Draw! #12 by TwoMorrows Publishing

THE PROFESSIONAL “HOW-TO” MAGAZINE ON COMICS & CARTOONING

The ever-Pliable

NUMBER 12

KYLE BAKER

SPRING 2006

Machine Teen’s

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MIKE HAWTHORNE

IN THE U.S.A.

The Venture Brothers’

PLUS!

COMIC ART BOOT CAMP WITH

ADOBE ILLUSTRATOR TUTORIAL BY

bret blevinS

ALBERTO RUIZ!

MIKE MANLEY

AND

CHRIS McCULLOCH

THE PROFESSIONAL “HOW-TO” MAGAZINE ON COMICS & CARTOONING WWW.DRAWMAGAZINE.COM

SPRING 2006 • VOL. 1, NO. 12

FEATURES

Editor-in Chief • Michael Manley Designer • Eric Nolen-Weathington Publisher • John Morrow Logo Design • John Costanza Proofreaders • John Morrow & Eric Nolen-Weathington Transcription • Steven Tice

COVER STORY INTERVIEW WITH CARTOONIST KYLE BAKER

For more great information on cartooning and animation, visit our Web site at: http://www.drawmagazine.com

Front Cover Illustration by Kyle Baker

SUBSCRIBE TO DRAW! Four quarterly issues: $24 US Standard Mail, $36 US First Class Mail ($44 Canada, Elsewhere: $48 Surface, $64 Airmail). We accept US check, money order, Visa and Mastercard at TwoMorrows, 10407 Bedfordtown Dr., Raleigh, NC 27614, (919) 449-0344, E-mail: twomorrow@aol.com ADVERTISE IN DRAW! See page 2 for ad rates and specifications. DRAW! SPRING 2006, Vo l . 1, No . 12 w as p r o d u c ed b y A c t i o n Pl an et In c . an d p u b li s h ed b y Tw o Mo r ro ws Pu b l i s h in g . Michael Manley, Editor, John Morrow, Publisher. Editorial Address is PO Box 2129, Upper Darby, PA 19082. Subscription Address: TwoMorrows Publishing, 10407 Bedfordtown Dr., Raleigh, NC 27614. DRAW! and its logo are trademarks of Action Planet Inc. All contributions herein are copyright 2006 by their respective contributors. Action Planet Inc. and TwoMorrows Publishing accept no responsibility for unsolicited submissions. All artwork herein is copyright the year of production, its creator (if workfor-hire, the entity which contracted said artwork); the characters featured in said artwork are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners; and said artwork or other trademarked material is printed in these pages with the consent of the copyright holder and/or for journalistic, educational and historical purposes with no infringement intended or implied. The Bakers, Cowboy Wally, Holmes & Watson, King David, Nat Turner, Why I Hate Saturn, You Are Here ™ and © 2006 Kyle Baker • Batman, Joker, Lex Luthor, Plastic Man, Superman, Woozy Winks are ™ and © 2006 DC Comics • Captain America, Daredevil, Darkhawk, Kingpin, New Mutants, Sleepwalker, Spider-Man, Terror Inc. ™ and © 2006 Marvel Characters, Inc. • Popeye ™ and © 2006 King Features Syndicate, Inc. • Goofy, Mickey Mouse ™ and © 2006 Disney Enterprises, Inc. • Dick Tracy ™ and © 2006 Tribune Media Services, Inc. • Hysteria ™ and © 2006 Mike Hawthorne • Queen & Country ™ and © 2006 Greg Rucka • Ballad of Sleeping Beauty ™ and © Beckett Enterprises, Inc • The Venture Brothers ™ and © 2006 Noodle Soup Productions • Dexter’s Lab ™ and © 2006 Cartoon Network • John Carter of Mars ™ and © 2006 ERB, Inc. This entire issue is © 2006 Action Planet Inc. and TwoMorrows Publishing and may not be reprinted or retransmitted without written permission of the copyright holders. Printed in Canada. FIRST PRINTING.

COMICS HYSTERIA AND THE BALLAD OF SLEEPING BEAUTY ARTIST MIKE HAWTHORNE

ADOBE ILLUSTRATOR TIPS DEADLINE HUNTER BY ALBERTO RUIZ

THE VENTURE BROTHERS INTERVIEW WITH SERIES CREATOR CHRIS McCULLOCH

COMIC ART BOOT CAMP CREATIVE PERSPECTIVE BY BRET BLEVINS & MIKE MANLEY

FROM THE EDITOR First off I’d like to thank Rachel Simon, the producer at Noodle Soup Productions in New York, the studio which produces The Venture Brothers for Adult Swim, not only for her help in putting together this article, but for The Venture Brothers crew’s help and time when I took my class of animators from DCAD (Delaware College of Art and Design) to visit the studio on our class trip to NYC. In the middle of their busy schedule they were very gracious with their time and answered a lot of questions about their working process for the students. There were many smiles that day and a lot of inspiration; seeing how a real studio is run is something every student should have happen. I’d also like to thank this issue’s contributors, Kyle Baker and his assistant Nicole, for all the help in conducting this interview which is so big we had to break it into two parts—the second half will run in the next issue of DRAW!. I’ve always admired Baker’s work and it was really great to get a chance to rap with him about his work and his philosophy as a businessman, something everyone working in comics can take a page from. A tip of the hat and a cheese steak to my pal and DRAW! columnist Jamar (Grand Poobah) Nicholas for his great job in conducting the interview with Mike Hawthorne, certainly one of the most talented and prolific artists working in comics today, as well as being a super-nice guy. These two are old buddies and I thought because of that it would be great to have them get together and yak about the old days and the current work Hawthorne is doing. I think the interview is one of the most honest and frank you will read from a working cartoonist. This issue also starts a new regular feature in each issue that is a direct result of your many requests for more on some of the basics like perspective, anatomy, storytelling, etc. So this issue Bret and I have started a feature we decided to call “Comic Art Boot Camp,” and each issue we will lay down some Basic Training on a variety of subjects, like this issue’s premiere article, “Creative Perspective.” There are a host of good books out there on perspective, but not much on how to take it to the next level and push it, break the rules to enhance a page, panel, or illustration. Also, a hearty slap on the back to Eric who keeps making my job easier by taking the hard part of the layout on DRAW! out of my hands and letting me concentrate on the editorial side. In closing I’d like to say I hope to see more feedback from you readers both on our message board and in our mail box—it was the continual letters and e-mails asking for more on basic drawing skills that led to our new feature. I hope to see you at one of the cons I’ll be attending this spring and summer. I plan to be at the Philadelphia Wizard World Con, the San Diego Comic-Con, and, I hope, the Charlotte Heroes Con as well. Have a great spring and I’ll see you in the summer,

Mike Manley, Editor E-mail: mike@drawmagazine.com Website: www.drawmagazine.com Snail mail: PO Box 2129, Upper Darby, PA 19082

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The Artist, Kyle Baker, the Comic Book Maker Interview conducted by Mike Manley Edited by Mike Manley and Kyle Baker Transcribed by Steven Tice arly in his career, Kyle Baker left behind the journeyman-like work of monthly comics to embark on a path that would lead him to produce graphic novels such as Cowboy Wally and the much lauded Why I Hate Saturn long before graphic novels became the rage they are today. Baker further expanded his efforts with I Die at Midnight, You Are Here, and King David, all for DC Comics. With Nat Turner, Baker is starting a new chapter in a career that has spanned 20 years and earned him a wall full of Eisner and Harvey Awards: Kyle Baker the self-publisher. DRAW! Editor Mike Manley caught up with the busy artist as he was in full production on the second issue of his slavery epic,

Nat Turner. DRAW!: So what was your work day like today? Were you working on Plastic Man, or were you working on Nat Turner? KYLE BAKER: Today was actually catch-up day, doing all my phone calls and paying bills and picking up bills and things like that. With the self-publishing, there’s lots of that kind of filling invoices and then billing people, and things like that, which I tend to put off. And weeks when I’m on deadline, like if I’m working on a Plastic Man, nothing gets done for a week. Nothing else. DRAW!: I know what you mean. I’m basically the same way, I let everything pile up, and then I have to sit down and basically have a couple days where I have to go through and do all of my business and correspondence. What is my long distance phone service? Oh, I forgot to pay the bill!

KB: Like today, one of the things that happened when I was in San Diego was I sold a couple of things by credit card at my booth, but I never sent in the receipts or whatever. You swipe the card, but then you have to send them to the bank and the credit card companies and they send you the money. So that was what I finally got around to doing today. [laughs] DRAW!: So you’re the alpha and the omega there at Kyle Baker, Inc. KB: Yeah, there’s also my assistant Nicole who’s taking care of a lot of stuff. At this point, I’m still trying to stay on top; we keep getting these orders for, like, ten books, or two books, or stuff like that, little tiny orders, and those are the ones that kind of pile up on you. DRAW!: Right. I dealt with that when I was in the midst of the heat of self-publishing, back about nine, eight years ago, I was doing the same thing. I would get my reorders from Diamond and they were like, “Send two copies of Action Planet # 2 to this DRAW! • SPRING 2006

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place, send five over here.” And so I would be making little boxes of books to ship, and you had to follow with the invoice to make sure you got paid.

LEFT: Cover to Nat Turner #2. BELOW: The artist at work. RIGHT: Opening panel of Nat Turner #1.

These little tiny $15 checks coming in, and then you have to remember to send out, like, four envelopes, because it’s a four-issue series.

KB: Yeah, I’ve been waiting for my comp boxes—I get comps of The Simpsons—and they come five to a box, which I guess is the least they can send from the printer. [Mike laughs] So I was waiting for a Simpsons box to show up so I could fill this order that I got. [laughs] I’ve got all the—

DRAW!: Right, right. KB: We wanted to make it available to everybody, but that one, we just said, “God.” It turned out to be too much work for the return on the investment. You know what I mean?

DRAW!: You use the comp boxes, when they send them to you.

DRAW!: Right.

KB: Yeah. Well, I’ve got those, and then I got the boxes that they send me the comics in when I have my comics printed. So I never throw boxes out anymore.

KB: ...to make three bucks. [laughs]

DRAW!: With TwoMorrows, they actually have a mail house that fulfills the subscriptions, so they take the copies over. Basically, that’s how most magaR. 05 KYLE BAKE © AND TM 20 DRAW!: I was the same way. I would zines do it; they have a company that actually hanNAT TURNER take all the boxes I would get from my dles that, because they can’t possibly afford to send out two copies comps from Marvel or DC, and then I would recycle those, ship- like that, y’know, have a room full of people working for Time magping however many issues for each distribution center. Although azine stuffing Time magazines in the Time Life building and sendDiamond actually has a lot fewer of those now. I think they only ing them out. But, that’s the hands-on aspect of self-publishing, and, have, what, two or three or something? They used to have, like, you know, 20 copies here, 20 copies there, five copies here, seven ten. copies there adds up at the end of a year, and especially on a good project that’s getting some heat. I would assume a book like Nat KB: I think it’s somewhere between three and five now. Turner has a longer shelf life—it is not something that is going to have a one- to two-week shelf life. It’s not like a regular super-hero DRAW!: Yeah, they used to have a lot more, so I was sending comic, say, that you have 30 days of it having a valid sales window two copies here, two copies there. And that eats up a good little and then it’s a back issue. I mean, you can keep it in print forever. bit of time to do that. KB: It does, and it doesn’t—it’s a fine line, because at this point I’m still trying to drum up business and stuff, and the reorder thing, it’s pretty good this time. Since Nat Turner came out—it was I guess a month ago or two months ago—we keep getting these little, tiny orders, anywhere from 50 to ten. It’s been nice. But also, we were selling subscriptions for a couple of weeks, until we gave up on that. DRAW!: Oh, so you were trying to sell subscriptions to Nat Turner? KB: We had them, yeah. And it wasn’t that it wasn’t working, it was that it was just becoming too much work. 4

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KB: Yeah. DRAW!: And now I would imagine, issue two is out? KB: No, I’m working on the second issue now. The second issue will be out when DRAW! #12 comes out. DRAW!: I see your situation being like my friend Ande Parks, who just had his Truman Capote comic/biography published by Oni Press. I remember talking to him and saying, “You know, this thing is going to have legs, because unlike something like Batman, where it © AND TM 2005 KYLE BAKER

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NAT TURNER © AND TM 2005 KYLE BAKER.

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comes out and there’s another Batman comic to push that Batman off the stands in 30 days, this kind of book has an unlimited shelf life, because there’s always going to be somebody who will just become interested in that subject. KB: Well, almost everything I do—I’m not sure about Plastic Man—but almost everything I do I have that in mind, to have a shelf life. Most of my cartoons could really take place at any time. Even something like You Are Here, everybody kind of dresses in a very generic way. The only thing that’s dated about that book is that New York has changed. DRAW!: Yeah, I guess that’s true. KB: A couple of buildings are gone. DRAW!: If they reprinted that, would you ever consider going back and changing that, or is that just sort of history now? KB: No, no, no. I don’t think it totally ruins the enjoyment of the book. Most of my books are designed to stay around for a very long time, and I just, y’know, watched a lot of cartoonists over the years, and most of my favorite cartoonists sort of become more popular and more successful over time. I mean,

even the cartoons that are successful today, like Spider-Man and The X-Men, were created about 40 years ago. DRAW!: [laughs] Well, Spider-Man’s older than I am, I think, now. KB: Yeah, there you go. But you know what I mean? I remember Chuck Jones didn’t really become recognized, he and Friz Freleng didn’t become recognized until, like, they were in their seventies. People take that stuff for granted, and also, I think sometimes your core audience is very young and has no clout. DRAW!: True to an extent, but, actually, that’s a little bit different today. When we were kids, we didn’t have as much clout. But today it’s a youth-driven market; everything is skewed towards kids today, in marketing. KB: Yeah, but I’m saying, for example, when you go to an X-Men movie now, all of the stories are ’80s stories, because whoever made that movie grew up reading The X-Men in the ’80s. Like, all the Sam Raimi movies, Spider-Man stuff, is all Steve Ditko/Stan Lee stuff, because he’s our age, and that’s what he was reading. I remember Steven Spielberg hired Jim Steranko for Indiana Jones for the same reason. Because these guys grow up and they have the DRAW! • SPRING 2006

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BUILDING THE EMPIRE DRAW!: So is this part of your philosophy as a cartoonist, to just keep building.... KB: Well, just to keep holding onto stuff, because it is becoming more popular, and I don’t want to be one of those guys who, when I’m 80 years old, is seeing his toys in the toy store and wondering why he didn’t get a check. DRAW!: “This is my toy! Can I have it for free?” “No, get out of here!” PLASTIC MAN ™ AND © 2006 DC COMICS.

KB: That’s one of those frustrating things about working on Plastic Man is that I know that the supporting characters I made up are going to end up somewhere down the line with their own series. DRAW!: Oh, like Edwina and— KB: The girls! Yeah, the girls are more popular than the other characters in Plastic Man. It’s just a matter of time before they end up spun off like Death.

power and they’re like, “Oh, I always wanted to work with Bernie Wrightson! I always wanted to work with Jim Steranko!” But getting back to what we were talking about, about things dating or staying on the shelf forever. You see the same thing, so many cartoonists today are affected by decisions made 30 to 60 years ago. At the time, you’re looking at your cartoon and you’re like, “Oh, gee, this cartoon’s a loser.” And somebody offers you 200 bucks for your character and you say, “Sure, I’ll take it!” 30, 40 years down the line, when the character’s got its own TV show and a line of toys, you feel like an idiot. [laughs] DRAW!: Well, like I’ve said before, the direct market is sort of a closed loop, so the average person who, let’s say, reads a comic or is familiar with those characters is probably familiar with the older versions of those characters, because they basically moved on in the ’60s, ’70s, or ’80s. Very few of those people are still reading comic books at all now, even though they may still be familiar with the characters. 6

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DRAW!: So now, you’re saying you would not get anything from them from DC? You wouldn’t get any compensation? KB: I don’t think so, because it’s Plastic Man. DRAW!: But if Edwina was in her own series, wouldn’t you get something for that? KB: I don’t remember. It’s not as good a deal as, like, when I make up my own stuff. DRAW!: Well, yeah, that’s obvious.

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KB: I mean, you’re the same as me. If you’re working on Batman, there’s only so much you can negotiate, because you didn’t create Batman. DRAW!: Well, I did create a couple of new characters for Batman, and basically would only make money if they were stars. KB: That’s what I mean. Maybe you got something, maybe you didn’t. DRAW!: Well, what you do is, you don’t get money for the character unless he’s in a book by himself. So if Edwina is the star, if it’s her own title, that’s different. At least as I remember the paperwork from 1994 or so. KB: If the villain in the next Batman movie.... DRAW!: Then you get money. You’ll get money for that. You’ll get money for the TV show. But you don’t get money in comics, if I remember my contract correctly, until—

LEFT: Cover to Plastic Man #2. BOTTOM LEFT: A 2005 Plastic Man convention sketch. RIGHT: Enter... Edwina! The first appearance of the popular supporting character from Plastic Man #10. BELOW: This sketch was done for a Plastic Man cover.

KB: Okay, so if your character fights Supergirl, you don’t get anything? DRAW!: Right. But if Supergirl’s in Edwina’s book, you get money if it’s Edwina Adventures. At least, that’s the contract as I remember it in the ’90s. Maybe they’ve completely changed that now. KB: I know it’s something fair, because I know that George Pérez is very happy. He got something for the Teen Titans TV show and he was very happy. It’s not like the same kind of stories that you hear about Marvel. I mean, everybody’s who’s created any kind of success for Marvel is pretty bitter about it, as far as I can tell. DRAW!: Yeah, well, it’s not even the same company anymore. KB: Yeah. I mean, Stan’s suing, y’know? [laughs] DRAW!: Exactly. Except Stan won, so Stan can’t really complain. KB: Right. But you don’t hear those kind of stories, really, about DC. They try to be fair.

DRAW!: Well, DC has always basically been the same company. If I worked for Marvel today, it’s not the same Marvel it was when I did Darkhawk. It’s not the same company at all. It’s a whole new corporation. KB: And it’s also that Marvel has never, in all the time I’ve worked there, been really interested in maintaining relationships with their top talent. Their business model has always been screw the guy as hard as you can, when he finally gives up and quits, you find some other kid to screw, and you just keep everything. It really bothers—like, DC—it really bothered Paul Levitz when Frank Miller and Alan Moore wouldn’t do anything for them.

THE TRUTH DRAW!: Now, let’s talk a little about Truth. When you were working on that, is that how you basically felt, like that wasn’t a good deal for you? KB: No. It was awful. I did it because my friend wrote the story and I liked the idea; I thought it was cool. But, y’know, it was what it was, and they totally controlled it. They’re Marvel. DRAW!: Can you be a bit more specific? Does that bother you in general as an artist, to work under those conditions? KB: When I’m responsible for only part of a job on a property I don’t own, it’s a collaborative effort. I don’t design the covers or logos usually. My work on Looney Tunes is indistinguishable from every other Looney Tunes thing that year. Plastic Man gets edited, and there’s about 20 pages in each issue I’m not responsible for, ads and editorial, etc. So it’s a team effort. I prefer to work on books that I’ve written, for a couple of reasons: One, I play to my own strengths. I know I draw cute girls and kids, so I write them into my stories, for example. Also, I know you can’t DRAW! • SPRING 2006 7

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write a story that’s got 200 characters on every page in period costumes and locations that are going to require research and expect the artist, who’s also the inker and colorist, to bring it in on time looking like Hal Foster! If I write a story with a big elaborate scene that takes a lot of time to draw, I know that I’d better write in a couple of full-page splashes to pick up the slack so I can deliver it on a deadline. Nat Turner has a lot of crowd scenes, and many of them are splash pages. I also give myself more time between issues, so the quality will be best. DRAW!: Now, was Truth the first time you had actually done something all digital in a print comic? KB: No, no. I’ve been doing digital print comics since... You Are Here, I think, would be the first entirely digital. And, I mean, if you’re just talking about comic books. I’ve been doing digital work on magazine stuff since the mid-’90s. DRAW!: Well, I was specifically talking about, I guess, comics. KB: Yeah, I think the first entirely digital work I did was a thing called Break the Chain for Marvel. And that was all digital. DRAW!: And why did you decide to go digital and did it effect how you thought about breaking down the work from the beginning in any way? How did you go about doing it digitally then as

opposed to how you do your digital work now? KB: It’s hard to remember, now. I was into computers so early that I used to have trouble finding a way to output it. Nobody had a printer, nobody could read a disk, or they didn’t have Photoshop, or whatever. I used Adobe Illustrator for the comic pages, because vector art was a smaller file size, and compressed well, and I had a really slow small computer with no memory, and storage was expensive back in the early 1990s. I remember that Photoshop cover files were so big, they’d crash my computer. I also remember coloring pages at a computer rental kiosk across the street from Marvel, on their dime, because Marvel didn’t have computers. DRAW!: Oh, okay. I remember seeing it—it was bagged right? And there was going to be more of those, right, but it fell apart or something? KB: Marvel couldn’t really get the distribution together. What had happened was they had made deals with all these famous pop stars like Gene Simmons and the Bob Marley estate and stuff like that, and Elvis, I think they did an Elvis comic. And the plan was to distribute them to record stores as well as comic book venues, and they just couldn’t do it. DRAW!: They just couldn’t crack the record distribution? KB: I don’t remember what happened. Because we had come to them, actually, with the project, because we had heard they were doing the other music books. The rapper KRS-1 at the time was very active and on MTV a lot. So we had said to Marvel that we were planning to handle the promotion because we knew how to do that, promote it, so we said, “We could probably hook up somebody to do the distribution if you can’t do it. Can you do it?” And they said, “Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.” And so we said, “Okay. Well, the publicity is going to be coming out in October— we’re going to have a video on MTV in October—so we need this book in the store in October.” And they just couldn’t do it. DRAW!: I guess that this is sort of touching on a little bit of what we were talking earlier today of how the business has sort of failed to spread the comic where the customer is.

KB: Yeah. I mean, that’s my biggest thing about Nat Turner more than, y’know, than what you were talking about before “the shelf-life,” but the biggest reason I self-published Nat Turner was because I’m willing to do the legwork and find out who exactly would be interested in such a book. I don’t think it’s a good idea to put everything on the shelf next to Superman, you know? DRAW!: Right. I agree. KB: I think if I have a super-hero concept, or even a science fiction type thing, then I think it helps to be on the shelf next to Superman and Spider-Man. But if you’re doing a black history book or a Bible story or something, that’s probably not the right LEFT: The Truth #5, page 2. NEXT PAGE: A panel from Nat Turner #1.

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section for you, y’know? DRAW!: Well, you go into the book store and they put sci-fi with sci-fi, history with history, religion with religion. So you want to avoid lumping Nat Turner right in with everything else. KB: Yeah! I’ve seen Persepolis in the Women’s Studies. I’ve seen Persepolis in all kinds of areas in the bookstore, because they know it’s got a built-in audience, and it ain’t the Superman audience. You know what I mean? They know a story about women in the Middle East has got to have some audience somewhere because it’s such a hot topic in the news today. I’ve seen it in all kinds of places. Political bookstores. My wife is reading it. I don’t know where she bought it. DRAW!: So when you collect Nat Turner, are you going to specifically try to aim it at a specific section in book stores? KB: We’ve been having really good luck with schools. I’ve been mostly just trying to get schools to buy it. DRAW!: For their libraries? KB: For their libraries, for their classrooms. Some classes will order 30 copies of the comic, and the class will read it and discuss slavery. But then there’s also schools that are teaching graphic novels now. So that’s another way to go. DRAW!: Right. Are you going in and speaking at schools?

KB: Sometimes. Yeah, anybody who wants to buy books, I’ll talk to them. I’m going to all kinds of places. I’m going to the Harlem Book Fair later this year, things like that. I think a lot of people get locked into this idea that there’s only one place to sell comic books and there’s only one way to do it, and if your book doesn’t fit that market, people will tell you they can’t sell it. I mean, I’ve had just the craziest stuff happen in comics, where you’ll come into a guy’s office with a brilliant idea that anybody else can see, like a black history book [laughs] or Bible story. These things aren’t really a stretch, you know what I’m saying? You go to any other publisher and say, “I’ve got a great idea. I want to do a Bible story.” They’ll say, “Oh, we love Bible stories. We have a Bible imprint, as a matter of fact.” Only in comics do they just say, “Oh, nobody will buy that.” DRAW!: Well, again, like I said, the main problem is that the direct market is so narrow now. KB: Well, it’s only a problem if that’s the only place you think you can sell your books. If you’re willing to go to the Harlem Book Fair, or if you have a book about different subject matter I just think that, whatever your book is about, you’re better off focusing on people who like those kind of stories. Like Persepolis. I haven’t read the book, but it seems to be a book that women are into. DRAW!: And that is a huge market. KB: I think the story is about women, right? I think that’s what it’s about, being a woman in the Middle East and how different that is. So it’s the kind of thing that y’know, doesn’t interest me that much as it does my wife, so you’re probably better off going to some women’s events. DRAW!: Well, it’d be like if you did a Civil War comic, or you did a detective comic, or you did a comic about NASCAR. There’s millions of NASCAR people that would like to read a comic about, I don’t know, Evel Knievel or something. DRAW! • SPRING 2006

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KB: That’s right. And there are also people who just like picture books. I don’t only buy comic books. I tend to like books that have pictures, so I buy travel books and things like that. And that’s another way to sell something. Or, at least in my case, I can sell something on the strength of the quality of the drawings, so somebody who’s not even interested in the subject of the story might buy it because they want to see nice drawings. DRAW!: Well, what I find interesting is, if I go to a party, or I’m in a group of people, and they find out that I do comics or animation, everybody always thinks, “Wow, that’s a really cool thing.” And when you show them something they don’t have so many prejudgments. You know, in comics, we bring our own sort of prejudices to the thing. “Does this relate to the Jack Kirby Fantastic Four or not? Is this in continuity?” That whole side of things. But the average person, who’s not into all the minutiae of fandom and what begat what and everything, it’s interesting to get their viewpoints on things, because they’re much more open to different subjects, different styles. ™ AND ©2006 KING They don’t have as much prejudice POPEYE FEATURES SYNDICATE, INC. or baggage to bring to the subject. KB: And I’ve seen a lot guys, a lot of cartoonists, guys that I consider graphic novelists, that people don’t think of because the stuff doesn’t really sell in the other markets, artists I like. I like Edward Gorey and Gahan Wilson. They’ve all done very well for themselves, sold millions of books, but nobody ever thinks of that stuff as graphic novels for some reason. Larry Gonick! [laughs] DRAW!: Well, that’s always put in the Humor section. KB: Yeah, yeah. It’s put in the Humor section, but it’s just not stocked in comic book stores. You don’t always need the comic book stores. DRAW!: No. And look how, they keep selling Calvin and Hobbes. Every year, they keep selling zillions of the reprints of that stuff. KB: That’s right, The Far Side is still popular. 10

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DRAW!: That’s one of the things when I teach my cartooning classes that I always stress to the students is that cartooning, in general, is such a broad, broad, broad medium. And super-heroes are great, but it’s just part, one little slice, one spoke on the wheel. So now, touching back on what you were saying, as far as this not being the only audience or the only place to sell your ideas, it seems like you embraced the digital process of doing comics pretty early on, and a lot of guys still sort of—not as much now, because basically, if you don’t have a computer, you’re really limiting your ability to do or get work, but in the beginning, a lot of people really resisted them, because they liked the idea of actually having the physical original. KB: Well, there’s guys who sell the originals and stuff like that. There’s something about a certain type of comic. It’s funny, because when we talk about comics, we tend to talk like it’s—we tend to be thinking of the comic-book business about ten years ago, I think. [laughter] DRAW!: Back when there was crazy money. [laughs] KB: See, I also think there’s still money. It’s just scattered more, because there’s more product. I mean, when everybody talks about when there was money, there wasn’t any money for me, because there were only two publishers, and they didn’t want what I had. And now there’s, like, 300 different kinds of publishers. There’s the Drawn and Quarterly type stuff, there’s Fantagraphics, there’s DC and Marvel. DRAW!: Right, and now the bigger, major book publishers are starting to get into it. KB: That’s right. You can go to Scholastic, or, who does Persepolis, Pantheon. So I think it’s a healthier business now.

DIGITAL VS. TRADITIONAL DRAW!: For a good while now you’ve been embracing, using the digital medium over the traditional, which must effect and change your concept of what an original is as part of also changing your idea of where you can go as a cartoonist publishing your work?

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KB: What I’m talking about, actually, now, is just your DC/Marvel thing, because there’s just this whole wave of hipsters that, for some reason, we never think of. But the guys that drive me nuts are the guys who are still drawing with a Crow Quill—I mean, which is fine, if that’s the style you like. But a lot of guys are still using those tools and using techniques for a process that was created for a technology that no longer exists. The reason inking was invented, for example, was because you couldn’t reproduce pencil drawings. And the reason lettering was done by hand was because typesetting was prohibitively expensive for a comic book publisher. I mean, if you ever worked for a newspaper or magazine— DRAW!: Well I don’t know if I agree. I think the traditional tools are fine, tools don’t limit you in any way really, your mind limits you, your talent. What’s the difference between a rollerball, a pigma or some other new pen sold at Staples? PREVIOUS PAGE: A Popeye gag cartoon from Kyle’s sketchbook. Mastering a skill like hand lettering requires you to underABOVE: This panel from You Are Here is set in Central Park, and features the stand lettering better. I understand that digital has certain Alice in Wonderland statue. The book was drawn with a combination of traditional advantages, especially and digital tools. in the fast-paced LEFT: An earlier Alice in Wonderland sketch. world of today, lettering as one example. It has really remade commercial art, but I think there is a price to be paid with every little loss of craft. Everyone relies too much on machines and not skill first. KB: Yeah, my dad used to make junk mail, and type was just really expensive. You had to go to a place. And the same thing with photostats. If you wanted to change the size of your artwork, it was a nightmare, and it cost about 50 bucks. But, yeah, that’s the thing is, you don’t have to ink stuff now, but people still do. DRAW!: Tell us a bit about that. Did having a father who did commercial art give you any hands-on experience or a dose of reality that art was a business? KB: My dad and mom both did art, and made toys for me and my siblings. I grew up making Christmas ornaments and Halloween costumes and all the stuff my kids insist I buy from the store. They taught me a lot about art. When I was a high school kid, my father also got me a short meeting up at Marvel. Somebody in my dad’s office knew a guy who knew somebody. So John Romita looked at my art and gave me some advice! My dad was also the guy who warned me that most of the cartoonists who created my favorite characters got shafted out of the profits. I guess a lot of cartoonists worked in advertising. DRAW!: Well, I think that the old school is still a legitimate way of working, very legitimate, and to my mind very important even though computers and digital art is effecting everything now, even the artist’s relationship with the original. Like painting in oil, or any way of expressing yourself artistically. The program Painter didn’t replace oil painting. And having used both, there is no comparison: real oil painting is harder to master and still a superior medium. KB: That’s fine, if that’s what you like. I’m just saying that now that people have these things, they have access to that stuff. And it’s the same thing, like, with animation. Computers have streamlined the animation process quite a bit, but the studios, the big studios, are still working ©2006 KYLE BAKER.

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COMICS in the 1940s or the 1930s. That’s a part of familiarity that’s also what appeals to people about comics. KB: Well, I do think that an employer wants you to draw in a house style. And Marvel and DC aren’t as bad as some other places. I mean, when you draw Mickey Mouse, you really have to make it look just like everybody else’s Mickey Mouse, or you’re fired. DRAW!: Oh, yeah, yeah. KB: You’ve done that, I’ve seen you do those Cartoon Network things. And with those things you can’t play. It’s got to look just like Dexter. If you’re doing your own book and you can do whatever the hell you want, why not try and do a book in watercolor? Why not try and do a book in charcoal? DRAW!: I agree. Getting back to my original question, when you were doing The Shadow or Why I Hate Saturn, or the books you were doing before that, there was a certain sense of technique and craft, tradition even, that you gained from working with the traditional tools that then you had to translate into the digital world. And it’s definitely different drawing on a Wacom or digital tablet than drawing with a pen on a piece of paper.

ABOVE: A Mickey Mouse and Goofy page layout from Kyle’s sketchbook.

with the old assembly lines, which is actually obsolete. Y’know? DRAW!: Well, in the case of comics now, because you could shoot from someone’s pencils, or you could have somebody ink it digitally, or with crayons, whatever— KB: You can do it with pencils, you can do this thing entirely on your computer, you can do it in 3-D, you can do anything. DRAW!: I guess it just depends on the aesthetic, the look, the feel you’re going for. I mean, there’s something you get from Klaus Janson inking Frank Miller that you don’t get from a solo job, without the collaboration. KB: And that’s fine, I like that stuff. What worries me is that, a couple of years ago, I finally reached the point where I said, “Why am I still trying to use computer lettering to look like hand lettering?” That’s the thing you see now in comic books is all these fonts that are designed to look like some guy did it by hand. What’s the point? [laughs] My handwriting isn’t that great that it needs to be immortalized. Maybe I’d like to try a different typeface. [laughs] There’s hundreds of wonderful typefaces now, and you can go to the store and buy them, and give your book an interesting, different look, instead of trying to use your computer to make it look like Artie Simek lettered your book. [Mike laughs] Why are we all still doing that? DRAW!: Well, I guess part of comics, what we think of in general as a “comic” or “comic strip,” the look of them, the way the whole medium is thought of, like the big half-tone color dots, the way the whole thing looks—there’s a certain appeal or aesthetic that you get from that familiarity. I mean, just like when you draw Popeye, you still have to draw him looking like he did 12

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KB: Yeah, and I still tend to draw something on a piece of paper before I scan it in, unless I really want a mechanical look. DRAW!: So you’re still doing, like, a rough drawing on a piece of paper? You haven’t broken away totally from what I call the “meat world”? KB: Yeah, like with Plastic Man, I have been doing inked drawings lately. The first six issues I wanted it to look like a real artificial plasticky type of thing, so I did the whole thing in Illustrator. But after that, I just have been doing pencils and inks, then scanning it in and coloring it on the computer. DRAW!: So you are then returning to a more traditional way of working, pencils then inking. And why so now? I have to say I prefer your pen line in every way to the digital work. KB: I’ve been working with pen and pencil the whole time. I just do the colors and letters digitally. Truth was even drawn on Marvel blue-lined paper! The only digital inking I’ve really done was the first six Plastic Mans and half of I Die at Midnight, because my scanner broke. King David was drawn on paper mostly, then composited digitally. Plastic Man covers are usually digital. Birth of a Nation was digital because the writers actually hated my pen line. I had to redraw 20 finished colored pages. Both Cartoonist books were drawn on paper.

THE MEAT OF THE DIGITAL WORLD DRAW!: All right. But when you were first starting, working on Break the Chain and things like that, and you were doing your digital illustration— KB: Break the Chain I also scanned drawings. It’s rare that I do everything on the computer, really.

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CLOCKWISE: For the cover of Kyle Baker: Cartoonist, Kyle started with a rough pencil sketch. Then he created an ornamental pattern for the safe in Illustrator, to give the safe an authentic look. Using Illustrator, Kyle was able to twist the angle of the pattern and add it to an inked drawing of the safe while keeping it in perspective. Then he added in the inked figures, tweaking the safe’s angle somewhat, and he had his cover.

DRAW!: So on King David, I Die at Midnight, You are Here, you were still doing a certain amount of drawing in the meat world, as I call it, as opposed to the digital world? KB: Yeah. I tend to use the computer the way I use all my art supplies, which is that I use them based on what job they do best. So if I’m doing something that’s, like, a background with a lot of straight lines, if I have to draw a skyscraper, say, that would go much easier in Adobe Illustrator, because it’s really good for drawing boxes and right angles, boring crap like that. Or if I need a perfect circle or a logo, those things all work very well in Adobe Illustrator. But if I want to do a drawing, I still find drawing on a piece of paper’s the best. DRAW!: Well, there’s a tactile feel as well as charm and a character to your line that you don’t get drawing on a tablet, or at least I don’t. So when you started drawing Plastic Man, the first several issues you were doing, you were drawing the pages in rough pencil and then importing and inking them inking in Adobe Illustrator. KB: Right. The covers tend to be done entirely on the computer. DRAW!: Why is that?

is because the covers are the only part of the book DC has to see in advance. [laughs] DRAW!: So you don’t show Joey Cavalieri, the editor, the pencils? You don’t show him any process along the way? KB: No, nobody sees the book until it comes in, until it’s finished. DRAW!: Really?! KB: Yeah. Yeah, I just bring it in. DRAW!: [laughs] What secret golden power or blackmail do you have over them that allows you to do that? KB: They’ve worked with me for 20 years, and they’ve realized that there’s a way to get the best work out of me. I’m not one of those guys who should be directed a lot, because what makes my stuff work, or at least what’s outstanding about my work, is that it’s weird and different. So when people start trying to say, “Draw it like this,” or, “Ink it like that,” it comes back and it starts looking like somebody else. DRAW!: So the best Kyle Baker is an unfettered Kyle Baker?

KB: The funny thing is, the reason I do the covers in Illustrator DRAW! • SPRING 2006

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KB: My job is to solve a problem in a unique Kyle Baker way. If you want that other stuff, you’ve got the other guys’ phone numbers. It’s easy enough to get John Cassaday or to get Alex Ross, if that’s what you want. If you’ve called me, it’s because you want what I do. So that’s the whole point of it. If you start messing with it, it’s not what I do. It becomes anybody’s Superman. When people pick up a copy of Plastic Man, it’s because they want to see what the hell I’m going to do with it. It’s like when Pete Bagge did Spider-Man. You’d have been really disappointed if you picked up Pete Bagge’s Spider-Man and it looked like John Romita drew it. You know what I mean? If I picked up a Dan Jurgens book and it looked a lot like John Romita, I wouldn’t be—it would seem strange to me, but I wouldn’t feel as ripped off as if I picked up a Pete Bagge book and it looked like Dick Giordano inked it. DRAW!: So when you started doing the digital work, this also basically allowed you to not have to go through the various processes of the editorial chain, sending the pencils in to somebody, and having the stuff lettered on the board, and sending it back to you or somebody else to ink and color? KB: Yeah. So the reason the covers end up being done on the computer is because I actually have to draw a sketch and send it to DC. And what I do is I send them, like, three or four sketches, and they pick two. So, since the thing is already scanned into the computer, I figure, “Oh, I might as well just finish it up.” So that’s why the comic book covers tend to be finished on the computer.

LAYOUTS DRAW!: So you lay out your pages like you would normally do, even if you were going to draw them in the traditional, oldfashioned way, right? KB: For the rest of the comic book, usually I draw all the panels as I think of them. Because I don’t have a script.

Plastic Man’s in his apartment, at the end of the story, he’s in China, I have that much. But since 90% of the thing is about the sight gags, I mostly focus on what Plastic Man’s going to turn into, because I figure that’s what the gag of the book is. DRAW!: So do you thumbnail the book out for yourself at all? KB: No, I just draw it. DRAW!: So you just go through the book, drawing it as you go, until you get to page 22. KB: Yeah, yeah. I mean, for me—and I’m one of the few people I know who works this way. Charles Schulz used to work this way. Actually, a lot of the old Looney Tunes guys and a lot of old animation guys worked this way. The philosophy used to be that the whole point of these books is the pictures. We’re selling picture books. If you want to read some funny jokes or if you want to read a story, there’s other places to get a better one. Y’know, if you want to read nice words, you pick up Tom Clancy or Stephen King, they probably write better than a comic book writer. If you’re picking up a comic book, it’s because you want to look at the pictures. DRAW!: It’s because you want to read a comic book. KB: Right. Well, I think because you want to look at the picture. The words just aren’t foremost, in my opinion, the words and stories aren’t that great. Or at least they’re not what it’s about. If I want to read, I can buy a novel about Superman, if that’s what I want to read. DRAW!: Or if you want to read a really scary book, you can read Stephen King as opposed to— KB: Or if I want to read science fiction, I can buy Isaac Asimov or something. DRAW!: Right. Ok, well I guess I tend to agree.

DRAW!: So you make it up as you go?

RIGHT: These back-to-back sight gags from a Plastic Man #2 page show Plas as two of the great humorous detectives: Scooby Doo and Nick Charles. NEXT PAGE: Page 6 of Plastic Man #11. For this issue, Kyle inked digitally and used color holds.

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KB: I know where it’s going. I mean, I know that there has to be a fight here, and I know that, y’know, at the beginning of the story

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KB: If I’m looking at a Buck Rogers comic book, it’s because I want to see some pictures. And I want to see still pictures. I mean, that’s the other thing. I can go to the movies and watch the Iceman now. If I’m reading an X-Men comic book, it’s because I want to look at still pictures of the X-Men. DRAW!: In a certain type of style. KB: In a certain type of style, yeah, and that’s the thing. I like looking at drawings. And paintings. I’m the type of guy who goes to museums, art museums, and I look at paintings on the wall. Or I go to art galleries. There are a lot of people like that who only want to look at some pictures, so I really try to start with the best pictures I can think of. DRAW!: So you go through and you draw from beginning to end, you draw all 22 pages. Do you do them pretty rough?

KB: I draw what I think of at the time. If I’m stuck on a part, but I really have a funny ending—because usually there’s something that makes me want to do the story in the first place. Like, “Oh, I always wanted to do a story in China.” So I know that it’s in China. So I’ve probably got some photos of China, and I’ve probably got a really good image in mind, which is why I wanted to do China in the first place. So if I don’t know how the story begins or ends, I’ll just start in on the China thing and hope that I come up with something by the time I get to the next page. And what happens to me often is, I’ll do a seven-page sequence and then run dry. Can’t figure out what happens next, and can’t figure out what happened before it. And so I’ll probably start inking it or coloring it. DRAW!: That’s what I was trying to get at is if you go through and pencil everything, and ink everything, and then color everything, in a systematic way, which it seems you don’t. KB: The first thing I do is really rough pencil drawings, just to get the idea, the story done. And I work really fast, and I work on Xerox paper. The reason I like to work on cheap paper is because I can throw it out without feeling too bad. If I found, like, a two-dollar piece of Strathmore and I do a shitty drawing, I’ll spend all day trying to save that drawing, because it’s an expensive piece of Strathmore. [laughter] Spend all day stretching the canvas or something and you want to save it. And you know as well as I do, if your layout sucks, you can’t save it. You can crosshatch the heck out of it, but you’re better off throwing out a bad layout.

DRAW!: Do you work on a light box then? KB: Not really. I have one, but rarely use it. Xerox paper’s pretty thin, you can see an inked drawing through it. I use tracing paper a lot, too. I have trouble seeing what I’m drawing on a lightbox, the drawing underneath is usually as dark as the overlay. I get confused. DRAW!: Once you get that all done, do you scan that in and ink that, then take it into Photoshop and—?

DRAW!: That’s true.

KB: It depends on the job. For Plastic Man, I’ve been inking it. For Nat Turner, I’ve been just doing pencil drawings, just plain old pencil drawings.

KB: And the same thing with the finish, if it’s a bad ink job because I’m working quickly, I can just throw another piece of Xerox paper right on top of it and trace it, and try again.

DRAW!: You decided to got back to inking Plastic Man in a traditional way, which I happen to really like because I prefer your line. So why did you do that? DRAW! • SPRING 2006

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KB: It’s faster. I wanted to spend more time on the gags and stories, so I took the time off the art. DRAW!: Okay. So, for Plastic Man, you would what, scan your roughs in and then ink on a layer in Photoshop? KB: No, for Plastic Man I do all the roughs in blue pencil, because I don’t like to erase. First, I’m just trying to get through the story as fast as I can. And, like I say, usually, in a good run, if I sit down, I can usually come up with maybe seven to ten really good pages of stuff. And then I completely draw a blank. DRAW!: You’ve drained the idea well. KB: Yeah. And so, if nothing comes for a while, then I start inking. DRAW!: Now, are you inking on the bond or copy paper? KB: Yeah, I’m inking right on the 8-1/2" x 11" copy paper. DRAW!: So what kind of marker are you using? KB: I’m bouncing around. I was using these things called, because they’re archival— DRAW!: The Micron Pigma? KB: The Micron Pigma, because they’re archival. And I have been trying to be a little bit more conscious of, thinking a little bit more about re-sellable original art, because I haven’t been 16

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good at that before. DRAW!: Well this seems to go against a bit what you were stating before about going digital with the art, and by doing that you are saying there is no physical original to sell. So you are saying there is a value to having a physical original as well. KB: I’m saying people will buy it. If it’s a marker drawing, which fades in ten years, they won’t pay as much. My originals usually have no backgrounds, because I do the straight lines on computer, and the drawings usually don’t have blacks because blacks go faster in Photoshop, with the bucket. I’m not sure why people buy them, but they do. I went to the art supply store the other day and they were out of Microns, so I just bought something else. I’m really not, I try not to get addicted to certain tools. DRAW!: Well, that’s always a problem, because you’ll find something you really like, and— KB: —and they either stop making it, or they change the formula. You pick up something you thought was Strathmore, and it’s a piece of crap now. DRAW!: Well, I was using the Rapidoliners, the disposable Rapidographs, and they were great. Of course, now they’ve stopped making them. So you’re inking, you’re producing the comic at basically printed size?

COMICS KB: Yeah. I’m also, because I have a lot of experience, I think, my stuff really does run a danger of getting too slick if I’m not careful, because I spent, like, ten years or something doing Marvel and DC super-hero books. I can do that style really well. I can draw. I can ink just like Dick Giordano. He taught me how to do it. But then you’re one of two hundred guys who draw like Dick Giordano. I try everything I can to make sure the stuff doesn’t get too tight or too slick. I just don’t like stuff that looks too slick and too professional. I don’t know why. My favorite cartoonists are guys like Matt Groening, y’know?

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DRAW!: So what is it you like best about digital? KB: If you want to do, like, a really tight, mechanical cross-section of an engine or something, for Auto Club News or something, then you would use a different set of tools. You would use Rapidographs or something. DRAW!: Now for the first several issues you were inking Plastic Man using Flash. Can you break down in specifics how you did that? What version of Flash were you using?

DRAW!: So you like the stuff that has sort of a more rough, raw sort of organic feel to it, I guess?

KB: I was working in Flash MX. I’d scan pencil roughs, make them a layer, then ink with the pencil tool on another layer. I’d use Flash to smooth the lines, because I wanted a plastic, techno, artificial look.

KB: Yeah, I guess that’s what I like. I like stuff that looks hip. [laughs] I just don’t like—I mean, it depends. There are certain guys who are so slick, that it’s kind of entertaining to look at it. Like Brian Bolland.

DRAW!: I also noticed you’d repurpose backgrounds, something working digitally makes easy.

DRAW!: Who’s doing all his stuff digitally now.

KB: That’s an animation thing. I also think it makes things clearer to read. I’m a big fan of clarity.

KB: That’s true, that’s true. DRAW!: Which is insane, because he’s doing the same thing, except he’s doing it on a digital tablet. KB: See, but at least in his case, his style was so mechanical in the first place that this only helps. Like, I don’t know why Chris Ware doesn’t do all his stuff on the computer. Because it looks like he did anyway. DRAW!: He has like an Illustrator line, almost. KB: Yeah, exactly! If he did that stuff in Adobe Illustrator it would look great. Rather than drawing the same panel eight times. What’s the point of that? I don’t know. DRAW!: That’s one of the things I find so interesting about doing this magazine and talking to the various cartoonists, because each guy, each cartoonist has such a specific or different reason why they work the way they work. Some can only use a brush. Some artists can only use a pen. Some artists will go, “I could never work on a digital tablet. I can’t get the eye-hand coordination thing.” Which, of course, you know, that there’s that— ALL CHARACTERS ™ AND ©2006 DC COMICS.

KB: Yeah, there are factors. But there are factors to everything. I always complain that the problem with drawing on the computer is that you can’t turn the paper. DRAW!: Unless you buy a centique? KB: Yeah. Oh, and in Painter you can turn the paper, too, if you really feel like it. But then I was thinking, y’know, I’ve worked on an easel doing paintings. DRAW!: And you can’t flip an easel, either. KB: Every tool has its limitations. If you’re going to work in pastels, for example, you can’t get into really fine detail. That’s just going to be something you’re going to lose, but you’re going to gain that nice pastel type of thing, which is the reason you chose that tool.

ABOVE: A splash in Flash—from Plastic Man #3. PREVIOUS PAGE: A little digital manipulation really illuminates this piece.

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DRAW!: So what do you like best about digital? KB: What I like best about digital is the predictability.

KB: I like that I get back exactly what I thought I was going to get back. When you do a painting, and maybe it’s gotten a little better, but when I did paintings, back in the ’80s and ’90s, what was printed never looked like what the painting was. I’ve seen blue turned into purple. I’ve seen green turned into purple. You just never knew what was going to happen. Or you’d do a drawing and it’s got a lot of subtle tones, and the guy shoots it and overexposes it and all the subtle tones drop out. Or you make a correction, you cut the guy’s head off and you drew the head and you paste a different head on, and when you see it printed, you see the razor blade line around the guy’s head, and the rubber cement looks really dark for some reason. [laughter] DRAW!: Well, nobody’s doing that anymore! Nobody’s shooting stats and pasting stuff down anymore. KB: I did a drawing years ago with colored pencils, and it was all very subtle, and it just mostly got lost. It just disappeared. So I like that with a computer, if I type in 20% blue, it ABOVE: Panel from Nat Turner #1. The pencils are scanned in, the tones are adjusted, and the will be 20% blue. And when I proof it in my image is converted to line art for a high contrast look. computer, what comes out in the comic store NEXT PAGE: Kyle’s caricature of Milton Glaser and Silas Rhodes. looks pretty much like what came out of my computer printer. Or at least it’s predictable, Because it’s a pencil drawing, it’s got a wide range of tones. But because of course a computer printer is not as good a quality. I don’t want a wide range of tones, I want it high contrast. And I DRAW!: So you don’t miss not having a physical original any more? KB: Um... no. For me, the finished piece is always the printed work, and I’ve never seen the point of having something come out that was inferior to what I have in my apartment. I can do a painting, and nobody’s ever going to know it was a great painting, because what came out in the newsstand was a piece of crap. DRAW!: Right, right. Now, with Nat Turner you’re doing what, charcoal drawings or pencil drawings? KB: Yeah, pencil drawings. I’m using an 8B pencil, I think. DRAW!: Okay, so it’s a real nice, velvety soft— KB: Real dark black pencil, and then I’m shooting it as line art, because I want it to break up. I mean, there’s a good example. 18

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would never trust a printer to get which parts I wanted to drop out and which don’t. DRAW!: And you can just sit there and play with your levels in Photoshop and kind of— KB: And say, “Okay, I’m willing to lose those trees.” Or maybe adjust the trees. If I hit the threshold level and it turns out that I’ve missed, that something in the background has dropped out, I can select that one piece and darken it up, or something like that. But once I get what I want, there were no surprises with that book when it comes out. Except that two pages got printed out of order in the first issue. [laughs] But it wasn’t my fault. DRAW!: Oh, really? KB: Yes. It got fixed.

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DRAW!: Which I find funny because the dynamics of your art, cartooning is about a certain sense of unpredictability.

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COMICS DRAW!: What kind of computer set-up do you have? Be specific—what kind of digital tablet, etc.? Do you try and stay up to date with the new versions of software? Do you do the layout of the book, preparing it for press, laying out in Quark or Adobe inDesign? KB: I work on a powerbook G4, I have a Microtek Scanmaker 4800. Wacom tablet. Two LaCie hard drives which are almost full, so it’ll be three soon. I put stuff together in Quark because DC wants it that way. I used Pagemaker before that. DC also requests you not use the newest version of Quark, because DC won’t upgrade. So I have Quark 5, but save files as Quark 4. I use Photoshop 7, and Painter 6. I’m not sure how up-to-date that is. I upgrade software when it’s incompatible with everything else. You want to be able to open your Illustrator files in Photoshop, for example.

❤ New York.” He’s done tons of stuff. DRAW!: Yeah, I know who he is. KB: When I worked for him, I was working on children’s books. He was doing all of the Barrons books at the time. DRAW!: And you were assisting him? How did you come to work for him? What time was this?

DRAW!: Now, were you thinking of working in this way from the beginning, when you were thinking of doing the book? In other words, do you, like an actor who might study a mentally ill person if they’re going to play a person with a specific mental illness, or a card shark if they’re going to card shark? One of the things I like about your work is that you sort of stretch artistically a bit from project to project.

KB: I got placed there in the mid-’80s by the School of Visual Arts alumni office. He was very involved with the school. He needed someone to draw bunnies, and I was doing Howard the Duck for Marvel at the time, so I was funny animal guy. I was doing them in his style. He would basically choose the style and the approach. He would say, “Use this type face. Draw it in my style that I used on a Bob Dylan album cover, and use this pen, and use these pantone colors.” And once you come up with the idea for “I ❤ New York,” you don’t really have to do it. He’d give you a layout or something, and say, “Here, use this typeface and these colors”; it would look like he did it. But the thing was he had all these different floors in the building. He had one floor where he was doing books, one floor was, like, art prints that people hang on their wall, posters and stuff, and one floor was Grand Union. I think they’re out of business now, but at the time he was doing all of the products—you know how the grocery stores have their own products? So you can either buy Wise potato chips or Grand Union potato chips.

KB: I hung out with a lot of slaves.

DRAW!: So he was basically doing branding.

SETTING STYLE AND TONE

DRAW!: [laughs] What I was getting at was, one of the things I like about your work, as a cartoonist, is you cast yourself maybe stylistically different with each project. Like, Jack Kirby always drew like Jack Kirby. It wouldn’t matter if he were drawing slavery stories, they would have looked like they could have worked for Galactus. You know what I mean? KB: Yeah. A big influence on me was a guy named Milton Glaser. I don’t know if you know who he is? DRAW!: Yes. KB: Milton Glaser is a very well known graphic designer. He designed the Grand Union red dot, the “I

KB: Right, right. And one thing that he said that made a real impression on me was, “You can be creative up to a point. If the job is to design a ketchup bottle, for example, it would be nice and creative to make a blue ketchup bottle, because nobody’s ever done it. And you might even say, ‘Hey, it doesn’t have to be a bottle shape. Why is ketchup always in a bottle? Maybe it’ll be a blue pen!’ And the problem with that is, who the hell’s going to know it’s ketchup? And nobody’s going to buy it.” When you’re designing a rock-and-roll poster, you’re trying to project one image. But if you’re working for Grand Union, you’re probably trying to project the image of, y’know, a reliable family grocery store. You want a real boring typeface. You don’t want psychedelic colors on your—

DRAW!: You want Helvetica.

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KB: Right, exactly! Or something really bad like that, yeah. DRAW!: So his process... KB: ...was that whatever the client was, he would try to solve their specific problems. So if you came to him and said, “Hey, I’ve got a rock and roll thing,” and he’d say, “Okay. Well, the values that rock and roll bands have is, like, excitement and sex. I’ll try and get that into it.” But if the job is designing a language book—Barrens did a lot of how to learn a foreign language and stuff like that—those have a certain look to it.

KB: Right. So when I’m doing a humor thing, it should look funny, and everything about it is funny. There shouldn’t be any confusion about Plastic Man’s intended audience. I know there is. They’re like, “What the hell? It looks like a kids book!” And it is a kids book. That’s why it looks like that. It’s designed to appeal to six-year-olds. DRAW!: So what attracted you to going to self-publishing and doing such a variety of material. Because you have The Bakers, which is like this family—

DRAW!: So you’d sort of take that philosophy and apply it to how you flex yourself artistically, depending upon the project?

KB: Because all of these ideas. I’ve done work for other publishers, I’ve done stuff for Crown Books and a bunch of other people. But the only real big comic book connection I have is DC Comics and Marvel, and I know that both of those companies, as ABOVE: Cowboy Wally and friends—from Kyle’s we discussed before, do really badly with anything sketchbook. that’s not super-heroes. Anything that is normally an BELOW: Turnaround for a proposed Cowboy Wally cartoon. easy sell. Like, if you walk into a TV producer’s NEXT PAGE TOP: Panel thumbnails for Kyle’s classic graphic novel, Why I Hate Saturn. office and say, “Oh, I want to do this funny show NEXT PAGE BOTTOM: Sketch of Laura and Anne, the about my family. Let me tell you about my kids. protagonists of Why I Hate Saturn. They’re always making a mess.” They would say, “Oh, I understand that! I get that! That’s terrific! We have lots of shows like that. We’ll buy it.” Or you say, “I want to do a story about black history and slavery.” “Oh, that would be good for February! We’ll buy it.” But only in comics do they just not get that stuff, and not really know how to sell it. DRAW!: Yeah, I think it’s more they don’t know how to sell it. I don’t think it’s that they necessarily don’t get it. KB: But I’m thinking it’s the only place—anywhere else, if you go to any other publisher and say, “I want to do a story about black history,” or about slavery, or about whatever, Hitler. They get it. My ideas are not that far out that they don’t have a built-in audience. I’m not, “I want to do this story about how the CIA is beaming radio messages into my head.” DRAW!: [laughs] Hey, I want to see that graphic novel! KB: I always have these ideas like, “Hey, wouldn’t it be fun to do a book of Mother’s Day cartoons.” [laughter] Because it’s easy. Someday, when I get enough gags, I want to put out a book of dog cartoons. DRAW!: So Kyle Baker Publishing is basically the result of your frustration and 20

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COMICS you wanting to have a vehicle, a way of putting out your ideas, yourself.

lot of positive feedback on Nat Turner from various—

KB: I wouldn’t say it’s frustration. I tend to be attracted to new ideas. I always want to do what’s not being done. I’m not one of those guys who— and 99% of people out there look at what’s currently popular and want to just imitate that and hope that they make a fraction of—say, “Gee, Alex Ross’s Justice League is really popular. I’m going to do ten other books just like that.” But they don’t work as well.

KB: It’s insane, yeah! It’s doing really well. And a lot of it is because I have the ability to get people books. What’s always happened in the past is that if somebody was interested, I’d have to refer them to somebody else to get a copy of the book. WHY I HATE SATURN ™ AND ©2006 KYLE BAKER.

DRAW!: So you’re not going to do Kyle Baker manga? [laughs] KB: You know, as a gag, I wanted to have my characters go through all those bad permutations, like the babies—you know, Baby Bakers [Mike laughs]—and just have, y’know, Baby Nat Turner; do, like, an ultimate Kyle Baker Universe crossover with every crappy idea that doesn’t work. So anyway, how I got on this thing, in comic books, for a very, very long time now, I’ve always been a little bit ahead of the curve. And people don’t get it. When Cowboy Wally was a very early graphic novel, it was ’87. There just wasn’t a precedent. And when I did Why I Hate Saturn for DC, it was the same thing, where I pitched DC on this idea of doing a 200-page book of people talking, and the protagonist is a woman, and there’re no super-heroes, and it’s black-and-white. It gets worse and worse! I mean, everything about it was just, at the time, a really bad, out-there idea to them. But the reason I come up with these ideas is because I tend to make the stuff that I would buy if somebody made it.

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DRAW!: So now you can actually make sure that they get a copy of your book. KB: Right. So somebody will call me up and say, “Oh, I’d love to have 300 copies of King David for my synagogue.” And I’d say, “Well, I’m not the guy to talk to. Talk to this guy.” And God knows if they got through to that guy, or if the orders got filled, or what happened.

DRAW!: Now, does your assistant Nicole take care of some of that, too? KB: Yeah! We’re both driving ourselves nuts right now to keep up with it. It’s gotten really—I mean, I love having the kind of problems I have, which is too much. DRAW!: So how do you split yourself, work-wise?

KB: Yeah. I like Bible stories. I buy them in various permutations. I buy books, I might go to the movies, etc., etc. So I said, “Gee, if somebody did a Bible comic book, I would buy it.” But nobody ever did one. The same thing with Nat Turner; if somebody else was doing a Nat Turner comic book, I would have bought it, because I’d love to read that thing.

KB: Well, like I said, today I pretty much got nothing done except for dealing with all the boring crap that has—like, I’m going back to my office now, because, while I was talking to you, my assistant called about this animation we’re working on, and I have to go and convert files to a different format so that they can work on it. And it’s just the kind of crap that takes up your time. I spend the time doing that, filling credit card orders, and, you know, crap like that. I go ahead and update my webpage. But then I have to block out some time to do work, like this week, I know I have to get three covers done. And do I have to get my Diamond ad in this week?

DRAW!: Now, are you getting a

DRAW!: Uhhh... the Diamond ad was due last week,

DRAW!: So you’re working to please yourself.

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COMICS first issue on the page I wanted, I just felt I needed an extra 16 pages before that page.

ABOVE: Some of Kyle’s research material for Nat Turner, showing how many slaves would fit inside the hold of a ship. BELOW: Dramatic close-up onboard the slave ship in Nat Turner.

I thought, on the 16th. KB: No, the solicitation was due last week, so I think this week I have to get my ad in. So that’s something that’s got to be done. So what will probably happen is next week I’ll lock myself in a room and finish Nat Turner. DRAW!: Does it take you longer to do Nat Turner than to do Plastic Man? KB: I don’t know. I think these things take me longer for a couple reasons. One difference between doing DC stuff and doing my own stuff is that DC stuff has a fixed deadline, and you don’t want to miss it. So they say, “Plastic Man needs to be in on the 15th.” So the 15th comes, and I have a crappy book in front of me, it has to go out. There’s always those jobs where you look at it and say, “Wow, if I spent another 24 hours on that, then I could just redo those two crappy pages.” And, in this case, you don’t have that time. In the case of Nat Turner, I did a 32-page book, and I looked at it, and I had solicited a 32page book. And I looked down and I said, “This is not a good book. It needs more pages.” And so I went and bumped it up to 48 pages. So that took an extra week. DRAW!: So you solicited it as a 32-page book, but delivered a 48-page book? How does that not only effect the story structure of the series and the individual issues, but your work schedule? KB: The structure didn’t change, I still ended the 22

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KB: Many times, things change from the initial concept. Sometimes a drawing turns out to be better than I’d expected, so I print it bigger than I’d planned, full-page. Other times, a page I thought was going to be spectacular turns out to be not as good as that other drawing I decided to print bigger. It’s why I avoid scripts. In a script, a chase through a maze might sound exciting and get your story approved by an editor, but when it comes time to draw the scene, you realize a maze is dull visually, or that it’s hard to show spatial relationships in a maze, and since spatial relationships are the core of a chase, the scene’s not going to work. The interior of a slave ship, for example, is very dark and cramped. While the scene is dramatic, there aren’t many angles you can show it from. I chose to do a close-up of a character’s face, which meant I wasn’t able to show much else inside the ship. In the early planning stage of the story, I’d expected to do a striking double-page spread, showing hundreds of suffering people in the ship’s hold. For the reasons I just described, it wouldn’t have been as effective. DRAW!: Did you bump the cover price up, or did you eat the cost? KB: Yeah, I paid for the extra pages, yes. One of the other reasons I’m doing the self-publishing that I always forget about is a lot of things I have in mind, like The Bakers, for example, is the kind of thing that would succeed everywhere else except in comic books. It’s the kind of idea that would make a great newspaper strip, it would make a great TV show, animated, some kind

DRAW!: Do you feel that if issue three needed extra pages you’d do the same. I don’t know if I could work that way as I lay everything out, then do to the next stage. This means your process really stays fluid right up till the last minute.

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of thing. It would make fun toys, what have you. It’s designed for that kind of an audience. Like a Simpsons audience. Now, one way to sell something like that is to go over to Fox and say, “I’ve got a great new idea,” and you pitch it to them, and you sell it to them, and they take it over, and they own it, and you might get fired off your own show, and you never know what the hell’s going to happen to it. And one way around that is to really come in with a lot of development already done, because anything that you come in with vague, they will add. Like, if you don’t know where they live and how they look, they will, they’ll get you a designer, and they’ll figure out where they live. DRAW!: Oh, that’s currently what I’m doing right now on the thing that Bill and I— KB: Okay, there’s a perfect example, right. So the thing you’re doing, you’re developing all the concepts and the characters and where they live and everything like that. DRAW!: All their friends, the world they live in, all that stuff, right. KB: You’re going to be investing a year of your life, at least, in this thing. And if it doesn’t work out, it’s hard to get it back. I don’t know what your deal is, maybe you get it back or maybe you don’t, but it’s hard to get it back. DRAW!: Well, even if you can get it back, it’s like X amount of time down the road before you can even get it back, so it’s basically dead, for all intents and purposes. KB: Yeah. And my experience in those things has always been, not only is it hard to get back, but they have usually crapped on it so much that it’s not something I would ever try to take to anybody else, because they’ve taken all the jokes out and made it really rotten. DRAW!: Right. So one of the reasons you do self-publishing is so you can better develop your ideas?

KB: Well, I mean, I could just walk into a movie studio and say, “Hey, here’s The Bakers,” and do all that work in advance, and say, “I want creative control,” and blah, blah, blah. But then that would mean I’d have to do a bunch of pages for free, and at least this way I’m not doing them for free. DRAW!: You’re going to get some return for it.

ABOVE: Gag page from the semi-autobiographic The Bakers. BELOW: Title art from The Bakers.

KB: I’m getting some return. It’s not much. And at least it’s getting the stuff out there, which at this point I think is important, that people even know you’ve got a property called The Bakers and are trying to sell it. So ultimately I’m hoping that somebody, I don’t know who, will give me a million dollars for the Nat Turner graphic novel. You know what I mean? Like, maybe a black college or something will, you know, do something with it, or something like that. I’m hoping that I won’t always be paying my own bills. But I’ve just found, DRAW! • SPRING 2006

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working the other way, what happens when I’m working is that the minute I sign a contract, they put the book on the schedule. And it doesn’t matter that you have no book yet. And they ask, “How long do you think it’ll take?” So you look at it and you say, “Ah, I think it’ll take six months.” And you’re working on it, and you get to a point where maybe again, you think it could be better if you did it a different way, or you look at it and you realize, “Gosh, this is going to take more than six months. I’d like to take longer.” Or any number of things. With King David, for example, there were two weird things that happened. One was, when I started drawing it, it was coming out really good, but it was going slower than I thought because the pages were so complicated. So I went back to the editor, Karen Berger, with about 20 pages, and I was supposed to have maybe 60. And I said, “Okay, Karen. Here’s the situation. I know we’ve got this book scheduled for this release date, and you know I’m a pro. I’ll bring it in if you want me to bring it in. But let me show you what I’ve got done in a couple months. I think it looks terrific, but it’s not going to come in on time. It’s up to you. I can

hack out the next hundred pages, or you can have another hundred pages that look this good.” And she said, “Okay, we’ll push it back six months.” But the second thing that happened was that the art director, after it was done came in and said, “This book looks really great. We didn’t know how it was going to look when we budgeted the thing. This thing really needs terrific paper. It would add five dollars to the cover price, but we really think that this book should have just the best production values to really accent how good the art is.” And we lost that battle. [laughs] They put it on the crappiest paper they could. So it’s the kind of thing where you’re just not in a position to win that fight. And The Bakers actually ended up being bigger for the same reason as Nat Turner, a 32-page book that ended up being 48 pages. I have higher standards for that stuff, because I think it has the potential to make me rich. So if I do a really good job on this thing, I think that this could go all the way. So, y’know, if it’s this half-assed job, you can’t do that. And, as the publisher, I plan to keep selling these things as long as I can. I’m hoping that when I’m an old man, I’ll have, like, 30 or 40 books that I’m just making money from. And whatever those spinoffs, the 30 or 40 books, and the 50 movies that are based on them, and— DRAW!: [laughs] Are you planning what you’re going to do after Nat Turner? KB: Oh, yeah, yeah. I’ve got about the next ten years planned out. [laughs] DRAW!: And is it a mixture of humor, non-fiction, and auto-bio stuff like The Bakers? KB: Basically, I want to do what Walt Disney did: get into everything and maintain control of it. I just watch a lot of artists. I watch their careers, and you look at guys and you say, “Boy, I’d like to end up like this guy, but I don’t want to be this guy.” Now, I don’t want to be Bill Finger. It didn’t work out. DRAW!: Right. I want to be Will Eisner. [laughs]

KB: Well, Will Eisner made some really good decisions. Matt Groening has made some wise decisions. Walt Disney made really great decisions. Joe Barbera is a hero of mine. His book is one of my favorites; his autobiography is great. The reason I like Joe Barbera is he is one of the few cartoonists who has created million dollar properties and actually gotten the money. DRAW!: That’s true. KB: It’s so rare that you will meet a guy who LEFT: Rejected cover rough for the Dick Tracy movie tie-in mini-series. The Tribune syndicate made the money off of the movie and its merchandising, not Tracy’s creator, Chester Gould. NEXT PAGE TOP: Kyle has his very own detective, a riff off of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s famous character. RIGHT: Panel from The Bakers.

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goes, “Yeah, I made up the Flintstones, and I got all the money from it.” He gets his fair share. DRAW!: It’s rare when you meet a comic book artist. It’s not so rare when you meet a newspaper or strip cartoonist. KB: It’s rare when you meet an animator. DRAW!: Ah, that’s true. KB: The guys who did all the Lion King characters didn’t get rich. A lot of those guys are pretty bitter. DRAW!: Well, strip cartoonists still make pretty good bread. That’s the one place left where I think you can still hit big money, even though newspaper circulations are down. KB: It’s a matter of which decisions you make. There are the guys who are making money on cartoons, and then there are the guys who got screwed after creating a really hot property. And you just have to watch that. And I have enough faith in my work that I’m willing to stick with it and take a loss for a while and hold out for the bigger check down the line, because I think it will happen. Again, the same way it happened for Crumb. Crumb, I think, is probably peaking now, as far as making money, and as far as being famous.

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graph of ‘Keep on Truckin’’.” In The Wall Street Journal sometimes they have a section on how executives decorate their offices, and a large percentage of them now decorate their offices with Jack Kirby art. DRAW!: Oh, really? That’s why I can’t afford it anymore! KB: That’s what happens. You’re 40-something or 50-something, you’ve got some money, your kids are gone. You’re, like, “Oh, I’m going to buy some Jack Kirby art! I used to love that stuff!” And look at Stan, Stan’s bigger now than ever. DRAW!: True. He’s richer now than ever, that’s for sure! KB: Spider-Man and the X-Men are more famous now than ever. They’re huge. You have to have faith. But also I think a lot of it is maintaining control. I’ve had so many times where a small opportunity faded. These big companies will turn down something because it’s not big enough for them. If a guy offers me 500 bucks for a Tshirt deal, I would take it. We did some foreign translations of the Cartoonist book, and the money wasn’t great, but what the hell? It’s a couple of bucks for sitting on your ass, and it gets the stuff out there. DC Comics tends to hold out for Wal-Mart. You know what I mean?

DRAW!: Yeah, unless he somehow did another movie or something, yeah.

DRAW!: Yeah. Well, I guess, though, to defend them a little bit, they basically sort of have to, because their overhead is so high.

KB: But he’s much bigger now than he was when he was doing Zap! Comix and “Keep on Truckin’” and stuff. It took another 30 years for the people to catch on in large number—like I said before, to grow up and say, “Oh, yeah, I used to really dig ‘Keep on Truckin’’ when I was 20 years old, and now I’m an old man, and I can afford this $3000 litho-

KB: That’s fine, that’s fine. I’m just saying it doesn’t work for me. I mean, there are plenty of my friends getting very rich at DC. So that’s fine. If you’re the kind of guy who’s getting rich at DC, please stay with DC. But if you’re somebody like me, who isn’t going to get into WalMart—you know what I mean? Wal-Mart’s not going to make that THE BAKERS ™ AND ©2006 KYLE BAKER.

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T-shirt deal yet. So if some other guy wants to offer us 200 bucks, I think we should just take it, and at least get the T-shirts out there. And you never know, once you get those $200 T-shirts out, maybe Wal-Mart will be interested. I think it’s better to have a crappy $3 comic book out than to not have anything out. DRAW!: So how does your website fit into this? Because one of the things I’m always interested in talking to artists about is the business angle, like we are doing here. I was talking to Steve Rude last issue about this. Steve and his wife use his website sort of like a general store. Is that what you’re using your website for, so that people can come and buy and purchases All Things Baker? KB: No.... I mean, you can, but my stuff is pretty well distributed. You can pick it up somewhere else easier. I actually started the website to hold onto the domain name. Back in the ’90s or whenever the Internet started, I remembered Dwayne McDuffie had to pay a lot of money to get the name “Dwayne McDuffie” from some other guy, and I didn’t want that to happen, so I just bought the name kylebaker.com. And back then, the bandwidth, everything was so slow, and so few people had Internet, that there was just no way to do anything interesting with it. Like, you couldn’t put large graphics files up at all.

DRAW!: But I guess the reason I’m asking is that when you’re interviewed by either Terry Gross or Tavis Smiley, and they go, “You can find out more information at kylebaker.com”— KB: That’s right, that’s right. Yeah, yeah, I do have a lot of information up there. And I was using it as a portfolio for a while, but that didn’t work. [laughs] DRAW!: That wasn’t working? KB: When it first started, it was a portfolio. The only stuff I had up there was to show off art samples, and then I had contact information. And I got one or two jobs, good jobs, out of that,

DRAW!: No, it would just take so long for everybody to download images—

KB: It would take a long time, or you could compress it so it looked like crap. You couldn’t put any animation up. All the animation was always like the size of a postage stamp, and so blurry you couldn’t figure out what it was. So I didn’t really know what I was going to do with it, but I thought that something could happen. But over the years, now it is possible to take people’s money over the Internet, which you couldn’t do before, and it’s also possible to put a decent-sized film up there; you can get some decent video up there, y’know? So I’ve been building up the store gradually, but the thing about that business is that there’s a certain skill to directing traffic to your website, and I haven’t really studied that. I’ve studied, over the last couple of years, how to publish books and how to sell books and things like that, so I know how to do that.

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COMICS when I first started. I think it might have just been the novelty of the Internet or something. DRAW!: Well, you also have to keep promoting every week, “Hey, I put new drawings on my website! Go check it out!” KB: These jobs happened because some people who just somehow had wandered, stumbled across it, but they happened to be good-paying clients—advertising jobs and such. And so I thought that was going to be what was going to happen. And I also haven’t produced that stuff as much. So, yeah, I guess now it’s more of a place for just people to see stuff. You can browse. You could buy the stuff online at my website, but it’s also easy enough to buy the stuff at amazon.com or— DRAW!: True, but you make more money on those sales as you are not giving 60% plus to a middleman, and comic shops are not always going to carry your books. Nobody pushes your book like you do. As a small publisher you can’t dictate percentage and the discount to the distributor like DC can. KB: I would like to put more effort into the website soon, it’s just a different set of challenges. For example, I know how to publicize things in print. I know which publications I need to be reviewed in, and how to get reviewed. I have no idea what websites to approach. I got some great reviews from aintitcoolnews.com, for instance, but I don’t know what that means. I hear it’s a heavily trafficked site, but I’m not sure how that translates to sales. Do the readers follow the link to my site and buy the book? Do they go to the comic shop and get it? Do they buy it from the online comic retailers who carry my books? Which online retailer is the biggest? Which sells more of my books? It’s such a different world, and I either need to learn more about the web, or just hire a web marketing expert.

KB: Yeah, yeah. You’ll see half of it. That’s what I did with the first one so, yeah, with the second issue you can see half of it. I may put the entire first issue up once it’s no longer in stores, because I’m about to run out of books. The only reason I didn’t put the whole thing up was that I figure if you read the whole story, you wouldn’t buy the book. That’s one of those things that I’ve been following a lot was that whole downloading debate. DRAW!: Oh, people downloading comics for free? KB: Oh, downloading anything for free, music or movies or what have you. DRAW!: Because people were raging about that, people were supposedly scanning whole issues of comics and putting them up. KB: Yeah, people are doing that, too. That sucks. But my whole thing has been, I do a lot of that downloading stuff, myself, and I discover a lot of things that I wouldn’t have gotten into if I had to pay for the thing. DRAW!: Oh, sure. I mean, if you can’t listen to a song, who’s going to drop $30 on a CD? KB: Unless it’s by somebody I’ve already heard before, like The Rolling Stones. DRAW!: Right. KB: So I think it’s good to give people free stuff, and I’m actually trying to give people free stuff on the web site because if you don’t do it, I think other people will bootleg it, and then you’re going to have crappy quality stuff up there. DRAW!: [laughs] So you’d rather control the quality of the bootleg?

KB: Yes, have a really nice GIFF out there that people can read for free, that I made, so that I know it looks good and isn’t all ©2006 KYLE BAKER. compressed and scanned badly and what have DRAW!: Right. But in other you. I don’t do as much words, if I go to kylebaker.com— market research as I should, but just based LEFT: Panel from King David. KB: You’ll see a whole bunch of cartoons. on the sales from ABOVE: Nude study from Kyle’s sketchbook. Nat Turner, I DRAW!: Right. And then the new issue of Nat think that it Turner is going to come out next week. Am I helped that I put half the issue up there on the web site. going to be able to see a couple pages from it? DRAW! • SPRING 2006

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DRAW!: You think so? Because people could get enough of a sense of—? KB: People have been buying that thing and don’t know anything about me or about comics or anything. I mean, they’re attracted by the subject matter. Y’know, if you hear there’s a Nat Turner book out there, and you’re of that ©2006 KYLE BAKER. mindset, if you’re interested in black history, you’re going to check it out, because it’s interesting, it’s a novelty. So I think a lot of people just might read about it somewhere, go onto the website, check it out, and then order it. DRAW!: Now, let me ask you this. How do you feel about web comics as, I guess, a medium. Y’know, like PVP, things like that. Have you ever thought about just doing that?

DRAW!: Right. It takes longer to get the books, though. KB: It takes twelve weeks to get the stuff. If there’s a mistake, it’s a real hassle. It has to go back to China. But the biggest thing is that you’re just not going to be able to put out a cheap product. If I do a book in color, I’m going to have to charge $17 to $20. Which is fine, that’s nice to have those kind of books out there, but I can’t figure out a way to do a crappy 50¢ pamphlet like we used to by. You can produce a DVD for a dollar. You can put a full-color comic book, you can put all of your comics—like The New Yorker just put out all The New Yorker cartoons on a CD, but if they put all The New Yorker stuff in a book, nobody’d be able to afford it, because it’d be a 1000-page book. DRAW!: So let me ask you this based on this reflecting on the value vs. expense of the traditional 22-page pamphlet comic. Why did you decide to do Turner as a series of comic books as opposed to just do it straight as a graphic novel?

KB: Because I’m curious to see if it makes a difference. When I first started publishing, I ran the numbers, and I realized there was just no money in $3 books. For the kind of numABOVE: The Baker family celebrates as baby bers that I can expect. My book hovers in Jackie takes her first steps. From The Bakers. the low thousands, really somewhere between three and five. And so, if you’re DRAW!: [laughs] A really bad animated film! only selling between three and five thousand $3 books, and you’re only making a dollar off of those, because you’re selling KB: For me, I don’t get that hung up on formats so much as I do them wholesale, you’re only making $3000 dollars. And once getting stuff delivered, getting stuff out there. One thing that attracts you spend money to market it or whatever, you’ve broken even. me to the computer as a finished product, instead of going to print, And when I first started doing the books, I called up Diamond, is color. Now color isn’t any more expensive. If you want to do your and I called up some other people. I said, “It looks to me like web comic in full-color, it’s fine. And I’ve found myself, I’m sort of there’s no money in the $3 book. I’m just going to do a graphic in this weird spot now, I’m doing this animation stuff and I’m pubnovel.” So the first two books I did were just plain old graphic lishing these books. I’ve been looking for a way to be able to pubnovels. The thing I’m curious about is whether or not doing a lish color books at a reasonable price. serialized version first generates some kind of advance publicity. I want to see if having those four comic books coming out a year DRAW!: You can do them overseas. A lot of people have been before, and getting all the publicity for those four comic books, I doing— want to see if that’s going to translate into sales for the hardcover. If it doesn’t, then I’m going to go back to the old formula and KB: I’ve been looking at it, yeah, yeah, yeah. I’ve been talking go back to publishing graphic novels. If it does turn out to sell to these guys, what is it, Regency? They do a lot of Denis KB: Yeah, I have. I was just reading a review or something in a newspaper, something about web comics, and there was something about how there’s this debate going on about whether something is a web comic or not. Like, if you put a little bit of animation in it, is it still a web comic, or is it now an animated film?

Kitchen books and stuff in China. 28

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CONTINUED ON PAGE 50

Interviewed by Jamar Nicholas

Transcribed by Steven Tice

rtist Mike Hawthorne may be able to justifiably wrest the “ hardest working man in entertainment” title away from James Brown just on page count alone. A prolific artist, Hawthorne has quickly risen up from his indy cred beginnings page-bypage on such books as his own Hysteria, as well as Queen & Country, Terminator 3, Ruule, 3 Days in Europe, and, most recently, Marvel’s Machine Teen. Hawthorne’s work always delivers strong drawing, great storytelling, and a sense of fun that has him pulling away from his pack of peers, clearly showing he isn’t a one-trick pony. His diverse body of work shows he can handle a great variety of subjects, from sci-fi to soap opera—which I have to say impresses the hell out of me. Hawthorne’s earned his bones, and he happens to be one of the nicest guys in comics you’ll ever meet. DRAW! interviewer and long time pal, Jamar Nicholas, who’s known Hawthorne since the beginning of his career, interviewed Hawthorne from his home in York, Pennsylvania.

—Mike Manley

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COMICS LEFT: Mike mugs for the camera thug-style. BELOW: Kung-fu action. RIGHT: The Kingpin from sketch to inks.

JAMAR NICHOLAS Mike, tell us about your childhood. What was it like growing up? MIKE HAWTHORNE: Well, I had a good and bad childhood. I was in a single parent house, just mom trying to make due. We were broke. Real broke. We were even homeless once, did I ever tell you about that? JN: No... MH: Yeah, it was bad at one point when we first moved to Pennsylvania. My mother, who was Puerto Rican, couldn’t get a good job. She had worked at Group W cable in NYC for like 10 years or more, but couldn’t get a shot at the local cable company here in PA. We were on welfare—government cheese, government peanut butter in a cardboard jar, the whole nine. We got evicted from a house we moved into early in here in York City, and we had to move above a bar to keep from being on the street. One room, with one bathroom for the whole floor. Dudes used to take their “dates” up there for an hour at a time, know what I mean? JN: Wow. MH: I remember my mom used to push the TV in front of the door to make sure no one broke in! She kept my milk for the Cheerios on the windowsill, ’cause it was winter. I remember thinking it wasn’t that bad, but I could see how bad my mother felt. JN: Yeah, when we’re kids, you don’t have a point of reference— it’s just how you live. MH: Exactly. You didn’t really know you’re that poor ’til you see how other kids lived. Then we got taken in by this family—this lady with three kids. I hated them at times man, cause they made sure I didn't forget I was worse off then them. I was getting to where I could tell I was poor. I started hating it, started hating not having options. If I remember correctly, I started to draw more at this point. We just had that one room, and I never wanted to be around the family so I drew a lot.... well, I always drew. But I think it really got serious here. Then, when we moved I made friends with a dude on my block named Shavane. He put me on to comics, ’cause at the time I just drew graffiti and little hip-hop characters. JN: What time period was this? 30

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MH: Ahh... 4th grade, maybe 5th? I forget. My mom isn’t around anymore, or I’d ask her. JN: This is like mid-’80s? I forget—I’m a little older than you. MH: Yeah, I’m 29 so that sounds right. Mid-’80’s... I was listening to Stetsasonic after we moved from that house. I could use my old Hip-Hop tapes as my timeline! JN: We have a lot in common, Mike. MH: Word! [laughter] JN: OK, so then, you weren’t thinking you wanted to draw for a living, were you? MH: Nah, not yet. I was just amazed that someone could draw highlights in hair or make something look like metal! I couldn’t believe some of this stuff when I saw it in comics. It was like magic to me. JN: Yeah! I remember having this old Terry Austin X-Men poster, and I would just stare at Colossus’ metal plates all day. It was amazing. MH: Exactly! I remember drawing Colossus and kids were bugging out on it! “Yooo, how’d you make it look like metal!?” It was like I became a magician by looking at that stuff. Like learning tricks by watching the stage show. JN: Especially for li’l dirty kids in the hood, you didn’t draw for a living. You drew as a hobby. That’s not a “real” job that people would strive for. MH: You drew graf[fitti]. Like I told you before, I use to charge to draw peoples’ names and stuff. But, to actually have art be your job? That was crazy! My mom used to tell me artists aren’t worth any money ’til after they died! JN: So did you wanna play ball or something when you got older? Every kid had some sort of vocation they thought they’d do. MH: I wanted to box at one point. I lived next to ©2006 MIKE HAWTHORNE

COMICS a boxing gym at one point, and used to hang out in there. Put the gloves one once or twice. I also wanted to freestyle bikes or race them. We’d set up ramps with old wood and cinder blocks and just go crazy. I played football, baseball. All of that. No b-ball though. But once I figured out you could draw comics for money, that’s what I wanted to do. I was too short for b-ball! [laughs] JN: I had that dream for a second. I wanted to be Dr. J. Then I realized I wasn’t going to make it past six foot. And I wasn’t very good at it, either. MH: Of course! Every Philly kid wanted to be Dr. J! He was like a super-hero in the flesh! JN: So what kind of grades did you get in school? Were you studious? MH: I was good, ’cause my mother was on me. She was alone, so she’d come down hard on me if I KINGPIN ©2006 MARVEL CHARACTERS, INC. messed up. My grades were good. Actually, they were really good in middle school and junior high. I was at a Catholic school, so they were on us, too.

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JN: Man, me too. I was doing a lot of graffiti and was aping Genosha soldiers in my pieces. MH: Yeah, we’d steal characters from anywhere! A dude might draw Hagar the Horrible in his piece and everyone would flip out! JN: What did you get out of graffiti? MH: Graffiti just got me drawing. I think it got me hooked on people going off on [appreciating] your work. Like, when you’d try something different and people noticed and flipped out! That was a drug for me as a kid. It also taught me that you had to practice because you never knew if you would have to battle someone. Battling made me want to get better, sharpened your skills. JN: Yeah, you couldn’t be sloppy with your stuff—it had to be crisp or you’d get clowned on. MH: Even now, I want to be able to take on anyone in art. I know it’s silly, and immature, but it’s just a holdover from that culture of battling. Competition. Later, in high school I got into graffiti on walls. I did some in Philly, and some here in York City. York was sad, ’cause there was no real graf, and so I took it on myself to fix that. [laughs] I’d go out at like two or three in the morning and just burn all over the place. Had my little collection of caps and everything! JN: Yeah, I know about that. MH: That taught me to respect a deadline I think. You only had sooo much time to mess with a piece before the cops would roll around. So, you had to work well under pressure!

JN: What were you drawing with at that time? Woolworth markers? Anything you could get your hands on? MH: Yeah, mostly I drew with pencils and markers. Any paper I could find. Note books were nice. The composition books were cool.

JN: I think people just see it as petty vandalism—graffiti has a set of rules you had to adhere to... well, back then you had to.

JN: You said graffiti and comics were what you were vibing off of then—what kind of comics? MH: Well, at first any comic that people would give me. Shay used to buy a lot of Conan comics, so that’s what I’d look at. Later I got some Judge Dredd comics from another dude I knew. Any comic was fine with me. Later, much later, I started buying X-Men. Then, graduated to Punisher War Journal.

MH: Yeah, exactly. No personal property. No house of worship. Now you see graffiti on people’s cars, man! I’d have never done that!

JN: JR JR! I really liked those, too. I liked his Punisher. JN: Those rules don’t exist anymore. MH: Honestly, I didn’t care who drew it in the beginning. Didn’t even occur to me to follow an artist. It wasn’t ’til I started buying X-Men that I noticed an individual artist. Marc Silverstri was penciling X-Men when I first jumped on, and just thought he was the man. And Jim Lee, when he did Punisher War Journal.

MH: Sad. JN: Plus, people used to die for it. That was real. I guess it seemed real silly, but that’s how deep graf was back in the ’80s. DRAW! • SPRING 2006

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COMICS MH: Yeah, true. Years ago I got to hang out with an old graffiti artist in East Harlem, where my cousins live. He talked r-e-a-l-l-y slow from inhaling fumes for years and years in subway tunnels, but was still doing it. Love, man. Love. JN: Okay, so how were you viewed in school? Were you the art kid? MH: In high school I did become the art kid. I was the man! [laughs] I used to draw with a pencil in my mouth in the lunchroom just to show off! JN: [laughs] Theatrics! MH: I was a ham! I got real into the art classes. Started learning about drawing the figure. Started keeping a sketchbook for the first time. Learned about modeling and shading. It was fantastic for me. Like I found nirvana! JN: I’ve seen your fine art stuff—did you practice still life and things in high school, or was that all college? I know a lot of cats with real hot street styles who couldn’t adjust in art school. MH: Mr. Dodson, the teacher I told you about before, really took to me. He used to tell me “I see a lot of Puerto Rican kids with a ton of talent and they fall through the cracks. You have to go to art school.” JN: That’s great. A lot of people never get that one person who believes in them. MH: He got me at a good time, ’cause I was ready to get serious. He got me into the PA Governor’s School for the Arts. He pushed me to paint in oils. He just kept throwing things at me, and I just ate it up. JN: You keep in contact with him? I’m sure he’d be proud of you. MH: Oh yeah, I send him books all the time. I got a letter from him a few weeks back cause he’s retiring. He thanked me for all the books, and told me I was his career highlight. JN: That’s awesome. My teachers hated me! MH: That dude saved my life, literally. I didn’t know about financial aid ’til I met him. He pushed me to look at art schools, enter contests, whatever it took. In the end, my senior year, I was being recruited like some football star! It was cool; I got all these letters and recruitment stuff that was personally addressed to me! Wild stuff. At the time, I never thought I could go to college. To me, college was for kids with money. JN: Was your mother encouraging about your art? Did she want something “better” for you?

MH: My mother was fantastic. I mean, I was going to get to college! This was like a dream come true for her! She’d buy me whatever supplies she could. Mr. Dodson knew my situation, so he kept me in supplies, too. But, my mother tried so damned hard, man. JN: Like I was saying, I think that’s great. I know a lot of people who didn’t have that support system. Family support is usually more of a “that’s nice dear” brush-off, or the kid would go to art school to escape “real college.” LEFT: Pencils and inks for page 1 of “Hype,” from 2005’s Four Letter Worlds anthology. NEXT PAGE TOP: Artwork for an Hysteria mailer. RIGHT: Cover to a Free Comic Book Day edition of Hysteria.

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MH: I was lucky. I remember she got me a set of Rapidographs, which were like 40 bucks at the time. Spending that much on any one thing was a big deal, and she did it. She was a trooper man. JN: They’re still expensive! [laughs] Your mother was a huge part of your life. MH: Hell yeah. With no father around, it was just her and me. We only had each other to turn to. I was real damned lucky. JN: Yeah, that was like me and my moms. MH: I respect you more for doing what you’ve done in spite of all that, man!

JN: Wow. I wish I had Mr. Dodson. Was your mother creative at all? MH: My mother was creative with her wit, that’s all. Jokes all day, but no art skills. She did get me loving Frank Sinatra and old R&B. So, she did affect me artistically in that way. I mean, I still listen to that stuff when working. JN: I was just humming “I Get a Kick Outta You” tonight in the car! MH: I usually dedicate my books to whatever artist got me through it. I think I dedicated Queen & Country to Nina Simone. JN: So how was college in relation to the other students? Was this your first time around other artists as good or maybe better than you?

JN: Who? Me? MH: Yeah, you. I mean, you’re a working cartoonist even with no teacher there to help you develop. You got staying power, homey!

MH: Yeah, in a way. Going to the PA Governor’s School got me over the culture shock of being around kids that could draw better then me. Showed me I had to catch up for all the years I hadn’t been studying, so when college rolled around I was ready. So, it wasn’t too bad.

JN: Thanks, but I suck. [laughs] MH: Nah, you know that’s not true. JN: My teachers hated me because I couldn’t paint and I “just wanted to do those silly cartoons all day.” I really wanted to paint, but that extension between surface and tool was too hard for me to deal with. I tried, but I never could grasp it.

JN: So you didn’t have that art “culture shock” in college? MH: Well, I did. Big time. What affected me was being around—God, this is going to sound terrible—being around that many white people!

MH: See, Mr. Dodson was good at showing me how learning to draw and paint would help me doing comics.

MH: I mean, I’m half white, but I never ever met my dad! I DRAW! • SPRING 2006

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always lived in black or Latino neighborhoods. I grew up strictly as a Puerto Rican, speaking Spanish most of the time and everything. JN: So that’s all you had to go on.... MH: It was odd. I didn’t know how to relate. I got offended every couple of minutes, ’cause I was sure they were all making fun of me. JN: Your radar was up. MH: Yeah, my radar and my dukes! [laughs] I remember following some kids toward Cheltenham Ave. because I thought I heard them say something racist about Latinos! I was always ready to fight. I got a bad rep for being “the mean guy.” JN: And you were short! MH: Yeah, an angry short dude is no fun! [laughs] But I was big at the time. I was lifting weights, and weighed like 198 freshman year. At 5' 6", that’s like the Thing’s proportions!

MH: I found myself seeking out kids I could be comfortable with. I made great friends with a black dude from West Philly named Jon Harris. We’re friends to this day. We had a small group of guys that just hung out. JN: Where was your head at? Were you just trying to graduate, or “be the best”? What kind of student were you? I doubt you were the goof-off type. MH: I was all about doing better then anyone there. See, I should point out something that happened in high school that messed my head up: When I was younger and wasn’t aware of being poor, there was a time when I wasn’t really aware of being a minority. Or, half a minority— ABOVE: Pencils for page 2 of the spy thriller, Queen & Country #1. whatever. Then, it started to sink in little by little. When I RIGHT: Pencil portrait of Mike’s daughter, Maria. started at a Catholic High School, they made clear that I didn’t “fit in.” I got called into the Vice Principal’s office JN: Damn, man. once because my uniform wasn’t correct. I explained that we couldn’t order the right one in time, because we just didn’t have MH: I couldn’t believe it! I was floored. I went off on him a litthe money. I still had a shirt and tie, but you had to have a certle, saying how I had applied under the name Hawthorne and tain kind of tie and slacks and whatnot. He says to me, “I know they couldn’t know I was half-Puerto Rican, but he just shrugged you don’t fit in here, but you have to wear the same uniform as it off and said “Hope you’re right.” I wanted to kill him, man. everyone else anyway. Just buy one set, and wear that everyday.” So, when I went to college I was convinced that the other stuI dropped out of that school after a week, and then moved to dents were looking on me as just being the best “Latino applithe city high school. I was much more comfortable there. The cant.” So, I was gonna crush them. I was gonna show them all I racial make-up was more diverse. It was a cool school, and it was better than them. Real silly thinking, but it got me fired up. had the art program I loved. Then, junior year I got into the I worked harder then anyone there, and made sure I never forgot Governor’s School I told you about. I had this chemistry teacher this chemistry teacher. I wasn’t crazy about at the time. One day we’re discussing it, and I’m all proud, because this was a big deal. Thousands of kids JN: That lit a fire under you. And people think that minorities apply and they take only about 50 kids or so just for visual arts. make this stuff up. This is pretty personal if you don’t wanna So, I felt like I had accomplished something. Then he says to me answer it—is there a reason you draw under your name as Mike “Well, are you the best applicant or the best Latino applicant?” Hawthorne so people aren’t sure what your race is? 34

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JN: But you had a crew of pals, I’m sure.

COMICS MH: No, I don’t try and hide that I’m Puerto Rican, but I didn’t change my name, either. I wanted to. I wanted to change my name to my mother’s maiden name, Otero. But she wouldn’t allow it. JN: Wow, why not? MH: In fact, I shouldn’t have the name Hawthorne. My mother and father were never married. Well, he was married but not to my mother. He has a wife and kids and a life, and she was... I guess she was his mistress. They went out for like 11 years or more. He was her one true love, and I was his son. So, the name stuck. She died thinking he’d come back to her one day. JN: Forlorn love. That’s deep. MH: Plus, I’ve got to be honest; I wonder if part of her thought I’d have a head start on life with the last name “Hawthorne.” “Otero” didn’t serve her well here, and she knew it.

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money in it beside my drawing desk. That’s all she had. Everything else was tied up in debt. JN: Wow, Mike, that’s got to be some emotional stuff. Every time you feel like goofing off, you look at that envelope. MH: Word. JN: So where were you? Were you living back at home then? MH: I had moved back to York after having lived in Philly for almost five years, and couldn’t find work. I moved back because I got serious about my then-girlfriend, now-wife. And my mom still lived here, too. My mom was alone, so I felt a lot of guilt for living in Philly. I worked at a diner flipping eggs. She saw me broke when she died, and that killed me. JN: So is this when you started self-publishing?

JN: Yeah. You went through sh*t anyway. Parents are smart.

MH: Yeah, I saved up whatever dough I could get and started self-publishing.

MH: Yeah, man, it’s tragic stuff. I felt for her. I was angry at him for a long time, not because he wasn’t there for me but because he wasn’t there for her.

JN: You just jumped in? What kind of homework did you do for that? I mean, that’s a drastic leap.

JN: I’m sure that shaped the kind of man you are today. MH: I was angry that he didn’t help her. She went through a lot of hardships because she raised me alone. JN: You don’t ever want to go find him? MH: Not really. I mean, my wife wants to more then me. She wants him to see what I’ve done and see the grandkids he’s got. I think she’s real damned proud of me, and wants to rub it in his face. JN: I’m the same way. I don’t want to go dig up my dad—I don’t need that. My girl has asked, “You don’t want to know him a little bit?” It’s just not worth the drama in my mind. MH: Yeah. I mean, what would you talk about? “Hey Pop, so why didn’t you give a sh*t?” JN: Yeah. I mean, I don’t really think I carry that “black male” anger, so I don’t need that closure. That “Pops, you didn’t love me! I hate women because of you!” jazz that a lot of people seem to get. MH: [laughs] Yeah, you can’t blame too much on them. They more then likely did us a favor not being around. As for my mom, she did play a hand in making me what I am now. Career-wise, I mean. She died right after I finished college. It was a mess because she was so in debt that everything she had I lost. The house, everything. She died with $2.20 in her pocket, on the floor of the factory she worked at. I still have the envelope they gave me at the hospital with the

MH: I jumped in head first, because I had something to prove. I had always promised my mom I’d be a big success and buy her a house and all this sh*t, and never got to. So, I just went all out. I did a little homework, but knew almost nothing. I didn’t even know how to use a computer! I went back to Mr. Dodson, who had a Mac lab at the school at this point, and he showed me a bit about Photoshop. I colored my first comic cover right there in his class room! [laughs] JN: You had all of these ill influences in your stuff then: manga, Hip-Hop, your heritage, robots, GI Joe. How did all of that turn into Hysteria? MH: Well, I knew I wanted Hysteria to have a little of all that stuff. So, I just threw as much of it onto the page as I could. It looks forced now, when I look back at it. But back then I was just going all out, throwing it all on the page. I didn’t care about any rules of storytelling, I just wanted Hysteria to look like my head cracked open and spilled on the page. JN: It was awesome. That’s some of my favorite work of yours. It’s hard to get back to that state now that you know all the rules. “Ignorant Brilliance.” MH: Oh, God! You’re so damned right! JN: Yeah. You can’t let yourself go nuts any more because your head is filled with rules and guidelines. DRAW! • SPRING 2006

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MH: I try and do that, but it’s a fight. I guess it’s for the best, but I miss it sometimes....

JN: Talk about your art supplies. I know you have tricked out pencils and brushes.

THE LABORATORY

MH: I love trying out all kinds of exotic art supplies, when I can. I have these Japanese brush pens I sketch with right now that I love. I have a big mix of stuff in my stash. I have these paint markers that I use for sketching. They have actual opaqueish paint in them and I can use them to block in big areas. I have this old school fountain pen I want to use for sketching. What else? A good mix of tech pencils. Graphite crayons and blue lead pencils. The stuff I generally use on the actual pages is pretty standard though. Hunt 102s, Raphael Kolinsky #’s 2 & 3. Well, I use the Deleter pens too. I love the G pen for bigger things that call for a pen. I also have a bunch of litho pencils and crayons I use for texture stuff. On my desk, I have a big cup full of erasers. Kneaded, white plastic erasers, gum and the old school pink pearls. I have a pen and brush cup with Raphael #’s 1, 2 and 3, as well as the Deleter dip pens and a Hunt 102. I have a couple of Winsor-Newton Series 7s in there, too. Then, the tech pen cup. All kinds of disposable and refillable joints in there. Oh, and the marker cup. Two of these cool Japanese brush pens from NYC, some Copic grey markers, and a couple of Tombos. For penciling I’m pretty simple. I use Dixon Ticonderogas and a cheap Sanford Tech pen, 0.5 lead size.

JN: Tell us about your workday. I know you have children, so it’s got to be a tightrope you walk to get your work done. MH: Man, it’s ever changing. Some weeks I’m up at 6am to work ’til “noonish,” then hang out with the kids and finish in the afternoon while they nap. Some weeks I’m watching the kids most of the day and only get to work while they nap, and after they go to bed... those days I end up working ’til all hours of the night. It’s silly; I have to be really reactive, which I don’t like. I wish I could stick to one schedule all the time. JN: Do you keep a TV in your studio? What do you do to get you through your drawing day? Radio? MP3s? Tell. MH: Hell no, I don’t have a TV in the Studio! I don’t watch much TV to begin with. Hell, we don’t even have cable in the house! [laughs] A stereo I do have. And a Walkman. I’m listening to music the entire time I’m working, unless I’m writing. I just can’t listen to music and write. Messes my head up for some reason. 36

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JN: Do you ever use Col-Erase Blue Pencils?

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MIKE HAWTHORNE

LEFT: Eterno goes on a rampage. RIGHT: Pencils and inks for page 2 of “Hype.”

MH: Nah, never. I want to try some though. Those are the ones you can erase, right? JN: Yeah. A lot of guys use them—a hold-over from animation. They glide across the page. MH: I’ll see if I can find some. Since I usually blue-line my pencils in Photoshop, I don’t need them. I am inking right on the pencils for Machine Teen, so might be a smart move. JN: What kind of ink are you using these days? MH: FW ink, thinned with rapidograph ink when it gets thick. The combo seems to stand up to erasing. But, when I ink the blue-lined pages, it doesn’t matter. I could ink with ashes mixed with water, since I don’t have to erase the blue-lined pages. JN: It’s funny, when you start doing comics, no one said you’d need to become a minor chemist. Mixing inks is something they never tell you about! I was using Higgins Black Magic cut with Sumi ink for a while. MH: [laughs] Nah, you’re right! You just pick up on it. I’d try and thin sh*t with water, and end up with grey ink. Tried the Rapidograph ink, since it’s thin already and it works just fine. I have a ton of Sumi, but it’s not waterproof so I avoid it. JN: I never knew that.... Wow. MH: Yeah, I’m pretty sure it’s not. I tested it once, and ended up with smudges. Bad news, especially if you take pages to a con and a fan boy with sweaty hands is squeezing the Charmin! JN: What do you do to make corrections? Pro White? White-Out pens? MH: Corrections are done with White acrylic, or it’s done on the scans in Photoshop. I used to use white labels for big areas! Just cut it to fit, and draw on top.

Works as long as you don’t use a quill pen. JN: That’s old school. Come on be specific—a certain kind of white acrylic? You know finding a good white cover-up is like finding the Ark. MH: I just use a tube of Liquitex. Works fine, unless I’m impatient and the ink is still wet. I do that sh*t all the time, out of stupidity! It can get thick though, so sometimes I have to go back over that spot. I try and do it in layers to get a smoother surface to draw on. JN: And you go right back over it with a brush or whatever you were using? It doesn’t crack or smear? MH: Nah, it works fine. There isn’t any real tooth to it, so you can smear it if you don’t let it dry. It needs more dry time, so I’ll ink over it and leave it alone for a while. Haven’t had any flaking yet... knock on wood. Plus, I ink mostly with a brush and that glides fine over the acrylic. . ORNE AWTH MIKE H 6 0 0 2 ORK © ARTW

JN: I’ve seen your layouts—they’re DRAW! • SPRING 2006

MIKE HAWTHORNE

COMICS

insane. Explain your process for doing a page. From script, do you start breaking it down and jotting notes for thumbs? Then layouts? Talk about that part of the process. MH: Well, it’s fluid and can change a good bit. When I started trying to build my skills, I used to do each scene separately and then light box them onto one page. Being a working artist would never allow for that kind of time. Plus, it just kills the energy for me. I know some guys can do fantastic stuff by going from roughs layouts to light-boxed pencils. Like Mike Wieringo! You’ve seen his layouts!? JN: Yeah. He’s amazing. MH: Oh, hell yeah! His “layouts” are more thought out and drawn better then my actual pencils! JN: So normally you’re starting out with thumbs? On typing paper or what? MH: Now, what I normally do is print the script on legal paper instead of letter. This leaves a space at the bottom of the pages, which I use to do my layouts. Really rough and quick. Then, I go from this to pencils. You’d be surprised how close they are to each other. My pencils are pretty loose, too, especially since I usually ink myself. My man Mighty says I don’t do pencils, I write myself notes! [laughs] JN: Are you constantly referencing the layouts when you start the penciling, or are you just eyeballing it? MH: Oh, yeah. I have to. I actually clip it to my desk while I’m drawing. I like having them on the script, because I re-read the dialogue while I’m drawing, too. To get the “acting” right. The pencils get scanned at grayscale around 300 dpi, then are blue-lined in Photoshop. I print those out onto 2-ply Strathmore Bristol, 400 Series. I ink these, not the actual pencils. The Marvel stuff I ink on the pencils to try and stick to their format needs. I use their paper, which isn’t bad stuff. Everything else gets blue-lined. JN: Wow. So you never touch a lightbox? MH: Not if I can help it. JN: I know a lot of people who blow up the layouts and trace them up—to keep the “fluidity”.... MH: I’d like to try that. I keep telling myself I will someday. I think I could slightly tighten up the layouts and ink that. But, my pencils can be so loose already that it might just add time to production. I RIGHT: Page 22 of The Ballad of Sleeping Beauty #2— pencils and inks. RIGHT TOP: Sleeping Beauty preliminary sketch.

DRAW! • SPRING 2006

only tighten up my pencils if I have to show them to an editor that is not used to how I work. But, yeah, I may try the blown up layout thing before too long. If I can cut time out of production that way, I’ll do it regularly. That’s the thing, I change my ways a lot. I keep it fluid, and try and go with the path of least resistance. JN: But you change the way you do this if someone else is inking you, right? It’s almost like doing a separate job when you need to hand off your pencils to someone else. MH: Yeah, exactly. It’s a whole new game then. But, even if I tighten up I miss things. When I did the T3 comic with Rick Remender, it was a mess at times. Poor Rick must have hated me, ’cause there was so much stuff I wasn’t aware I did. Stylistically I mean. Things I would normally fix in the inks that I didn’t fix in the pencils because I just wasn’t aware I was doing it. Like, I draw these elongated necks, and poor Rick would ink what I did and I’d see it and go “Damn, what I was I thinking?”

COMICS

MIKE HAWTHORNE

Rick can draw his ass off, too, so he must have thought I was a maniac with no idea of proportions! JN: But at the same time, wasn’t that your first gig where you had an inker? You have to give yourself some slack.... MH: Yeah, first time. I just always inked myself. But, even with my weird style issues, Rick did an incredible job. He made me look good! It’s a whole new game. You have to tighten up so the inker knows what the hell you want to do. But, even if I tighten up, I miss things. So much of what I do is done in the inks. JN: I know you’re self-taught in regards to your comics work—how’d you figure out how to do your layouts and thumbnails? Has anybody since given you a different way to do that? MH: I’ve just experimented, gone through different phases. Different ways of working. At one time, really early on, I used to do each panel separately and then trace them onto a fresh piece of bristol. This was back before I was actually working regularly. I don’t think I got my

way of working from anyone. It was developed before I got to know anyone in comics and so I never got a good storytelling type critique ’til later. Best advice I did get was from Matt Wagner, when I was doing his short for Grendel: Red, White & Black. I was nervous, and wanted to make everything read really clearly. He looks at the pages and says “Don’t go moment to moment. We can jump around and still be clear.” I’m paraphrasing, so forgive me Matt, but it was something like that. Then it hit me that I was doing pages like storyboards. Wanting to show every moment, to hold the reader’s hand through the story. I didn’t trust myself to trust the reader. JN: Right. You were handholding. MH: Yeah, so I work with very rough layouts now. The layouts are so bare bones, it’s scary. You can hardly tell what the hell it is! But, if I labor over them the juice is gone, you know? There have been times I haven’t done any layouts at all. Parts of Ruule were like that. I just went straight on the page, which was fun as hell. It just got to that point where the fresher the idea was, the fewer layers there were between idea and paper, the more fun the story read. JN: You can definitely feel that in the book. There’s a connection there. The artist was having fun and you can feel it. MH: I kind of think storytelling skill is like perfect pitch for musicians. You either are born with it, or DRAW! • SPRING 2006 39

MIKE HAWTHORNE

COMICS

you’re not. I think I have a natural sense of it, but I don’t have that “perfect pitch” that some guys have. I’ve kind of fought with it for a long time and now just have a good guess for what will work.

just have to start over when it’s getting to be too big a mess. JN: You teach, don’t you? MH: Not anymore. Had to give it up about a year-and-a-half ago for several reasons. But I loved it. It was in this inner city community center I used to hang out in as a youngin’. The school is called Youth Build Charter School. It’s a high school for “at risk youth,” which I hate saying. “At risk” just sounds... I don’t know. Not right?

JN: Tell us about your computer hookup. MH: Man, remember how the A-Team used to get these junkertype trucks and stuff and fit them with all kinds of junk to make it work? Steel plates, and weapons and stuff? Well, that’s my computer. I have this old blue and white G3, it’s got like 6 gigs of hard drive or some sh*t! It’s really on its last leg, I’ve driven it into the ground! But I keep it alive with all this junk I add on. I have a LaCie external hard drive, and CD burner. Microtek tabloid-sized scanner. Epson Stylus 1280 large format printer. I have this cheap Mustek tabloid scanner for back-up. Motorola cable modem for uploading pages to various FTPs. But the computer itself needs a vacation! JN: Would you like to do more painting in your comic work, or would you rather keep them separate? MH: I’d love to paint comics. More than you know. It’s killing me that I haven’t painted in such a long time. Not since my straight illustration days. With that said, I don’t think I really want to paint a mainstream book. Like Ross or whoever. I want to paint my own stuff. My creator-owned stuff. JN: Do you take comic coloring to be a different brain process than painting? MH: Well, yes and no. I find that I want to approach coloring like I would a painting. Block in colors, and then get real brushy with nightlights. Blend a lot, that kind of stuff. I even use the sliders to “mix” colors, and almost never use any palettes. It’s tricky because it’s so simple. You can go crazy in Photoshop or Painter because you’re working with a safety net. You can always undo. With painting you can fix small missteps, but if you goof and use a bad color... well, it’s curtains for the painting. At least for me. I 40

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MH: Anyway, I taught art there. Most times the kids were sent to us by judges as part of their sentence. They were good kids that just screwed up somewhere. You wouldn’t believe the talent in some of them! Some of them had never really used a ruler—I seriously had to teach some guys and gals to use it—but ended up doing fantastic stuff. I could see myself in many of them, and how easily I could have been in their shoes had I not had art and a few people in my corner. I never really went out looking for teaching work. I actually got it because Youth Build was becoming a client of mine, for design work. The viceprincipal asked if I wanted to teach art, and he told me how they needed a guy like me to teach these kids art. They needed someone that could keep up with the kids there. Damn, I keep calling them kids... it’s silly. Every one of them was taller than me! JN: How do you feel about having assistants? Would you ever get one? MH: Well, I’d work with someone on basic stuff. Scanning, filling blacks, that kind of thing. My wife will help out sometimes, if she can. It’s tough with the kids, you know? JN: Actually, I don’t, but I understand it. [laughs]

JN: I know what you mean.

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MIKE HAWTHORNE

MH: I don’t think I’d take it farther than that. Like a background artist, I don’t think I could do that. No offense to guys that use a background artist, I just don’t want to go there with my stuff. Hell, handing over my work to be inked by someone else is tough enough. And I’ve been lucky to work with a couple of talented guys. I just find that I want to do more, not less. JN: Who are some of your major influences? I know one is Segar. MH: [laughs] I think I just like Segar ’cause of Popeye, and that he just had him punching people a lot! I love that! My influences are an odd thing, ’cause they’re all over the place. I’ll see some scribbles on a wall or a phone booth in marker and want to just go home and draw right away, you know?

MH: Jordi Bernet is a big one for me. You see Jordi in my work often. I think it’s the long figures and rough line work. I think his way of working just clicks with me because it was where I was already, mentally. Hirshfeld is a big one for me, too. And Eisner! Oh, I got to meet him in San Diego the year before he died, and it was just a high point for me. I think my influences change with every book. I’ll be studying Toth while doing Queen & Country, then Shirow for Hysteria, then some Spanish painter for some cover I have do to. I’m all over the place. JN: How do you feel about the siren songs from Hollywood to comics creators? Is it imperative for you to break into Hollywood, or if comics can support you, would you stay put? MH: Ah, man! Don’t get me started! Look, I’ve got nothing personally against these Hollywood guys, but I’m a little tired of the idea LEFT TOP: Action panel from Hysteria: One Man Gang #1. that they have comic creators by the short and LEFT BOTTOM: Ballad of Sleeping Beauty preliminary sketch. curlies. I mean, with some guys they do but it’s ABOVE: Queen & Country #1 cover pencils. because many creators act so damned desperate to get some sort of deal, some sort of recognition. It makes me crazy. So much so that I’ve had disagreements money. But I want to make money from selling books first, ideas second. I just won’t let certain things go. Certain books. Not ’til with publishers of mine over it because I just don’t want to I’m comfortable with a guy or girl to sell it. Option money is throw certain properties of mine to the wolves just yet. I just hate that it’s part of the business plan now. Forget trying to make crap now anyway, and I don’t see any reason to go nuts trying to get it. I can make more dough just drawing illustrations for some money from publishing. magazine, you know? Look, don’t get me wrong. I have several things being At cons, you get approached all the time by agents, and many “looked at” by Hollywood people. I have an agent for my stuff at are nice guys. But some are so damned... arrogant. They forget Oni and Beckett, and Whiskey has some guys on it, too. Most of they need creators, not vice versa. that is the doing of Mark, the writer on Whiskey, Beckett and Oni. So, I’m in the game, I guess. If the things get made, I stand JN: Do you keep a sketchbook? to make more money, which is fine by me. I want to make DRAW! • SPRING 2006

JN: Yeah, I still look at graffiti pieces and vibe off of that.

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MIKE HAWTHORNE

MH: Several, actually. They’re sitting all over the house since I end up sketching for a few minutes then putting it down for whatever reason. I think Sophia draws in them more then I do now! [laughs] I still try and sit and sketch as much as I can. It’s hard, since I can’t even sit most times, with the kids wanting me to play or jump around. So, I kind of sneak it here and there when I can.

MH: Yeah, it’s my curse! There were times when I would do four five, six or more pages a day! It was silly. I’ve had to slow down, with my sore hand and burnt-out brain. I don’t often totally rework a layout. I kind of feel my first ideas are usually the best, as far as the rough layout goes, then I tweak it on the actual page. So, I guess that counts as reworking. I change things often on the page, but not anything major. Normally it just involves moving a character from one side to the other for readability. Many times you just have to move a character around based on who’s speaking first. It’s a good idea to have the person speaking first on the left side, since we read left to right. It’s rare that I totally change a layout, though it does happen from time to time. As far as being in a zone... that’s a tough one. Most people can’t understand it. The only thing I can compare it to is when you’re talking to a girl you just can’t get enough of, and you look at LEFT: Mike filled page after page in his sketchbook in preparation for his work on The Ballad of Sleeping the clock and all of a sudden it’s like 2 am! It’s kind of like that, minus the pretty Beauty. Several of those sketches are shown here. ABOVE: An image as powerful as this deserves to be a full page splash. Page 28 of The Ballad of face. You’re drawing and you’re in love Sleeping Beauty #5. and the next thing you know you’ve just drawn for hours. [laughs] Problem is, get you through the day to keep the edge off. you only have so much of that juice left after drawing for several years professionally. You’ve used it up drawing ’til all hours of the MH: I think this is why I like jumping from one project to night, week after week. Meeting deadlines kills it. It becomes art another, instead of doing an ongoing thing. It allows me to work by numbers. Put this here, put that there, get it done. I’m a hack on fresh projects, get recharged... even if it’s just a little bit. I sometimes, I admit it. Screw it. The kids gotta eat, ya’ll! like that each of my books is different from the last; I like to stretch my legs. Helps make the late nights drawing a little JN: Yeah, as awesome as civilians like to think it is, drawing is easier, you dig? a lot of hard work. You have to keep reinventing things that help DRAW! • SPRING 2006

JN: I probably shouldn’t tell this, so now they’ll be after you to speed it up, but you pencil real fast. [laughter] Is there a zone you get into to do that? Layouts seem to come real easy to you. Do you do a lot of retries and reworks in your layouts or do you do a “one and done” approach?

SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL CARTOONIST!

EACH BOOK PERSONALLY SIGNED AND NUMBERED BY THE ARTIST ART ATTACK is limited to 200 copies. It’s 48 pages filled with gals, monsters and weirdos for only $10 US. THEY CAME FROM OUT OF MY HEAD is limited to 500 copies. It’s 48 drawing jam-packed pages for only $10 US. Add $1.50 each for shipping. Overseas orders add $7.00 US Send a check or money order (preferred) to my mail box: PO BOX 2129 Upper darby PA 19082, or my paypal account by sending money to Action Planet Inc mike@actionplanet.com

www.actionplanet.com

By Alberto Ruiz

The deadline for the new DRAW! magazine article was fast approaching, and instead of choosing a “tool” to write about, I decided to use the current cover I was working on to illustrate a typical “tight deadline” assignment. The final cover illustration took one full day to complete; the article, well that’s another story. The concept was based on an old preliminary sketch I never got the chance to use. Salsipuedes is the name of a famous hanging bridge in the almost inaccessible mountains of Ecuador. I’ve always thought the name was interesting and fitting, because in Spanish “sal si puedes” means “get out if you can,” which is precisely what one thinks while crossing the bridge. It turns out the peculiar moniker is not as original as I once believed; an

Internet search resulted in more than two dozen towns throughout the Americas and Spain bearing the same name, including a California municipality and school district.

The concept plays on the literal meaning of the set of words that make up the name. Because I was both the client and the art director for this piece, the approval process was a snap! I showed the preliminary rough to Alberto (my art director and account manager) and he approved it with but a few minor changes. He then showed the concept to the client (Mr. Ruiz) who was delighted with the clever concept and stamped his seal of approval on the spot. DRAW! • SPRING 2006

ALBERTO RUIZ

Through the years, I’ve managed to keep a pretty substantial amount of preliminary, unused and unfinished repeat patterns I either created or converted for use in the garment industry. This effort has paid good dividends time and time again.

DIGITAL ILLUSTRATION

You can download the original files at this address: http://homepage.mac.com/deepfriedcandy

As with most of the work colored in Illustrator, I started by drawing the main shapes with the Pen tool, following the pencil line as closely as possible when tight and simplifying complex shapes as I went along.

All the shapes conforming the face and body were filled with the same (pink to white) gradient, using the white of the paper as both mid-tone and highlight color—a good opportunity to apply “negative shape” theories. There is no time for excessive detail such as hair and other complicated minutiae. I filled in the two hair shapes with an old, unused, abstract flower repeat pattern I had created a zillion years ago for textile use. I used a more “populated” pattern for the cowboy hat, in direct contrast with the broader, flatter shapes of the hair fill.

You can download the original files at this address: http://homepage.mac.com/deepfriedcandy

DRAW! • SPRING 2006

DIGITAL ILLUSTRATION

ALBERTO RUIZ

If you use tints of the same custom color, one click is all you need to switch colors (you must select the entire repeat).

Using the Rectangle tool, I drew the horizontal shapes and filled them in with a custom color.

If you use CMYK or RGB colors, you can always switch colors via the Adjust Colors module found in the Filter menu on the top menu bar.

The vertical shapes came next. I used a tint of the same color.

I selected all the shapes and applied the Divide filter. I discarded the unwanted shapes outside of our repeat rectangle, re-colored the shapes, placed a white rectangle in the back, and dragged the newly created pattern into the Swatches box.

Main font used: Emulate Serif from the T26 collection of typefaces.

You can download the original files at this address: http://homepage.mac.com/deepfriedcandy

DRAW! • SPRING 2006

ALBERTO RUIZ

DIGITAL ILLUSTRATION

More than to show the process, I did because it was a lot of fun. I love diagrams and schematics, don’t you?

You can download the original files at this address: http://homepage.mac.com/deepfriedcandy

As usual, I layered my shapes, overlapping from back to front, setting the transparency blends to Darken or Multiply for shadows and Screen or Color Dodge for the highlights. The bumps under the barrel of the gun project a shadow that is contrary to the light source, but they lend “texture” to an otherwise flat object, so I left them alone.

After drawing the shield shape outline, I sliced it in two using the Knife tool (you can find it by clicking and holding the Scissors tool. TIP: As a quick alternative to the Pathfinder Divide filter, and for a clean, straight cut, hold both the Shift and Option keys as you slide the Knife tool across the shape. You can download the original files at this address: http://homepage.mac.com/deepfriedcandy

DRAW! • SPRING 2006

K YL E B A K ER

COMICS

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 28

more— That’s why I’m doing it. It’s more of an experiment than anything else. And, actually that’s the reason I’m doing The Bakers—I just did 48 pages of The Bakers to pad out a graphic novel. Because I already had a hundred pages of material, and I needed more to make a whole book.

DRAW!: Well, I have a theory about that. KB: Well, there’s too much competition for too few dollars. DRAW!: Exactly. There’s just too much stuff. The average person cannot absorb all the new TV shows, all the new DVDs, all the new books, all the new videogames, all the new—

DRAW!: So you may alter your publishing— KB: My publishing plan is still based on graphic novels, because that’s the only way I make money is on the $15 books. I either break even or lose on the $3 ones. DRAW!: So do you see the direct market as something you want to grow away from, in a way? In other words, the direct market is still basically a pamphlet market. It’s basically driven by, and most of the stuff sold is the $3 pamphlets, which, if you’re self-publishing like we do, it’s really hard to make money doing that. But if you can break out into the book market, in a book chain, then libraries and other venues— KB: I’ve just found that is the way the world is today, because publishing in general is on the ropes. I mean, publishing is not doing so well, but the weird thing is, as far as I can tell—and I read a lot of business magazines and stuff—all entertainment is on the ropes. 50

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KB: There aren’t enough hours in the day. That’s the thing, when I was young, there were three TV channels and two comic book publishers. So of course everybody was reading Spider-Man and Superman, because that’s all they were publishing. And everybody watched Happy Days because it was the only show on TV. DRAW!: And you could only play so much Atari. [laughs] You can only play so much of that tank battle Atari game, y’know? I’m very interested in that, too, because I’ve thought about plans for the future and was interested in how you felt about web comics, because it’s something that I’m thinking about. I have some other ideas that I plan on putting out. Some of the things, I’m thinking about doing almost like a super-limited run, like some of the stuff I saw people doing at MOCCA, where you may do 50 copies and sell them for $10 apiece just because you want to produce this sort of cool little comic. And then there’s the web comics, which I actually did do before. I did do my Girl

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K YL E B A K ER

LEFT: Rough sketches and the final cover image. ABOVE AND RIGHT: Kyle’s inks and the final color images for two panels from You Are Here.

Patrol thing, and it was quite popular. But I was just wondering if you felt that was a valid medium for your approach, for you to try to do web comics. Because I always think that your humor is a broad humor in the sense that I think it would appeal, like you said, to a lot of people, average people who like comics or humor and if you had a Bakers strip every day, or something like that, that people could go to kylebaker.com and see it, if that would be a way of driving branding yourself, creating an audience. KB: Yeah, and I think that’s going to happen soon. One other thing I’ve been doing with my publishing is, I’m following the classical book publishing business model, which is you start with your most expensive format first, and then work your way down over the years. DRAW!: To doing...? KB: Well, like, for example, Tom Clancy. First you get the hardcover. First there’s a hardcover of Harry Potter for, like, 30 bucks or whatever it is. The next year, you can buy that same book in paperback for half price. The year after that, you’ll probably be able to buy three old Harry Potter books packaged under a softcover for even less. DRAW!: Or you’ll be able to go to one of those places that sells used books and get Harry Potter for a dollar. [laughs] DRAW! • SPRING 2006

COMICS

K YL E B A K ER

KB: I think that once you get to that point, you might as well just give the stuff away for free on the Internet, too, which might generate interest in the new stuff. Right now for me, it’s a fine line between you want to give people enough to get them interested, but you don’t want to give them so much that they have no reason to buy your book. DRAW!: Well, there’s that fine line of perception of value. And I know this from selling my sketchbooks. It’s easier for me to sell a $10 sketchbook that I make at a local printer or a Kinko’s, than it is for me to sell a 32page comic book for $3. It’s easier to sell my sketchbook than to sell my comic book. KB: That’s exactly right. I found that out the first year I did a con, which was only two years ago, actually. 2003 was the first con I had actually done trying to make any money. I used to go as a social thing, or to meet editors and things like that, but I never actually sat behind a desk and tried to sell any products. So that was the first time I did it, and I called up Scott Dunbier for advice, because he had been doing it for years. He used to buy my original art and sell it at conventions. So he had asked me what I was selling, and I said, “Oh, I’ve got this great new $3 comic book. I had it professionally printed in Quebec, and it looks terrific!” It was 32 pages for $3. And he said, “No, no, you’re doing it all wrong. Go to Kinko’s right now and Xerox your sketchbook.” [Mike laughs] And I said, “You’re kidding me, right.” “No, no, you can just go and make, like, a 12- or 16page booklet,” or whatever it was, “and charge ten bucks.” And he said, just like you said, that particular crowd, the San Diego convention crowd, they are there for something they can’t get anywhere else. That $3 comic book, even though it was a convention exclusive, it looks just like something they could buy in a comic book store. But the Xerox, they knew that that was their only chance to buy that crappy Xerox. And you’re right, the $10 thing sold faster than the $3 thing.

LEFT: David takes on Goliath—from King David. ABOVE: Kyle spoofs on Alex Ross in this Plastic Man #8 splash page.

DRAW!: Right. Now, before I went to San Diego this year, I flew into Arizona with Blevins. The day I got there, we went to the galleries in Scottsdale. High end fine art galleries, cowboy art galleries, Western art galleries, right? We’re going around and we’re looking. And this little story sort of sums it all up to me. I’m in, I think it was a Heritage Gallery, which is one of the top, the big galleries, right? So you know this place has got to make money, because it’s half the size of a Wal-Mart, in the middle of the desert, and it’s 125 friggin’ degrees outside, okay? So you know they’ve got to be making money. They can’t hang anything in there that doesn’t sell. So there’s this big oil painting, five feet by five feet. It’s a nice painting, like a Grand Canyon vista. It’s priced at $90,000. Now there’s two people standing in front of it, looking at it. And they look down. First they look at the painting real quick and then they look down at the price, and woman say, “Wow, that’s really good.” And the man replies, “Almost just like a photograph.” Now, that was $90,000. That’s what impressed them first.

KB: Well, right. And you have to think about, a lot of times, who you’re working for. Part of why I draw in the art style I do these days is to piss off the kind of fan I call “line counters.” I think there are people who think they’re paying you by the hour, and they are happy as long as it’s got a lot of lines on it. DRAW!: Right. Although those people who were looking at the painting were the fine art version of the line counters. The brushstroke counters. KB: Again, I hate to keep bringing this guy up, because I like the guy and I think he’s a good artist, but Alex Ross, I would say, is the same thing. People are buying it because it looks like a photograph. It looks like the photographs he used to make the painting. DRAW!: Well, I think that’s what impressed me when I DRAW! • SPRING 2006

Mix two parts Jonny Quest with one part Hardy Boys and maybe a dash of Scooby Doo and might you end up with Adult Swim’s hit series, The Venture Brothers, created by Chris McCulloch, who was one of the writers from the short-lived live-action Tick series on Fox. DRAW! editor Mike Manley was one of the storyboard artists on the first and second seasons of The Venture Brothers, and visited the Noodle Soup Productions studio in New York with his college class in order to shine some light behind the scenes and get a scoop of noodles on Los Bros. Venture. Mike conducted this interview with show creator Chris McCulloch via the Internet.

DRAW!: I guess first off I’d like a little bio info. Where and when were you born? Chris McCulloch: Brooklyn, New York. 1971. Lived there until my father remarried in 1983 and we all moved to New Jersey.

DRAW!: Did you go to art school? CMc: Yes and no. I enrolled in the Joe Kubert School of Cartoon and Graphic Art and then quit on the first day. I had spent my last two years of high school dreaming of going to Kubert’s (if I’m to be shamelessly honest, those dreams more than likely included me drawing Spider-Man for a living, and maybe marrying Jamie Gertz or something) and I took no interest in college whatsoever—a result of already knowing what I wanted to be “when I grew up” and a blinding misconception of how much colleges cost based solely on the tuition for Columbia University, which I heard about from a guy I knew. No offense to Joe or his fine school, but it happened to be situated only 20 minutes from my father’s house, and I was working after school in a comic-book store at the time. It suddenly hit me—as all my friends were heading off to their big colleges with lush, sprawling campuses—that I was about to spend the next few years of my life waking up every day in my parents’ house, commuting to a school to learn how to draw comics, and working in a comic shop until it was time to go back home to my parents’ house. The depressingly narrow

scope of it all just caved in on me that first morning, I got super-depressed, and when I reached for the new watch I had gotten just a week or two before for my birthday, I noticed it had stopped. Silly as it sounds, I took it as an omen, and I decided I needed to quit and go to college after all. So after the worst three months of my life working at UPS, I started community college and eventually transferred to Rutgers University, where I majored in art and minored in English. I wasn’t crazy about their art program—they had more of a fine arts/conceptual-heavy curriculum that was light on technical training and luridly unfriendly to cartoonists (see Daniel Clowes’ The Art School Confidential—he explains it better than I ever will). So I ended up taking a lot of unnecessary history classes instead, just because I liked learning about that stuff, along with a couple of film and literature classes. Artistically, the best part about my education there was working on a weekly “alternative” school newspaper called The Medium. I did a full-page comic strip every week for three years and edited the Arts section for a while, so it was great practice for writing and drawing my own stuff. I never finished college because I ran out of money and got a job working on The Tick animated series. I often wish I had gone someplace like SVA (School of Visual Arts) or RISD (Rhode Island School of Design) or something, because my drawing skills were probably stunted by all of this—which frustrates the hell out of me because I can’t always visualize the things I create. But my writing skills and general social awareness improved at Rutgers, which is ultimately more important to me creatively.

CHRIS Mc CUL L OCH

ANIMATION

I love to write and draw my own stuff, but if I could only do one, I'd prefer writing. I'm pretty lazy that way—everything past the initial idea becomes work. The most fun to be had is in making stuff up. Watching myself fumble through heavyhanded attempts at drawing what inevitably becomes a lackluster version of whatever I had in my head is endlessly frustrating. I’ve definitely improved, but very slowly. I really wish I drew more. DRAW!: Were you heavily into comics and animation as a kid? CMc: Very much so. Like every kid, I was really into cartoons—as a product of the ’70s I enjoyed the heyday of Saturday morning TV, for better or VENTURE BROTHERS worse, but Looney Tunes really stood ™ ©2006 NOODLE SOUP PRODUCTIONS. out as the best there was. They hooked me at age one and they’ve never gotten old. In comic books, I was super into Spider-Man and Batman, despite the unwritten code of childhood that dictates you either like Marvel or DC, as you can only like Mad or Cracked, Mets or Yankees, Coke or Pepsi. My older brother was a real comics collector, and Spider-Man was his favorite, too, so I had access to nearly a decade’s worth of issues that predated me, which was really great, especially when the month’s wait for a new issue, in kid time, is like a year. I grew out of comics for a while, and even drawing, but then The Dark Knight Returns and Watchmen hit during my adolescent/high school years and they pulled me back in. Having not much else to do with myself, I got super-serious about collecting and reading and drawing, and that’s when I started working in the comic shop and dreaming of drawing comics for a living. If having a brother with a sevenyear head start on a comics collection was the elementary school of my comics upbringing, then having an entire comic shop’s back issues to browse through was my Masters program. Good

god, I sound like a dork. It was a Master’s program in dorkiness, wasn’t it? That’s okay. I’m a dork. I’m fine with that. My girlfriend likes to remind me of this every time I accidentally start to think I’m cool because my hair looks good that day. DRAW!: [laughs] Since Venture Brothers is an obvious parody of Jonny Quest, were you a big fan of the old Hanna-Barbera cartoons? CMc: Not really. You kind of take what you’re given when you’re a kid, so I liked everything because, hey, it was TV. But they didn’t resonate with me like the Warner Bros. stuff at all. Not until I was older anyway and could approach them with a certain amount of irony or nostalgia or something, and appreciate the simplicity and retro-ness of the design work on them. DRAW!: Why the Venture Brothers? Was this an idea you had for a while? CMc: Yes and no. The germ of the idea—just two dorky boys named Venture with a ’60s aw-shucks sleuthing mentality—goes way back to the mid-’90s, when a friend lent me some old Tom Swift books and I started catching ABOVE AND LEFT: Head and body construction designs for Race Bannon stand-in, Brock Samson—a super-spy and bodyguard with a license to kill.

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ANIMATION some Jonny Quest cartoons on TV. But I didn’t seriously start developing it until around 1999, when I was trying to build up material for a story in the first Monkeysuit anthology. I hadn’t drawn comics in a while, though, so I didn’t think my skills were quite up to snuff to nail the specific look I had for The Venture Brothers. I had in my head. So I held off on that story until I’d gotten a couple of other Monkeysuit stories under my belt and started to feel more confident in my drawing. In the meantime, the characters had started taking on a life of their own and new situations and jokes filled my little notebook until there was too much for one story, so I started another, intending that to be short... and that one got too big, too. I combined the two and started typing all my notes into a screenwriting program one night, just for kicks. Four days later I had a pilot script for an animated series. DRAW!: Tell us a little bit about the creative impetus behind VB. Did you have in mind to pitch it to Cartoon Network right off? CMc: Not at all. I hadn’t even considered them at first because they weren’t doing adult animation at all when I first started pitching the thing. There wasn’t an Adult Swim yet. I finished the pilot script during a time that I was coincidentally in the midst of pitching another idea to Comedy Central—based on one of the comic strips I had done in college, which I’d created with my friend Ralph Vincelli. That week we had our last of several meetings with them, in which they finally told us, “Thanks, but no thanks. Do you have anything else?” “Yes!” I said, “and it’s ten times better than the other thing I’ve been pitching you all month!” Well, they didn’t think so. I pitched it to a few more places, and everybody liked it and thought it was funny but uniformly didn’t think it could sustain a series. A couple of years later a friend told me I should check out this crazy new cartoon they had on Cartoon Network late at night, because the main character looked like Race Bannon, and he knew I was pitching a Jonny Quest parody type of thing. Turned out it was Sealab 2021, and I checked it out, and that’s when I learned about Adult Swim. I mailed them my pilot script and pitch presentation about a month later and the rest, as they say, is her story.... DRAW!: How did you come to partner with Noodle Soup in New York to work on the VB for Cartoon Network?

CHRIS Mc CUL L OCH LEFT: Character designer Martin Wittig. BELOW: Chris George—also a character designer on the first season—draws his designs directly in the Wacom Cintiq digital tablet. BOTTOM: One of Chris’ characters designs for the show. This one was labeled “beautiful island girl.”

CMc: They’re all my friends. I had worked with the entire staff of Noodlesoup at one time or another in various other studios over the years and some of them are part of the Monkeysuit Press collective with me. Noodlesoup formed while I was living in L.A. working on The Tick live-action series, but we’d all stayed in touch and I watched their progress in getting the studio up and running from afar. Because I had pitched Venture Brothers to a couple of places already I knew the trend in development deals was fast becoming “Can you do it cheap... in Flash?,” so I had already run the project by Jeff Nodelman once or twice to get an idea of what could be done on a limited budget. When Cartoon Network gave me the green-light I had just moved back to New York with no intention of leaving again, so there was no place else I wanted to take the show but to my incredibly talented friends in New York. As I expected, they put twice as much effort into it as any other studio would have, we had a lot of fun, and I think it showed in the final product. DRAW!: Chris, it was great getting the chance to meet you in Philly during that Adult Swim pitching contest. CMc: Yes, you too. I can’t believe we never met before and feel like we must have at one point, however briefly. You do look terribly familiar yet eerily brand new to me! DRAW!: Break down your creative process on VB. How do you work with your writing partner, Doc Hammer? CMc: Doc Hammer (half his real name) and I have perhaps the least structured writing process in television. We have no formal meetings, no pitch sessions, no huddling over a computer and saying, “Well, what does Brock do now?” Our best ideas are generated sort of organically, more often than not when we’re both working in the same room on completely different things that have nothing to do with Venture Brothers and we just start shouting dialogue at each

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ANIMATION LEFT: Creator/Producer Chris McCulloch [right] and his writing partner Doc Hammer [left] at the Adult Swim Pitch Contest in Philadelphia last spring. And Mike and Chris at that same event. RIGHT AND BELOW: Character expression sketches for Dr. Venture and his number one son, Hank.

other in character and riffing off each other’s remarks. A good deal of the best Season One material was created in this manner while we played darts and spoke to each other almost exclusively in The Monarch’s voice. So that accidental process generates the germ of a lot of material, and then we go off and work almost completely independently of one another— not even telling each other what we’re working on except for a hint here and there or perhaps a question like, “Are you using that Depeche Mode gag in your script?” Then we’ll show each other our respective first drafts, Doc will usually add a few great lines to

mine, I’ll add a little structure to his, and off they go to the network. On the three occasions we co-wrote scripts, we more or less talked about the overall structure and then split up the scenes between us. The fact that we have four main characters makes this pretty easy because we usually separate the boys from Dr. Venture and Brock in our stories, or we pair one of the brothers with Dr. Venture and one with Brock and have simultaneous stories taking place. So Doc and I will each take one of the concurrent stories, write our scenes and swap them with each other for some input and fine tuning. It’s a pretty good system because we have at once very different sensibilities and yet very similar ones. We think and approach things differently but we have the same “rules” about what’s funny and what’s hack-job crap. It makes for a richer variety of humor in the episodes but keeps them all under one umbrella. DRAW!: Who generates the initial idea? Do you have to get that approved by the network? CMc: Either of us can generate the initial idea and, depending on the quality of our individual memories or our swiftness with a pen and a notebook, either of us will end up using it in one of our scripts. When we started the first season, we sent the network about a half-dozen premises for future episodes—

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CHRIS Mc CUL L OCH

ANIMATION

partially because that’s how I was used to doing things on other shows and partially because we needed the money that an “approved premise” brings when you structure a writing schedule on premises, outlines, and final script. A lot of those were based on notes that I had kicking around my notebook from a couple of years of thinking about The Venture Brothers before it ever got picked up. I think we only ended up using about half those premises as the basis for scripts and even then they got dramatically altered. It quickly became obvious the network didn’t care much about seeing the scripts in these various stages so by the time we were a third of the way into the season we stopped sending anything other than finished first drafts. They were pretty much in the dark about what we were writing, they didn’t give us any crap about it and they seemed to prefer it that way. I guess everyone likes surprises, and we certainly liked the freedom from scrutiny and interference it fostered. DRAW!: How did you interface with the production staff at Noodlesoup? Did you generate initial designs for characters, or rough sketches? What was it like suddenly being in control? CMc: I pretty much did tight pencil drawings for the main cast which were then tweaked a bit and inked by the Noodlesoup designers, and then I would give them revision notes and sketches for those. I think visually for the most part, so when I’m writing I constantly doodle all over my notes. Any time I introduce a major

CHRIS Mc CUL L OCH

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: (1) My class of second-year animation students from DCAD (Delaware College of Art and Design). (2) Animation Director Mike Foran shows some of my DCAD students how he goes about keeping things organized in the “paperless” studio where everything is created in and stored on the computer. (3) Director Miguel MartinezJoffre. (4) Rachel Simon, the producer on season two of The Venture Brothers. (5) The bullpen of Noodle Soup is a small but busy hive of activity.

character in a script I need to know what he/she’s going to look like, so chances are when the designers get the script from me and start their work I also hand them a stack of rough designs—sometimes these are pages torn out of a notebook with tons of writing on them and one little drawing of a head, other times they’re cleaner, nicer drawings of a full figure. The designers then interpret these, and I either approve them or give them revision notes. Sometimes I’ll give them other reference materials as well, like an image from a 1970s Sears catalogue with the perfect pants for Dr. Venture or something. I have a great rapport with the design guys—they’re all friends—so during this process we’ll trade as much information as we can. If they have a good idea, it gets incorporated into the design and can even alter the way I’m thinking about a character, which can then change the approach of a whole scene or episode. When I told them to put Hank and Dean in DRAW! • SPRING 2006

CHRIS Mc CUL L OCH

ANIMATION

pajamas once, one of the designers did a sketch of Dean in Spider-Man jammies, and once I saw that I just had to stick Hank in Aquaman Underoos. When it comes to backgrounds and color, I try to provide as much source material as well— usually trying to achieve some impossible amalgam of elements. Like I’ll show them a photo of the UPS building in New York, a Robert McGinnis paperback cover, and an ad for kitchenware from the 1960s and I’ll say something like “paint this building in this style with these colors....” We got a lot of mileage out of my All American Ads of the ’50s, ’60s, and ’70s books, New York 1960, and my handbook from the 1964 World’s Fair. As for what it’s like being in control, well... it’s great. There’s nothing better than seeing an idea through to its end the way you pictured it. When I worked on another cartoon as just a writer, we had an expression to describe the way our ideas would get mauled by the production process, since we didn’t have a lot of control over the design, direction, or animation. When we finished a script we were particularly proud of we’d send it off to be animated and say, “Okay, let’s throw it through ‘The Sh*t Window’ and see what sticks to it.” It sounded much better in German. There’s no Sh*t Window on Venture Brothers, so I’m much happier now. DRAW!: Have you ever animated anything yourself? CMc: Not since the last flip book I did in elementary school. DRAW!: I know from boarding on the show, you worked with Bill Pressing the storyboard supervisor on breaking out the script into storyboard roughs, which were handed out in sections to the various board teams since you were working on multiple shows at one time. Why did you employ this process? Control?

CMc: Control, yes, and consistency. And because Bill’s such an amazing artist, with an incredible sense of composition and a dynamic cinematic sensibility. Plus, he’s worked on a lot of Flash stuff and knows how to get good results with limited animation. Bill

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ABOVE: Storyboard Supervisor Siobhan Mullen goes over a board in production on her Wacom Cintiq. Once the storyboard has been scanned, anyone in the studio can pull it up from their server. BELOW: Mike Manley’s storyboards for “Eeney Meeney Miney MAGIC!”

and I communicated a lot before production started and he really understood what I was going for. He really dug into those thumbnails and did a lot of research and prep work. He had a reference guide for compositions he cobbled together from Doug Wildey’s Jonny Quest comics (the ones Comico put out in the ’80s) and Alex Toth stuff. When we’d start a new script, if there was anything I wanted shot a specific way already I’d do some quick thumbnails for Bill. Otherwise, he’d go off and thumbnail the whole episode, and then I’d revise his work a little bit before it got passed on to the storyboard artists. This process also saved me from having to write pages and pages of explicit descriptions in the scripts (which were already pretty damn long). To me it’s always been a little weird that most productions just farm out all the boards to freelancers and

ANIMATION

CHRIS Mc CUL L OCH

to all the tracks we recorded—and I mean all of them, because more often than not the ones we marked as the good takes don’t work as well as some of the ones we may have thought, at the recording session, were awkward of “over the top.” I give this list of my selected tracks to the recording engineer, who then trims them and lays them all out in an audio program in the order they appear in the script. I sit with him for a few hours and we edit that all down to pretty much a radio show of the episode—tightening the space between lines until the conversations feel natural and funny, and leaving gaps for the time I imagine the actions described in the script would take. We take this edited track, drop it in Flash and lay the storyboards out like a slide show to it. Then I sit with the animatic editor for a few hours and mess with it—trimming it for even better comedic timing, tightening the action or giving it more time because we’ve put more shots in the storyboard then I imagined, maybe lengthening establishing shots so that the music Jim Thirlwell’s eventually going to add can have a little space to set the mood, etc. DRAW!: The show looks like it was done traditionally, in other words, not in Flash. How was it done? whatever you get, you get. No offense to freelance storyboard artists or what they can bring to a show, but you can get wildly different, inconsistent approaches—especially since a single episode will sometimes be split between two or three different artists. Storyboards are the first stage of direction, so as the director I wasn’t going to let strangers direct my show, you know? On most shows the writer’s just the writer and the director does more technical stuff than I do, so he/she’s too busy to deal with every panel of every storyboard, but such is not the case with Venture Brothers. DRAW!: I know you had a staff of artists to do board corrections; did you then shoot a lica reel to time out the show? CMc: We did animatics in Flash, yeah. The first thing I do is listen

CMc: It was done traditionally. We did the pilot in Flash, all at Noodlesoup, but for the full season our budget and schedule necessitated doing the animation at an overseas studio. They draw the characters by hand but use digital ink and paint and they composite it in a program called Animo, which allows them to do some very Flash-like visual trickery and cutting of corners. DRAW!: I also know that the budget was not huge, so whenever possible the idea was to minimize a lot of animation and save it for the action sequences. That meant strong poses and compositions and attitudes to compensate for a lot of full motion whiz-bang. How much was this a factor in the beginning of your creative process?

TOP: More of Mike’s storyboards from “Eeney Meeney Miney MAGIC!” ABOVE: Douglas Lovelace was Revisions Head for season one; this year he’s moved over to be a full-time board artist. RIGHT: Jon Roscetti, also a revisionist on the first season, draws the changes to the storyboard requested by the director. He is one of the few people who still draws on paper in the studio as he adds changes to the freelancers’ boards before they are scanned in.

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CHRIS Mc CUL L OCH

DRAW!: Now you are working on the second season, after a fairly long lay-over, waiting until Cartoon Network ordered a pick-up. Did the delay and move of the studio since last season effect the show at all? 62 DRAW! • SPRING 2006

ABOVE: More of Mike’s boards from “Eeney Meeney Miney MAGIC!” BELOW: Every adventure show needs its own Dragon Lady, even the funny ones. Turnaround for the show’s femme fatale, Molotov Cocktease. RIGHT: Turnaround for the Ventures’ next-door neighbor, Dr. Orpheus. RIGHT BOTTOM: Still more of Mike’s boards from “Eeney Meeney Miney MAGIC!”

CMc: The move of the studio hasn’t affected things much—it’s six of one, half dozen of the other. We’re in a much better neighborhood now, but in tighter quarters. The delay was kind of hellish, but ultimately I think good things came out of it. For one, it gave us some time to get over the first season, to decompress. We were pretty burnt out after the first thirteen episodes’ worth of pre-pro-

CMc: Not as much as it should have been. Our first episode out of the gate was way more complicated than it was ever supposed to have been and the overseas studio kind of freaked out, so we scaled it back for the next few after that. But by the end of the season, the pressures and time constraints of production combined with the fantastic footage we were getting back from Korea that showed they could handle just about any animation challenges we threw at them conspired to make me throw out all concerns about limiting animation—which, while it created some great looking episodes, really taxed the studio over there and kind of pissed them off because it was far from the simple show we had promised them. To their credit, they took it all in stride. For the second season we secured them a little more money in the budget and we’ve concocted a more regimented system of checks and balances to keep the show a little simpler. Which isn’t a problem. It’ll be a little bit of a challenge, but as you mentioned, strong posing, composition, and attitudes go a long way towards increasing the overall illusion of quality and complexity.

ANIMATION duction—so much that I put off writing the Christmas special for months while we chugged through post-production, which was waaaaaay more time-consuming and stressful than I ever expected it to be. So while the waiting was really annoying—and a little depressing—it did give me the time I needed to really want to come back to the show and it gave my mind the space to develop new ideas. I did get to watch the show slowly grow in its popularity over that period of time, too, which of course encouraged us. And during the hiatus, I went broke enough that I needed to take a storyboard supervisor gig at another studio for a while. So I was exposed to their production process, which was somewhat different from ours and involved a heavy reliance on those Wacom Cintiq monitors. I made it a major point that we get some of those for our production, and they paid for themselves within weeks. Really streamlined a lot of things. Plus, the timing of our start date coincided with that production’s end date, so I got to hire some really great artists from that team.

CMc: That’s good that you’re more involved, and in a way that makes me more involved as well. I’m now kind of forced to scrutinize the thumbnails more closely than I did last season because I’m waiting to see how new artists handle things. It’s more work for me up front, but the more I’m able to steer the storytelling and the setups in the right direction at the thumbnail stage, the less my revision team will have to do, so they can focus on improving and finessing the boards rather than just fixing them. We also do two animatics now instead of one. When we get the first draft of the boards in the editor puts together an animatic right away, so I can watch it and see how things play out the way the artist saw them. It cuts back on some of my revisions because, rather than staring at a bunch of still panels and imagining how the show would run, I watch it unfold. I can see where even things that aren’t how I originally imagined them actually play out well, so I leave them alone instead of putting a ton of post-its on them. I also see in a much more obvious way where we need extra poses and stuff for dialogue that takes longer than the artist thought it would, or if the voice is more expressive and demands more expressive posing. It takes the storyboard from the theoretical to the concrete and I get my notes out of the way early so there are no surprises in the end, when it’s too late to do anything

DRAW!: I know for me the biggest difference is that now since Bill Pressing has left as storyboard supervisor to work at Pixar, I am doing my own thumbnails now, which I enjoy more as I feel totally immersed in the storytelling process, where last year I felt a bit removed.

CHRIS Mc CUL L OCH

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ANIMATION LEFT: Mmmmm, toasty. More of Mike’s boards from “Eeney Meeney Miney MAGIC!” BELOW: Poses for Brock Samson.

about them. We do the second animatic after the boards are revised and that one’s more about getting the timing really precise and smoothing everything out. DRAW!: How do you see the second season building? Will there be any changes to the style of the show as it matures? Also will there be a compilation of the first season? CMc: The style of the second season is already changing, albeit not dramatically. I felt the main characters needed some refining for a lot of reasons. For one, they were based on very old drawings of mine, and none-too precise ones. Different artists interpreted the characters differently so it was important to me, for the consistency of the show, to really solidify and codify the characters’ looks so there’d be less guesswork on the part of the storyboard artists. When I watch an episode of Venture Brothers, I can tell you the name of the artist who drew the storyboard panel every shot came from based on style inconsistencies, and that’s not good. On the other hand, some of the different stylistic embellishments of the board artists—many of whom draw much better than I do—were really cool and I wanted to incorporate the way they handle certain expressions and so forth in the official models. I was looking for both style and con64

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sistency, basically, so we’re addressing that. Brock, for instance, I thought tended a little toward handsome action figure looks in the hands of some people. I wanted to get him back to what I originally imagined him to be: a massive, brooding beast of a man. So we made his forehead a little smaller, gave him a little more Russell-Crowe-in-Gladiator heft to his physique instead of washboard abs, and we keep his eyes attached to his furrowed brow a little more, so he looks a bit more brutal now. The Monarch needed a lot of smoothing out and elongating of his limbs; Dr. Venture and Orpheus needed a little work and so did Jonas Venture, Jr., who keeps coming back. The backgrounds this season are changing in a much more obvious way. We’re going back to something closer to what we had in the pilot—which is simulating the gouache and watercolor painted cartoon backgrounds and advertising art of the 1960s. Less comic book-y; no black outlines this season, because last year the overseas studio would blow up portions of our backgrounds and we’d end up with these chunky black lines that were thicker than the foreground character’s arms, which looked awful even when it wasn’t all bitmapped. The color artists are really doing an exceptional job so far—far exceeding my expectations. The backgrounds really have a lively, luxurious, retro feel and way more realistic lighting.

ANIMATION

CHRIS Mc CUL L OCH

DRAW!: Are you using the same studio overseas? How long does it take to get the animation back after you ship it, and how much time in post do you spend on an episode? CMc: We are using the same overseas studio, yes. The only complaints I ever had about them, which were very few, all come down to the basic communication problems any production is going to have when dealing with a studio on the other side of the

TOP RIGHT: A cityscape background design. ABOVE: Background Design Supervisor Freya Tanz goes over a background before it’s sent for color. RIGHT: Background Designer Ray Feldman shows a student how he uses Flash to create a background in layers. BELOW: Background drawing for an exterior shot of a Micronesian temple.

world where the people speak a different language. The amount of work they put into our show—and the often stunning results—were incredibly impressive to me. In some cases, they even altered my approach to the style and direction because they would embellish certain things I never thought of. Like they took it upon themselves to do a lot of soft focus and racking of focus, which we hadn’t directed. But I loved it and now I direct those kinds of things all over the place. It’s part of what elevated us past

DRAW! • SPRING 2006

CHRIS Mc CUL L OCH

ANIMATION LEFT: Director Miguel Martinez-Joffre goes over a mouthchart explaining to my visiting students how it works. BELOW: Design for a sea monster after a run-in with Brock.

the level of just parodying cartoons from the ’60s. So yeah, we’re using them again... I’d be crazy not to. What we have done, though, is had them give us specific limits on what we can ask for—in terms of scene counts, frame counts, background setups, etc. And we’ve required them to do their own layouts instead of blowing up and tracing our boards. We’ve also gotten better at the paperwork and stuff. How much time we spend in post varies. It’s never an eighthour, regimented day when you’re working with a Doc Hammer—it’s fits and starts at all hours of the night. We’ve scheduled more time this season because we got slammed last time around and we had unforeseen technical problems. Doc now has to render the footage from the original TIFF sequences, slap it in Final Cut, sync up the dialogue, and then we edit. If we’re doing any interesting or unusual transitions or anything, or if we’re adding special effects or whatever, Doc needs time to do all that in After Effects and, lunatic that he is, he’ll bust his ass making it as complicated and unnecessarily weird and beautiful as possible. Then we put the music on, and since the music was written to an animatic and a lot of editing has taken place between animatic and finished footage, Doc becomes a music editor, too. So all this takes time. Usually about two weeks, I guess. DRAW!: Who would you say are your biggest artistic influences drawing wise, and what do you look at these days for inspiration? Ever do any drawing outside of work? I know you don’t have a lot of free time as the show schedule is pretty punishing. 66

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CMc: In my personal drawing my biggest influences are Daniel Clowes’ older stuff—not that I’m not into his newer stuff, quite the contrary—and David Mazzuccelli, and it’s the marriage of the two of them that I’ve been trying—and failing— to achieve for years. What’s funny is how different they are: one is precise and almost stiff and the other is all about confident, looser, more expressionistic drawing. Which is probably why I have such a hard time. I get nowhere near either of them, but they’re what I’m thinking of and what I’m trying to accomplish when I fail. For bolder physical shapes and composition, I’ve always got Frank Miller, John Romita, Jr., and Harvey Kurtzman in mind. Whether it shows up in my work or not, some other influences have been Steve Ditko, Matt Groening—believe it or not, his old Life in Hell strips had a big impact on me in high school—John Romita, Sr., Kyle Baker, Mike Mignola, Bill Sienkiewicz, and Chris Ware. When I got more specific about the look and feel I wanted for The Venture Brothers while I was developing it, I started looking beyond my immediate influences and into older guys, who were probably the influences of the guys I like. Robert McGinnis is a biggie. Alex Toth and Doug Wildey, of course. These days, as far as comics are concerned, it takes Chris Ware to really rock my boat artistically and story-wise. I spend a lot of time looking at history, architecture, and fine arts books instead of comics and cartoons, though, which dovetails into my writing influences. Mostly, I read non-fiction just to load up on stranger-than-fiction facts and to get all obsessive about a given subject, because I only seem to be able to get anything done when I’m obsessed with something. Sometimes when I’m feeling like my writing’s getting dull or clichéd or just uninspired, I’ll read some Terry Southern or Bruce Jay Friedman and remember how weird and sharp and funny and great satire can be in the hands of a writer who really knows what he’s doing and has a strong voice. And of course, I’m super-big on movies. Movies are where all the true inspiration for my directing comes from and directing is the discipline I really want—and need—to hone more than almost any other right now.

NEXT ISSUE: DRAW! #13

This issue features a cover by the fantastically talented ALEX HORLEY (Heavy Metal, Vertigo, DC, Wizards of the Coast), along with a step-by-step demo of his painting methods! The demo is in full color and you don’t want to miss this one. We’ll also talk with the creator of the popular web comic Banana Sundays, COLLEEN COOVER, and explore the Internet as an option to traditional publishing. And who says funny animals can’t be beautifully drawn? Certainly not OVI NEDELCU, creator of the new comic series, Pigtale. We’ll talk with him about what it takes to come from the world of animation and make it in comics. Speaking of animation, be sure to check out our behind-the-scenes look into Adult Swim’s newest sensation, Minoriteam! Plus regular DRAW! instructors BRET BLEVINS and MIKE MANLEY return with the second installment of Comic Art Bootcamp! 96 pages with COLOR SECTION, $6.95 IN STORES july 2006

NEXT ISSUE’S COVER BY ALEX HORLEY!

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CREATIVE PERSPECTIVE By Br et Blevin s a n d M ik e M a n ley

n the realm of two-dimensional drawings or paintings made on a flat surface, visual perspective is always an illusion— the convincing appearance of objects and figures existing as three-dimensional forms that occupy space and extend across distances is achieved by deceiving the eye. If the lines, shapes, and masses are effectively chosen and placed by the artist, the viewer’s mind will use its history of real world observation to cooperate with the artist’s trickery and complete the illusion of depth. This marriage of real world observation and careful artifice is the key to our subject, because the focus of this article is the distortion and exaggeration of the traditional rules of drawn perspective to create dramatic effects. The drawing formulas of One-, Two-, and Three-Point perspective work through mimicry of real world appearances—by imitating the visual affect of the seen world as it is processed by our eyesight. The basic example of viewing, from the center point between the rails, a straight run of railroad track stretching away across a flat plain is a simple proof—by drawing two converging lines meeting at the distant horizon we can trick the brain into accepting our drawing’s claim of distance. This visual deceit, coupled with the willing cooperation of the viewer’s mind to “believe” in the artist’s legerdemain is our essential technique of creating all manner of complicated illusions of space and depth. I’m stressing the artificial essence of drawn perspective to free your thoughts from an adherence to “true,” “factual,” “realistic,” “accurate” constraints when considering this aspect of making representational drawings. Although spectacular, powerful, and beautiful images can be created with a schematically faithful drawing that respects the rules of optical perspective as inviolate laws, broadening our concept of those same rules into a sort of flexible “reference keyboard”—a playing field with room to bend and distort as invention inspires you—opens up endless potential for dramatic picture making. In this case fakery and deception have no negative connotations—they are essential means to our aesthetic goals. Of course, a straight, literal use of the traditional rules of perspective may be just the effect needed for a drawing, scene, or project, but restricting your ideas of what is possible to the limits of these rules is an unnecessary binding of your imagination. If you can push your drawing to subtle or outrageous extremes and it remains convincing—believable to the viewer—then anything that works is fine. Remember, in visual art, if it looks right, it is right! It’s important to understand the basic principles of traditional perspective drawing demonstrated at the beginning of this article because command of those precepts makes it possible to stretch beyond their dictates and reach for drawings that use more expressionistic/impressionistic distortion of space and form.

In my own work, I rely on a knowledge of classical perspective to “ground” my flights of fancy—to make extreme distortions feel consistent with the traditional world I may have created around it—in other words, make everything I draw believable to the viewer, no matter how outlandish.

PERSPECTIVE: A Glossary of Terms THE HORIZON LINE: The horizon line runs across the canvas at the eye level of the viewer. The horizon line is where the sky appears to meet the ground. VANISHING POINT: The vanishing point should be located near the center of the horizon line. The vanishing point is the single point where all parallel lines (orthogonals) that run towards the horizon line appear to converge, come together like train tracks in the distance. It’s usually placed at the viewer’s eye level. ORTHOGONAL LINES: Orthogonal lines are “visual rays” helping the viewer’s eye to connect points around the edges of the canvas to the vanishing point. An artist uses them to align the edges of windows, doors, walls and bricks, etc. LINEAR PERSPECTIVE: A mathematical system for creating the illusion of 3-D space and distance on a flat, 2-D surface such as paper, canvas, or wall. AERIAL PERSPECTIVE: Creates a sense of depth in a color drawing or painting by imitating the way the Earth’s atmosphere makes distant objects appear less distinct, hazy and more “bluish” as they recede into the distance. This is also known as atmospheric perspective. DRAW! • SPRING 2006

B RET B L EVINS

PERSPECTIVE Here are a few examples: As you can see in the “spacial charts” that accompany these drawings, I am bending, stretching, compressing, forcing forms and distance for dramatic effect, but always creating within a clear concept of my “working depth” to integrate all the elements together into an image that “fools” the eye into accepting my fanciful conceits. This diagram explains the structure of my thinking as I compose and execute an image. The PI C T UR E P L ANE is the two-dimensional surface on which all my information is imprisoned—the conceptual “window” through which the viewer perceives my scene. It’s also the only surface that I can physically manipulate (make lines and tones on). But the conception of my scene happens within the P I C T UR E BOX—I invent and arrange the elements within this imaginary working space—I am thinking in this depth field, my vantage point circumscribed by what is visible through the borders of the Picture Plane. Once I conceive the content of the scene, I decide on my P OI NT OF VI E W—the angle at which the elements will be “seen” through the frame of the Picture Plane—then I search for the shapes that create the strongest statement of the effect I’m after. Now we come to the fun part! This is where the artist is free to distort and exaggerate the forms in any way that enhances the aesthetic goal. Using traditional one-, two-, and three-point perspective as my mental “working reference points,” I can “push and pull” any element of the scene to the breaking point (the point where the drawing looks blatantly incorrect in some way and becomes unbelievable). Allowing yourself this freedom to manipulate forms and spacial relationships is especially useful when creating narrative artwork, because it expands your repitoire of storytelling tools. The perspective choices found in these examples were all shaped by the drama or humor being portrayed.

Th i s ex p l o s i o n i s t h e c l o s es t point to the p i c t u r e p l an e.

Th es e c h ar ac t er s ’ f eet ar e t h e f ar t h es t p o i n t f r o m t h e p i c t u r e p l an e.

DRAW! • SPRING 2006

PERSPECTIVE

B RET B L EVINS

BATMAN: In these three pages of the two fighting Batmen, Catwoman, and an out-of-control helicopter cavorting around on a suspension bridge, the perspective is mostly straightforward and conventional—the vanishing points can easily be traced out and the distortion of the figures is mild. Here the bridge itself created an opportunity to add sweeping scope and exciting eye direction/dynamic shape movement to the scenes. But I could not have constructed these scenes without a thorough understanding of basic traditional perspective—and there is one subtle but very effective trick employed in the splash page of the helicopter arcing toward the bridge below as the city stretches out around it that is useful for adding an energetic twist to panoramic downshots. All the perspective is clean and by-thebook, except the building in the lower right corner. Here the riverbed vanishing point (for this single building) has been moved up into the scene to “bend” that building around and create a “fisheye” effect that increases the illusion of depth.

This kind of distortion that feels “optically right” increases the feeling of height somehow, perhaps by suggesting a quality of vertigo. It’s a very useful device for “animating” this kind of master shot—adding energy, visual excitement and an enhanced rhythm to your scene. The distortion of the Batman figure is similar, though here the background does not participate—the intended effect here is heightened dramatic movement, exaggerating the power and determination of Batman as he returns to the scene of conflict. The panel showing the helicopter dropping a net over Azrael uses distorted perspective to solve the problem of making an absurd fantasy action appear feasible. This scene is physically impossible, but careful bending of scale, distance, and especially the roiling curves of the strands that form the weighted net create an illusion that this scene could happen as we see it here. (As long as the reader doesn’t linger and think about it too long!)

DRAW! • SPRING 2006

B RET B L EVINS

PERSPECTIVE

I try to use all my experience of visual impressions to construct the effect I’m after— I am using a “ground field” of traditional perspective, but I override that if my instinct seems to demand something different, exaggerated or “extra.” Intuition comes into play in making these kinds of decisions—perhaps the desired emotion I am trying to capture feels too tame if I respect the dictates of traditional vanishing points, measured planes, etc.— I’m compelled to “push” the body language—exaggerate the foreshortening, skew the perspective along the lines of a “fisheye” camera lens, or some invented variation of that effect. Obviously many of our visual storytelling sensibilities come from the history of liveaction film directing, animation, and in recent times the seemingly limitless possibilities of computer generated imagery and “camera” movement, as well as the dynamic imaginations of such narrative artists as Jack Kirby, Moebius, and many others. So the choice to limit one’s options to the tight dictates of traditional perspective formulas should be a conscious decision, and should suit the intent and spirit of the imagery to be created. For me the most fascinating attraction of creating artwork is the endless variety of possible solutions to every expressive need, and taking creative license with the “laws” of perspective is an option too rich in undiscovered power to ignore. So strain your imagination to the breaking point and relish the results! See you next time! Bret

DRAW! • SPRING 2006

B RET B L EVINS

PERSPECTIVE

These diagrams eliminate form and surface detail to lay bare the structure of the planes advancing toward the Picture Plane and receding away from it. Study them carefully. Conceiving an image with this awareness is important in all two-dimensional drawing, but is especially useful when distorting perspective for exaggerated effect, because in these kinds of images you cannot “correct” any odd-looking problems by tracing out the forms to their conventional vanishing points. Much of this kind of distortion is instinctual, and your instinct can get you safely home if you understand the rules you are bending and breaking. The grossly distorted depth of the leaping/swinging Batman figures works because I am pushing the exaggerations to the edge of believability, and I’m able to do that by thinking in terms of these charts before I begin building the structure of the actual forms, anatomy, rendering, etc.

DRAW! • SPRING 2006

B RET B L EVINS

PERSPECTIVE

This is an extreme example of bending all the rules of perspective and relying on intuition to arrange the elements into a convincing illusion of characters interacting with an impossible (but believable to the eye) space writhing with distorted forms. In this scene of the New Mutants flying through a New York City possessed by chaotic supernatural forces, every element except the small figures riding Warlocke’s back are twisted in exaggerated or insanely impossible configurations. Here a knowledge of drawing form in depth allowed me to compose this image without thinking about “proper” perspective at all, then I carefully sustained the illusion by attentive rendering of details (windows, railings, street lamps, etc.) following the dictates of my imaginary “space” and distorting the forms to comply to its planes, distances, and recessions from the Picture Plane. Again the viewer is grounded by the eye level—we look up at the top half of the picture, down at the bottom half.

DRAW! • SPRING 2006

Here a fairly straightforward three-point perspective is enhanced by “bending” the space—curving the lines/forms away from the point of view and “squeezing” the left horizontal vanishing point to magnify the distance and increase the illusion of speed and movement projected by the flying chair. Slanting the entire scene at a 45º angle helps create a sense of a slightly-out-ofcontrol trajectory that suits the subject.

B RET B L EVINS

LEFT: In these single-panel examples the perspective is dramatically stretched, compressed, bent, and twisted for various dramatic purposes. The (soon to be) Moleman fleeing the bar is distorted almost to the breaking point—pushing the “fisheye” effect any further would have strained the eye’s credulity—the figure and background would begin to feel disjointed and no longer believably “whole.” That effect might be perfect for a nightmare or hallucination sequence, but here the intent is to convince the reader the figure is an actual form in a “real” space—the exaggeration is used to heighten the drama, convey visually the panic and anxiety the character is feeling. The steep upshot of a disguised and crippled Bruce Wayne approaching a possibly dead victim of abuse is a beat in a story sequence of Bruce discovering, then saving the invalid by restoring his dangling oxygen mask. I used an odd point of view and exaggerated the steep angle to visually intensify the moment’s tension, disorientation, and Bruce’s fear of being too late as he desperately hobbles over on his double canes. The perspective and point of view of the other panels on this page (not shown) are very simple and “straight,” allowing this extreme shot to function as a moment of emotionally heightened drama.

BATMAN ™ AND ©20 06 DC

COMICS.

PERSPECTIVE

RIGHT: The scorpion-like character flying out from the “fish-eyed” jumble of electronic equipment uses a similar device—the eye level runs across the base of the figure’s neck, separating the background between a downward point of view below and an upward angle above. But here the perspective distortion is intensified by exaggerating the forward thrust of the figure, throwing him right out of the circular picture plane, off the paper into the viewer’s “space.”

DRAW! • SPRING 2006

B RET B L EVINS

PERSPECTIVE

LEFT: The splash page of Sleepwalker struggling within the subconscious/dream/memory realm of his host’s mind is a perfect opportunity to bend perspective for drama, fancy and just plain visual fun. This is an example where it is impossible (or at least more trouble than it’s worth) to locate from every element a clean set of vanishing points that relate clearly to an horizon line, but there is an eye level/point of view that holds the image together in a convincing arrangement. Although it was not worked out with measured precision, the viewer looks down on all the objects below Sleepwalker’s eyes, and up at all the objects above them. This familiar orientation allows me to twist, force, bend, extrude, and otherwise distort the perspective of the environment around Sleepwalker by intuition and instinct, creating a whirling kaleidoscope of surreal spatial relationships that create an entertaining image, “grounded” by the visual logic of the consistent eye-level point of view.

DRAW! • SPRING 2006

PERSPECTIVE

B RET B L EVINS

LEFT: In this sequence the perspective is distorted to enhance the effect of exaggerated movement—after an upshot of the motorcycle rider (upshots always attribute a heroic, powerful, or ominous quality to a character), the large panel is “stretched” by forcing the perspective of Daredevil’s leaping body—his left arm is pushed forward into space and his left leg is pushed back. The car Mr. Hyde is lifting is slightly “bent”— drooping just a bit over the support points of his hands, and the perspective of the car itself is also forced—notice how much narrower the front width of the car is than the rear, closest to us. Because the focus of this image is the action of the characters, I left the background of the scene flat— essentially a two-dimensional backdrop akin to a piece of painted stage scenery. The motorcycle rider skids into the space between the antagonists and the backdrop—the small slice of sidewalk on the left creates the illusion of a street by the simplest means. I could also have chosen to draw a steep perspective of the street stretching away behind the foreground characters, and that choice would have worked fine, too, but here I wanted the reader to focus on the foreground conflict and the rider entering the scene behind them, so I “blocked” any depth view behind the motorcycle by “walling off” the background. This choice allows me to contrast the flat, square, perpendicular lines of the backdrop against the diagonals and curves of the figures and props to “thrust” the characters forward into the reader’s notice by setting up a kind of visual line-direction springboard that throws them toward the Picture Plane. A similar effect is utilized in the third panel—the distant Mr. Hyde hurls the car forward, up-ending it to again form a “flat” plane that Daredevil, his companion, and the debris shoot away from—the effect is exaggerated by Daredevil’s back-flung arm “breaking” free of the panel border, which serves to push his extended left leg even closer to us, creating the illusion that he is leaping beyond the Picture Plane, right off the page. The next two panels use the forced perspective of the thrown billy club to exaggerate the impression of depth and space, and the last a simple manipulation of size relationships to push the rider into the background as he is hit by a chunk of flying rubble.

DRAW! • SPRING 2006

PERSPECTIVE

MAKE PERSPECTIVE WORK FOR YOU TO HELP YOUR STORYTELLING Since its invention in the early 1400s in Florence, Italy, by Filippo Brunelleschi (sculptor, engineer, and architect 1377–1446) “perspective,” which is the name Brunelleschi gave his mathematical system of measuring 3-D space, has allowed artists to create a greater sense of “realism,” in their work. It has allowed artists to create a greater visual representation and link between the reality of the physical or natural world and the imagined or representational reality created by the artist. Perspective is the chief tool we artists use in depicting the illusion of 3-D space and distance on a 2-D or flat surface. It mimics the way we see the world in a realistic and mathematical way. As a tool in conjunction with light and shadow (chiaroscuro), composition, color, tone, value, etc., we can create vast, intricate, realistic, or hyper-realistic representations of the world we can see with our eyes or imagination. And like any other tool or principles/disciplines we must learn and master—anatomy, composition, brush, pencils, paints, computers—perspective is one we have to learn first, as it directly governs or effects anything we place upon the Picture Plane. It takes a while to get it down— master the few basic rules until they don’t become rules but just a part of our natural process as artists—but anyone with a mind to do it can master perspective in a few short weeks of serious application. Of all the principles or ground rules you have to learn as an artist, perspective is one of the simplest, has the fewest rules, yet it’s one of the things I have come to notice most budding artists fear the most and try and cheat around. And it will show right away; it will be clearly evident in the art, the drawing, if the artist doesn’t have a secure grasp of perspective. Figures sliding up and down, people stranding in holes, giant people here, midgets there… things aligned in perspective like a surrealistic painting or drawing, though it clearly wasn’t the artist’s intention. In comics, animation, illustration, everything is done with intent, or should be; there are no happy accidents, there is only the artist’s intent and his or her failure to achieve it, make it clear, to the viewer. 80

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DARKHAWK SPLASH: In your face! I was inspired to do a very “hyper perspective shot” in this splash page from Darkhawk. I was thinking of something similar to what Jack Kirby would do, and wanted to see if I could possibly “plus” it a bit. My solution was to have the figure break the border and extend to the bleed of the page. The perspectives on the figure and the background are very different, and while I pushed the one-point perspective on the buildings, slightly skewing it, I then stuck the figure on top and pushed the foreshortening to really make DH pop out of the page. Again, the goal often is to get a feeling— almost more of an emotional reaction—when doing this type of “hyper perspective” to capture a moment of high intensity which super-hero comics are all about.

MIK E MA NL EY

PERSPECTIVE

MIK E MA NL EY

GENE COLAN—MASTER OF PERSPECTIVE

Colan was one of the classic Marvel Bullpen artists who achieved a dynamic in his work equal to Jack Kirby but in a very different, more realistic manner. Between his use of sharp contrast, chiaroscuro use of blacks, and the distortion of perspective, his work had a very photographic, cinematic feel which was enhanced by his long time inker/collaborator Tom Palmer. The last panel of this page clearly shows Colan used some photo reference to achieve not only a sense of heightened reality but one of great depth in this shot. He used and bent the rules of perspective to dramatic effect rather than let the photo restrain him to a mere lackluster tracing. By doing this he was able to create a sort of “hyper-perspective” that matched the dynamics of his powerful figure work, giving us a complete artistic vision.

Nothing will send young artists or art students running for the hills faster, or elicit more groaning—like they’ve just been given a load of math homework—than the subject of perspective. I think they often view the orthogonal lines and grids used to guide the walls, windows, and elements to the vanishing points as taking all the fun out of drawing, making it seem more like math than art—a prison of lines that will trap the creative impulse. Yet in the end nothing could be further from the truth. The idea should be to learn perspective, get it down, and then break the rules to great effect. All of the greatest cartoonists, illustrators, and animators do this. A short list of artists whom are my favorites and whom I think illustrate this point the best in their work follows: Jack Kirby, Gil Kane, Alex Toth, Gene Colan, and Maurice Noble.

Here Colan makes great use of forced perspective and camera angles to make this car chase as exciting as it would be on a movie screen, which is no small feat on a comic page. In every panel on these two pages the perspective is pushed, bent, distorted for dramatic effect, lending an extra dimension, a “hyperperspective” if you will, that takes a traditional one-point perspective shot and warps it to create this incredible action sequence forcing the reader’s eye to go where he wants. A good practice is to copy a few panels to “work out” the perspective and see how the artist achieved his effects or broke the rules to great effect. Let another artist teach you their tricks, techniques, and approach this way.

DRAW! • SPRING 2006

MIK E MA NL EY

PERSPECTIVE

KIRBY—KING OF PERSPECTIVE!

Kirby stands out as the best example as his work is so dynamic and it bends every rule in the book, especially perspective and anatomy. Here is a checklist of sorts you can use to help push your perspective and take a boring scene and make it a “hyper-perspective” with shot choice and creative perspective, like a photographer choosing a special lens, but much more so. Remember, perspective will influence the shot choice and vise versa, you cannot separate perspective from the effect it has on the arrangement of elements/objects on the Picture Plane.

• PERSPECTIVE IS AN ESSENTIAL COMPONENT OF COMPOSITION • USE PERSPECTIVE TO ENHANCE A SCENE, PUSH A BORING LAYOUT • PERSPECTIVE CAN BE USED AS A TOOL FOR PSYCHOLOGICAL/ EMOTIONAL ENHANCEMENT. 82

DRAW! • SPRING 2006

Jack Kirby is noted for that “in your face” quality in his artwork. His work, more than any other cartoonist’s, defines super-hero comics. His figures and compositions burst forth from the panels. The big square fingers coming at you, or the dynamic figure jumping at the reader, are classics, hallmarks, and Kirby set the pace every single cartoonist working in the field of super-hero comics attempted to follow. The power of Kirby’s work derived from incredible imagination, inventiveness, and his ability to bend every rule of anatomy, perspective, and composition to his will. The hero jumping at us was something Kirby started in the ’40s Golden Age comics but almost purified in the Captain America splash page here [at left] from the ’60s. [Below] Cap’s right leg and shield come at us while his right arm recedes, but not in a true perspective but a “hyper-perspective.” The leg of the soldier in the foreground is not in true perspective, but a “hyper-perspective,” and Kirby chiefly creates depth here by layering his figures and background elements to read clearly as silhouettes against each other, pushing the one-point perspective and “blowing it out” to give this page maximum impact. The two-point perspective in the page to the right again illustrates how Kirby would bend perspective or flatten it to push his shapes as needed to enhance a composition.

PERSPECTIVE

MIK E MA NL EY

ALEX TOTH: ONE-POINT PERSPECTIVE

This page penciled by Toth is a great example of choosing the right perspective to enhance the storytelling and making it work by use of dramatic composition. This is a simple one-point perspective in three out of the four panels, and Toth’s choice to use it to illustrate Superman’s fast pursuit of the criminals on a subway enhances the fact that Superman is flying down a tunnel at super-speed.

DRAW! • SPRING 2006

MIK E MA NL EY

PERSPECTIVE

that were almost 100% in the opposite direction of Disney. They produced the very successful Mr. Magoo series and the Academy Award-winning Gerald McBoing Boing, which was recently included on the Hellboy DVD. In the first panel of Example #2 I flatten the perspective and warp it a bit. I am thinking layers like a cut-out, not an observed perspective. I take advantage of the fact that as humans we tend to think objects which are closer are bigger and those which are farther away are smaller, and I use this “viewer’s logic” like a magician. Here I attempt to fool the eye of the reader; I play tricks with the eye by placing the road on the hill leading to the castle and by simply making the road narrower as it gets closer to the castle. This simple little trick convinces the reader that the castle is in the distance. It seems almost too simple when you think about it, but a few lines lazily drawn down, not integrated or designed, and the effect will be weakened or lost. This type of “visual trick” can work to great effect only if you employ it in a well designed way. As a child watching a zillion hours of cartoons on TV—everything from the Hanna Barbera shows to the classic Looney Tunes—

Now I’d like to touch on another approach to perspective that I employed for effect in the Dexter’s Lab comic pages [next page] and often use on more animated or cartoony work, but will use on more realistic work when needed. This type of perspective emphasizes shape, line, and pattern instead of using perspective to create an academic or linear perspective. This design approach really comes out of modern art, specifically Cubism, where the forms are abstracted, showing views of an object you cannot observe in real life. Picasso’s “two eyes on the same side of the head” drawings are a great example of this. Following along in this fashion I take the perspective and exaggerate it, simplify it, flatten it, warp it. In Example #1, I bend the ground plane and flatten it out to a degree, having the robots “ride the horizon,” and drop in the foreground elements for depth. Were I to illustrate this scene in a realistic way—not push the shapes—this scene would be a lot less dynamic. One of the main hallmarks of Dexter’s design is that UPA school of Cubist simplification. This approach to abstraction in animation really came to the fore in the cartoons of UPA (United Productions of America). Instead of the traditional “Disney” method—the lush, fully dimensional work you’d see in Snow White Noble was one of the best art directors, designers, and layout artists to ever work in animation. or Pinocchio—UPA cartoons were full of Here are a few classic examples of background layouts done by Noble from a Porky Pig short [Top] big areas of broad, flat color—abstract and the instant classic, “Duck Dodgers in the 24th-and-a-half-Century” [Above], which masterfully modern art shapes; the artist there didn’t illustrates Noble’s bold use of “Cubist Mannerisms” to push and pull, twist and flatten perspective strive to recreate a realistic environment for to great effect. the characters. They sought to create cartoons 84 DRAW! • SPRING 2006

AND NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY CUBIST

PERSPECTIVE

MIK E MA NL EY

I was really affected and impacted by the cartoons directed by Chuck Jones, especially the Ralph Phillips shorts, “Robin Hood Daffy,” and “Claws for Alarm.” I later came to know what is was that I liked about these cartoons so much... it was that these cartoons were all designed and laid out by Maurice Noble [1910-2001]. There is a school of art out there when we learn from the best artists in the fields of comics, animation, illustration, and fine art. All we have to do is open our minds and let artist before us teach us.

These two Dexter’s Lab pages heavily rely upon design to make the perspective work and create an illusion of depth with such extremely flat designs. The colorist can enhance this effect as can line weight, but the basic design must be rock solid or the drawing will as flat and lifeless as a piece of paper.

See you next time, Mike

DRAW! • SPRING 2006

MIK E MA NL EY

PERSPECTIVE

GIL KANE—KING OF DYNAMIC PERSPECTIVE The late Gil Kane was one of the most dynamic figure artists to ever work in comics, and he was one of the artists I learned a lot from as a struggling, analyzing, young artist because his work was so structured, consistent, formalized to a degree. Because of this his work was easy to dissect—the structure lays right on the surface. His process was laid bare in many an interview where they would reprint the rough layouts, such as Figure B [Above]. While his work is powerful, overt, and lyrical to an extent, Kane’s work is all about structure and dynamics, especially dynamic figures bounding and leaping out at the reader. Two of his trademarks were the figure splayed out flying back at you, the reader, and his “up the nose” shot. In the three examples I have included here, you can see how Kane pushed the perspective to help break the inherent flatness of the comics page, the almost “fenced in” aspect of the panel borders. You can see even in his rough layout [Figure B] Kane is already pushing the perspective. Notice the extreme foreshortening of the main figure in the second panel: not only does he push the rules so that the figure breaks the panel borders, but he uses the dynamics of that figure to lead your eye to the main figure in panel three. Kane, however, doesn’t overdo it thereby reducing the border-breaking figures to a cliché, which he could easily do, thus diminishing the impact. This is a great example of how to make the perspective “enhance” your storytelling and design. Kane moves the camera around as well, but often uses the “up shot” perspective in his layouts. In Figure A [Above left], notice how consistently Kane has placed the reader’s POV from below the horizon line or right on it.

Figure C might be my favorite Spider-Man cover, and once again Kane pushed the perspective and foreshortening to make Spidey almost leap off the cover. I have chosen mostly classic cartoonists here to illustrate these points as I feel they were very, very solidly grounded in the fundamentals which allowed them to break the rules with purpose and not by accident.

DRAW! • SPRING 2006

JOHN CARTER WARLORD OF MARS ™ AND © ERB, INC.

PERSPECTIVE

MIK E MA NL EY

HOLY PERSPECTIVE BATMAN! On these two pages I drew during my stint on Batman I really warped the perspective for effect. On the first page [Figure 1] I tried to capture or enhance the craziness of the Joker by tilting and warping the perspective. The coat tails of his jacket point back towards the shadow of Batman on the brick wall, whose brick pattern also enhances the feeling of depth.

[Figure 2] Every panel on this page has the perspective pushed to help give a hectic, tense feeling. The extreme foreshortening in panel three is then followed up with a sort of wide-angle, fish-eye shot in the biggest, most dynamic panel on the page. By warping the perspective I was trying to give a sense of movement on the static page, along with that spinning feeling that one would get watching a film where the camera spins around the surrounded hero. In the last panel I used an extreme upshot on Robin. Again, putting the reader’s eye or POV in a spot they wouldn’t normally be gives an immediate sense of dynamics to the layout and perspective.

DRAW! • SPRING 2006

HOW-TO BOOKS & DVDs

WORKING METHODS: COMIC CREATORS DETAIL THEIR STORYTELLING & CREATIVE PROCESSES Art professor JOHN LOWE puts the minds of comic artists under the microscope, highlighting the intricacies of the creative process step-by-step. For this book, three short scripts are each interpreted in different ways by professional comic artists to illustrate the varied ways in which they “see” and “solve” the problem of making a script succeed in comic form. It documents the creative and technical choices MARK SCHULTZ, TIM LEVINS, JIM MAHFOOD, SCOTT HAMPTON, KELSEY SHANNON, CHRIS BRUNNER, SEAN MURPHY, and PAT QUINN make as they tell a story, allowing comic fans, artists, instructors, and students into a world rarely explored. Hundreds of illustrated examples document the artists’ processes, and interviews clarify their individual approaches regarding storytelling and layout choices. The exercise may be simple, but the results are profoundly complex! (176-page trade paperback with COLOR) $21.95 ISBN: 9781893905733 Diamond Order Code: MAR073747

HOW TO CREATE COMICS FROM SCRIPT TO PRINT

HOW TO DRAW COMICS FROM SCRIPT TO PRINT DVD

REDESIGNED and EXPANDED version of the groundbreaking WRITE NOW!/ DRAW! crossover! DANNY FINGEROTH and MIKE MANLEY show step-bystep how to develop a new comic, from script and roughs to pencils, inks, colors, lettering—it even guides you through printing and distribution, and the finished 8-page color comic is included, so you can see their end result! PLUS: over 30 pages of ALL-NEW material, including “full” and “Marvelstyle” scripts, a critique of their new character and comic from an editor’s point of view, new tips on coloring, new expanded writing lessons, and more!

Documents two top professionals creating a comic book, from initial idea to finished art! In this feature-filled DVD, WRITE NOW! magazine editor DANNY (Spider-Man) FINGEROTH and DRAW! magazine editor MIKE (Batman) MANLEY show you how a new character evolves from scratch! Watch the creative process, as a story is created from concepts and roughs to pencils, inks, and coloring—even lettering! Packed with “how-to” tips and tricks, it’s the perfect companion to the HOW TO CREATE COMICS FROM SCRIPT TO PRINT book, or stands alone as an invaluable tool for amateur and professional comics creators alike!

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COMICS 101: HOW-TO & HISTORY LESSONS TwoMorrows has tapped the combined knowledge of its editors to assemble How-To and History lessons including: “Figure Drawing” and “How To Break Down A Story” from DRAW!’s MIKE MANLEY and BRET BLEVINS, “Writing Tips” from WRITE NOW!’s DANNY FINGEROTH, plus ROUGH STUFF’s BOB McLEOD provides “Art Critiques” of promising newcomers! There’s even a “Comics History Crash-Course”, assembled by ALTER EGO’s ROY THOMAS and BACK ISSUE’s MICHAEL EURY! (32-page comic book) FREE! (shipping charge applies) • Diamond Order Code: FEB070050

COMICS GO HOLLYWOOD TwoMorrows unveils secrets behind your FAVORITE ON-SCREEN HEROES, and what’s involved in taking a character from the comics page to the big screen! It includes: Storyboards from DC’s animated hit “THE NEW FRONTIER” (courtesy of DRAW! magazine)! JEPH LOEB on writing for both Marvel Comics and the Heroes TV show (courtesy of WRITE NOW! magazine)! Details on the unseen X-Men movie (courtesy of ALTER EGO magazine)! A history of the Joker from his 1940s origins to his upcoming appearance in the Dark Knight film (courtesy of BACK ISSUE! magazine)! And a look at Marvel Universe co-creator JACK KIRBY’s Hollywood career, with extensive Kirby art! So before you head to your local cineplex this summer, make sure you pick up your FREE copy of this must-have item from your local retailer on May 3, 2008! (32-page comic book) FREE! (shipping applies) or FREE at your local comics retailer on May 3, 2008

BEST OF DRAW! VOL. 1

BEST OF DRAW! VOL. 2

Compiles tutorials, interviews, and demonstrations from DRAW! #1-2, by DAVE GIBBONS (layout and drawing on the computer), BRET BLEVINS (figure drawing), JERRY ORDWAY (detailing his working methods), KLAUS JANSON and RICARDO VILLAGRAN (inking techniques), GENNDY TARTAKOVSKY (on animation and Samurai Jack), STEVE CONLEY (creating web comics and cartoons), PHIL HESTER and ANDE PARKS (penciling and inking), and more! Cover by BRET BLEVINS!

Compiles tutorials and interviews from issues #3-4 of DRAW!, with ERIK LARSEN (savage penciling), DICK GIORDANO (inking techniques), BRET BLEVINS (drawing the figure in action, and figure composition), KEVIN NOWLAN (penciling & inking), MIKE MANLEY (how-to demo on Web Comics), DAVE COOPER (digital coloring tutorial), and more! Each artist presents their work STEP-BY-STEP, so both beginning and experienced artists can learn valuable tips and tricks along the way! Cover by KEVIN NOWLAN.

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COMICS ABOVE GROUND

SEE HOW YOUR FAVORITE ARTISTS MAKE A LIVING OUTSIDE COMICS

BEST OF WRITE NOW! Whether you’re looking to break into the world of comics writing, or missed key issues of DANNY FINGEROTH’S WRITE NOW—the premier magazine about writing for comics and related fields—this is the book for you! THE BEST OF WRITE NOW features highlights from the acclaimed magazine, including in-depth interviews about writing from top talents, like: BRIAN MICHAEL BENDIS, WILL EISNER, JEPH LOEB, STAN LEE, J. M. STRACZYNSKI, MARK WAID, GEOFF JOHNS, TODD McFARLANE, PAUL LEVITZ, AXEL ALONSO, and others! There’s also “NUTS & BOLTS” tutorials, featuring scripts from landmark comics and the pencil art that was drawn from them, including: CIVIL WAR #1 (MILLAR & McNIVEN), BATMAN: HUSH #1 (LOEB & LEE), ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN #47 (BENDIS & BAGLEY), AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #539 (STRACZYNSKI & GARNEY), SPAWN #52 (McFARLANE & CAPULO), GREEN LANTERN: REBIRTH #1 (JOHNS & VAN SCRIVER), and more! Also: How-to articles by the best comics writers and editors around, like JOHN OSTRANDER, DENNIS O’NEIL, KURT BUSIEK, STEVEN GRANT, and JOEY CAVALIERI. Professional secrets of top comics pros including NEIL GAIMAN, MARK WAID, TRINA ROBBINS, PETER DAVID, and STAN LEE! Top editors telling exactly what it takes to get hired by them! Plus more great tips to help you prepare for your big break, or simply appreciate comics on a new level, and an introduction by STAN LEE! Edited by Spider-Man writer DANNY FINGEROTH.

COMICS ABOVE GROUND features comics pros discussing their inspirations and training, and how they apply it in “Mainstream Media,” including Conceptual Illustration, Video Game Development, Children’s Books, Novels, Design, Illustration, Fine Art, Storyboards, Animation, Movies and more! Written by DURWIN TALON (author of the top-selling book PANEL DISCUSSIONS), this book features creators sharing their perspectives and their work in comics and their “other professions,” with career overviews, never-before-seen art, and interviews! Featuring: • BRUCE TIMM • BERNIE WRIGHTSON • ADAM HUGHES • JEPH LOEB

• LOUISE SIMONSON • DAVE DORMAN • GREG RUCKA AND OTHERS!

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PANEL DISCUSSIONS

TOP ARTISTS DISCUSS THE DESIGN OF COMICS

BEST OF DRAW! VOL. 3

BEST OF DRAW! VOL. 4

Compiles more of the best tutorials and interviews from DRAW! #5-7, including: Penciling by MIKE WIERINGO! Illustration by DAN BRERETON! Design by PAUL RIVOCHE! Drawing Hands, Lighting the Figure, and Sketching by BRET BLEVINS! Cartooning by BILL WRAY! Inking by MIKE MANLEY! Comics & Animation by STEPHEN DeSTEFANO! Digital Illustration by CELIA CALLE and ALBERTO RUIZ! Caricature by ZACH TRENHOLM, and much more! Cover by DAN BRERETON!

More tutorials and interviews from DRAW! #8-10, spotlighting: From comics to video games with artist MATT HALEY! Character design with TOM BANCROFT and ROB CORLEY! Adobe Illustrator tips with ALBERTO RUIZ! Draping the human figure by BRET BLEVINS! Penciling with RON GARNEY! Breaking into comic strips by GRAHAM NOLAN! Lettering by TODD KLEIN! International cartoonist JOSÉ LUIS AGREDA! Interviews with PvP’s SCOTT KURTZ and Banana Tail’s MARK McKENNA, and more! Cover by MATT HALEY!

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Art professor DURWIN TALON gets top creators to discuss all aspects of the DESIGN of comics, from panel and page layout, to use of color and lettering: • WILL EISNER • SCOTT HAMPTON • MIKE WIERINGO • WALT SIMONSON • MIKE MIGNOLA • MARK SCHULTZ • DAVID MAZZUCCHELLI • MIKE CARLIN • DICK GIORDANO • BRIAN STELFREEZE • CHRIS MOELLER • MARK CHIARELLO If you’re serious about creating effective, innovative comics, or just enjoying them from the creator’s perspective, this guide is must-reading! (208-page trade paperback with COLOR) $24.95 ISBN: 9781893905146 Diamond Order Code: MAY073781

MODERN MASTERS SERIES Edited by ERIC NOLEN-WEATHINGTON, 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 a COMPREHENSIVE INTERVIEW (including influences and their views on graphic storytelling), DELUXE SKETCHBOOK SECTIONS, and more! And don’t miss our companion DVDs, showing the artists at work in their studios!

MODERN MASTERS: IN THE STUDIO WITH GEORGE PÉREZ DVD

MODERN MASTERS: IN THE STUDIO WITH MICHAEL GOLDEN DVD

Get a PERSONAL TOUR of George’s studio, and watch STEP-BY-STEP as the fan-favorite artist illustrates a special issue of TOP COW’s WITCHBLADE! Also, see George as he sketches for fans at conventions, and hear his peers and colleagues—including MARV WOLFMAN and RON MARZ—share their anecdotes and personal insights along the way!

Go behind the scenes and into Michael Golden’s studio for a LOOK INTO THE CREATIVE MIND of one of comics' greats. Witness a modern master in action as this 90-minute DVD provides an exclusive look at the ARTIST AT WORK, as he DISCUSSES THE PROCESSES he undertakes to create a new comics series.

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Volume 1: ALAN DAVIS

Volume 2: GEORGE PÉREZ

Volume 3: BRUCE TIMM

Volume 4: KEVIN NOWLAN

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Volume 6: ARTHUR ADAMS

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Volume 8: WALTER SIMONSON

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Volume 12: MICHAEL GOLDEN

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NEW FOR 2008

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Volume 14: FRANK CHO

Volume 15: MARK SCHULTZ

Volume 16: MIKE ALLRED

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MODERN MASTERS BUNDLES

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Volume 18: JOHN ROMITA JR.

by Tom Field & Eric Nolen-Weathington (128-page trade paperback) $14.95 ISBN: 9781893905948 Ships May 2008

by George Khoury & Eric Nolen-Weathington (128-page trade paperback) $14.95 ISBN: 9781893905955 Ships July 2008

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MODERN MASTERS VOLUMES ON MIKE PLOOG AND CHRIS SPROUSE ARE COMING IN FALL 2008 SEE OUR SUMMER CATALOG UPDATE!

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ARTIST BIOGRAPHY BOOKS

NEW FOR 2008

DICK GIORDANO: CHANGING COMICS, ONE DAY AT A TIME JOHN ROMITA... AND ALL THAT JAZZ! “Jazzy” JOHN ROMITA talks about his life, his art, and his contemporaries! Authored by former Marvel Comics editor in chief and top writer ROY THOMAS, and noted historian JIM AMASH, it features the most definitive interview Romita’s ever given, about working with such comics legends as STAN LEE and JACK KIRBY, following Spider-Man co-creator STEVE DITKO as artist on the strip, and more! Plus, Roy Thomas shares memories of working with Romita in the 1960s-70s, and Jim Amash examines the awesome artistry of Ring-a-Ding Romita! Lavishly illustrated with Romita art—original classic art, and unseen masterpieces—as well as illos by some of Marvel’s and DC’s finest, this is at once a career overview of a comics master, and a firsthand history of the industry by one of its leading artists! Available in Softcover and Deluxe Hardcover (with 16 extra color pages, dust jacket, and custom endleaves).

MICHAEL EURY’s biography of comics’ most prominent and affable personality! Covers his career as illustrator, inker, and editor, peppered with DICK’S PERSONAL REFLECTIONS on his career milestones! Lavishly illustrated with RARE AND NEVER SEEN comics, merchandising, and advertising art (includes a color section)! Also includes an extensive index of his published work, comments and tributes by NEAL ADAMS, DENNIS O’NEIL, TERRY AUSTIN, PAUL LEVITZ, MARV WOLFMAN, JULIUS SCHWARTZ, JIM APARO and others, plus a Foreword by NEAL ADAMS and Afterword by PAUL LEVITZ!

NICK CARDY: BEHIND THE ART NICK CARDY has been doing fantastic artwork for more than sixty years, from comics, to newspaper strips, to illustration. His work on DC Comics’ TEEN TITANS, and his amazing comics covers, are universally hailed as some of the best in the medium’s history, but his COMMERCIAL ILLUSTRATION work is just as highly regarded by those in the know. Now, this lavish FULL-COLOR HARDCOVER lets you see what goes on behind his amazing art! Nick has selected dozens of his favorite pieces from throughout his career and shows how they came to be in this remarkable art book. From the reams of preliminary work as well as Nick's detailed commentary, you will gain fascinating insight into how this great artist works, watching each step of the way as some of his most memorable images come to life! By ERIC NOLENWEATHINGTON and NICK CARDY. (128-page FULL-COLOR HARDCOVER) $34.95 ISBN: 9781893905993 • Ships June 2008

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R! WINNE! D R A Y AW OR EISNESRT SHORT ST BE

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A comprehensive look at GEORGE TUSKA’S personal and professional life, including early work at the Eisner-Iger shop, producing controversial crime comics of the 1950s, and his tenure with Marvel and DC Comics, as well as independent publishers. The book includes extensive coverage of his work on IRON MAN, X-MEN, HULK, JUSTICE LEAGUE, TEEN TITANS, BATMAN, T.H.U.N.D.E.R. AGENTS, and many more! A gallery of commission artwork and a thorough index of his work are included, plus original artwork, photos, sketches, previously unpublished art, interviews and anecdotes from his peers and fans, plus the very personal and reflective words of George himself, making this book a testament to the tremendous influence Tuska has had on the comic book industry and his legion of fans! Written by DEWEY CASSELL.

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“I HAVE TO LIVE WITH THIS GUY!” STREETWISE Featuring NEW autobiographical comics stories by: • BARRY WINDSOR-SMITH • SERGIO ARAGONÉS • MURPHY ANDERSON • JOE KUBERT • JACK KIRBY • BRENT ANDERSON • NICK CARDY • RICK VEITCH • ROY THOMAS & JOHN SEVERIN • SAM GLANZMAN • PAUL CHADWICK • EVAN DORKIN • C.C. BECK • WALTER SIMONSON • ART SPIEGELMAN • Cover by STEVE RUDE • Foreword by WILL EISNER (160-page trade paperback) $19.95 ISBN: 9781893905047 Diamond Order Code: STAR11522

BLAKE BELL takes a look at what its been like living with comic book creators over the past 60 years, with the people who know them best! Explore the lives of the partners and wives of the top names in comics, as they share memories, anecdotes, personal photos, mementos, and never-before-seen art! Featured are interviews with the “significant others” of:

The ultimate retrospective on COLAN, with rare drawings, photos, and art from his nearly 60-year career, plus a comprehensive overview of Gene’s glory days at Marvel Comics! MARV WOLFMAN, DON McGREGOR and other writers share script samples and anecdotes of their Colan collaborations, while TOM PALMER, STEVE LEIALOHA and others show how they approached the daunting task of inking Colan’s famously nuanced penciled pages! Plus there’s a NEW PORTFOLIO of never-before-seen collaborations between Gene and such masters as JOHN BYRNE, MICHAEL KALUTA and GEORGE PÉREZ, and all-new artwork created specifically for this book by Gene! Available in Softcover and Deluxe Hardcover (limited to 1000 copies, with 16 extra black-and-white pages and 8 extra color pages)! Written by TOM FIELD. (168-page softcover with COLOR) $21.95 ISBN: 9781893905450 Diamond Order Code: APR053190 (192-page hardcover with COLOR) $44.95 ISBN: 9781893905467 Diamond Order Code: APR053189

JACK KIRBY BOOKS

NEW FOR 2008

WALLACE WOOD CHECKLIST The most thorough listing of Wood’s work ever published, taking more than 20 Wood experts over two decades to compile! Lists in exacting detail Woody’s PUBLISHED COMIC WORK, including dates, story titles, page counts, and even documents the assistants who worked with him! It also includes his NEWSPAPER, ADVERTISING, and FANZINE WORK, plus a myriad of more obscure Wood pieces such as GUM CARDS, STICKERS, GREETING CARDS, and more! Also included are listings of his UNPUBLISHED WORK, and it’s profusely illustrated throughout with WOOD ARTWORK! (68-page comic book) $5.95 Diamond Order Code: JUL032590

NEW FOR 2008

BRUSH STROKES WITH GREATNESS: THE LIFE & ART OF JOE SINNOTT During his 56-plus-year career in comic books, JOE SINNOTT has worked in every genre, and for almost every publisher, from 1940s Timely Comics to Charlton Comics, Treasure Chest, and Dell as a top penciler. But his association with Marvel Comics in the ’60s as its top inker cemented his place in comics history. This book celebrates his career, as he demonstrates his passion for his craft. In it, Joe shares his experiences working on Marvel’s leading titles, memories of working with STAN LEE and JACK KIRBY, and rare and unpublished artwork from his personal files. It features dozens of colleagues and co-workers paying tribute to Joe, plus an extended Art Gallery, and a Checklist of his career. Written by TIM LASIUTA, with a Foreword by STAN LEE, and Afterword by MARK EVANIER. (136-page softcover with COLOR) $17.95 ISBN: 9781893905726 • Diamond Order Code: MAR073744

ULTRA-LIMITED EDITION A 52-copy edition of the Softcover with custom Sinnott pencil portraits of his most popular characters! Call or go to www.twomorrows.com to request a copy with your favorite character, while they last! (136-page limited edition softcover ) $69.95 ONLY AVAILABLE FROM TWOMORROWS!

KIRBY FIVE-OH!

CELEBRATING 50 YEARS OF THE “KING” OF COMICS

The publication that started the TwoMorrows juggernaut presents KIRBY FIVE-OH!, a book covering the best of everything from Jack Kirby’s 50-year career in comics! The regular columnists from THE JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR magazine have formed a distinguished panel of experts to choose and examine: The BEST KIRBY STORY published each year from 1938-1987! The BEST COVERS from each decade! Jack’s 50 BEST UNUSED PIECES OF ART! His 50 BEST CHARACTER DESIGNS! And profiles of, and commentary by, the 50 PEOPLE MOST INFLUENCED BY KIRBY’S WORK! Plus there’s a 50-PAGE GALLERY of Kirby’s powerful RAW PENCIL ART, and a DELUXE COLOR SECTION of photos and finished art from throughout his entire half-century oeuvre. This TABLOID-SIZED TRADE PAPERBACK features a previously unseen Kirby Superman cover inked by “DC: The New Frontier” artist DARWYN COOKE, and an introduction by MARK EVANIER, helping make this the ultimate retrospective on the career of the “King” of comics! (A percentage of profits will be donated to the JACK KIRBY MUSEUM AND RESEARCH CENTER.) Takes the place of JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR #50. (168-page tabloid-size trade paperback) $19.95 ISBN: 9781893905894 Diamond Order Code: FEB084186

HERO GETS GIRL! THE LIFE & ART OF KURT SCHAFFENBERGER

JACK KIRBY CHECKLIST: GOLD EDITION The most thorough listing of JACK “KING” KIRBY’s work ever published! Building on the 1998 “Silver Edition”, this NEWLY UPDATED GOLD EDITION compiles an additional decade’s worth of corrections and additions by top historians, in a new Trade Paperback format with premium paper for archival durability. It lists in exacting detail EVERY PUBLISHED COMIC featuring Kirby’s work, including dates, story titles, page counts, and inkers. It even CROSS-REFERENCES REPRINTS, and includes an extensive bibliography listing BOOKS, PERIODICALS, PORTFOLIOS, FANZINES, POSTERS, and other obscure pieces with Kirby's art, plus a detailed list of Jack's UNPUBLISHED WORK as well. BONUS: Now includes a complete listing of the over 5000-page archive of Kirby’s personal pencil art photocopies, plus dozens of examples of rare and unseen Kirby art! (128-page trade paperback) $14.95 ISBN: 9781605490052 Ships May 2008

COMICS INTROSPECTIVE: PETER BAGGE

Profusely illustrated bio of KURT SCHAFFENBERGER, the preeminent Lois Lane artist and important early Captain Marvel artist who brought a touch of humor and whimsy to super-hero comics! Covers his LIFE AND CAREER from the 1940s to his passing in 2002, and features hundreds of NEVER-SEEN PHOTOS AND ILLUSTRATIONS from his files! Also includes recollections by family, friends and fellow artists such as MURPHY ANDERSON, WILL EISNER, CARMINE INFANTINO, JOE KUBERT, ALEX ROSS and MORT WALKER! Written by columnist MARK VOGER (Schaffenberger friend for the final 13 years of the artist’s life), with a Foreword by KEN BALD.

With a unique, expressive style, PETER BAGGE’s work runs the gamut from political (his strips for reason.com), absurdist and satirical (the BATBOY strip for WEEKLY WORLD NEWS), and dramatic (APOCALYPSE NERD). From his Seattle studio, Peter Bagge lets journalist CHRISTOPHER IRVING in on everything from just what was on his mind with his long-running Gen X comic HATE!, to what’s going on in his head as a political satirist. This book features an assortment of original photography, artwork picked by Bagge himself, and a look at where Bagge’s work (and mind) is taking him.

(128-page trade paperback) $14.95 ISBN: 9781893905290 Diamond Order Code: SEP032545

(128-page trade paperback) $16.95 ISBN: 9781893905832 Diamond Order Code: MAY073779

KIRBY UNLEASHED (REMASTERED) Reprinting the fabled 1971 KIRBY UNLEASHED PORTFOLIO, completely remastered! Spotlights some of KIRBY’s finest art from all eras of his career, including 1930s pencil work, unused strips, illustrated World War II letters, 1950s pages, unpublished 1960s Marvel pencil pages and sketches, and Fourth World pencil art (done expressly for this portfolio in 1970)! We’ve gone back to the original art to ensure the best reproduction possible, and MARK EVANIER and STEVE SHERMAN have updated the Kirby biography from the original printing, and added a new Foreword explaining how this portfolio came to be! PLUS: We’ve recolored the original color plates, and added EIGHT NEW BLACK-&-WHITE PAGES, plus EIGHT NEW COLOR PAGES, including Jack’s four GODS posters (released separately in 1972), and four extra Kirby color pieces, all at tabloid size! (60-page tabloid with COLOR) $20 Diamond Order Code: OCT043208

JACK KIRBY (1917-1994) stands as comics’ most prolific talent, with a 50-year career wherein he created or co-created such iconic characters as THE FANTASTIC FOUR, SILVER SURFER, THE HULK, X-MEN, CAPTAIN AMERICA, THE NEW GODS, and a legion of others. These books pay tribute to him and his creations.

COLLECTED JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR, VOLUMES 1-6, EDITED BY JOHN MORROW

VOLUME 1

VOLUME 2

VOLUME 3

VOLUME 4

This colossal trade paperback reprints issues #1-9 of THE JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR, the highly-acclaimed magazine about comics’ most prodigious imagination: JACK KIRBY! Included are the low-distribution early issues, the Fourth World theme issue, and the Fantastic Four theme issue! Also includes over 30 pieces of Kirby art never before published, including uninked pencils from THE PRISONER, NEW GODS, FANTASTIC FOUR, CAPTAIN AMERICA, THOR, HUNGER DOGS, JIMMY OLSEN, SHIELD, and more! Features interviews with KIRBY, JOE SIMON, MIKE ROYER, MARK EVANIER, JOE SINNOTT, STEVE SHERMAN, and other Kirby collaborators, plus an introduction by MARK EVANIER.

Reprints JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR #10-12—the Humor, Hollywood, and International theme issues! Also included is a new special section detailing a fan’s private tour of the Kirbys’ remarkable home, profusely illustrated with photos, and more than 30 pieces of Kirby art never before published, including Jack’s uninked pencil art from THE PRISONER, NEW GODS, CAPTAIN AMERICA, THOR, HUNGER DOGS, JIMMY OLSEN, SHIELD, MACHINE MAN, THE ETERNALS, and more! Learn more about the King’s career through interviews with JACK AND ROZ KIRBY, JOHN BYRNE, STEVE GERBER, MARK EVANIER, ROGER STERN, MARV WOLFMAN, and others!

Reprints JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR #13-15—the Horror, Thor, and Science-Fiction theme issues! There’s also a NEW special section with 30 pieces of Kirby art never before published, including uninked pencils from CAPTAIN AMERICA, THOR, JIMMY OLSEN, THE DEMON, NEW GODS, THE PRISONER, and more! Go behind-the-scenes of Jack’s career through interviews with KIRBY and his collaborators and admirers like DICK AYERS, CHIC STONE, WALTER SIMONSON, AL WILLIAMSON, and MIKE THIBODEAUX, and see page-after-page of rare and unpublished Kirby art! Features a 1960s Kirby cover, and an introduction by STEVE BISSETTE.

Reprints JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR #16-19—the Tough Guys, DC, and Marvel theme issues, and a special issue detailing the intricacies of Jack’s art! Also included is a new special section with over 30 pieces of Kirby art never before published, featuring Jack’s uninked pencils from NEW GODS, MISTER MIRACLE, FOREVER PEOPLE, JIMMY OLSEN, KAMANDI, CAPTAIN AMERICA, THE SILVER SURFER, OMAC, and more! It features interviews with KIRBY, STAN LEE, FRANK MILLER, WILL EISNER, NEAL ADAMS, nearly the whole MARVEL BULLPEN (including JOHN BUSCEMA and JOHN ROMITA), and others, a Foreword by colorist TOM ZIUKO, and a KIRBY/STEVE RUDE cover!

(240-page trade paperback) $24.95 ISBN: 9781893905009 Diamond Order Code: DEC032834

(160-page trade paperback) $17.95 ISBN: 9781893905016 Diamond Order Code: MAR042974

(176-page trade paperback) $19.95 ISBN: 9781893905023 Diamond Order Code: APR043058

(240-page trade paperback) $24.95 ISBN: 9781893905320 Diamond Order Code: MAY043052

SILVER STAR: GRAPHITE EDITION

CAPTAIN VICTORY: GRAPHITE EDITION

First conceptualized in the 1970s as a movie screenplay, SILVER STAR was too far ahead of its time for Hollywood, so artist JACK KIRBY adapted it as a six-issue mini-series for Pacific Comics in the 1980s, making it his final, great comics series. Image Comics recently collected the printed comics as a full-color hardcover, but now the entire six-issue run is collected here, reproduced from his powerful, uninked PENCIL ART, showing Kirby’s work in its undiluted, raw form! Also included is Kirby’s ILLUSTRATED SILVER STAR MOVIE SCREENPLAY, never-seen SKETCHES, PIN-UPS, and an historical overview to put it all in perspective!

For the first time, JACK KIRBY’s original CAPTAIN VICTORY GRAPHIC NOVEL is presented as it was created in 1975 (before being broken up and modified for the 1980s Pacific Comics series), reproduced from copies of Kirby’s uninked pencil art! This first “new” Kirby comic in years features page after page of prime pencils, and includes Jack’s unused CAPTAIN VICTORY SCREENPLAY, unseen art, an historical overview to put it in perspective, and more! Besides presenting this classic story in never-before-seen pencil form, proceeds from this comic go toward the huge task of scanning and restoring the 5000+ page photocopy archive of Kirby’s pencil art from the 1960s-80s!

NEW FOR 2008

VOLUME 5

VOLUME 6

Reprints JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR #20-22—the Kirby’s Women, Wackiest Work, and Villains issues, featuring interviews with JACK KIRBY and daughter LISA KIRBY, plus DAVE STEVENS, GIL KANE, BRUCE TIMM, STEVE RUDE, and MIKE “HELLBOY” MIGNOLA! Also features an unpublished Kirby story still in pencil, Jack’s original pencils to FANTASTIC FOUR #49 (from the fabled Galactus trilogy), and over 30 pieces of Kirby art never before published, including Jack’s uninked pencils from THE DEMON, FOREVER PEOPLE, JIMMY OLSEN, KAMANDI, ETERNALS, CAPTAIN AMERICA, BLACK PANTHER, and more, a Foreword by DAVID HAMILTON, plus a KIRBY/DAVE STEVENS cover!

Reprints JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR #23-26—Jack’s “Greatest Battles,” “Gods,” and his Golden Age work with JOE SIMON! Features rare interviews with Kirby himself, plus new ones with comics pros DENNY O’NEIL, JIM SHOOTER, JOHN SEVERIN, and WALTER SIMONSON! PLUS: see a complete ten-page UNPUBLISHED KIRBY STORY! Jack’s ORIGINAL PENCILS to FANTASTIC FOUR #49 (the first appearance of the Silver Surfer)! Kirby’s original concept art for the Fourth World characters! An analysis comparing Kirby’s margin notes to Stan Lee’s dialogue! Plus a NEW special section with over 30 pieces of Kirby art never before published, and a Foreword by MIKE GARTLAND!

(224-page trade paperback) $24.95 ISBN: 9781893905573 Diamond Order Code: FEB063353

(288-page trade paperback) $29.95 ISBN: 9781605490038 Ships August 2008

(160-page trade paperback) $19.95 ISBN: 9781893905559 Diamond Order Code: JAN063367

(52-page comic book) $5.95 Diamond Order Code: JAN042759

“HOW-TO” MAGAZINES Spinning off from the pages of BACK ISSUE! magazine comes ROUGH STUFF, celebrating the ART of creating comics! Edited by famed inker BOB McLEOD, each issue spotlights NEVER-BEFORE PUBLISHED penciled pages, preliminary sketches, detailed layouts, and even unused inked versions from artists throughout comics history. Included is commentary on the art, discussing what went right and wrong with it, and background information to put it all into historical perspective. Plus, before-and-after comparisons let you see firsthand how an image changes from initial concept to published version. So don’t miss this amazing magazine, featuring galleries of NEVER-BEFORE SEEN art, from some of your favorite series of all time, and the top pros in the industry!

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ROUGH STUFF #1 Our debut issue features galleries of UNSEEN ART by a who’s who of Modern Masters including: ALAN DAVIS, GEORGE PÉREZ, BRUCE TIMM, KEVIN NOWLAN, JOSÉ LUIS GARCÍA-LÓPEZ, ARTHUR ADAMS, JOHN BYRNE, and WALTER SIMONSON, plus a KEVIN NOWLAN interview, art critiques, and a new BRUCE TIMM COVER!

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The follow-up to our smash first issue features more galleries of UNSEEN ART by top industry professionals, including: BRIAN APTHORP, FRANK BRUNNER, PAUL GULACY, JERRY ORDWAY, ALEX TOTH, and MATT WAGNER, plus a PAUL GULACY interview, a look at art of the pros BEFORE they were pros, and a new GULACY “HEX” COVER!

Still more galleries of UNPUBLISHED ART by MIKE ALLRED, JOHN BUSCEMA, YANICK PAQUETTE, JOHN ROMITA JR., P. CRAIG RUSSELL, and LEE WEEKS, plus a JOHN ROMITA JR. interview, looks at the process of creating a cover (with BILL SIENKIEWICZ and JOHN ROMITA JR.), and a new ROMITA JR. COVER, plus a FREE DRAW #13 PREVIEW!

More NEVER-PUBLISHED galleries (with detailed artist commentaries) by MICHAEL KALUTA, ANDREW “Starman” ROBINSON, GENE COLAN, HOWARD CHAYKIN, and STEVE BISSETTE, plus interview and art by JOHN TOTLEBEN, a look at the Wonder Woman Day charity auction (with rare art), art critiques, before-&-after art comparisons, and a FREE WRITE NOW #15 PREVIEW!

(100-page magazine) $6.95 Diamond Order Code: AUG063714

(100-page magazine) $6.95 Diamond Order Code: NOV064024

(100-page magazine) $6.95 Diamond Order Code: FEB073911

(116-page magazine) $6.95 Diamond Order Code: APR063497

ROUGH STUFF #5

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NEVER-BEFORE-PUBLISHED galleries (complete with extensive commentaries by the artists) by PAUL SMITH, GIL KANE, CULLY HAMNER, DALE KEOWN, and ASHLEY WOOD, plus a feature interview and art by STEVE RUDE, an examination of JOHN ALBANO and TONY DeZUNIGA’s work on Jonah Hex, new STEVE RUDE COVER, plus a FREE BACK ISSUE #23 PREVIEW!

Features a new interview and cover by BRIAN STELFREEZE, interview with BUTCH GUICE, extensive art galleries/commentary by IAN CHURCHILL, DAVE COCKRUM, and COLLEEN DORAN, MIKE GAGNON looks at independent comics, with art and comments by ANDREW BARR, BRANDON GRAHAM, and ASAF HANUKA! Includes a FREE ALTER EGO #73 PREVIEW!

(100-page magazine) $6.95 Diamond Order Code: MAY073902

(100-page magazine) $6.95 Diamond Order Code: AUG074137

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Features an in-depth interview and cover by TIM TOWNSEND, CRAIG HAMILTON, DAN JURGENS, and HOWARD PORTER offer preliminary art and commentaries, MARIE SEVERIN career retrospective, graphic novels feature with art and comments by DAWN BROWN, TOMER HANUKA, BEN TEMPLESMITH, and LANCE TOOKS, and more! (100-page magazine) $6.95 Diamond Order Code: NOV073966

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ROUGH STUFF #8 Features an in-depth interview and cover painting by the extraordinary MIKE MAYHEW, preliminary and unpublished art by ALEX HORLEY, TONY DeZUNIGA, NICK CARDY, and RAFAEL KAYANAN (including commentary by each artist), a look at the great Belgian comic book artists, a “Rough Critique” of MIKE MURDOCK’s work, and more! (100-page magazine) $6.95 Diamond Order Code: FEB084188

Editor and pro inker BOB McLEOD features four interviews this issue: ROB HAYNES (interviewed by fellow professional TIM TOWNSEND), JOE JUSKO, MEL RUBI, and SCOTT WILLIAMS, with a new painted cover by JUSKO, and an article by McLEOD examining "Inkers: Who needs ’em?" along with other features, including a Rough Critique of RUDY VASQUEZ! (100-page magazine) $6.95 Ships Summer 2008

4-ISSUE SUBSCRIPTIONS: $26 US Postpaid by Media Mail ($36 First Class, $44 Canada, $60 Surface, $72 Airmail).

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DRAW! (edited by top comics artist MIKE MANLEY) is the professional “HOW-TO” magazine on comics, cartooning, and animation. Each issue features in-depth INTERVIEWS and STEP-BY-STEP DEMOS from top comics pros on all aspects of graphic storytelling. NOTE: Contains nudity for purposes of figure drawing. INTENDED FOR MATURE READERS. TWO-TIME EISNER AWARD NOMINEE for Best Comics-Related Periodical.

4-ISSUE SUBSCRIPTIONS: $26 US Postpaid by Media Mail ($36 First Class, $44 Canada, $60 Surface, $72 Airmail).

DRAW! #4

DRAW! #5

DRAW! #6

Features an interview and step-by-step demonstration from Savage Dragon’s ERIK LARSEN, KEVIN NOWLAN on drawing and inking techniques, DAVE COOPER demonstrates coloring techniques in Photoshop, BRET BLEVINS tutorial on Figure Composition, PAUL RIVOCHE on the Design Process, reviews of comics drawing papers, and more!

Interview and sketchbook by MIKE WIERINGO, BRIAN BENDIS and MIKE OEMING show how they create the series “Powers”, BRET BLEVINS shows “How to draw great hands”, “The illusion of depth in design” by PAUL RIVOCHE, must-have art books reviewed by TERRY BEATTY, plus reviews of the best art supplies, links, a color section and more! OEMING cover!

Interview, cover, and demo with BILL WRAY, STEPHEN DeSTEFANO interview and demo on cartooning and animation, BRET BLEVINS shows “How to draw the human figure in light and shadow,” a step-by-step Photo-shop tutorial by CELIA CALLE, expert inking tips by MIKE MANLEY, plus reviews of the best art supplies, links, a color section and more!

(88-page magazine with COLOR) $5.95 Diamond Order Code: JAN022757

(88-page magazine with COLOR) $5.95 Diamond Order Code: APR022633

(96-page magazine with COLOR) $5.95 Diamond Order Code: FEB032281

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DRAW! #11

DRAW! #12

DRAW! #13

From comics to video games: an interview, cover, and demo with MATT HALEY, TOM BANCROFT & ROB CORLEY on character design, “Drawing In Adobe Illustrator” step-by-step demo by ALBERTO RUIZ, “Draping The Human Figure” by BRET BLEVINS, a new COMICS SECTION, International Spotlight on JOSÉ LOUIS AGREDA, a color section and more!

RON GARNEY interview, step-by-step demo, and cover, GRAHAM NOLAN on creating newspaper strips, TODD KLEIN and other pros discuss lettering, “Draping The Human Figure, Part Two” by BRET BLEVINS, ALBERTO RUIZ with more Adobe Illustrator tips, interview with Banana Tail creator MARK McKENNA, links, a color section and more!

STEVE RUDE demonstrates his approach to comics & drawing, ROQUE BALLESTEROS on Flash animation, political cartoonist JIM BORGMAN on his daily comic strip Zits, plus DRAW!’s regular instructors BRET BLEVINS and MIKE MANLEY on “Drawing On LIfe”, more Adobe Illustrator tips with ALBERTO RUIZ, links, a color section and more! New RUDE cover!

KYLE BAKER reveals his working methods and step-by-step processes on merging his traditional and digital art, Machine Teen’s MIKE HAWTHORNE on his work, “Making Perspective Work For You” by BRET BLEVINS and MIKE MANLEY, Photoshop techniques with ALBERTO RUIZ, Adult Swim’s THE VENTURE BROTHERS, links, a color section and more! New BAKER cover!

Step-by-step demo of painting methods by cover artist ALEX HORLEY (Heavy Metal, Vertigo, DC, Wizards of the Coast), plus interviews and demos by Banana Sundays’ COLLEEN COOVER, behind-the-scenes on Adult Swim’s MINORITEAM, regular features on drawing by BRET BLEVINS and MIKE MANLEY, links, color section and more, plus a FREE ROUGH STUFF #3 PREVIEW!

(96-page magazine with COLOR) $5.95 Diamond Order Code: DEC032848

(104-page magazine with COLOR) $5.95 Diamond Order Code: DEC043007

(112-page magazine with COLOR) $5.95 Diamond Order Code: MAY053188

(96-page magazine) SOLD OUT (96-page Digital Edition) $2.95

(88-page magazine with COLOR) $6.95 Diamond Order Code: OCT063824

DRAW! #16

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DRAW! #15

Features in-depth interviews and demos with DC Comics artist DOUG MAHNKE, OVI NEDELCU (Pigtale, WB Animation), STEVE PURCELL (Sam and Max), plus Part 3 of editor MIKE MANLEY and BRET BLEVINS’ COMIC ART BOOTCAMP on “Using Black to Power up Your Pages”, product reviews, a new MAHNKE cover, and a FREE ALTER EGO #70 PREVIEW!

BACK TO SCHOOL ISSUE, covering major schools offering comic art as part of their curriculum, featuring faculty, student, and graduate interviews in an ultimate overview of collegiate-level comic art classes! Plus, a “how-to” demo/ interview with B.P.R.D.’S GUY DAVIS, MANLEY and BRET BLEVINS’ COMIC ART BOOTCAMP series, a FREE WRITE NOW #17 PREVIEW, and more!

(80-page magazine with COLOR) $6.95 Diamond Order Code: MAY073896

(80-page magazine with COLOR) $6.95 Diamond Order Code: AUG074131

Features an in-depth interview and coverage of the creative process of HOWARD CHAYKIN. From the early ’70s at DC, STAR WARS, and HEAVY METAL, to AMERICAN FLAGG and now WOLVERINE, we catch up with one of comics most innovative artist/storytellers! Also, we go behind the drawing board and animation desk with JAY STEPHENS, from JET CAT and TUTENSTEIN to his new Cartoon Network show, SECRET SATURDAYS! Then there's more COMIC ART BOOTCAMP, this time focusing on HOW TO USE REFERENCE, and WORKING FROM PHOTOS by BRET BLEVINS and MIKE MANLEY. Plus, reviews, resources and more! (80-page magazine with COLOR) $6.95 Ships Summer 2008

Don’t miss our BEST OF DRAW volumes, reprinting the SOLD OUT ISSUES!

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ALTER EGO #77

BACK ISSUE #28

WRITE NOW! #18

DRAW! #15

BRICKJOURNAL #1 (V2)

ST. JOHN ISSUE! Golden Age Tor cover by JOE KUBERT, KEN QUATTRO relates the full legend of St. John Publishing, art by KUBERT, NORMAN MAURER, MATT BAKER, LILY RENEE, BOB LUBBERS, RUBEN MOREIRA, RALPH MAYO, AL FAGO, special reminiscences of ARNOLD DRAKE, Golden Age artist TOM SAWYER interviewed, and more!

“Heroes Behaving Badly!” Hulk vs. Thing tirades with RON WILSON, HERB TRIMPE, and JIM SHOOTER; CARY BATES and CARMINE INFANTINO on “Trial of the Flash”; JOHN BYRNE’s heroes who cross the line; Teen Titan Terra, Kid Miracleman, Mark Shaw Manhunter, and others who went bad, featuring LAYTON, MICHELINIE, WOLFMAN, and PÉREZ, and more! New cover by DARWYN COOKE!

Celebration of STAN LEE’s 85th birthday, including rare examples of comics, TV, and movie scripts from the Stan Lee Archives, tributes by JOHN ROMITA, SR., JOE QUESADA, ROY THOMAS, DENNIS O’NEIL, JIMMY PALMIOTTI, JIM SALICRUP, TODD McFARLANE, LOUISE SIMONSON, MARK EVANIER, and others, plus art by KIRBY, DITKO, ROMITA, and more!

BACK TO SCHOOL ISSUE, covering major schools offering comic art as part of their curriculum, featuring faculty, student, and graduate interviews in an ultimate overview of collegiate-level comic art classes! Plus, a “how-to” demo/ interview with artist BILL REINHOLD, MANLEY and BRET BLEVINS’ COMIC ART BOOTCAMP series, a FREE WRITE NOW #17 PREVIEW, and more!

The ultimate resource for LEGO enthusiasts of all ages, showcasing events, people, and models! #1 features an interview with set designer and LEGO Certified Professional NATHAN SAWAYA, plus step-by-step building instructions and techniques for all skill levels, new set reviews, on-the-scene reports from LEGO community events, and other surprises! Edited by JOE MENO.

(80-page magazine) $6.95 Now Shipping Diamond Order Code: FEB084191

(80-page magazine with COLOR) $6.95 Now Shipping Diamond Order Code: AUG074131

(80-page FULL COLOR magazine) $8.95 Now Shipping Diamond Order Code: FEB088010

ALL- STAR COMPANION V. 3

MODERN MASTERS VOLUME 15: MARK SCHULTZ

(100-page magazine) $6.95 Ships May 2008 Diamond Order Code: MAR084108

KIRBY FIVE-OH! (JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR #50) The regular columnists from THE JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR magazine celebrate the best of everything from Jack Kirby’s 50-year career, spotlighting: The BEST KIRBY STORIES & COVERS from 19381987! Jack’s 50 BEST UNUSED PIECES OF ART! His 50 BEST CHARACTER DESIGNS! Interviews with the 50 PEOPLE MOST INFLUENCED BY KIRBY’S WORK! A 50PAGE KIRBY PENCIL ART GALLERY and DELUXE COLOR SECTION! Kirby cover inked by DARWYN COOKE, and an introduction by MARK EVANIER, making this the ultimate retrospective on the career of the “King” of comics! Edited by JOHN MORROW. (168-page tabloid-size trade paperback) $19.95 ISBN: 9781893905894 Diamond Order Code: JUL078147 Now Shipping

(100-page magazine) $6.95 Diamond Order Code: MAR084109

SILVER AGE ALTER EGO: BEST SCI-FI COMPANION OF THE LEGENDARY COMICS FANZINE In the Silver Age of Comics, space was the place, and this book summarizes, critiques and lovingly recalls the classic science-fiction series edited by JULIUS SCHWARTZ and written by GARDNER FOX and JOHN BROOME! The pages of DC’s science-fiction magazines of the 1960s, STRANGE ADVENTURES and MYSTERY IN SPACE, are opened for you, including story-bystory reviews of complete series such as ADAM STRANGE, ATOMIC KNIGHTS, SPACE MUSEUM, STAR ROVERS, STAR HAWKINS and others! Writer/editor MIKE W. BARR tells you which series crossed over with each other, behind-the-scenes secrets, and more, including writer and artist credits for every story! Features rare art by CARMINE INFANTINO, MURPHY ANDERSON, GIL KANE, SID GREENE, MIKE SEKOWSKY, and many others, plus a glorious new cover by ALAN DAVIS and PAUL NEARY!

Go to www.twomorrows.com for FULL-COLOR downloadable PDF versions of our magazines for only $2.95! Subscribers to the print edition get the digital edition FREE, weeks before it hits stores!

(144-page trade paperback) $19.95 ISBN: 9781893905818 Diamond Order Code: JUL073885

In 1961, JERRY BAILS and ROY THOMAS launched ALTER EGO, the first fanzine devoted to comic book history. This book, first published in low distribution in 1997, collects the original 11 issues of A/E from 1961-78, with creative and artistic contributions by JACK KIRBY, STEVE DITKO, WALLY WOOD, JOHN BUSCEMA, MARIE SEVERIN, BILL EVERETT, RUSS MANNING, CURT SWAN, & others—and important, illustrated interviews with GIL KANE, BILL EVERETT, & JOE KUBERT! See where a generation first learned about the Golden Age of Comics—while the Silver Age was in full flower—with major articles on the JUSTICE SOCIETY, the MARVEL FAMILY, the MLJ HEROES, and more! Edited by ROY THOMAS & BILL SCHELLY with an introduction by the late JULIUS SCHWARTZ.

More amazing secrets behind the 194051 ALL-STAR COMICS—and illustrated speculation about how other Golden Age super-teams might have been assembled! Also, an issue-by-issue survey of the JLAJSA TEAM-UPS of 1963-85, the 1970s JSA REVIVAL, and the 1980s series THE YOUNG ALL-STARS and SECRET ORIGINS, with commentary by the artists and writers! Plus rare, often unseen art by KUBERT, INFANTINO, ADAMS, ORDWAY, ANDERSON, TOTH, CARDY, GIL KANE, COLAN, SEKOWSKY, DILLIN, STATON, REINMAN, McLEOD, GRINDBERG, PAUL SMITH, RON HARRIS, MARSHALL ROGERS, WAYNE BORING, GEORGE FREEMAN, DON HECK, GEORGE TUSKA, TONY DeZUNIGA, H.G. PETER, DON SIMPSON, and many others! Compiled and edited by ROY THOMAS, with a new cover by GEORGE PÉREZ!

(192-page trade paperback) $21.95 ISBN: 9781893905887 Diamond Order Code: DEC073946

(224-page trade paperback) $26.95 ISBN: 9781893905801 Diamond Order Code: MAY078045

(10TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION)

SUBSCRIPTIONS:

Surface

Airmail

JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR (4 issues)

$44

1st Class Canada $56

$64

$76

$120

BACK ISSUE! (6 issues)

$40

$54

$66

$90

$108

DRAW!, WRITE NOW!, ROUGH STUFF (4 issues)

$26

$36

$44

$60

$72

ALTER EGO (12 issues) Six-issue subs are half-price!

$78

$108

$132

$180

$216

BRICKJOURNAL (4 issues)

$32

$42

$50

$66

$78

Features an extensive, career-spanning interview lavishly illustrated with rare art from Mark’s files, plus huge sketchbook section, including unseen and unused art! By ERIC NOLEN-WEATHINGTON. (120-page TPB with COLOR) $14.95 ISBN: 9781893905856 Diamond Order Code: OCT073846

MODERN MASTERS: MICHAEL GOLDEN DVD Shows the artist at work, discussing his art and career! (120-minute Std. Format DVD) $29.95 ISBN: 9781893905771 Diamond Order Code: MAY073780

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TwoMorrows. Celebrating The Art & History Of Comics. TwoMorrows • 10407 Bedfordtown Drive • Raleigh, NC 27614 USA • 919-449-0344 • FAX: 919-449-0327 • E-mail: twomorrow@aol.com • www.twomorrows.com