Draw #22 by TwoMorrows Publishing

SCOTT WILLIAMS FRANK MILLER MILLER & KLAUS JANSON

82658 27764

BOB McLEOD

PLUS:

JAMAR NICHOLAS

DIGITAL

NS DRAW! (edited by MIKE MANLEY) is the professional EDITIO BLE A “HOW-TO” magazine on comics, cartooning, and IL AVA NLY animation. Each issue features in-depth INTERVIEWS FOR O 5 and DEMOS from top pros on all aspects of graphic $2.9 storytelling, as well as such DRAW! #3 skills as layout, penciling, inking, Inking by DICK GIORDANO, interlettering, coloring, Photoshop techview with animator/director CHRIS niques, plus web guides, tips, tricks, BAILEY, “how-to” on web comics, BRET BLEVINS’ “Figures in Action,” and a handy reference source—this PAUL RIVOCHE on “Design for magazine has it all! comics and animation,” a discussion of trademarks and copyrights, NOTE: Some issues contain nudity for drawing tips, and more! purposes of figure drawing. (80-page magazine) SOLD OUT INTENDED FOR MATURE READERS. (Digital Edition) $2.95

DRAW! #7

DRAW! #8

DRAW! #9

DRAW! #4

DRAW! #5

DRAW! #6

Interview with ERIK LARSEN, KEVIN NOWLAN on drawing and inking techniques, DAVE COOPER’s coloring techniques in Photoshop, BRET BLEVINS tutorial on Figure Composition, PAUL RIVOCHE on the Design Process, reviews of comics drawing papers, and more!

MIKE WIERINGO interview, BENDIS and OEMING on how they create “Powers”, BRET BLEVINS shows “How to draw great hands”, “The illusion of depth in design” by PAUL RIVOCHE, art books reviewed by TERRY BEATTY, plus reviews of the best art supplies, and more!

Interview & demo with BILL WRAY, STEPHEN DeSTEFANO interview, BRET BLEVINS shows “How to draw the human figure in light and shadow,” Photoshop tutorial by CELIA CALLE, inking tips by MIKE MANLEY, reviews of the best art supplies, links, and more!

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DRAW! #10

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Interview/demo by DAN BRERETON, ZACH TRENHOLM on caricaturing, “Drawing In Adobe Illustrator” demo by ALBERTO RUIZ, “The Power of Sketching” by BRET BLEVINS, “Designing with light and shadow” by PAUL RIVOCHE, reviews of art supplies, links, and more!

Interview & demo by MATT HALEY, TOM BANCROFT & ROB CORLEY on character design, “Drawing In Adobe Illustrator” by ALBERTO RUIZ, “Draping The Human Figure” by BRET BLEVINS, a new COMICS SECTION, International Spotlight on JOSÉ LOUIS AGREDA, and more!

WRITE NOW #8 crossover! MIKE MANLEY & DANNY FINGEROTH create a comic from script to print, BANCROFT & CORLEY on bringing characters to life, Adobe Illustrator with ALBERTO RUIZ, Noel Sickles’ work examined, PvP’s SCOTT KURTZ, art supply reviews, and more!

RON GARNEY interview & demo, GRAHAM NOLAN on creating newspaper strips, TODD KLEIN and others discuss lettering, “Draping The Human Figure, Part Two” by BRET BLEVINS, ALBERTO RUIZ on Adobe Illustrator, interview with MARK McKENNA, links, and more!

STEVE RUDE on comics & drawing, ROQUE BALLESTEROS on Flash animation, JIM BORGMAN on his daily comic strip Zits, BRET BLEVINS and MIKE MANLEY on “Drawing On Life”, Adobe Illustrator tips with ALBERTO RUIZ, links, a color section and more! New RUDE cover!

KYLE BAKER on merging traditional and digital art, MIKE HAWTHORNE on his work, “Making Perspective Work For You” by BRET BLEVINS and MIKE MANLEY, Photoshop techniques with ALBERTO RUIZ, THE VENTURE BROTHERS, links, and more! New BAKER cover!

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DRAW! #13

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DRAW! #17

DRAW! #18

Demo of painting methods by ALEX HORLEY, interview and demo by COLLEEN COOVER, a look behindthe-scenes on Adult Swim’s MINORITEAM, regular features on drawing by BRET BLEVINS and MIKE MANLEY, links, color section and more!

In-depth interviews and demos with DOUG MAHNKE, OVI NEDELCU (Pigtale, WB Animation), STEVE PURCELL (Sam and Max), MIKE MANLEY and BRET BLEVINS’ COMIC ART BOOTCAMP on “Using Black to Power up Your Pages”, product reviews, and more!

Covers major schools offering comic art as part of their curriculum, in an ultimate overview of collegiate-level comic art classes! Plus, a “how-to” demo/interview with BILL REINHOLD, MIKE MANLEY and BRET BLEVINS’ COMIC ART BOOTCAMP series, and more!

In-depth interview with HOWARD CHAYKIN, behind the drawing board and animation desk with JAY STEPHENS, COMIC ART BOOTCAMP on HOW TO USE REFERENCE and WORKING FROM PHOTOS (by BRET BLEVINS and MIKE MANLEY), and more!

Interview and tutorial with Scott Pilgrim’s BRYAN LEE O’MALLEY on how he creates the acclaimed series, learn how B.P.R.D.’s GUY DAVIS creates his series, more Comic Art Bootcamp: Learning from The Great Cartoonists by BRET BLEVINS and MIKE MANLEY, reviews, and more!

Interview & demo by R.M. GUERA, Cartoon Network’s JAMES TUCKER on the 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!

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DRAW! #19

DRAW! #20

DRAW! #21

DOUG BRAITHWAITE demo and interview, DANNY FINGEROTH begins a new regular feature on writer/artists, starting off with R. SIKORYAK, BOB McLEOD critiques a newcomer’s work, JAMAR NICHOLAS reviews art supplies and tool tech, MANLEY and BLEVINS’ COMIC ART BOOTCAMP gets your penciling in shape, plus Web links, reviews, and more!

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!

Urban Barbarian DAN PANOSIAN talks shop about his gritty, designinspired work with editor MIKE MANLEY, DANNY FINGEROTH interviews “Billy Dogma” writer/artist DEAN HASPIEL, plus more of MIKE MANLEY and BRET BLEVINS’ “Comic Art Bootcamp”, a “Rough Critique” of a newcomer’s work by BOB McLEOD, product and art supply reviews by JAMAR NICHOLAS, and more!

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

SPRING 2012

CONTENTS

VOL. 1, NO. 22 Editor-in-Chief • Michael Manley Designer • Eric Nolen-Weathington Publisher • John Morrow Logo Design • John Costanza Proofreader • Eric Nolen-Weathington Front Cover Illustration • Scott Williams DRAW! Spring 2012, Vol. 1, No. 22 was produced by Action Planet, Inc. and published by TwoMorrows Publishing. Michael Manley, Editor, John Morrow, Publisher. Editorial Address: DRAW! Magazine, c/o Michael Manley, 430 Spruce Ave., Upper Darby, PA 19082. Subscription Address: TwoMorrows Publishing, 10407 Bedfordtown Dr., Raleigh, NC 27614.

SCOTT WILLIAMS Mike Manley interviews the influential inker, and Scott goes step by step through his process

COMIC ART BOOTCAMP “Illustration” by Mike Manley

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 ©2012 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.

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FRANK MILLER Danny Fingeroth interviews the industry Legend

MILLER/JANSON An art gallery featuring one of the greatest collaborations in comics’ history

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THE CRUSTY CRITIC Jamar Nicholas reviews the tools of the trade. This month: Ink.

ROUGH CRITIQUE Bob McLeod gives practical advice and tips on how to improve your work

DRAWING AHEAD ’d like to thank everyone who made this issue of DRAW! one of the best ever in my opinion. Hats off to Scott Williams, who took time out of his very busy schedule to share his thoughts on inking and his awesome step-by-step demos. Big kudos for my old Darkhawk partner, Danny Fingeroth, and comics legend Frank Miller for this issue’s long-awaited interview. I’ve wanted to cover Miller in the pages of DRAW! from the very beginning, and here he is at last! A special shout out and thanks goes to Klaus Janson for opening his personal files to really illuminate his collaboration with Miller in this issue’s gallery section; it’s great to get a glimpse into their iconic run on Daredevil. They certainly were one of the great teams of comics on one of the best runs of comics in Marvel’s storied history, and their work still reaches out and influences the writers and artists working in comics today. Thanks also go out to my regular crew of Bob McLeod, Jamar Nicholas, Bret Blevins, and, of course, John Morrow and Eric Nolen-Weathington for putting the issue together and getting it out to you. Make sure you visit our blog, draw-magazine. blogspot.com, and check in for updates and additional art, as well as some web-only interviews I have planned. As always your feedback is critical and wanted. Who are the artists you’d like to see interviewed? What are the tutorials and lessons and skills you’d like to see covered? Let me know!

Artistic Interpretation by Bret Blevins

E-mail: mike@drawmagazine.com Website: www.draw-magazine.blogspot.com Snail mail: DRAW! Magazine 430 Spruce Avenue Upper Darby, PA 19082

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COMING IN JULY: DRAW! #23 DRAW! #23 (80 pages with color, $7.95), the professional “how-to” magazine on comics and animation, gets webbed up with top flight penciler PATRICK OLIFFE, as he demos how he produces such comics as Spider-Girl, his recent revival of Dark Horse’s Mighty Samson, and digital comics for Marvel. Then, JORGE KHOURY presents a comprehensive look at the career of AL WILLIAMSON, as the man and his work are remembered by ANGELO TORRES, BRET BLEVINS, MARK SCHULTZ, TOM YEATES, ALEX ROSS, RICK VEITCH, and others, including an examination of Al’s working process. Plus, there’s another installment of MIKE MANLEY and BRET BLEVINS’ “Comic Art Bootcamp”, a “Rough Critique” of a newcomer’s work by BOB McLEOD, product and art supply reviews by “Crusty Critic” JAMAR NICHOLAS, and more! Edited by MIKE MANLEY. SUBSCRIPTIONS: Four issues in the US: $30 Standard, $40 First Class, $11.80 Digital Only NEW LOWER RATES OUTSIDE THE US: Canada: $43, Elsewhere: $54 Surface, $78 Airmail

TwoMorrows. A New Day For Comics Fandom. TwoMorrows • 10407 Bedfordtown Drive • Raleigh, NC 27614 USA • 919-449-0344 • FAX: 919-449-0327 • E-mail: twomorrow@aol.com • www.twomorrows.com

Interview conducted by Mike Manley and transcribed by Steven Tice

PUNISHER ™ AND © MARVEL CHARACTERS, INC.

n recent times there has been quite a lot of talk about the state and future of comic art and the comic book inker. Will comics still be inked in a traditional way, or will everything go digital, the penciler tweaking things in Photoshop and thus not needing an inker? A huge ground shift has happened in the craft of comics in many areas; the digital wave has hit every aspect, from production to the way pencilers and inkers work together. Now pages don’t always physically leave the penciler to be inked as they have for decades. Instead pages are often sent via email. Long gone are the days of pages sent only via FedEx or the mail. The rise of the inker in the ’60s at the Big Two, Marvel and DC, really developed and enshrined inkers who set house styles for each company, chiefly Joe Sinnott at Marvel and Murphy Anderson followed by Dick Giordano at DC. Over the next two decades the role of the inker grew even more important in the production of comic book art, the next generation of inker being trained at times by or being assistants of the previous generation. The ’80s and ’90s saw the coming of superstar inkers like Terry Austin, Joe Rubinstein, and Klaus Janson, to just name a few, and pencilers actually vied to have specific inkers on their work. The style of comic art also changed, becoming slicker and even more detailed. In the late ’80s Scott Williams began his rise to the top of the inking profession with his work teamed with penciler Jim Lee. Williams continued to gain popularity and influence to become perhaps the most important and dominant inker style-wise of the ’90s, thanks to his work on X-Men. Williams became even more influential when the top Marvel artists bolted to form Image Comics, which became the dominate publisher in terms of artistic style. DRAW! Magazine editor, Mike Manley, caught up with the always-in-demand Scott Williams to talk about the profession of inking, past, present, and future. DRAW! • SPRING 2012

(above) A double-page spread from Uncanny X-Men #267, early in Jim Lee and Scott’s collaboration as the title’s art team. Courtesy of Heritage Auctions. (next page) This cover for Conan #220 marks the third published appearance of the team of Jim Lee and Scott Williams. Courtesy of Heritage Auctions. X-MEN AND ALL RELATED CHARACTERS ™ AND © MARVEL CHARACTERS, INC. CONAN ™ AND © CONAN PROPERTIES INTERNATIONAL, LLC.

DRAW!: So what are you working on today? SCOTT WILLIAMS: I am working on Justice League over Jim

However, I wasn’t working with Jim exclusively during all those years by any stretch.

Lee. DRAW!: Right, there were a bunch of other artists you worked DRAW!: Is that going to be an ongoing series, or are you just

with, but he is probably your longest collaboration—

doing a couple of issues? SW: Have you followed any of the news about the DC relaunch?

SW: Oh, without a doubt. And, clearly, he’s the elephant in the

DRAW!: Yeah, but I’m not up on the specifics of each title. SW: Got it. Yes, Jim Lee, Geoff Johns, and I are doing a Justice

League re-launch. It’s part of the big new push from DC in 2011. They are really trying to do some different things, and it should be cool. DRAW!: So how long have you been working with Jim, now?

About 20 years, right? SW: Yeah. We started off on a couple issues of Punisher War Journal, whenever that was; it must have been the late ’80s. And then we did a few fill-ins of Uncanny X-Men, again, probably right around 1990, and then right after that we got a regular X-Men gig. So, you’re talking over 20 years at this point.

DRAW! • SPRING 2012

room from the standpoint of, y’know, there hasn’t been anybody bigger than Jim over the course of the last 20 years, so he’s definitely the guy that I’m most known for, without a doubt. DRAW!: What would you say, if anything, is the difference

between inking Jim now and inking Jim then? SW: I think that there is definitely a difference. And I don’t

know how much of it is a function of the way he draws versus a function of the way that I ink. And, also, just the natural progression that an artist goes through, some of it calculated, some of it just organic. People go through transitions where what was important in the past changes, and what’s important now evolves. DRAW!: So what are the differences of importance now?

DRAW! • SPRING 2012

SW: Right now, to me, the most important thing is more funda-

mental solidity in the drawing, which is translated into solidity into the inking, and I don’t really differentiate the two. I think you have to have solid drawing skills, and drafting skills, and light logic, and rules of perspective, in order to ink properly. And I think, in the early years, when I was still figuring things out, I was much more interested in surface detail, in making stuff shine and pop, and style for style’s sake—experimentation with different types of ciphers and markings that at times were probably not to the advantage of the drawing. A lot more of the “look at me” sort of mentality. I wasn’t really consciously doing that—it was a function of learning all the different things I could do with my inking tools— but, at the same time, I know I was trying to make a name for myself in the industry, and trying to differentiate myself from other inkers, in particular, in the industry, and show off a style where it would be instantly recognizable. All the guys that I admired had a very instantly recognizable style, and I wanted mine to be just as recognizable and unique. It just so happened

that the guys that I was working with—whether it was Jim Lee, or Whilce Portacio, or even Brent Anderson early on, and a bunch of these guys from my early days—had penciling styles that lent themselves to my inking style, whereas there were other pencil artists I might have been ill suited or too heavy-handed on. It wouldn’t have worked, or at least it wouldn’t have worked unless I really subordinated myself to the pencils. I don’t think, early on, my inking style would have worked on, say, John Buscema or Joe Kubert or someone like that. I was actually set to do John Buscema projects three different times and they all didn’t happen for one reason or another in the end, which is now a huge regret! At the same time, I wonder if it might have just been oil and water, and, obviously, not every inker and penciler combination works. That aside, I just happened to hit it with guys who were of like mind and were able to absorb some of my garishness and sort of flashiness, and the styles melded in such a way that I was able to show off my skills and my approach without the overpowering nature of it being problematic. DRAW!: Well, it’s funny, because when I look at

comics, and I look at the profession of inking, I always break it down into the three schools. And there’s sort of two epochs: the comic book and comic strip, with the comics coming out of the strips. Marvel had the Joe Sinnott style, and you could toss Frank Giacoia in there, and then DC had the Neal Adams/Dick Giordano style, which also goes back to Stan Drake and Al Williamson and Alex Raymond. All those classic comic strip guys really came up with the language, let’s say, the way of crosshatching, and the way of rendering clothes, and all that. And then, out of that, came guys like Terry Austin and Klaus Janson, who were assistants to Neal Adams and Dick Giordano. SW: And Joe Rubinstein, as well. DRAW!: Yes, and then I look at you as being sort of

the next generation of inkers. SW: For better or worse. [laughter] DRAW!: Terry Austin was the guy who for a long

time was the champion inker, and everybody wanted Terry to ink their stuff, and he plussed their stuff. And he married pretty good with most of the modern guys, from Byrne all the way to—I always liked what he did on Rick Leonardi. SW: Yeah. And Michael Golden and Marshal Rogers, amongst others. Just great stuff. DRAW!: But he was still sort of using those tech-

Scott inked Brent Anderson, among others, for Strikeforce: Morituri in the late ’80s.

ALL CHARACTERS ™ AND © MARVEL CHARACTERS, INC.

DRAW! • SPRING 2012

niques and philosophies.... SW: Well, he was Dick Giordano’s assistant, so his stuff sort of seems morphed from Dick. His style evolved, as everybody’s does. Some of the really early Terry Austin stuff, you can definitely get that Giordano/Adams vibe. I think it’s more obvious to professionals than the fans, but I definitely pick up on it. But he very quickly evolved his own style. And it’s the same thing with Klaus Janson. He had a very distinct Giordano look, and, even as his style evolved,

you could still see the trace elements continue to linger. And probably even to the current day, he probably sees it as being very clear. Klaus definitely became a unique inker, but the root of what he learned from Giordano and Adams was not forgotten, and the lineage is still intact to this day. From a lineage standpoint, I am also a descendant of Neal Adams. I think Neal Adams’ ink line is a source point for many later generations of inkers. Of course, you can go back further to Stan Drake’s line; it really depends on how far back you want to go, and, obviously, before Stan there was somebody else. Just for practical discussion purposes you can go from Stan Drake to Neal Adams to Dick Giordano and then, for me, Klaus Janson. I was a huge Adams fan, but the guy who I idolized even more than Adams and the guy whose comics I had laying out in front of me as I was really learning to ink professionally for the first time—not just playing with ink, but really trying to figure things out—was Klaus Janson. Now, the fact that my work—then, in particular—didn’t look like Klaus at all ended up played to my advantage in the long run. You see, I tried real hard to not just achieve a Klaus Janson vibe in my young work, but to duplicate it in form and substance. Of course, I failed at it miserably, but it was a starting point, and the end result of my failures basically put me on a path to my own individual style and approaches based on that which I tried so hard to copy. All young artists look at those who came before them for guidance and inspiration. And while my failure at becoming the next Janson was a complete failure, I think in hindsight probably that played to my advantage in that my own sensibilities ended up ruling and my own limitations ended up forcing me to think of new solutions to drawing and inking problems, and, Jim Lee pencils and Scott Williams inks for Uncanny X-Men #271, page 9. Courtesy of www.ha.com. as a result, my style and the approach that I ALL CHARACTERS ™ AND © MARVEL CHARACTERS, INC. took became individualized and became recognizable as unique. I think if I’d have come in as just a Klaus And the irony of it is, as the years have progressed, I probably have Janson wannabe and too close to that source material, I don’t more Klaus in my line now than I ever did back then. Full circle. think I would have—it’s hard to say, but it’s hard to believe that I would have had the level of acceptance and relative success that DRAW!: He was one of the guys that I picked up on and was I did. And just to be clear, Klaus wasn’t the only ink line that influenced by a lot, too, when I was younger, and I still like his informed my approach. I looked at everyone and studied so many stuff quite a bit. For me there are two periods of Janson. There’s artists and was a real student of the art form. I picked up tons of the period when he was first starting, when he used much, much inking tips from the likes of Barry Smith, Bill Sienkiewicz, P. thinner lines and everything was much tighter. And then the later Craig Russell, Whilce Portacio, Walter Simonson, Kevin much more bold inker. Nowlan, and on and on. But at the end of the day, Klaus was the SW: I don’t know what exactly influenced his creative evolution, guy that I looked at and studied and really tried to figure out. but his work did not remain static. Something that caught my eye

DRAW! • SPRING 2012 7

Jim Lee pencils and Scott Williams inks for Uncanny X-Men #273, page 27. Courtesy of Heritage Auctions (www.ha.com).

DRAW! • SPRING 2012

ALL CHARACTERS ™ AND © MARVEL CHARACTERS, INC.

from the beginning is that Klaus was always very conscious of light logic throughout his career, and whoever he would ink, he really showed off his verisimilitude and his understanding of light and core shadows and double lighting. Very dramatic, very Neal-Adams-y, which I’m sure he got from both Neal and from Dick. I was always amazed at the work he would do with Gil Kane and John Buscema back in the late ’70s. Of course he would make the work his own, taking the pencils and, in the best possible sense, light it in a dramatic way and make it his own. It may not have been everybody’s cup of tea in that he was an aggressive inker, but, to my eyes, he used black and white and shadows in really dramatic ways and rendered his figure work in a very bold yet anatomically accurate fashion. As the years have gone by, he’s definitely gone more in favor of a more graphic approach. As I’ve matured, I have learned to really appreciate and love a simpler, more graphic style. But I like all styles of art. Always loved Neal Adams and Jack Kirby. You couldn’t find two more different artists in terms of approach. Kirby appealed to the fan in me, and Neal appealed to the artist side of me and what I wanted to do career-wise.

ing, and light logic, and texture, and all of the things that are what inking is about. DRAW!: And comic inking changed, too, because, when I started in the mid-’80s we were still printing on newsprint, and now you’re printing on great paper and can print anything. You can scan and shoot basically anything, any style, washes, you name it. A lot of those older styles, where they would pop the big, fat contour line around things, had to do with the fact that you were printing on newsprint and you needed to have the bolder approach. SW: You did, but it’s funny, you and I started at the same time. My first gig was probably 1985, so we’re at the mid’80s starting point. And, honestly, at that point I think the printing was still good enough; they hadn’t gone to the Flexipress stuff— DRAW!: Oh, that stuff was

awful! My first Marvel job was on the Flexipress; it just ruined it. SW: That stuff was awful, and you’d get the wiggly lines and all the crap. It was brutal. But when I came in, comics was still sort of at the tail end of the older printing, and— depending on which part of the print run you were at and probably certain other techniDRAW!: Right. I mean, you cal aspects which I’m not have guys like Joe Rubinstein, really aware of—certain guys also, who were also part of were able to pull off amazing that school of thought. ink jobs with real fine-line SW: Yeah, yeah, Joe stuff. A few years later, when Rubinstein was an influence you might think progression during that period and espeJim Lee pencils and Scott Williams inks for Uncanny X-Men #273, page 27. of technology would have cially was a real force in the Courtesy of Heritage Auctions (www.ha.com). gotten better, it actually got Marvel side of the equation. ALL CHARACTERS ™ AND © MARVEL CHARACTERS, INC. worse for whatever reason. To me, the late ’70s through mid-’80s was Terry Austin, Joe Rubinstein, and Klaus Janson. But during the years of ’85 to maybe ’88 or so, you could still get That was the three-legged stool of inking at Marvel. And there away with some pretty elegant, finessed lines in the printing. I were other guys who were doing great work: Bob Wiacek, Bob always got the impression that a lot of the bold, real thick chunk McLeod, and some of the pencilers who inked their own work lines that a guy like Klaus would throw in there, he just did it who did marvelous work. But those guys all kind of came from because it looked great and it added solidity to it, not so much a similar starting point, and they were the guys everyone looked that it was necessary from a response to poor printing. It did offer a certain guarantee that the line would print, but I don’t think bad at and learned from. printing changed his aesthetic. I think the aesthetic was that it just looked right to be bold and that said boldness served the DRAW!: And, also, those were the inkers who drew well enough that you could give them pencils and they could go in and do fin- work well without it necessarily being a function of crappy printing or crappy printing presses. ishes. SW: Yeah, that’s exactly right, and they would fill in the gaps. And they would do it with style and with flourish and with DRAW!: Right, and I also look at it as an evolution from more knowledge. And, yes, they had a distinct style, but it wasn’t style of a brush-based style, which most of the strip guys had, to more solely for style’s sake. It was an emphasis in solidity, and draw- of a pen-based style. DRAW! • SPRING 2012

SW: Right, and I think that’s why I gravitated toward Klaus, and still do,

because what he would do is he would have those really bold, brush-chunky, think strokes, à la old school, whether it was Sinnott or what have you, but then he would mix in a lot fine line pen lines. He had both, and I still to this day do both. I really shoot for a very bold, lay it down with one stroke, almost Japanese brush inking style, and then, next to it, sort of have some fine line rendering, perhaps, or fine detail, and I like the mix. I like the mishmash of thin and thick, light and dark. To me, the stuff that bores me is when everything is the same, when all the line weights are the same and everything has the same texture. Now, I can easily contradict myself on that. It doesn’t hold true 100% of the time. There have been times where guys like Kevin Nowlan will go in with, basically, spotted blacks, and then a very dead weight line, sort of like his AlexTothian masterpiece, that Batman/Manbat Secret Origins story. And then he would mix things up a little bit by adding some zip-a-tone, perhaps, but for the most part it wasn’t a huge variation in line weight. So I understand that there are exceptions to every rule, but, as a rule, I’ve always gravitated towards guys that had a real wide variety and range of lines all sitting right next to each other on the same page. It may not necessarily always read immediately and instantly, but it appeals to my particular sensibilities. An emphasis on varied and lively lines. DRAW!: When you were coming up, did you study formally? How did you

pick up the techniques? SW: I got a degree in Fine Art Drawing and Painting from the University of Hawaii, which is where I grew up. It was a way to learn how to draw, as I never had any intention of getting into comics as an inker per se. I was looking to get into comics as an artist. I knew from a very young age that I wanted to be into comics. But at the start of my career, inking just sort of fell into my lap. There was an opportunity to do it before a serious penciling gig appeared. I took the opportunity to get my foot in the door, and just sort of stuck. Inking has its own challenges, but it doesn’t start with the most fundamental challenge, which is starting with a blank sheet of paper. But I don’t think I got into it because it was easier. I got into it due to opportunity and a particular aptitude, and it was a logical and productive way for me to best utilize my talents. And the fact that I seem to be lucky enough to keep getting paired up with quality artists with each successive gig helped a lot. If I somehow had just been unfortunate enough to work with pencilers whose drawing skills or sensibilities didn’t match with my own, I think it really would have pushed me much more towards penciling. I sort of had it in the back of my mind that the inking was a temporary gig, and eventually I’d just keep learning the ropes and would eventually start penciling full-time. I just kept getting better and better opportunities as an inker, and being a full-time penciler did not materialize.

TOOLS DRAW!: How did you pick up which tools to use? Which tools did you use

then? SW: Well, at some point I became exposed to the How to Draw Comics the

Marvel Way book by Stan Lee and John Buscema. There weren’t a lot of text books on making comics, and this book might not have been the perfect learning tool for an up-and-coming inker, but it did provide a peek behind the curtain. DRAW!: Though it was pretty light on inking. SW: Right. There wasn’t a lot there, but it gave you some fundamentals. I (above) A panel from Uncanny X-Men #277, from the creative team of Jim Lee and Scott Williams. (next page) Jim Lee left Uncanny X-Men for the new spin-off series, X-Men, which Scott inked. But Scott also continued as inker for Uncanny over Lee’s replacement, John Romita, Jr. BISHOP, GAMBIT, WOLVERINE ™ AND © MARVEL CHARACTERS, INC.

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mean, it showed you the crow quill, it showed you what a brush was, it showed you how to rule a line, it showed you the different highlighted textures and sensibilities to inking. I never thought inking was particularly complicated. It’s certainly difficult to master, and it takes a certain craft and facility and, yes, talent to manipulate the tools, and there’s a lot of trial and error, but, obviously, once you get certain tool fundaments, like which tools to use—don’t use a ball-point pen, and, generally, don’t use Rapidographs. I mean, shoot, you can

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use a rusty nail if you want, if it’ll give you the line that you want, but generally there’re a few certain tools that you can use that’ll put you on the right path. DRAW!: I believe Terry Austin used to ink everything with a Rapidograph when he was starting. SW: Yeah, I know, so that’s why I’m saying every rule has an exception, and inking is no different. But the point is that, really, once you kind of understand which tools to use, then it really comes back down to your drawing skills, your drawing sensibilities, and practice, and trial and error. I think the drawing skills are first and foremost, by far. I think even an artist who has a scratchy, ugly line, if his drawing is sound, I’ll like it. It doesn’t have to be a clean, slick, polished line, Of course not having a nice line might hinder your acceptance in being hired by a given editor, that’s true, but in terms of appeal to me and putting you on the right path, the quality of the line is not the important part. The solidity of the drawing and the understanding of fundamentals is the most important part. And that’s what I’ve always focused on. DRAW!: Oh, I 100% agree, because, basically, all of the best inkers were guys who drew well, and maybe they weren’t all as dynamic as a Buscema or Kirby in the old days, but they knew how to draw a hand, they knew how to draw faces, so they didn’t destroy shapes, form, they didn’t flatten out somebody’s features.

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SW: Yeah, and that still holds true today. And there are inkers

whose work has a nice line who I, frankly, am not particularly impressed with, because I sort of sense that they’re at the mercy of the penciler. They can’t fill in the gaps. They can’t interpret. If you give them a nice, completed pencil line, then they’ll be able to pull something out, but if you give them anything that’s vague, or anything that requires a certain level of drafting skill, that’s where, I think, their limitations begin to show. DRAW!: Have you changed your tools from the beginning to now? What are the tools of your trade? SW: Well, I started off—again, I think it may be counterintuitive—I thought learning how to ink with a brush would be easier than learning how to ink with a quill, so I started off inking with a brush. Or at least having more success with the brush. Finding a good brush is much harder now, but back then it was the old Winsor & Newton Series 7s. DRAW!: They kind of suck, now, though. SW: Yeah, they really do. Brushes in general suck now. Finding

quality material, be it brushes or pens or paper, is a serious problem right now. It concerns me a great deal. DRAW!: You know which ones I like right now? I don’t know if you guys have a Dick Blick near you, but I’ve been using the

STEP BY STEP—DARK KNIGHT: To the left and right, you can see various stages of Scott’s inking over David Finch’s pencils for a splash page from Dark Knight #2. He starts with Batman’s face and arm, then proceeds to block in the figure. Notice that leaves the small details (Batman’s utility belt, the cracks in the floor tiles, the texture of the stairs) for last. BATMAN ™ AND © DC COMICS.

Dick Blick Series #4, and they’re actually better than— SW: Raphael’s? DRAW!: No, they have a store brand.

Even with the real expensive brands, it really depends upon the brush you get, because the quality is all over the place. SW: Oh, without a doubt. That’s why I was saying that finding quality materials is tough right now. DRAW!: But the Blick brushes are cheap

and decent. SW: I abandoned the Winsor & Newton Series 7s years and years and years ago and found that the Raphael 8404, the 8408, were great. But even in the early days, you’d only get a certain percentage of them that were serviceable. If you bought ten at a time, maybe seven or eight of them would be real solid. Now if I get ten, depending on which batch I get them from, they may all blow. I can’t use any of them. Or maybe only two or three are any good, and when you’re talking brushes that are 20 bucks a pop, there’s a realization that you’re just sort of spitting into the wind. DRAW!: That’s why I was saying I was using those Dick Blick Studio brushes, because I found those to be.... SW: Consistent quality? DRAW!: Yeah! I mean, I like them. You have to pick them—you know, spit test them in the store—but I find they do well. For the money, if you blow through one a week or month, what the heck. It’s, like, eight bucks or something like that. So, I take it you were using, what, a crow quill pen? SW: Yeah, yeah. Getting back to the question, I started off doing more brushwork and then realized that, just to get some versatile lines and some different types of lines, I had to figure out how to use the crow quill, and that takes a little longer getting used to, understanding the angle that you have to hold the sucker at. And I had to figure out why, when you buy them by the gross, or by the box, or whatever, some of them are split down the middle, and sometimes the tong isn’t split down the middle. You pull out one pen nib and it makes a reasonably decent line, then you pull the next one in the box, and it either won’t make a line or it makes a

crappy line or digs into the paper or you have wash the oil off. You know, all the little tricks of the trade that you start figuring out. DRAW!: Or they explode on you when you’re inking. [laughs] SW: They explode. Especially when you’re in a groove, when

you get a really nice one and the metal gives a little bit, it’s nice, and you’re just ripping along and making big, fat lines as well as thin, little fine lines, and then they just blow up, and you hope to God a piece doesn’t fly into your eye or whatnot. Yeah, I’ve had multiple exploding episodes. So I started off my career doing a lot of brushwork, but very quickly went into probably an 80/20 split, with crow quill being 80 and the brush being 20. I usually used a Hunt 102, and then a little DRAW! • SPRING 2012

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(left) STEP BY STEP—DARK KNIGHT: Scott’s final inks for the David Finch-penciled Dark Knight #2 splash page. (above) STEP BY STEP—JUSTICE LEAGUE: Jim Lee’s pencils for the cover of Justice League #1, along with the start of Scott’s inking. ALL CHARACTERS ™ AND © DC COMICS

bit later on the Gillott 850 and the 659, and used those through the bulk of the X-Men years and the early WildC.A.T.s and Image type stuff, and then eventually coming back to the 102. However, I almost completely dropped all my pen work in favor of a brush when I started my DC work and “Hush” in particular. It sort of reintroduced my love affair with brush inking and opened the door to a fresh look at my work. More experimentation, though not without a cost. A lot of the “Hush” stuff, which by all reasonable measures should have been inked with a crow quill or some other fine line tool, was brushwork and was done so because I had rediscovered this old, great toy, and probably gave me carpal tunnel or nerve damage or whatever, because it was just insane some of the stuff I was trying to do with a brush. Types of things that didn’t really lend itself to brush. It was a challenge that I really wanted to attempt at that point in my career—a different look in my work, a more organic look, or a little more fluid look, but still recognizable as my work—and doing it with the brush just blew through that creative door. As a result I’m now mostly a brush guy again. Although, having said that, a lot of the stuff I’m doing on Justice League right now is back to quill. Part of that it is because I kind of get bored a little bit too easily. I kind of get with a tool, or get with an approach, for a period of time, and then I get bored with it and just want to change things up for reasons that only,

probably, my shrink would be able to tell you. I don’t know why exactly it is. I think everybody gets bored doing the same thing, and there’s a certain tactile quality to inking, and I think after I while I just get bored with that same feel, that same motion, and the sameness of the line. Then the pages start to blur from one to the next a little bit, I realize I’m using the same techniques and the same tools over and over and over again, and it creates a sameness that I think, “Well, if I’m bored, then the people who are reading the stuff are probably bored, too, at least the ones that are tuned in to something as subtle as the ink line.” So I kind of start changing things up. Now I’m at a point where I flip it on and off like a switch, back and forth, back and forth. I used to feel very—I think inkers in general have a bit of an anal retentive quality in that I felt like if I inked Batman’s cape with a brush, I had to be consistent throughout, and there had to be a consistency in the visual language of the ink line. There is a logic to that thinking. But now I’m like, no. One page I’ll do it in brush, the next page I’ll do it with a pen, and the variation in line and line quality—if it doesn’t make sense in a logical way, I don’t care. [laughter] DRAW!: So today what are you using, a 102? SW: Today I’m just using a 102, yeah. And in an hour, I’ll bust

out the brush again. Very consistent, yes?

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DRAW!: The other thing that’s really different now from when we started is that marker technology has gone through the roof. In the old days, only guys like Gil Kane or Toth would be using markers. SW: Sharpies. Yeah, they used Sharpies that turned purple after a few years. I used to do a little bit of Sharpie work, just to touch up some line work or spot a few blacks. Wouldn’t touch them today. DRAW!: Yeah, but now the markers are amazing. You can do all kinds of stuff with markers. SW: The problem that I have with the markers, like the Microns and the Pitt pens or whatnot, is that you have to be careful when you’re erasing the pages, because the marker work tends to come up, to lighten up. While it probably doesn’t come up enough to where it causes much of a problem from a scanning standpoint, it just looks so light to me that I have to be careful that you don’t have to adjust the scanning thresholds. That alone can create some problems if you have dark ink next to light ink. As a result, most of the marker work that I use now I just use for touch-up, and that’s after a page has been inked, and it’s already been erased, and I just want to beef up some line weights or add some detail or fix some things. Then they come in real handy. I can just go in and nothing’s going to have to be erased. I’ll go in and use the markers for that. But for primary inking work, they just don’t cover enough. It doesn’t stay on the page. And, having said that, when we were talking about the poor quality of tools, I don’t think ink is as good as it used to be. It doesn’t seem to stay on the page as well as it used to. DRAW!: No, they changed the formula. SW: The changed the formula for toxicity and/or environmental

purposes, I think, and so even erasing brushwork is now problematic. I have to be really careful about how to erase that stuff.

DRAW! • SPRING 2012

DRAW!: Yeah, I know guys like Terry Austin were very much

about making sure that blacks were really dense. Al Williamson or Frazetta would let the ink be more watery and that lent to their inking styles. I’m a hoarder, so I still have some good old ink that I bought years ago that I still use, but, yeah, it’s not as good now. So what’s your favorite ink now? SW: Well, I totally agree with you as far as the ink goes. Right now I’m actually using, right out of the bottle, Rapidograph Ultradraw 3085-F Ink for Paper and Film. And for no other reason than that’s what I’ve been using for several years. I used to use Pelican back in the day, but they kept changing their formulas, and eventually it just wasn’t dark enough. I used to be very anal about everything having to be really jet black. I’ve completely changed on that. I don’t care at all. As long as it’s black enough. This Rapidograph ink seems to flow off my brush, and that’s the biggest thing. I need ink that’s going to go down pretty dark, that’s going to flow off my brush, I won’t need to add a second coat, and right now the Ultradraw seems to work okay. There might be other things out there. I know some guys go through complex mixtures and whatnot— DRAW!: [laughs] Like alchemists! SW: Yes, to go through the trouble of making mixtures, and

adding ammonia, and all the crap that people do.... If it works for them, God bless ’em, but I’m really a little bit more about instant gratification when it comes to the tools. I have no patience for crappy tools. If I pull out a brush—it could be a 30 dollar brush—if I put two lines down and they don’t work, that brush goes into the trash. I’m not interested in babying it and using it for filling in blacks later on. It’s just not my personality. I’m not going to keep banging my head against the wall and expecting different results. It’s just not going to happen. I’ve said it before,

STEP BY STEP—JUSTICE LEAGUE: A detail shot of Scott’s initial inking (previous page) for the cover of Justice League #1 shows him starting with the foreground figures. With each stage he works farther back, spotting blacks as he goes, though he does not usually complete each figure before moving on to the next. With Batman (right) he only leaves the larger black areas of his pants and cape. ALL CHARACTERS ™ AND © DC COMICS

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STEP BY STEP—JUSTICE LEAGUE: Green Lantern from start to finish, along with Scott’s finished inks for the cover of Justice League #1, penciled by Jim Lee. ALL CHARACTERS ™ AND © DC COMICS

and I’ll say it again: I am a slave to my tools. I feel like, in some ways, I am a kick-ass inker when I’ve got good tools, and I absolutely suck when I have lousy tools. I am their slave. DRAW!: A lot of inkers will have two different bottles. Al Williamson used to have a bottle for the pen and a bottle for the brush, and he would leave his ink for the brush open so it would get thicker as it would evaporate, and then every once in a while he’d add a little extra fresh ink into it. SW: No, now the only little inker trick that I do as far as ink goes, I just have one ink bottle and basically I refresh it or recharge it

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every day or two, because there is evaporation, and at some point it gets thick enough to where it doesn’t flow the way I want it to flow, either off my pen or off my brush. Basically I just dump a little bit out of the bottle and then add an equal amount of new ink that’s been sealed up in a bottle, and that thins it out just enough so that it flows properly. And I also only keep maybe about a halfinch of ink at the bottom of the bottle, so it probably gets thicker a little bit faster, but that way I don’t have to measure how far to dip the pen or dip the brush. I just take it right down to the bottom, and it’s just enough to take the ink line up to the base of the pen, or far enough on the hairs of the brush without actually going

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past the ferrule and gunking up where the brush comes out of the ferrule. And those are really the only tricks I’ve got. As far as other procedural things I’ll do, I tend to fill my blacks in as I go along. Some of the work that I’m least proud of, even during my heyday of, say, the X-Men work that a lot of fans know very well, to me it looks very flat because, in those days, I would very often delineate an outline for the areas of black and shadow and put an “X” in, like a lot of guys do, and then either I or an assistant could go in and just fill in the blacks and, boom, you’re done. But I’ve found over the years that you get a better result if you’re sort of

organically adding to the blacks as you go along, and spotting the blacks as needed. It’s a more responsive way to ink. As you spot a black, and maybe change the shape of a shadow or of the black, that corresponds to maybe needing some heavier shadows somewhere else. And it’s a much more organic give-and-take, and, to my eye, it looks more correct. It looks right. When I used to just outline shadow areas to be filled in later... the solidity got lost; it just kind of looked flat. It looks a little bit like a coloring book type of an approach. I mean, the approach I’m doing now just seems to work from a solidity, and it’s more sound in a fundamental way. DRAW!: I think I do the same thing. SW: And you can always go back. In

theory, you could always go back and make adjustments later, but what happens if you chewed up all your time, and then the pages have to go out, and you never got a chance to go back and tweak it? I would rather be able to tweak it as I’m going and be able to respond a little more instantly while I’m in the moment, while I’m in the page. When you feel like you’re kind of done with a page, and then you need to go back later and tweak it, sometimes you’re a little bit blind to some of the flaws. You’re more thinking about the deadline and getting the page out and maybe less attuned to what your thinking process was on the page. And I say that, again, with the caveat, nothing is 100%. There are times where, if you have a little bit of time between some work that you’ve done and you can go back and revisit it, some of the flaws become more apparent. But I think that’s more true of when you’re drawing. I think if you’re drawing something and some of the drawing fundamentals are not sound, you give yourself to the next day, you can kind of come back in with fresh eyes and take a look at it and make your adjustments. I don’t think it’s quite as true with inking. Inking is a little more immediate. While you’re in that place, in that zone, while you’re inking, I think you kind of need to make it as complete as you can at that sitting rather than thinking about trying to go back and find some of the little, real subtle, minor little tweaks that you need to make. It can be done, but I don’t think it lends itself as well in inking as it does with drawing. DRAW!: What about the things like

Jim Lee/Scott Williams cover art for X-Men #3. Courtesy of www.ha.com.

ALL CHARACTERS ™ AND © MARVEL CHARACTERS, INC.

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whiteout? Do you do that all in Photoshop now? Do you like to do it on the original? SW: No, I’m still very old school. Everything is non-digital. The only

Pages from Gen13 #7, penciled by Jim Lee and inked by Scott Williams. Courtesy of www.ha.com. GEN13 ™ AND © DC COMICS.

thing I’m using Photoshop for is when I’m making my scans, but I don’t make any art corrections in Photoshop. That day may come, but right now I’m still doing it old school. And old school with the caveat that I use modern tools and techniques. Those Pentel Presto! Jumbo Correction pens are a great modern version of old school Wite-Out. You know, they’ve got the little rollerball at the tip, and offer great coverage with a level of detailed control. Even better, it’s so opaque, and it dries really fast, and you can ink on top of it. A lot of the more water-based [correction fluids]— like Pro White or Pelikan Graphic White—some of those you have to put down multiple coats, and maybe they dry faster, maybe they don’t. You have to sort of play with the thickness of it to get it just the right thickness. Usually they’re a bear to ink over. And I used to use that stuff for little, delicate, finessy stuff from time to time. But I try to get as much of the whiteout work done as possible with the Presto! pens. They’re great. DRAW!: Would you say that your inking philosophy, your ideas

of line weights and things, have changed in the last couple of years? Because it seems like—especially when you were working with Jim and guys like that in the beginning—it was more dense, and I notice now it’s changed a little bit.

SW: Well, I think there was a sense back then that you really

couldn’t be too thin or add too much detail. And a lot of that just came from the standpoint that I looked at a lot of guys like Bernie Wrightson, and Barry Windsor-Smith, and even Neal Adams—the guys who I would consider to have a little bit more of an illustrational bent, where you just sort of get lost in the detail, and the textures, and the various line weights and line techniques. There’s a lot of very technique-y stuff. Now, those guys were great artists, too, and a lot of the surface detail appeals to them and to fans like me! And so the logical step for me was to take some of those ideas and translate them into my own inks, and what followed was an intense interest in surface detail and technique. I think I’m still technique-oriented, I still enjoy quality technique, but the technique and the surface gloss and the amount of detail is less important. It’s really about, within a panel, or a cover, or a splash, there has to be consistency. If the light is coming from a certain direction or from multiple directions, it has to be consistent throughout. If there are forms and anatomy within the style of the given artist, they have to be consistent and they have to be solid. If there are differentiations in texture, it can’t just be texture for texture’s sake. There has to be some logic to it. A rock DRAW! • SPRING 2012

and rubble cannot be inked the same way as a bicep or a porcelain surface, and smoke has to be different than steam, and all the different things that you find within a given page has to have its own language, it has to be somewhat consistent, it has to make some sense. And that doesn’t necessarily mean more lines or a flashier, more exotic way of putting the lines down. It just has to have its own internal logic, and something that works as a quick read, being able to see an image and digest it in a more iconic and fundamental way rather than have the reader luxuriate over every page, or every panel, and take in all the lines and appreciate the amount of labor that goes into it. And, to be honest, a lot of the stuff I do right now is still pretty labor-intensive. I’m not saying what I do is simple or minimalist, but I’m more interested in that first instant that your eyes hit a page, how does that register, rather than the assumption that what I’m doing kicks so much ass that you’re going to spend 20 minutes on a panel, or on a page, and take it all in. I see the language of comics as being a little bit more immediate, perhaps, than I used to, and I’m less apt or less interested in trying to impress you with my inking skills and the ability I have to wield a pen or a brush. That’s not really what I’m about right now.

DRAW!: I think, actually, that is a fairly typical progression by

most career artists. When you’re young and you’re full of piss and vinegar, you go in and you put a lot of effort in because you’ve got a great singing voice—you want to sing. You want to be able to show people that you can just blow people out of their chairs. And then usually as you get older, not that you can’t still do that, but you also find that you tend to work towards things that are a little bit more simple, or a little bit more elegant, and you find that that has a staying power, which sometimes that stuff that’s overly fussy doesn’t have. SW: I agree. It also depends on what your career trajectory is like, and then, I mean, we’re kind of talking about two different things. There’s the artistry of what you do, and then there’s the practical application of, this is a job, and you have to know who your audience is, who’s hiring you, what are they looking for. And I think if I go too far in simplifying my style, I’m going to alienate my audience, and perhaps alienate my editor, to the extent that you get— DRAW!: Alienate your penciler. [laughs] SW: Alienate your penciler, that’s right. Without a doubt. I mean,

all those things have to come into play, and I feel like I’m always straddling that line. I’m always trying to have it both ways, where I can play to my own evolving sensibilities and never forget that I’m trying to entertain people. I’ve been doing this now for over 25 years, so I’ve sort of branded myself a little bit. And there are certain things that I do with my work, and how can I keep doing what I’m doing without seeming stale, without seeming like it’s just a rehash of the same-old, same-old, year in and year out. And keeping myself interested, but without alienating the people who like the type of comics that I do, and like the types of artists that I work on. It’s a line that I’m constantly trying to navigate, and I try to figure out how can I evolve and say things in different ways that keeps everybody interested and keeps things fresh, and keeps things spontaneous, without straying too far off of what landed me the gig in the first place. DRAW!: Right. Do you have a set way of approaching a page?

Scott’s inks over Todd McFarlane for a Superman pin-up piece. Courtesy of Heritage Auctions (www.ha.com).

SUPERMAN ™ AND © DC COMICS.

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Do you do the figures first? Do you do the faces first? Do you start at the top, the left hand, and work down to the bottom right? SW: You know, I probably don’t have a set, standard way. A lot of times what I’m conscious of is I try not to do all the fun stuff first. A lot of guys, I think, will go straight for whatever parts of the page are most interesting to them. It’s sort of like, they’ll start with their dessert, and then work their way to the main course, and then finish up with the vegetables. And I just don’t want to do that, because I know, eventually, if I save all of the veggies that I don’t want to do for last, the boredom will just be more than I can overcome. So I try to mix it up. I’ll find little areas that I think are interesting and ink some of those, and then I’ll find some stuff—to me, the most boring stuff is anything that involves straight-edging work or template work, and I even tend to do most of that freehand now just to keep me interested. Even straight lines, which in some ways are actually easier with a template or straight edge, I’ll tend to freehand that stuff because it looks more organic and won’t look like a machine punched it out. I think it adds a little more character to the overall job and to the line. I mean, the most boring lines that I do are the ones where, for whatever reason, I need a perfect ellipse, or I need a perfectly straight line. For instance, just as an example, I would much rather, much rather, ink a story that’s taking place

STEP BY STEP—DARK KNIGHT: Another page of Scott inking over David Finch’s pencils for Dark Knight #2. Scott starts at the bottom of the page, where the heaviest blacks reside. COMMISSIONER GORDON ™ AND © DC COMICS.

in Gotham City than a story that’s taking place in Metropolis, because Metropolis is set up as newer, and architecturally lots of straight lines, and ruled lines— DRAW!: Lots of ruling. SW: And Gotham City, I mean, you don’t need any straight lines. Everything is

organic, everything has texture. And texture can be simple. It doesn’t necessarily have to be lots and lots of noodling, but it has a more interesting type of line. Metropolis is just boring. I guess you do need that sort of the yin and yang of it. I mean, you need Metropolis to Batman’s Gotham, and you need Gotham to Superman’s Metropolis. You need the mix, from a storytelling standpoint, and from a sort of a comic book universe standpoint. But just, from a strictly technical, sitting behind my desk producing inks mentality, the more organic stuff is much, much more interesting and entertaining to draw and ink. DRAW!: Do you ink more than one page at a time, or do you use a lapboard at all? How is your table set up? SW: Because of the miles that I’ve got on my body, I’ve been having to make adjustments to my set-up. I don’t usually use a lapboard at all. I have to make sure I’ve got proper height and proper adjustments set up for my board, the level of my board, the chair. I make sure I’ve got something wedged up on the small of my back so I’ve got a little back support. Just over the last year I’ve been having a lot of back problems and neck problems, and it’s just come from bad posture that’s 25 years in the making. I’m actually seeing a physical therapist. I just dropped 40 pounds

DRAW! • SPRING 2012

to ease the discomfort and the level of stress that extra weight puts on my back and on my neck. I’ve already got a permanent sort of humpback right at the base of my neck, which is really just... very distressing that at the age of 51 I’ve already become deformed, and it’s all come from years and years of bad posture and leaning over my board without thought that I’m abusing my body over the course of years, and am now sort of paying the piper. At least I’ve never had the hand and wrist and carpal tunnel type symptoms that I’ve heard other artists have. So far that hasn’t hit me, but my back and my neck are problematic and probably will be for the rest of my life. I’m going to have to be very careful about strength and flexibility and posture and all those things because of all the years I’ve put into this career.

STEP BY STEP—DARK KNIGHT: Scott continues working his way up the page, saving the most detail-heavy work for last. COMMISSIONER GORDON ™ AND © DC COMICS.

DRAW! • SPRING 2012

DRAW!: When I was working with Al Williamson, Al always used a lapboard, but for a while, because he was blasting out the pages there for a while, he inked, like, three or four books a month for Marvel. He was inking 50, 60 pages. He’d ink a couple pages a day; he was so fast as an inker. But he started almost getting a tennis elbow. So he went to the doctor, and the doctor told him he had to, I forget, it was either raise or lower the table so that when he lifted his arm up to get the dip or whatever, that he wasn’t—it’s like carpal tunnel, you’re repeating the same movements over and over. SW: The same movement and the same motion, and I’m having to be conscious of taking many more breaks than I used to rather than just trying to power through the work for hours, and staying in the same position and the same posture; I’m having to consciously remember to take breaks. About every hour, or maybe even every 45 minutes, I’ve got to get up, walk around, stretch, change my position, and all those little tricks that I’m learning to try to not get that same process disability where you’re not only repeating the same movement over and over and over again, but maintaining a certain body position for stretches at a time that is just detrimental.

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DRAW!: Every inker has their bucket list—the people that you wish you could have inked, but who have passed on into the Great Art House in the sky. And now you’re inking Neal Adams, though I assume by now you’re probably done with inking Neal Adams on the Batman: Odyssey. SW: Yeah, that was a big one I got to cross off the bucket list. DRAW!: So who are the top five pencilers that you haven’t

inked, that you would love to ink? SW: Most of them are probably still around, though they are guys who usually ink their own work. I’ve never inked a Frank Miller job, would love to. Probably not a surprise knowing what big Klaus guy I was, but having said that, there are a lot of Frank Miller jobs of Frank inking himself that I like even better than what Klaus was doing. A little bit of apples and oranges. I think the line that Frank used over the years was a lot different than the line that Klaus used. I thought that Klaus, as an inker, did a remarkable job of interpreting Frank during the period of time that they worked together. Having said that, I thought Frank’s line on a lot of the work he did was great, where he was experimenting through Ronin, and through the Elektra graphic novel, and even from 300, on The Dark Knight Returns, and some of the covers that he did for Lone Wolf and Cub. A lot of that stuff is very appealing. I always thought that I was so tuned into that stuff that I could do a good job on Frank. Whether he would agree, or anyone else would agree, is subject for debate, and something that is open for interpretation. And, actually, a couple years ago I did a Frank Miller piece in a sketchbook that was a Dark Knight Batman and Robin statue sketch that he did mid- to late ’80s. I inked that in a much sleeker line than maybe I would have if I’d have been actually inking a gig for Frank. If he said, “Scott, I’m doing such-and-such. I’d like you to ink me. Show me what you would do,” I don’t think I would have done it in the slicker style that I did the Dark Knight piece. But that was for a different audience and with a different sensibility. But that was a lot of fun to do. And so he would be one of those guys. I would love to have a chance to work on Mike Mignola’s stuff, but, again, he inks his own work. Let’s see.... There are certain guys I would never in a million years ink. I would never ink Kevin Nowlan, and he would never have me. I would never ink Bernie Wrightson. These are some of my favorite artists, but I would just ruin them. There are certain guys that just have their own line and their own sensibility. At one point, when I was doing that sketchbook of inking different artists in different styles, there were certain guys that I thought that I could handle, and certain guys that I thought would be almost impossible to handle. The Wrightsons of the world, he’s got such a line that I just can’t imagine—I could do no justice to it. There would be nothing on the horizon but failure trying to approach something like that. I just think guys like Wrightson, or guys like Nowlan, who have such a distinctive style, I just don’t see any upside to doing any of that stuff. I’m trying to think if there’s anybody else. Yeah, I really wish John Buscema was still around. I think I could do some interesting stuff with John. I wouldn’t be scared of it, because I think his style lends itself to a lot of different approaches. DRAW!: Yeah, I still wish he was around, too. I was always very envious that Jerry Ordway got to ink him. He’s one of the guys I

DRAW! • SPRING 2012

(above and next page) Neal Adams’ pencils and Scott Williams’ inks for Batman: Odyssey #4, page 10. BATMAN ™ AND © DC COMICS.

would have loved to ink. It’s like, when I got to ink Steve Ditko on that one Marvel job, I felt like, “I’m a real cartoonist now! I’m a real inker now!” SW: Yeah! And, one way or another, I mean, I’ve inked a lot of guys that I’m not particularly recognized for, but I’ve gotten to do something with them. I think everybody from Jack Kirby, to Simonson, to John Byrne, to Michael Golden, to Rick Leonardi, to Todd McFarlane, and Barry Windsor-Smith, and now Neal Adams.... There are a lot of guys that I’ve inked professionally— DRAW!: Did you ever ink Gene Colan? SW: No, I’ve never inked Gene Colan. He would be hard. He

would be hard. Trying to interpret the grays and graduated tones? I would be better suited for it now than I was years ago, without a doubt, but I think he would be hard. I think I could do something that might work, but that’s tough. DRAW!: Because Janson did a good job on him. SW: Yeah, Klaus did a good job. I think the only guy that I’ve

ever seen Klaus do that probably wasn’t appropriate was when he inked John Byrne. And the inks were actually beautiful. They

tain—I mean, it’s part of the reason why I would never ink a Wrightson or a Kevin Nowlan. There’s a certain purity there. It’s especially true where artists ink their own work and are best known for having their own work inked by themselves. There’s a certain style, a sensibility and aesthetic, that the pencil artist brings to his own inks that, for me, just are cemented as the standard, and any deviation from a secondary ink artist is just off-putting. Just wrong. And it’s almost pointless, because your hand doesn’t work that way, and your mind doesn’t work that same way, as an inker coming in from the outside, to do justice to it. John Byrne definitely has benefited from a lot of different inkers, but you do have to have a certain stylistic aesthetic that works, and I think Klaus is a guy who has a certain style aesthetic that doesn’t necessarily work on John Byrne, but for 99% of the other pencils out there, it works just fine.

NEAL ADAMS DRAW!: So how was it inking Neal

Adams? SW: It was excruciating. It was excruci-

were beautiful inks, but they were too heavy-handed; they took away from John Byrne’s aesthetic on those Avengers issues to the extent that they were distracting. I think that was the only time I’ve seen Klaus ink somebody where I thought, “Beautiful linework, but not appropriate.” DRAW!: It’s funny, because the only John Byrne art that I own, I have a couple pages that Klaus inked probably over Byrne’s looser, breakdown pencils on Wolverine. And that only because it had a lot of great, interesting texture. SW: Oh, like I said, the ink line itself, and the textures and everything that he brings to the page is gorgeous. But there are cer-

ating in a wonderful sort of way. What I didn’t realize when I started the gig, though, was that we were working at cross-purposes. And by that I mean, Neal was really thinking—and rightly so—in very contemporary terms. He draws the way that he draws now, and he inks the way that he inks now, and he likes both those approaches. When I was looking at his pencils, I’m thinking, “Okay, how can I translate this in ink into Neal circa 1971?” I have a huge Neal Adams art collection, and I pulled out all of his artwork and just started looking at his Green Lanterns, his Batmans, his “Deadmans,” and his Avengers, and most of the stuff he inked himself—not so much the stuff that Dick Giordano inked, or the stuff that Tom Palmer inked. Not that they didn’t do a great job, but I was trying to get more of the soul of what Neal was doing and sort of that pure Neal line. And I was inking everything in an energetic, spontaneous, but very reinedin style, and very delicate lines, but, again, with a confidence and a cocksureness that I think Neal had back then. Today, Neal’s line is much different, and I don’t even know how he would describe it. I’m not quite sure how I would describe it. But it’s a much different line, and I think when he saw what I was doing, I’m not sure it went down right. I think he felt it was so different than what he’s doing now that he changed a lot of it after the fact— changed it digitally. He didn’t change any originals. I sent him DRAW! • SPRING 2012

scans of all the inked boards, and I didn’t ink bluelines; I inked right on top of his pencils. And he changed a huge, huge amount of my inks to match his more current style. I think if I had known what he was looking for, maybe I would have made a style adjustment. DRAW!: Did you guys talk at all? SW: We did, we did. And I thought I could split the difference.

We didn’t maybe talk about his approach, at first. It became clear to me, as the project went on, what he was looking for, and by that time I was already pretty far into it. And I did try to split the difference, and eventually I got my linework a little more in

accordance to what he wanted and what he was doing now, and he acknowledged that. There were certain pages that he said were published as I inked them—he didn’t touch them, he didn’t make any changes. But the first maybe half-dozen pages or so, I threw everything I had at them to try to give them that 1970 shine, and in the end it probably looked dated to Neal and he changed it. And I tried not to take it too personally, because he’s gone back in on some of his most classic work in some of the DC reprints and changed his own inks. And, to my eye, not successfully. I don’t think you mess with the iconography of what he did. I think you let it ride and accept it for what it is, and, in my eye, it looked beautiful as he originally inked it anyway. I don’t know why he felt the need to “fix” his own classic work. But for whatever reason he felt he needed to change it to bring it more up to date. It’s his work, and he’s entitled to do with it whatever he chooses. It’s not the choice I would have made, but he has every right, just like he had the right to change my inks. Wish he didn’t, but I’m honored that he let me loose on his pencils in the first place, so I can’t complain. DRAW!: Yeah. I think his line is different

because he’s not using a nib pen and then the brush. The more Stan Drake-ish feel. SW: His tools have changed. I think it’s his sensibility that changed, his aesthetics have changed. DRAW!: I think it’s much more of a com-

mercial art style now. His style was much more classic comic strip illustrative up until, I think the last job, really, was probably that Superman/Muhammad Ali job, and even then it had changed a little bit by then. SW: Yeah, it was, it was, and obviously he didn’t ink that stuff. And, for better or for worse, as bold as his line always was during that period in the ’60s and ’70s, it was a very bold line, but it was a very pretty line. It was a very elegant line. It had a lot of finesse, but, again, a lot of confidence in those lines. He still has a lot of confidence in his lines, but he doesn’t care about a pretty line. And to a certain extent, I think sometimes he’s also at cross-purposes with his own structure today, and that’s problematic. More than the elegance and the beauty of the line, I think sometimes he is not as in tune with his own structure as he once was. And he would probably disagree with me vehemently and there would be a long, interesting discussion. But that’s just my take. And, to be honest, having been such a fan of his as I was, I was approaching it much more as a fanboy. (above and next page) Neal Adams’ pencils and Scott Williams’ inks for Batman: Odyssey #4, page 17.

BATMAN, DEADMAN ™ AND © DC COMICS.

DRAW! • SPRING 2012

DRAW!: Well, sure, you’re getting to ink one of your idols.

DRAW! • SPRING 2012

SW: Right. And if I’m inking Jack Kirby, I’m pulling out my best Joe Sinnott/Jack Kirby, or my favorite Frank Giacoia/1966, ’67 Jack Kirby art, and I’m going to try to do that. Now, it’s not going to come out looking just like that, because I’m not those inkers. But that would be my starting point, and the approach that I took upon inking Neal was 1971. And, actually, even beyond that. I mean, I looked at everything. I looked at his Ben Casey work, I looked at his early “Deadman” stuff. The whole period right up until about 1975. DRAW!: The Ben Casey stuff is beautiful. For me he was always his best inker, even though I like what Giordano did or Tom Palmer. SW: I love that stuff. From a pure inking standpoint, I think the Ben Casey art is as close to perfection as there is in comic art. DRAW!: And it’s funny because, when I look at that stuff, I think that work was actually a lot better than the work he was doing at DC for a while. I think he had to reinvent himself as a superhero artist. SW: I think the best of the Ben Casey stuff is maybe the best ink art that comics has ever produced, or at least on a par with anything anyone has ever done. It sort of has it all. Now, maybe some of the DC stuff later on was probably close to being as good, but it was a little different because, again, he sort of evolved. It had its own quality that was maybe different, but just as good. But, yeah, the best of the Ben Casey stuff, especially from some of the later years, ’65, ’66—just as good as it gets. DRAW!: Inking has gone through all these permu-

tations over the length of our careers, and now a lot of guys are doing things on blueline, or inking things on the computer with a Wacom tablet, or using a Cintiq, or using Manga Studio. Do you use bluelines at all, and how do you look at that as far as a craftsman going into the future? Because, like you said, you have to take into account the needs of the marketplace.

DRAW! • SPRING 2012

(above) One of Neal Adams’ Ben Casey daily strips, a favorite of Scott’s. (below and right) Neal Adams’ pencils and Scott’s inks for Batman: Odyssey #4, page 18. BEN CASEy © NEA, INC. ALfRED PENNyWORTH, BATMAN ™ AND © DC COMICS.

SW: Yeah, or the needs of the publisher. I think the publishers have just pushed the virtues of using bluelines. It saves time, it saves FedEx bills, all those types of things. But, having said that, I don’t think I’ve ever inked on a blueline other than for my own purposes. When I had to ink for the sketchbook I did where I’m inking Jack Kirby, and Frank Miller, and John Byrne— DRAW!: Well, then you have no choice. SW: Yeah, I had no choice, so it was for my own purposes. But,

as far as my regular gigs, I’ve never actually had to ink on blue lines. And maybe at some point in the future I’ll have to fight it

out, maybe with the penciler, the editor, or both, that want me— and this isn’t coming from a prima donna-ish standpoint, I just don’t like inking bluelines. Especially when I’m working with a brush, I’ve found that a lot of times it doesn’t take the ink as well. There’s a certain waxiness depending on how you print up the bluelines. It’s not terrible when it comes to using pens and crow quills, but inking with a brush, it tends not to go down quite so well. It’s distracting to me. I don’t mind the blue under-drawing, but ultimately I need the graphite. Y’know, some of that is sort of my old, curmudgeonly way, that I’m just used to what I’m used to, and I try to maintain that. Fortunately, virtually everybody DRAW! • SPRING 2012

DRAW! • SPRING 2012

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(left and above) Neal Adams’ pencils and Scott’s inks for Batman: Odyssey #4, page 18. ALfRED PENNyWORTH, BATMAN ™ AND © DC COMICS.

that I’ve worked with over the years has not had a problem with me inking over their originals. DRAW!: I’ve noticed, when I’ve done the blueline, you also lose

some fidelity of what you’re looking at. SW: Yeah, you do, and you can sort of mitigate that to a certain extent if you have a photocopy of the original pencils—you can kind of compare it with the blueline. It’s more cumbersome. It’s not as instantaneous as far as translating the real pencils. But blue lines are the least of my problems with publishers regarding inking. I think the move to digital inking is a gigantic step in the wrong direction. With few exceptions, I’ve never talked to anyone who thinks darkening pencils is an improvement for the art form. I’m not even sure it’s a time or money saver. Probably a wash at best. And since we’re all looking to make comics that stand the test of time and continue to improve, why would we want to take a step back in the name of “progress”?

$500,000 PAID FOR ORIGINAL COMIC ART! COLLECTOR PAYING TOP DOLLAR FOR “ANY AND ALL” ORIGINAL COMIC BOOK AND COMIC STRIP ARTWORK FROM THE 1930S TO PRESENT! COVERS, PINUPS, PAGES, IT DOESN’T MATTER! 1 PAGE OR ENTIRE COLLECTIONS SOUGHT! CALL OR EMAIL ME ANYTIME!

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P.O. BOX 455 • RAVENNA, OH 44266 CASH IS WAITING, SO HURRY!!!!!

DRAW!: Well, this has been really great, Scott.

DRAW! • SPRING 2012

(above) N.C. Wyeth provided covers and illustrations for many classic children’s novels. (right) Norman Rockwell’s paintings graced many a cover of The Saturday Evening Post. (below) James Bama is best known for his Doc Savage book covers. DOC SAVAGE ™ AND © CONDE NAST.

his time out with “Comic Book Bootcamp” we are going to delve into the emerald realm of Sherwood Forest and the world of illustration. In the last year I have had the opportunity to illustrate two book covers featuring Robin Hood for the fine folks at Airship 27. I have always loved illustration, specifically the golden age of American Illustration. Norman Rockwell, Dean Cornwell, and N.C. Wyeth are three of my favorite artists in any field. I have always thought of illustration as a sister field for comic artists and cartoonists to work in, and in fact many of the best and most famous cartoonists moved into illustration from comics, like Frank Frazetta, Mort Künstler, and Frank Godwin (Connie, Rusty Riley) to name just a few. Hal Foster of Prince Valiant fame started as an illustrator and moved into comic strips, first with Tarzan and then with his most famous creation, Prince Valiant. Foster employed the same skills he used in doing realistic and researched illustrations for magazines like Popular Mechanics and brought them to bear in the comic strips, ushering in a sense of realism and believability and setting a level of craftsmanship to which other cartoonists and illustrators strived. In the ’50s, when the comics industry went through its first big downturn, many cartoonists left comics for the much more lucrative field of illustration. Some, like

Frazetta, never came back. Frazetta himself went on to great fame and fortune as a fantasy and paperback cover artist. As a teenager I used to haunt many local used bookstores on the search for his paperback covers, and along the way I discovered a lot of great illustrators, from John Berkey to Frank McCarthy and James Bama. I collected old Saturday Evening Post magazines for covers by Norman Rockwell and illustrations by many artists of the golden age of illustration, such as Dean Cornwell, Mead Schaeffer, Albert Dorne, and more. All throughout my career as a comic guy, I have continued my interest and passion for illustration. A little over a year ago I met Ron Fortier via Facebook after he left a nice comment on one of my fine art paintings I had posted. In short order this lead to Ron offering me an opportunity to illustrate a cover for one of Airship 27 and Cornerstone Publishing’s upcoming books, Robin Hood: King of Sherwood, by I.A. Watson, a new book telling the stories of Robin Hood. In this article I will focus mainly on the second of the two book covers I painted for the series. The first cover of the series garnered me the Pulp Factory “Best Cover” Award. When Ron emailed me about the second book in the series I was pumped to get started on it. DRAW! • SPRING 2012

(above) Mike’s submitted rough sketch and finished painting for the cover of Robin Hood: King of Sherwood. (next page) Photo reference shot by Mike for the cover of Robin Hood: Arrow of Justice. © MIkE MANLEy

For the first cover in the series I talked to Ron and Art Director Rob Davis. I set about doing some sketches and came up with a final sketch, which I submitted. Next I set about gathering my reference for the illustration, and this led me to employ one of my best friends and fellow student and studio mate at school, Will Sentman. It just happened to be my luck that Will looked the part of a young Robin and had the costume, as he is a Ren Faire fan, and had a bow and arrow to boot. I set up a photo shoot in my living room, and Will posed as close as he could to my sketch. My idea was to use the pictures I shot for the lighting and details I wanted in the final illustration, but I did not want the photos to be something that I was a slave to. I wanted to use the photo merely as a tool to aid me in details and lighting. I looked to artists like N.C. Wyeth, who did employ some photography, but was not in any way a slave to them. In fact, Wyeth was a big influence on me in doing both of these covers.

USING PHOTO REFERENCE On the second cover of the series, Robin Hood: Arrow of Justice, I again employed Will and also my friend Alina Osipov as Maid Marian. This time I did the photo shoot at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, where we all attend. The action on the second cover takes place as Robin and

DRAW! • SPRING 2012

Marian break into the castle, and I figured the school would be the perfect backdrop and stage. It was a pretty hot day for us as I tried a lot of different set-ups with both Will and Alina. I had in my mind what I wanted to do for the cover this time, so I went about placing Will and Alina in a variety of poses and angles knowing that I would probably not use any one picture, but choose parts of many. I shot many photos that day and later spent a good bit of time sorting them down to a useful handful. I then sat down and did my sketch. I referenced the photos, but ultimately ended up not using much from the ones I shot of Alina. I was not happy with the poses of the figure, but they were great for her hair and face. Once I was happy with the sketch, I submitted it to Rob and Ron for approval. In the end I only took parts of the photos and made up most of the figure of Maid Marian, as I was just not happy with any of the photos I shot. I should also mention that I never use the color from the photos I shoot, but rather the values, and I also bracket the exposures and then adjust them in Photoshop to capture details. There is a great recent book called Norman Rockwell: Behind the Camera, by Ron Schick, which details Rockwell’s process and how he used photography. It’s a fantastic book and one I highly recommend not only as a Rockwell fan, but also for its detailing of how to use photography as an aid, not a straightjacket. Once the sketch was approved, I moved into production.

DRAW! • SPRING 2012

38 DRAW! • SPRING 2012

(previous page) Mike’s approved rough sketch for the cover of Robin Hood: Arrow of Justice. (above) Mike pieces together his enlarged sketch, then thoroughly covers the back of the sketch in pencil. © MIkE MANLEy

PREPPING THE SURFACE

GETTING STARTED

The first thing I did was purchase a piece of four-ply Crescent Hot Press Illustration Board and coat it with four coats of acrylic gesso. I like Liquitex’s acrylic gesso; I find that it works the best for me. Next I fastened the board with clips to a large piece of foam core to prevent the illustration board from warping when I applied the gesso. After it was dry, I very lightly sanded it with a fine grit sand paper to give it a nice, smooth, even surface.

Next, I spent some time correcting the drawing and getting things to the stage I was happy with. I then started painting, beginning with the background and working with the largest masses. I did not do a color comp for this illustration, but I do highly recommend it to work out your color scheme and settle any problems or indecision. Indecision is a terrible thing when you are trying to do a piece of work. I feel you have to work from a base of confidence, as you need to gain a great head of steam to power through a piece of work. I really had the cover vividly in my mind on this piece, so I decided to risk it and repaint anything I didn’t like. Next, I started blocking in the figures, again starting with the biggest masses and not getting tied up in details. This is a very important idea and one trap that many artists fall into—and one I even have to fight myself sometimes. Details always come later! Like a tailor making a fine suit, the buttons come last, not first. We are enticed and want to get to those cool, little details, but if you jump to them first the drawing or painting will usually fall victim to being out of sync, out of harmony. After blocking in the painting and getting a good “bed,” as they call it, I set aside the illustration to let it dry a bit and to give myself a rest so that I could come back the next day with a fresh set of eyes. I also used some Liquin Fine Detail as a medium to help the oil paint dry faster.

TRANSFERRING THE SKETCH Next I enlarged my sketch several hundred percent on my copier and, using blue painter’s tape and my light box, taped the pieces together into one piece. I flipped this over and, using a 3B pencil, covered the back very thoroughly. What I did here was make myself a larger transfer sheet. You want to make sure you get good coverage so the image will transfer to the board well. Once the illustration board was dry, I taped down the transfer sheet and, using a ballpoint pen, traced off the drawing. Now, I could have approached this step in a different way. I could have used a projector to trace off my drawing. Some illustrators do this, and I have done this in the past, but, since I wanted to really do my “drawing” when I did the final painting, I just wanted a good placement of things. The other concern here is that you want to press hard enough that the drawing transfers, but not so hard that you press grooves down into the board.

DRAW! • SPRING 2012

After the painting had dried for three days I applied some Winsor & Newton Retouching Varnish to the whole painting to bring back the colors and the darks. Dark colors tend to dull down or sink in as they dry, and this tends to happen even moreso when working on illustration board. The retouching varnish should be applied in a well-ventilated area. It can be cut or thinned a bit; you can use mineral spirits or odorless turpentine for that. You cannot apply a final varnish until the painting has fully dried for at least six months.

CHOOSING A PALETTE Here is the basic palette I used for both paintings. My general thinking is to keep your palette simple; you don’t need a zillion colors. Basically you need to choose a warm and cool of the primary colors—red, yellow, and blue—and a few earth tones, and then work from there. If you need a color you just can’t mix, then add as needed. Working with fewer colors will teach you more about color. Quality paint is important, as the better a paint is, the better the color is. You also will get better coverage. These brands are the ones I like, but each artist will find colors and brands they love the best:

Palette ■ Alizarin Crimson, Rembrandt ■ Vermilion, Williamsburg ■ Cerulean Blue, Williamsburg ■ Prussian Blue, Rembrandt ■ Payne’s Gray, Rembrandt ■ Titanium White, Williamsburg ■ Cadmium Yellow Medium, Williamsburg ■ Yellow Ochre, Williamsburg ■ Warm Gray, Dick Blick ■ Van Dyke Brown, Dick Blick ■ Mars Black, Dick Blick

Medium ■ Odorless Mineral Spirits ■ Liquin Fine Detail ■ Retouch Varnish (to bring the colors back up)

Brushes ■ Flats various sizes but I like 12, down to 6 ■ Fan for blending large area ■ Rounds down to 4 down to 0 for details Good brushes are important, and I tend to use the Dick Blick store brand lately. I use their white synthetic brushes a lot because they are good and inexpensive. When they lose the point, toss them and get a new one. After the painting was dry I photographed it, corrected the colors in Photoshop, and sent it off to the publisher. I really loved doing both of these covers and the opportunity to try my hand at doing an old pulp-style cover, and I look forward to another trip to Sherwood Forest. See you next time, Mike 40

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Mike’s finished painting for the cover of Robin Hood: Arrow of Justice. Both this painting as well as the first Robin Hood cover painting were executed in oil at roughly 24" x 30" in size. Both Robin Hood books are available at www.cornerstonepublishers.com. © MIkE MANLEy

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Hardboiled Hero

FRANK MILLER Interview conducted via phone by Danny Fingeroth transcribed by Steven Tice and copyedited by Danny Fingeroth and Frank Miller

SPOTLIGHT

(above) Miller’s cover contribution to ’Mazing Man #12. (righ) Prelims and final art from Frank’s “Sin City” book The Big Fat Kill #2.

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BATMAN AND ROBIN, ’MAzING MAN ™ AND © DC COMICS. SIN CITy ™ AND © fRANk MILLER.

RANK MILLER changed the way comics are done, starting with Daredevil and moving on to re-envision Batman in The Dark Knight Returns. Other triumphs for the writer-artist included Martha Washington, 300, and, of course, Sin City, which was turned into a sleeper-hit movie which he co-directed. Frank also wrote and directed The Spirit, based on Will Eisner’s classic character. His recent work includes Holy Terror, and the upcoming sequel to 300, Xerxes. I spoke with Frank via phone on March 11, 2010, and he answered some follow-up questions via email in November, 2011.

DANNY FINGEROTH: Did you always want to write your own comics,

Frank? You came to Marvel drawing other people’s stuff. Was writing always your ambition? FRANK MILLER: It always was, because I always saw the two crafts as one thing. I grew up drawing my comics on a piece of typing paper folded in half, showing my mom and saying, “I’m doing this for the rest of my life!” DF: What did she say when you said that? FM: She said, and I quote, “You can do anything if you set your mind to it.” DF: Who are your influences in writing and art? Who got you excited about wanting to do comics professionally? FM: Well, the first two would be a guy by the name of Curt Swan, and then Jim Shooter. I grew up reading superheroes. Later I fell in love with the work of Steve Ditko and Stan Lee, and Jack Kirby and Stan Lee. Then years and years went by, and I discovered Will Eisner and fell madly in love with his combination of words and pictures. DF: Where did you discover him, in the Warren Spirit reprints? FM: Yup! I was bicycling, as I always did, from Montpelier, Vermont, to

Barre, Vermont, two towns that are very close together, and came across this oversized, weird-looking comic book and thought, “Who is this new guy? He’s amazing!” Then, of course, I saw the copyright and it said “1942.” DF: Had you read the Jules Feiffer’s The Great Comic Book Heroes, which introduced Eisner to a new generation? FM: I had read the Feiffer book and seen Steranko’s Eisner tribute in his History of Comics, but it wasn’t until I sat down and read the Spirit story “Sand Serif ” that I realized what Eisner really did. DF: What was it about that story that got to you? FM: It broke my heart. It showed me that comic books could break my heart.

(above) Frank’s poster art for The Spirit. (below) Frank Miller’s Daredevil via Will Eisner. THE SPIRIT ™ AND © THE WILL EISNER ESTATE. DAREDEVIL ™ AND © MARVEL CHARACTERS, INC.

Beyond showing guys walking in shadows along waterfronts and all that wonderful imagery, it showed a hero facing a moral challenge, and addressing it. DF: A deeper moral challenge than the Marvel heroes of the day were facing? FM: I thought so, because he had that classic line, which I kept in the Spirit

movie, “I’ve got to find Sand Serif and bring her in.” Which I, of course, stole when I did Elektra. I just changed the lingo. I had Daredevil say, “I’ve got to find Elektra and bring her to justice.” But, come on, it was a cold rip-off. DF: It would be like Superman saying, “I’ve got to find Lois Lane and bring

her in.” FM: Yeah. And I think we all have a Sand Serif back there somewhere. DF: At least one. FM: Well, yeah. If we’re lucky, it’s more than one. But there’s always that one.

It’s your Bobby McGee. It’s the one you’ll never forget.

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Some of Frank’s earliest work for Marvel included this 1980 cover for Marvel Spotlight vol.2, #5 (left) inked by Bob Wiacek and a 1980 “Captain Marvel” story in Marvel Spotlight vol. 2, #8 (right) inked by Bruce Patterson. CAPTAIN MARVEL, DRAGON LORD ™ AND © MARVEL CHARACTERS, INC.

DF: Most people’s first memory of your work is on Daredevil. But where did you first break in? FM: There’s no way to explain this without prefacing it. I bothered Neal Adams a lot, and he kept on letting me come to his studio. And he hated my work. DF: Why did he hate it? FM: He just told me it was terrible. And I went on from him to

Joe Orlando at DC Comics, who also hated my work, and various other people who hated my work. And eventually I showed something to Neal that impressed him enough where he said, “The guy can’t draw, we all know that. But his storytelling is budding.” He gave me my first job at Gold Key Comics doing Twilight Zone. I did a few Twilight Zones, and then I got down to DC Comics, and eventually Paul Levitz offered me Claw the Unconquered. And I went to Jim Shooter and I said, “I’d rather do something for Marvel. Can you guarantee me regular work?” And he said, “I can only make you a personal promise. You will work regularly here.” So I got to draw things like “Captain Marvel” and so on. And then I had the utter audacity to request Daredevil. Gene Colan had just quit, and Frank Robbins had taken it over, but it was an issue-by-issue thing. And I applied for the job and got it.

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DF: Did you go to art school? FM: No. I only learned by practicing at home, ripping off every-

body from Barry Smith to Neal Adams, and then learning directly from masters like Al Williamson and Neal Adams. DF: From copying their work, you mean? FM: No, I mean from invading their studios. [laughter] And hav-

ing them show me how bad my work was. DF: What made you think you could just go knock on their doors? Was it naiveté? FM: It was a combination of naiveté, and also—Danny, I got fired off every job I ever had. I couldn’t make it as a truck driver. I couldn’t make it as a bus driver. I couldn’t make it as a janitor. For me, it was do or die. DF: Did you have art teachers in high school who encouraged

you? FM: Yeah. I had one art teacher in particular, Bruce Brooks, who was a wonderful teacher, and he encouraged me. And I had a brilliant teacher, Jeff Danziger, who’s actually now a renowned cartoonist, who encouraged me to write. He said that my talents were more in the writing sector. Now he and I are good friends,

and we’re both almost the same age. But when he was in his 20s, he thought I’d make a better writer than an artist. DF: Did you write as a teenager? FM: Oh, yeah, yeah. I wrote all my own stuff. Who

else was going to do it? DF: I mean did you write prose—short stories, or detective fiction, anything like that? FM: Yes, I did. I did it very badly. DF: Has that material ever been published anywhere? FM: If it had been, I wouldn’t tell you. DF: So Shooter gives you the shot on Daredevil. I

guess technically the editor was Al Milgrom? FM: That was Al Milgrom. I worked with Al Milgrom and Jo Duffy. DF: Klaus Janson had been inking it before, and so that’s how you two first got paired up? FM: Yes. And I called up Klaus and begged him to stay on the book because I knew somebody had to soften the rough edges and make sense out of my pencils, and he did a beautiful job. I think Klaus and I had kind of a magical collaboration, because he would take my stuff and he would really take the rough edges off it, and really pull out what was inside it, meanwhile adding that snap and confidence to the ink line, so that we developed a style that was ours. It wasn’t either of ours, and I really felt that we had a rapport that was pretty amazing considering we almost never socialized. DF: Klaus brought a visual continuity from the previous Daredevil days to your first run on the book, and made it a seamless transition. FM: I thought he and Gil Kane were astonishing together on the book, and I was out to imitate that a lot at the beginning. And, of course, there was the Eisner influence. DF: As with every artist, those influences are there, but you’ve synthesized them. FM: Well, it’s all mixed in with a country kid new to New York and falling in love with it. (top and far right) The cover (inked by Joe Rubinstein) and opening splash page art (inked by Klaus Janson and courtesy of www.ha.com) of Frank’s first issue as the penciler for Daredevil. (right) Frank’s cover art for Daredevil Visionaries: Frank Miller, vol. 1, which collects the first issues of Frank’s run.

DAREDEVIL ™ AND © MARVEL CHARACTERS, INC.

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(above) Just a few of Frank’s iconic covers from his run on Daredevil. (below) Cover art for the Elektra Lives graphic novel. ALL CHARACTERS ™ AND © MARVEL CHARACTERS, INC.

DF: You often speak about Denny [O’Neil] and people associated with him. Did you get much training from Al or Jo? FM: I got a lot from both of them. I especially have to mention Jo, because she took me under her wing and really taught me a terrific amount about what a story was, about what characters were, and about how to make it all work. Al would pound me hard on something when he thought that I did a figure that didn’t fit together. DF: How long was it before you started writing your own stuff, and was it hard to convince Al and Jo to let you do that? FM: Well, by then, Denny O’Neil was the editor, and I approached him because I felt that I was already writing it, and that my notes in the corners were enough to make a script. Denny gave me a chance. I completely overwrote my first job, and he pulled me back and said, “You’re using too many words.” He came onboard after Al, and it was he who hired me as a writer, and that was where he really tutored me a lot about comic book writing. Everything from very simple things like “you’re using too many words” to “you’ve got the slide on the gun on the wrong side.” But he and I had long conversations about writing, and he exposed me to a lot of the martial arts material that I used so extensively. In a way, I kind of think Denny brought me back home, because he loves noir stuff as much as I do, and the more I went in that direction, the more he encouraged me. He was much more the gentle guide of my writing career. He saw the Eisner influence. He made no claims to understand the artwork, but he could see that I was progressing.

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What he would mainly do is bring to me notions of what story content and its inherent character conflict was, and what a plot point was, which at the time was news to me. DF: And I guess the Irish Catholic thing, also, was something you

had in common. FM: Well, that was already in me, but he sure shared it, to say the least. With a name like Denny O’Neil, he’d better. DF: Daredevil was the closest you could come to a Spirit-like noir character at Marvel. You changed comics, and especially that character. Then you left it, then you came back at a point where you had pretty much the choice to do whatever you wanted in comics. What made you keep coming back to Daredevil and Elektra and that whole mini-universe? FM: I fell in love with Batman and with Daredevil. In both cases I simply fell in love with the characters, and have revisited them from time to time when I miss them and when I get a new idea of some new torment to put them through. DF: What do you think it was about Daredevil

that you fell in love with? FM: Well, I turned it into a personal vehicle, you know, with the Irish Catholic reverence and the love of the city. But mostly it was just that I worked on the character enough so I got inside his head, and I cared about him. DF: Did you have any trouble getting the Irish Catholic stuff through? FM: Not really. The amount of interference I got along the way

was minimal, and mostly they were right. It took me a long time

to learn that there are certain parameters that the major companies, with their brand names, work with. It’s especially true now, of course, with everything being turned into a movie. DF: And Elektra—if you fell in love with Daredevil, was it a different experience to fall in love with a character that you invented? FM: With Elektra, I can’t even look at anything anybody else does with her. I haven’t seen the movie, I haven’t seen the comic books they’ve done of her. I just tell everybody she’s dead. My main line about Elektra is, “I’ll always love you, but you’re just sleeping all around town, and I can’t put up with it.” DF: Sometimes you write stuff that

other people draw, sometimes you draw stuff that other people write, for instance, the Wolverine limited series you did with Chris Claremont. How do you determine what role you want to take in a particular assignment? FM: These days, I don’t draw what other people write, because I see it too much my own way. It’s nothing but asking for a fight, involving another writer. DF: But back when you were still doing that...? FM: Back when I was doing that, I was excited. It turned me on. There was a three-hour drive from San Diego to Los Angeles in which Chris and I plotted Wolverine in its entirety. And we had a ball working together. DF: Joe Rubinstein did a beautiful job of inking it. FM: Absolutely. DF: What eventually led you to say, “You know what? Marvel’s not enough, Page 6 of Wolverine #2, penciled by Frank Miller, inked by Joe Rubinstein, Daredevil’s not enough.” Where and and hand-painted on the board by Steve Olliff. Courtesy of Heritage Auctions (www.ha.com). how did Ronin become the thing that ALL CHARACTERS ™ AND © MARVEL CHARACTERS, INC. you went to next? FM: Well, I’m an ambitious man, and I wanted to use what I’d DF: Working with Walt and Howard, were you constantly showing learned at the Upstart Studios that I shared with Walt Simonson, each other your work? Do you recommend getting into a studio Jim Sherman, and Howard Chaykin. And I wanted to work with situation to a young artist? colorist Lynn Varley. And part of the atmosphere at Upstart was FM: We’d just jump all over each other’s work and show each this excitement of what was going on in France, especially Jean other what we were doing. Howard would come over in his Giraud’s work as Moebius. I wanted to do something new in acerbic way and rip me to pieces. Walter would come over, comics. I wanted to compete with the European production values, he’s a very gentlemanly guy, but he’d also rip me to pieces. And and I was very lucky to be in proximity to Lynn, and have her I would learn. I was there when Walter drew Alien, which, to my help me along in making the pictures stronger and stronger, and mind, might just be the only successful movie adaptation ever done in comics. It’s an amazing graphic novel, and he and to give life to them.

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(left) Page 18 of Wolverine #2, penciled by Frank Miller, inked by Joe Rubinstein, and hand-painted on the board by Steve Olliff. Courtesy of www.ha.com. (above) Artwork for the limited edition slipcase cover for the original Sin City trade paperback. (right) Frank’s cover art for the Absolute Dark Knight collection. WOLVERINE ™ AND © MARVEL CHARACTERS, INC. SIN CITy ™ AND © fRANk MILLER. BATMAN ™ AND © DC COMICS.

Archie Goodwin really brought it to heights in a way that was not the movie. DF: Do you now work in a studio alone? FM: I work alone. DF: Do you miss working with other people? FM: We do get older and more crotchety. If I worked with some-

body else in the same room with me, we’d probably end up killing each other. But I do miss the give and take. I miss it a lot, and I get it mostly through staying in touch with artists like Bill Sienkiewicz and Paul Pope, where we show each other work. But it’s not the same thing as being shoulder-to-shoulder. DF: How does it feel to be more or less the same age as “old Batman” was in The Dark Knight Returns? [laughs]

FM: I just keep making him older every time I do him. When I

first decided to do Dark Knight, I was horrified to realize that I was about to turn 30, and that would make me older than Batman. That’s why I made sure in Dark Knight 2 that he was pushing 60, well in my future. God knows, if I ever do a Dark Knight 3, he’s probably going to be using a walker. DF: Sin City is something that you have come back to again and

again. The same with Batman and 300. What is it about those characters or worlds that keeps you coming back? FM: Well, I love my work, and sometimes I love going to Marvel or DC and playing with their toys. I know that I’m a contributor in a much greater work that is ongoing and will go on forever, as long as those companies are in business. With Sin City, it’s much more mine. It’s more personal. Sin City is the comic book that I wanted to do since I was a little kid. I always wanted to do hot

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A double-page spread from Ronin #1, penciled and inked by Frank. RONIN ™ AND © DC COMICS.

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Frank’s preliminary layout sketch for a scene in Sin City: Big Fat Kill #1, along with the finished panels. As you can see, Frank decided to place a larger establishing shot at the top of the page. He then swapped the first two panels of his layout in order to better establish just who is looking into the rearview mirror. The third panel, which was pushed to the top of the next page, he turned into a silhouette, which heightens the look of concern on Dwight’s face. SIN CITy ™ AND © fRANk MILLER.

girls and sharp cars and guys in trench coats. I was first introduced to the 300 story when I was about seven years old, and there was a clunky old Universal movie called The 300 Spartans that I spent too much of my adult life thinking how much I wanted to adapt the story, until finally I turned somewhere around 40 and I said, “I’d better do this thing with 300 while I can.” That has led to a much greater exploration of the Greek material, and a much greater realization of how important it is, how compelling it is, how moral it is.

thought it would be, and so I was in financial straits, and there’s a sense, when you’re all of a sudden in financial trouble, of your whole world falling apart, and I thought, why not put Matt through that? And from that came the business of bringing in Karen Page vastly transformed, and the Kingpin discovering Daredevil’s secret identity and dismantling his life. So it was kind of like vanity, but it was also a way for me to break the character down to his absolute core and get rid of all the stuff I didn’t like about him. One of the reasons that I kept him out of his costume so much in the series was that I wanted him to come back fresh and new.

DF: With the story arc “Born Again,” you came back to

Daredevil after doing the landmark Batman stuff. Why did you come back, and what was different about the character when you returned to him? FM: Well, I got offered the job, and the story presented itself. I had just moved to California and it was much more expensive than I

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DF: What made you decide to just write it, and not draw it? FM: David Mazzucchelli was available, and I was really, really

busy. It was the same time I was doing Dark Knight, and Elektra: Assassin, and God knows what else. And I thought that it’d be really fun to see it through somebody else’s eyes.

Cover art for Wolverine #4, inked by Joe Rubinstein. RONIN ™ AND © DC COMICS.

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Back and front cover art for the Spider-Man/Daredevil Special Edition, penciled and inked by Frank. Courtesy of www.ha.com. DAREDEVIL, SPIDER-MAN ™ AND © MARVEL COMICS, INC.

There was something about working with David that was like riding a rocket, because the transition from Daredevil to “Batman: Year One” was totally dramatic. And then you go on to his own Rubber Blanket and you’ve got a completely different artist on your hands. I’ve never seen anybody progress so quickly.

coming up with new scenes and new sequences. Elektra wasn’t even in the original version, and she’s all over the Man Without Fear. So that was all new, so poor Romita would just keep getting these addenda from me, and the project kept increasing in size. DF: You did a one-shot Daredevil story with John Buscema. How

DF: When you work as a writer for another artist, do you do

did that come about?

Marvel style—plot first—or full script? FM: It depends on who it is.

FM: As I recall, I was simply asked to do a fill-in, and when I

DF: And what about with John Romita Jr. on Man Without Fear? FM: That was done Marvel style. It was originally my attempt at

learned that I had a chance to work with John Buscema, it was like getting a chance to work with [legendary Prince Valiant artist] Hal Foster! I came up with a story that I thought would play to his dramatic strengths. Our entire conversation was a call I got from John where he was just over the moon because he didn’t have to draw “muscle” comics. [The story is Matt Murdockfocused, without him putting on the Daredevil costume.—Mike] You knew John, he talked like a truck driver and drew like Michelangelo. That one was just a real honor to work on.

a TV treatment for Daredevil. I didn’t know anything about TV treatments, and I wrote one that would have been about seven hours long. [It was rejected and] Marvel asked me if I wanted to do anything with it, and I thought, why not? Because there was a lot of good work in it. And then, as it progressed, I kept on

DF: How do you decide if something you’re doing should be color or black-and-white? FM: Mostly I decide by whether Lynn is available or not. But it also has to do with the characters or the product itself. Sin City I

DF: Say Bill Sienkiewicz—how did you work with him on Elektra: Assassin? FM: With Bill I wrote a full script, and then he would turn in the artwork, and I would rewrite the entire script.

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decided to do in black-and-white because I wanted it to be—this is going to sound really stupid and ironic—as anti-film as it could be. I was burned-out on Hollywood. I was fried. And I decided I would sit down and do a comic book that could never be made into a movie. Well, guess what my first movie was? DF: That leads me to the next question. You’ve made the step that

so many comics people want to make, into writing and directing movies. Was that always part of the game plan? When did you first get interested in it, and what’s your relationship to Hollywood now? You’re still doing comics, so it’s not like you’ve gone over completely. FM: Oh, no, no. In fact, comics feels very much more like my home, whereas movies are much more of an adventure that I go on. And I have a great time. I love actors. I’m the epitome of the actor’s director. DF: Had you ever directed actors before Sin City? FM: No. I just found out I was at home and got along with them

great, and admired what they’re able to bring to... how do I put it?... to emotional life. There’s really nothing like Gerry Butler charging at you to convince you you’re in a battle. But it wasn’t until I got a series of phone calls from this guy named Robert Rodriguez, who I’d never heard of, who kept wanting to make a Sin City movie. And I kept on saying that was the stupidest idea

Frank’s preliminary layout sketch for the closing scene in Sin City: Big Fat Kill #2, along with the finished panels. Here Frank changed the final panel to be a close-up of the dead cop. The revealing of the badge is pushed back to the bottom of the previous page. The heavy blacks on the badge and Dwight’s arm draw the reader’s eyes and make the badge the center of attention. The inverted white on black inking of the final page reflects the dark moods of Dwight and the women and adds to the feeling that big trouble is coming. SIN CITy ™ AND © fRANk MILLER.

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in the world. And then I finally agreed to meet the guy. We met at a bar in Hell’s Kitchen. He showed me the way he would do it, and I said, “This looks great! Let’s do it!” And we went off and made Sin City. It really was that simple.

to time, but I don’t think we ever had a meal. Whereas, with Eisner, he and I had an ongoing debate for a lot of years. And most people who knew us thought we didn’t like each other, because every conversation would end with him saying, “I don’t even know why I talk to you anymore!” Which, by the way, is Yiddish for “I love you.”

DF: If you had to pick one most significant influence on your

work, would you say it was Eisner? FM: It would be Will Eisner or Jack Kirby, I’m not sure which.

DF: But you both kept coming back for more. FM: Yeah. He was a very good man. But I’ll tell you, he was one

bitch of an arguer. DF: Eisner/Miller is a wonderful book of discussions between you and Will. It really gets into the heart of both the agreements and disagreements between the two of you. Did you have that kind of relationship with Kirby, as well? FM: No, I didn’t, actually. Jack and I never had that much concourse. I stood up for him as a fellow professional, and saw him from time

DF: But he must have enjoyed it because you kept doing it. FM: Look, we’ve got an Irish Catholic and a Bronx Jew. What’s

going to happen? We’re going to argue. It was healthy, it was good, and I learned a lot. And, believe it or not, I actually won a couple of the arguments. But only a couple. DF: Did you ever get to say a real goodbye to

him? Despite his age, we were all taken by surprise when he died. FM: Oh, yes. I spoke to him a couple of weeks before he died, and it was very sweet. It was probably the first conversation where he didn’t say, “I don’t know why I even talk to you anymore.” Because he was just telling me, “You’ve been a good friend.” It was very sweet. DF: Switching gears, this interview is for

DRAW!, so the readers are going to want to know about what kinds of pens and pencils you use, that kind of thing. FM: I use the very old tools. Brushes, Bristol board, and flexible pens. DF: And what kind of pencils? FM: Plain old Ticonderoga. And I work on

two-ply Bristol board. DF: Aside from being able to get work in

more quickly, has the computer affected how you write or draw? FM: Well, it’s affecting how I write because it’s so much easier than a typewriter. For God’s sake, typewriters feels like something from the Dark Ages. DF: So you’re not one of those guys who writes in longhand? FM: I am. I write all over my pages as I’m drawing them. DF: But then you transfer it over to the com-

puter? FM: If I’m not drawing it, I transfer it to a computer. If I’m writing and drawing it, I do it all on the same page. DF: And then you letter the dialogue directly Page 5 of Wolverine #2, inked by Joe Rubinstein.

WOLVERINE ™ AND © MARVEL CHARACTERS, INC.

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on the boards? FM: Yes, I do.

DF: And you do it the old-fashioned way, with the balloons on

the boards before the inking is done? FM: Absolutely. DF: Do you deliver your work electronically, or do you send the original art to your editors? FM: I’m a Luddite. My editor gets my originals, warts, scratches, chipping white-out, and all. DF: How do you feel about digital delivery and reading of

comics? Is the transition of so much of comics and other print material good, bad, ugly, or something else altogether? FM: It’s neither good, bad, nor ugly. It is inevitable. Pamphlet comics have priced themselves out of all reason. The digital kind— 99 cents a comic!—will replace the old sturdies. I’ll miss them. DF: Would you ever do a comic whose initial existence was digital? FM: Sure. Just have to learn my stuff. It’d be a hoot. I’d find a lot out. DF: Any projects coming up in 2012 that you want to make sure

people know about? FM: Xerxes, my next graphic novel. Sin City 2, which Robert and

I are preparing. Beyond that, my lips are sealed.

FM: Find out how things work. Find out what things really look like. Study the classics. Beyond that, my best advice would be to mix it up, to meet as many other people who do what you do as possible. Go to conventions and bother people, because they’ll tell you what’s wrong with your work. They will be very clear. DF: Is there a knack for bothering people without them thinking you’re a crazy person? FM: Develop your social skills. DF: Any other advice? FM: I don’t think I can top “develop your social skills.” [laughs] DF: Thanks, Frank. This was great. FM: Thank you, Danny.

Danny Fingeroth is Sr. V.P. 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 TwoMorrrows, and is co-editor, with Roy Thomas, of the company’s recent (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: danny@ dannyfingeroth.com.

DF: Any advice you would have for aspiring artists or writers, or

writer-artists, or for anybody trying to break into comics?

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FRANK MILLER/ KLAUS JANSON

THE TITANIC TEAM-UP A gallery of one of the greatest collaborations in comics’ history

(left) Cover art for Daredevil #188. (above) Daredevil #165, page 30. Both courtesy of www.ha.com. ALL CHARACTERS ™ AND © MARVEL CHARACTERS, INC.

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(above) Daredevil #175, page 14. (right) Daredevil #181, page 3. Both courtesy of www.ha.com.

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(above and next page) Frank’s pencil breakdowns and Klaus Janson’s finishes for Daredevil #190, page 2. Klaus used Craftint in the inking to provide texture.

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(above and next page) Frank’s pencils and Klaus’ finishes for Daredevil #190, page 9. Klaus, being a fine penciler in his own right, tweaks the pencils as needed.

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(above and next page) Frank’s breakdowns and Klaus’ finished inks for Daredevil #190, page 12.

66 DRAW! • SPRING 2012

DRAW! • SPRING 2012

(above) Elektra Saga #1, page 25. (right) The Dark Knight Returns #1, page 47. Both courtesy of www.ha.com.

DRAW! • SPRING 2012

(previous page) Page 3 of The Dark Knight Returns #3. (above) Page 31 of The Dark Knight Returns #4. Both courtesy of www.ha.com BATMAN, ROBIN ™ AND © DC COMICS.

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alutations once again! It is I, your humble recorder of the rolling ruler, the artistic surveyor of supplies, the Crusty Critic, here again to help you navigate through the sometimes daunting but always fun world of finding great art supplies to help you get through another comic book assignment. What we all want from our art supplies is great quality, great price (if you can get it), and great quantity! The worst thing in the world is to be in the middle of a deadline tornado and to run out of that one thing you need to get to the finish line—be it a special brush, that paper that feels just right as your pencil slides across it, or, in this case, the fuel that great comic pages are powered by: ink! I’ve said this before in previous columns, and it should go without saying, though I’m saying it anyway—YMMV. Your Mileage May Vary with whatever art supplies you find and use. Something that I thought was awful you may love, but my hope is that you may discover something new from my research.

INK Every comic book artist has in their arsenal a shelf or drawer full of ink for finishing comic pages. While a majority of younger cartoonists have found their way with disposable markers and technical pens like Microns or even the brilliant Eberhard & Faber PITT series pens, there’s always the need for a real, old-school, tried and true bottle of ink. But which one? Since you are readers in good standing of DRAW! magazine, you already know that, as a professional, the only ink you should be using should be permanent India ink. This is the most important rule to keep in mind as

DRAW! • SPRING 2012

you shop for a brand, as inks that do not mention permanency will come back to haunt you, fading or bleeding, as non-permanent inks are not created to stand the tests of time. You want to approach all of your art as something that needs to be archived, so make sure you check your labels. Some newer ink brands may not say that they are “India” brands of ink, such as the new FW Acrylic Artist’s Ink, but just keep scanning the label, as it should let you know if the ink is water-resistant. That’s the deal-breaker. For this article, I have called forth aid from my good friends at Allegheny Art Company in Pennsylvania, my local store and my first and last stop for shoring up lots of test inks. Allegheny has a great selection, is well-lit, cheery, and has a great staff that knows their stuff. If I can help it, I will give my business to the small art shops whenever I can—sometimes hanging out in the shop and talking about art for an hour with the staff is worth it. If I tried that at the big-box places, I’m certain the constable would be called on to rid this Crusty Critic from their establishments. The Crusty Critic will review each ink for this article on a five-beret scale under these parameters: QUALITY: Is it a well-made product? DARKNESS: How the ink lays down on the page—darkness is key for this Crusty Critic. CONSISTENCY: Was the ink like water or slick and squiddy? PRODUCT SIZE: We all want to stretch our dollar. Product size factors in on the score. I have also included a test swatch where I show the way our inks lay down on paper.

SPEEDBALL SUPERBLACK

DR. PH MARTIN’S BOMBAY BLACK INK

2 fl. oz. plastic bottle, wide mouth, no eyedropper

1 fl. oz. glass bottle, eyedropper

The Speedball SuperBlack is a thin, pretty dense ink with a wide mouth and a deeper base, primarily for crow quill use. Applying with a nice, rich black and not a lot of streaking, the Speedball SuperBlack lives up to the test and may become my new brand.

I’ve been using the Bombay Black for a while, using this to fill travel brushpens. It pours thin and dries quickly. Not the richest black, but a nice ink to keep in stock. Works really well against a balanced, bright paper, such as the Borden & Riley Paris Bleedproof brand.

DR. PH MARTIN’S BLACK STAR INK (HICARB & MATTE) 1 fl. oz. glass bottle, eyedropper I picked up a bottle of each of the Dr. PH Martin’s Inks—HiCarb and Matte—and I didn’t see much of a difference between the two. The Matte reminded me of a little of the thick PLAKA we used to use back in art school, which was dark as midnight, but needed to get mixed—definitely not something you’d want to work with on a comics page. I would pick the Matte ink over HiCarb—it had a richer black and didn’t absorb into the paper as much. HICARB (far left)

MATTE (left)

DRAW! • SPRING 2012

WINSOR & NEWTON INK (#951)

LIQUITEX INK! CARBON BLACK

.47 fl. oz. glass bottle

5 fl. oz. plastic bottle, screw cap

The Winsor & Newton ink comes in a tiny bottle and isn’t really packaged to stretch for a big inking job, as I believe this series is set up as the base black in a line of W&N pigments—I know I have an apple green and some reds rolling around in one of my Crusty Crates. The black is pretty thin and would probably work well in an airbrush, but it’s not the best thing for a comic artist, based on the size of the bottle alone. The ink is even and fairly dark, but there are better options out there.

The Liquitex Ink! is a newer brand, as Liquitex begins to penetrate the drawing ink market. Branded as acrylic ink, from what I’ve seen it’s nothing spectacular, but I do enjoy the oversized bottle, which reminds me of some of the Japanese SUMI-E brands of ink. It dries pretty gray, but when wet it really gives a rich black. You’ll probably have to do a couple of coats before you get what you’re looking for. It gets a halfberet just for the bigger container—sometimes all you need is more ink to get the job done, and the Liquitex brand passes, but it’s not amazing.

FW ACRYLIC ARTISTS INK 1 fl. oz. glass bottle, eyedropper I have a few inker friends who swear by the FW ink, and I’ve used it on a few jobs. Actually, I recall buying the Bombay and FW inks at the same time and used them concurrently, with the FW beating out Bombay just slightly—a little thicker ink which didn’t fight you on the brush. My color swatch (left) doesn’t show a great coverage, but I’d recommend you give it a shot anyway—I know I’ve gotten better batches in the past. I hope the formula hasn’t changed, like Higgins’ did, where I have large bottles of that stuff I can’t really use unless I wanted to do some wash-work.

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In summary, out of my tests for this review, I really enjoyed the Speedball ink. I hadn’t used it before and was surprised by the richness of the product. If you’re in the Philadelphia area and you want to solicit a great art store with great service, stop by one of the Allegheny Art Company’s brick-and-mortar establishments at 318 Leedom Street, Jenkintown, PA (215-884-9242) and 22 South State Street, Newtown, PA (215-579-1060), or punch them up online at http://www.alleghenyart.com. I would love to hear what you think! Until next time, stay Crusty!

Constructive analysis and criticism of a newcomer’s work by

BOB MCLEOD

n these pages each issue, I show a sample page sent to me into it. I know I was definitely that way, and I still have to fight by a young artist struggling to break into comics and I try the urge to get to what I consider the “fun stuff,” which for me is to offer as much constructive advice as I possibly can to get him definitely not the layout. But it has to be done well, because it’s or her up to the next level and hopefully closer to getting work one of the most important steps. with the major publishers. We all need to be able to accept critiI tell my students that each minute you work on a drawing is cism if we hope to improve, and we should be our own toughest less important than the one before it, and that includes the very critic, so nothing anyone else might say will be any worse than first minute. In fact, in many cases the first few seconds will our own self-criticism. determine how well the drawing comes out in the end, even if This time, we have a page drawn by Stuart Roddy, who’s that’s many hours of effort later. That’s because if you’re drawing been studying at the Joe Kubert School, so I think they’ve in a productive way, roughing in the entire drawing, you need to already critiqued this page, and I’m following in their wake. He’s quickly establish the basic positions and proportions in those first very graciously and courageously allowed me to share this critique few seconds. If you don’t start out well, all the fancy rendering in with all of you. I can see a lot of progress comparing this most the world can’t fix bad proportions or positioning. If you do start recent page to the other samples Stuart sent me of his earlier out well, everything after that is just a matter of refining and polwork. But whatever good advice they no doubt gave him at ishing. So the thinking you do before you ever make a mark with Kubert, I can still see a lot of room for the pencil can actually be more important “If you don’t start out well, than how well you draw. You have to put even further improvement. I do think Stuart definitely shows all the fancy rendering in the that mark in the right place before you some real talent, and he’s working hard making it a pretty mark. world can’t fix bad propor- worryAllabout and doing a lot of things well. Just the fact representational art starts out as tions or positioning. If you that he’s studying at the Joe Kubert abstract design, and the stronger the School and also submitting his work to me do start out well, everything design, the better the art. So on a page of shows how serious he is about improving comic art, you first of all have several after that is just a matter of vital decisions to make: how many panels his art and getting into comics. It takes that kind of 110% commitment to make it are you going to use, what shape are they refining and polishing.” to the pro level. I like his sense of drama, going to be, where are they going to be, and his subtle details and interesting lighting. His art is fun to look and how big are they going to be? That’s a lot of very important at, which is one of the main things you want from a comic artist. thinking, but it’s just basic graphic design combined with visual But his storytelling and design have some problems. As a storytelling. Stuart’s design of the panel shapes, placement, and reader of this page, I’m confused about some things, and you size appears good at first glance, but it can be better. don’t want the reader to be confused. The primary thing in all First, he has the spaceship crashing in a nice three-panel areas of creating comics, whether it’s writing, penciling, inking, sequence, so that’s an excellent start. This crash could of course lettering, or coloring, should be clarity. As with many beginning be shown much bigger and more dramatically. A spaceship crash artists, it’s the basic fundamentals Stuart needs to work on most. landing on an alien plant and the crew setting out to investigate Before you get to all that interesting surface detail, you need to is a very dramatic situation, and it could easily take up an entire lay a solid foundation to build on. Too many beginners can’t wait page. But for the purpose of this sample page, it’s really just a to get to the rendering at the end, so they rush the underlying set-up for the subsequent scenes, so these three panels are just structure at the beginning, and don’t put enough thought or effort right for that. DRAW! • SPRING 2012

Next, mainly just for variety, but also for the page design, he has two “inset” panels (so named because they’re set into other panels). The first is a close-up introducing us to the characters, so that we care more what happens to them next, which is another smart storytelling move. It’s usually good in any case to have a mix of close-ups, long shots, etc., just for variety, whether it serves the story or not. However, these look squeezed by that thick, black panel border, as if he barely managed to get them into the picture. Which he did, because his inset panels are so small! The next panel is a long shot, which is also a good choice, showing (I think) water rushing at them from behind, but it’s way too small and cluttered. It’s a panoramic establishing shot the size

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of a postage stamp. Remember that your page is going to get reduced in size when printed in a comic, so anything small on your original art is going to be 1/3 smaller in the comic! And the thing is, these two panels didn’t even need to be so small, because there’s plenty of room around and above them. Finally, he’s got the big money shot, with the monster rising up out of the water, so he’s wisely given that a nice, big panel... except that his inset panels are covering up a third of it, including part of the monster’s threatening claws, which are too important to mess with. Focal points like claws, heads, hands, feet, etc., need to be carefully placed so that they’re unobstructed. So those inset panels need to be enlarged and raised up away from the monster.

FIGURE 1

FIGURE 2

(left) Figure 1: Stuart’s layout reduced to an abstract design. Reducing the art to simple abstract design reveals that some panels aren’t very well-balanced. (right) Figure 2: In my version, the design’s weights are more evenly distributed.

Now let’s tackle what’s going on inside the panels more thoroughly. In panel 1, the spaceship, which is the center of interest, is placed way up in the corner. That would be okay, except that with the most detail in the panel on the ship and the mountainside below it, and just empty water at the bottom, the panel is too heavily weighted on the upper right. We could really cut off the entire left side of the panel and not miss anything. Any time you can crop a panel, you should. You want to pare your layout down to what best tells the story and crop everything else out, because it’s obviously not needed. When you start to draw a panel, you need to decide what the center of interest is (every panel should have one), and carefully place it for maximum effect—usually off-center vertically and horizontally, but not in a corner. Then you design other elements, figures or backgrounds, to balance against it. Each panel, as well as the overall page as a whole whenever possible, should be a well-balanced abstract design of large and small shapes and positive and negative space. Replace each major element with a simple shape as in my example (figs. 1 and 2) to check your design before you start adding details and refining the drawing. See how some of your panels aren’t as well balanced as mine when viewed as simple abstract designs? Before you worry about drawing the people and ships and monsters, it’s critical that you

first place your main focal points so that they create a wellbalanced design. A good way to do this is to do very simplistic thumbnail layouts, with the entire page maybe only a few inches tall. This makes it difficult to add any detail or do much drawing. Only when everything is in the right place is it time to really start drawing it. You also need to consider the reader’s eye movement. The spaceship is flying right to left. We read left to right, and it would lead our eyes right to the next panel if we fly it the other way instead. Whenever possible, you want to place the focal points to lead the reader’s eye toward the next panel. It’s good to use balloon placement to do this as well. In panel 2, the ship is moving directly away from us, which is not the best way to show movement. Again, movement left to right is best, and I try to avoid symmetrical design as much as possible, particularly in action scenes, because it isn’t as dynamic as asymmetry. It appears that the ship is crashing on land, but in the next panels they appear to be wading in water. Don’t confuse the reader. The lettering style of the sound effect looks amateurish. You need to look at the way other artists draw sound effects. Have you seen anyone do a sound effect like this? Lettering is an art, and amateurish sound effects can make your art look amateurish. DRAW! • SPRING 2012

Panel 3 is once again too heavily weighted on the right. Good graphic design calls for balance. If the ship and figures are on the right, why not put the foreground rocks on the left, or vice versa? Again, place your center of interest (the figures), then place background elements to balance against them. It’s good to have weight on the perimeter of the page, rather than clustered in the middle, so the rocks are good placed on the right here. But your figures then need to be more to the left. If you flop this panel, you’ll see what I mean about weighting the perimeter. The page just doesn’t look as good with the rocks on the left of that panel. Panel 4 is a great close-up, but as I said earlier, it needs some room to breathe. I also always fear leaving the writer no room for balloons, because I don’t want him to cover up interesting parts of the art that I put work into, like you did on the earpiece of his helmet here. And this is a small, nit-picky thing, but why is he in profile? Aren’t they going the same direction? Panel 5 is just too small and cluttered. While the bird would

add interest in a larger panel, in this tiny panel it’s just distracting and adds to the clutter. What’s happening with the water is also unclear. Rather than trying to show the waves coming up behind them (I think that’s what’s happening), wouldn’t it be better to show the action of the wave hitting them (even if seemingly from out of nowhere)? Inset panels are great, but they should never cover up anything we want to see, particularly major focal points like the claws here. Joe Kubert is a master at using inset panels; just study how he does it. These two panels need to move up, up, and away! And make the black border trimmer so that it takes less space away from the drawing. Panel 6 is a very nice shot... except that the main figure appears to be getting stabbed in the back by the crab monster’s legs, and the girl is barely in the panel for no apparent reason. Never crop a figure for no reason. Why isn’t she in the panel? We want to see her! The ship wreckage is what should be partly

Panels 4, 5, and 6 of Stuart’s pencil sample. Here the inset panels cover up too much of the focal points of the artwork.

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FIGURE 3

(left) My simplistic version of Stuart’s sample page. (right) Fig. 3: Until you get better at drawing hands, try to pose your own, or get a friend to pose for you.

cropped, not her. She’s one of your centers of interest. And why isn’t the crab facing them? He’d be far more threatening if he were. Doesn’t he even see them? Are his claws on fire? Smoking? What are we looking at? And what’s that under him next to the guy, a big cupcake? Rocks need to look like rocks. Don’t confuse the reader! I also think the crab’s a bit too horizontal. Raise one claw higher than the other and angle his body a bit. Horizontals are calm and static. Diagonals are dynamic and indicate action. If you don’t believe me, think of the difference between a log on the ground and a falling tree. Stuart also needs to be more consistent. The guy’s helmet looks different in panel 6 than in panel 4, where it apparently has a glass dome around it, and the earpiece is smaller. And this is also a small thing, but when we finally develop the technology to fly to other planets, are we still going to be using those clunky old flashlights from the 1950s? Thinking about details like that can add another level of believability to your art. For that matter, why not design something more alien-looking than a big crab? What is this, a 1950s sci-fi movie? I love the old EC comics as much as anyone, but you want to get work in today’s comics. And how did the crab rise up from the shallow water they were just wading in? Once again, the thinking is usually more important than the drawing. I’ve drawn a simplistic version of your page here, correcting most of these problems, and I placed blacks in my version just for simplicity and clarity. If I were drawing this page for a comic,

I would of course add much more detail and form in the mountains and elsewhere. But I’m not so concerned with your details and rendering. I think your problems lie in the more fundamental areas of design and composition. And although it isn’t as apparent in this example, the other work you showed me revealed that you still have a lot of studying to do on anatomy as well. The girl’s hands in panel 6 here aren’t very well drawn, for example. I quickly sketched some hands in similar poses on my Wacom tablet (fig. 3). On the right hand, remember the fingers need to be attached to the palm. As her fingers get farther from the palm, we’d see less of them; probably only the tip of the little finger. And she’d probably grip the flashlight a little tighter with her thumb to avoid dropping it. On her left hand, although it’s possible to pose your hand a bit like you drew it, you want to avoid making the thumb look like a fifth finger, so leave a little more space between it and the forefinger. The palm shouldn’t be so wide, either. So I guess that about covers it for this Rough Critique. Thanks for sharing your sample page with us, Stuart! Any readers who would like to submit a page for next issue’s critique can email me at mcleod.bob@gmail.com. Bob McLeod is a veteran comic artist who’s worked on all the major titles for Marvel and DC, and is the author/illustrator of Superhero ABC, published by HarperCollins. He also teaches at the Pennsylvania College of Art & Design. DRAW! • SPRING 2012

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• Reprints—in FULL-COLOR—nine complete original stories from the 1940s from such rare collector’s items as FEATURE COMICS, SMASH COMICS, POLICE COMICS, NATIONAL COMICS, and CRACK COMICS! • Features Golden Age art by LOU FINE, REED CRANDALL, JACK COLE, WILL EISNER, JIM MOONEY, and others! • Compiles the first-ever A-Z in-depth character profiles of every Quality costumed super-hero! • Provides coverage of character revivals at DC, and more! Written by MIKE KOOIMAN with JIM AMASH!

The ultimate collection of Stan Lee rarities!

(288-page trade paperback with 64 COLOR PAGES) $31.95 • ISBN: 9781605490373 • Diamond Order Code: AUG111218

THE STAN LEE UNIVERSE features interviews with and mementos about Marvel Comics’ fearless leader, direct from Stan’s own archives! Co-edited by ROY THOMAS and DANNY FINGEROTH, it includes:

• RARE PHOTOS, SAMPLE SCRIPTS AND PLOTS, and PERSONAL CORRESPONDENCE! • Transcripts of 1960s RADIO INTERVIEWS with Stan (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, with comprehensive notes from Lee and Kirby about the story, plus pages from a SILVER SURFER screenplay done by Stan for ROGER CORMAN! • Notes by RICHARD CORBEN and WILL EISNER for Marvel projects that never came to be, and more! (176-page trade paperback with 16 COLOR pages) $26.95 • ISBN: 9781605490298 • Diamond Order Code: APR111201 (192-page hardcover with 32 COLOR pages, foil stamping, dust jacket, and illustrated endleaves) $39.95 • ISBN: 9781605490304 • Diamond Order Code: APR111202

Follow the evolution of the FF throughout the 1960s!

Celebrate the 50th Anniversary of Fantastic Four #1 with LEE & KIRBY: THE WONDER YEARS, a new book about the duo who created the Fantastic Four, and a decade in comics that was more tumultuous and awe-inspiring than any before or since! Calling on his years of research, plus new interviews conducted just for this book (with STAN LEE, FLO STEINBERG, MARK EVANIER, JOE SINNOTT, and others), regular JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR magazine contributor MARK ALEXANDER completed this book just before his recent death. It traces both Lee and Kirby’s history at Marvel Comics, and the remarkable series of events and career choices that led them to converge in 1961 to conceive the Fantastic Four. It also documents the evolution of the FF throughout the 1960s, with previously unknown details about Lee and Kirby’s working relationship, and plenty of amazing Kirby artwork!

Examine the work of a true Modern Master: Ron Garney!

Ron Garney can draw cinematic blockbuster action with the best of them, as his iconic runs on Captain America, Wolverine, and Weapon X will attest. But he also excels at depicting the quiet moments—there is emotional nuance in his work, which elevates every story he illustrates. Now join authors JORGE KHOURY and ERIC NOLEN-WEATHINGTON—along with JASON AARON, TOM PALMER, ALEX ROSS, and friends—for MODERN MASTERS, VOLUME 27: RON GARNEY! This book documents his stellar career by virtue of an exhaustive interview with Garney, where he explains his creative process, and presents a wealth of rare and unseen art, including a gallery of commissioned pieces, many in full-color! (120-page trade paperback with COLOR) $15.95 • ISBN: 9781605490403 • Diamond Order Code: OCT111232

FOR A FREE COLOR CATALOG, CALL, WRITE, E-MAIL, OR LOG ONTO www.twomorrows.com

TwoMorrows—A New Day For Comics Fandom! TwoMorrows Publishing • 10407 Bedfordtown Drive • Raleigh, NC 27614 USA • 919-449-0344 • FAX: 919-449-0327 E-mail: twomorrow@aol.com • Visit us on the Web at www.twomorrows.com

(160-page trade paperback) $19.95 • ISBN: 9781605490380 Diamond Order Code: SEP111248