ©2009 Douglas Adams estate. Miracleman, Superboy ™ and ©2009 respective owner. Editorial package ©2009 Eric Nolen-Weathington, Todd Dezago, and TwoMorrows Publishing.

Dedication To Han Solo, Flash Gordon, Buck Rogers, Spock, and all the other characters who fueled my young imagination. And to Donna, Iain, and Caper — the stars of my constellation. Acknowledgements Chris Sprouse, for his enthusiasm, his time, and his love of science fiction. Terry Austin, for his generosity and his always insightful comments. Special Thanks Cully Hamner, J. Hiroshi Morisake, Xan Sprouse, Karl Story, 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-One:

CHRIS SPROUSE Table of Contents Introduction by Karl Story . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Part One: Elephants in India and Doodling in Dale City . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Part Two: Chris Goes to College . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 Part Three: Marvelous Monsters. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 Part Four: Adventures in Outer Space . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39 Part Five: The Team Supreme—A Strong Combination . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53 Part Six: Storytelling and the Creative Process . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79 Art Gallery . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87

Introduction

“H

ey Karl, we thought we would ask you to write the introduction to Chris Sprouse’s Modern Masters volume!”

the nicest guy in comics, Chris could easily be his sidekick. Then-DC editor Michael Eury paired us up as the art team on Legionnaires in 1992, and while I had worked on a number of projects in comics by then, this was to be my first monthly book. I can’t think of a better partner to have on such an experience than Chris. Since that time I have watched his work grow and have tried to keep up with his vast leaps in evolution. The work he would deliver to my doorstep, by turns elegant and explosive, has never ceased to prod me into what I consider my own best work. My own skills as an inker have been shaped and fired over the years by the challenges Chris has presented, as if he were daring me to keep up. Chris—being Chris— will always apologize for what he thinks he’s putting me through, but between you and me, I’ve never been upset over a single Sprouse page I have inked. Ever. From Legionnaires to Titan, Tom Strong, Ocean, Midnighter, Number of the Beast and all of the covers, cards and pin-ups we have collaborated on, I have come to realize there are few people I would rather be working with than Chris Sprouse.

You’ll have to excuse my silence at that, but I was dumbstruck. Those words did—and do—spell out a portent of doom to me. Words have always come hard to me; little characters that reel out in front of you on paper or a monitor... it’s something I’ve never been quite as confident about as I’d like. But damn it all, I’ve known Chris for about 20 years or so, and worked with him for a good chunk of that time. I consider Chris to be a great friend and an amazing artist. I couldn’t say no. How could I? Truth be told, my memory is not the greatest anymore and I fully blame Chris for this. He has a habit of blowing my mind. He has repeatedly done just that over the years pretty much every time I opened a box of freshly shipped penciled pages, so forgive me if my recollection of events is not precise as precise as it might be. I first met Chris way, way back at the Heroes Con in Charlotte, North Carolina, and at that time, I was struck first by his undeniable talent, and second by the following: Chris has to be one of the nicest guys I have ever met, very humble and unassuming. If Walt Simonson is

Karl Story June 2009

Part 1:

Elephants in India and Doodling in Dale City

MODERN MASTERS: So, let’s start at the beginning; you were born in Charlottesville, Virginia, July 30, 1966. Do you remember any of that?

secretarial work in the ’60s, then worked as a substitute teacher while we were growing up, and later worked in a daycare center before doing day care for commuting parents out of our home while I was in college.

CHRIS SPROUSE: [laughs] I have essentially no memories of anything from that early on. I can tell you that, while I was born in Charlottesville, my family actually lived in Arlington, Virginia at the time, just outside Washington, D.C. My clearest earliest memories are from the first year or two that we lived in New Delhi, India, which would have been 1969-70—we can get to that later.

MM: Any brothers or sisters? CHRIS: One older brother and two younger sisters. MM: What are the age differences? Did you all play together? Were you close as children? CHRIS: My brother is three years older than me and my sisters are one year and six years younger, respectively. We were close as children, probably because we didn’t play with/hang out with lots of other kids while in India, and then we went on lots of family vacations and road trips together all the time after we came back to the US. My brother and I shared all the same interests until we were teenagers and he discovered cars and girls and rock music while I just continued plodding along as a super-nerd, drawing comics and reading sci-fi and fantasy like I always had!

MM: Were your parents originally from Charlottesville? Do you know how they met? CHRIS: My dad is originally from Charlottesville, Virginia, and my mom is essentially Pennsylvanian, but her family moved around a lot. They met in college in Tennessee. I think she was dating someone he knew, and they hit it off. MM: What did your dad do? Did your mom work? CHRIS: My dad worked as an auditor for the General Accounting Office in Washington DC, which is now known as the Government Accountability Office. He basically audited various US Government projects throughout his career, including construction projects overseas early on and hazardous waste disposal later. My mom did

MM: Would you consider yours a “happy childhood”? CHRIS: I would say I had an atypical childhood, at least at first. My childhood started out with lots of travel and unusual experiences and then settled into your typical 1970s-’80s suburban upbringing. In 1969 or early 1970, my Dad was sent to New Delhi, India to audit some US Embassy dam construction projects, and he took his family along, luckily. As I said above, my earliest memories are from our time in India—elephants, snakes in our yard and in our house, elaborate palaces and steamy weather—all kinds of “Rikki-Tikki-Tavi” stuff that you might expect to make an impression on a young boy. [laughs] We went to an international school for embassy kids, so we were around lots of different nationalities and cultures all the time. We had no television and we couldn’t really play outside all that much due, partially due to the aforementioned snakes, so we amused ourselves inside with 6

Previous Page: Chris drew this spot illo of his character Ber-Mander for a notepad he made in his high school industrial arts class. Left: Chris (far left) and his family riding an elephant in India. Below: Chris’ first published work, done for his high school paper, The Hyphen. Chris says this accompanied “a hardhitting exposé on overactive water fountains.” Artwork ©2009 Chris Sprouse.

Viewmaster reels, G.I. Joes, model kits, drawing, and, of course, comic books. While we were able to bring some comics from the US with us—I know my brother had a copy of Fantastic Four #1 while we were in India, and I’m pretty sure he still has it—we bought lots of British editions of European comics in New Delhi—Asterix and Tintin, mainly. Tintin was my favorite from the start, and we were able to assemble a nearly complete collection of the albums before returning to the States in 1972. I think the time in India had a definite effect on us as kids and on our family as a whole. We came back to the US with lots of unusual experiences behind us and with a love of reading and—speaking for my brother and myself at least—drawing and comics. I know that I definitely felt a little different, like a little bit of an outsider, when I started school in suburban Virginia, and I continued being kind of a loner, doing all the same solitary things that I did overseas: reading books and comics and drawing constantly. My parents always encouraged us to be creative, and my mom even came up with lots of arts and crafts projects for us to do. My brother and I were both into comics, but he played sports and just generally got out of the house more, while I stayed inside doodling or building models and turned into more and more of a nerd as time went by. I think my brother and I drew a few

comics together, but I mostly drew alone or with some like-minded friends later. MM: Wow! A lot of traveling already for such a little guy! So, that would have put you in, what, third grade? Did you make many “likeminded” friends upon your return? CHRIS: I was six or seven years old when we arrived back in the States, and I think that means I must have been in first grade. I think I may have been in third grade before I ever really made any friends. That’s when I met my best friend to this day, Gary. We—my siblings and I—had, of course, become typical suburban US TV addicts by then; we still read constantly and did creative stuff, but we were hooked on Ultraman and Speed Racer and lots of cartoons. I always liked cartoons and probably picked up some of my art style from Hanna-Barbera and Filmation series. My wife impressed me 7

Below: Chris says this Fantastica page is “from middle school, done by me and my friend Bobby. I don’t remember who penciled what, but I do know I wrote and typed out the horrible, clichéd dialogue on the page and did all the inking.” Next Page: Commission drawing of Darth Vader.

early on in our relationship by pointing out how much Alex Toth was lurking in my art, so I guess Space Ghost, the Super Friends and The Herculoids must have had some impact, because I never ever knowingly read any Toth comics until long after I was doing comics professionally—hard to believe but true, I swear! [laughter] Anyway, Gary was one of only a few close childhood friends I ever made—I was just amazingly shy and didn’t make friends very easily. I have a distinct memory of Gary describing to me some fantasticsounding TV series I had never seen called Star Trek when we first met. I think when I finally started watching Star Trek, my future

as a geek was cemented. [laughter] One of my few buddies, Bobby, could draw and was also into comics, and at some point during junior high school we started writing and drawing our own comic books. They were usually half-baked rip-offs of whatever TV show or movie or comic we were into at the time. We’d sit around and B.S. a plotline into existence, then we’d both alternate penciling and inking parts of pages with little rhyme or reason. I should mention here that we learned the steps involved in creating a page of comic art from some little pamphlet my brother and I ordered out of the back of a Charlton comic in the ’70s, and Bobby and I tried our best to use the tools and methods the pros used, with mixed results—neither of us was very good at inking or lettering. We only ever finished a few stories in their entirety, but we sure cranked out hundreds of pages together. One project I remember clearly was a thing called Fantastica, which was hugely influenced by The Micronauts—I think we worked on that one for years, re-doing it when we got better at drawing or whenever we had a new take on it. A couple of years ago my parents gave me three huge boxes full of this stuff which I thought had gone missing but had actually been festering in their attic somewhere for years! When we saw Star Wars in 1977, things really kicked into high gear. Something about that movie really lit a fire in my brain and sparked all kinds of creativity, and this led directly to me deciding—actually it was more like realizing—that I wanted to do something creative for a living. I wrote about this in my introduction to the recent re-release of the Splinter of the Mind’s Eye series I drew. I couldn’t make movies, but I could draw and could create my own characters and worlds that way. Pre-Star Wars, drawing comics was just a way to kill time and have fun, but after seeing that movie it became an obsession. From that point on I really wanted to get something published, and I wanted to be a professional cartoonist. MM: So, upon your return from India— was this also an awakening to comics? What were you reading when you came back to the States?

other more sci-fi, less superhero titles. The Gold Key Star Trek series and some older issues of Al Williamson’s Flash Gordon Dell comics were some early standouts for me. In the late ’70s/early ’80s a comic book shop opened in Charlottesville near where my grandmother went to the laundromat, so she’d let us go to buy comics when she went out to do her laundry. We bought tons more comics there, but what I remember most about that shop was that one of the guys who worked there had put up some black-&white reproductions of Alex Raymond Flash Gordon panels on the wall behind the counter, and he drew his own comics while on the job. That was fascinating to watch, but I remember more about the tools he was using—brush and crow quill pen&-ink on bristol board—than what he was drawing.

CHRIS: I would read the Tintin books—the entire series, chronologically—over and over in those early days, and my brother had a small collection of Marvel comics, including that FF #1, that we read and re-read all the time. What led to full-blown comics addiction were the trips we’d take when school was out to stay with our grandparents in Charlottesville. Two doors down from their house was a kind of general store/convenience store that had a huge ever-changing pile of comics for sale near the front door. We’d gather up all the recyclable glass soda bottles at my grandparents’ house—and there were lots; the Sprouses were always champion soda drinkers—and haul them down to the store to cash them in on comics and our own soda of choice, Mountain Dew. These were the days when you could take a bottle into a store and actually get a nickel in return. I remember my brother getting the first two issues of the Star Wars comic there before the movie was released, and I know we amassed a huge collection of Charlton horror comics and the John Byrne Space: 1999 comics, as well as various Marvel books. We were pretty anti-DC at first for some reason, but my brother discovered Mike Grell’s Warlord and started collecting that, so that made DC okay by us. As the older brother, he kind of set the pace as far as what we bought; he’d recommend books for me to buy, and of course we couldn’t collect the same series—that would be copying. So, I picked my own books to follow, gravitating towards the sci-fi TV and movie adaptations and

MM: Do you think they began inspiring your artwork right away? That early? CHRIS: Certainly. I know Tintin had a huge influence on me, from the clean line style to little stylistic things like the beads of sweat coming off of startled or worried characters—I still do that today—or the realistic accurate backgrounds and tech stuff. The Tintin stuff just seeped in and was always there behind all my other influences. One weird way that a lot of the sci-fi books I was reading influenced me—besides making me really want to draw sci-fi comics—was through the inability of a lot of the artists to get the details right. It bugged me that the Gold Key Star Trek didn’t look like the TV Star Trek, or that Howard Chaykin’s Star Wars ships and lightsabers 9

in traffic, at least by the time I left the area! My dad had to commute into DC, and Dale City was as close as they could get to the big city and still afford to buy. While the Dale City house was being built, we rented a house in nearby Woodbridge, Virginia. We all grew up in the Dale City house, and my parents only moved out a few years ago. MM: You said that your brother was more into sports and that you were more focused on drawing and comics and telling stories. Were you an art geek in school, known as the kid who draws? CHRIS: I think people noticed I could draw pretty early on—I remember winning some art contest on board the QEII ocean liner that brought us back to the US from India—but even as a small child I was uncomfortable with lots of attention and tried to keep unnoticed throughout my school years as much as I could. Typical middle child behavior, I’ve since learned! I probably was known as “that quiet kid who draws,” though, because any time there was a chance to do some book report or other school project as an art project, I drew something. People had to notice! [laughter] Sadly, the art classes weren’t really memorable in my school system, especially not in my high school. I had some good teachers who meant well, but the art class—yes, there was only one art class available—was promoted as a “fun alternative to study hall,” so we got a lot of people who had never even held a paint brush before who needed lots of extra help. This meant that the people who did have a little talent felt a little stifled, waiting on the non-artists to catch up.

weren’t what I saw on screen. I knew even then that the right way to do it was to get that stuff as accurate as possible. I remember I started drawing my own adaptation of Star Trek: The Motion Picture because I thought the Marvel adaptation took too many liberties with the look of the sets and technology! I was such an anal retentive little nerd, but that idea—that if you make the setting and props believable and consistent you can create a convincing world—stuck with me.

MM: Were you involved in any other clubs or groups or extra-curricular activities? CHRIS: I ended up not taking any more art classes in high school and just threw myself into journalism class because, as I mentioned earlier, I desperately wanted to get published, and we had a pretty good school paper that featured student illustrations. I took Journalism with the wonderful Mrs. Martha Smith, the best teacher I’ve ever had, for three years. The Journalism program was

MM: Sorry, gotta go back just a little bit.... Where were you living when you returned from India? Did your family come back to Charlottesville? CHRIS: My parents bought a house in a brand new development in Northern Virginia called Dale City, about 15 minutes south of Washington, DC, 45 minutes 10

set up so that the first year, students learned the basics of writing for and producing a periodical, submitting sample stories and newspaper designs for grades. If they stuck with the program for another year, students became either staff writers or editorial or production staff members on an actual monthly school newsmagazine, with Mrs. Smith functioning as publisher. The first year, my sophomore year in high school, I bugged Mrs. Smith and the production manager—the guy in charge of designing and laying out and pasting up all the copy and artwork and generally getting the paper print-ready—so frequently about doing some illustrations that they eventually caved in and gave me a shot. I can’t remember what my very first published art was, but one later drawing for the paper that stands out in my mind is a now cringe-worthy piece I did to accompany a review of the Yes album, 90125, with lots of bad Roger Dean wanna-be stuff going on and lots of badly over-used zip-a-tone. One thing that I got from Journalism class, other than finally getting published, was the first sense of finally belonging to a group. I wouldn’t say that I came out of my shell exactly, but Journalism class was about the only place I felt at home during my high school years, and it further reinforced my desire to be creative for a living and to be around creative people. I also joined the staff of the school literary magazine and did lots of horrible artwork to illustrate lots of god-awful student poetry. Imagine angst-ridden pretentious 16year-old kids whose main literary influences are Neil Peart and Sylvia Plath writing poems and short stories illustrated by wanna-be Frazettas and John Byrnes... yikes! Anyway, people were starting to become aware that I could draw—my stuff was out there for everyone to see.

MM: And is this about the time you started doing “Ber-Mander”? CHRIS: Yep. I became Production Manager of the school paper during my Junior year, and started lobbying for a comic strip—which I assumed I would draw—to go on the back page of the paper. Mrs. Smith eventually gave me the chance to do a one-time strip, and I went for it! I created some heavy-handed, basic “day in the life of a student” kind of fullpage strip with lots of bad jokes and a cast of stereotypical high school students—the dumb jock was named Jim Bags, for example... what wit! [laughter] One of the characters was a little freak guy—freaks were the army-jacketwearing guys who hung out in the smoking court and smelled like weed... they were pretty much the same as “stoners” today—who wore a headband and had so much hair it covered all of his face except for his nose and mouth. This guy was just an incidental character with no name originally, but when I turned in the strip, people really responded to him. The staff started bandying around names for the guy, and the one that made everybody laugh was “Ber-Mander.” Some backstory: my high school was Gar-Field Senior High School, named after 11

Previous Page: Chris says, “One of the covers I drew for the school paper. I tried to duplicate brush-splatter shading I was seeing used in Frank Miller’s Daredevil and Bill Sienkiewicz’s Moon Knight, but, as usual, when I tried emulating other artists’ styles, I failed miserably and went way overboard.” Above: Chris: “The Yes review. I remember this looking more Roger Dean than it actually does. Oh, well....” Left: Spot illo of Zaphod Beeblebrox, drawn for a review of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy which appeared in The Hyphen. Artwork ©2009 Chris Sprouse. Zaphod Beeblebrox ™ and ©2009 Douglas Adams estate.

two guys named Garber and Manderfield. The school paper itself was called The Hyphen, after the piece of punctuation in the middle. So when someone suggested we name the freak character after the remaining syllables from GarberManderfield, it seemed like a good idea at the time. We ended up naming the onetime strip after the character, calling it “Leave It to Ber-Mander.” When the paper with the strip was published, “Leave It to Ber-Mander” actually got some decent feedback, so the staff asked me to do more and it eventually became a regular feature. I drafted my friends who were funny or who were into comics to help me with story ideas when deadlines were tight or I had writer’s block, so occasionally “Ber-Mander” became a group effort. It also brought me a weird kind of notoriety—people started to treat me better in school! Jocks who had previously thrown books at me and my small group of nerdy friends now said “Hi” and were friendly in the halls, and girls even started talking to me when they found out that I did the strip. Usually they just wanted to ask me if I’d draw a picture of them that they could give to their boyfriends, but, hey—that was still pretty good considering I was a tragically shy, pimply nerd with bad hair and a cracking voice and not in any way a chickmagnet.

away to college. I also continued to do art for the literary mag and kept working on super-hero and sci-fi comics at home throughout high school. MM: You talk of Mrs. Smith and what a wonderful teacher she was, a wonderful influence—have you seen her since you’ve become successful in comics, or had a chance to talk with her?

MM: That was your Junior year. Did you continue “BerMander” throughout the rest of high school? About how many strips did you do?

CHRIS: I think there was a reunion lunch about a year after I graduated where Mrs. Smith took us all out for pizza in Old Town Alexandria, Virginia, where she lived and where I would end up spending a large chunk of my adult life. This was still a few years before I broke into comics. Other than that pizza party, I haven’t seen her or too many other people from high school again, mostly

CHRIS: I did continue “Ber-Mander” until the end of my Senior year and the staff even asked me to do one during my first year at college about Ber-Mander going 12

because I’m terrible about keeping in touch with people. As for being “successful” in comics, I really wasn’t very successful until after I moved to Ohio years later anyway. Twice people from my high school—other than Gary, of course—have shown up at conventions where I was a guest, and coincidentally enough, one of those people was my former Editor-in-Chief Eric from the school paper. I don’t remember too many comic collectors/fans from high school other than myself and my brother and my friends Bobby and Steve—Gary wasn’t really into comics then—so I’m actually surprised that even two people came forward! MM: So you were basically a good kid? Kept your nose clean? I’m sure—because I’m pretty sure you told me a story or two at dinner one night—that you had at least one crazy high school incident, one time you got in trouble...?

of the guys thought it would be cool to see if we could lift a car up with our combined strength. Apparently we could, because we did, several times! We didn’t move the cars very much or very far, maybe six or eight inches straight up off the ground—no tilting or up-ending or anything at all destructive. I admit that we didn’t always put the car back down where we found it, and that doesn’t mean we stole cars, we just put them up on the sidewalk instead of in the street. [laughter] I’m sure it’s not the stupidest thing a group of teenage guys has ever gotten up to, but it had to be baffling and annoying for the cars’ owners. Well, we were lifting up the last car of the night, just a few inches off the ground, marveling at our mightiness, when the owner of this car runs out of his house

CHRIS: Man, I was such a goodygoody it’s really kind of disgusting. I watched and learned from other people’s mistakes—I found that doing homework and studying was actually easier than what some people went through dealing with summer school and angry parents and teachers, so I just did my work, stayed after school for school paper stuff and spent most of the rest of my time drawing. I did manage to have a steady girlfriend, somehow—in spite of my shyness, but she was pretty serious about her grades too and wanted to get into into a good school, so not a lot of craziness there either! I was such a dweeb! [laughter] The sole story of adolescent misbehavior I can come up with is even chock-full of nerdiness: after an all-night Dungeons & Dragons session—see, I told you, chock-full [laughter]—a group of us, about eight or nine guys, thought it would be fun to roam around the neighborhood in the wee hours of the morning. At some point, one 13

Previous Page: Chris: “This is probably the best of the ‘Ber-Mander’ strips, mostly because it’s not exceedingly moronic and isn’t too terrible artwise. It’s a good example of how the strip usually went, with references to things we were dealing with in school and little in-jokes... Even at this early stage I was trying to make settings look as realistic as possible....” Below: This “BerMander” strip was dedicated to Martha Smith. Ber-Mander ™ and ©2009 Chris Sprouse.

Below: A Ber-Mander illustration. Next Page: “During my freshman year at college I was still drawing super-hero comics and suffering some serious ridicule for it! This panel is from a Micronauts story I abandoned before my second semester.” Ber-Mander ™ and ©2009 Chris Sprouse. Micronauts ™ and ©2009 Mego Corp.

yelling. We scattered and ended up back at the home of the DM thinking we had gotten away scott free. Wrong! It turned out that the owner of that last car worked for the FBI—remember, we were in the DC suburbs—and he wasn’t going to let a bunch of snot-nosed D&D geeks get away with anything. He called the cops and somehow they tracked us down, and I remember one very large, angry policeman yelling in our pimply, terrified faces until dawn! Our parents were called, and that was pretty much that! I have to say that this incident was

completely atypical of what I usually got up to with my friends. A typical night out with the guys would consist of Gary, Steve, and me riding around in Gary’s car griping about the usual teenage problems or shuffling aimlessly around the local mall too nervous to talk with any of the girls we’d see, or maybe we’d shut ourselves up in someone’s rec room with a case of Mountain Dew and some horror movies for the evening. Not a lot of partying or shenanigans, considering this was the ’80s. More Mark Ratner from Fast Times at Ridgemont High than any of the highschoolers from Dazed and Confused, if I had to use movies about that general time period for reference. MM: Did you have a job while you were in school? It seems like you were doing an awful lot with all of your extra-curricular activities. CHRIS: I “sort of” had a job during high school. My mom worked in a daycare center and somehow convinced me to apply for a job cleaning the center up after hours. I roped my drawing pal Bobby into helping me out, since it was really too much work for one kid. We didn’t earn very much, and what we did earn we probably just blew on comics and Big Gulps at the 7-11 next door, but we started plotting our own comics out verbally while we worked there at night, so it wasn’t too bad.

Part 2:

Chris Goes to College

MM: So after high school, was it right on to college? Was the idea of a future in art the next natural step?

MM: What comic books were you reading then? CHRIS: A few years before high school, I was pretty much reading only movie or TV adaptations: Star Trek and Star Wars. I tried a few superhero books like Iron Man and the Hulk, and I even collected Howard the Duck for a while for some reason. My brother read and collected tons of Marvel stuff like X-Men, Spider-Man, and Conan, so I was aware of what was going on in those books, but nothing really set me on fire until my brother showed me a copy of The Micronauts #1. That book grabbed me like nothing else had. Some of it was that I had lots of Micronauts toys already and loved them, some of it was that it was—at first anyway—science-fiction space opera, but most of it was Michael Golden’s artwork. I hadn’t seen anything like his art before, and the way that he created an entire world for these characters just fascinated me. Everything looked so interesting and so darned cool in that book! I loved the design of the Micronauts’ ship, the Endeavor, and I used to trace the pin-up Golden drew of the Endeavor in the back of issue #4 over and over until I got it right, I was so obsessed. Years later, after I got into comics professionally, I was able to buy the original art for that pin-up. I started looking for Golden’s name in the credits of other books, snapping up the Mr. Miracle and Batman Family books he drew for DC around the same time he

CHRIS: Yeah, it was always assumed that I’d go to college right after high school, and I had decent enough grades to earn a tiny bit of scholarship money, so off I went! I was determined to do comics for a living by this point, so I knew I wanted to take art classes and I didn’t really want to go too far away from home. My parents wanted me to go to a liberal arts school so I could get a decent well-rounded education and have something to fall back on if the comics thing didn’t work out. They had always supported my interest in art and comics, but neither they nor I really knew much about the business side of comics—whether a living could be made was a mystery to us all then—so their concerns weren’t misguided. I applied and was accepted at a lot of Virginia schools, but settled on James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Virginia. I decided to major in Graphic Design in a nod to my parents’ concerns, thinking I could get training to be an art director or product designer if my plans to make it in comics did indeed fall through. However, I was still determined enough about cartooning for a living that I loaded up my schedule with every figure drawing or life drawing class I could fit in. Either way I was going to go eventually, I never even considered a non-art career for a second.

Above: “Another piece by Bobby and myself, this one a double-page spread from some sciencefiction comic we were working on early on in high school. It looks like he drew the guy and I drew everything else.” Next Page: Preliminary sketch of Nathan Kane, the hero of Ocean, and Chris’ pencils for page 7 of the first issue of the series. Nathan Kane, Ocean ™ and ©2009 Warren Ellis and Chris Sprouse.

was working on Micronauts. By high school, I had built up a pretty decent Golden collection, and that set the tone for the way I’d collect comics from then until today: I’d collect the work of artists I liked instead of collecting series. Anyway, what really made Golden a long-lasting influence and inspiration for me was meeting him when I was 14 or 15. It was at the first comic convention I ever attended, and Golden and Chris Claremont were in town promoting the first issue of Marvel Fanfare. I brought along a complete story I’d drawn, a twelve-page sci-fi thing, hoping I could get some advice on my drawing and info about how to get into the business. I waited in line to talk to Golden, admiring the stacks of art all over his table, and listening to him joke with fans. I’d watch people getting comics signed, and if I saw something that I didn’t already own, I’d run into the dealers room and hunt for it! 16

Finally it was my turn, and I got my Marvel Fanfare signed, then nervously asked him to look at my pitiful little story, voice cracking and armpits dripping. Golden looked at a few pages, then actually said some nice things about the artwork! He asked me to come back behind the table so he could point out some storytelling things I could stand to learn. He showed me how I could have made the action clearer, how I could have purposefully arranged the visual elements for specific effects and to lead the reader’s eye over the page and through a story... it really opened my eyes and made me realize that drawing comics was so much more than just sequentially depicting events in a story. He gave me a really good thoughtful critique and made me see what I was doing and what I could do in an entirely different light, and he was really cool about it—very helpful and encouraging and willing to pass on his own knowledge. I left that show feeling like a million bucks,

ready to draw myself silly! Very inspiring! I was a fan for life! I remember that convention experience every time I’m reviewing someone’s portfolio at a con now—I want to be that encouraging and inspire people to go out and draw good comics. What I don’t want to do at cons is what was done to me at my second ever comic convention, not long after the meeting with Golden. At this second show, I brought the same story and more art to get critiqued by another ’80s fan-favorite artist, and got so savagely and inconsiderately reviewed that I slunk out feeling like I should just give up. The guy actually told me to give up. He said I didn’t have a future in comics and should try another career! You don’t crush a 14-year-old like that! I know I wasn’t very good, but this artist was just dismissive with nothing constructive to say at all. Luckily, it only killed my enthusiasm to draw comics for a few days, but it sure killed my enthusiasm for this man’s work. Ironically enough, after I got into comics, this very artist who told me I had no future in the business requested me for a project he was writing.

comic, which was a huge thrill! My main influence interpreting characters I designed—very cool! Later Dunbier managed to get him to do the covers for Ocean, my first fully creator-owned series and a project that was really special to me—a realization of a lot of long-standing dreams. During the making of Ocean, Michael and I emailed back and forth a bit, but I tried my best to keep it professional. I went to a Motor City Comic Con where he was a guest a few years ago and I commissioned a Tom Strong drawing, and my wife and I ended up getting along pretty well with Michael and his agent Renee—whom I had met years earlier while trying desperately to promote Hammerlocke, but that’s another story—and we ended up seeing them repeatedly at conventions over the next couple of years and becoming friends—friends in the way that people in comics are usually friends, though: long periods of time without seeing each other and then

MM: Mike is a very giving guy. Have you had a chance to talk with him since then and tell him what an influence he was? CHRIS: I have! It’s better than that, though—while working on Tom Strong I was able to have editor Scott Dunbier hire him to draw part of a Tesla Strong one-shot 17

Below and Next Page: Chris’ layout and pencils for the climactic action sequence of “Harder Than Diamonds,” written by Walt Simonson for The Spirit #7.

instantly picking up where you left off when you do meet again. We’ve had some really memorable post-con dinners and conversations. It’s hard to suppress my fanboy side sometimes—I had him sign that Micronauts spaceship pin-up and tried to tell him about how I used to trace it and all of that, and I think I just ended up making him feel old and making myself look like a dork! MM: And which other artists were you studying and/or being influenced by? CHRIS: In addition to Hergé and Golden, my two other major influences are artists I discovered in high school: Walt Simonson and Frank Miller. Simonson had drawn an

adaptation of the Alien movie which had a place of honor in my growing comic collection. I loved that he got the “tech stuff” right and accurate, but I also liked the way he made that adaptation really visually exciting, unlike a lot of movie tie-ins. Then he started his Thor run and I was hooked on his art pretty thoroughly. What’s weird about his influence on me is that I can only see it coming through in my art anymore in my rough layouts— they’re really gestural and kinetic and look like Simonson’s layouts. I also learned ways of using lettering as artwork in comics from Simonson, something I try to do even now with sound effects. I always wanted to be able to get the same sense of power I see in his drawings into my own. I rarely do, but I’m always trying. I was able to work with Walt Simonson about a year ago, and that was full of coolness and fanboy weirdness also. We did a Spirit story together with Walter writing it Marvel style—plot first—which was challenging but fun, since I hadn’t worked that way since the beginning of my career. We talked a lot on the phone during the job and occasionally I’d just have to sit back and shake my head—one of my major idols was on the phone with me asking if his plot was okay with me when I could barely contain myself that I had the chance to work with the guy—surreal, to say the least! Such a nice and personable guy, too! I might be a professional working in the industry, but I still love comics and comic art as a fan, so this kind of experience is something I treasure, something that makes the occasional struggles to make ends meet and the crazy, crazy hours worthwhile. I learned about Frank Miller from an issue of Amazing Heroes with a cover feature on his Daredevil. I found some Daredevil issues at a 7-11 and fell hard! I learned many storytelling techniques from Golden, but Miller really got me going, trying out crazy storytelling things I’d never tried before, like using vertical panels and stacatto panel layouts and how to place panels on a page and figures in panels for effect. Other artists who influenced me in one way or another at that time included Al Williamson, Howard Chaykin, Marshall

Rogers, Bill Sienkiewicz to some extent, as well as [John] Byrne and [Terry] Austin, but no one had the impact on my drawing style that Hergé, Golden, Simonson, and Miller have. I may not draw like all of these artists, and fans may not see their influence expressed in my linework, but it’s there informing the way I tell stories, the way I place elements on a page, and in dozens of other ways that I definitely see myself. MM: So, you started at James Madison in... what year would that have been? CHRIS: I started at JMU in 1984 and graduated on schedule in 1988. MM: How was college life? Did you find the transition from living at home smooth? Did you fall right in with the art crowd and make friends right off? CHRIS: As usual for me, I didn’t make friends easily. I was still extraordinarily shy and I didn’t come to school ready to party, so I didn’t fit in with any group of people right away. What eventually socialized me was music, of all things. I was still planning to try for a career in comics, so I drew comics in the dorm whenever I could fit it in. A lot of people found this really weird and made fun of me, so I eventually stopped drawing in the dorm at all and kept to myself even more, just doing my homework and listening to music on my headphones. I became pretty tired of all the old music I brought from home, so I started hitting local record stores looking for something new. Often I’d choose albums because of their cover art, or I’d write a shopping list after reading reviews in the back of Rolling Stone. Both of these things led me to buy an R.E.M. album—Reckoning, their second—without knowing much about the album or the

band. One listen and I was hooked on them like I got hooked on comics. I went out and tracked down every single and EP and soundtrack they did. It’s hard to describe what early R.E.M. was like when it was brand new. It was dark and mysterious and intriguing, yet somehow sort of traditional. It blew all the synth bands and prog rock groups out of my head. When I heard that they were playing at a nearby college, I had to go and I hooked up with a few other people I didn’t know very well in order to get a ride. To make a long story short, we ended up talking a lot on the road trip, and over the course of several such road trips to see R.E.M. and other so-called “college rock” bands play all over the South, I started making friends and meeting all kinds of people from all over the country. It all bled into other parts of my life: I had jettisoned all the old music I had been listening to and I started trying new things in other areas, getting into different art styles, doing sculpture and other three-dimensional art. I still had moments of being really solitary and shy, but being around change and being with artsy people and creative types again was helping me become a little more outgoing. MM: I can relate to your love for R.E.M.; Reckoning was my first album and, though it sounds like I was a lot more into music at the time—I was in a few bands by then— that album was something wonderful and new. CHRIS: Yeah, R.E.M. was my Beatles and my Grateful Dead. I was into music deeply before, but it was—embarrassingly—progressive rock: Genesis, Yes, Saga—horrible, 20

boring crap. I never played music, but I was all about music when I wasn’t—and sometimes when I was—all about comics after middle school. I’m listening to music right this second on my iPod, as a matter of fact: Aimee Mann’s cover of Badfinger’s “Baby Blue” from a playlist labelled “Awesome Mix Tape #7.” If you’ve seen Boogie Nights that might actually be amusing... or not.... MM: Were classes what you had expected? CHRIS: At first, taking all of the required freshman English and math and science classes just made college feel like Grade 13 away from home. I hated most of my design classes—the classes that were part of my major—because it seemed like they were preparing students to become art directors who were just idea men and never got their hands dirty doing any actual drawing. Drawing was all I wanted to do, so it wasn’t a good fit, and it just made me more focussed on getting into comics. I still had just enough doubt about making a living through cartooning that I made sure I learned what I needed to and did well in my graphic design classes, just in case, but I set about arranging my schedule so that it was full of electives that would help with my drawing and illustration. I took studio classes—basically two- to four-hour blocks

of studio time—in life drawing, figure drawing with live models, painting, photography, and printmaking. Some of my teachers/professors in these studio classes were openly dismissive of my interest in cartooning and doing anything at all commercial with my talent, but some were very enthusiastic and encouraging. Weirdly, one of the encouraging ones told me he had a student a few years earlier who wanted to be a comic artist, but he had transferred out. He showed me some of this student’s

Previous Page Top: This 1984 newspaper clipping appeared in Chris’ local paper right before he left for JMU. Chris says, “I felt several times more uncomfortable than I actually look in the photo.” Previous Page Bottom: A side project Chris did “for the heck of it” during a photography class. “It’s a really bad rip-off of a hand-colored and manipulated R.E.M. publicity photo that I had hanging on my wall as a poster through most of my college years. I’m the guy in the upper right; the other guys are roomies and dormmates from my sophomore year.” Left: Figure drawing from Chris’ sophomore or junior year of college. Below: “Whenever I could, I’d turn any class project into some sort of comic. This one was a fumetti I did for a photography class.” Artwork ©2009 Chris Sprouse.

Above: This strip, named “Tuesday,” is another school project done in a comic format—this one for a printmaking class. Next Page: “A Halloween illustration I did for the James Madison University student newspaper. I still like this one!” Artwork ©2009 Chris Sprouse.

illustration work and it turned out it was someone whose name I recognized: Matt Wagner! Anyway, with some encouragement, I was able to start doing some assigned class projects as comic strips or comic books. I did several comics in my printmaking class under the heading “printing from photographic plates” and at least one for a bookthemed assignment. My life drawing and figure drawing teachers gave me some of the best advice about drawing I’ve ever received, essentially that I should let go of any preconceived stylization and draw what I see, letting the way my hand and eye work together make my drawing “style.” This helped put me on the path of understanding that I should be interested in being the best “Chris Sprouse” out there and stop trying to draw hands the way Michael Golden did or mouths the way John Byrne did. A certain amount of similar stylization is inescapable in comics 22

because of what is reproducible and basically the fact that everyone lets those who influenced them show every once in a while, but I liked the idea of trying to just be me and be unique, and my drawing started to feel more natural and less stiff pretty quickly. MM: So, on a college student’s budget, were you able to keep up with comics while in school? What, if anything, were you reading then? CHRIS: At first I just brought a few prized comics with me, my Micronauts #1-12 and some Legion of Super-Heroes comics. I forgot to mention earlier that in high school my friend Bobby showed me some Mike Grell and James Sherman Legion issues and turned me on to that world. The Giffen and Levitz issues were new on the stands, so I bought all of those and it was all over—I was a Legion fan. That became one of the few books I collected as a series, no matter

CHRIS: I had a summer job with a government contractor called The Rail Company—don’t ask me why it was called this because I don’t know if I ever knew—just outside Washington, DC. I landed this pretty sweet summer job because the art department was run by my friend Steve’s dad, who knew I could draw and had done pasteup and publication work in high school. The main function of the Rail Company art department was to provide artwork for what were called “Vu-Graphs” or “Viewgraphs,” I don’t remember the correct version of the name, but they were basically big photographic slides for overhead projectors used in meetings. If this were being done today, we’d be providing graphics for PowerPoint

who was drawing it. The book seemed like the perfect mix of sci-fi and super-hero comics, so it really appealed to me. Anyway, I kept my super-hero comics hidden most of the time—some people hide their porn, I hid my funnybooks! [laughter] I figured that if the other dorm guys were going to bust my chops for drawing comics, they’d really give me hell over reading comics with characters named “Bouncing Boy” or “Shadow Lass”! Eventually a comic shop opened in Harrisonburg, and I’d walk to it occasionally and browse and buy a few books. Once, when I was particularly flush with cash, I picked up a Love and Rockets trade paperback and fell in love with Jaime Hernandez’ work. Of course later on after continuing to read the collections, I ended up loving Gilbert’s stuff, but Jaime was definitely the “gateway artist” for many mainstream comic fans like me, leading us gradually into discovering lots of great independent books. I also realized that since Love and Rockets had some naked punk chicks occasionally, lots of beerdrinking, etc., I could probably keep those books out in my dorm and not get ridiculed, and I was right! So, I was picking up that series via the paperbacks when I could afford them, RAW when it came out—those huge oversized things—Maus, a few other independent comics, at the same time as I was reading Legion of Super-Heroes, Watchmen, Matt Wagner’s Grendel, and a few other mainstream books. Weird mix, but it felt perfect and exciting to me, having spent all my life up to that point reading different genres of comics anyway. MM: Did you have a job in order to be able to pay for all this stuff? 23

Right and Next Page: Examples from Chris’ summer and holiday job with The Rail Company. The strip on the right “was part of a comic strip history of this particular Naval officer’s career, presented to him at his retirement party.” The Rail Company was a US Navy subcontractor. Below: “An illustration used for a feature on homemade fast food snacks in the local Harrisonburg paper,” the town where JMU is located. Artwork ©2009 respective owners.

presentations. We drew charts and graphs and pasted up schedules, and I drew lots of airplanes for these Vu-Graphs—lots and lots of airplanes! Steve’s dad was an artist and he often did caricatures and birthday cards as well for the US Naval personnel we dealt with, but he started funneling some of these cartoony things my way after he saw some of my comic strips, and pretty soon I was doing a couple of these a week in addition to Vu-Graphs. It was all pretty good experience for a budding commercial artist and

cartoonist—all deadlines and pressure and learning to draw fast and accurately, plus time with typesetting machines and stat cameras and other now-obsolete graphic arts toys. I got even more experience and spending money while attending school. After having some freelance illustrations published in the JMU student paper, I got semi-regular paid illustration assignments from the local Harrisonburg paper, drawing everything from Civil War maps to dancing Nachos! MM: And what about movies or television.... Were there films or shows at that point that you were into? Were any of these influencing your work? CHRIS: While at school I saw virtually no television that wasn’t sports-related! I had no TV in the dorm, and when I moved into an off-campus house with a group of guys, they were all sports fanatics and the house TV was constantly tuned on some sporting event. If you haven’t figured it out by now, sports was not my thing.... There are probably ancient humans being dug out of the ice in some northern European country who know or care more about modern sports than I do! Plus, I was spending long hours back at the art classrooms

Above: “The cover of a very limited run selfpublished comic that I worked on with a few other cartoonists in the JMU art program near the end of my time at college.” Next Page: Previously unpublished pin-up of The Phade intended for the Hammerlocke miniseries.

and studios at night finishing projects or, horror of horrors, just doing art for the fun of it—not to mention working on all of the illustrations for the local paper— so I never really had time to watch a lot of TV anyway. I didn’t feel like I was missing much. These were the years of Who’s the Boss and The Facts of Life, after all. I did miss the first few years of Star Trek: The Next Generation, though. During summer breaks and holidays I tried to catch up on sci-fi movies with my friends, Steve and Gary, or my brother, Mike, with whom I saw The Terminator, Aliens, and whatever Star Trek movies were out. I really wasn’t into any movies or TV shows or influenced by anything new at this point—I was just really into comics art and music to the exclusion of almost everything else. Everything except girls, that is, but I was way more successful at the comics, art, and music.... Comic-collecting music nerds who spent all their time in studios covered in graphite and paint and smelling like printer’s ink just weren’t very appealing, apparently— surprise, surprise! MM: And toward the end of college, were you already preparing a portfolio that you could take to conventions and shows, to 26

show to editors and artists? CHRIS: I was! As I’ve mentioned, I had done several non-super-hero comic strips and books for various class projects, but I had stopped working on my own more traditional super-hero comics before my sophomore year. It wasn’t until my last year of school, feeling sick-to-death of my design classes and with graduation looming that I picked it up again. I was more determined than ever to do comics for a living by the time my four years were up. I had bought the first Marvel Comics Try-Out Book in 1983 or ’84—it contained sample script pages, blank Bristol board pages for pencillers to work on, blue-line pencil pages for inkers, inked pages for colorists, and guides on every step for prospective cartoonists— and I think I had taken a shot at pencilling some of the pages then but abandoned them. Well, in ’87 or ’88 I finished all four or so of the pages and sent copies to Marvel. When I didn’t hear anything by the time I graduated, I knew I had to keep working at it, but I was blindly confident that I would get into the business eventually—I just had to keep practicing and getting better.

Part 3:

Bringin’ Down the Hammer(locke)

MM: You graduated in ’88 with a degree in Graphic Design... and were still in your cap and gown when an as-yet-unnamed DC editor approached you with a script and a contract, right?

folks in Dale City, then I started sending out résumés for graphic design-related jobs. I had decided I had to do something to make a living while I continued trying to get into comics, so why not go with what I had just gone to school to learn? I quickly learned from a few of the companies I contacted that I had actually graduated with a pretty comprehensive knowledge of tools and techniques that were no longer being used in the design field. It seems that while I was learning how to use typesetting machines and stat cameras and such, the graphics world had been completely revolutionized by computers and needed computer graphics specialists, not whatever I was. I don’t want to slam JMU too much, but it wasn’t a huge school and I don’t think they could afford too many computers, so we had only the briefest introduction to the Macintosh. I left school knowing pretty much how to turn on a computer, how to do basic word processing, and how to use a mouse. I think also that the instructors were very much old school design guys and thought that a good grounding in the basics should see us through, while completely misjudging how thoroughly and how quickly computers would change the field. Whatever the case, I was almost unemployable in my major! I was finally hired by a company that still used the old physical paste-up methods and all those other things that computers had made obsolete. That company was NTW (National Tire Wholesale), whose corporate headquarters happened to be in Dale City. At NTW I did absolutely no drawing—not like my time at The Rail Company; I was just one of the people tasked with doing the newspaper advertisements for all of the NTW locations across the

CHRIS: [laughs] It wasn’t that easy or that quick, unfortunately! MM: Knowing what you wanted to do and having prepared for that, what did you do once you got out of school? What was your game plan? CHRIS: I took a week or two off and moved back in with my

country. It was just hours and hours of shooting tiny tire photos with an old stat camera and pasting them up on boards full of tire model numbers and prices. It wasn’t very challenging, and I hated the corporate world we had to constantly deal with. I hated having to wear a tie and nice clothes to a job where I handled photographic chemicals and hot sticky paste-up wax. I hated the staff meetings and corporate functions. Basically, I hated that it wasn’t very creative and especially hated that it wasn’t comics. I absolutely could not do this job for very long or I was going to end up stuck there, because it was the only place that would hire me. I decided that I had to get into comics. I started working on samples at night after work, one set for DC Comics, one for Marvel. If they didn’t pan out, I planned to try the larger independent publishers around at the time: Comico and Dark Horse. If that didn’t work, I’d figure out how to publish my own comics. Whatever the case, I thought I was good enough and more than ready enough and I was going to go for it and I was going to draw comics for a living, no matter what! I plotted out a little four-page Mr. Miracle story and a four-page Spider-Man story and worked and re-worked the art until it was as good as I could get it. Looking at the sample pages today, I see all the typical newbie storytelling mistakes I made—things overlapping into the wrong panels for proper storyflow, mainly—and I’m surprised at how loose the pencils are, but there’s definitely enthusiasm bursting through. I was very proud of them at the time and sent photocopies off to the publishers. Then I went back to work at NTW and waited. MM: Yeah... I’m sure that everyone who looks at this Mister Miracle page is going to say the same thing—beautiful! It seems like every artist is their own worst critic... but we’ll come back to that later. So, you put together your portfolios. Did you send them out or were they primarily for in-person reviews at shows and conventions? CHRIS: Actually I didn’t even put together a portfolio. I just did four pages of samples

for each company, made photocopies, attached brief cover letters and mailed the photocopies in [envelopes] addressed to “Submissions Editor, DC Comics” and “Submissions Editor, Marvel Comics.” And, back then, editors didn’t do portfolio reviews at conventions—at least not at little Holiday Inn ballroom shows like we had in our area—so I never even considered it a possibility that anyone at a con could give me a job. I also seem to remember that I didn’t go to any conventions at this time. I think the next convention I attended after high school was a San Diego Comic-Con that I attended as a pro guest in 1991. 29

Previous Page: “This is the first of the four sample pages I sent to DC Comics in 1989 which eventually led to my career in comics. Above: Cactus Jaq and Sahara Skyhawk talk in their quarters. Page 15 of Hammerlocke #4. Mr. Miracle ™ and ©2009 DC Comics. Hammerlocke ™ and ©2009 Misc. Mayhem Productions.

Right: Chris isn’t very happy with his work for 1990’s Batman Annual #14, but deemed this panel passable. Below: Page 37 of Justice League Quarterly #1 (1990). Inks by Bruce Patterson. Next Page: The Martian Manhunter appears in his natural guise in this splash page for Justice League America Annual #5 (1991). Batman, Justice League, Martian Manhunter ™ and ©2009 DC Comics.

MM: You said that Michael Golden gave you a nice review and some real encouragement. Were there other professionals you took it to who were also constructive and helpful? CHRIS: No—again, I was feeling trapped and depressed by the NTW job and I just sat alone in my parents’ house and did my samples and mailed them in. I guess I was pretty confident that I was good enough to get into the business, that I knew what I was doing and had a decent enough shot at it. I was so set on getting into comics that I couldn’t imagine it not working, which is weird thinking, I know, and it was strange that I was so confident—very not like me—but the only thing I’ve ever been confident about in my life is my drawing ability, so I guess that was a lot of it. I’ve never been afraid of hard work when it comes to drawing, and I just knew that I would keep at it, doing samples and submitting them, until someone hired me. Eventually I’d be so good from all the practice drawing samples that someone couldn’t help but give me a job! As for reviews and encouragement, I hadn’t met any more pros since high school, and like I said, I don’t think I went to any conventions, either. I did get some feedback from people whose opinion I trusted: my brother and my friends who were into comics and not above busting my chops and tearing me down if called 30

down my day job—I was that enthusiastic and impatient! This must have impressed them because they told me that they were going to start giving me actual paying work—I was in! The only thing Richard Bruning wanted me to improve on was tightening up my pencils. He thought I was a little loose and it would be hard for inkers to interpret my linework. He was right, and I started to put his advice into practice—you can see where it’s led today: pencil art that is sometimes too tight. It’s all Richard Bruning’s fault! Actually, that’s not true; I think some of my looseness at that stage was due to me trying to fudge over things I wasn’t good at drawing. I think confidence, practice, and learning how to draw better is what actually led to how tight my art is today....

for. They all seemed to think the samples were pretty good, and their opinions mattered to me, so that helped. MM: How did your Secret Origins job come about? That was your first professional work, right? CHRIS: [laughs] Nope—but until now, I’ve told very few people what my first published comics work was because it was so bad it was embarrassing, plus it was uncredited, so no one needed to know! But let me start from the beginning.... Two weeks after I sent my samples to DC Comics, my mom called me while I was at work at NTW and told me I had a letter from DC Comics in the mail. Needless to say, I couldn’t think about anything else the rest of the afternoon, and I rushed home after work to read the letter. It was from Richard Bruning, who was DC’s art director then, and it started with the line, “Where have you been all our lives?” [laughter] I’ll never forget that—I still get chills! Anyway, Richard went on to say that in all seriousness, I showed a lot of promise and if I could prove that I could meet deadlines, DC Comics had work for me. What a day! And it had only taken two weeks; I was prepared for months of waiting. I did learn later from Richard Bruning that while my samples were okay enough to get his attention, the situation was helped along by the fact that he had just cleaned several months’ worth of submissions off his desk and my photocopies were the first new ones to land in his inbox one morning. Anyway, over the course of the next month or two, DC put me through a little try-out period. They had me submit more samples specifically showing my ability to draw different locations and non-super-hero characters in non-super-heroic situations. Then, when I proved I could do those things, they gave me a speed test: they sent me a short script for a Secret Origins story, “The Secret Origin of the Space Museum,” which they told me would never see publication—this was just a test, and Carmine Infantino was drawing the actual one that would eventually be published. They gave me about a week to draw 13 pages, and I think I finished it in three or four days—while still holding 31

After that, Richard brought up Hammerlocke. Since my Mr. Miracle samples were pretty full of sci-fi stuff and I had shown a flair for the genre in my “Space Museum” story, he thought I’d be a good choice for a new sci-fi series he was editing. The series, Hammerlocke, was created by Tom Joyner and Keith Wilson. Tom was the writer, while Keith was going to ink the book. The series hadn’t actually been green-lit yet—DC required creators to submit a proposal first and create a first issue for review before they gave the go-ahead to anything in those days—so Richard flew me up to New York partly to introduce me around the offices and partly to meet Tom and Keith to discuss Hammerlocke and see if we’d all hit it off. I can’t adequately express how exciting this was. In the space of a few months I had gone from wanna-be to working cartoonist being flown up to the corporate headquarters for story conferences! These were the halcyon days of 1989, when DC was riding high on the first Batman movie and could afford to fly creators around just to talk about stuff! Anyway, it was lots of fun and Tom and Keith and I seemed very compatible, and I came back home to work on Hammerlocke #1 feeling like some sort of bigshot. We finished the first issue and submitted it for approval... and heard nothing for months! I was still working for NTW and hating every minute of it, but it let me move out of my parents’ house into a place of my own. I set up a little home studio, but after Hammerlocke #1, I had nothing to work on for a very long time. I was just beginning to feel my hopes and dreams crumbling when I was offered a licensing

MM: So what really was your first paying job? CHRIS: My first actual paying job for DC Comics was an inventory Starman job written by Peter David, but the series was cancelled before it ever saw print. I never got my artwork back, and I found out years later that DC had used the pages to test out new inkers—they actually sent prospective inkers my original pages! Poor inkers!

Previous Page: The Starbridge—under attack! Splash page from Hammerlocke #6. Left: Sahara Skyhawk takes flight in this panel from Hammerlocke. Below: Archer Locke takes on Hugo Tharn’s giant spider robot. Hammerlocke #8, page 2. Hammerlocke ™ and ©2009 Misc. Mayhem Productions.

job—a little comic story insert that would be stapled in the middle of some upcoming Superman and Batman comics. This project was a promotion for some little toy cars and involved a group of kids and some Don Knotts-lookalike character thwarting some ridiculous super-villain using these toy cars. DC sent me the toys for reference and told me I had a weekend to do the entire eightpage job. I did it—I literally didn’t sleep all weekend, but I did it! I was still pretty awful and my pencils were still very loose, so they had Joe Orlando come in and correct things and clean up the kids, then the whole mess was inked by Romeo Tanghal. In the end, the finished product looked very little like my work—except for that stupid villain— but the speed with which I had delivered it once again impressed DC and got me more work right away, although to this day I am amazed DC ever gave me any more work— that toy car story was the worst piece of crap I have ever perpetrated with a pencil! The next job, while Hammerlocke was still in limbo, was the “Secret Origin of Karate Kid” story you referred to. Embarrassed by the toy car story and jazzed to be working on a Legion project, I did a better job on this one, and it’s what eventually led to me working on Legionnaires, which led to everything else that’s come since. 33

MM: How did it feel to finally see your work in print in a comic book? CHRIS: Well, I had a couple of jobs under my belt, but nothing had been published yet. Eventually, I heard that the Batman and Superman issues containing the toy car insert were hitting the stands. Even though I hated that job with a passion, it was still major-league exciting to know that I was finally going to have something published professionally. I rushed to the local comic shop after getting off work at NTW the day the books were supposed to come out— only to find the shop had received their books late and they wouldn’t be putting them out for sale until the next day. Aargh! I was so impatient I begged and pleaded and eventually admitted that my first story had been published and I was dying to see it. The shop took pity and let me have a copy of the Superman book early, and I went home with my first published comics work!

CHRIS: The Secret Origins issue came out not long after the toy car thing, followed by that hideous Justice League Europe issue. With the exception of Hammerlocke #1, which was still in limbo, everything else was pretty much published in the order I drew the jobs. There was an issue of the recently relaunched Legion of Super-Heroes which retold the team’s origin story, followed by the Batman Annual written by Andy Helfer. That annual is a job I think I got too early in my career—I just wasn’t good enough yet for the material. I could do so much better today. Then I did lots more Justice League work: the 80-page Justice League Quarterly #1, several covers, and a chapter in JLA Annual #5.

MM: At what point did you start working on comics full-time? CHRIS: Stung by that period where I had no comics work at all, I was still hanging on to my day job, too nervous about paying the bills to quit. I was slogging through my days working at NTW, then rushing home at 5 p.m. to draw comics until about 2 a.m. every night, then getting up at 7 a.m. to go back to NTW. This went on for a year. Hammerlocke was still awaiting approval, and nothing else had hit the stands yet, but I was starting to get offered quite a bit of future comics work. I drew a Justice League Europe fill-in—a rival for worst piece of crap with that toy car thing—which apparently somehow impressed editor Andy Helfer enough to have him request me for a Batman Annual he had just written. Batman! And this was still my first few months in the business! If that worked out, Andy wanted me to do more Justice League work for him. Once I realized I had a year’s worth of comics work lined up in front of me, that was it—I quit NTW and never looked back, never worked an office job again and have survived on my comics work ever since! MM: So, aside from the bad toy car thing, your first published work at DC was the story in Secret Origins #42? 35

Previous Page: Ice and Blue Beetle... no more! Cover art for Justice League America #54. Below: Unpublished pencils for the cover of Justice League America #56. The published version of this cover has J’onn J’onzz sitting rather than standing. Blue Beetle, Ice, Martian Manhunter, Justice League ™ and ©2009 DC Comics.

MM: You’re such an artist! [laughter] That Batman job looks great! CHRIS: Shut up! [laughter] MM: Honestly, I’ve got it right here in my hands and re-read it for the sake of the interview—it’s really nice! Very smooth! Considering this was still early in your professional career—and a 40-page story—the artwork is solid and very consistent—no signs towards the end of racing against a deadline. Did you feel a lot of pressure on this story because it was Batman?

CHRIS: I am definitely my own toughest critic. It’s not all low selfesteem, though—once I see something in my work that I’m doing wrong or once I notice what I’m bad at drawing—usually after a book’s in print, unfortunately—I can work on those deficient areas and get better. This Batman Annual was still only months into my career, so, yeah, it seemed unreal and like I had to “knock it out of the park” so to speak, because this was going to be very visible. I was fueled purely by enthusiasm that early on and didn’t realize how much I didn’t yet know about figure-drawing and storytelling. Lots of people seem to like that annual.... Like I say about all my old work when asked at conventions, it was absolutely the best I could do at the time. I never hacked anything out, but it’s difficult to look at now. As far as deadlines go, I think I was still really good at making all my due dates at this time. I was very fast for the first two years, up until Legionnaires. MM: You said that you’d always known that you wanted to work in comics, that you couldn’t really see yourself doing anything else. Now that you were in, was it everything you’d imagined? 36

CHRIS: It really was—and more—but not always in a good way. The good: I was just absolutely thrilled to be doing comics for a living—to be able to draw for a living— and I loved being a freelancer and working at home. As I’ve mentioned quite a few times already, I’m a solitary type, so not going into an office was sheer bliss. I also loved seeing my work in print, out on the stands at local comic shops—something I still get excited about today. Meeting or getting to work with famous names out of my fanboy days, like Dick Giordano and Denny O’Neill, was pretty freakin’ sweet, too! The bad: I threw myself into my work so much that I kind of lost touch with some of the few friends I had. My free time or off hours also started to diminish and would often disappear for months on end. This and the sleep deprivation that freelancers have to endure to get the job done at times are still the worst parts of this job and are less tolerable the older I get.

MM: You mentioned the JLA Annual #5. Did you enjoy working with a large cast of characters like that? CHRIS: I was a big fan of the Giffen JLA books, so I did indeed enjoy working on all of those books and getting to see Keith’s layouts for everything. I’ve never been intimidated at all by the large cast, which is a good thing considering some of the books I’ve ended up working on! MM: You did a handful of other jobs including an issue of Legends of the Dark Knight and Legion of Super-Heroes #33—and I don’t want to gloss over any of these—but it looks like your big break was really Hammerlocke. Were you able to have fun with this series? Were the characters all your own designs? CHRIS: Please feel free to gloss over the Legends of the Dark Knight book—it looked better than the Batman Annual, but it still makes me hang my head in shame when I 37

Above: Double-page spread from the opening battle scene of Hammerlocke #8. Next Page: Convention sketch of the core members of the Legion of Super-Heroes as Chris designed them for Legionnaires. Hammerlocke ™ and ©2009 Misc. Mayhem Productions. Cosmic Boy, Legionnaires, Live Wire, Saturn Girl ™ and ©2009 DC Comics.

look at it. Hammerlocke was a big break in that it was my first real job for DC. It languished in approval limbo for so long that I did a full year’s worth of work before ever coming back to work on Hammerlocke #2, and in that year I did the two Legion jobs—Secret Origins #42 and Legion #8—which led to me being chosen as the artist on Legionnaires. I consider my Legion work to be my real big break, because almost every job I managed to get until after I worked on Supreme was offered to me because of Legionnaires, either because of the connections I made while working on Legionnaires or because editors had seen my work on that book. Getting back to Hammerlocke, though, eventually it was approved, and I did have fun with the series. Tom Joyner and Keith 38

Wilson were overflowing with ideas and this was definitely infectious. We poured everything we had into that book. I didn’t actually design any of the good guys— those were all pre-existing designs Keith had drawn himself for the proposal before I came along—but I did design the villain, Hugo Tharn, and all of his robot bodies. As for the near-future locations and technology, Tom and Keith supplied plenty of reference material, both written description and visual, and I took what they supplied and ran with it, adding and refining things sometimes. I loved being able to work on a science-fiction series and I loved being a part of the “world-building” process for the book—something that has become my favorite part of any series I’ve worked on.

Part 4:

Adventures in Outer Space

MM: Which brings us to the Legion assignment. Though Hammerlocke had been steady, monthly work, it had always been under the “mini-series” umbrella. This would be your first on-going assignment on a rather high-profile title. How did that all come about?

CHRIS: It’s all a little hazy now due to the number of people involved and the twists and turns the project took, but I’ll try to answer this as accurately as I can. Mark Waid had been the editor on the Legion-related Secret Origins story I drew, and I think even then DC was considering a “young Legion” book; I seem to recall Mark mentioning this to me at some point. At the very least, he mentioned that he’d love to see me do more Legion work. Later, by the time I was offered the story in Legion of Super-Heroes #8 retelling the origin story, there was definitely a new Legion book in the works. Here’s the part I can’t quite remember: either they were already considering me for the new Legion book when I drew that origin story, or the story made them consider me for the new “young Legion” series. Either way, by the time I finished that issue, I had been offered the ongoing series, which was originally proposed as just a modernized retelling of classic Legion history with a less dated look and feel. First I had to finish everything else I’d already committed to draw, such as some Justice League covers and the remaining eight issues of Hammerlocke, which were finally green-lit around the time I was offered the new Legion series. Just to complicate the matter a little more, I was offered the job as regular artist on JLA just as I was finishing Hammerlocke. There was almost no question of which book I’d rather do, since I really wanted to do a science-fiction series and I loved the Legion, but I hated turning down the JLA gig because it was the first time I’d had to turn anything down since starting in comics, and I had no idea if I was burning a bridge. Plus, it was a much bigger and better-selling book at the time. I turned it down anyway, and it became only the first of many times I turned down more lucrative work to draw what I wanted instead. Anyway, while I was finishing up my other projects, the new Legion book acquired a name, Legionnaires, and started to get more complicated behind the scenes. The powers-that-be started to get nervous about retelling existing history, which seems really funny now in light of how many relaunches there have been of not only the Legion books, but just about every series out there. But back in 1991, ’92, there just hadn’t been many relaunches or reboots... Byrne’s Superman comes to mind, but not much else. Plus, since we weren’t allowed to use Superboy in the history of the Legion anymore, retelling the old stories started to seem too messy. I’m not sure who came up with the idea—I think it was 39

Keith Giffen—but the existing Legion book was about to introduce young versions— possible clones—of all the Legion characters into the storyline. These youngsters were referred to as the “SW6 Batch,” and it was decided that the SW6 batch would now be the Legionnaires, spun off into their own book, and their stories would take place mainly on Earth—New Earth, actually— while the older Legion characters would spend their time out in deep space having adventures. Incidentally, I can now reveal to Legion fans that the young SW6 batch was always intended to be the real Legion characters, kept in stasis, while the older versions of the characters were supposed to be revealed some day as the clones. I don’t think this was ever covered in any of the books, and Legionnaires has since been written out of continuity, so it’s all pointless now, but I just thought I’d get that out there. This was all eventually approved, and we had a few story conferences with the creative teams from both books— writer/artist Keith Giffen, writers Tom and Mary Bierbaum, artist Jason Pearson, myself, colorist Tom McCraw, and editor Michael Eury. MM: And what did SW6 stand for? CHRIS: Supposedly it was taken from the address or postal code of a friend, who was also a Legion fan, of Tom and Mary Bierbaum’s or something like that. I don’t quite know or remember what it meant in terms of the story—probably just some colorful techno-babble. With all of the set-up now nailed down, I started designing characters and new costumes with an eye towards unifying the large cast and making the group look more like a team. I don’t remember why, but one day early on in the design process I added a utility belt with a big round belt buckle featuring the current “L” Legion symbol. I also came up with the “stripe down the middle” look for all of the costumes, and that seemed to do the trick!

To this day, I believe they’re still using the big round belt buckle, so that’s kind of cool. MM: Did you get along well with the writers and editor? CHRIS: I really got along well with the Legionnaires team. Everyone clicked from the beginning and worked well together. Tom and Mary were a joy to work with and always encouraging, as was editor Michael Eury, who made working on the Legion one of the best professional experiences I’ve had. I also had the good fortune to have Jason Pearson recommend an inker friend to me, his studio-mate, Karl Story. I liked what Karl was doing with Jason’s pencils and 41

Previous Page: Al Gordon was another inker who worked well over Chris’ pencils and the two worked together on many jobs, such as this cover for Legion of SuperHeroes: Secret Files & Origins #2, which was originally intended for Legionnaires. Above: Convention sketch of Saturn Girl. Legionnaires and all related characters ™ and ©2009 DC Comics.

Michael tried him out over my art and it was fantastic! Karl has since become my inker of choice and a good friend.

Above: Chris’ pencils and Al Gordon’s inks for the cover of Legionnaires #68. Next Page: Pencils for an unpublished cover intended for Superboy. Legionnaires and all related characters ™ and ©2009 DC Comics. Superboy ™ and ©2009 respective owner.

MM: Did you find yourself changing your style—or maybe a better term would be your approach—to to the stories as you went along? CHRIS: Well, before Legionnaires, my work and my “style” had started to gel and had begun to look like it eventually would as early as the Justice League Quarterly I drew— that’s the first book I drew that I think looks like my work today in any way. Part of that was due to me continuing to tighten up my pencil art and part was due the inker on JLQ, Bruce Patterson, who was the most faithful inker I had had up to that point. By faithful I mean he followed the pencils very closely. Previously, I had really heavy inkers working over me and the finished books bore little resemblance to what I had actually drawn in pencil. This 42

didn’t bother me all that much at first—it was kind of cool seeing my work inked by other people all that first year or so, but once someone inked my pencils and gave me back pretty much exactly what I put down on paper, it was a revelation. First, I decided that that’s how I wanted it from then on—faithful inking, I mean— it was like I didn’t know that’s what I wanted until I saw it for the first time. Second, I started to notice all the mistakes and bad habits in my work with no one correcting my anatomy or cleaning up after me. I really wanted to improve my drawing, but I was caught up in trying to make deadlines and couldn’t afford to really work out any problems. I really wanted to do my absolute best on Legionnaires, so I started taking more time on my Legionnaires pages than I had on anything else, trying to get everything perfect and trying to get down on paper the much cooler pages I was seeing in my head when I read the scripts.

The more time I spent on my work, the more dissatisfied I became with it, though, and this in turn led me to spend even more time fixing and correcting. A really bad cycle to get into. The end result was a massive slow-down in my work pace and lots of missed deadlines. Sure, drawing 22 main characters a month was no easy task and led to some long work days, but the real reason I started blowing my Legionnaires deadlines was that I was just slowing down as I drew and re-drew panels until I was satisfied with them. I was kind of having a crisis, I guess—I wanted my art to be so much better, I wanted my figures and faces to look more convincing and natural and my backgrounds to look more realistic, but I didn’t know how to improve on the fly other than taking more time to work out the problems. I essentially changed the way I worked almost completely while drawing Legionnaires: I started to refer to anatomy and figure-drawing books, and I started drawing from life—holding poses and expressions in a studio mirror and drawing from that—or photo reference

for settings and props, all of which took lots more time than making it all up out of my head, which is what I had been doing previously. Something had to give in order for me to fit in all of the preliminary work and research I was doing, and unfortunately the schedule is what ended up suffering—along with the rest of the creative team, as they had to wait for me to finish my part before they could do their jobs. MM: Did this dissatisfaction with your work continue to the end of your run on Legionnaires? CHRIS: Oh, far beyond, unfortunately. It continues today. I still have a very hard time sending off pages or leaving finished pages alone if I see something that could be done better. It’s driven almost everyone I’ve worked with or for crazy, since I’ve frequently sent in patches for panels and often times completely redrawn pages after mailing them in. I’ve produced and rejected scores of unfinished, and sometimes completely finished, pencilled pages since Legionnaires. Close to half of my stack of original 44

pages I display at conventions is made up of these rejects. Perfectionism gone insane or constantly striving for quality no matter the cost—I can’t quite decide. Maybe I’m just nuts! Whatever the case, I don’t recall re-drawing or rejecting anything until I was drawing Legionnaires and really feeling that dissatisfaction and the need to actively improve my drawing. MM: This must have slowed you down tremendously. Did this ultimately lead to your leaving the book? CHRIS: Most certainly! I was seriously behind as of issue #6, so issues #7 and 8 were given to Adam Hughes and Colleen Doran, which I didn’t mind at all—I love their work and loved seeing my new costume designs drawn by other people. I was still getting slower and couldn’t pull out of it, so Adam and then-studiomates Brian Stelfreeze and Joe Phillips were recruited to draw chunks of most, if not all, of my later issues. I was embarrassed that I was falling behind, and I was receiving lots of editorial heat, so much so that I felt like I was seriously hurting the book itself and the careers and incomes of the other creators who had to do their jobs in less time than usual because of my lateness. The whole thing had me agonizing for a few months and eventually I decided the best thing I could do for myself, the other creators, and the book, was to quit and let someone else draw the series. Despite fears that I had seriously messed up and might have doomed my career only a few years into it, the stress disappeared instantly and Legionnaires soon got a steady and dependable art team in the Moy brothers. MM: This is exactly the same struggling and self-doubt I’ve heard from many artists, but many of them didn’t want to dwell on it or, in some cases, even mention it. I think it’s fantastic that you’re sharing this here, and that it’ll be an eye-opener to a lot of artists, just starting out and already established, that you all go through this. CHRIS: No reason to hide it, and I’d like fans to also read this kind of stuff. I sometimes think they assume artists are late because they’re busy sitting by a pool lighting cigars with royalty cash or some-

thing. This job is fun, but it’s hard work and it’s easy to get lazy and stop moving forward. It’s important to me to get better, if not with every job then at least every year I want to notice an improvement. I’ve certainly fallen into all the freelancer traps at one time or another—sleeping in too much, blowing off a work day here and there, allowing myself to get distracted by whatever’s going on at home—but the main reason I haven’t been a faster or steadier “producer” is my dissatisfaction with my finished work. I re-draw, re-think, tinker with, and abandon stuff until I’m finally happy with it, and this often gets me into trouble. 45

Previous Page Top: Ultra Boy convention sketch. Previous Page Bottom: Pencils for the cover of Legionnaires #72. Above: Uncanny X-Men #304, page 28. Inks by Terry Austin. Legionnaires and all related characters ™ and ©2009 DC Comics. Banshee, Bishop, X-Men ™ and ©2009 Marvel Characters, Inc.

Top Left: Chris’ first foray into the Star Wars universe—a trading card for the Star Wars Galaxy set. Inks by Wade von Grawbadger, about which Chris says, “He did it as a favor to me, and I later returned the favor by drawing a cover for an issue of Negative Burn that he had a story in. I feel bad that Wade was never credited on the card or in the Star Wars Galaxy, Vol. 2 art book that reprinted the card.” Top Right and Next Page: Collect ’em all! More trading card art, this time for a Youngblood set.

MM: Did you feel at this point that you were falling apart? That this self-imposed pressure was starting to unravel your plans for a lifetime in comics? CHRIS: I did indeed sweat bullets, but I was still pretty determined to make this career work. The phone didn’t ring for one very tense week, and I didn’t know who to call myself—I just assumed I was persona non grata at DC, and I didn’t yet have many contacts at other companies. I remember talking on the phone with other creators and putting it out there that I was looking for work. MM: What did you do to continue forward, to work through it? CHRIS: I had done a few Spider-Man Classics covers and six pages in an issue of X-Men by this point, so I let Marvel know I had some free time to do more work with them. Then at the end of that week of unemployment, I went to a comic convention in either Philadelphia or New York. Shortly after 46

arriving at the con, I ran into former Legion editor Michael Eury at the Dark Horse Comics booth and learned he was currently editing for them. When he learned I was available, he asked me to draw a one-shot book he had in the works for Dark Horse, spotlighting a character called Titan, part of the short-lived Dark Horse super-hero line. After I accepted that job, I think my calls to other creators started returning results because the phone started ringing again with offers. Every editor I talked to said they just assumed I was busy at DC or they would have called even sooner. So, my period of unemployment was pretty brief! I jumped around all over the place for a few years then, doing just loads of pin-ups, trading cards, and covers for every company around—it was a pretty exciting time to be working in comics, with sales through the roof, high page rates, and new series popping up every week. I did a Star Wars card for Topps—a huge thrill—and some Youngblood and WildC.A.T.s work for Image.

Below: Pencils for a very limited run trading card set given out at conventions to promote the second WildStar miniseries, which Chris was to do with writer/inker Al Gordon. The cards were used as back cover art for the mini-series. Next Page: The opening page of Terry Austin and Chris’ adaptation of Alan Dean Foster’s 1978 novel Splinter of the Mind’s Eye—the first “Expanded Universe” Star Wars story.

I designed a couple of action figures and drew the artwork for lunchboxes and some cookie tins for Marvel, as well as covers for some of their 2099 books. I even did a few jobs for DC Comics again: some Legion pin-ups and some guest pages for Starman. For some reason, quite a bit of work I did during this time was never published, including several covers I drew for various Valiant books. Three covers for Ninjak were published, but I wish they’d remained in the vaults. Then inker Al Gordon and I started preliminary work on a sequel to Al’s WildStar series for Image. We produced a little limited edition run of trading cards and some pin-ups, and I started a couple of pages, but the series was ultimately abandoned. Thanks to Al, I had begun talking with Terry Austin on the phone and this finally led to me settling down with my

first real sustained interior work since Legionnaires, an adaptation of the Star Wars novel, Splinter of the Mind’s Eye. MM: Wow, Star Wars comes full circle! Were you excited at the opportunity to work on some of your favorite characters, to become part of the mythology? CHRIS: Unbelievably excited! I wanted to do the best Star Wars series ever, and for me that meant all the “stuff” had to be right—the ships and blasters and lightsabers had to be correct, and everything had to be consistent with the Star Wars universe. I was essentially hoping to draw a Star Wars book that I would want to read—that the 11-year-old me would think was Star Wars done right. MM: About how much time had passed between Legionnaires and the Star Wars gig? CHRIS: Two years more or less. I think I drew my last Legionnaires issue in the middle of 1993 and started work on Splinter of the Mind’s Eye in late 1995. MM: After a spell away from doing sequentials/interiors, were you hesitant to jump back in? CHRIS: Not at all—I was itching to do interiors again. To be quite honest, I prefer doing interior pages to covers any day. I agonize even more over my cover art than I do over pages, and I am almost always really unhappy with my covers. I always take way longer than necessary on the stupid things, too. So many other people can do a better cover than me that I often just ask editors to get someone else to do covers for books I draw. Only in the last few years have I done any that I think work really well, and knowing me I’ll think they stink in a couple of years. Anyway, enough ranting about covers! Basically, it was fun doing trading cards and pin-ups, cookie tins, and the like, but I wanted to tell stories, to move characters around, so I was more than ready to get back to really drawing comics. MM: This was going to be based on the Alan Dean Foster novel, Splinter of the Mind’s Eye, which came out between the first two movies and featured a romantic relationship

Above: Splinter of the Mind’s Eye #2, page 10 and #3, page 1. Series writer/inker Terry Austin says, “I confess—I brought Darth Vader on stage earlier than in the novel, because I always hated how he sort of just jumped out of the bushes at the end of the story. There’s something to be said for creating anticipation in the reader for what’s going to happen!” Next Page: Pencils for Splinter of the Mind’s Eye #4. Star Wars and all related characters ™ and ©2009 Lucasfilm Ltd.

between Luke and Leia prior to our learning that they were brother and sister. Had you been a fan of the book? CHRIS: I snapped it up when it first came out. It was one of the first pieces of Star Wars merchandise ever. And, yeah, I believe Terry was directed to get rid of the Luke/Leia stuff. It’s funny, but in the years since the novel was released, the Star Wars people have taken great pains to make it seem as if they had the entire saga planned out from the beginning, but Splinter of the Mind’s Eye makes that kind of hard to believe. MM: How was it working with Terry? He’s known primarily as an “inker extraordinaire,” but he’s a great writer as well. He was going to both write and ink this project—did that make you feel more involved in the story? CHRIS: I loved working with Terry! He is 50

an inker extraordinaire, and as someone who grew up loving his work, it was a big, big thrill to have him ink my pencils. I think Terry also did a great job of adapting the novel and adding little bits of his own—like including Admiral Piett from Empire—which tied the entire thing into the mythology even tighter. Having Terry as a writer didn’t necessarily make me feel more involved in the story, because we had a pretty firm blueprint we had to follow already, but at first it made me feel like we were working in our own little private bubble. I say “at first” because we learned exactly who was in charge when Lucasfilm had me redraw quite a bit of the first two issues, eliminating any scenes showing stormtroopers with their helmets off and changing the two Yuzzem creatures in every panel in which they appeared. Oh, well—it was their property, I was just happy to get the chance to play around with it.

Below: Terry: “By the fourth issue, the new editor wanted to replace Chris because he had fallen so far behind the deadline. I assured him I could make up the time by doing all the lettering corrections and production myself—happy ending! Chris wasn’t fired and the project was completed as intended.” Darth Vader, Luke Skywalker, Star Wars ™ and ©2009 Lucasfilm Ltd.

MM: And most importantly, were you able to remedy your desire to re-draw things and develop a rhythm again? CHRIS: Um... no... I still fell behind and probably became editor Diana Schutz’s least favorite freelancer for a while! Nothing she could do or threaten me with made me want to sacrifice any quality or hack pages out. This was the highest profile job I’d ever done, and I wasn’t going to hack out something that was going to become a part of this thing—the Star Wars saga—that was so important for me. Not very professional and I’m not at all proud of it. It has not escaped my notice that

Dark Horse Comics hasn’t been falling all over themselves to hire me again, but I still have fans telling me that our adaptation is one of the best Star Wars series ever done, and that’s something I am proud of. Having said that, and no matter how long I labored over the series, it was a big flop at the time. Someone once told me it was the first unsuccessful Dark Horse Star Wars comic in terms of sales. I feel horrible that late shipping played a part in that, but issue #1 hit the stands right when the comics industry’s X-Men/Spider-Man/Imagefueled bubble burst in late ’95/early ’96. I’m sure that didn’t help! I had turned down an X-Men stint to do Splinter, much like I had turned down a regular job drawing the JLA to do the significantly less popular Legionnaires, so, boy, did I feel like I was making all the wrong career choices, moneywise! Not that I had chosen comics as a getrich-quick scheme or anything, mind you... I’m not that crazy! MM: That was indeed a tough time for the industry, and yet a great reason why the book didn’t do all that well rather than your being a little late. I find that fans are very forgiving as far as timeliness goes if the reason for the delay is quality. That said, you did put your all into this, it being a Star Wars property and a childhood dream come true. Were you exhausted once it was finished? CHRIS: Not at all. These days, I feel like I need to take a week off after finishing a mini-series, and the last few pages are always nightmarish all-nighter affairs, but I actually have no bad memories of doing the actual work on Splinter. I was very jazzed to do it and kept excited after it was all over by getting the series ready for the trade paperback—my first collected work. I provided tons of extra material for the back pages, and they even asked me to write commentary for this stuff, so I guess it wasn’t just my first collection, it was my first published writing as well.

Part 5: MM: Following Splinter of the Mind’’s Eye, what came next?

CHRIS: I don’t remember the exact details, but someone from Rob Liefeld’s company called me—I don’t remember what it was called at that point, maybe it was already Maximum Press—and offered me work doing a Youngblood Annual. I was itching to draw super-heroes again after a bit of a break from them, so I jumped in and drew about 3/4 of the annual before being asked to stop. The annual’s writer, Eric Stephenson, was also the writer and editor of New Men, a young-mutant team book kind of series, and he asked me to work on that series with him and put off the annual for a while. He wanted to change the direction of New Men a little, so we had lots of character and plot discussions, and I even redesigned the cast and all of their costumes, something I always enjoy. I love designing characters and working out all the little details, something I hadn’t done very much since Legionnaires. A lot of friends and peers kind of scratched their heads, wondering why I was going from Star Wars

The Team Supreme— A Strong Combination to some virtually unknown book for a smallish company. Well, the phone just wasn’t ringing with offers, and I’d rather work on a book where I was instrumental in the design and overall look than work as just another guy in a long line of fill-in artists on JLA Annuals or Wolverine one-shots anyway. Plus, if it was good enough for the likes of Alan Moore and Rick Veitch, then it was good enough for me.

MM: This is Eric Stephenson who is now the guy keeping the ship running at Image Comics. CHRIS: The same guy, and I have to say I enjoyed my time working with and for him. MM: And so you re-designed and relaunched New Men, and you did several issues of that. Is that when they tapped you to take over the art chores on Supreme? CHRIS: I did three issues in all, plus loads of pin-ups and character designs and even a cover for an issue that we never got to do. I think Eric may have mentioned me drawing Supreme before New Men ended, but I can’t remember for sure. MM: Were you personally chosen by Alan Moore, or do you know how that came about? CHRIS: Once poor sales finally killed New Men, Eric hired me to draw one issue of Supreme—the 50th issue—as well as a pinup. By the end of the issue, Eric had asked me if I wanted to take over the series as the regular artist, so I guess he and Rob liked what they were seeing, and presumably Alan did as well. This was a very intimidating idea for me: Alan had worked with some fantastically good artists on some really big comics, and I didn’t want to screw up! I actually had to think about it because I was so nervous! I did say “yes” though, in the end. Anyway, before I could start Supreme regularly, I had to finish that Youngblood Annual, so I went back and resumed work on that. The finished product was kind of weird and inconsistent visually, because I had actually improved quite a bit since I drew the first chunk of pages, and that chunk wasn’t in sequential order. To make matters worse, a different inker did the new pages. Control freak that I am, I did some patches and corrections to try to make things a little more consistent, but you can still tell which pages were done later. The book was later published as the Youngblood Super Special. As soon as that was finished, I drew a couple of covers for two issues of Supreme that someone else drew to buy me a little lead time, and then it was on to Supreme

#53, my first regular issue, and still my favorite—visually—of the half-dozen or so I eventually drew. MM: I love those Supreme stories that Alan did and re-read them every couple of years or so. They were Alan re-visiting the Superman that he grew up with as a kid— those wild Mort Weisinger stories that were so light and fanciful. And though these stories operated on other levels, they maintained that whimsy and fun. Did you approach these stories in any way differently than you did, say, your Legionnaires? 55

Below: Pencils and inks for the cover of Supreme #56. Inks by Al Gordon. Next Page: Chris: “The unpublished final page from my last issue of Supreme. I have no idea why it was left out.”

CHRIS: I rarely have a conscious plan of attack, visually speaking, when starting a story, with some exceptions, like the early Timmy Turbo parts of Tom Strong, or our later attempt at injecting a little “Kirby FF” feel into later Tom Strong. I wish everything I did was planned and carefully executed, but it’s not. It’s usually just me reacting to the script and trying to give the writer everything he or she wants. So I suppose Alan’s more light-hearted approach to his Supreme scripts dictated how I handled the art, but I didn’t consciously try to do something different than what I did on Legionnaires other than attempt to be better. After we moved on to other things later, I wondered if having me on the book was a liability at times, in that Alan was often try-

ing to contrast the then-current comic art style, the stereotypical Image style of that time, with styles from various periods throughout comics history, and my style has just never looked “current” and never less so than then! I always try to do my best, but I’m just not the guy anyone should go to when emulating someone else’s style is called for—for better or worse, it always just end up looking like my stuff. I tried to do really cartoony styles a couple of times on Tom Strong and tried to darken my style for my Midnighter work, but I don’t think anyone noticed a difference. MM: How was your working relationship with Alan? Did you communicate other than via his scripts? Did you get notes from him on your art? CHRIS: I don’t know all the details, so I apologize to anyone involved if I’m getting it all wrong, but Alan was very far ahead of me when I began drawing the book. I’ve heard that he was completely finished with his run, but I’ve also heard that he had more Supreme stories planned. Whatever the case, we didn’t communicate at all while I was working on Supreme. I know that sounds bizarre to some people—how

could I waste such an opportunity? Well, I’m a very shy person and very easily intimidated, especially when around people I admire, so I was afraid I’d just stammer and say stupid things. I just wanted Alan to appreciate the artwork instead of being put off by another awkward fanboy experience. As for notes, well, as I’ve stated above and many times before, one of my goals is to give the writer what they want. Alan’s scripts were so detailed and what he wanted was so clearly defined that it made giving him what he wanted on the page very, very easy. He never asked for changes in the finished art on anything we ever did together, and I’m very proud of that. Anyway, we didn’t talk while working on Supreme—Eric just sent me the scripts and I drew the pages and mailed them in. MM: It would appear that you both enjoyed working together well enough to then flow right into Tom Strong. Do you recall how the subject of this new project came up? CHRIS: I enjoyed working on Supreme immensely, but when Rob’s company folded, I just assumed that that was it. I felt unbelievably lucky to have gotten to work with Alan at all, let alone so early in my career. I just assumed I’d be moving on, looking for something at DC or Marvel. Then I came home a few days after it all ended to find a 58

message on my answering machine from a very deep-voiced Englishman, something like: “Hello, Chris, this is Alan Moore and I have an idea for a new series....” I called him back and we finally talked, and Alan pitched the America’s Best line of comics, a new character called Tom Strong that he wanted me to design, and what seemed like several years’ worth of Tom Strong plots—which were actually all covered in the first half-dozen or so issues. I was literally shaking with excitement and enthusiasm for this series after the call—it was quite a pitch! Later there was a phone call in which Alan pumped my brain for things I’d always wanted to draw, artists and series I liked, and other interests that he said he’d like to incorporate into Tom Strong. I later heard that he tailored each ABC book to its artist this way. When the first typed synopsis/proposal arrived, it was all there: my love for Hergé, science fiction, tech stuff, and much more. This was going to be an amazing experience—we just needed a publisher.

Comics bought WildStorm, further complicating matters and slowing everything down. Luckily, WildStorm Editor-in-Chief Scott Dunbier hired me to draw the WildC.A.T.s/Aliens one-shot while I was waiting for the go ahead on Tom Strong, and that was my first job with Warren Ellis and the only time I’ve been inked by Kevin Nowlan—one of my favorite projects all around up to that point.

MM: Oh, so the ABC/ WildStorm relationship was not yet in place? CHRIS: Well, I don’t know who else Alan pitched the ABC line to, but WildStorm did show interest pretty quickly, so everything seemed like it was going to come together and work out fine. For some reason, there was a bit of a delay from the time I agreed to work on Tom Strong until I was able to actually start drawing the book. I think WildStorm was trying to get the other art teams in place and hammer out contracts, and Alan needed time to write all the first issue scripts. Then DC 59

Previous Page and Below: Artwork from WildC.A.T.s/Aliens. Dig the pose of Zealot pre-swing from page 21—and the eyes! Inks for page 27 by Kevin Nowlan.

MM: That was very pretty. But then, Kevin makes everything look so nice. He could even make me look better, and I’m a stick figure guy. [laughter] So Tom Strong—and the rest of the ABC books—find a home at WildStorm and it’s on! Did it feel like the beginning of something special when you received that first script? CHRIS: Oh, yeah! I set aside a day to read that first script—especially when I saw how densely detailed it was. Plus, it was a really long script. Alan types everything single-spaced, and the thing still ran about two to three pages of script per page of comic art on average, with some pages taking more and some panels even running to multiple script pages. Once I started reading—wow—it was completely captivating. Just the panel descriptions alone on some pages gave me chills, like Tom’s first appearance with the helicopter backpack over Timmy Turbo’s cable car, and others actually made me tear up, such as the scene with Tom’s mother’s death and thenyoung Tom standing on the edge of the volcano carrying his parents’ bodies... again, wow! I remember thinking how good this was going to be if just the script alone had me so worked up. I couldn’t wait to draw this story! First, I had to spend a while designing

characters and locations. I had already designed Tom, Pneuman, and Tesla based on Alan’s outline and lots of back and forth between us, but that still left many, many characters and props and sets. As I’ve mentioned before, I love doing that stuff, and I ended up doing really tight inked design sheets for every character who ever appeared in the series, most of which have been reprinted in the collections. The early days of ABC were very special, in general. I’d never been as energized and excited about working on a project before, and I won’t speak for the other ABC creators, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they experienced something similar. It felt like we were really starting something 61

Previous Page: Cover art for WildC.A.T.s/Aliens. Inks by Kevin Nowlan. Above: Layouts and pencils for a one-page tribute to Alan Moore done for George Khoury’s book, The Extraordinary Works of Alan Moore. WildC.A.T.s ™ and ©2009 WildStorm Productions, an imprint of DC Comics. Aliens ™ and ©2009 20th Century Fox Film Corp.

Below: Model sheet art for Chris’ original version of the trusty Pneuman. Chris: “I didn’t like the tread/feet design—too complicated and too futuristic—so I redesigned him right before drawing him for the first time in issue #1.” Inks by Al Gordon. Next Page: Pre-cat suit Dhalua kicks Nazi butt in this splash panel from Tom Strong #6.

exciting, different, and fun. Thanks to Alan’s involvement, we also had creative freedom like never before. Usually editors assign artists to work on scripts, then hire colorists and letterers themselves, and they get someone in the company’s production department to handle any design work. Not so with ABC: I felt like we— Alan and the artists—had a hand in picking everyone on the creative teams and were involved in almost every aspect of the books from execution to even marketing. Letterer Todd Klein did most of

the design work on the individual issues and the collections himself. Alan was even able to dictate where the advertisements would be placed in the books. Then, while working on the books, we were pretty much left on our own to create whatever we wanted. As I’m sure you know, this is pretty rare when working for one of the majors. MM: Of those character designs and sets, did anything give you any trouble? Some one or some thing that gave you pause in the process? In other words, anything, in retrospect, that you wish you’d done differently? CHRIS: I was unhappy with the costumes I’d designed for Tesla and Dhalua once I had drawn them in the first issue. Tesla’s costume was a sort of hold-over from the very first talks Alan and I had about Tom’s own costume, which was originally going to be more of a “jungle-adventurer” look— khakis and machete and so on. Tesla’s khakis and T-shirt look didn’t make much sense once we gave Tom his Flash Gordon-esque super-hero costume. I changed Dhalua’s costume in issue #2, but was still unhappy with her look until I put her in the black ’60s cat suit in issue #9. I didn’t figure out what to do with Tesla until the issue before that, #8—that’s when she got her “Strong Family Uniform” of red shirt with white triangle and black pants. It was around that time that I was reading the Lee/Kirby Fantastic Four run all the way through, so that influenced the team/family consistent look idea. Actually we consciously started steering the book in more of an FFthemed direction around issue #9 or #10. Alan told me he wanted to focus on the family dynamics and play up the sci-fi gadgetry, which I was happy to do. MM: Tom Strong #1 definitely does set the tone on so many elements of the story, and the stories to come, and establishes Millennium City as a very unique metropolis in its own right. Hence, I would imagine, the massive script. After building all of that up in the premiere issue, were the subsequent issues easier?

the characters and that world and would have been happy to work on Tom Strong for the rest of my career.

CHRIS: No, not at all! [laughter] I had had months to design everything for issue #1 because all the characters and situations for that issue were clearly described in Alan’s outline/proposal. For almost every subsequent issue we had at least one new character—and in many cases several— but less time to spend on preparatory stuff. Issue #2 was a huge amount of work with all of the thousands of Modular Man modules that had to be drawn—that one stands out as one of the more challenging issues, but it’s one of my favorites. Then issue #3 had an army of high-tech Aztec warriors and their civilization... issue #4 had Ingrid and Albrecht and all the Nazi super-women and their planes and gear.... Every issue was a new challenge, but I’ve never loved working on a comic so much before or since. I loved

MM: Yes, as much as I love any stories about alternate realities and the colorful variations of the characters from this world or that, I’m also well aware of all the extra work that the artist has to do to make that all look so different and diverse. When all of the various Tom Strongs began showing up—all those “Science Heroes”—I was certain that you must of been pulling your hair out. No? CHRIS: If you’re talking about issue #9 or #10 with Tesla unleashing all the alternate reality Toms and Teslas, well, I had already started falling behind schedule by that point. I had moved from Virginia to Ohio right 63

in the middle of Tom Strong #6 and lost a bunch of time due to that, and my marriage was ending between issues #8 and 11, and that certainly had an impact. Add to that the increasing complexity in the storylines and growing cast of characters, and, yeah, my old pattern of blowing deadlines and hating myself for it was in full effect. Alan and editor Scott Dunbier tried several things to help me out and relieve some pressure—not to mention get things back on schedule—like having someone else draw eight-page short stories every issue for a while. Zander Cannon took some time out of his own busy schedule on Top 10 to do layouts for one issue, maybe two, but I ended up still doing my own layouts anyway because I’m an absolutely awful control freak, as I may have mentioned a time or two already. [laughter] Sorry, Zander! I’ll always be grateful for the help people provided and for the extra effort other people on the creative

and editorial teams had to expend to make up for my schedule problems, but none of it helped in the end. I won’t get too confessional, but when my marriage finally ended, I was literally in the middle of Tom Strong #11, and one day I found I just couldn’t work anymore— with the pressure and all the personal drama, I just hit a wall. I had lost all the enthusiasm that had carried me into and through ten years of drawing comics professionally, and I was just completely physically and emotionally drained. It kills me now thinking about this time, as I was doing really well and working with great people on great projects—my favorite job ever in comics—with almost unlimited creative freedom, and I just couldn’t appreciate any of it anymore. I was able to eventually finish Tom Strong #11, but it was horrendously late, and I didn’t even start #12 for ages after that, so the book just looked like it was never coming out! Ugh! 64

MM: This is about the time that you and I first met and commiserated over our respective break-ups and the depression that followed. Nice meetin’ ya, Chris, but, man, we were a couple of downers that weekend. [laughter] In that, generally, all artists, writers included, draw their inspiration and motivation from their own emotional reserve, when that part of you is compromised—and in some cases, devastated—it makes the job you have to do, to keep working, to get paid, seem unreachable, like the place you need to go to access all of that is inaccessible. CHRIS: Absolutely! Very well said! MM: How long did it take you to dig your way out of that and see the sun again? Were you still on Tom Strong by then? CHRIS: I think it took about a year to get my enthusiasm and drive to draw back. I was on my own in a town I didn’t know at

all yet, and I didn’t have much else to do outside of work except think about the train-wreck my life had turned into. So that’s what I did. Lots of soul-searching and long, dark nights. I realized things were finally getting better emotionally when I was invited to a few conventions, two in far-flung cities and one in Columbus where I was living, and I actually went instead of declining and sitting at home in my depressing little bachelor pad. First I went to a con in Seattle. I had a day in the city by myself before the show where I just walked around record, book, and comic shopping, just doing things that I loved to do and being myself, and it was nice. It was a relief to discover that I could still enjoy anything. Then the convention itself helped boost my morale, because... I don’t know—I don’t want to sound like some adulation junkie, but having lots of people tell you they like what you do sure doesn’t feel bad. [laughter]

Previous Page: Model sheet designs for three of the alternate reality Teslas as seen in Tom Strong #10. Below: Tom and Tesla’s soon-to-be love interest Val meet for the first time in this two-page spread from Tom Strong #15. Chris enjoyed the opportunity to stretch his wings a bit.

Next, I went to the Mid-Ohio Con in Columbus, with my best friend Gary along, and I met lots of new people— you, for instance—and just wallowed in the world of comics and spent a lot of time talking to people again and socializing after months by myself. Yeah, we talked about depressing stuff, but it sure was good to be talking to other human beings about anything. Then, I was flown to Buenos Aires for a con and had an absolute blast there. I had never really travelled on my own that far nor been so self-reliant, and it felt good. I guess I was discovering that things could not only be okay again, but could be fun and exciting as well. Sometime in between all these shows, I was trying to go out and have some kind of a social life again, and I met this fascinating girl named Xan who read comics and was into sci-fi and was pretty much the perfect woman for me! I was completely smitten, and after I got back from the Buenos Aires con we started dating. So, in short, one year after I hit that wall and lost my way, I was starting to feel good about myself and good about what I did for a living again, and I was primed and ready to go when I got the script for Tom Strong #15. It’s weird, but I can chart my life through my comics, because I have a weird ability to recall exactly what I was doing while drawing specific pages or issues. For example, there’s a certain page from Supreme that hits me like a jolt when I look at it because it’s what I was working on when I got the call that my grandfather was dying. And while not every single Tom Strong page I produced during that shaky year was horrible—I think much of #12 turned out really

well in spite of how I was feeling—I distinctly remember being wildly excited about working again when I started page 1 of Tom Strong #15. And, yes, almost a full year went by between Tom Strong #11 and #15—it was that bad. Alan and I were fully implementing the more team/family-oriented direction for the book with that issue, plus I was reunited with inker Karl Story starting with #15, so it really felt like a fresh start and I really poured it all into that and the next three issues, the “Space Cowboy/Giant Ant” storyline. We had great new characters like Tesla’s new love interest, Val, Svetlana X, and the Weird Rider, and Alan wrote in double-page spreads and splash pages and lots of really fun science-fiction bits, lots of comedy stuff with the Strongmen of America—I loved every page, and I think it shows in the finished work. I’m just really proud of those issues. 66

MM: Yeah, all that’s cool about Tom Strong and all, and all of the changes and shift to the more family-oriented stories; we’ll get back to that. Let’s not hurry over Xan here. When you introduced me to her about a year later, you were more than smitten. And I could see why; she is great! Very compassionate and insightful, friendly, and fun. And she obviously cared a lot for you. You didn’t answer me then, but you have to now ’cause this is an interview—how did you two kids meet?

having favorites. When I was younger it was probably The Hobbit, and then there’s The Stars My Destination for sentimental reasons—it was the book I read in preparation for attending the first book group meeting where I met Xan. MM: Your return and re-involvement on Tom Strong was long-awaited by us fans, and it was clear to see that you were coming to it with a new energy. Looking back, do you see a change in your work there, in the energy and fun that was coming through in your art?

CHRIS: We met at a book group. After I found myself out on my own for the first time in about a decade, I reconnected with a lot of the geeky pursuits I had given up during my marriage. I hung up my Flash Gordon movie poster, treated myself to a DVD player, started trying to complete my Kirby Fantastic Four collection again—but mostly I watched genre movies and read sci-fi novels like they were going out of style. On one of my trips to load up on books and magazines at the local book megastore, I noticed a little flyer for a sci-fi book group. I thought that even I could do that—I was reading a new sci-fi book every couple of days anyway, so what the heck—time to get out and meet some like-minded people again! I showed up for the next scheduled book group, and there she was! Xan worked at the book store and was one of the founders of the book group, and something just clicked between us—we hit it off immediately. A couple more book group meetings and we were geeks in love. And not only is she compassionate, insightful, friendly, and fun, she’s my biggest supporter, my closest confidant, and the light of my life—I couldn’t be happier! MM: Do you have a favorite book? CHRIS: I don’t honestly know.... It’s more a case of not being able to pick one as opposed to not 67

Previous Page: Model sheets for Val and his followers as well as the cartoony version of the Strongmen of America. Below: Unpublished pinup depicting Tom and Svetlana in the bowels of the giant ants’ mothership from Tom Strong #18. Tom Strong and all related characters ™ and ©2009 DC Comics.

Above: The “Space Cowboy/Giant Ant” storyline was one of the most enjoyable working experiences of Chris’ career. Pencils for Tom Strong #16, page 20 (left) and inks for Tom Strong #18, page 9 (right). Inks by Karl Story. Next Page: Cover pencils for Tom Strong #23—written by Peter Hogan—the first Tom Strong story Chris worked on without Alan Moore.

CHRIS: Oh, yeah. I think the issues from #15 on look significantly better than the early issues. That doesn’t mean I’m denouncing or dismissing the first year of my art on the book, I was just more comfortable with the characters and their world and the feel of the book by #15. Add my improved mood and the cool new storylines and character stuff, plus Karl Story’s inks—he just makes everything look good—and it just looked better than ever. I was also really working at the art, trying to make up for the fact that I hadn’t exactly been giving it my all since about issue #8. MM: You and Alan were mostly done with Tom Strong with issue #19; you came back to do issues #23 and 24 with Peter Hogan, as well as #35, and then you both returned on issue #36, “Tom Strong at the End of the World,” the crossover with all of the other America’s Best Comics. What were you working on in the meantime? CHRIS: Well, spending more time working on the art, re-drawing things and trying to make everything perfect meant I began blowing deadlines again on a book 68

that had developed a horrible reputation for late-shipping already. Someone, either Alan or editor Scott Dunbier, decided to do a three-issue story arc that Jerry Ordway would draw, thereby giving me a chance to get to work on future issues. Unfortunately—and I may not get the entire timeline of the following events correct here, but it’ll be close enough—Alan decided to retire sometime during the Ordway arc, or at least he announced it privately at that time, and he seemed to withdraw from the book quite a bit. What this meant was that there were suddenly no scripts for future issues coming in, and I had nothing to work on for quite a while. Peter Hogan stepped in and wrote issues #23 and 24 for me, and they were fantastic—I had a blast with them, easily two of my favorite art jobs to date. Several prominent guest writers were rumored to be working on scripts for upcoming issues— Harlan Ellison, for one—but nothing ever materialized. While I sat around waiting for these special scripts, I watched from the sidelines as a series of fill-in artists were scheduled

Below: Pencils for page 7 of Global Frequency #8. Next Page: Chris changed the angle and tightened in on his initial sketch for the final art of Ocean #5, page 14. Also shown is a model drawing of the hero of the story, Nathan Kane.

one after the other to draw issue after issue of the book I was dying to draw. Even though I thought these guys did fantastic jobs, it was incredibly frustrating. Maybe no one wanted me around to screw up the schedule, maybe there really were scripts by fabulous guest stars on the way, I don’t know... I just know I had very little work for about five months. I know that some readers thought that I didn’t want to work on stories that Alan didn’t write, but that’s just not true. I loved the characters, drawing the characters, and I think I’ve said this before, but I could be happy drawing them for the rest of my career.

I did eventually get a slot in the Global Frequency series written by Warren Ellis, and that was a lot of fun. I tried to get some work drawing Star Wars short stories from Dark Horse, but by the time scripts were ready, I finally had more long-term work, the sci-fi series Ocean, again with Warren. I’d wanted to work on a straight science-fiction story since I got into comics, so I jumped at the chance to do the book when Dunbier mentioned it to me. Luckily Warren agreed, papers were signed, and we were off. I did a number of character designs and concept sketches, then spent the next six months to a year drawing the series. Like a lot of the series I’ve done, I feel like I started off strong on the book, but by the middle of issue #6, a double-sized issue, I was exhausted and behind and not so strong anymore. It’s still my second-favorite experience in comics, after Tom Strong, and I can’t thank Warren and Scott enough for giving me the chance to do it. I really worked hard on the storytelling and figure drawing in that book, trying new things, failing many times, but succeeding enough that I’m very happy with the work. I’ve always believed straight-ahead nonsuper-hero science fiction could work beautifully in comics—2001 Nights by Yukinobu Hoshino is probably the absolute best example of this—and I’m glad I had a chance to try my hand at it. I hope it’s not the last chance I get! MM: I agree; I’d love to see more straight science-fiction series in comics, and I had somehow gotten the impression that Ocean was going to be an ongoing. I was disappointed when I realized that the story was ending. Had Warren finished the entire script to Ocean when you first had a look at it? CHRIS: Yes, he had. As a matter of fact, Ocean was originally a film script Warren had written, but for whatever reason he decided to turn it into a graphic novel. It was always intended to be read as a single piece, and I think this led to confusion among readers who read it as it was published, readers who expected the usual story climax/cliffhanger ending every issue. I’ll leave it to others to judge how it holds

up—I just know it was a very special project for me, a dream project—a sci-fi book by a great writer, creator-owned, with covers by my idol—that fell into my lap right when I was beginning to wonder about my future in the business for the first time. MM: And how was it coming back to work with Alan again, to work on Tom Strong again, and to see them all off into that grand conclusion that tied things up so nicely? CHRIS: It was incredibly bittersweet—the epitome of bittersweet, actually! I was so happy to be back on the book, but crushed that it was coming to an end. Alan tied it up beautifully, pulling out at least one big surprise, bringing the readers—and me—to tears one last time. I remember just being sad every time I drew a character in the book for the last time. At the same time I was working on this final issue, my cat Max, who had been with me for 17 years, was dying, so I was just a wreck anyway. I finished the last page of that issue on New Year’s Eve, and I was just depressed and drained and kind of scared about the future. I’m sure I was a lot of fun at the New Year’s party I went to that night.... 71

Right: Pencils and a Photoshop composite for a page 1 panel from Tom Strong #36. Below: Tom Strong and family say goodbye... for now. Next Page: Panel from Ex Machina Special #2. You can barely make out the lions on top of the train, but Chris would rather you see the African Grey Parrot anyway.

MM: So sorry about Max. And again, such an emotional loss that had to have had an impact on your artwork—or at least your desire to work—as well. CHRIS: Actually, in this case, I wanted the distraction of work, but there was a bit of a delay getting the next job set up, so that was a little rough. I think no one quite knew what to do with me. WildStorm kept promising me work, but I know everyone was nervous offering stuff to me with my reputation for blowing deadlines. MM: Your next big project was Midnighter, but before that you drew a couple Ex Machina Specials. CHRIS: I needed work while waiting for Garth Ennis to free himself up to write the Midnighter scripts, so my usual editor Scott Dunbier hooked me up with editor Ben Abernathy for the two-issue Ex Machina Special. Regular Ex Machina artist Tony Harris gave me his blessing, sent me lots of reference, and off I went! It was a pretty enjoyable experience. Ben was great to work for, and I loved the series anyway, so I had a good time. My only regret about that job is that I’m terrible at drawing animals until I’ve worked at it for ages—it took about a year working on Tom Strong before I got any good at making King Solomon look even remotely like a real gorilla—and this story was full of animals. The African Grey Parrot turned out okay, but the horses and dogs were pretty embarrassing. Oh, well... I’m glad I was able to contribute to this wonderful series and I hope Brian [K. Vaughan] and Tony were okay with it. 72

CHRIS: Scott suggested Midnighter as a possibility while I was working on the last two issues of Tom Strong, which was after I had finished Ocean. I had followed Warren and Bryan Hitch’s run on Authority, but I’d lost touch after that. In addition to getting to work with Garth Ennis, I agreed to do the book for a few reasons: first, I needed work, and after the last couple of years of uncertainty and long periods with no work, I was happy to be offered anything steady; second, it was pitched as a six-issue limited series that we’d be given lots of lead time with; and third, I wanted to demonstrate that I could handle different material than people usually associated with me. I liked the idea of doing a darker, more action-oriented book at that time.

CHRIS: I usually set out on a project with no other approach or goal than to just try to draw as well as I can, to get everything down on paper the way I see it in my head when I read the script. With Midnighter I had specific stylistic goals in mind for the first time. I wanted to use lots and lots of shadow. Whereas Midnighter had always looked sort of blue-gray and like he was wearing a big rubber suit right out of the Tim Burton Batman movies, I wanted him to just be a black blur when he moved, nearly solid black under his leather trench coat. This was one of those times in my career when I realized I needed to consciously work at an aspect of my art, and in this case, I needed to really work on my lighting and my use of shadow, something I’d kind of ignored or fudged for years. Ocean especially, and other recent work, had made me realize that with the current state of comic book coloring, my work looked really thin and was overpowered by the color unless I used lots and lots of solid black. So, anyway, that was my approach—black and more black.

MM: Any differences in how you prepared for Midnighter?

MM: So, in concentrating on the heavier blacks, do you feel that you achieved the effect you were looking for?

MM: [laughs] I’m sure they were. Again—too hard on yourself. I have those issues right here in front of me and they look great! So, was it during Ocean that they approached you with Midnighter? Had you been following The Authority prior to that?

What I mean is, were you happy with it? And have you incorporated more of that into your everyday style? CHRIS: Well, I’m almost never happy with my work once it’s published. Usually a few to several months have gone by between when I drew it to when it hits the stands, and that’s long enough for me to get a little distance. I end up seeing all the mistakes and how some scenes or pages could have been done differently and usually better. With Midnighter, when I started to see color proofs of the pages, I realized I had only gone about half as dark as I should have— it still looked really thin and insubstantial with the heavy coloring. Luckily, most of issue #2 took place at night and was very dark anyway, so it ended up working pretty well visually. That second issue was the only one I really liked in the end, and the last one I didn’t feel miserable working on. I did indeed try to incorporate heavier blacks into subsequent jobs, particularly

my Spirit story, and whenever I could I went really dark in Number of the Beast, and the best pages were usually the ones that had lots of strong dark areas to hold and balance out the coloring. I’ve worked with some really good colorists over the years, but starting with Supreme, I feel like I’ve been battling the tendency towards... I don’t know, everyone trying to make every comic page look like a painting. I always ask for flatter, more graphic coloring, and I feel like rarely does anyone know what I’m talking about or how to achieve it. I think flatter, less rendered, airbrushy coloring works better with my style, but I can’t seem to convince anyone else. So, if I can’t get the coloring I want, I’ve decided to do what I can to minimize the problems, and if using more black works, then that’s what I’ll do. As you may be able to tell, this is my pet peeve right now. I feel like I’ve been able to work on really amazing scripts with 75

Previous Page: Chris was going for “dark”— visually, that is—with the Midnighter series and he certainly achieved it here. Midnighter #2, page 8. Inks by Karl Story. Above: More Midnighter darkness from Midnighter #2. Notice how background details are often depicted in white highlights on otherwise solid black shapes. Midnighter ™ and ©2009 WildStorm Productions, an imprint of DC Comics.

Below: The opening page, complete with clever logo incorporation, of Walter and Chris’ story for The Spirit #7. Next Page: Two-page spread from Number of the Beast #1.

fantastic faithful inkers, and yet getting the kind of coloring I’m looking for is just turning out to be really difficult. I don’t want to be such a control freak about the colors, telling everyone else how to do their jobs, but I want all parts of the process to work towards a common unified goal, and the coloring just seems so out of left field, so inappropriate sometimes. I’m hopeful about the future—I’ve been lucky enough to have Laura Martin and Guy Major color my most recent published work and they seem to get it. Jeez—now any colorists reading this are going to hate my guts! What have I done?!

MM: You’re jumping the gun on me again, breezing through both the Spirit job and Number of the Beast. Slow down, dude! How was it getting to work on a Spirit story with Walter [Simonson]? CHRIS: Absolutely unbelievable! I’m still a big fanboy, so it knocked my socks off! I still have to pinch myself sometimes when stuff like this happens. Twenty years ago I was copying drawings by Golden and Simonson trying to learn how to do comics, and now I’m working with these guys. I haven’t gotten many perks from my career, but getting to meet and work with my idols and influences is definitely one that makes up for working holidays and the long hours and a lot of the stress. I still wouldn’t mind paid vacations and sick days, though. [laughter] Anyway, the Spirit job was done “Marvel-style,” with Walter giving me a plot to work from instead of a full script. Because of this, there was a lot more backand-forth between us than I typically have with a writer, so that was very cool. And Walter was so friendly and easy to talk to that I got over my starstruck feeling pretty quickly and was able to do the work. I hadn’t penciled off of just a plot since my very first year in comics, so it was a challenge—an enjoyable one—to try to fit everything he wanted into the eight pages we had. The whole experience was so positive from start to finish—I even liked how it looked in print, and there’s only one panel I don’t like in the entire story—that’s the opposite of how I usually feel when I finish a story. I hope we can work together again. MM: And how did Number of the Beast come about? CHRIS: Number of the Beast was something I took on to try to repair my reputation in the industry—or at least with WildStorm and DC after Midnighter just went horribly off track. Midnighter had somehow become an ongoing series, and against all logic and out of fear after the dry periods of the last couple of years, I thought I could still do the book. To make a long story short, I ate up all of our lead time taking my time on the first two issues and WildStorm/DC

and that didn’t leave a lot of options in the business open for me. So, it was a complete surprise when WildStorm editor Ben Abernathy pitched Number of the Beast to me. WildStorm was planning a big crossover event for 2008, and Ben was in charge. The crossover was to consist of three bi-weekly mini-series, and Number of the Beast was the last of the three. Ben pitched it to me in July of 2007, and with the first issue not scheduled to hit stores until Spring of 2008, there was plenty of lead time. I liked the concept, and I loved that the series would give me the chance to design dozens of new characters. I liked that if I could do it on time, I’d salvage at least some of my rep. If no one noticed and my rep was unaffected, well, at least I had guaranteed work for the next year. I agreed to do it, officially quit Midnighter, and began work immediately. I spent about a month designing the core group of characters, then began working on the series and continuing to do character designs at night. It’s pretty much all I did from July of 2007 to June or July of 2008—and I mean that quite literally; I did

yanked me from the third and fourth issues rather than ship late. I did the fifth book, feeling like quite a loser, then felt even worse as I learned month after month that someone else was working on each subsequent issue. Making matters worse was that I usually learned this from the Diamond Previews catalog or on the Internet before anyone from the office let me know. I got to draw issue #10, and I’ll be honest, at that point I had lost interest—it wasn’t exactly spirit-building to have screwed this up publicly and to have become a fill-in artist on a book on which I was supposed to be the regular artist. It was all my fault—I’m not blaming anyone else, because it all boils down to my lack of speed, tendency to overcommit, and failing enthusiasm when things go bad. I took a good look at my career and the comics industry’s reliance on the monthly grind for its material, and I began to wonder if I had a future in comics. I was pretty sure I didn’t have a future at WildStorm or DC after my latest blunder. There was no getting around the fact that I just couldn’t do 22-24 pages in one month, 77

Above: Layout sketch and finished pencils for an alternate “incentive” cover of 2006’s Justice League of America #3. Next Page: Convention sketch of Star Wars’ Padmé Amidala in a ceremonial costume Star Wars designers based on Mongolian royal fashion. Justice League, Superman ™ and ©2009 DC Comics. Padmé Amidala, Star Wars ™ and ©2009 Lucasfilm Ltd.

almost nothing except work and sleep during that time—but I actually enjoyed the work and was happy with the quality, even when I had to do less-finished pencils on some issues to meet the deadlines. By the end of the year I was more exhausted than I’d ever been in my life, but every issue shipped on time, and I felt pretty proud of the whole thing. I don’t know if this series actually did [anything to] polish up my image in the industry, but I do know that it helped give me my confidence back, something I desperately needed. It also gave me a glimpse of how comics could work for guys like me: getting most or all of a limited series done before it’s solicited is definitely the way to go. MM: So, to bring this home so to speak, and bring this up to current, were there any other jobs or projects that you did between Number of the Beast and the waycool, I-can’t-wait-to-see-it, new Tom Strong and the Robots of Doom? 78

CHRIS: I did two short back-up stories which were follow-ups to Number of the Beast—they haven’t been published yet. I was asked to draw two issues of Superman, but DC killed the assignment before I ever started. That’s just as well, because I just hardly ever draw a decent Superman. I have no idea why! I did draw four covers for the various Superman books, one of which remains unpublished, and of course, that was easily the best one. Which brings up a point I may not have mentioned yet: I don’t enjoy drawing covers much at all. I’d rather do storytelling stuff any day over pin-up shots and covers. I feel like I’ve only done a handful that worked well and they always take far more time than they should—too much pressure, I guess... I don’t know. That’s why I often ask editors to hire other artists to do he covers for books I work on.

Part 6:

Storytelling and the Creative Process but I find the people they drew or painted a little disturbing now, kind of dead-looking. The only trace of any of these influences that I still see in my art is that of the Star Wars designers and illustrators. I don’t draw like any of them, but they made me realize that if you’re going to build a fictional world for characters to inhabit, it’s best to really work it all out on paper in advance. I don’t know if I can always pinpoint another artist’s influence on my own style. It seems more like I’m constantly taking in everything I see and it sits in my mind percolating, working behind the scenes.

MM: Once bitten by the comics bug and then taking pencil to paper yourself, would you say that there were artists at the time that you were trying to emulate?

CHRIS: I don’t remember trying to emulate anyone in particular early on, and I especially don’t see any of my influences coming through until my high school work. I see Michael Golden’s Micronauts art interpreted really poorly in all of my early homemade comics, especially Fantastica with all of its bug people and armored characters. It’s not always obvious to everyone, but “BerMander” is blatantly screaming out Frank Miller’s Daredevil when I look at it now. I started using those wide, horizontal action panels and heavy Zip-a-tone on that strip because of Miller’s Daredevil. I even had ninjas attack Ber-Mander in at least one strip!

MM: Do you feel that your style is still malleable? Do you continue to be influenced by artists today? Or do you feel constrained to stick to the “Chris Sprouse style” because that’s what’s expected of you?

MM: Do you feel that you were influenced by artists and illustrators outside of comics? What did they bring to your burgeoning style?

CHRIS: As I said, I feel like I take in everything I see and it’s inside influencing how I do things even if I don’t consciously know it. Even work I don’t like is an influence— it makes me realize how I shouldn’t approach something. My style is definitely malleable, because I’m still trying to improve when I notice problems or deficiencies or I realize I’m falling into lazy or bad habits—too many of one type of panel, not enough of another; shortcuts being relied upon too frequently; too many similar poses, etc. Often I don’t even notice my work has changed until I go back and look at old photocopies. For example, I recently went digging through my Tom Strong photocopies from the last two issues of the series—from only a few years ago—and I was really surprised at how I was handling faces differently now without even realizing I was! I definitely do not feel constrained to stick to any style. As I may have mentioned while talking about my college art classes, it was important from even early on that

CHRIS: A few non-comics people were influential—way overshadowed by my comics influences, but they were there nonetheless. I started noticing and seeking out Arthur Rackham’s illustrations somewhere around high school and college. He illustrated many children’s stories and fairy tales. In college I got permission to see some very rare and very old books in the JMU library that Rackham had illustrated. I also know I was influenced by all of the designers for the Star Wars films and collected all of the “Art of” or “Making of” books I could find, especially the sketchbooks featuring nothing but pre-production sketches for the original trilogy. In my college art classes, some teachers introduced me to figure artists like Egon Schiele and Klimt, and I liked them at the time, 79

I be myself and that my style had to come from how I learned to draw what I saw around me. Copying another person’s style is just copying surface linework, it’s not necessarily learning how to draw well or how to generate anything new. Unfortunately, it’s what most people do when they let another artist influence their work. Sure, I still see way too much Golden in my linework sometimes, and I see a little Walt Simonson in some energy beams every once in a while, but I’m not trying to get that stuff in there. I look at it as stuff to wash out of my style—not because I don’t like those guys, but because to me that’s relying on crutches instead of walking on my own. For instance, if I shade hair the way I see Michael [Golden] doing it in a Spartan X comic, then I’m not really learning how to draw hair for myself, I’m just copying someone else’s stylistic quirks. I’d be better served to study hair or photos of hair and learn how light and shade act on real hair,

because once I figure out how it all works, I am covered in any situation where I have to draw hair again. I don’t have to go looking for the right comic panel for just the right reference—it’s there in my head. Anyway, this is how my style changes. I don’t necessarily keep piling on the mannerisms and techniques of people whose work I admire; instead, I see them do something that looks particularly naturalistic with a figure, or I see a really powerful panel somewhere, and I try to bring that feeling to my work by trying to understand why the anatomy works or why one panel composition is more powerful than another. As for sticking to some sort of specific “Chris Sprouse” style because someone expects it of me, well that’s just crazy-talk—I’m the only one whose expectations matter to me when I’m drawing. I just draw and it comes out the way it comes out. And while I like having my work published and seen by other people, and conventions can be fun and gratifying for the ego, at the end of the day I’m drawing for me and drawing because I like to draw more than almost anything else. I’d probably draw comics for my own amusement even if no one else was paying attention! MM: Now that we know a little more about you and what made you the awesome artist you are today, let’s get inside your head a bit and talk about how you tell the story and create a page of action and energy. We’ve got a page from Ocean, because it’s one of Editor Eric Nolen-Weathington’s favorites and because it was one of the few pages that you retained all of the various steps for. Usually when you’re done with your thumbnails and layouts you—gasp!—throw them away! [laughter] 80

fit in the panels and on the page and trying get the panels to flow in the right direction.

So, Chris—let’s start at the beginning, with this actionpacked page of script from Warren. Do you usually read the whole story first and then go to thumbnail? Or do you start sketching it out as it unfolds, page by page?

MM: Then it’s on to layouts and tightening things up. Do you find that you make many changes between thumbnails and layouts? Is there any tweaking here or do you usually get it all figured out in the thumbs?

CHRIS: I normally read the entire script for an issue in one sitting, but I don’t sketch anything yet. What happens is that as I read I will “see” the panels in my head, where they appear almost as freeze-frame images from a film. I have a terrible memory, but I usually retain these visualizations throughout the time I’m working on an issue, luckily, so I don’t have to do thumbnails or layouts for an entire story all in one sitting. I just do thumbnails for one or two pages at a time at the beginning of my workday, then I move on to layouts for one or both of those thumbnailed pages, depending on how complicated or busy the pages are. When I begin the thumbnail drawing, I work out the panel layout and sizes first, using those mental images inspired by the script as a guide. I draw very quickly and at a relatively small size at this point— each page’s thumbnail is about 5" x 7"— just really roughly sketching in very basic stick figures to determine size, position and placement. Background elements are nearly non-existent in my thumbnails unless they’re essential to the action, something the characters have to touch or climb on for example. In the case of this specific page, I “saw” that first panel with Nathan Kane tumbling over the heads of the bad guys like some John Woo character very clearly in my head, but the other panels were a little less clear. It helped that Warren is very good at describing action scenes, and once I start sketching, solutions usually present themselves based on the elements of previous panels and even the shape of the panels themselves. For this page, I knew that the action had to look fast, so I chose wide horizontal panels, and that led to having to make design and figure placement choices that would fit in that format. For instance, I knew that in panel three I had to move the horizon line/camera angle down low to the ground in order to be able to show the bad guys hitting the ground at the same time Kane lands on his feet and still have it all work as a wide-screen panel. At this stage it's all problem-solving like that—trying to get everything the writer has asked for to

CHRIS: I definitely don’t get it all figured out in the thumbs—that’s what the layouts are for. The thumbnails are easy and quick basic page designs, while the layouts are where all the hard work takes place—the anatomy and perspective and all the background elements are worked out in the layout stage.

Previous Two Pages: Script, thumbnail sketch, and layout for page 5 of Ocean #6. Script by Warren Ellis. Below: Model drawings of Nathan Kane’s guns and the acid pistol. Next Page: Chris’ finished pencils for Ocean #6, page 5.

By the way, there’s often a step between thumbnails and layouts, my “referencegathering” step, where I dig up any photographic or physical reference I can find for technical things, historical situations, and any other real-world items that I want to get as accurate as possible on the final page. For this particular page, I didn’t need any historical or technical photo reference, but I got out the gun replicas I modified myself for use as Kane’s handguns and the bad guys’ acid rifles. I keep a few boxes of props and odds and ends in my studio for occasions like this which contain lots of rubber and plastic gun replicas, old cell phones, model cars/tanks/planes and lots of other little items. As I’ve mentioned before, I like to make the world the characters function in as realistic as possible, and having actual physical items to

refer to or photo reference helps keep everything consistent and real. So—I’ve got my script and my thumbnail sketch and all my reference together. Next I rule out the panel borders full-size on 11" x 17" copy paper—or whatever I have lying around—and I start drawing. For figures I start out loose and a little gestural and then tighten the linework up where necessary. I block out the figures the same way I learned to draw figures years ago, oval for the head with guidelines for facial features and various set shapes for the other body parts—cylinders and cones for arms and legs, and so on. For faces, I use an extra set of guidelines—I draw a basic skull shape over the oval to help me keep the facial features lined up correctly and to give the faces consistent definition. You can still see a lot of the initial light gestural sketch lines and construction lines in Kane’s face in panel one and in the face of the Manager, our main villain, in panel two. I keep a mirror bolted to my drafting table, and I often model expressions or hand poses in it while I’m drawing the layouts. I also go to my digital camera and shoot photos of myself when I need to solve really tricky figure problems. In panel one, for example, I had to take some photos of my own arm in a suit jacket sleeve in order to get the foreshortening on Kane’s right arm worked out convincingly, while panel two was completed with the help of my trusty mirror—I made that very expression into the mirror over and over until I captured it in the layout. As I said earlier, I wanted this action sequence to “move” quickly, so I decided when doing thumbnails that I’d keep the backgrounds to a minimum in the first two panels—less to look at in a panel usually means you spend less time on that panel, therefore it “moves” faster. When a panel does require a background, as in panels three and four, I usually start laying out that panel by drawing a horizon line, vanishing point and perspective grid. The grid gives me a frame-

work for placing and sizing the figures, and if I stick to the rules of perspective, I usually don’t run into problems. When I don’t work out my perspective grid in advance, things go horribly wrong, as in panel four! I struggled on the figure of Nathan Kane in that panel so much—I’m terrible at drawing running figures—that I was so sick of the layout stage by the time I worked out the figure that I rushed to the final pencils without finalizing the background elements. My reasoning was that I had drawn that corridor so many times already and the background figures were so small that I could just work them out on the final art board pretty quickly, no problem. Essentially, what I’m doing in the layout stage is creating a template for the final pencils that I can trace onto the final Bristol board page with the help of my lightbox. I won’t be literally tracing the layout line for line, but it will be a pretty firm guide for what I do next. MM: With your layout and page design done, and some fairly tight pencils already evident in your layouts, do you move to the lightbox here and tighten it all up? CHRIS: Yep, and this is my favorite step. I put on some music or an audiobook and just really get into the drawing. I place the sheet of layouts on my lightbox, then place a sheet of 11" x 17" 2-ply Bristol board paper over the layouts. With the lightbox on, I can clearly see my layouts through the Bristol board. Using the layouts as a guide, I begin drawing on the board, starting with the main figure in the first panel. Then I go on to the other figures in the panel, then finally I draw the background. In the layouts, I never use a straight-edge or ellipse guides, but I almost always try to where necessary when penciling. I also leave much of the feathering and all of the filling in of black areas until after I’ve finished all of

the linework for every panel on the page. I should mention here that the whole process from thumbnails to finished pencils takes one day under ideal circumstances. If something goes wrong and I have to struggle with a panel or a figure it can take far longer. I should also mention that there is sometimes an extra step at this point in the process—kind of a “corrections” stage. 83

Below: Karl Story’s inks for Ocean #6, page 5. Next Page: Previously unpublished pin-up of Tom, Tesla, and Solomon—soon to be returning to a comic shop near you.

Long ago I read an interview with a comic artist—I can’t remember who it was—who said that if you look at your artwork in a mirror, a lot of previously unseen mistakes will become obvious. I found this to be true, but since I worked on a lightbox, I sort of adapted the process for the lightbox. Now when I finish the basic pencil linework on a page, I flip the page over on my lightbox and I can see the entire page in reverse. I then work on the reverse side, drawing corrected versions of misaligned eyes or shoulders—my most common mistakes)—or anything else that looks wrong. I flip the page back over, and with the lightbox still on, I can see the corrections

through the paper. I erase the mistakes and trace the corrections. I thought I’d mention this because it’s a really useful process for me and might help an aspiring artist reading this, and also because—next to “What’s it like working with Alan Moore?,” it’s the question I’m asked most at conventions as people flip over my artwork as they’re going through the stack and see the drawings on the backs of most of my pages. Strangely enough, the page under discussion here has nothing on the reverse side! [laughter] You can see when you compare the layouts to the finished pencils for this Ocean page, that I definitely don’t simply trace my layouts—I embellish, refine and even add to the drawing. In panel one, for example, I added part of another bad guy over on the right, and flipped the boot on the left around horizontally. Unfortunately, I left myself too much to do in the finished pencils for the final panel and ran into problems. I drew the Kane figure in panel four first since he was pretty much all I had worked out beforehand, then I roughly and lightly began sketching out my background elements, including the small figures behind Kane. I didn’t notice right away that I had placed my horizon line and vanishing point too low, thereby making Kane look like he’s hovering along about three feet off the floor! [laughter] I finished drawing the elements of that panel, then went back and indicated areas of solid black and did most of the feathering that you see in the finished art. Feathering, for those who are unfamiliar with the term, is indicating gray tones with a series of parallel strokes, which are usually thickest near darker areas and thinnest as they near a light source. All of the little X’s on the page are a shorthand pencilers use to indicate that an enclosed area should be filled with black ink completely by the inker. I don’t know how this use of X’s came about, but it’s pretty standard and it saves me time and keeps me from getting Carpal Tunnel Syndrome, plus it keeps the pages from just turning completely gray as the graphite can smear as the penciler and inker work on the page. When I finished all the shading, I gave this page a onceover, made a photocopy, then sent it overnight to Karl Story to be inked.

Sometime after Karl had inked the page, I noticed when looking at my photocopy of the pencils that the last panel just looked wrong. I realized my mistake—placing Kane too high, placing the background too low in the panel, but it was too late to do anything about it. This happens quite frequently, actually. After I get a little time and distance from the page, I’ll notice mistakes immediately when I look at my photocopies. In many cases, I can send a patch for the panel that Karl can paste in, but in this case, we were so behind and so under pressure to just finish this issue that I decided to leave the panel as is and move on to the next page. While I hate it when this kind of thing happens, I do, in fact, learn from it. I’ll make sure I don’t make the same mistake again if I can help it. I know I’ve come across as really harsh when critiquing my own work during the course of this book, but every mistake and everything I don’t like about an old page informs what I’m doing now. I said earlier on that I’ve never hacked out a job, and it’s true—every page I’ve drawn is as good as I could do at the time I drew it—but I see the pages with a clearer more critical eye as time passes. Ocean was drawn only a few years ago and I can already point out lots of things I did wrong. I’m sure that in a few months I’ll spot all my mistakes in Tom Strong and the Robots of Doom. It just means I’m still evolving and—hopefully—improving as an artist. MM: Do you have any suggestions or words of advice for any aspiring artists out there who look at you, Chris Sprouse, as their new master? CHRIS: [laughs] Master? I feel like I’m still learning how to do this with every job. Here are the things I would tell any aspiring comic artist: Draw all the time and like it—because when you get into the industry, you’ll end up drawing all the time and if you don’t like to do that you’ll be miserable. Don’t overcommit. Be honest with the people giving you work about what you can do—I still need to work on this one occasionally. Don’t ever work without some sort of contract or written and signed agreement in place—I learned this one the hard way once. Keep a sketchbook and practice your craft when not drawing comic pages. Be open to influences outside of comics, whether it’s film, fine art, other commercial art, animation, drawing from life... whatever. Don’t try to copy anyone else’s style—be yourself, because in the end, you’ll be happier being you instead of just a second-rate somebody else. MM: What about the future? You said that you would have been happy to’ve been able to draw Tom Strong and his Family for the rest of your career. If you could choose, what would you like to work on, not necessarily for the rest of your life, but what would be your dream job?

CHRIS: Aha! I am currently working on Tom Strong again, and I’m as happy as I could be! Peter Hogan and I are doing a six-issue series called Tom Strong and the Robots of Doom, and I feel like I’ve come home! This really is my dream job. If this series does well, the plan is to do Tom Strong “Hellboy-style,” as a series of self-contained miniseries, none of which will be solicited until they’re completed so none ever ship late. That’s how we’re handling the first series now, and I love it. I’m working pretty fast, but giving it my all, and I don’t feel the editors and the company breathing down my neck. It’s one of the most pleasant experiences I’ve had in comics, really. I do have another project with WildStorm on the horizon—too early to talk about, except that it’s another creator-owned book—but I want to keep coming back to the Strong family. And this is how I’d like to work for the rest of my career. I like the creative freedom I get working on creator-owned books—and partially creator-owned, like Tom Strong—and I so like that at least WildStorm is

starting to realize that finishing a book, or at least having several issues in the can before solicitation, is the way to go to avoid late shipping. I have no great desire to work on any of the big established characters—although I would like a shot at Spider-Man and the FF, and I’d take another crack at the Legion in a heartbeat. I’d much rather work on characters I’ve helped create and design. I’ve said this many times throughout this interview, but one of the things I love most about doing comics is the worldbuilding and design process. MM: And where would you like to see the comics industry going—as opposed to where you see it going?

Above: Convention sketch of Legionnaire, Ferro Lad. It’s been nearly ten years since Chris has worked on the Legion; imagine what Chris could do with a Legion book now. Next Page: Now that’s the right stuff! Previously unpublished Tom Strong pin-up art.

CHRIS: I want every publisher to adopt the “no solicitation until the book’s done” mindset. I’m tired of hearing people complain about late-shipping books, and speaking as a fan myself, I really want to see more comics interiors by people who just can’t produce monthly books under the current industry grind—people like Golden, Adam Hughes, Jason Pearson, Andrew Robinson, Dave Johnson, and other great artists who are only doing covers these days. I also want to see more science-fiction comics, more non-super-hero genres in general represented. I don’t want an end to super-hero books—I quite like reading them and working on them—I’d just like to see the companies get behind and promote other material as well. I’m encouraged by the increasing numbers of horror titles and sci-fi movie and TV adaptations coming out right now and doing really well; it means there’s an audience for more than just costumed do-gooders out there among the super-hero buying masses. I know there are lots of different kinds of comics being produced by independent 86

publishers and small press guys, but as long as DC and Marvel pump out virtually nothing but super-heroes, then that’s primarily what you’ll see in the stores. The goal of marketing is to create a desire for a product in a consumer, and the big two should be able to sell any kind of comic to readers. They have the money and the ability to hire the marketing guys, but they concentrate only on the sure-bets: the Superman comics and the X-Men books. Imagine if Vertigo books got the push that your average three-part Superman crossover gets. MM: Oh, I’d love to live in that world. CHRIS: I think you may get the chance. It seems like the comics industry is in some sort of transitional state right now, or maybe just where it needs to be, with not one drawing style dominating the field, and so many different kinds of books to choose from. It’s never been easier to find foreign comics, either, and we have such a presence in bookstores these days! Comics used to be shelved in a single small shelf unit at the end of the sci-fi and fantasy section in most book stores, but now the chain stores have entire aisles dedicated to graphic novels and still more aisles dedicated to just manga. And what about women and girls reading comics, something the industry has needed for decades? Well, it’s happening—I have a niece addicted to Naruto and Full Metal Alchemist comics, and Xan buys way more comics every week than I ever do. When was the last time you were surprised to see women in a comic shop or at a convention? General public awareness of comics has changed in just the last decade and a half. People are more tolerant and accepting of comics than when I first started working in the business and I invariably heard someone say, “I didn’t know they still published those,” when they found out what I did for a living. I know the economy’s rough and sales aren’t what they used to be, but I think there’s never been so much potential for so much good work and for reaching such a large audience as there is right now. I wish I knew how to get more comics into readers’ hands, but all I can do is create the best comics I can and hope they connect with someone out there.

Chris Sprouse

Art Gallery

Below: Youngblood trading card art. Next Page: One of only two layout pages Chris did for a mid-’90s Metamorpho story pitch which was to be written and inked by John Beatty. Page 90: Pencils for three unpublished covers done for Valiant: Timewalker #17 (top left), Armorines (bottom right), and Ninjak (background). Page 91: Splinter of the Mind’s Eye #3, page 11. Inks by Terry Austin. Page 92: Opening page of Chris’ all-splash story for the 1999 Grendel: Black, White & Red anthology mini-series. Page 93-95: Head sketches, cover art (inks by Al Gordon), and the first two penciled pages for an unpublished Gen13: Bootleg story. Chris was doing the book Marvel-style with Walter and Louise Simonson, but the title was cancelled just a couple of days after he began work on the story. Page 96: Cover art for Supreme #57. Inks by Al Gordon.

Armorines, Ninjak

, Timewalker ™ and

ainment.

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Page 97: Legionnaires pin-up art. Pages 98: Painted commission of Phoenix. Page 99: Painted commission of Poison Ivy. Page 100: Of this Star Wars painting Chris says, “It was just something I did for fun. It began as an exercise in watercolor painting, but I went back in with pen and ink and it became the Frankenstein-y painting/drawing that it is. It’s kind of a poster based on our Splinter adaptation.” Page 101: Watercolor artwork for a Tom Strong hardcover collection. Page 102: Unused cover art for Tom Strong #23 based on the cover of Tintin: Explorers on the Moon. Pages 103: Watercolor artwork for a Tom Strong trade paperback collection. Pages 104: Tom goes zombie in this commission piece. Page 105: Various preliminary sketches for Tom Strong. Page 106: Cover pencils for Tom Strong #3. Page 107: Cover art for Tom Strong #33. Previous Page: Art correction sketches and a finished panel for the Ocean mini-series. Above: Layout for a panel in Ocean #3. Left: The Manager arrives on board Cold Harbor station. Pencils for Ocean #5.

Left: Layout for the cover of Midnighter #12. Below: Model drawing of Number of the Beast’s coolest character, Engine Joe. Right: Pencils and inks for the cover of Number of the Beast #2. Pages 112-117: Commission art of Wolverine; Darth Vader; Planetary’s Jakita Wagner; Miracleman; Batman and the Joker; and two of the few Legionnaires Chris hasn’t had a chance to draw in a comic, Mon-El and Shadow Lass.

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THE MODERN MASTERS SERIES Edited by ERIC NOLENWEATHINGTON, these trade paperbacks and DVDs are devoted to the BEST OF TODAY’S COMICS ARTISTS! Each book contains RARE AND UNSEEN ARTWORK direct from the artist’s files, plus COMPREHENSIVE INTERVIEWS (including influences and their views on graphic storytelling), SKETCHBOOK SECTIONS, and more! And don’t miss the companion DVDs, showing artists at work in their studios!

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CHRIS SPROUSE The artwork of Chris Sprouse is hard to categorize. It is fresh, yet familiar... modern, yet classic. Perhaps that is why titles such as Supreme and Tom Strong—both written by the legendary Alan Moore—are the perfect vehicles for his work. With his clean linework and his dramatic, crystal-clear storytelling, it is easy to see that this Eisner Awardwinning artist is a Modern Master! Join Todd Dezago and Eric Nolen-Weathington as they explore what makes Chris Sprouse such an influential force in the comic book industry. MODERN MASTERS is an ongoing series of books celebrating the lives and work of the greatest comic book artists of our time.

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In The US ISBN 978-1-60549-013-7 Legionnaires, Tom Strong & all related “America’s Best” characters TM & ©2009 DC Comics. Midnighter TM & ©2009 WildStorm Productions, an imprint of DC Comics. All others TM & ©2009 their respective owners.