Modern Masters Volume 21: Chris Sprouse Preview 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

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 Supremeâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;A Strong Combination . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53 Part Six: Storytelling and the Creative Process . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79 Art Gallery . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87

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. Fantastica ™ and ©2009 Chris Sprouse and his friend Bobby. Darth Vader ™ and ©2009 Lucasfilm Ltd.

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?

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

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

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

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.

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.” Supreme and all related characters ™ and ©2009 Rob Liefeld

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

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. Global Frequency ™ Warren Ellis and ©2009 Warren Ellis and DC Comics. Ocean ™ and ©2009 Warren Ellis and Chris Sprouse.

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

Part 6:

Storytelling and the Creative Process

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?

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.

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

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?

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

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

Chris Sprouse

Art Gallery

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Modern Masters: 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—were the perfect vehicles for his work. Regardless, one category this Eisner Award-winning artist easily falls into is that of Modern Master! Join Todd Dezago and Eric NolenWeathington as they explore what makes Chris Sprouse such an influential force in the comic book industry. This book presents a career-spanning interview and discussion of his creative process, plus plenty of rare and unseen art, including a large gallery of commissioned work! (120-page trade paperback with COLOR) $14.95 (Digital Edition) $5.95

Chris Sprouse

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