Draw! #19 by TwoMorrows Publishing

#19

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

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WRITE NOW’s

SUPERSTAR ARTIST

DOUG BRAITHWAITE

DANNY FINGEROTH

SPOTLIGHTS WRITER/ARTIST

R. SIKORYAK

INTERVIEW & DEMO ROUGH STUFF’s

BOB McLEOD

PLUS: MIKE MANLEY & BRET BLEVINS’

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CRITIQUES A NEWCOMER’S WORK

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 DEMOS from top pros on all aspects of graphic storytelling. NOTE: Contains nudity for purposes of figure drawing. INTENDED FOR MATURE READERS.

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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!

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!

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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!

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!

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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!

In-depth interview and coverage of the creative process of HOWARD CHAYKIN, behind the drawing board and animation desk with JAY STEPHENS, 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!

An in-depth interview and tutorial with Scott Pilgrim’s creator and artist BRYAN LEE O’MALLEY on how he creates the acclaimed series, plus learn how B.P.R.D.’s GUY DAVIS creates the fabulous work on his series. Also, more Comic Art Bootcamp: Learning from The Great Cartoonists by BRET BLEVINS and MIKE MANLEY, reviews, and more!

Features an in-depth interview and demo by R.M. GUERA (the artist of Vertigo’s Scalped), behind-the-scenes in the Batcave with Cartoon Network’s JAMES TUCKER on the new hit show “Batman: The Brave and the Bold,” plus product reviews by JAMAR NICHOLAS, and Comic Book Boot Camp’s “Anatomy: Part 2” by BRET BLEVINS and MIKE MANLEY!

WALTER SIMONSON interview and demo, Rough Stuff’s BOB McLEOD gives a “Rough Critique” of a newcomer’s work, Write Now’s DANNY FINGEROTH spotlights writer/artist AL JAFFEE, JAMAR NICHOLAS reviews the best art supplies and tool technology, MIKE MANLEY and BRET BLEVINS offer “Comic Art Bootcamp” lessons, plus Web links, book reviews, and more!

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

FALL 2010

CONTENTS

VOL. 1, NO. 19 Editor-in-Chief • Michael Manley Designer • Eric Nolen-Weathington Publisher • John Morrow Logo Design • John Costanza Proofreader • Eric Nolen-Weathington Front Cover Illustration • Doug Braithwaite

DRAW! Fall 2010, Vol. 1, No. 19 was produced by Action Planet, Inc. and published by TwoMorrows Publishing.

DOUG BRAITHWAITE Mike Manley interviews the penciler of Justice and Wolverine: Origins

ROUGH CRITIQUE

WRITER/ARTIST SPOTLIGHT: R. SIKORYAK

COMIC ART BOOTCAMP

GALLERY OF JUSTICE

We welcome Rough Stuff ’s Bob McLeod, here to give practical advice and tips on how to improve your work

Michael Manley, Editor. John Morrow, Publisher. Editorial Address: P.O. Box 2129 Upper Darby, PA 19082

Subscription Address: TwoMorrows Publishing 10407 Bedfordtown Drive Raleigh, NC 27614

Action Planet, Inc. and TwoMorrows Publishing accept no responsibility for unsolicited submissions. All artwork herein is copyright the year of production, its creator (if work-for-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.

This entire issue is © 2010 Action Planet Inc. and TwoMorrows Publishing and may not be reprinted or retransmitted without written permission of the copyright holders. ISSN 1932-6882. Printed in Canada. FIRST PRINTING.

Write Now’s Danny Fingeroth begins his new feature on top writer/artists, and interviews the master of the mash-up

“Here Comes the Judge Parker” by Mike Manley

A gallery of Doug Braithwaite pencils for the Justice mini-series.

DRAWING AHEAD

Watercolor by Bret Blevins

elcome back everyone! It’s been a little while since the last issue came out, but many things have been happening here at DRAW! central since our last issue. This issue we also welcome two new regular contributors to the pages of DRAW! to sit at the table every month: Danny (Write Now!) Fingeroth and Bob (Rough Stuff) McLeod. The “Rough Critique” lessons Bob started in Rough Stuff will continue here in DRAW!, and Danny will offer regular interviews with comic personalities and artists. So while those two fellows’ respective TwoMorrows magazines have stopped publication for now, it’s great that both Danny and Bob can continue to bring their great contributions to the study, appreciation, and learning of the art form to the pages of DRAW! Also while we were away, I started a new regular job (one, it seems, of many). I am the new artist on the Judge Parker newspaper strip, and I decided to do an article this issue on doing the strip and all that entails. There are many more things underway here, and I plan on making the DRAW! magazine blog much more active this year. So stop on by http://draw-magazine.blogspot.com and leave a comment to let me know what you are looking for as far as learning, articles, tips, and interviews.

Mike Manley, editor

E-mail: mike@drawmagazine.com Website: www.draw-magazine.blogspot.com Snail mail: PO Box 2129, Upper Darby, PA 19082

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SHINING THE LIGHT ON...

DOUG BRAITHWAITE Interview conducted by

Mike Manley

rom The Punisher to Thor and Wolverine, Doug Braithwaite has been one of the top artist/pencilers in the business for two decades. DRAW! catches up with this busy, in-demand artist to talk about his work and his process. DRAW!: How do you start your day, etc.? DOUG BRAITHWAITE: My day usually starts around 10:30

a.m., once I’ve had breakfast, read the mail, and fed and watered the two stray, feral cats that we are currently caring for. Once I’ve tended to all that I will start work (I’m sure this routine sounds familiar to most creators—with the exception of dealing with wild cats). I work at home, and my studio is the top floor of the house. I used to share a studio in London a few years back, and it was great fun. I shared with four other artists, and while I found in the beginning it was great having other people’s energy and enthusiasm to bounce off of, after six years of it, I now find I’m more comfortable having my own creative space to work in. I can do things at my own pace, play my own music, or have complete silence when it’s necessary. Generally fewer distractions all around, it’s something to do with getting older, I think. Anyway, once I’m ensconced in the studio I might check my e-mails, but recently I’ve been leaving them to later on in the day, 4

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mainly because that’s when the offices in America open (which are five hours behind us here in the UK), but more importantly because I like to concentrate and get my head into my work early. And I find that two hours can easily be lost answering e-mails first thing in the morning; they have a terrible way of eating into work time. DRAW!: Who were the artists you were sharing the studio with?

Did you work with any of them? I have shared a studio many times and I find the company a great booster, especially on the days when you get in a rut. DB: Originally I shared the studio with four other creators, and it changed a bit over the years as people moved on, but the original crowd was Kev Hopgood, who worked for Marvel and is best known to fans for his work on Iron Man and War Machine in the ’90s (he later went on to work in advertising and games design); Steve White, who was an editor for Marvel UK and lately for Titan publishing (he is also a fantastic wildlife and dinosaur

(left) Detail from Justice #8. Alex Ross painted over Doug’s pencils on the series. (above and right) Pencil panels from Marvel’s Universe X series, where Doug first worked in collaboration with Alex Ross. FLASH ™ AND © DC COMICS. UNIVERSE AND ALL RELATED CHARACTERS ™ AND © MARVEL CHARACTERS, INC.

artist); John Tomlinson, ex-editor at Marvel UK and 2000AD (he used the studio as a base to do his writing); and Brian Williamson, another artist at Marvel UK, who, I think, is currently working on Dr. Who. Clockwork Studios in south London was where we had studio space, and it was in a building totally devoted, thanks to the owner Noel Perkins, to artists and artisans. It was a very creative environment in which to work. There must have been about 15 or so people over two floors of the building, and there was everything from potters to milliners, actors, illustrators, sculptors, fashion designers, and in a little corner of the building, us comics boys. I never went to art school, but my wife, who did, said the smells of paint and clay, and the atmosphere generally, reminded her of her art school days. It was an open plan building with lightweight panels dividing spaces, and the building in itself was interesting in that it was a large warehouse space that had once belonged to Fred Karno of Karno’s Army and had been known as the Fun Factory at the early part of the 1900s. For those who have never heard of Fred Karno or his army, and their significance, it was his theatrical company that took Stan Laurel and Charlie Chaplin to the States in a comedy show in 1910. Fred Karno trained his artists, wrote and rehearsed the sketches and created the scenery and costumes in the building we were in. In a tall narrow building next door to the studio was where the backdrops for stage shows were created and hung from a vaulted ceiling. Karno had lived in the large Victorian house next door and Noel rented this out to some of the artists from the studio. There was a garden out the back that adjoined our studio, and it was a nice place to hang out in the summer. It was an inspiring environment, knowing such great comedic talents had once walked around and trained in the very building we worked in. I often wondered why more people interested in the history of the building didn’t visit, but I now know they had changed the name of the road many years before, so it wasn’t so easy to find. It was a great place to work and I spent six years there and only left when I moved out of London. As you mentioned, having so many creative people around you had the effect of boosting your own creativity and, of course, there were many laughs to be had on a daily basis.

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Detail from a page of Doug’s pencils for Universe X. ALL CHARACTERS ™ AND © MARVEL CHARACTERS, INC.

DRAW!: What kind of process do you go through for doing your pencilling, breaking down your pages, etc.? DB: When I get a new script, I will usually settle down and spend some time reading it through and making notes. I tend to read a script through two or three times before I draw anything, playing the story and scenes through my head so I get a good visual feel of the pacing and choreography and the staging of the characters. Then I’ll make notes for what reference I’ll need from the editors or writer, which usually tends to be for flashback scenes or costume reference for specific characters. On the final readthrough of a script I will start to make tiny visual notes in the margins, pinpointing the key moments of impact and beats within the frames of the story. These visual notes tend to be very sketchy, squiggly things that would look non-descript to anyone looking over my shoulder at the time, but are pretty clear to me. Until quite recently I would then do all of my workings out on the final page and would always be correcting the art as I went along, which, on some pages, could be pretty labor intensive. I didn’t think this was unusual, as I felt at the time that was the way that worked best for me. I liked the fluidity and movement of the line — working very lightly with the pencil and gradually building up to solid form. Hard work, but I suppose you always have to “suffer for your craft” and all that—you live and you learn. I now lay out the pages separately from the final boards. In hindsight, with the exception of a few inkers, it must have been pretty intimidating for the person inking my work when faced with all the workings out and construction lines on the page with the drawing, even though I tried to clean them up as

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much as I could without losing the essence of my work. I thought it would be more of a help to the inkers to see some of my workings out, help them understand forms and the like, rather than be a hindrance. DRAW!: Talk a bit more about this first step, because I think it’s

really an important one, maybe the most important, and it’s where artists really differ in their thinking. As you read the script and images appear, is it like watching a movie that you pull stills from, or do you see it gelling even from the beginning as comic drawing? Do you imagine the flow of images as panels on pages or is it still hazy? DB: Most of the time when I read a script the imagery comes to me pretty easily. I may have to re-read sections to clarify what the writer is after, but on the whole it’s a pretty fluid process. The story comes to life in my head, much as you would watch a film or see the story being played out when you read a novel, but for certain frames I still see in traditional comic terms. Those frames tend to be the impact images. It’s funny that being the case, but I see those frames being handled with the exaggerations and dynamics of traditional comic art. I can’t see those images being handled any other way. I prefer plotting the story sequentially from beginning to end, without jumping to the impact scenes that tend to be more exciting to draw, as I find jumping around disrupts the flow of the storytelling. Some artists are good at that and prefer jumping to the “money shots” and worrying about the less exciting images later. I prefer building up to the impact points in the story, as I am always reassessing the frames as I

draw them, and if I draw it sequentially it’s better suited to the pacing of the story. I don’t enjoy working on half-completed scripts, I like to be able to plan the story out in full before I begin to draw up the pages. These days I put in another stage in the process—I now work out each page as a thumbnail. I work out the individual pages on 9mm x 6mm panels, several of them to an A4 page. These panels are scaled down from the art boards, and I work out the composition, panels and perspective all at the same size. After all these years of working in the business I’ve found out that it is far quicker and easier doing all my workings out at that size. I tried to do it this way years ago, but it didn’t suit me then, and now it does, but I can’t say why. Once I’m happy with that stage I will scale up the small images on a photocopier and then light-box onto the final art boards, giving myself a rough layout of the page to work on. Once I’ve done that I jump straight in and start drawing up the page, adding all the details. I use no reference for my figure work when I’m drawing; clothing, musculature, characterisation (expressions) and light sources are all from my head. I was taught you had to be competent in your understanding of anatomy, perspective, drapery and lighting to be a good draftsman... old school, I suppose. I had to study these elements so I could use them without reference, so I could plot out a story properly, and that knowledge has always stood me in good stead. I love portraying the human form and feel I have a real affinity with it. I love the sheer variety, the dynamics, elegance, motion and emotion it can portray, and I hope to convey that excitement to the reader, and to do that it has to come directly from my head. A lot of people say my work is realistic. I would say it is to an extent, but only in the sense that it feels right to me when I work this way; it allows me to express what I see in my mind and put my point across as a storyteller. I always try to be true to the realities of the human form and the real world around me, but filtered through the stylized art of the comic book.

can be fun, I also like seeing the process, the searching for a form or drawing. DB: Artists like the late, great Al Williamson (and I’ll mention more about his importance to me later) and more recently Bill Reinhold, both instinctively understood what I was trying to achieve by working that way — that is, working things out directly on the page and leaving some of that construction visible. My problem was thinking everyone would think like Al, so I had some hit and miss inking over the years. Sometimes I’ve had to clean my pencils up when an inker hasn’t understood the way I work, but

DRAW!: It’s interesting that you mention

that, because many, many years ago I saw some Punisher pages by you that Al Williamson was inking. He termed what you were describing as “scientific drawing,” and I suppose with the light record of your construction process still seen throughout the pages it could have looked that way. As much as clean pencils

Pencils for Wolverine: Origin #45, page 11.

ALL CHARACTERS ™ AND © MARVEL CHARACTERS, INC.

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(left and above) Doug’s pencils and Mike Manley’s inks for Wolverine: Origin #45, page 14. ALL CHARACTERS ™ AND © MARVEL CHARACTERS, INC.

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DRAW!: When you are drawing right on

the board are you using a hard pencils, say a 3H, to rough out? I seem to remember seeing pages by you long ago when I was sharing Al Williamson’s studio, and they were very clean, and the pencils looked like they were done with a hard lead. Inking the Wolverine pages that you penciled, I found that, for me, sometimes those lines searching for the form gave me slight insights to what you were thinking as well. DB: I’m glad you saw it that way, Mike. Some of those Wolverine pages had to be drawn quicker than usual due to tight deadlines, and I tended to leave a lot more “info” on them. Considering it was our first time working together you did a great job, and I thought you interpreted them very well. Big thanks to Bill for recommending you to me. It’s great to hear you worked alongside Al. That must have been an amazing experience. Al Williamson has a special place in my heart. When I first started working for Marvel, about 1990 I think, my first job was on Punisher on “Eurohit,” written by Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning. I was lucky enough for Al Williamson to be inking that whole storyline. We all went out to the States during the New York Comic-Con, and Al was at the show and wanted to meet me (and vice versa), so Don Daley, our editor, arranged for us to see him at the show, but when we got there, unsurprisingly, there was a huge crush of people at his table, so Don just pushed me through to the front and introduced me. Al put down his pen, got down on his hands and knees and crawled under the table and gave me the biggest bear hug! We got on famously after that. When he knew I was travelling to the States he would always try and arrange for me to visit his home, and on occasion he even drove up to New (left and above) Doug’s pencils and Mike’s inks for Wolverine: Origin #45, page 16. York from his place in Pennsylvania to ALL CHARACTERS ™ AND © MARVEL CHARACTERS, INC. pick me up, which really was kind. luckily Bill “got” my pencils, though I have to say he has devel- Unfortunately, I only managed to visit Al’s studio in town a oped his style the more he’s worked with me. There’s also the couple of times, but I found his collection at home to be inspiraproblem that, much as the working out adds to the enjoyment of the tional. He had a real who’s who of American illustration and drawing for someone such as yourself, who happens to see it, not comic strip art. a lot of that working out is seen by the comic reader once it has His inks on my first Punisher story were a real master class in been inked and colored. I’ve done a few jobs recently where they inking, and I have to say that without Al’s guidance and inspirahave just colored over my pencils and, although not exactly what tion I don’t think I would be the artist I am now. He opened my I was after, it certainly gives things a different quality, but I need eyes to the world of American illustration and was so generous to get the pencil line strong enough to be seen through the colors. with his time. We spent hours discussing comic art and illustraSome people like this method of working, while others hate it, tion, and he was more than happy to answer all my questions. but for the moment it’s something I’m experimenting with. And, being the raconteur he was, it was always a great laugh to DRAW! • FALL 2010

Like Kirby, Ditko, Colan, and the other great artists before him, when drawing such fantastic, over-the-top characters such as the Brothers Grimm (left, from Paradise X) or Kalibak (below, from Supermen of America) Doug is able to make them fit into the world he is creating. BROTHERS GRIMM ™ AND © MARVEL CHARACTERS, INC. KALIBAK ™ AND © DC COMICS.

be around him and hear his reminisces about the days he worked alongside other greats like Krenkel, Frazetta, Torres, and Wood, and about the great respect and affection he held for his longtime collaborator and friend, Archie Goodwin, another lovely guy with whom I was also lucky enough to work with. These are stories I know many pros have heard, and I’m sure we can all share similar tales, but they were all so special to me. Can you imagine, me, an English kid, just broken into the mainstream, meeting one of his heroes and finding out he was a great guy? Al meant a lot to many people in this business and inspired everyone he came in contact with, but I will never forget what he did for me. Thank you, Al. And God bless. I would have handled those pages you saw at Al’s with an HB lead, and I did pencil a lot tighter back then, as I think I had more time to do the pages. I think Marvel was a bit unsure where the story would fit into the schedule, and it may have been originally intended as an inventory story (which wasn’t unusual at that time), so we would have been on a fairly loose deadline. I have always used a mechanical pencil, with 0.5 HB leads, and Pentel is my preferred make, because I found I got nice subtleties and contrast with their leads. Nowadays I use F leads, a pretty unusual choice, and I have to try hard to track them down in the UK. I prefer them because they don’t leave much graphite on the board, but they are still dark enough to use for shading and putting down strong lines. I started using this lead on the Justice series, as I was working on art board that was different to the usual boards provided by DC; it was Strathmore 500 series Bristol board. Originally, I found that my usual HB lead was leaving too much residue on the page and things could get pretty murky, so I tried various other leads. The F lead turned out to be the best option, and I’ve stuck with it ever since. DRAW!: So you put the reference through your “lens” so to speak, give it your style or twist. I always admired that about certain artists, artists like Ditko or Kirby or even Gene Colan, everything “fit” in their world, even door knobs and mail boxes were so thoroughly visualized and rendered in their own style. Often you see art that is kind of bland except for the figures; the backgrounds were just filler. DB: I like to ground my characters in their space, in the world I create. That’s all part of storytelling as far as I’m concerned. I like to represent the world my characters inhabit realistically.

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Creating a convincing background environment is one of the most important components to comic book storytelling, and I put as much time and thought into that as I do my figures. If a scene is not established properly, then the whole story falls down around you. Sometimes I’ll play around with frames and will drop out a background on the odd panel so the reader can concentrate on a particular story point or action sequence. But I only do this once I’ve established the environment. Great artists like Ditko, Colan, Kirby and Eisner had that ability to draw the reader into a story. When Kirby drew a street battle and some villain threw a car across a street, it felt like a real car being thrown. The car may have not been mechanically accurate, but on a visual storytelling level it worked perfectly. That’s what I got from comics as a young boy. I remember one of the first SpiderMan stories I ever read, a black-and-white reprint taken from Amazing Spider-Man #114, drawn by John Romita Sr., had that same effect on me. I thought that was the most realistic thing I had ever seen and I never questioned any of the details; it just worked on every level. It sucked me in and it was like watching a film being played out on the page. I aspire to be like those guys, to be able to establish a reality you just don’t question. Another is Alan Davis — he is a master of storytelling and scene-setting and excels at this. DRAW!: So you never use photos at all? You never pose in front of a mirror to get any drapery issues solved? I’m always interested in this and I know readers are too, because some people feel that photos are some sort of a cheat, and I don’t. They can be a crutch for weak artists and they never have the life a great drawing would if you just trace them. For instance, I always loved the way Gene Colan used photos. You could tell he used them, but, man, he warped, bent and twisted them into his vision. You could see he used the shadow patterns — he kept that — but everything had the cool, warpy feel. DB: Well, I would only photo reference for specific landmarks, buildings, vehicles, and inanimate objects, like guns, household furnishings, etc. It’s not something I use for figure work. If a story is set in present day reality you can’t really bluff what a particular car looks like, otherwise it looks stupid, so it’s essential that those sorts of things are portrayed accurately. An example of how I use the reference would be this: in the Wolverine story arc, I had to draw the Tinkerer in a high-tech wheelchair, so I found some reference of an electric wheelchair from the Net. Unfortunately, the image I liked was only taken from one angle and the wheelchair had to be drawn from lots of different angles, so that’s when my spatial brain took over and I visualised it turned every which way. When it comes down to drawing people and structuring clothes, I try and use my imagination as much as possible. I’m not adverse to the idea of using photographs and models, they’ve been used for hundreds of years by better artists than me — from posing models to using camera obscura. I’m not about to dis Vermeer and Caravaggio on that count! I admire artists who use them well — they’re just tools after all, and there are plenty of comic artists who use them to good effect — but the really great ones need time to accomplish the best results. In fact, I usually advise aspiring comic artists on the importance of using reference in the first instance to help them understand form, lighting, movement, and perspective. But I always stress they use them

Pencil detail from What If...? #86.

SCARLET SPIDER, SPIDER-MAN ™ AND © MARVEL CHARACTERS, INC.

Doug’s pencils for Justice #3, page 12. CHEETAH ™ AND © DC COMICS.

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(above and left) Pencil panels from Universe X #0, which were then painted over by Alex Ross. (next page) The aftermath of battle. Doug’s pencils for Wolverine: Origins #45, page 18.

ALL CHARACTERS ™ AND © MARVEL CHARACTERS, INC.

only as a guide. What I don’t like to see is the loss of an individual’s style and their work being compromised by over-reliance on photo ref. And anyway, putting out a monthly comic, I don’t have the luxury, I’d never get my work finished on time if I had to photo reference everything. It’s bad enough having to find reference for the inanimate objects that the writer specifies and keeping up to date with costume changes without using reference for every wrinkle in the spandex. Working to pretty tight schedules, I need to work spontaneously to produce my best work — as soon as it’s in my head I like to get it down on the page. Having said that, on the days I can’t think straight I might need to remind myself on small things like a hand gesture or a facial expression, so I have a shaving mirror on my desk and use my own face or hand. But 99% of the time I don’t use it. It’s just the way I am and I suppose the way I taught myself to draw. The 14

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other thing is, I do feel that if you rely on photo ref too much it may actually hamper you. You don’t bother learning, say, how fabric drapes over the body or proper perspective, and I certainly couldn’t do the sort of action sequences I do if I had to photo reference everything. It’s one thing doing guys flying up in a straight line; it’s another choreographing a major fight scene. I just couldn’t do it any justice if I were relying on photos; it would be too limiting to my imagination. I have to admit I didn’t realize that Gene Colan used photo reference. I always assumed that he had this amazing photographic memory and that he just pulled everything from there, but I can see he might have used them in some places and, like you said, filtered them through his drawing brain. Nobody portrayed movement like him. And you can’t teach that! His stuff is just so natural on the eye. He could create a world that drew you in and

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a comic artist. As far as I was concerned the comics I loved were produced in America, and that may as well have been on Mars at that stage in my life. I’ve talked about my route into comics before, but since you’re asking about it, at age 15, an English teacher at my school noticed my interest in drawing comics and superheroes and he arranged for me to visit the offices of Marvel UK in London. I took a couple of sketchpads along with me. I had no idea about presenting a portfolio or anything like that, but as I learned, having an expensive portfolio doesn’t make you a better artist. It was at Marvel UK that I first met Richard Starkings, who was an assistant editor at that time and later went on to become editor-in-chief of Marvel UK, then earned fame as the founder of Comicraft and co-creator of Elephantmen and Hip Flask. (Big ups to you there, Richard!) I was given a tour of the offices, and shown what went into producing a weekly comic. They gave me a try-out script to play around with, but I knew when I walked out the door I wasn’t ready for it. But I also knew if I wanted to become a comic artist I needed to put in a lot of hard work — so I had my epiphany right there. Around that time I also attended my first UK comic convention. Up until then I had no idea these events even existed. Some comic fans at my school heard of my interest in drawing comics and offered me a spare ticket they had for the show. These kids persuaded me to take some of my drawings with me, as they had read that there was going to be a portfolio review. So I went along, with my sketchpads inside a plastic carrier bag — yeah, I know, very professional. I Pencils for Justice #4, page 11. Doug has left notes for Alex to make sure the action is clearly interpreted. had a great time at the show and CHEETAH, WONDER WOMAN ™ AND © DC COMICS. couldn’t believe I was in a place with you never questioned anything about it. His shadow play was not only people who loved comics, but also the people who creperfect and whether he used ref or not, he always created the right ated them. Bill Sienkiewicz was there and had a stunning portfomood for the scene. lio on display. Steve Bissette and John Totleben were there, too. Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons were on a panel talking about a DRAW!: You mentioned that you were taught, does that mean project they were working on which was to be published the folyou went to school or were an assistant? lowing year: Watchmen. Dave Gibbons was doing the portfolio revue, and I was persuaded by my friends to get in line to see DB: I never went to art school. Being a precocious brat, I took my exams and finished school a year early and I had a place at him. The queue was huge, and this guy in front of me had this two art schools in London, but, as things turned out, I didn’t take really fancy portfolio he had been showing around the conventhem up. I have always drawn, and I loved art of all types, not just tion floor, and everyone said he was a dead cert to get work. It comics. It never occurred to me until age 15 that I could become certainly looked very slick and polished — a million miles away 16

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(above) Doug still has the souvenir booklet from the first convention he attended. (right) The battle concludes. Pencils for Justice #5, page 14. CHEETAH, WONDER WOMAN ™ AND © DC COMICS.

from the sketches and doodles I had in my sketchpads. This guy was about 30 and he was pretty cocky and confident he would get some work. I remember him handing his portfolio to Dave who quietly looked though it. Dave didn’t say much, but once he finished looking through it he elegantly deconstructed the work. Well, I was ready to jump out of the queue! If it hadn’t been for those school friends penning me in, I would have legged it. Then it was my turn, and I handed my sketchpads along with lots of odd bits of loose paper to Dave. As well as being terrified, I can honestly say I wasn’t expecting much. He looked through the pages and didn’t say a word, then he quietly ordered the pages and handed them back to me and said, “I hope to see you working professionally within a year,” which was not what I was expecting to hear. I just didn’t know what to say, so I just thanked him and left! The folks at Marvel UK recommended I attend an evening class that was running at the London Cartoon Centre. It was there that I was taught the fundamentals of comic strip art. I joined that class about six months after it had started. It was held once a week and was taught by David Lloyd — yes, that David Lloyd of “V for Vendetta.” Sometimes he’d have invited artists come in and do a talk and show us their work. Artists like John M. Burns and Garry Leach come to mind and other strip artists from Fleetway Publications who had worked on titles in the ’60s and ’70s. As well as bringing in examples of their own work, they’d occasionally bring in original work by other great British comic

artists like Frank Bellamy, Frank Hampson, and Ron Embleton. It was amazing to see these original pieces of art up close and see the artists’ techniques. I was so lucky at that age to be exposed to art like that. It was nothing less than inspirational, and I just wanted to learn and experience as much as possible of this incredible art form. So, at the London Cartoon Centre I was taught page design, storytelling, inking techniques and a basic understanding of the tools of the trade. We also learned about light sources, basic anatomy, and perspective. You had to put in more study on your own time if you were serious about it, but I’ve always felt that having that sort of instruction from David Lloyd was worth three years of art school, and British art schools did not teach comic art as part of the curriculum, so I may have wasted my time had I gone to art school back then. DRAW! • FALL 2010

it was very difficult to balance the two, and comics were always my first love. John is an amazing artist, and his ability with oil paints is simply breathtaking. I learned an awful lot from John, listening to his wacky theories on life and watching him work. He understands the human form like an anatomist. He saw himself as a student of old master techniques, but he also had a love of comics and classic strip art from the ’50s and ’60s. He had a particular liking for Warren’s Eerie and Creepy black-and-white magazines from that period, but there was one artist in particular that stood out for him and that was Al Williamson, and that was where I first saw Al’s work. One of the many important things I learned working with John was discipline and how you needed it to become a professional artist. On many occasions, storyboard jobs needed to be turned around in a day for presentation to a client the following morning. If you screwed up, the client would never use you again, so there was no messing around. I was still attending the London Cartoon Centre classes while working with John, and then I got my first work from Marvel UK. How I got the work at Marvel is quite funny. I remember I got a portfolio together and went to see Richard Starkings at Marvel — without telling Dave — probably because I didn’t want him to know if it came to nothing. Richard gave me a try-out script and I drew it, but I froze and struggled with it. My artwork was rubbish. All the panels were very static. I took it in, and Richard said it wasn’t so good and explained what was wrong with it — basically, there was no movement in the frames. I remember drawing a car hitting a wall, and it had no impact or movement whatsoever. I had gotten ahead of myself and thought I could get work before I was ready. Of course, unbeknown to me, Richard and Dave must have been communicating with each other about me and my failed attempt, as Dave went and got the second part of the script from Richard and gave me it one day at the Centre and said I should have another try. So I refocused my head and tried to draw it as well as I could without freezing up, and I made a real effort to put some movement in it. When I had finished it I went in to see Richard with my artwork, and he looked at it and said my work was actually as good as the regular artist Doug’s pencils for Justice #6, page 22. on the story. That was when I got my BATMAN, POISON IVY, WONDER WOMAN ™ AND © DC COMICS.

It was an amazing few years in my very young life, and I have to think hard to remember all that went on and in what order. An editor at Marvel UK called Bambos Geogiou suggested I go see an artist called John Watkiss at his storyboard studio in central London. We met up and hit it off straight away, and he invited me to work with him to gain some experience. I assisted John for a few months, and he seemed confident enough in my abilities to offer me storyboarding work on a few commercials. It was incredibly hard work and pulling all-nighters was not unusual. I’m sure if I hadn’t got the comics work from Marvel UK coming through at that time I may have made more of a go of it, but

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In these panel details from the Justice page shown on the previous page, you can see how Alex Ross did some redrawing in the faces for the finished comic. Ross uses a group of models which he photographs for reference, and the faces of Batman and Wonder Woman reflect his models. However, the composition and figure posing is left pretty much as Doug has penciled it. BATMAN, WONDER WOMAN ™ AND © DC COMICS.

first professional work from Richard, and to this day he remains one of my favorite people. In this business of miserable cynics, Richard is one of the most genuine, thoughtful, fun people you could ever wish to meet. For a while I was working at John’s studio and working for Marvel and attending the Cartoon Centre, and it was hard to fit everything in, so I had to make a decision as to whether to continue with the storyboarding or commit to the comics, because I couldn’t do both, so I chose my first love and never looked back. One of the other advantages to going to the Cartoon Centre classes was that Dave took a few of us to a Society of Strip Illustrators (SSI) meeting which was being held at the Pen Club in Chelsea. I’ve still got the program from that meeting in February 1987. In it there’s an interview with Alan Grant, where he talks about the setting up of 2000AD. And in the back the new members list include Mark Farmer, Mark Buckingham, Dave Elliot, Grant Morrison, Peter Milligan, and Neil Gaiman — some of them you may have heard of. But the main focus of the night was the visit from the States of Dick Giordano, Karen Berger, and Jeanette Kahn. It was at that meeting that Dave introduced me to them, and they decided to keep tabs on me until they thought I was ready. Later on Karen Berger offered me my first DC work. Sorry, I’m getting off topic because I’m pulling out all these old programs from UKCAC and the SSI and reminiscing. I learned a lot in those few years, and I was incredibly fortunate to meet so many open and encouraging professionals who took a genuine interest in me and my work when I was a wet-behindthe-ears kid, and what’s nice is they’re all still my friends. I was also lucky in that I knew this was the right business for me from an early age and I was determined enough to learn what I needed to be the best comic book artist I could be. Crikey, that’s a long answer for a one-line question! DOUG BRAITHWAITE INTERVIEW CONTINUES ON PAGE 63

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Constructive analysis & criticism of a newcomer’s work by

BOB McLEOD

’m a strong believer in constructive criticism. If an artist can’t take criticism and look objectively at his own work, he’s not going to go very far. We all tend to be a bit blind to our own weaknesses, because we focus mostly on what we enjoy and do well. But realizing what we don’t do well is what helps get us to that next level. To that end, I offer my Rough Critique to artists struggling to break into the big leagues of comic art.

SUPERMAN, BIZARRO ™ AND © DC COMICS

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This cool Superman vs. Bizarro sample page was submitted by Chris Hanchey, who took a correspondence lesson from me a few years ago and has improved to the point where he’s now penciling a new series for Arcana called The Infinites. Congrats on getting that first paying gig, Chris! So this sample page is about three years old, but offers a chance for me to point out some things that should be helpful to a lot of beginning pencilers still looking for that big break. Thanks go to Chris for allowing us to use it. First of all, you need to understand the format and define your working space. See that blue dotted line near the edge, where it says “trim” in the corners? That means that the art will likely be cropped along that line when the comic is printed. So anything outside that line isn’t going to be printed! So for example, Bizarro’s toes, knee, cape tip and hand will all be cropped off in the printed comic. Superman’s forefinger in the lower left panel will be cut off. That dotted line should be considered the edge of the page in the comic. Even a panel border drawn on that line may be cropped off. So never draw anything beyond that line that you want to be seen in the printed comic. And hands are important and should be placed within the panel whenever possible. Hands and faces are primary focal points and should always be placed carefully and deliberately. Beyond that, a good rule is to never crop anything that doesn’t need to be cropped, and those hands could easily have been placed further within the panel. Your next consideration is how many panels to have on the page, and what shape and size they should be. For an action sequence, you want to be able to show large figures up close, so the reader is close to the action and involved emotionally in the scene. Who wants to watch a fight from a block away? So four or five panels is preferable. Six panels should be the maximum. Here we have five, but because the lower four are all about the same size, it doesn’t allow panel three to have the impact it deserves. Giving extra space to panel one makes the rest of the page seem anti-climactic. Gutters, by the way (the

Here’s how the page would look cropped at the trim lines. SUPERMAN, BIZARRO ™ AND © DC COMICS

space between panels), should be at least 1/8 of an inch wide, or the panels blend into each other too much. Some artists just draw a line between panels rather than a gutter, but in that case you need to make sure the areas of the two panels that touch are visually different enough that they don’t blend into each other. The angled shape of the panels is a good choice. That lends a chaotic feel to the sequence, which befits an action page. But repeating the same angle with the building in panel one and the middle panel gutters in the bottom two tiers works against that chaos. Angled panels also present the problem of using the corner areas effectively. In panel three, the figures should be moving further into that corner, rather than being centered in the panel. That stops the movement of Superman into Bizarro’s body. By placing them in the middle of the panel, the action seems frozen. That first panel action works well because you can feel Bizarro’s movement from Superman over to the right side of the panel. Once you’ve decided on the size of your panels, the next problem is the angle from which to view each scene. Beginners tend to show everything straight-on, as if the camera was sitting on an immoveable tripod. Chris wisely offers some variety with the two down-shots in the middle panels. But it would be even better to have one of the panels as an up-shot. The best artists follow a close-up with a long shot, a down-shot with an up-shot,

etc. That juxtaposition offers the most impact and makes the sequence much more interesting. Keeping the same camera angle panel to panel steadies the action, which works against the excitement Chris is trying to generate here. After deciding on the viewing angle, you need to decide where to place the figures in the panel, and beyond that where to place the main focal points. Chris does a decent job of that here, except for panel three, as I mentioned above. You want to place figures and focal points off-center, but well within the panel, cropping only where necessary. When you must crop a figure, as in panel four, never crop at a joint, such as an ankle, knee, wrist, elbow, waist, or neck. Bizarro’s legs and Superman’s elbow are not what we need to see in this panel, so the figures should have been placed more to the right and lower, cropping Bizarro mid-thigh and mid-forearm. Here’s where you need to think like a movie director and camera man, and focus on what tells the story and only what tells the story. Everything else should be cropped out. Don’t crop figures for no reason, but when you want to move close and have to crop, go ahead and move as close as you can. This used to be a major problem for Chris (see my critique in Rough Stuff #6, available from Twomorrows), but he’s getting much better at it. You obviously can’t show the whole world in every panel, so you’re already choosing what to show. Be very deliberate and show only what tells the story—nothing else! Next, keeping in mind how close to focus, you decide how big to draw the figures. The goal should be variety, showing large figures and small figures, and balancing them around the page. Avoid drawing figures the same size in adjacent panels, such as panels three and five, and the small figures in panels one and two. I try never to draw heads the same size in any two panels. Once you decide on the camera angle, the placement and size of the figure, you just need to work out the pose. The figure as a whole, and particularly the arms and legs, should be posed on diagonals, not horizontals or verticals. Chris has done a pretty good job of this, except for Superman’s pose in panel one, which seems deliberate, and the two parallel right arms in panel four, which I’m sure wasn’t intentional. The left arms are also parallel, by the way, and that’s a no-no. Unless done for some purpose, repetitive angles are

Moving Superman and Bizarro further into the corner and out of the center of the panel increases the sense of moment and action. SUPERMAN, BIZARRO ™ AND © DC COMICS

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This is how large the head should be. When raising the arm, the elbow is just above the head. SUPERMAN, BIZARRO ™ AND © DC COMICS

poor design. Notice that in panel one, while Superman appears to be standing vertically and knocking Bizarro away with little effort, he’s actually leaning diagonally to his right, because the background is tilted to the left. So as long as we’re tilting him, why not tilt him on a diagonal that enhances the design? Remember when posing your figures to place the heads and hands and other focal points carefully. When I refer to focal points, I mean the primary things the reader looks at—the centers of interest. These are almost always eyes, faces, heads, hands, and feet. So obviously, you need to place the centers of interest very carefully, never randomly. You want them off-center, away from the panel border, and you don’t want anything distracting from them. Which leads to the next problem to be solved: backgrounds. Chris is just knocking himself out drawing complex backgrounds here, which is one of his strengths. But just as a page full of close-ups lessens the impact of each one, and a page with no backgrounds looks empty, a page with too many complex backgrounds lessens the impact of each one and looks crowded, not allowing enough rest for the eye of the viewer. So those first three panels compete far too much with each other, lessening the impact of Bizarro flying through the air in panel one, and all that amazing work in panel three. And panel five by contrast appears to have shifted to the Twilight Zone. So when should you draw backgrounds? And equally as importantly, when shouldn’t you? Here are some simple guidelines: Never follow one detailed background with another equally detailed one because each one detracts from the other. Close-ups rarely need a background, long shots always do. Medium shots usually need some background. The amount depends on adjacent panels, and whether the setting needs to be established, or whether some background element is relevant. On this page, panel two could have had a much simpler background, and an up-shot would have allowed sky to separate it better from the first panel. Great as it is, the background in panel three doesn’t need to be there, and in fact shouldn’t be, because the action is so intense the background detracts from it too much. Rather than panel one, this is where the figures should be larger and possibly extending beyond the panel border. And if you’re going to tilt the background, don’t tilt it at the same angle as the panel next to it! That’s just poor design. Panel four should be a closeup and not have a background, and panel five does need a back22

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ground, but a simple one that doesn’t detract from the figures, such as the clouds in panel four. When adding a background, keep in mind that you don’t want it to conflict with or detract from your focal points. So in panel one, for example, Superman should be surrounded by sky, with no buildings touching him, except perhaps the tip of his cape overlapping a building to help create depth. Bizarro’s left hand should also be surrounded by air, not touching the edge of the building. In panel two, Superman’s hand shouldn’t be so close to the corner of the building and Bizarro’s foot shouldn’t appear to be pushing against the wall. Bizarro’s left hand gets totally lost in the building in panel three, and his face seems to be buried in his cape, it’s so perfectly centered on it. Consider everything you draw in a panel as a shape. In panel one, for instance, Bizzaro is a shape, and the building behind him is a shape. You don’t want to place one large shape behind another one. That’s poor design. While on the subject of backgrounds, I’m compelled to mention perspective, one of my pet peeves. I have nothing against “sighting” perspective, without actually using a ruler to make every line go to the vanishing points. But I do object to making errors in perspective out of ignorance, which is far too commonplace in comics. In panel one, he’s using one-point perspective, and seems to be in good control of that. But in panel two, the close building is not “square,” because the wall going off to the right should recede to the same vanishing point as the rest of the planes parallel to it in that panel, and it doesn’t. So consequently, it appears to be sloping downward. The verticals in that panel should all be receding to a point far below, but don’t. So actually, none of the buildings are squared. Neither are the buildings in panel three, which don’t adhere to vanishing points either. Wow, that’s a lot of things to think about just drawing comics, isn’t it?! But wait, we’re not finished. Not by a long shot. What about anatomy? Do you need perfect anatomy in comics? No, actually you don’t. I can probably count the number of comic artists who draw correct anatomy on one hand. But you do need to meet a certain standard. The figures need to be believable within the fantasy world you establish. So with such realistic backgrounds, the figures need to be as realistic as possible, and

Here, I just enlarged the head. Usually, we do draw super guy heads smaller than normal to make their bodies look more massive. But the closer forms should appear larger when using foreshortening. . SUPERMAN, BIZARRO ™ AND © DC COMICS

Here’s how the head should look. I enlarged the head and moved it over more on top of the neck, then moved the neck and head both over more to the center of the torso. Remember to construct your figures, don’t just draw the surface. The torso is basically a block, and the neck is a cylinder in the center of the top of that block. This is why it’s so important to learn the skeleton. BIZARRO ™ AND © DC COMICS

the more incorrect their anatomy, the more obvious and distracting it becomes. Both heads are too small in panel one, and both left legs have been amputated below the knee (another of my pet peeves). In panel two, note the difference in size of Superman’s upper arms. Again his head is too small (it’s about the size of his fists!), and his left forearm really needs work. Superman’s thumb is dislocated in panel three, and the anatomy overall is just wrong. In panel four, Bizarro’s head isn’t attached to his neck properly, nor is his neck attached to his spine, his ribs are broken, his abdominals are offThese changes to the page make it visually more exciting and also easier to follow. center, and his buttock is sliding down his leg. SUPERMAN, BIZARRO ™ AND © DC COMICS Note the difference in the length of the first joints of Superman’s fingers on his right hand. In panel five, Bizarro’s detail or rendering creates a grey, so be careful not to put rendering right leg is not attached to his hip correctly, his ribs are once more next to rendering because it flattens the forms. It’s important to broken, his right foot is painfully small, and Superman’s patella is think about where to put rendering and where not to. This used to dislocated. Figure drawing is a huge part of drawing comic books. be the inker’s worry, but with today’s ever-tighter pencils, it’s I don’t think it’s too much to ask that artists have a basic under- become the penciler’s worry. Rendering both sides of a form standing of human anatomy. Someone who draws as well as Chris flattens the form. So only render the side of the form away from the light. Chris is doing a pretty good job of that. Use rendering should easily be able to solve these issues with a little study. So, we’ve covered composition, design, perspective, anatomy, to soften the transition of black into white. Until you get skilled what’s left? What about lighting and tonal values? Chris is doing at rendering, the less the better. All the tonal work can be done in a pretty good job here using high-contrast lighting to give the color in today’s comics, so some artists use little or no rendering illusion of three-dimensional form. But be careful. See how at all. When placing blacks, remember that black ink on white Bizarro’s right knee appears to have a hole in it? See how the paper really attracts the eye, so don’t isolate blacks where they’ll muscle of his right forearm is sinking visually into the dark of his distract from the focal points. Try to balance them around the cape? In panel five, why does Superman’s right vastus medialis panel and the page as a whole. Surround dark focal points with (the muscle on the inside of his lower thigh) get less light than light, and light focal points with dark. I think that about covers it. Thanks again to Chris for his semitendinosus (the back of his upper thigh)? consenting to this Rough Critique, and I’m looking forward to Shadows should be consistent with the light source, and seeing his new series, The Infinites! If you’d like me to give a remember that contrast is what creates the illusion of depth. So Rough Critique to your sample page next time, e-mail me at place black or grey next to white, white or grey next to black. mcleod.bob@gmail.com. Don’t put black next to black, white next to white, or grey next to grey. This simple rule eludes so many artists. A high level of DRAW! • FALL 2010

SPOTLIGHT

Interview conducted and transcribed by

Danny Fingeroth 24

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Sikoryak is the author of Masterpiece Comics — an anthology of his “mash-up” parodies — and he’s adapted the classics for anthologies such as Drawn & Quarterly, Raw, and the new Hotwire (published by Fantagraphics). His cartoons and illustrations have also appeared in The Onion, The New Yorker, Nickelodeon Magazine, Mad, Wired, and Fortune, among other publications; on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, and in The Daily Show Presents America (The Book); and Our Dumb World: The Onion’s Atlas of the Planet Earth. He’s also on occasion worked for Marvel (Unstable Molecules), DC (Bizarro Comics) and Dark Horse (The Escapist). He’s recently drawn storyboards for the Comedy Central series Ugly Americans. Sikoryak is the co-author, with Michael Smith, of The Seduction of Mike (Fantagraphics), a comic book funded by the National Endowment for the Arts. He was awarded artists’ fellowships from The New York Foundation for the Arts and The American Antiquarian Society for his comics adaptations of the classics. He is in the speakers program of the New York Council of the Humanities and teaches in the illustration department at Parsons School of Design. Since 1997, he has presented his cartoon slide show series, Carousel, around the United States and Canada. He lives in New York City with his wife Kriota Willberg.

Here and on the following pages we will look step by step at Bob’s working process, specifically for his mash-up of Emily Brontë’s gothic novel, Wuthering Heights, and EC Comics’ Tales from the Crypt in the story called “The Heights.” It all starts with a reading of the novel. Then Bob reads the Cliffs Notes version and makes notes. Shown here are some of Bob’s notes on Wuthering Heights along accompanying thumbnail layouts. ©2010 R. SIKORYAK

DANNY FINGEROTH: I’m here with R. Sikoryak in his downtown Manhattan Bohemian digs. Hello, R. Can we call you Bob? R. SIKORYAK: Sure. DF: What is the origin on the “R”? Why “R. Sikoryak” and not

Robert or Bob? RS: “Bob” seemed too informal, and “Robert” seemed too formal, so I thought “R.” was a good compromise. DF: It has some gender ambiguity. RS: Well, my work has a lot of ambiguity in terms of who

actually made it, so that appeals to me, too. DF: Tell me your secret origin. What’s your background, and how did you know you wanted to be an artist, and all that stuff? RS: I always was interested in drawing. I knew I wanted to be some sort of artist type since I was a young kid. The word “artist” just always seems so pretentious to me, but there’s no way around it — other than saying you’re a “graphic novelist.” [laughs] I have two older brothers, and they were really into comics and media, so I was exposed, like radiation, to all this stuff at a very early age, and I guess that’s where my “superpowers” came from. They had a big comics collection, which I then became involved in and started collecting. I was very much into reading newspaper comics, specifically Peanuts, but I read just about everything except Mary Worth. I only really got into that later. I grew up in central New Jersey. We got a great newspaper,

the Star Ledger, which has a big comics section, so I saw a lot of great strips there. And this was in the ’70s, mainly, when there was a more thriving newspaper comic strip field than there is now. DF: Have strips moved to the Web? RS: For sure. Back then, that’s where you’d see the comics, in the

newspaper. My brothers and I would collaborate on stuff. Whatever hobby they were into, I’d sort of piggyback onto. They would make movies, and they would write stories, and they would make comics. And I’d hang around, to watch or contribute. For whatever reason, comics seemed the most graspable to me in terms of actually figuring out a way to make them myself. You could really do it all yourself. So I got very much involved in doing that. My brothers and I would do parody comics, and I would do newspaper comic strip style cartoons. DF: A lot of kids want to be artists and love comics, but did you ever consider another branch of art, or was it always comics that latched onto you? RS: Well, I got into comics at a really early age, as I said. I guess I just got sucked in. I was really into Peanuts, and I was really into a lot of the Marvel comics that I was reading. Those just captured me somehow. I did a lot of different kinds of art in college, and afterwards a lot of performance art and crazy theater productions, but they’re even harder to fund than comics. I went to Parsons School of Design, and I actually teach there now. I had some really great teachers there, including Steven Guarnaccia, who is now the chair of the Illustration department.

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He was into a lot of great work and knew Art Spiegelman and Francoise Mouly at Raw magazine. Through Steven, I ended up interning for Raw. So that was further immersion in the comics world. I imagine that I could have gone into animation, but the opportunity didn’t arise, and comics were something that, the more I got in, the harder it was to get out. DF: Raw was a cutting-edge magazine, kind of the next step beyond the underground, a fine arts approach to comics. What was it like, day to day, working there? RS: I had mentioned to Steven that I was excited by what they were doing, so he put me in touch with them. I started, really, just helping around the office in 1986. I was studying a little bit about postmodern art, which was happening in the ’80s, and was into the gallery scene in New York City, so what Art and Francoise were doing dovetailed with a lot of the other artists that I was interested in, such as the pop artists, and other 20th century artists, who owed a debt to the Dada movement. Specifically, people like Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns, and — from an earlier generation — Marcel Duchamp, a lot of artists who approached art in a way where they were kind of thinking about dismantling the idea of “art” while they were making art. And that was definitely what Raw was doing, as well. They were comics, but they were comics about comics. DF: That’s what Spiegelman had been doing since the beginning of his career. RS: Yeah, pretty much. I first saw his book, Breakdowns, in

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college before I met him, which collects a lot of his experimental comics from the ’70s. It was recently reprinted by Pantheon, but there was a rather obscure, small printing in the ’70s. When I saw those strips it really blew my mind. To give one example, he took panels from the strip Rex Morgan, M.D. and collaged them into his own drawings to make a surreal, abstract narrative out of the most straight-laced soap-opera comic. That was just one of the things that he did, but that idea of taking old strips and making something new and strange with them totally thrilled me. Anyway, when I began working for Raw, I was really just helping them around the office, shipping out book orders, things like that. The day I started working for them was the release party of Raw #8, and that was the same month that the first collected paperback of Maus [which had been serialized in Raw] came out, so Art was about to become some kind of comics celebrity just as I started working there. It was really interesting to see that happen. I was about 21 at the time, so very young and impressionable and excited to be there. I always admired Art’s and Francoise’s intelligence in how they put their anthologies together. They’re very smart, they’re very well-informed — not just knowing the medium, but also smart about how to take that knowledge and make something exciting out of it.

At that point, they had gotten a contract with Pantheon to start doing books with individual artists, so they did a book with Gary Panter, who was another artist who I was really excited about. He’s also someone who shifts his style and really plays around with the conventions of comics, and then makes them into something totally his own. Pretty much all the artists there I really admired, and their work really spoke to me. DF: When you say “the office,” I have a feeling it wasn’t an office in the sense of a Marvel Comics or an ad agency or something like that. RS: Right. They’d just gotten a working space in the building where they were living, and that was “the office.” The early issues were all done in their loft, so they were just starting to expand somewhat. It was still a small operation. Most of it was not funded by their comics, but by a map of the neighborhood — SoHo — that they put out. A lot of my job was editing this map of the local businesses. This was a business that Francoise was running that they had started in the ’70s, and they were still doing it. I think they put out about twelve annual maps, and they would hire salespeople — not me, luckily — to go around to businesses to try to get them to advertise in their map. DF: This was not an arty, ironic map? This was a real tourist

guide map? RS: A real map. And it’s funny, because it has a cover by Art

Spiegelman, and it’s about the tamest image you can imagine Art Spiegelman doing, if you’ve ever seen his New Yorker covers, which are often very provocative and very stark and startling, and, for The New Yorker, sometimes rather experimental. But the map had a very nicely designed generic cover that was meant to appeal to tourists, or to anyone who was coming through the neighborhood. It would advertise the art galleries and the little boutiques.

DF: As an intern, was there an active kind of an instruction going

on? Did they ever say, “Here’s how you do this, here’s how you draw that?” RS: A lot of it was learning on the job. I was doing a lot of production work. And when I say I was exposed to these artists, I would often be photostatting their artwork, so I would meet them occasionally. The night I started working for them, they had that party, and I met a lot of people, but that was kind of all a blur to me. Then when they started publishing issues again in 1989, I was very involved with that. I was doing hand separations of the coloring — they taught me how to do that sort of thing. I was learning to do photostats and paste-ups, getting type set, and speccing type, and a lot of other stuff that’s completely irrelevant now.

ART EDUCATION DF: You had some stuff printed in Raw, right? RS: Amazingly, I did. I was doing much of the production work.

Sometimes they would publish foreign strips, so after they were translated, I’d often do the hand-lettering in the style of the original artist. While I was working there, I also was sitting in on some classes at SVA [the School of Visual Arts] because Art was still teaching there. I was actually moonlighting at SVA while I was going to Parsons and trying to apply some of my work at SVA to my classes at Parsons, which didn’t always work. But I was sitting in on a lot of different classes. I was sitting in on a painting class, I was sitting in on an animation class, and I was sitting in on some comics classes at SVA. A lot of my teachers taught at both places. DF: Who were some of your teachers, besides Art? RS: I had a lot of great teachers at Parsons. Steven Guarnaccia

taught a satiric illustration class that was wonderful. I studied with the animator Howard Beckerman and sat in on his incredible DRAW! • FALL 2010

Bob usually picks a specific artist’s style to emulate. In this case, he’s chosen Jack Davis, who excelled at drawing both humor and horror stories for EC (some of his horror covers are shown on the left). Bob is still refining the layout and tightening the sketches at this point.

history of animation class at SVA. That exposed me to a lot of different films that — this is before the Internet — I would never have had any access to. Maybe if I drew fast enough I could have found a career in animation at an earlier time, because that was also fascinating to me. In any case, I also was sitting in on classes with Art. He taught a six-week, condensed version of his history of comics class at SVA, and through that class I met Paul Karasik and Mark Newgarden, who were previously students of his at SVA and also were involved in Raw and were teaching a class at SVA. Through the class with Paul and Mark, I got into their comics anthology, Bad News. The strip I did was based on the anecdotes of composer John Cage, who incorporated “found” sounds into his music. I tried to incorporate the styles of different comics into his stories. So each of his anecdotes, which were taken from a book that he had written, are all done in the style of different strips. There’s a Mutt and Jeff parody, a Barnaby parody, and 28

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Pogo, Mary Worth, Krazy Kat, and so on. Anyway, Art saw that story and invited me to do a page for Raw, which kind of flabbergasted me. I was thrilled, and I wracked my brains to try and figure out what to do for that, and I hit upon the idea that would turn out to obsess me for the rest of my life, the “mash-up.” The first strip that I did for them was a version of Dante’s Inferno done in the style of Bazooka Joe. By the time this Raw came out, I was actually doing freelance bubble gum card writing for Topps and I was writing gags for the backs of Garbage Pail Kids cards. I had written some Bazooka Joes, too — made a fairly good living for a couple months writing Bazooka Joes. Sadly, none of those ever saw print, because Topps had decided to update the characters. But I was getting paid around 50 bucks, for Bazooka Joe gags — and if you’ve ever read Bazooka Joe, you know the gags weren’t that hard to write. So, I was immersed in the world of Bazooka Joe, and through college I was immersed in a lot of literature. I was really excited

by the one literature survey class I had to take as a freshman at Parsons. I was trying to think of something that could be kind of epic, but wouldn’t be too pretentious, and that’s how I came up with “Bazooka Joe meets Dante’s Inferno.”

DOING THE “MASH-UP” DF: The question you must always get is, when most people say

they’re going to be a comics artist, they seem to fall into two categories: (a) I’m going to be my own person and have my own style, or (b) I’m going to spend my career imitating one, or a combination, of people. “I’m going to be Jack Kirby and Gil Kane’s love child that they never had.” But you have established a niche that’s not either of those. Any thoughts as to why? RS: I guess I really just wanted to be Will Elder, who, of course, did all of the old Mad parodies in the early years. The comic book parodies. He was really great at imitating other styles. He did “Ping Pong,” “Gasoline Valley,” “Woman Wonder.” He did a quarter of all the early Mad stories. As I said, when I was a kid, with my brothers, we would often do Mad-style parodies of superhero comics. By the time the ’70s rolled around, there was Saturday Night Live, and the humor style of Mad was all over the culture by that point: National Lampoon, Saturday Night Live, and even Wacky Packages. The culture was already eating itself, and maybe that accounts for the approach I took, because that’s what a lot of the stuff that I found funny was already up to.

really trying to find a way to make the kind of comics I was interested in approachable to a wider audience. In the back of my mind I thought, “Well, maybe I can play with these conventions and I can also create something that the layperson will understand.” I was interested in reaching an audience that would recognize trappings of famous comics, think, “Oh, that looks familiar,” and then, as they started to read, would hopefully go, “Oh my God! What the h*ll is that?” So I wanted to get two responses — have a veneer that people could recognize and approach, and then, when they actually read the strip, hopefully something else would happen and it would become something new they wouldn’t see at first glance. DF: But you’re also not doing, say, The Terminator in the style of

Peanuts, or Saving Private Ryan in the style of Nancy. You’re picking things that have more of a highbrow aim. RS: Yes. That’s something else that was really going on. There was a show at the Museum of Modern Art in 1990, the “High/Low” exhibit, and its subtitle was “Modern Art and Popular Culture.” There was this sense of a divide between high culture and low culture, which everyone seemed to be talking about in the ’80s, if they weren’t talking about nuclear war. It was

DF: How did you first come up with the “mashups” idea? RS: Post-modernism was in the air in the ’80s in New York, with Kenny Scharf putting the Jetsons in his paintings and things like that. DF: Was the idea there’s almost nothing new to

say, so why not go back and say whatever you have to say disguised as someone else? RS: I always felt that my work was derivative and not very original, so I just kind of embraced that. There’s a great quote from Marcel Duchamp to the effect that you should steal from dead artists rather than the living. I think his idea was that your work would be more exciting if you adapted your contemporary sensibility to the style of another era. A lot of the artists I parody are alive, but I generally “steal” from people who are very established. They’re so well known that you’re meant to recognize the homage. I wouldn’t want readers to think I was just ripping someone off. What I do is not merely a knock-off of a successful artist, it’s obviously commentary on their work. DF: And you’re also not imitating, say, an obscure French comic from the 1920s. You’re doing something where people recognize that you’re homaging. RS: Right, right. Duchamp probably would applaud ripping off a French cartoonist from the ’20s. I think that’s kind of what his quote was about. But that’s not what interests me. I was

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in a way they never did before, so things that might have seemed esoteric once upon a time perhaps aren’t so esoteric anymore. RS: Right. You can download the entire text of Dante’s Inferno from the Gutenberg version, or you can go to YouTube and watch Transformers cartoons from the ’80s, and they’re all free! It’s all just culture, and there’s not much distinction between those things. Or, at least, it doesn’t feel like there is. [laughs] DF: You started in this niche or genre of doing

something that was in the air, and it seemed like combining high and low was a natural thing to do. I’m not saying I came up with anything new or I put it together differently. Mad has done this, too. But I think those issues of what is valuable in culture and what isn’t were a lot more important then than now. And when I started the strips, I thought, “Oh, I’m making fun of the high culture, the high literature, by putting it in the form of these comic strips.” But lately I’ve heard from a lot of teachers who say, “Oh, this would be a great way to introduce these classics to the kids in my class.” That seems so bizarre to me. But I think that pop culture has now become the cultural canon. It’s hard to know what part of what I’m doing is canonical when Peanuts is canon as much as Kafka is canon. DF: With the Internet and cable TV and DVDs, people have access to the entire history of culture literally at their fingertips

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parodies, and then in between doing those pieces, you actually have a career that seems to pay quite a bit better doing commercial work. How did that evolve? What was your first commercial work? RS: Well, I actually went to school at Parsons for illustration. I knew I wanted to do comics, but I felt like I could make a living in illustration, which seemed more true in the ’80s than it does now. But that’s all right, I’m still finding work. Because I knew Steven Guarnaccia and all the other teachers at Parsons, I made some great contacts in terms of art directors. Because Raw was a part-time or occasional full-time job, I didn’t need to do too much freelance work at first. But working there ended up being a great opportunity for me in a way you wouldn’t expect. One day I was in the office and I got a call from Esquire magazine. “We need someone who can do a Jack Kirby parody.” And I said, “Well, that would be me.” They didn’t know who I was. I think I had had one strip published in Raw at that point. And I am not an egomaniac, but I am the guy to call if you want a parody, and while I wouldn’t say what I did for them looked exactly like Jack Kirby, it did the job. That was my first job for Esquire, and I subsequently did a number of parodies for them.

DF: Of course, what comes to my mind — no criticism of you — is that Jack Kirby was still alive then. They could have called him and gotten the real thing. RS: Well, it’s also kind of strange that a lot of my freelance work is doing comics parodies, but I often don’t write them — but they pay a lot better than my personal work.

GETTING NOTICED DF: How did magazines find out about you? RS: Slow word of mouth. I’m not a great promoter. I have my

website [www.rsikoryak.com], I’m on the iSpot. It’s an illustration portfolio website where you can search people by category and by style. It’s gotten me some jobs over the years. At this point I’ve been working professionally so long people have seen my work. Also, a lot of times I’ve gotten calls from art directors who happen to be comics fans, and say, for instance, “We want a

Tintin parody for an article about going to Mars.” That was something I did for Wired magazine and was basically a dream job. They gave me the parameters of what they wanted and they let me write it, too, and it came out great. I was really happy with that, and they were very hands-off.

That was probably one of the most grueling deadlines of my career, and also one of the most gratifying, because that led to a couple of other jobs with them, and they actually recycled the artwork that I drew in a number of different episodes. DF: What was Unstable Molecules, and how did you get involved

DF: Was all your freelance work of that type, or would we ever

open up a newspaper and see an ad for Brooks Brothers, and say, “Oh, Bob drew that suit!” RS: I would be happy to get some advertising work, especially drawing suits. I think I could handle that. I don’t think I would have any moral qualms with drawing a suit. But, nah, I don’t get that much advertising work, but I’ve worked for a lot of different publications. Up until a few years ago, print was really my medium. DF: Was it the comics parody kind of thing? RS: Yeah, or illustration parody. It’s amazing, Roy Lichtenstein

swiped from so many comics artists, it’s kind of gratifying now that so many magazine art directors ask illustrators, and in my case a cartoonist, to parody Roy Lichtenstein. His style became so pervasive it became a look that magazine art directors like.

with that? RS: Unstable Molecules was a project that my friend James Sturm was writing for Marvel. James and I go back to the ’90s at Raw. He’s done a million different things besides his own comics, including founding and running the Center for Cartoon Studies in Vermont. He worked briefly at Raw, and I was his advisor when he was getting his Masters at SVA around the same time. We worked on a number of different projects together. He had an idea to tell the story of the four individuals who would become the Fantastic Four: Ben, Reed, Johnny, and Sue. It was the story of their lives before they got their powers. DF: That was sort of an experimental period at Marvel where they’d come out of bankruptcy. Bill Jemas was the president, and Joe Quesada had recently become editor-in-chief, and they were doing all sorts of offbeat stuff with creators you wouldn’t expect. RS: Yeah, it was 2003, they were trying a lot of different things,

DF: They’re asking you to parody Russ Heath and Jack Abel, really... RS: Yeah, only with bigger dots, essentially, is what it comes down to. And that imprimatur of fine art on comics, I don’t know if that’s what makes a difference for art directors, or just that the “big dot look” became so ubiquitous after Lichtenstein championed it. So, yeah, I did lots of illustrations like that. I did a number of jobs for The New Yorker. The co-editor of Raw, Francoise Mouly, became the art editor at The New Yorker, and I did a string of covers for them because I was good, I think, at coming up with concepts, and I was also interested in parodying the magazine’s cartoon styles of earlier eras. Francoise seemed to appreciate what I was doing playing with styles of their past. So, for instance, taking a Peter Arno cartoon character from the ’50s and putting him in a ’90s setting, as I did on my first cover, was the quintessential example of what I would have loved to have done for them all the time, and that I did get to do for them occasionally. DF: How did you get hooked up with The Daily Show? RS: By that point, in the mid-’00s a friend of mine was doing

illustrations for a book they were putting out, and another friend was actually writing on the show, and they both told me they recommended me for the job of doing some cartoon parodies for their book, America: The Book. And then they needed various cartoons and drawings for the show. They needed woodcut parodies for their special Democratic Convention coverage. They needed parodies of Family Circus and The Lockhorns, to illustrate a story on cartoon controversies. That led me to do a series of strips for them called “The Decider.” Once George Bush said he was “the decider,” they called me and said, “We want to do a comic strip parody tomorrow about George Bush dressed as a superhero. Start doing some drawings, while we’re working on the script.” And over the course of 24 hours, pretty much all night, I stayed up and did drawings and got my wife, Kriota, to help color them on the computer while I was doing more art, and somehow I banged out 14 drawings, and they were on the air the next night.

A new idea springs to life. Importing a scan of the third draft into InDesign— Adobe’s publishing software—Bob stretches and squeezes the images into a new layout. It’s a quick and easy way to see if the new idea will work. ©2010 R. SIKORYAK

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In this series of panels from Unstable Molecules #3, Guy Davis’ Sue Sturm morphs into R. Sikoryak’s Vapor Girl in the depths of Richard’s fantasy world. ALL CHARACTERS ™ AND © MARVEL CHARACTERS, INC.

and James had really wanted to do this story. I think he had been telling me about it long before it had come to pass, but he had the opportunity to do it under that administration. Anyway, there are a number of panels of a supposed comic book from the ’50s that Johnny Storm is reading. James asked me to draw them in a 1950s style. The character that James invented was called Vapor Girl, a superhero who fights monsters and who has a kid sidekick, so it has a lot of the genre trappings of ’50s comics. It has bits of Little Archie, and of Fin Fang Foom, and of Wonder Woman, and there are some EC science-fiction elements in there, too. A lot of different ideas mashed into one comic. It’s all fodder for me. I tend to approach most of this stuff with a lot of affection. I can’t say I love every comic strip I’ve ever parodied, but I try to understand it, something like a method actor who would say, “I have to love my character, I have to believe in what my character is doing.” So I have to believe in what these comics are about. And I have a lot of affection for those old Marvel characters in particular. Where I grew up, I didn’t see a lot of the undergrounds in the early ’70s. I didn’t see a lot of the ground-level things going on, either. Maybe some Star*Reach. So mainstream comics were my gateway to comics in general. I didn’t really see the divide between alternative and mainstream comics like other people do. It was interesting working on Unstable Molecules, because I really enjoy working with James, and I thought the book was great, but it occurred to me, “Oh, I’ve helped create a character that Marvel now owns.” [laughs] So, even as James and I are exploiting the characters invented by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, we also now have something that Marvel owns. I don’t actually see a Vapor Girl movie coming, but even so, it was a strange feeling. DF: Was there ever a point in your early career when you said, “Gee, why don’t I take my portfolio to Marvel and become a

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superhero artist?” Was that ever a fantasy that had any appeal to you? RS: I think it might have when I was in high school or earlier. I can’t remember when I decided that that wouldn’t be me. Certainly, by the time I was in college I was interested in all this other stuff, and also my teachers would occasionally remark on my inability to choose one style to work in. [laughs] I get impatient, and I like being able to play around with a lot of different styles and concepts and things like that. So I think doing a monthly series for someone would be really grueling and a little intimidating for me. I admire people who can do it, but that’s really not my world.

CREATING A MASTERPIECE DF: Have the original artists of the various strips you’ve parodied

ever seen your takes on their style? RS: I had the foresight to send Charles Schulz my Peanuts-

meets-Kafka’s Metamorphosis strip in 1990, when it appeared in Raw. I knew Raw had enough cache that it wouldn’t look as if a crazy person had done this comic strip and was sending it to him. He sent me back a very nice four-sentence letter. He wrote something like, “I really appreciated the way you treated the Peanuts satire.” I was very excited to hear back from him. It was my only contact with him, and it was really thrilling. He really was a pivotal influence on my work. I also sent one of my Garfield parodies to Jim Davis, and he also sent me a really nice letter, which was great. I understand he’s a big supporter of parodies of his work. It’s interesting, he owns his own work, and he’s also okay with parodies. I wish corporations could understand that sometimes parodies ultimately help “the brand,” rather than hurt it. As Jim Davis has said, “If you’re parodying me, you’re paying attention, and that’s really what matters.” And I think anyone who’s seen my work can tell that it’s done with a lot of affection. Even if I end up killing off

This Vapor Girl “cover,” drawn to look like a 1960s Marvel cover, was done for Marvel’s website to promote Unstable Molecules. VAPOR GIRL ™ AND © MARVEL CHARACTERS, INC.

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then I make time and clear the decks. I probably spent a solid three months finishing the second chapter of “The Crypt of Bronte,” and doing the preparatory work on it was probably a few months before that, between other jobs — thinking about the writing, thinking about the layout — but I haven’t really timed it out. I did a parody of some Hindu literature for a yoga magazine in the style of Sunday comics, and I actually timed that, and it would take me about a month to draw two pages. That was two months of serious work. I really just bore down and did it. And, on the other hand, I drew a strip for Mad, which was recently reprinted in Mad about the Superheroes, Volume 2, in a much shorter time. It was a classic Superman parody. The art director, Sam Viviano, did roughs for me, but I literally was able to do two pages (penciling, inking, coloring, lettering) in eight days. I was going for a Curt Swan ’50s style. Every Superman pose in there is swiped directly from a classic Superman pose. Despite being a very topical strip — about Obama conceding before the 2008 election! — I was glad it made it into the collected book. DF: So, in a given month do you work perhaps an average of five

or six days on your own stuff? RS: I don’t know, it seems like a fifth of my time is spent on my own work, at best. But it really varies. Now that I’ve finished the book, I’ve promised Kriota that I’d take a break, so I’m just working on commercial assignments. DF: Do you have anything planned? RS: I don’t have a plan, exactly, but I have lots of notes for future Cover art for the Masterpiece Comics collection. MASTERPIECE COMICS ™ AND © R. SIKORYAK

the characters or doing horrible things to them, there’s so much respect for the craft of what these artists do. DF: You’re clearly not trying to pass it off as an original from the original comic. I know that you’ve come in for some ribbing that it took 20 years to get the book done, but you do a lot of commercial work. Of those 20 years, what percentage do you think you were really working on material for Masterpiece Comics? RS: Nineteen and a half. [laughs] No. It’s so sporadic. I mean, I do say that it took me 20 years to do the book, but the majority of the book was done in the last ten years. A few of the shorter strips were done in 1989 and the early ’90s. I put out that book The Seduction of Mike in the late ’90s, and I’ve obviously done a lot of other things. I would say the long stories that I did in the book, which are “Dostoevsky Comics,” “Little Pearl,” and “The Crypt of Bronte,” all took a considerable amount of time. The shorter strips I might spend a month or two on. The “Little Dori” strip took me a long time. I took the story of Dorian Gray and did it in the style of Little Nemo, and it took me a long time to synthesize the novel into something that would feel like a Little Nemo Sunday page, and then drawing it was actually so difficult. I’m kind of dumbfounded by how Winsor McCay could do it every week. The Bazooka Joes did not take me long to draw. [laughs] I need to do more parodies of hackwork. But usually my own work takes a backseat to my commercial work, so when I get a call to do something commercial, then all my personal work is put aside. When the deadline for the personal work is coming,

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strips, and I’m definitely not going to run out of material. I actually did a strip for the new issue of Hotwire, which is a Fantagraphics comics anthology edited by Glenn Head, who’s been printing my work for many years. I did a strip for him, “The Menace of Denmark,” which is Hank Ketcham meets Shakespeare, and that’s out now. That was too late for my book, but that gives me an excuse to say, “Oh, it’ll be in the next book.” DF: I know in your commercial work you often draw from other people’s scripts. Have you ever written anything that somebody else has drawn? RS: That would be fun, but, no, I haven’t. I’ve been lucky. With Nickelodeon Magazine in particular, my average of writing to what I was drawing was pretty good. By the end there, most of the comics I was drawing I was writing myself. DF: What did you do for Nickelodeon Magazine? RS: I worked for them for 16 years, and they gave me a lot of

wonderful assignments. I wrote and/or illustrated articles and comics. And I tried really hard to do good work for them, because they’re comics fans, and they always appreciated the details. I tried to be really diligent in the comics I did for them. DF: Those were mostly parodies or homages, too? RS: Yes. Chris Duffy gave me my first job at Nickelodeon

Magazine, which was illustrating a newspaper comic strip parody where all the comics took place in a grade school. So, instead of Garfield, it was the frog that lives in the science room, and so on, and so forth. I should mention them in this interview because I’d still be working for them if they were still around. Sadly, advertising in magazines has nearly evaporated. Nick’s circulation was

still impressive, but that’s not enough to stay in business! I did all sorts of work for Nick. Every month they would do a “Comic Book” section, which would feature various indy cartoonists doing their own stories, as well as comics about Nick’s characters, like Spongebob and Hey Arnold. They had me do a lot of parodies of contemporary comic strips, such as For Better or For Worse, Dilbert, Cathy, Spider-Man, etc., as well as goofs on the Power Rangers and Powerpuff Girls. I would also write and/or illustrate prank advertisements that they’d sprinkle through the magazine, which might be anything from a Survivor TV show parody to a classic Charles Atlas ad. Plus I’d illustrate various humor articles or their recurring parodies of Highlights and other kids’ mags. I’d also create or draw various mazes and puzzle pages. I even got to draw some 3-D comics for their occasional 3-D issues (with glasses). It was a wide variety of material. DF: I know you haven’t done a full-

length graphic novel. Oddly enough, Crumb never did until Genesis, either. Would you ever want to take on a hundred or more page thing? RS: Sure. It would have to be the right story. Part of the issue for me is I do like being a chameleon, and I think without having one style juxtaposed against the other it wouldn’t be as much fun for me. And I have ideas, although I’m certainly not ready to talk about them, but if I could find the right book to adapt into a variety of styles, where it made sense with the novel, I’d love to do it. DF: You once mentioned MobyA page from “Little Pearl,” a mash-up of The Scarlet Letter and Little Lulu. Dick as something you’d like to try LITTLE PEARL. ™ AND © R. SIKORYAK to adapt. RS: I have too many ideas for Moby-Dick. Because Moby-Dick heard existed but were never done or published for one reason or shifts styles within itself, it would make total sense for it to be another. It’s coming out again from Drawn and Quarterly this year. adapted in a series of different styles, and I have some notions for It’s a brilliant conceit. It’s great. So, yes, long-form would be fun. that. But I would like to finish it in my lifetime, so I don’t know! I actually thought the rest of the Zap comix artists should adapt the I’m already intimidated by Moby-Dick in and of itself. I don’t know New Testament, and maybe I could do that. But maybe not. [laughs] if I want to add to the pressure of, like, having to learn 135 styles — because it has 135 chapters — to do the book justice. But that may DF: To get back to the “20 years for these comics,” how did you be the book that’s located in Hicksville, if you know the reference. know when it was a book? What made you go, “It ends with this Dylan Horrocks wrote a graphic novel called Hicksville, and there’s story,” and not, “I’m going to put another two stories in”? How a library in Hicksville that has all of those great comics that you’ve did you know when the book was ready?

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This page and the next, containing snowy versions of various newspaper strips, were done for Nickelodeon Magazine.

36 DRAW! • FALL 2010

R. SIKORYAK INTERVIEW CONTINUES ON PAGE 56

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Here H ere CComes omes tthe he

By Mike Manley thought this time around in the boot camp I’d cover my work on the Judge Parker newspaper strip, which I started working on as the regular artist this past February. We haven’t covered a lot of comic strips in DRAW!, and I thought this would be a great opportunity to show the process and demands of doing a daily continuity or non-humor strip. Of all the formats comics are drawn in, the comic strip is probably the most popular and read by the largest amount of readers with the widest age range worldwide. Though they are read by children, the overwhelming amount of comic strip readers are adults. Comic strips begat comic books some 60, almost 70 years ago. Millions across the globe read the comics section every day — strips ranging from Peanuts to Zits, from Prince Valiant to B.C. to Mutts. In recent years, with the decline and trouble in the newspaper industry, penny-pinching and budget-conscious editors have often tried to prune strips from the comics pages only to have the readers revolt and demand their return. The squeeze isn’t just economic, it’s also physical! The average size of the daily comic strip on the newspaper page has shrunk by more than half as the size of the newspapers — in order to save on paper costs — has continued to shrink due to the decline in revenue from advertising and falling readership. Current strips often run at 1-1/2 inches high. As a result, the detail in the drawing of the average comic strip has also suffered to allow the drawings to read at such a small size. However, the positive facts are that more adults read comics in the newspaper than kids and that the strips as a whole are aimed at a more adult audience. This gave rise early last century to the adventure strips, and, after the second World War and the rise of the soap operas on TV, the appearance of soap opera strips

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such as Mary Worth, On Stage, Juliette Jones, Apt 3-G, and Judge Parker to name but a few.

JUMPING IN HEAD FIRST The opportunity for me to try out for the art chores on Judge Parker came as the result of the regular artist, Eduardo Barreto, falling ill. A heads up from my buddy Graham Nolan, who we interviewed in DRAW! #10, let me know that King Features was looking for somebody to at least substitute for a few weeks as Barreto’s health meant he was off the strip, at least for a while. Graham draws Rex Morgan, which is written by Woody Wilson who also writes Judge Parker. A quick phone to King Features head honcho Brendan Burford put me in the mix fast. I had previously worked with Bredan Burford producing two Secret Agent Corrigan stories for Europe. Initially, Burford said they had my buddy John Heebink doing a few weeks, as he had pinch-hit for them on the strip in the past. So I thought I would also do just a few weeks of strips to help out on the deadline, basically just doing a fill-in on the strip until Eduardo got better, but when a few days later I was told Barreto was giving the strip up, I tossed my hat in the ring as permanent replacement. Unfortunately for Eduardo, he had to give up the strip after he contracted meningitis, which left him unable to continue drawing the strip. This left the syndicate, King Features, in a rush to find a permanent replacement. It’s not easy to hit the ground running on such an endeavor; there is so much you need to do, and you never like to get an opportunity because someone became ill. It’s one thing to come of the bench and pinch-hit and yet another to become the everyday player.

I’ve cut out one of the current Judge Parker Sunday strips from the Detroit Free Press and put it side by side with an old Johnny Hazard Sunday strip. Obviously, they have been scaled down to fit on this page, but the relative proportions have remained the same. Look at the difference in size!

The nature of the comic strip biz means there must be a new strip every day, and unlike comic books, which I have worked on for nearly 30 years, comic strips are never late and can never miss a day or run on reprints — with the exception of something like Peanuts, of course. After some discussion with Bredan Burford and several of my strips were turned in, I officially became the fourth artist to work on the strip on February 15, 2010, following in the footsteps of Dan Heilman, the original artist on the strip, Harold LeDoux, and Eduardo Barreto. I have to say Barreto really did a great job on the strip, reinvigorating it and adding a dash of film noir to it, which enhanced the smart scripts by the writer, Woody Wilson. Barreto is another artist in a long line of great draftsmen from South America, including Jose Salinas (Cisco Kid), Ricardo Villagran, and García-López.

JUDGE PARKER © AND ™ KING FEATURES SYNDICATE, INC.

A sample of the Judge Parker strip as drawn by Harold LeDoux.

Baretto brought a great sense of realism, splashy layouts, and a dash of spice to the strip with his excellent and sexy drawing of the women of Judge Parker, and the readers noticed. DRAW! • FALL 2010

JUDGE PARKER © AND ™ KING FEATURES SYNDICATE, INC.

I had big shoes to fill and an uphill battle, for sure. The first thing I needed to do was get enough reference of the characters and try to catch up with the strip’s continuity, to understand where everybody was and what/where the story was. I got a few weeks’ worth of script by Woody Wilson and access to dailyink.com, King’s online comic strip website, which had almost a year of Judge Parker in its archive. Initially I was told to keep the strip looking as much like Eduardo’s style as possible, which makes sense; you don’t want to shock the readers with a sudden dramatic new take in style. You have to keep the characters looking basically the same. Writer, Woody Wilson is a real pro and was just such an immense help to me in those first few weeks, as was everyone, including Bredan Burford and Karen Moy, and Evelyn Smith and her staff at Hearst. 40

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Here are my first Judge Parker daily and Sunday strips. I was still working hard to keep pretty close to Barreto’s style. I had to find reference for the Judge’s secretary and office, which took some time. In some papers, the entire first row or tier of the Sunday strip is cut, so the strip has to be structured story- and art-wise to work without those first two panels.

JUDGE PARKER © AND ™ KING FEATURES SYNDICATE, INC.

The two strips above show the daily strips with the word balloons already inked in, I tried this for a week or two, doing the lettering on a layer in Photoshop, but soon abandoned this as it didn’t allow me to adjust the lettering enough or move the balloons to accommodate type.

The next thing I had to figure out was the proportion of the strip, the size it runs at in the paper and the size I would draw it at. King provides no pre-printed art boards like some of the comic companies do, so I printed out one of the daily strips and sized it up to fit on an 11" x 17" sheet of Bristol. It turned out I can fit “two up” on one sheet. That mean the strips are still rather small for my taste and ease at drawing, and certainly much smaller than the several examples of original strip art I have in my collection. The main thing is they have to fit on the 12" x 18" scanner I have. All of the strip work was going to be delivered digitally. I wanted to make the originals as big as I could to make the drawing easier. I also had to deal with the lettering as well, which I decided for speed and ease I’d do digitally. I got a copy of the font Barreto used. During the first several weeks I kept adjusting how I did the lettering, the size and shapes of the balloons and type. At first I roughed in the lettering in pencil on the board and inked the balloons on the art, but eventually I gave up doing that and instead created a few custom balloons and brought them in Photoshop and laid them in digitally. The whole point is to make things as easy and quick as possible, so the production of the strips is as smiple as can be. I would prefer to have the lettering done on the boards, in the traditional fashion, but I don’t have enough lead time to do that like the strip guys of old, who would hire a letterer or had one on staff. The first weeks were rough, trying to get the characters on model. As an example: I spent a good deal of time just finding a shot of the

Judge’s secretary and the office for the first strip. The next big job was doing the Sunday strip, as Judge Parker also has a Sunday full-color comic strip. Once again I printed out and proportioned up a strip to the maximum size I could fit on my scanner. I own a fair amount of comic strip art, and one of the things you’ll notice is how much larger the old originals are, often 12" x 20", much larger than my scanner can hold unless I drew the panels separately.

Here is the rough layout for the March 28, 2010 Sunday strip. This was the first time I drew Abbey Spencer, the main female lead in the strip.

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JUDGE PARKER © AND ™ KING FEATURES SYNDICATE, INC.

Here are the finished and inked strip and the final colored and lettered strip. The lettering was done later in layers in Photoshop.

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JUDGE PARKER © AND ™ KING FEATURES SYNDICATE, INC.

Here are two examples where I laid in the lettering and then inked in the balloons. I lay in the lettering first and this lets me know how much real estate I have left for the art and any changes that I will need to make in the layout. Sometimes it’s a real balancing act to get everything just right.

In the old days the strips were sent to the syndicate by the artist and a lot of the production was done by their staffs — paste-ups, corrections, Ben-Days (the precursor to Zip-a-tone), and shooting the art with a stat camera. All comic art was done this way in the pre-digital days. I worked with the same kind of camera when I used to work in printing and commercial art — from the time I started out in commercial art in high school, right on until I got my first Mac. The other concern about the Sunday strip is that the Sunday isn’t always carried by every paper that carries the daily strip. It also has to fit into different formats, because some papers carry the full threetier Sunday and some only the smaller twotier strip. This means the first tier or row of panels might not run in some papers; you’ll know if your paper carries the full Sunday if it has the first row which includes the title panel containing the strip’s logo, “Judge Parker.”

Pencils for a Sunday strip. I usually block in using a Colerase Blue pencil, then tighten the final pencils up with a mechanical pencil using a .5mm 2B lead.

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Above are the pencils and to the right the inks for two of the strips that re-introduce Neddy, the adopted daughter of the lead characters, Sam and Abbey. Neddy has been out of the strip and off in France for a few years. At this stage I was doing the pencils pretty tight, because I was still really working my way forward on the strip and trying to get my “sea legs,” as it were. I mostly used a Hunt 108 pen nib, Pigma markers and a #4 sable brush. At this point I still hadn’t seen what the strip would look like in print, as I was working several weeks ahead on the deadline.

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JUDGE PARKER © AND ™ KING FEATURES SYNDICATE, INC.

Another daily in pencils and inks. This time I included some zip-a-tone, which I put in on a layer in Photoshop. I rarely use it anymore, because the reproduction in the paper causes the zip to reproduce poorly due to the small size. I am open and adaptive to my approach to the strip based on how it looks in print. King has a website which carries all of its strips (www.dailyink.com) but many newspapers which have an online version also carry the strip on their websites as well. Online the strips run at a higher resolution, and on King’s website they provide a color version of the daily strip as well.

Here is another finished Sunday. The color version of this strip is on the next page. One of the major demands from a realistic strip like Judge Parker is the necessity of drawing realistic environments, as well as people, cars and trucks, etc. Luckily I am one of those artists that has a pretty accurate memory, so many things like the airport or the police officers I was pretty close on.

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JUDGE PARKER © AND ™ KING FEATURES SYNDICATE, INC.

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In this Sunday strip I relied heavily on my memory of eating in my local diner to make the background believable. One evening while grabbing a late bite on deadline at the local diner I made a few notes and recorded with my mind the booth where I ate. It’s really important to pay attention to everyday settings like these. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had to draw the inside of a diner in the last ten years!

One of my duties every week after reading the script is to spend time doing some research to get reference for that week’s strips. Thank goodness Google makes finding things like cars a cinch, or airports, even police uniforms, but often I have to be creative in how I ask or search. To make a believable world you need to put in the time on this part of the job. Faked cars or poorly drawn settings will quickly make the work look fake and stir the ire of the sharpeyed fans who have come to know these characters and where they live as well as their own homes and families. It’s a part of the job I feel is important, and all of the great strip artists excelled at this, from Raymond to Caniff, though they often had assistants for both research and drawing the backgrounds. I am not so lucky; I have only myself. 48

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JUDGE PARKER © AND ™ KING FEATURES SYNDICATE, INC.

Judge Parker Sunday — July 4th

1. and 2. (show the scene in the diner — we see Neddy and Mark from the sideview — Neddy is on the left and Mark is on the right side)

Neddy — (slight smile) Iʼll bet your dad and step-mom are happy to have you home!

Mark — (seriously) Yeah, they were very supportive during the divorce! 3. and 4. (show Mark in closeup from the front)

Mark — (looking down) Dad never did like Samantha much anyway!

Line 2. 1. and 2. (show the scene in the diner — we see the scene from behind Neddyʼs right side — her head and shoulder are on the right side — Mark is across from her on the right side)

Neddy — (slight smile) Got any plans while youʼre home?

Mark — (slight smile) Not really! Maybe hang with some of the guys...I donʼt know!

Judge Parker cont.

3. and 4. (show the scene from behind Markʼs right side — we see his head and shoulder on the left side and Neddy is on the right side — Neddy looks at her watch)

Mark — (slight smile) Maybe we could get together again...Jules, too!

Neddy — (seriously) Sure, thatʼs a possibility!

Line 3. 1. (show Neddy from the front — we see her in closeup) Neddy — (slight smile) I have to get back, Mark!

2. (show Neddy standing up — we see the scene from behind her left side — Mark stands up, too) Mark — (slight smile) Sure, lunch is on me!

Neddy — (slight smile) Thanks, it was great to see you!

3. (show the scene from behind Markʼs right side — Neddy is starting to walk away — she turns to see him) Mark — (sincerely) Ned, can I call you?

Neddy — (slight smile) Sure...you have my cell number!

I have a sketchbook set aside just for doing these Sunday rough layouts. In this one I’ve gone in with a marker to designate where the heavier blacks will go.

JUDGE PARKER © AND ™ KING FEATURES SYNDICATE, INC.

As you can see, Woody Wilson’s script is a full script, including panel description, but it leaves me a lot of leeway in moving the camera around. However, I must place the characters accordingly so as to not have confusing balloon placements. Coming from comic books and often working with a plot instead of a full script, sometimes I feel a bit more restricted with a full script. Some artists prefer it, though.

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JUDGE PARKER © AND ™ KING FEATURES SYNDICATE, INC.

Now that a few months have gone by, I feel a lot more confident about the strip and fully work the strip in my own style, even going as far as trying to manipulate the inking style to show the characters’ change in mood or feeling.

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I am very conscious of the blacks, and plan the black patterns on a strip like this to force the eye’s path across the page and to frame the characters. I think it’s even more important to do that with the smaller printed size of the strip. I am very influenced by Classic Hollywood movie lighting when planning this out. Sometimes all a panel needs to “pop” is the right amount of black in just the right place.

Here are the final pencils and inks for a Sunday strip after about six months of me working on the strip. I usually block-in using a Colerase Blue pencil, then tighten the final pencils up with a mechanical pencil using a .5mm 2B lead. At this point the characters are starting to live in my head like real people, which makes it a lot easier for me to make them act.

JUDGE PARKER © AND ™ KING FEATURES SYNDICATE, INC.

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JUDGE PARKER © AND ™ KING FEATURES SYNDICATE, INC.

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JUDGE PARKER © AND ™ KING FEATURES SYNDICATE, INC.

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JUDGE PARKER © AND ™ KING FEATURES SYNDICATE, INC.

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JUDGE PARKER © AND ™ KING FEATURES SYNDICATE, INC.

Here in this rough, you can see how I am planning or blocking in the blacks as framing/design elements. The better it works here, the better it will work in the finished strip.

Sometimes I will, when pressed for time, work a bit looser and then do more of the drawing in the ink, as with the strips on the previous page. In this case I still had in my mind where the blacks would go, and even though I was going to black in the figure — such as the one of Neddy looking out of the window in the first panel of the 8-7-10 strip — I still drew the figure and drew through the background elements as well, so that when I blacked it all in, it all fit together correctly. One of the simple rules I always apply to my work, even after all of these years, is, “When in doubt, draw it out.” Sometimes the only way to know or to fix something is to work it out in a drawing, sometimes two or three times, until you can solve the problem with confidence. Only when you feel confident with your drawing can you say if you have solved the problems on the page or strip before you. If you feel any doubt, it’s always best to keep working until you get that

feeling you have really solved the issue in pencil before you go to the next step, otherwise that little doubt often becomes a huge crack in the foundation and you end up having to do a lot more work to try and fix the mistakes later. I know, I made this mistake very often when I was younger. The realistic comic strips like Judge Parker are a challenge for me, even after drawing comics for nearly 30 years, but I welcome the challenge because I feel as artists we can never rest on whatever level of craft we have reached. We must always push ourselves up “Art Mountain” or risk the fall down the slopes of mediocrity.

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R. SIKORYAK INTERVIEW CONTINUES FROM PAGE 37

RS: When my wife said, “Just publish the d*mn book, already.” DF: Sometimes that’s what it takes. RS: I would have liked it to be 100 pages, but I’m actually real-

ly grateful that she egged me on to do it, because there’s really no ending it, and comics are serial publications. And Masterpiece Comics is not a graphic novel, it’s a comic book. DF: That’s true. It’s a compilation, an anthology. RS: So, in a way, it was good to stop there, because I can do

another book, eventually.

THE PROCESS DF: Let’s talk about your nuts-and-bolts working process, Bob. To begin with, where does the writing fit into the concept and all those different things? RS: Since I did the “Inferno Joe” strip, which combined Dante’s Inferno and Bazooka Joe together, I’ve been playing with mashups, which is a term that didn’t exist when I started. The tagline on the cover of my book, Masterpiece Comics, is, “Where classics and cartoons collide,” because what I do is take classic literature and I retell it in the style of famous comic strips. DF: Why did you say “cartoons” instead of “comics”? RS: Because the name of the book is already Masterpiece

Comics. [laughs] And, also, there’s a Beavis and Butthead parody in there, so technically, I have to say “cartoons.” I actually

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explained my book to one of my neighbors in the elevator, so the literal “elevator pitch” was, I combine classics and cartoons — for instance, I retell the story of “Genesis” with the cast of Blondie, or I take the story of Kafka’s Metamorphosis and use Charlie Brown as the main character. In that case, Kafka and Schulz were essentially writing about the same character. As I’ve done more of these, the stories have been getting longer and longer and longer. I’ve been trying to resist that urge for the most part, but occasionally it just happens. I did a version of Crime and Punishment in the style of Batman called Dostoyevsky Comics. It took me a while to figure out what artist to parody for that, and I briefly thought, “Well, maybe I should tell the entire novel through the various styles of Batman comics, from Bob Kane to Neal Adams,” or something like that. But that seemed a little too insane, even for me. Also, that wouldn’t have really allowed me to explore the other part of my process, which is not just to replicate the drawing style, but also replicate the pacing, and the storytelling length, and all of the other elements that make up the comic I’m parodying. So I really did need to choose one artist if I was going to do a Batman story. Also, the novel Crime and Punishment doesn’t take place over a long period. The timeframe for the story is probably just a few weeks, so it wouldn’t make sense to draw it in a million different styles. I chose Dick Sprang’s Batman style because I felt like he was the quintessential Batman artist of the ’50s. His drawings are kind of a boiling-down and a summation of the Bob Kane and the Jerry Robinson art style into something that’s really codified and iconic, and that’s what really interests me. In all my strips, I’m trying to take the characters in their most iconic forms and then flip the icons by combining them with wildly different sources. DF: When you do Crime and Punishment as Batman, are you parodying Dostoevsky, or are you parodying Batman, or both? RS: I try to do both. I’m also parodying Classics Illustrated, and the whole idea of a faithful adaptation. I do try to be faithful to both sources, so that’s another reason to choose just one artist to parody. I really try to retain the actual plot, even as much of the dialogue as possible, of the original novel, and I try to be faithful to the pacing and the structure of the original comics. So my Dick Sprang Batman/Crime and Punishment mash-up is ten pages long, because that’s usually how long those ’50s comics were. It uses all of the visual devices that Sprang would use in terms of composition, in terms of page layout. And it also tells the story of the novel, at least as much as you can fit in ten pages. All the important stuff. In some ways, I fit in more than did the original ’50s Classics Illustrated version, because they left out the book’s heroine, a religious prostitute. But who better for Robin to portray? So I start by reading the novel. There’s a great Crime and Punishment edition illustrated by Fritz Eichenberg. He did wonderful woodcuts, very dramatic, and with a lot of detail. They’re very crisp and clean. So I will often look at illustrated editions of the novels to get ideas in terms of visualizing scenery and costumes, but I also do a lot of research. The New York Public Library is an amazing resource for historical photos and drawings of Russia from 1865, when the story takes place. You can certainly Google a lot of material, but I like having high-res versions to work from. I use the Mid-Manhattan Library at 40th and 5th. It’s excellent. Some of their collection is online, but a lot of

it isn’t. It’s a good reason to get out of the house, too, so I like going there. I also look at Cliffs Notes. Even though I do read the novels and listen to them on tape, I always like to see how other people boil down the stories. So I’ll look at the Classics Illustrated versions, or any other versions, even any comics that happen to take place in that era. Plus I’ll look at the movies. There’re a lot of different ways to do research, and I like to use as many of them as possible. I always start with the book, though. I try not to look at the adaptations — the movies or comics versions—until I’ve read the novel, if at all possible, because I prefer to start with the source material, even though ultimately I’m going to eviscerate it and really boil it down. While I do all the research, I also start doing thumbnail sketches. I really do the writing while I’m doing the drawing. I like to plan the pages visually as I’m writing them. DF: When you were speaking to my writing class at MoCCA [the

Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art], you had some bullet-point notes for a story and handwritten notes in a notebook, which you did before the drawing. RS: Oh, sure. But I don’t start with a full script and then start drawing. Because I’m trying to emulate specific art styles, I like thinking of the visuals, thinking of the panel layouts, and plotting out what happens on each page. So it definitely becomes written, obviously, but it doesn’t necessarily start with that. DF: But the very first thing is jotted-down notes, right? RS: Yes. I jot down notes from the Cliffs Notes, or I jot down

scenes that I know I want to illustrate. I do make bullet points. My sketchbooks are very all-encompassing. I make all sorts of

notes and doodles while putting the stories together. But I would never write out all the dialogue and then think, “How am I going to visualize this?” The visuals have to develop at the same time. Also, I’m more comfortable drawing than I am writing, so I enjoy doing it that way. It takes the pressure off to mix it up. I go through a series of revisions as I lay out the pages. Once I have the general layout done... DF: You lay them out on typing paper? RS: I used to do it all at the printed scale, on 8-1/2" x 11" typ-

ing paper, or tracing paper. What I do now is I lay out the type in boxes in a computer program called InDesign. I used to use Quark, and they work essentially the same way. And now, if I’m doing a long story, I’ll often have a font made. Either I’ll design one, or I’ll find one online that’s exactly the style that I want, because it has to be a perfect match for the visuals. It always makes my teeth hurt a little when someone does a Peanuts parody and they don’t use something that looks just like Schulz’s hand-lettering. I try to be obsessive about all the details all the time, but some jobs don’t always give me the opportunity, because of their tight deadlines. But, when it’s demanded, I rise to the occasion. In any case, for my personal stuff, yeah, getting the font right is very important. I’ll often hand-letter, but if I can find an appropriate font, I’ll use that. For my EC parody, I needed to match their lettering, which was known as Leroy lettering. It was done from a template, so that lends itself perfectly to a font, because it’s a very generic, regimented letterform. DF: That EC lettering was hand-lettering but designed to emulate

a machine-like look.

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RS: I’ve never done Mort Drucker. That would be bizarre,

because I guess it would have to be a film parody of a classic novel. That would be interesting. [laughs] I don’t know what that would be. Someone suggested Don Martin. I haven’t yet tried Don Martin, but he seems like a natural. I wish I could get to them all! There’s a lot of refining of the layout with InDesign, and then I print it out, so I have a sheet of white paper with text for the word balloons and black borders for all the panels. From there, I start doing tighter sketches. Sometimes I do them right on the paper, sometimes I do them on tracing paper, and then I scan and composite those sketches into the layout, which I import into Photoshop. I see what works, see what doesn’t work, and then I might go back in and refine the images and layout as I go along. While I’m developing the compositions, I’m also compiling and photocopying the old comic strips that I’m parodying, and I’m cutting out figures, kind of creating model sheets. I’m doing it in the reverse order you’d normally do it for a project. I’m making the model sheets after the strips are already done. For instance, I’ll find pictures of each character laughing, or crying, or running, or sitting, or reading. Then, I cut and paste those images onto printer paper, which I organize by content and compile in big, fat, three-ring binders, to use as a guide for when I draw my strip. I also cut and paste panels or pages that have interesting layouts or compositions I think I’ll need. DF: Are the plot and dialogue done at this point, or do they

RS: My understanding is it was a template, a lettering guide.

So I refine the page layouts with InDesign and shuffle the text to make it fit in the balloons, and shuffle the panels to make the page layout look attractive or accurate — which are not always the same thing. It’s not really about my taste, it’s about trying to match the style that I’m emulating. In some ways, that takes a lot of pressure off of you, because you don’t have to make the same kind of aesthetic decisions as when where you’re not referencing a style. Working with constraints is very exciting to me. It’s very easy for me to get distracted with the demands and requirements of my freelance jobs, so I really enjoy the process of deciding, “Okay, this is going to have to look exactly like Irving Tripp drew it.” He’s the Little Lulu artist. Or, “This is going to look like Jack Davis when he was drawing Tales from the Crypt.” I try to be very particular about following their formulas, or their impulses. And I like losing myself while studying someone else. DF: Have you ever done anything in a Mort Drucker look?

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evolve as you do the art? RS: The plot and dialogue is pretty well worked out in the layout version. I have a good idea of where everything is going to go, and from there I have to decide, “What reference am I going to need for this panel?” Perhaps I’m going to need a close-up of a character sewing, or I’m going to need a long shot of a character carrying a body across a field. Then I go back to the strips, back to my photocopies, and try to find similar imagery to what I need. The Drawn and Quarterly issues — where my three longest stories first appeared — had such long deadlines I was able to do a lot of research and take a lot of time to do them. Obviously, for my commercial work, I might have overnight deadlines, so I do the best I can. But I knew all my classic/comic parodies were going to end up being collected, and they’re really my most personal work, so I took extra care with these pages. Anyway, I’m compiling reference to use when I’m drawing. I refine my sketches on layers of tracing paper. I do rough doodles, and then I put down another layer of tracing paper and redraw it closer to the chosen style, and then trace over that to refine, and refine, and refine. It’s a process of removing my own stylistic tics and personality and bringing in someone else’s. A lot of these revisions I do on the computer, now. I just got a Cintiq, which is a step up from the previous Wacom tablet I’ve used for years. The Cintiq lets you draw directly on the screen, which I suspect is going to speed up my drawing process considerably, especially in the sketch process, because I can go through three to five, in some cases up to ten, sketch revisions for certain panels. Less time for, say, a Peanuts parody, because I know Peanuts a lot better than many other strips and the compositions are so stripped down. But for something like Tales from the Crypt, or for the ’50s Batman story, I was really trying to get into the head of those

artists, whereas, with Charles Schulz, he’s totally in my head already. Some other artists, less so. Then I go back to Photoshop, I import the revised text and elements from InDesign, and I squeeze and stretch drawn elements and reconfigure type. I’m juggling. Once I get the sketches to a pretty good state, I’m juggling a lot between correcting layouts in InDesign and altering images in Photoshop, and then I’m compositing pieces on the computer again, and again, and again. When I’m really happy with the layouts, I refine them further. For a realistic strip, I might take photos of Kriota, my wife, or she’ll take photos of me, if I need a specific pose, which I’ll then — hopefully, seamlessly — incorporate into the style I’m using. So there’s a whole process of refining the sketches. When I’m really happy with the results I do a very, very tight drawing. Often I’ll do it with any old marker. Previously I’d use a thin Sharpie, but these days I like the archival pens, such as the FaberCastell Pitt Artist Pens and Pigma Micron pens. I’ll scan that tight drawing and do a composite with the best lettering. It’s really tight at this point. Then I’ll print it out larger, around 150%, and trace it with mechanical pencil onto Strathmore Bristol board and ink it the old-fashioned way. For the most part, I’m trying to emulate styles that are drawn by hand, and I’m not entirely satisfied yet with my ability to replicate traditional comic book inking on the computer. So, for the time being, I ink with pen nibs or brushes, occasionally even Rapidographs, whatever I can use to make it look like the original artist. I like the Winsor & Newton Series 7 brushes, Speedball nibs, and FW Artist’s black ink. If I can find articles or interviews with the artist I’m parodying where they discuss their materials, I might try to find their preferred nib or brush. In addition to all of those photocopies I’ve made of the original art, I also blow up pages of their comics to the scale that I’m inking so I can literally examine their line quality, and see how thick the lines are, how tight the crosshatching is, and so on. And even if I’m using a font for the word balloons and captions, the sound effects, logos, and titles are all inked by hand. DF: So what size is the actual board you work on? RS: The image size is often around 10" x 15", which is about

standard comic book artboard size. I like working at that scale, and it’s also very easy to photocopy. If it fits on an 11" x 17" photocopier bed, it’s perfect for me. But I’ll mix it up a bit. Sometimes I’ll work at the size of the specific artist. I drew a

Little Nemo Sunday page parody that’s in my book, and it was done at the scale of Winsor McCay’s originals, which were huge. I did it in two parts so I could fit it on my drawing table. Each part is about 21" wide by 16" tall for a full strip that’s 21" x 32". Huge! In that case, I really wanted to work at his scale, to match his level of detail, and as always I want the marks that I make to resemble those of the original artist. So, as much as possible and practical, I use the materials they’d use. DF: You said you photocopy your art. Why is that? RS: I usually photocopy my pages down to the size they’ll ulti-

mately be printed, then scan those photocopies for coloring in Photoshop. My scanner is only big enough for 8 1/2" x 11" images — smaller than I usually work — so reducing them on a copier beforehand means that I don’t need to scan the art in pieces and DRAW! • FALL 2010

I do the color at 300 dpi and save the lineart scan at 1200 dpi. Those two files are then combined in InDesign or Quark by the publisher. DF: The computer is such a big part of your process.

Do you expect it to take over? RS: It certainly seems to be heading that way! I like making and having the physical artifact of the inked board, and as of yet I can’t quite match that handmade look on my computer. It may ultimately depend on the style I’m trying to replicate. But as more and more of my preparatory work is done digitally, it seems like a natural progression to complete the process there. And some of my commercial work is already entirely digital. It sure helps with deadlines. I don’t like to be too nostalgic for old methods, and I’ve already happily embraced so many changes in the technology since I began making photostats, doing paste-ups, and cutting zip-a-tone when I did production work at Raw 20 years ago. Plus, I’ve read that even Blondie is now drawn digitally!

COMICS! LIVE! NOW! DF: You do something called Carousel, which is a

showcase for cartoonists that’s mostly in New York, but you also do it around the country at conventions. What is Carousel? RS: Carousel is a cartoon slideshow series that I host and produce. I present my comics as slideshows, one panel at a time, with music and live narration. It’s a very common and easy thing to do now. It got started partially because of my interest in performance art and fringe downtown theater in New York. There’s a wonderful scene down here, and I’ve done a lot of different theater stuff; I’m really interested in that. The connection between comics and theater goes (above) A new draft with tighter penciling, and it’s almost there. back to Winsor McCay, who did vaudeville shows (next page) The finishing inks are applied, and the page is finally ready to see print. ©2010 R. SIKORYAK with his Gertie the Dinosaur animations, and tons of cartoonists did chalk talks and things like that. composite them in Photoshop. Also, I like the clean copy I get Anyway, Carousel started with me doing my own presentafrom a traditional copier, and the work I’m parodying is bold tions of my readings of my comics, with the art projected behind enough to withstand the relatively crude technology. And photo- me. I describe them as, essentially, radio shows, live readings of copy paper is of far better quality than the newsprint the original comic strips with slide projections of the art. The idea is, somestrips were printed on! times I’ll do all the voices myself. I understand Vaughn Bode did this in the ’60s, was very famous for doing these presentations DF: What’s your coloring process? where he would read his comics. I’ve never seen them, obviousRS: Well, I scan the art at 1200 dpi and work in Photoshop. I do ly. That was before my time. In any case, my shows started with a quick retouching of the scan, fixing small errors and cleaning readings of my strips, and then that expanded, and I invited my up specks. If any lettering wasn’t inked by hand, or the font was- various friends who also would do presentations with visuals. For n’t already pasted on the original art, I’ll import the final letter- instance, there’s Brian Dewan, who does these absurd educationing from InDesign and add it to my scan in Photoshop. al filmstrips in a traditional format, that he writes and draws himThen I do the coloring in Photoshop, using a very simple self, as well as narrates and composes the music. And I have process. I generally stick to a palette that’s very close to tradi- other friends — both cartoonists and downtown performers — tional comic book coloring. I like to limit myself to 30%, 60%, who do other slideshow-type presentations. In the ’90s, we startand 100% tints of cyan, magenta, and yellow. I avoid black tints ed doing shows together, and now under the umbrella of entirely. Those CMY tints give you 64 colors altogether, nothing Carousel I do these traveling shows. fancy. Sometimes at the end I’ll add a pale tint over the whole page to replicate the warmth of old newsprint. That could be DF: It’s named after the old Kodak slide projectors and the something like 5% magenta and 15% yellow. carousels that would hold the slides, correct? 60

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RS: Exactly. And they’re almost completely defunct. Occasionally I’ll put a slide projector in the show just for old time’s sake, but now mostly it’s done on PowerPoint. I’ve also been able to convince and cajole cartoonists into reading their own work. I think there’s something powerful about seeing the creator onstage while their stories are being presented. I think it’s really gratifying for the cartoonist to see and hear the reaction to their work, and I think it’s also fun for the audience to see the work in that context. A lot of my audience are downtown theater types who aren’t necessarily into comics. I’m interested in reaching other audiences with my work, and it’s a way of introducing my work to people who wouldn’t normally see it, and a way to get me out of the house and performing again, at least on a small level. I’ve been doing Carousels for about twelve years. I do four to six shows a year at conventions, galleries, lots of different locations. Sometimes I open up for rock bands. I do most of my shows at a little theater called Dixon Place in New York that I’ve worked at for many, many years. DF: There must be some way to adapt that to the Internet, to

either just film the performances or do an online version. I think that would be a great thing to do. RS: You can see some of my readings on YouTube. I did a reading at The Strand bookstore, and they posted some of that online. But part of what’s fun for me about Carousel is the live element. The slide shows don’t really work as animation on their own, and watching a recording alone isn’t as much fun as having the live experience with the crowd. People have suggested adapting it for the Web, and maybe I’ll do it. But it’s another one of those projects where there’s not a ton of money or time to do it right. If I ever do one at a convention near you, you should come see it, because it’s a lot of fun. DF: I’ve seen them. They are, indeed, great fun.

As we get to the end of our time for this chat, any advice for aspiring young cartoonists? RS: My only advice to everybody is to just draw more. I mean, that’s even the advice for myself. I parody all of these great artists and I see what they can do, and they make it look so effortless. But it’s not effortless for me. I’ve certainly gotten faster over the years, but I attribute that to more practice. So it really is practice, practice, practice. So, read as much as you can, and draw as much as you can. DF: That’s a good place to end this chat. Thank you, R., Bob,

Robert Sikoryak. RS: Thank you, Mr. Fingeroth. Danny Fingeroth is Sr. VP of Education at New York’s Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art (MoCCA). He was the longtime editor of Marvel’s Spider-Man line. Danny created and edited Write Now! magazine for TwoMorrows, and is coeditor, with Roy Thomas, of the company’s upcoming (and amazing) book, The Stan Lee Universe. He’s the author of Superman on the Couch: What Superheroes Really Tell Us About Ourselves and Our Society and other books on comics. You can reach him at: Danfinger@aol.com. 62 DRAW! • FALL 2010

DOUG BRAITHWAITE INTERVIEW CONTINUES FROM PAGE 19

DRAW!: How would you say technically your job pencilling has

changed since the computer started coming into and in some ways dominating the way things are delivered and put together? Do you have input on coloring? DB: Apart from the processes I’ve mentioned, it hasn’t changed much at all. I still use the traditional approach of paper and pencil. I recently bought a 21-inch Cintiq, but that’s more for coloring than drawing. I am contemplating using the computer to rough out my pages, but at the moment I use it mainly to blow up my thumbnails. Computers are the way things are going in the business, and I realize that I have to learn to adapt it into my working methods. I’ve colored a few covers on the computer and even a few interior pages. I enjoy coloring and painting, but just trying to get my head around the coloring process on the computer has been a struggle, and I still find the technical aspects of it slightly unnatural. Finding the time to experiment and learn more while I’m on a regular monthly penciling schedule is almost impossible, but, with the help of my wife, I’m gradually getting to grips with it. She’s been great explaining the more confusing aspects for me and she’s very adept at coloring herself, so I think we may work together in the future, not least because she understands the way I work and what I’m trying to achieve — and having the colorist in house will mean I can shout at her if she does it wrong!

Seriously though, I admire artists like Brian Bolland who moved away from traditional tools and now creates fully rendered pieces on the computer — and you can’t tell the difference! Today, a lot of comics are produced totally on the computer, and there are some fantastic exponents of the medium, people like Steve Pugh — his comic Hotwire for Radical Comics is something else. I’ve known Steve for years and I’m really pleased this has been such a success for him. For the moment I’m happy to continue with my way of working, with minimal input by computer on the drawing side of things, but happy to use it for occasional coloring. I do try to give input on the coloring when I can. I make color and SFX notes on the edges of my pages for the colorist and I like to provide lots of ref and visual “mood boards” so they have a clear idea of what I’m looking for. Coloring is so important to the end result of a comic, so I try to pass on what I have in mind when I draw something and I always encourage the colorist to read the script for SFX indicated by the writer — you’d be

Doug penciled and inked a back-up story in Flash #234. With the inks, rather than doing traditional linework, Doug applied a full ink wash to the job. Colorist Alex Sinclair then incorporated the tones of the wash into his coloring. FLASH ™ AND © DC COMICS.

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In Doug’s cover roughs for Brave and the Bold #19 and #20 (right), he did quick ink washes to get a feel for the lighting and tonal balance of the pieces. Upon Doug’s suggestion, inker Bill Reinhold did a full ink wash over Doug’s pencils — as Doug had done himself the previous year with the Flash back-up story — rather than a standard inking job. GREEN LANTERN, PHANTOM STRANGER ™ AND © DC COMICS.

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for me to do the ink washes, so Bill Reinhold came on board to do inks, and I suggested Bill do the ink wash technique. Mike, you know Bill Reinhold is one of the unsung creators in this business; he’s a fantastic artist in his own right, as well as a great inker, and he cares passionately about his craft. I knew he was the only person capable of achieving the wash effect needed in the interiors — even though he didn’t know it himself. Bill was reluctant at first, but once he started on it he really got into it and produced some breathtaking ink washes over my pencils. Brian Reber and Art Lyon did an outstanding job on the colors, but Bill and I were always talking to them explaining how things should look. We all worked hard together, communicating regularly to get the best look and feel for that story, and I think it turned out to be one of the best four issues of the entire series. So, yes, I have input, but I’m also conscious that I have to avoid trying to tell them how to do their jobs. Colorists’ deadlines are incredibly tight and sometimes they can only do what they can do in the time they have, but hopefully they can take my guides on board and run with them. DRAW!: How was it working with

surprised how many colorists just don’t read the script. I’ve been particularly interested in the coloring since I’ve been doing the ink wash technique, as it needs some subtlety to be successful. I did a series of covers for Batman and the Outsiders using ink-wash and had a lot of communication with the colorists on these issues to give them an idea of what I was looking for on top of the ink washes and was very happy with their results. I wanted a similar approach on the interior pages of my next project: a four-issue story arc for Brave and the Bold written by fellow Brit, Dave Hine. But I knew it would be time-consuming

Alex Ross on Justice? That was a big, impressive project. How did you guys go about working out the art side of things? Did you change or alter what you were doing as a result of his finishes? I think that was an interesting division of labor and technique, and it seems that your work with Bill Reinhold has some of that, too, with Bill employing at times a grey tone wash. DB: As you’ll know, I had pencilled Universe X and Paradise X prior to Justice, so the relationship wasn’t new to me. The original plan for Justice was for me to pencil the series then Bill Reinhold to do the inking as we had done on the X series, but Alex had seen all my pencils from the X series and was always saying how much he admired my drawing ability and how much my pencils were crying out to be painted by him. We had similar interests with regards to certain artists and in our approaches to art, so it wasn’t such a surprise when he suggested we collaborate together so closely on the series. DRAW! • FALL 2010

I did have my reservations. From my point of view, for it to work it needed to be a true collaborative effort and egos would have to be put to one side. I was also concerned that my contribution in the pencils could be buried, not only because of his very distinctive painting style, but also because of his profile in the industry. The last thing I wanted was to put in all the hard work pencilling it only for my contribution to be diminished because of the profile of the person doing the colors. In a certain sense I guess I was right, as it seems to have been put around in some circles that I only did layouts. Anyway, we did a few test pieces that were used as the pin-ups of the characters in the back of the comics and for some of the reprint covers, and the results were great. He managed to keep the essence and energy of my work intact while adding his own flourishes on top. When it came down to drawing out the issues, I’d be sent over the art boards to work on — Strathmore 500 series Vellum finish. I mentioned before how different the paper was to the usual company boards I was used to, not only in texture but in scale as well. I had to work half-up again from the normal sized boards, and it took a little while to adjust to them. At that point I was still working everything out on the boards, and it was hard work for the first few weeks. But eventually I adjusted to the size and 66

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managed to “get my eye in.” I would work, on average, about a page a day, a little more for really intricate pages, and a day and a half to two days for double-page spreads. It was solid graft for two and a half years and a very intense period of work. Once I finished a batch of pages they’d be physically sent to Alex by FedEx. He’d then paint directly on the boards over my pencils. Although I would draw the faces in with the appropriate facial expressions, he would use his photo ref of his usual models for the faces of the main characters — Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, etc. — to get his photorealistic faces. When we began the project he sent me loads of photos of his models, dressed in costume, in various poses to use as reference, but as I’ve said, I don’t work that way, so after flicking through them once they ended up stuffed in a drawer for the duration. I could understand the benefits of using them, but I knew if we were to get the best from me I had to handle the pages the same way I always did. I knew he would change the faces to get his photorealistic effect, but it was all part of the deal. Sometimes you have to make compromises for something to work out for the better, and I was happy to look at the bigger picture for the sake of the project. We would chat on the phone constantly, analyzing the story and art, changing little details here and there. We’d confer on designs, such as the Batmobile and Batboat, and I’d chip

in my two cents with development sketches. Occasionally he’d send me rough designs he had in mind for specific scenes and I would do my version of them, but I can honestly say the vast majority of what you see in Justice is how I envisaged it in my pencils. I think the combination of my spontaneous pencils with his lush paints was very successful. With Bill, we’ve always had a great understanding: I draw, he inks. No, seriously, I consider myself fortunate to have worked with Bill on some of my best projects of the last ten years, from the Earth X series right through to Wolverine: Origins. He understands what I want to see in the pages. His artistic sensibilities are similar to mine and, like me, he’s not frightened to push himself, the beautiful ink washes he did on Brave and the Bold being a good example of that. We both like to see good draftsmanship and storytelling and neither of us are afraid to experiment and try new things. The only bad thing about this is he’s now pencilling and inking a project for Dark Horse, so now I’m having to push myself even more to fill the gap he’s left!

my work may tighten up. I’m still experimenting, trying to get the balance right with the wash work, but I’m happy with the way things are going. And on a business level, I’m more valuable to the company as a penciller who can put in a monthly title on time. So even if I wanted to there would be that time constraint. DRAW!: I know you are always busy and working hard, but do

you do anything to keep fresh or stay in art shape? The grind of a monthly comic can impose a time factor that can dull the edge

DRAW!: And what about ink-

ing? You’ve worked with some of the best artists ever, and it seems to me the reason you worked so well with them was that they drew so well. Ever think about inking your own work? DB: From my experience, the best inkers are always good artists themselves. I’d love to ink myself, but I’m not so sure I’d be happy with the results. I’ve spent so much of my career penciling it would take me too long to get it to the standard I’d be happy with, and I honestly don’t think I’d find the time to do it properly — it always boils down to time. Inking is a real skill and I admire people who do it well. I’m enjoying working with ink wash, which allows me to pick out tones and create form that I’d normally not be able to achieve with traditional inking. I see my work heading more in that direction; it’s a more immediate process for me and is a nice balance between painting and inking. I like the fluidity of the process and if I were to go back to pen and brush I’m afraid

DRAW! • FALL 2010

of the pencil and the mind. DB: I do spend a lot of time behind the art board — usually up to twelve hours a day — and there are periods where I don’t leave the house for days on end when deadlines are pressing, but I’ve never been one to keep still and I enjoy doing things outside of comics to keep my mind fresh. I try to keep myself as active as possible and enjoy playing sports: football and cricket. That’s when I forget about work and everything else and just have fun. We live in the countryside, in hill country, so just going for a walk up the hills clears my mind. As far as art is concerned, I go

to galleries and exhibitions in towns I visit, and you will be pleased to hear, Mike, I fit in a life drawing class when I can, but, again, it depends on my work schedule whether I’m able to attend. Life drawing helps break up the routine of drawing one way, and I find it therapeutic working with different medium and pushing myself to experiment, and also seeing how the other people in the class approach their work is fascinating. DRAW!: When you get stuck for creative solutions, what’s your process to find the right idea or angle? For many younger artists, they really get stuck here and get caught in a morass, as it were, when they hit that difficult panel or drawing. DB: When I have a block and find it difficult to put anything constructive down on paper, I just step away from the art board and try and relax for a while. I’ll pick up a good art book or maybe watch a film and try and get inspiration from that. If all else fails I just go out for a walk or even go into the city with my wife, anything to just try and step out of that rut I feel I might be in. Don’t beat yourself up over it. It doesn’t do you any good, and you have to remember everybody has days like this. Once I’m recharged, it’s surprising how quickly I work, and the things I was worried about one day, pulling my non-existent hair out over, can seem so simple to fix the next. However, if the deadlines are pressing I just have to knuckle down and work through it. Tough, but that goes with being a professional in any business. And if all else fails, my wife is usually happy to point out in passing where I’ve gone wrong. She’ll walk past the art board and glance at it and say, “That panel doesn’t work, maybe you could try it like this.” And, much as it pains me to say it, through gritted teeth, she is often right! It’s easy for artists to get too close to their work, especially when it can be so detailed and labor intensive and sometimes it helps for someone to look over your shoulder and point it out.

More pencils from Doug’s two-part story for Brave and the Bold.

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DOUG BRAITHWAITE

Gallery of Justice

DRAW! • FALL 2010

For the most part, Alex stayed fairly true to Doug’s pencils, albeit often changing facial structure and lighting. But occassionally he would make changes to individual panel compositions or even whole page layouts, as shown in these two pages from Justice #10. ALL CHARACTERS ™ AND © DC COMICS.

DRAW! • FALL 2010

COMING IN JANUARY WALTER SIMONSON ROCKETS IN FOR

DRAW! #20 The professional “how-to” magazine on comics and animation gets unprecendented access behind-the-scenes with comics icon WALTER SIMONSON, as the artist takes us into his studio for an interview and demo of his working processes. Also, pro inker and former Rough Stuff editor BOB McLEOD presents another of his regular "Rough Critiques" of a newcomer’s work, while former Write Now! magazine editor DANNY FINGEROTH presents his ongoing feature spotlighting the top Writer/Artists in the comics industry—this time featuring AL JAFFEE! Then, JAMAR NICHOLAS presents another “Crusty Critic” column, cluing you in on the best art supplies and tool technology, while MIKE MANLEY and BRET BLEVINS assemble another installment of their indispensable Comic Art Bootcamp lessons, sure to offer insights to new and experienced artists alike! (Edited by Mike Manley • 84 pages with color, $7.95) ORION

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ALTER EGO #95

ALTER EGO #96

ALTER EGO #97

BRICKJOURNAL #12

“Racers” theme issue, with building tips on race cars by the ARVO BROTHERS, interviews with the LEGO Group on TOP SECRET UPCOMING SETS (we can’t say anything yet about them, except... camels), photos from NEW YORK TOY FAIR 2010 and other event reports, instructions and columns on MINIFIGURE CUSTOMIZATION and MICRO BUILDING, builder spotlights, LEGO HISTORY, and more! Now bi-monthly!

“Back To School” issue, with educational LEGO items, a review of the WeDo system, LEGO RELATED BOOKS, school sculptures by NATHAN SAWAYA, reports from the LEGO IDEA HOUSE, instructions to build a SCHOOL BUS, minifigure customizations, spotlights on LEGO Design byME models, building standards used for the Moonbase standard for Space, Great Ball Contraption for Technic builders, and much more!

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $8.95 Now shipping!

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $8.95 Ships October 2010

ALTER EGO #98

ALTER EGO #99

(NOW WITH 16 COLOR PAGES!) Marvel’s NOT BRAND ECHH madcap parody mag from 1967-69, examined with rare art & artifacts by ANDRU, COLAN, BUSCEMA, DRAKE, EVERETT, FRIEDRICH, KIRBY, LEE, the SEVERIN siblings, SPRINGER, SUTTON, THOMAS, TRIMPE, and more, GEORGE KASHDAN interview conclusion, FCA, MICHAEL T. GILBERT and MR. MONSTER, and more! Cover by MARIE SEVERIN!

(NOW WITH 16 COLOR PAGES!) Focus on Archie’s 1960s MIGHTY CRUSADERS, with vintage art and artifacts by JERRY SIEGEL, PAUL REINMAN, SIMON & KIRBY, JOHN ROSENBERGER, tributes to the Crusaders by BOB FUJITANE, GEORGE TUSKA, BOB LAYTON, and others! Interview with MELL LAZARUS, FCA, MICHAEL T. GILBERT, and more! Cover by MIKE MACHLAN!

(NOW WITH 16 COLOR PAGES!) The non-EC Horror Comics of the 1950s! From Menace and House of Mystery to The Thing!, we present vintage art and artifacts by EVERETT, BRIEFER, DITKO, MANEELY, COLAN , MESKIN, MOLDOFF, HEATH, POWELL, COLE, SIMON & KIRBY, FUJITANI, and others, plus FCA , MR. MONSTER and more, behind a creepy, eerie cover by BILL EVERETT!

(NOW WITH 16 COLOR PAGES!) Spotlight on Superman’s first editor WHITNEY ELLSWORTH, longtime Krypto-editor MORT WEISINGER remembered by his daughter, an interview with Superman writer ALVIN SCHWARTZ, art by JOE SHUSTER, WAYNE BORING, CURT SWAN, AL PLASTINO, and NEAL ADAMS, plus MR. MONSTER, FCA (FAWCETT COLLECTORS OF AMERICA), and a new cover by JERRY ORDWAY!

(NOW WITH 16 COLOR PAGES!) GEORGE TUSKA showcase issue on his career at Lev Gleason, Marvel, and in comics strips through the early 1970s—CRIME DOES NOT PAY, BUCK ROGERS, IRON MAN, AVENGERS, HERO FOR HIRE, and more! Interview with 1950s Timely/Marvel editor AL SULMAN (“personal associate of STAN LEE!”), MR. MONSTER’S COMIC CRYPT, FCA (Fawcett Collectors of America), and more!

(84-page magazine with COLOR) $7.95 US • Now shipping!

(84-page magazine with COLOR) $7.95 US • Ships December 2010

(84-page magazine with COLOR) $7.95 US • Ships January 2011

TwoMorrows. Celebrating The Art & History Of Comics. (& LEGO! ) ®

BACK ISSUE #43

BACK ISSUE #44

BACK ISSUE #45

KIRBY COLLECTOR #55

(NOW 8x/YEAR, WITH 16 COLOR PAGES!) “Jungle and barbarian” issue! Shanna the She-Devil feature and gallery, JONES and ANDERSON on Ka-Zar, LARRY HAMA interview, Beowulf, Claw the Unconquered, Korg 70,000 B.C., Red Sonja, Rima the Jungle Girl, art and commentary by AZZARELLO, BOYETTE, CHAN, GULACY, KUBERT, MICHELINIE, REDONDO, ROY THOMAS, WINDSOR-SMITH, cover by FRANK CHO!

(NOW 8x/YEAR, WITH 16 COLOR PAGES!) “Spider-Man in the Bronze Age!” Drug issues, resurrection of Green Goblin and Gwen Stacy, Marvel Team-Up, Spectacular Spider-Man, Spidey Super Stories, CBS and Japanese TV shows, Clone Saga, CONWAY, ANDRU, BAGLEY, SAL BUSCEMA, DeFALCO, FINGEROTH, GIL KANE, STAN LEE, LEIBER, MOONEY, ROMITA SR., SALICRUP, SAVIUK, STERN, cover by BOB LARKIN!

(NOW 8x/YEAR, WITH 16 COLOR PAGES!) “Odd Couples!” O’NEIL and ADAMS’ Green Lantern/Green Arrow, Englehart’s Justice League of America, Daredevil and Black Widow, Power Man and Iron Fist, Vision and Scarlet Witch, Cloak and Dagger, and… Aquaman and Deadman (?!). With AUSTIN, COLAN, CONWAY, COWAN, DILLIN, HOWELL, LEONARDI, SKEATES, and more. New cover by NEAL ADAMS!

“Kirby Goes To Hollywood!” SERGIO ARAGONÉS and MELL LAZARUS recall Kirby’s BOB NEWHART TV show cameo, comparing the recent STAR WARS films to New Gods, RUBY & SPEARS interviewed, Jack’s encounters with FRANK ZAPPA, PAUL McCARTNEY, and JOHN LENNON, MARK EVANIER’s regular column, a Kirby pencil art gallery, a Golden Age Kirby story, and more! Kirby cover inked by PAUL SMITH!

(84-page magazine with COLOR) $7.95 US • Now shipping!

(84-page magazine with COLOR) $7.95 US • Ships November 2010

(84-page tabloid magazine) $10.95 US Ships October 2010

TwoMorrows Publishing 10407 Bedfordtown Drive Raleigh, NC 27614 USA 919-449-0344 FAX: 919-449-0327 E-mail: twomorrow@aol.com www.twomorrows.com

• Back Issue! now 8x per year! • BrickJournal now 6x per year! • Back Issue! & Alter Ego now with color! • New lower international shipping rates!

WHE N YO ORD U ONL ER INE!

NEW BOOKS FROM TWOMORROWS!

NOW G! IN SHIPP

IN SHIPSV.! O N

CARMINE INFANTINO

PENCILER, PUBLISHER, PROVOCATEUR CARMINE INFANTINO is the artistic and publishing visionary whose mark on the comic book industry pushed conventional boundaries. As a penciler and cover artist, he was a major force in defining the Silver Age of comics, co-creating the modern Flash and resuscitating the Batman franchise in the 1960s. As art director and publisher, he steered DC Comics through the late 1960s and 1970s, one of the most creative and fertile periods in their long history. Join historian and inker JIM AMASH (Alter Ego magazine, Archie Comics) and ERIC NOLEN-WEATHINGTON (Modern Masters book series) as they document the life and career of Carmine Infantino, in the most candid and thorough interview this controversial living legend has ever given, lavishly illustrated with the incredible images that made him a star. CARMINE INFANTINO: PENCILER, PUBLISHER, PROVOCATEUR shines a light on the artist’s life, career, and contemporaries, and uncovers details about the comics industry never made public until now. The hardcover edition includes a dust jacket, custom endleaves, plus a 16-PAGE FULL-COLOR SECTION not found in the softcover edition. New Infantino cover inked by TERRY AUSTIN!

(224-page softcover) $26.95 • (240-page hardcover with COLOR) $46.95

THE STAN LEE UNIVERSE

Looks at the life and career of comics’ most controversial inker, known for the atmospheric feel he gave his work, and the shortcuts he took. With commentary by Colletta’s friends, family, and co-workers.

Face front, true believers! THE STAN LEE UNIVERSE is the ultimate repository of interviews with and mementos about Marvel Comics’ fearless leader! From his Soapbox to the box office, the Smilin’ One literally changed the face of comic books and pop culture, and this tome presents numerous rare and unpublished interviews with Stan, plus interviews with top luminaries of the comics industry, including JOHN ROMITA SR. & JR., TODD McFARLANE, ROY THOMAS, DENNIS O’NEIL, GENE COLAN, AL JAFFEE, LARRY LIEBER, JERRY ROBINSON, and MICHAEL USLAN discussing his vital importance to the field he helped shape. And as a bonus, direct from Stan’s personal archives, you’ll see rare photos, sample scripts and plots, and many other unseen items, such as: PERSONAL CORRESPONDENCE between Stan and such prominent figures as: JAMES CAMERON, OLIVER STONE, RAY BRADBURY, DENIS KITCHEN, ALAIN RESNAIS and (Sinatra lyricist and pal) SAMMY CAHN! Transcripts of 1960s RADIO INTERVIEWS with Stan during the early Marvel era (one co-featuring JACK KIRBY, and one with Stan debating Dr. Fredric Wertham’s partner in psychological innovation and hating comics)! Rarely seen art by legends including KIRBY, JOHN ROMITA SR. and JOE MANEELY! Plot, script, and balloon placements from the 1978 SILVER SURFER GRAPHIC NOVEL, including comprehensive notes from Lee and Kirby about the story. Notes by RICHARD CORBEN and WILL EISNER for Marvel projects that never came to be! Pages from a SILVER SURFER screenplay done by Stan for ROGER CORMAN! Notes and thumbnail sketches by JOHN BUSCEMA from HOW TO DRAW COMICS THE MARVEL WAY, and more! Excelsior! (Co-edited by ROY THOMAS and DANNY FINGEROTH.) Hardcover includes a deluxe dust jacket, plus 16 EXTRA FULL-COLOR PAGES of rare Archive Material!

(112-page softcover) $14.95

(176-page softcover with COLOR) $26.95 • (192-page hardcover with COLOR) $39.95

OW AND PNING: SHIP

THE THIN BLACK LINE:

VINCE COLLETTA

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