Modern Masters Vol. 5: Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez by TwoMorrows Publishing

M O D E R N

M A S T E R S

V O L U M E

F I V E :

J.L. GARCÍA-LÓPEZ

Edited by Eric Nolen-Weathington

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Modern Masters Volume Five:

MODERN MASTERS VOLUME FIVE:

JOSÉ LUIS GARCÍA-LÓPEZ edited and designed by Eric Nolen-Weathington front cover by José Luis García-López front cover color by Tom Ziuko all interviews in this book were conducted and transcribed by Eric Nolen-Weathington proofreading by Fred Perry

TwoMorrows Publishing 10407 Bedfordtown Dr. Raleigh, North Carolina 27614 www.twomorrows.com • e-mail: twomorrow@aol.com First Printing • June 2005 • Printed in Canada Softcover ISBN: 1-893905-44-6 Trademarks & Copyrights All characters and artwork contained herein are ™ and ©2005 José Luis García-López unless otherwise noted. Alfred Pennyworth, Aquaman, Atom, Batman, Black Canary, Blue Devil, Brainiac, Brent Wood, Captain Marvel, Catwoman, Cheetah, Cinder & Ashe, Clark Kent, Deadman, Dinah Lance, Dr. Sivana, Elongated Man, Firestorm, Flash, GeoForce, General Zod, Green Arrow, Green Lantern, Harley Quinn, Hawkman, Hercules, Homer Glint, Ilda, John Starker, Joker, Jonah Hex, Karel Sorensen, Killer Moth, Lex Luthor, Lois Lane, Martian Manhunter, Mr. Mind, Mxyzptlk, Outsiders, Penguin, Phantom Stranger, Prankster, Red Tornado, Riddler, Robin, Scarecrow, Star Hawkins, Superman, Titans, Tommy Tomorrow, Two-Face, Wonder Woman, Zatanna ™ and ©2005 DC Comics. Abomination, Hulk, The Leader, Rhino, Ringo Kid, Spider-Man ™ and ©2005 Marvel Characters, Inc. Dr. Strangefate, Jade Nova, Myx, Skulk, White Witch ™ and ©2005 DC Comics and Marvel Characters, Inc. Atari Force, Star Raiders, and all related characters ™ and ©2005 Atari, Inc. Nexus ™ and ©2005 Mike Baron and Steve Rude. Tarzan ™ and ©2005 Edgar Rice Burroughs Estate. Eternity Watch, Roland the Corsair, and all related characters ™ and ©2005 Editoral Columba. Big Ben Bolt, Flash Gordon, Juliet Jones, Prince Valiant ©2005 King Features Syndicate, Inc. Steve Canyon ™ and ©2005 Milton Caniff and News America Syndicate USA. Lt. Blueberry ™ and ©2005 Jean-Michel Charlier, Jean Giraud, Dargaud Editeur. Demolition Man ™ and ©2005 Warner Bros. Barbie, Star Riders ™ and ©2005 Mattel. Elvira, Mistress of the Night ™ and ©2005 Queen B Productions. Founding Fathers, Mort Cinder, Torpedo 1936 ™ and ©2005 respective owners. Editorial package ©2005 Eric Nolen-Weathington and TwoMorrows Publishing.

Dedication To the memory of Stacy J. Evans, the best grandfather I could have asked for. Wherever you may be, I hope the fishing’s good. And to Donna and Iain and the little one on the way. Acknowledgements José Luis García-López, for being so gracious. His English is much better than he thinks it is. David Roach, for being such a big supporter of José’s Charlton work, and for sharing it with me. Tom Ziuko, not only for his great coloring on the cover, but for being a packrat and sending me some great pencil art from José’s early years. his greh Terry Austin, speaking of packrats, for his continued help and support.

Special Thanks Spencer Beck (José’s official art dealer—www.theartistschoice.com), Mike Burkey (www.romitaman.com), Scott Burnley, Ray Cuthbert, Andy Helfer, George Khoury, Steven Lee, Mike Manley, Kevin Nowlan, Walt Parrish, Fred Perry, Jeff Scott, Aaron Sultan, Enrique Villagrán, Rick McGee and the crew of Foundation’s Edge, Russ Garwood and the crew of Capital Comics, and John and Pam Morrow

Modern Masters Volume Five:

JOSÉ LUIS GARCÍA-LÓPEZ Table of Contents Introduction by Andrew Helfer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Part One: Argentina, Pirates, and Being a Teenaged Pro . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Interlude One: Under the Influence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 Part Two: “I Really Felt Very Welcome at DC”. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 Interlude Two: License to Style . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38 PartPart Three: From Outer Space to New Orleans and Back . . . . . . . . . 46

Interlude Three: Twilight Gallery . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61 Part Four: Other Worlds and the World Beyond. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67 Part Five: Storytelling and the Creative Process . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75 Art Gallery . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85

Introduction art; it was my job to help; and it fell to José Luis GarcíaLópez to draw all of the hundreds of images contained on its pages. José proved to be the perfect choice for this most intensive of projects. Over the course of months—if not years—José turned in page after page of glorious images, and in the process created a new and sparkling identity for the DC characters... an identity that defined the look and feel of the DC pantheon of super-heroes then, and continues to do so to this day. In no uncertain terms, José’s vision of the DC Superheroes is the vision that introduces millions of children (not to mention their parents) to the world of DC—a number far greater than comic book readers. Over the years, his illustrations have appeared on thousands of products—it’s a credential that’s seldom mentioned but shouldn’t be overlooked, and quite possibly makes José Luis’ imagery the most often-seen of any comic artist. While we worked on the style guide project, José Luis and I became friends, and the strength of the relationship only grew as time went by. With hundreds of style guide pages behind him, José Luis was anxious to get back into comics work, but wanted a well deserved vacation from super-heroes. By this time Joe Orlando and his “Special Projects” Department were knee-deep in Atari Mania—the first wave of video game craziness that was sweeping the country. We were producing a series of magazines for Atari featuring comics based on the most popular game cartridges, and top of our list was a comic adaptation of the Star Raiders adventure game. Jose jumped on board, but by the time he had completed 40 pages of the 120-page story, the entire videogame market had come crashing to the ground. The project very nearly died just then, but writer Elliot Maggin was asked if there was any way he could wrap up his story in just 25 pages. Everyone at DC thought José Luis’ art was just too good to go unpublished. Elliot felt likewise, and gave it his best shot. José kept on drawing and painting, and in the end, Star Raiders became DC’s very first Graphic Novel. While few accuse it of being a literary masterpiece, it’s still a joy to behold. Another project already in the works was an updating of a concept that had already appeared in a series of mini-comics packed into select Atari Game cartridges. Atari Force was my first solo comic editing assignment,

hen I was first hired by DC Comics back in 1980, I was assigned to work for a man named Joe Orlando. I like to believe our relationship was unique; we started as boss and employee, then quickly advanced to mentor and apprentice, and finally settled, in our minds at least, as confidantes—and in everyone else’s estimation as “partners-in-crime.” It was the best of times, I remember. We worked together, played together, smoked way too much together (me, cigarettes; him, those little, stinky, plastictipped cigars) and grew to trust each other the way best friends, or fathers and sons, often do. It was in that spirit of trust that Joe Orlando introduced me to his secret weapon. This man, who as an editor had discovered some of the greatest DC writers and artists of the ’60s and ’70s, considered this one particular artist to be the finest and most valuable of them all. Joe had the framed original art for the cover of Action #500 hanging on his office wall. The issue featured the “marriage” of Superman and Lois Lane (jumping the gun by around twenty years), and the cover image of Superman flying across the sky with a wedding-gowned Lois on his shoulder was breath-taking. The artist was Joe’s “secret weapon”: José Luis GarcíaLópez. Every editor in the business knew his work, but few knew the man. Even fewer knew how to get in touch with him. Joe was certain that if the competition could make contact with García-López, they’d try to steal him away. So the phone number Joe scribbled on a piece of DC note paper and passed to me had a value beyond rubies. “I want you to work with this guy,” Joe said in that wonderfully mock-sinister voice of his. “Be nice.” I called the García-López residence the very next day. The assignment we’d been given was unlike any we’d ever produced before—a “Style Guide” featuring images of all the major heroes, both in stock poses that would serve as guides for products, as well as “action poses” that could be used for t-shirts, underoos, posters, and package art. The style guide was a huge quality leap forward for DC, which until then had provided referencehungry licensees with random images of characters arbitrarily clipped from comic pages. DC president Jenette Kahn believed that providing them with original art of the highest quality would raise the quality of the products themselves; it was Joe’s job to design and assemble what would become a mammoth loose-leafed book of character 4

and José and Gerry Conway were the best creative team a tyro editor could ask for. The comic was doomed from the start, since the name Atari, once a license to print money, was now the kiss of death—but the group persevered, deciding that if we were doomed, we might as well have fun before we go. Atari Force is still one of my proudest editorial moments, thanks to José and his irresistible cast of characters. As a writer, José and I worked together on a Deadman mini-series, my first writing assignment, and also still my favorite. I was amazed at how José transformed my convoluted plotlines into seamless visuals— the artwork he gave me of our first issue still hangs on my living room wall. Since then I’ve worked with José Luis as an editor on countless projects, each more enjoyable than the last. While I was a fan of his art years before we met, my respect and admiration for him and his work has only increased as the decades knowing him have passed. I suspect that as we read through this book we’ll both discover things about José Luis’ life we never knew—but I’m honored to have the unique opportunity to talk over each and every point with the man himself. One last story, which I stick at the end of this intro because I can’t remember exactly when it happened, only that it did. As I sat in my office one day, a man stepped into my doorway and stared at a point on the wall behind me and just above my head. Although I’d never met the man, I knew his distinctive face. It was Jean Gireaud, a.k.a., Moebius, and he was staring at a drawing of Wonder Woman by José Luis García-López. Without acknowledging me, he inched his way into my office and behind my desk until he was just in front of the drawing. He shifted his glasses down off his nose to get a better look at the drawing. After a moment, he turned to me.

“This García-López,” he asked in a heavy French accent. “He uses models, no?” “No,” I answered, smiling. “Son of a bitch!” Moebius hissed. He didn’t need to say another word. I already knew it was the highest compliment one artist could pay to another. Andrew Helfer

Part 1:

Argentina, Pirates, and Being a Teenaged Pro

MODERN MASTERS: Though everyone thinks of you as Argentine, you were actually born in Spain. Where in Spain are you from, and when were you born?

with his hands; he’s what you would call an artisan. When he retired, he surprised me with a variety of small sculptures he did—very primitive, or very “naif,” but nevertheless it is art to me.

JOSÉ LUIS GÁRCIA-LOPÉZ: I was born in 1948 in Pontevedra, which is in the northwestern part of Spain, in Galicia. We lived in a very small, rural town.

MM: Did you have any problems adjusting to life in Argentina? JOSÉ: Not at all. Everyone was an immigrant or a son or grandson of immigrants—from Europe and from neighboring countries, different cultures, even different religions—but everybody get along fine and most importantly, you did not feel like an outsider. The public schools were the great integrators there.

MM: How old were you when your family moved to Argentina? JOSÉ: It was in 1953, so I was about five years old. MM: Why did your family move? Was it for financial reasons?

MM: You were exposed to comics at a very early age. In fact, you even learned to read from comics. Did you have any favorites you would ask for, or did you just look at anything that came your way?

JOSÉ: It was very hard in Spain at that time. In the small villas there was much work, but little prospect towards progress. Because Galicia was the least developed region of the country, a lot of Galicians moved to other parts of the world—this started in the beginning of the 20th century—mainly to South America: Argentina, Uruguay, Venezuela, Cuba.... Argentina was the principal destination— Buenos Aires in particular. Half the population there is of Spanish descent, the other half being Italian.

JOSÉ: Anything, from Donald Duck to Tom & Jerry and all the local funnies. We’re talking about the early years, five to seven years old. Later on, all the adventure strips and books. Yes, I did read Batman and Superman. Time plays tricks with the memory, but I guess I liked Batman more. I was a compulsive reader—I am still. I don’t remember having any favorites, I’d devour all the stuff I could get. I just simply enjoyed reading stories.

MM: What did your parents do for a living? Did either of them have an artistic background?

MM: I read somewhere that you started working professionally in comics at the age of 13. Is that true?

JOSÉ: In Spain they cultivated the land. In Buenos Aires, my father was an official carpenter in a cigarette manufacturing company. My father did and does all kind of things

JOSÉ: There were some small companies in Buenos Aires at that time. They would publish a few issues and then close shop, most of the time owing a bunch of artists money. 6

That’s what happened in my case. I was around 13 and I got a couple of short stories to do. I remember not being paid and giving up on seeing my work in print. Then, a year or so later I discovered one of my stories published in another comic book— it was a western—and that was my first published job. MM: How did you get that first job? Did you have an apprenticeship? JOSÉ: Just being bold and going to companies to show my work. Some places gave me good advice and encouragement and the chance to come back later to show my progress, if any. Others gave me small scripts which I drew, delivered, and never heard about afterwards. Those were the dues you had to pay, but I didn’t complain because I got the chance to practice and get experience. MM: Had you any art instruction in school before working professionally, or were you still strictly self-taught up to that point?

JOSÉ: I was self-taught, I guess. My sister bought me a correspondence art course— Continental School—when I was about ten, but it was all humor stuff. I remember going sometimes to the school offices to deliver the lessons and I would take my “serious” stuff with me. I suppose they realized I liked that better and advised me to show my work to the various companies— and that’s what I did. MM: What was a typical day like for you during those early years of your career? JOSÉ: Well... when I was 14 and making my numerous wanderings trying to break into comics, I got this offer to work at the office of a small comics publisher. I lived in the suburbs with my parents and had a 45minute trip to the city. At the office I did a lot of things, and it was good for me because of the learning involved. At one time it had been a big company, but it had financial trouble and was bought by a person related to the printer. I was, at one point, the only employee, so I did lettering 7

Previous Page: José, the pirate king. A selfportrait. Above: A festive panel from “Roland, el Corsario.”

Above: Panel from “El Doncel.” Right: Pages from “La Profecia” (1969) and “La Devocion de la Cruz.” Next Page: Two splash pages—one from “La Guardia Suiza,” and one from “El Arpa Rota.” All characters and artwork ™ and ©2005 respective owners

and paste-up, drew some covers, retouched negatives for offset printing, went to the printer, ran errands, etc., and every time I could, I went down to the basement where their comics archive was at my disposal. When I was 16—after learning a lot there—I realized it was not enough, so I went to art school. I went three times a week from 6 pm to 9 pm. Those days I didn’t go home until night, and between 2 pm—the time I left work—and 6 pm, I went to different bars near the school and worked on the scripts I was getting on the side. I remember doing a whole comic—seven pages—in those bars. Sometimes I even inked there. Now... this thing with the bars needs a little explanation. The “café bar” in Argentina was something similar to those in France, Spain, or Italy. If you know those places or have seen European movies, you’ll get the idea. I could spend hours there with a couple of coffees

and a sandwich. So, I was a “regular.” I sat in the bar section, where people played cards and billiards, and there were plenty of characters to do sketches of—I even used them in my stories—they were very good for Western saloon scenes. Everything went fine until the bar owner discovered I was under age. So, I had to move to the “family” section, usually a place for couples—quieter and better for working, but boring. When not working in the bars, I used to go a lot to the movies and to bookstores—used bookstores mainly. One year later, I left the comics publisher for a small advertising company, and because it was near the school, I enjoyed more time in the city. About a year after that, I finished school and left the ad company and started to work freelance for Squiu, a Catholic publisher, where I did a science-fiction story. Then Charlton, through an agent, and later Columba, where I did most of my professional work in Argentina. I did not have to commute at that point; I was working at home, getting up late and working until very late, the day before a deadline not sleeping at all.

JOSÉ: Breccia taught illustration for fiction, children’s books, and advertising. I remember having to illustrate James Joyce; it was hard, but worth the effort, and an example of the kind of assignments he asked for.

MM: Was this art school the Escuela Panamericana de Arte? JOSÉ: Yes, it was. MM: Was it an all-ages school?

MM: What do you consider to be the most important lesson you took from art school?

JOSÉ: Yes, it was. I guess that most of those who attended were 15 to 30 years old, but there were a few more mature people, 50-year-olds or so. I remember a middle-aged lady who was an excellent painter—but with no training in drawing—who took courses there.

JOSÉ: With the perspective of years: the idea that you never really learn everything in a few years. It takes more—a whole lifetime. In the school we had veteran professionals who were actively working in advertising, publishing, and comics, but they were still evolving, doing things better from one job to the next. With that example you realize that you have to learn the basics... and then you have to continue the learning by yourself. Let’s call it a continuing education.

MM: Were you studying drawing only, or were you taking classes in different mediums, like painting or sculpture? JOSÉ: The first year was the basic curriculum: anatomy, perspective, drawing from casts and live models. Later on, the use of different tools and mediums, and then the practical application of illustration, children’s books, advertising, comps, lettering, etc.—and even comic books.

MM: Did you enjoy the job at the ad agency, or was it just a matter of convenience to work there? JOSÉ: Yes, I did enjoy it. Before that I had an almost paternalistic relationship with my boss in my former job.

MM: Didn’t you have Alberto Breccia as an instructor there? What class did he teach? 9

Below: Panels from “The Copper Kettle,” as they appeared in Charlton’s Ghostly Tales #77.

In the agency, even though most of the staff were older than me, I was treated like I was among equals. I was 16 or 17, and the timing was good to meet a more diverse group of people. I did not do too much drawing the year I spent there, but nevertheless it was useful and educational. MM: Do you think your time there helped you grow as an artist? JOSÉ: Yes, sure. I guess that it helped me grow as human being mostly. That’s because I was exposed to more things, from fine arts to movies from all over the world, fiction and non-fiction books, politics, music. It was refreshing.

MM: You said you got work from Charlton through an agent. Was this an Argentine agent?

Next Page: A sampling of José’s covers for Charlton and the splash pages from “He’s Not for Me...” (Time for Love #5) and “Stubborn Heart” (Career Girl Romances #71).

JOSÉ: Yes it was. He was an artist himself and was working and getting work for others from British publishers and from Charlton. MM: How old were you when you got your first assignment with Charlton? JOSÉ: I think I was about 18. MM: What was that first assignment? Was it one of the romance stories you did for I Love You? JOSÉ: I just did seven or eight stories, mostly romance. I never saw any of the published books, so I don’t know the titles. MM: I came across a mystery story you did for Charlton. The lead female character had a very distinct face and body language. Was 10

she based on an actual person? Did you use photo reference when drawing those stories? JOSÉ: I didn’t remember the story until you sent me the pages. Nevertheless, I don’t remember the details. I guess I took her likeness from photos in fotonovelas—the term used in Argentina for fumettis. They were comics made with photos, usually with romantic themes. They were a great help and a good tool to learn the trade. MM: Did you know E.R. Garcia Seijas, Gustavo Trigo, and/or Leandro Sesarego? They all did work for Charlton around the same time you did. JOSÉ: Yes, I knew all of them personally. They were established professionals long before me. For instance, I knew Sesarego’s work from the ’50s, and when I was a kid, I did a few comics for a magazine he was editing—I was lucky they never published them. [laughter] They were all my senior. I was the youngest, or at least the last addition to the group, which, by the way, included several other artists. The group did work for publishers in England also. Garcia Seijas did a number of romance books for British publishers; he was, and still is, a wonderful girl artist. He was also a favorite of Dick Giordano. I’ve got a letter from Dick to our agent asking for Seijas’ work and mine even if we didn’t meet the deadlines. MM: On some of your early Charlton work there was a credit for someone who signed his name as “David.” I assume he inked your pencils or at least inked the backgrounds. Was he an assistant of yours? What was his role exactly? JOSÉ: We were good friends, and he was an artist himself. His full name was David Jonathan Mangiarotti. He moved into my neighborhood at the time I worked for Charlton, and he had spare time to help me with the backgrounds and sometimes as a model. Later on when I got “Roland, el Corsario,” he collaborated with me in the same manner in several issues. He inherited the character when I left the country and continued the series for about one more year.

MM: The Argentine strip you’re most associated with is “Roland, el Corsario,” which was published by Editorial Columba. Did you do any work for Columba before “Roland”? JOSÉ: I did several works based on Spanish classics, like Cervantes, Lope de Vega, etc. Also some little biographies about Stendhal, Yates, Wagner, and others, and a handful of movie adaptations— old classics like Queen Christine with Greta Garbo. MM: The “Roland” strip seems to me to be very influenced by EC’s Piracy book—there’s a lot of text in the stories. Were you familiar with the EC books? Do you know if they were an influence on the strip? JOSÉ: About the amount of text, it was because the Columba books were very literary inclined. Hector Oesterheld, the writer, adapted his style to the company. He was a publisher and writer in the ’50s, and he did all kind of comics—Western, war, science fiction, horror, historical— and a lot of local and international artists did their best works with him. He knew how to tell a story with very few words, believe me; I even remember one without any copy. I was proud of working with him, but I knew that “Roland” was not his best work because of the company-imposed limitations. Personally, I’ve hadn’t seen any EC books of any kind at that time. I can’t speak for Oesterheld, but I suppose he was familiar with them and with artists like Kurtzman. However, his influences were more from books and from the short story writers like Maupassant, Poe, Conrad, Bierce, Lovecraft, Kafka, and others.

MM: Did working for an American publisher come with any special prestige for you? Did that help you get work in Argentina? JOSÉ: Not really. I was trying to get work from Columba—the most important publisher of comic magazines in Argentina—and I’d show them everything I was doing for Charlton, but it never got me work there. Now, during that same time I did a science-fiction book—32 pages, in color—for a Catholic publisher who was trying to put out a collection of books with some religious morals in them. I’m not talking about fundamentalist stuff, but just non-violent and with a wholesome tone. And this was the one job which opened the door for me at Columba and other companies.

MM: I assume you worked from a full script, so you would know how much space to leave for all of that text. Was that the case? JOSÉ: Yes, it was, and it was very simple to do. You had some captions and one or two balloons per panel, and all placed above the art. You did not have to do any heavy thinking there. MM: Except for the occasional splash page, you had 12

eight to ten panels on every page of those stories. Did that present any extra challenge to you in your layouts? JOSÉ: Not really. The layout was always simple; the real work was inside each panel. MM: Did you enjoy drawing the big fight scenes? I imagine it took extra thinking on your part in order to make them different from story to story. JOSÉ: Of course I did. [laughter] We had one big fight per story and we took the opportunity to show off in those scenes. With the super-hero stuff it’s the other way around. You have a lot of action and only one or two quiet sequences. I personally enjoy the quiet scenes more, and I think I do my best work there. MM: The “Roland” stories were 15 pages each. How long would it take you to draw a story? JOSÉ: About one month, and usually working overnight the day before the deadline. [laughs] MM: Was “Roland” a monthly strip? Did you have much time to work for other publishers during that time? JOSÉ: Yes, it was monthly, and I just did one job for another company during that time. Of course, I was getting help at that time, mainly with backgrounds.

José Burone and Lucia Vergani I became friends with at art school— Panamericana—and Mangiarotti I knew from the ad agency. MM: What was the work arrangement like with your assistants? Did they come to your home to work? Did you pay them out of your pocket? JOSÉ: Everything was very informal. When I had the deadline blues, I asked for help. I was lucky that all of them lived nearby, so sometimes they came to my home and sometimes I went to their place. You know, it was more fun than work. [laughter] When I’d get the check, I’d pay them a previously arranged percentage of the page rate. What you may call my more professional period in Argentina was with “Roland.” We worked seriously on this, with David and later with José, and even Lucia helped sometimes with the coloring. MM: How popular was “Roland”? Were you getting fans in Argentina? JOSÉ: It was not common to receive fan mail, but I had some and it was nice. They continued the strip for a couple more years after I left it, so I suppose it was more or less popular.

MM: So you used assistants at times. Did you find them at the art school? JOSÉ: I only worked with friends and only occasionally. It was not something I did on a regular basis. I remember having three assistants—one at a time, of course—and we worked the same way I worked with David. 13

Previous Page: Page two of the “Roland, El Corsario” strip, “La Traicion del Caimán Negro.” Below: The last panel of the “Roland, el Corsario” strip, “El Gran Tesoro de Nueva Almeria.” Roland ™ and ©2005 Editorial Columba.

Interlude 1:

For me, it was the most personal style I saw in comics at that age, and I suppose that at some level I can’t remember now, he was a great influence in my beginnings. At least I’m sure he was a great communicator with kids of my age.

Héctor Oesterheld He was not an artist, but a writer and publisher. In the ’50s he put out two or three magazines of comics and he wrote 90% of the stories. They ranged from war, to westerns, science fiction, historical, etc. He also had the best talent available at that time in South America. I read his magazines later on, in the ’60s. They consisted of short stories, six or ten pages long, and had everything you want (I want) in a comic in a few pages: a good tale, well paced, with believable characters and very distinctive art styles. It was pure joy to read them, because the match of text and art were impeccable. 14

I was about 12 years old or so when I read short stories reprinted in Argentina from (now I know) Detective Comics, Atlas, Dell, etc. There were several artist I liked: Russ Heath, Joe Kubert, Don Heck, Gil Kane... and one Joe Maneely. His close-ups were very bold, thick lines and spots of blacks, but his backgrounds, even the figures, were rendered with a thin and regular line. (All these comics were printed in black-andwhite.) I never again saw his work, and because I was very young I’m not able to figure out why I liked his work so much, but at that time I copied his style and even his panels in a short comic I did.

Inc.

Joe Maneely

When I was about 14, I got a job in a small comics company. Now, it was small then, but it was a big and powerful company in better times, and they had in their basement an immense archive, with every magazine they had ever published from their beginnings in the first decades of the 20th century. They published domestic and foreign material— mainly strips from KFS, UFS, Tribune, and so on. They still had the original lithos. These were two or three strips pasted up on a board proportional in size to a comic or magazine, with new translated copy on it. There were hundreds, thousands of them, almost in no order, and I was in the middle of this treasure. I had the history of the comic strips at my feet, from Bringing up Father, Jungle Jim, Terry and the Pirates, Prince Valiant, Big Ben Bolt, Mark Trail, Brick Bradford, Dick Tracy, etc., etc.... you name it. There were also works from unknown artists (to me) from England, Italy, Spain, France.... At that time I did not analyze comics, I just devoured them.

Under the Influence

Alberto Breccia

™ and ©20 05 respectiv e owner.

He was a powerful influence for a lot of comic book artists in Argentina in the ’50s and ’60s, including myself, and I was lucky to have him as a teacher for three months in EPDA. Besides his work—which still impresses me—it was his strong ideas about art and his personality that made an impact on me. He was an artist who evolved. I mean, he not only perfected his craftsmanship, but he changed his style and always was looking for new forms to express himself artistically.

Mort Cinder

Through him I discovered a more ample world not reduced to the small scale of comic books. One that engulfs everything from movies to literature, from classic art to pop art. I was a teenager at the time, so you can imagine how all this made an everlasting impression on my future professional career.

Dean Cornwell

Because of him I spend a good time collecting references and doing sketches until getting the right one, before putting anything in the original board. Of course, he was doing all this preliminary work for his paintings and frescoes, not comic books, but who cares.... I do want to achieve some day the same quality of work he showed in his sketches, in my finished work.

I only saw one strip by this artist—in Spanish. It was called, “Kevin el Denodado.” Later on, in an illustration book I found a few other examples of his work. That was all, but it was enough for me to appreciate his talent. He was a real master of composition, with a superb control of black and white and open space in a panel.

Norman Rockwell The way he drew common people; his perfect use of facial and body language; the way he composed just with human figures on a scarce background, where only predominates the canvas’ whiteness. He was great.

Alex Raymond I was about 15 when I saw in KFS’ offices in Buenos Aires two Sunday strips from Flash Gordon. They were big, and the printing (lithography, I guess) was exquisite. I was familiar with Raymond and his other strips, Jungle Jim, Rip Kirby... but looking at those large Sunday pages from the ’30s, I realized I just wanted to become an artist like him. In America it is common to feel uncomfortable admitting you like comics, but Raymond can show anyone that comic art can be equal to fine art.

Harold Foster

Foster was another monster. Each of his panels embodied a class in composition. You put tracing paper over any panel, especially a big battle scene, and mark just the blacks in that panel, and all the perfect composition appears as a mathematical equation. Despite the monumental work he put into each page for so many years, he always kept the same level of quality in everything he did. Something not common in comic book art, old or new, was the way Foster treated his backgrounds. They were at the same art level as his figures; he was not just filling a blank space behind the characters. You could take the figures out and still be left with a wonderful landscape to entertain your eyes, whether a castle up in the hills, a Mediterranean ship port, or the grand forests of Canada. 16

Carlos De La Fuente The most important thing I took from his work is that you don’t need to follow the same people you knew and loved in younger years. I’m talking about the classic styles that everybody follows. When I discovered De La Fuente in the late ’60s, I was won over by his spontaneous work. I mean, I’m pretty sure he is rigorous in his planning, but his final renderings are so fresh, so alive. I have a long way to go, but I’d like to get that feeling in what I do. (I only see that in my sketches.)

When I saw his stuff in Batman, Green Lantern/Green Arrow, Superman, and so on, I was converted. I told myself, “If I’m going to do super-heroes, I have to look up to this guy.” For those first years working for DC, Neal Adams was my best aid in adapting to the medium. Steve Canyon ©2005 Milton Caniff and News America Syndicate USA.

Milton Caniff What attracted me first to Caniff was his storytelling. Later, after my initial love with the more classic styles, I learned to really appreciate his drawing and his masterful use of black and white and the beauty of his brush work. With Frank Robbins and Alex Toth, I had the same experience. I enjoyed their strips first as a reader, and later on as an artist myself. Behind those apparently simple styles, there’s plenty to learn. 17

2005 DC ™ and © Deadman

I wasn’t familiar with Adams’ comic book art until I came to the States. By the way, I wasn’t familiar with anybody outside of syndicated newspaper strips. I’d seen his Ben Casey dailies and was impressed by his strong figures and expressions. However, for me, he was one more disciple of the line from Raymond to Stan Drake.

Comics.

Neal Adams

Ross Andru I knew Ross Andru through Superman vs. Spider-Man. It was in 1975 (I guess), and about a year later DC put out Superman vs. Muhammad Ali. I hate to make comparisons, but in this case it’s just to illustrate the point of what I learned from Ross Andru. In Superman vs. Spider-Man, the characters were the stars. Nothing could distract the reader; it was pure comic book storytelling with a clear and classical style and great sequences. Here was the artist at the service of the story. He didn’t appear bigger than his characters. On the other hand, the latter book was pure Adams. I got the impression— and this a personal opinion— that he was more important than the story he had to tell. Myself, I try to serve the reader first, and I think I learned that from Andru.

d ©200

Superman ™ an

s, Inc.

rvel Character

Jordi Bernet I discovered him through the Torpedo 1936 series. I liked his work right away, but when I read the stories I also saw him for the great storyteller he is. He didn’t need complicated pages, layouts, or pin-ups to maintain the reader’s attention; it was pure and old-fashioned, good comic book art.

Spider-Man ™ 5 DC Comics.

Stan Drake I did some semi-romantic stories previous to my relationship with Charlton, but when I got work from them, it was only romantic stuff, and it was Drake and his Juliet Jones who saved me and gave me inspiration. The acting he put into his characters, so expressive and so dynamic in their body language, they could be the envy of countless soap operas stars. In a 22-page super-hero story, you have usually two pages (if that) where nothing happens, and in these two pages you can feel lost—you have no action, no big pin-up to fall back to. Stan Drake had a little fight every hundred panels or so, and yet he was able to keep your interest at all times with his stupendous acting and sense of storytelling. Perhaps the type of stories he did are not popular any more, but you can still look at those strips and learn a lot about what’s good and solid sequential art.

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Jean Girau

Editeur.

Moebius Giraud as Moebius reinvented the Art Noveau. It’s a pleasure to look at those panels where the big whites are an important part of the composition. He’s an artist who provokes contemplation and reflection. You can let yourself go in those minimalist landscapes.

And: Neil O’Keeffe, Frank Frazetta, Jose Luis Salinas, Robert Fawcett, Charles Dana Gibson, Sergio Toppi, Warren Tuffts, Will Eisner, Howard Chaykin, Kevin Nowlan, David Mazzuchelli, Patric Gothias, Hermann, Gene Colan, John Cullen Murphy, etc., etc.... Because as Bruce Timm said: “I’m influenced by anybody and everybody I’ve ever looked at.“

Part 2:

“I Really Felt Very Welcome at DC”

MM: What made you decide to move to the United States?

here, and besides—and most importantly—I didn’t have a deadline to finish this job by.

JOSÉ: The movies, the TV series, the comic strips, the music, and all the social and cultural changes going on at that time, first in places like New York, and then influencing the rest of the world. But then, I grew up with a large amount of American culture, so it was almost natural to decide to come here.

MM: Luis Dominguez introduced you to DC and Western when you arrived. Did you know Luis beforehand? JOSÉ: Only his work. I first met him in New York, the same day he brought me to Western, DC, and Marvel. MM: How did you get in touch with Luis?

MM: When did you make the move?

JOSÉ: When I arrived here, I had with me a couple of phone numbers. One was for Luis Dominguez and the other was for the cartoonist Arnaldo Franchioni, “Francho,” who used to work for Mad magazine among others. I didn’t know them personally, but I got their phone numbers from people I knew in Argentina. I thought it would be good to have someone to call if I had problems. The first person I called was Franchioni, because I was staying in a hotel and basically I wanted to find out if there was an apartment for rent in the area. Five days later, I rented an apartment near Times Square in the area that was known at the time as “Hell’s Kitchen.” After I got the apartment I started looking for work. I had the address for National Publications— or DC—which I got from the old comics I had in Argentina. The address led me to 3rd Avenue, but when I got there I was told they had moved to 75 Rockefeller Center. So I went there, but I couldn’t find their office. I didn’t know that Rockefeller was a complex of buildings—it was very difficult for me. I was frustrated because I couldn’t find DC. Then I called Luis Dominguez, and I told him that I was trying to get to DC to show my samples and to

JOSÉ: At the end of 1974. MM: Did you have work lined up before you moved— perhaps with Charlton—or were you just hoping things would work out for the best? JOSÉ: No, I didn’t make any contact ahead of time. I just trusted my luck. MM: How long did it take for you to adjust to your new environment? Was there any culture shock? JOSÉ: It didn’t take long. I don’t honestly remember having to adjust. If I ever experienced a culture shock, it was gradual and not a problem. Remember that globalization is not a new thing, so I was ready for New York. MM: Was there ever any time when you thought about moving back to Argentina? JOSÉ: No. MM: Did you continue to work for Columba or any of the other Argentine publishers after you moved to the US, or would that have been too difficult? JOSÉ: In the ’80s I did a mini-series for Columba. At that particular time, their rates were superior to those 20

look for work, but I couldn’t find the office. My English was so limited that I couldn’t understand the directions I had been given. Dominguez told me that that was the day he was going to the city. He had to go to Western, to DC, and to Marvel. We met up at Western Publishing on 5th Avenue. He took me into their office and they gave me a script. He introduced me to the people at DC and I got a job to ink over Curt Swan. After that he asked me if I wanted to be introduced at Marvel, and I said, “No, please, I have enough.” [laughter] I didn’t know Luis Dominguez. I was familiar with his work—I even copied some of his work when I was a kid. He was a wonderful person who helped me in so many ways, especially by introducing me to the manners and customs of the city: what to eat, what not to eat, where I should work, where I shouldn’t work. At that time in the ’70s the neighborhood near Times Square wasn't as nice as it is now. [laughter] MM: Who did you talk with at Western?

JOSÉ: I met two people. One was Wallace Green, who was editor-in-chief of that department of Western. The other was an editor whose name I cannot remember. He had a moustache and thick glasses. It’s a pity I forget his name, he was very kind to me. Later on when I went to Western I tried to go at the same time Luis would go, so he could help me with the language problem. I didn’t dare to take the subway—I thought I would get lost. What I did was walk from 9th Avenue and 45th Street to 3rd Avenue. I thought it would be a short walk, but it actually was a long walk. The blocks in Manhattan are very long, and I would always forget about the other avenues I had to cross along the way, like Lexington Avenue and Park Avenue. So I usually was a little late. The editor asked Luis if I was reliable, because I was always late. [laughter] MM: What did you have in your portfolio? Did you have your work from Argentina or your Charlton work? 21

Left: From mildmannered Clark Kent to Superman, the Man of Steel. DC style guide art from 1998. Above: Pages from the Eternity Watch mini-series, published by Columba in the ’80s. This series is the only work José has done for an Argentine publisher since his move to the US in the early ’70s. Superman ™ and ©2005 DC Comics. Eternity Watch ™ and ©2005 Editorial Columba.

Above: These Big Ben Bolt samples didn’t win José a newspaper strip, but they did help him get work from DC. Next Page: During his early days at DC, José was often paired with Filipino artist Ernie Chan. Here José inks Chan’s pencils for the cover of Flash #238. Inks Flash ™ and ©2005 DC Comics. Big Ben Bolt ™ and ©2005 King Features Syndicate, Inc.

JOSÉ: Basically what I brought from Argentina were the historical stories, the book adaptations, things like that. MM: So you took the actual printed copies of your work. You didn’t have samples of your inks or samples of your pencils? JOSÉ: No, no, I didn’t bring any pencils. I did do a few things especially for my portfolio. I did three sample strips of Big Ben Bolt, because I was aware that they were looking for someone to replace John Cullen Murphy, who at that time was taking over Prince Valiant. The people at Columba had told me about it, and I went and tried my luck at King Features. [laughs] 22

Back in Argentina, we felt that syndicated newspaper strips were more important than comics. We knew all the syndicated characters there, so for us the comic book characters were secondary. I also did two to four pages of continuity—something with gangsters or spies, I think—just to have an example of my work. But I guess the most important thing for the editors was to see what I already had published. It was a good amount of work, and I suppose they liked it. MM: Who did you talk with at DC? Most of your first work for DC was for Julie Schwartz, so I assume you talked with him that first day.

I had brought in to show. Those Ben Bolt strips and the continuity pages, with good-looking girls and guys, some romance, some action—I suppose my inking style was okay for that story. It was a short story—five pages, I guess—of “The Private Life of Clark Kent.”

JOSÉ: My first experience at DC was terrific, because I met everybody that day. I met Joe Orlando, Julie Schwartz, Murray Boltinoff, Sol Harrison, Infantino, Paul Levitz. I don’t know, a lot of people. I think the first person we saw was Joe Orlando. Then he started calling everybody over to look at my samples.

MM: Your first jobs for DC were inking jobs. Were they just making sure you were reliable before they gave you penciling assignments?

MM: It makes sense that you saw Joe Orlando first, since Luis did so much work for his mystery books.

JOSÉ: What I remember is the first job I did for DC was the “Clark Kent” story. Then after that I did a short story, pencils and inks, for Joe Orlando.

JOSÉ: Yeah, yeah, you’re right. But Dominguez used to do stuff for everybody over there, not only Orlando. But basically you are right, most of his stuff was for Joe Orlando.

MM: Was that for Weird War Tales?

MM: That must have been a whirlwind of a day, meeting so many people in one day.

JOSÉ: Yeah. And then I did a 17page story, pencils and inks. At the same time I did some inks here and some pencils there.

JOSÉ: Oh, yeah. [laughter] It was terrific, because it was not the way I was used to working in Argentina, where you met the president of the company after many, many months of working for them. I really felt very welcome at DC. I felt very, very happy with the reception I received. [laughter] And especially because they didn’t know Dominguez was bringing someone up to show their samples.

MM: Okay, I guess your work wasn’t published in the same order in which you worked on it. In your first year or two at DC you inked a few Ernie Chan jobs, Dick Dillin, Irv Novick, and we already mentioned Curt Swan. How did you feel about inking other people? Was that a difficult adjustment for you? JOSÉ: Well, it was something new for me. It wasn’t the way things were done in Argentina. There you did the whole thing. If you had an assistant, you would ink the figures and the important backgrounds, and leave everything else for the assistant to ink. But I don’t think I had any problems inking another penciler. Besides, those other pencilers

MM: Well they must have liked you quite a bit to immediately give you an inking job over Curt Swan’s pencils, even if it was a back-up story. JOSÉ: In this case, I suppose it was because of the work 23

were better than me—remember that. [laughter] Not only were they better, but they drew tighter pencils than me. MM: Well, most artists pencil much tighter when they know another artist will be inking their work than when they ink themselves. JOSÉ: Yeah, because I was used to inking my own stuff, my pencils were not very tight. But Curt Swan’s pencils—Irv Novick’s also— were pretty tight. Nowadays there are some guys out there who have terribly tight pencils, because you can shoot directly from the pencils, but that’s a little crazy for me. [laughter] MM: Did working over their pencils give you a better idea of what you needed to do when you had to pencil a job someone else would ink? JOSÉ: Some of the stuff I penciled as tight as possible. The problem for me—and I still have this problem—is that I’m slow. A good amount of the work I did at that time was only layouts. Very tight layouts, but I didn’t put blacks in, for instance, and I didn’t embellish the linework. That’s the kind of thing I used to do with a brush and a pen. It was a little boring, because I couldn’t get the same feeling with the pencil that I could with the brush. I can’t remember the specific jobs where I only did layouts. MM: While you were breaking in at DC, you were also doing jobs for Western—mostly ghost stories and that type of thing for Grimm’s Ghost Stories and Twilight Zone. JOSÉ: And Boris Karloff. I guess I did five stories, or maybe a couple more—I don’t remember. MM: You were doing pencils and inks for all your Western jobs. Was there a big difference in working for Western than working for DC? JOSÉ: Working for DC was more exciting. The contact with lots of people there was good for me. Especially since I had just arrived, to be in contact with so many decent people was a good experience. I learned a lot not only about the job, but how to live in the city. At Western you picked up the script, went home, did the job, 24

brought back the finished pages, picked up your check, and that’s it. There was no feedback; everything was okay. At DC you learned, because when the work was okay they told you. It was nice that someone you considered a better artist than you would tell you, “Oh, this is good, this is good. Keep doing it this way.” MM: Did you have a preference for the types of stories you were working on? JOSÉ: Everything was new, so I liked everything. But, of course, I was more comfortable with the work I did for Joe Orlando. When “Jonah Hex” [in Weird Western Tales] came around, that was a good match for me. MM: The first place I remember seeing your name—and this was one of the very first comics I owned; I was only five years old when I got it, but I could already read fairly well—was a “Seven Soldiers of Victory” back-up story in Adventure Comics #442, which featured the Vigilante. I loved that story as a kid, and I kept coming back to it reading it over and over. JOSÉ: I don’t remember the story, really, but I still have the originals, because I really liked it. After DC returned the originals to me I had a chance to sell them, but instead I kept them because I liked them so much. I suppose it’s because of the inking of Mike Royer. Perhaps because it doesn’t look like I did it. I don’t know why. MM: Maybe it’s because you had always worked on realistic stories, and this story is a complete fantasy, with the gnomes and Vigilante turning himself into a giant fly and so on. JOSÉ: Perhaps. It was something I didn’t do very much. Most of the jobs I did, I didn’t draw in that style—more caricaturistic. But I guess for this specific story it was

the style that worked best. I really don’t remember the story, but I remember the work, and I still like it. MM: You worked on The Joker for three consecutive issues, inking issues #2 and #3, then penciling #4. What do you remember about that book? JOSÉ: I fondly remember the inks I did over Irv Novick in “The Sad Saga of Willy the Weeper!” [Joker #2]. I think the Joker I did later on was modeled after his. 25

Previous Page: Splash pages from Grimm’s Ghost Stories #24 and #25, and from Boris Karloff Tales of Mystery #64. Above: Joker #4, page 3. Inks by Vince Colletta.

Right: “The Music of Minox”—a six-page story published in Starstream #1 in 1976—was José’s only job for Whitman. Below: Detail from the splash page of Hercules Unbound #2. Next Page: Page one, page four, and a detail, all from “Mister Mxyzptlk’s Circus Caper.” This story had actually been written off before being pulled out of inventory to be published as a back-up in Superman #351 in 1980. Of course, the credits had to be updated, as Denny O’Neil had long since stopped using his Sergius O’Shaugnessy moniker. Hercules Unbound, Mxyzptlk, Superman ™ and ©2005 DC Comics. The Music of Minox ™ and ©2005 respective owner.

I only remember a few of the regular books I did at that time. There was “Jonah Hex” and Hercules Unbound. But everything else, I would start something, and the deadlines would catch up to me and they would give me something else. MM: Like the “Hawkman” back-up stories in Detective. JOSÉ: Yeah, I remember those. MM: Did you like “Hawkman” a little more than— JOSÉ: No. [laughter] MM: You didn’t enjoy “Hawkman”? JOSÉ: No. MM: What about it did you not like? JOSÉ: I don’t know. I was having a hard time with super-heroes. It wasn’t what I liked to draw. I was okay doing westerns; I was okay doing Hercules Unbound. I was okay, I guess, even doing Superman, but other characters... I just didn’t have the feel for them. MM: What made Hercules Unbound more enjoyable for you? JOSÉ: I guess, it was because I had the chance to create something. I could do

things with those characters that I could not do with the established characters. At that time, I did several Superman stories and covers also. Superman was sacred; you had to kneel before the character and do him in a certain way. That was very hard for me. When I had the chance to create something myself, I felt a sense of freedom. MM: How did the book come about? Did they approach you with the idea of a new book, or did you ask for something new? JOSÉ: They offered it to me. I don’t remember asking for any specific job. Everything I’ve done is because they felt that I was able to do it. MM: So you designed the Hercules character? JOSÉ: Yes.

MM: Did you do a lot of sketches of different costumes, or did you know what you wanted from the start?

Jack Kirby, so I thought you might have seen that. JOSÉ: A lot of very good artists I came to know better once I was here in America. I might have heard their names in Argentina, but I never had a chance to see their stuff.

JOSÉ: It was a very simple costume. I don’t think we spent too much time on it. MM: Was the approval process fairly easy?

MM: What did you think of Wood’s inks over your pencils? He tended to make everyone’s pencils look like Wally Wood, and he did that to some degree with you, as well.

JOSÉ: Yeah, it wasn’t a big deal. Later on with other characters, it was different. For instance, Atari Force took a long time and had to go through a lot of people before we were given a go-ahead. But in this case it went pretty fast. I did two, three, four sketches of the character and gave them the chance to choose one. It was the same process I went through with the covers.

JOSÉ: The only thing I regret about it was to not have the Wally Wood from a few years earlier. To be honest, Wallace Wood was a great artist, and great artists can be very good inkers and improve another penciler’s work, but I don’t think Wally Wood at that time was at his best. It was an honest job, but for my

MM: On Hercules Unbound you worked with Wally Wood. Were you familiar with his work before you came to America? JOSÉ: No, I became familiar with his work here. Remember, in Argentina we knew a lot about the comic strips. MM: Well, he had worked in comic strips. He inked the Sky Masters strip over

tastes it wasn’t “Ooh, this is beautiful. This is wonderful.” But, I’ve had many other inkers, and I recognize that Wally Wood was one of the best.

MM: How many pages were you able to do in a month? JOSÉ: I was doing about 17 pages—pencil and ink—at that time. Sometimes I only did 15. Over time it would accumulate and in three or four issues I was late. Every week I would go to DC, and when I delivered something an editor would give me a cover or a short story. For me it wasn’t a problem. I didn’t feel bad when I had to change from one character to another. Each new book was a new challenge and something new to learn. I didn’t pay too much attention to the fact that I wasn’t sticking to one book. Remember, I only did “Roland, el Corsario” for one year, one year and a half. What I was doing was standalone stories, not continuity, so I was used to doing different things.

MM: One of your inkers from that time was Rudy Flores. I thought he did a very nice job with your pencils. JOSÉ: Yes, on Tarzan. He was good. Okay, he wasn’t Wallace Wood, but he put more effort and time in the job. When you compare with what Wallace Wood was able to do with what he did in Hercules, you see that he only put one percent of his talent into that job. MM: What was it about the “Jonah Hex” job you liked so much? JOSÉ: At that time it was my favorite. Perhaps not a lot of them were very good, but I tried my best. Besides, I was working on something I was familiar with and working in the way I had worked in Argentina. I drew loose pencils and did most of the work in the inking. I guess a couple of those books are still worth a second look; the others, I don’t know. [laughter] “Jonah Hex” had very good artists with Tony DeZuniga and, for a very brief but important time, an Argentine artist, George Moliterni. When they gave it to me I felt very good, because it was something I could do—something where I had more freedom with the character, because it wasn’t Superman.

MM: And the “Jonah Hex” stories were stand-alone stories, too. JOSÉ: There were very good people at DC. They wanted to keep me busy, but they knew my limitations. MM: Do you wish you could have done even more “Jonah Hex” stories? Would you have stayed on the book indefinitely if you could have? JOSÉ: That I don’t know. [laughter] What I remember about “Jonah Hex” is that I really enjoyed the scripts. I wasn’t into office politics and things like that, so I don’t know why there were things said against the writer—

MM: Were you able to pencil a “Jonah Hex” story at a faster pace than you could a super-hero story?

MM: Are you talking about Michael Fleisher?

JOSÉ: Yes.

JOSÉ: Yeah. But, basically, as a writer he was very good. Before doing “Jonah Hex” I did another story about the 28

Civil War that was scripted by Michael Fleisher. I always liked his writing.

tabloid book. Did you do fairly loose pencils, or did you work on it for a few months? JOSÉ: I remember doing at least the first 20-25 pages in a very tight style. But later on the deadline was drawing near, and I did layouts. Everything was there, but I didn’t put in the blacks. Perhaps you’ll notice a difference between the first part of the book and the second part of the book. I find that sometimes

MM: You mentioned Tarzan earlier, so let’s go back to that for a moment. You drew six issues of the series—did you enjoy it as much as you did “Jonah Hex”? JOSÉ: Well, for me everything was new, and that was good for me. But in this case, Tarzan was a character I knew from my childhood. I had a point of departure from Joe Kubert. I really tried to do my best. I don’t know if this is okay to say [laughs], but a couple of issues were inked by Frank Springer. The same thing that happened on Hercules Unbound with Wally Wood, happened on Tarzan with Frank Springer. He was capable of better work. I was disappointed with those issues, because of all of my effort, all the work I put into the pencils. But everything else was okay. [laughter] I guess a lot of people are going to hate me after this. [laughter] But, you know, after so many years I suppose they won’t be offended—not really. MM: Did you see the Tarzan newspaper strips in Argentina? JOSÉ: Yes, the Burne Hogarth strips. MM: Did you like his style? JOSÉ: No, the one I really liked was Bob Lubbers. I liked Hogarth, but for my taste he’s a little too... academic. [laughter] It’s not exactly comics; it’s more illustration. It’s something he used to show his knowledge of anatomy. On the other hand, Bob Lubbers was really doing a comic strip. MM: Let’s talk about Superman vs. Wonder Woman. That was a 72-page 29

Previous Page: Plate 3 of the History of the DC Universe Portfolio. Left: Cover art for Tarzan #250. Below: Page 2 of the twelve-page back-up story from Detective #459, which José penciled and inked. Batman, Jonah Hex ™ and ©2005 DC Comics. Tarzan ™ and ©2005 Edgar Rice Burroughs Estate.

the inker will put in too many blacks when he isn’t given any indications in the pencils. But I guess the final product was okay.

Below: Line art from the cover of Superman vs. Wonder Woman. Inks by Dan Adkins. Right: Cover for 1978’s DC Special Series #9, a.k.a., Wonder Woman Spectacular. Next Page: Pages 15 and 16 of DC Comics Presents #2. Inks by Dan Adkins. Flash, Superman, Wonder Woman ™ and ©2005 DC Comics.

MM: How long did you spend working on the story? Were you working on it while you were doing other jobs, or did you work on it exclusively? JOSÉ: I don’t remember. I didn’t pay too much attention to deadlines really. That’s the only unprofessional part of my career. [laughs] I don’t remember if they gave me a deadline, or if they thought I would be able to do it faster than I did. I’ve never been very fast. It’s very difficult for me to sacrifice the work. Even if I have someone behind me cracking a whip, it’s very difficult. [laughter] When I see the possibilities of the work and I have to do it another way to meet a deadline, I cannot concentrate—I cannot do it right. I prefer to concentrate on the quality and not the deadline. And that’s bad. Perhaps it’s something I should consult about with a psychologist, no? [laughter] MM: Were you given photo reference for the story? There are a lot of historical figures in the book. JOSÉ: Well, the New York Public Library was the best source of information. It was terrific. During the first week I spent here in New York, a friend who had lived here for a while took me to the library to get a card. He told me about the reference section of the library—it was terrific at that time. Any time I need reference, I would spend my afternoon there. MM: Did the tabloid print-size of the book effect how you approached the layout of the story? JOSÉ: When they asked me to do this job, the first thing they did was bring me to Infantino’s office—it was Joe Orlando and someone else, I don’t remember who—and they showed me Superman vs. SpiderMan, which was done by Ross Andru and Giordano. 30

It was terrific. Really terrific. I guess it was the first thing I saw in comic books that really made an impact on me. I remembered the stuff from Neal Adams and all, but this book was pure comic book stuff. It wasn’t illustration; it wasn’t the artist trying to show off his talent. It was all about the characters, the movement. And they asked me, “Can you do something like this?” And I said, “Well, I don’t know. This is terrific. I don’t think I would be able.” But they told me, “No, we think you can do it.” And that was it. Of course, when they show you that beforehand, then in some ways you try to follow that example. Especially in the layouts, when you try to find different angles to show the action and things like that. I don’t know if I am very good at that. Basically, my layouts are very conservative. But I owe Ross Andru a lot, because after looking at that book I tried a lot of things I had never tried before. MM: Did you start on DC Comics Presents right after you finished Superman vs. Wonder Woman? JOSÉ: I don’t remember. Maybe so. Perhaps that’s the reason why they teamed me up with Dan Adkins again. I remember that the first pages I drew for Superman vs. Wonder Woman I didn’t do here—I did them in Buenos Aires. I was paying a visit to my family, and I remember sending out six or ten pages to Joe Orlando. A few days later I got a call from New York, and it was Joe Orlando telling me how happy he was with the job. That was great! [laughter] Joe Orlando knew how to make an artist happy, probably because he was an artist himself. MM: Is there any particular issue of DC Comic Presents that stands out for you—that you were especially happy with? JOSÉ: Well, I didn’t do very many. MM: You did the first four issues and two or three issues later in the series. The one that really stands out to me is issue #24, the team-up with Deadman. JOSÉ: Oh, yes. Was Len Wein the writer? MM: Yes, and you did pencils and inks for that one. JOSÉ: Yeah, before that I did some “Deadman” stories with him, and he was very happy with my Deadman. MM: And the story was really more of a Deadman story than it was a Superman story. It seemed like you had more freedom to experiment with your artwork, too. JOSÉ: They didn’t pay the same amount of attention to Deadman as they did to Superman. You always have more freedom when you draw a character that nobody pays much attention to. 31

MM: The one in Adventure Comics #466. I was about to mention that splash page. JOSÉ: And that was the approach I took with “Deadman”—a more human approach. MM: Did you actually go to a park and do sketches or anything to get the feel right? JOSÉ: No, I think the only reference I got for that was the pigeons. Everything else, well, you pick up things here and there. But, you know what? Every time I get a script—especially if it’s not set in some far, far away galaxy, but here on Earth, in a big city like New York—as soon as I read the script I go out. I look at things on the street while I think about the script. Everything you’ve seen is in your memory, but you have to keep refreshing your memory. If you have to draw a scene in a park, it’s a great idea to go to a park and look around. But I don’t remember specifically going to a park in this case. MM: You started working on those “Deadman” stories during the DC Implosion. Were you at all worried about the industry during that time, or were you fairly comfortable with your position at DC?

MM: Did you think of Deadman as a super-hero? Because the “Deadman” stories revolved around “real” people and generally took place in “real” settings. Did you feel more comfortable doing “Deadman”? JOSÉ: Yeah, and not because of the character, but because of the possibilities with the art. The fact that Deadman was such a great hero was something I never thought about. The stories I did with Len Wein were more like “human” stories—not superheroic stories with a lot of action, a lot of punch. I remember one short story I did with Len Wein that started with an old guy feeding the pigeons— 32

JOSÉ: I wasn’t too aware of what was happening. I just did what they gave to me. Sometimes I liked what they gave me, sometimes not so much. [laughter] I knew, of course, that there were problems, but for me they were new kinds of problems. When they told me they had to cancel Jonah Hex because it didn’t sell more than 80,000 copies, I thought about the industry in Buenos Aires. If they sold that many comics, they were considered very successful. I thought to myself, “Why are they dropping a book because it’s only selling 79,000 copies?” But if I knew about business, perhaps I wouldn’t be doing comic books. [laughter] In some ways I suppose the Implosion didn’t effect me because I produced very few pages. In the time I took to do one page, some artists were doing three, four, even five pages. For those people it was a problem, but for me it was not.

Below: Batman #321 cover art.

MM: When you were working on the “Deadman” stories for Adventure Comics, did you look back at what Neal Adams had done earlier for visual cues?

comfortable with that approach. My point of departure for drawing Deadman, Superman, and Batman, started from Neal Adams.

JOSÉ: I modeled the character on what Neal Adams did. The same thing happened with Superman, because I felt more

MM: Deadman is an observer during a large part of his stories. Was it challenging to find ways to make him an active part of the story when he was just hovering above the scene? JOSÉ: No, because when there was something happening with the other characters, I could show Deadman’s reaction to that. I don’t remember having any specific problems.

last issue of House of Secrets. The Golden Knight is killed by his squire, who takes his place in the armor. JOSÉ: Well, that story gave me the chance to look back at the historical reference material I brought from Argentina. I hadn’t really needed to use it before then. I had done many historical stories in Argentina, so I was happy to be able to do that type of thing again. It was fun; I liked it. [laughs] I don’t know if I looked at it now that I would still like it. [laughter]

Above and Right: Two cover roughs and the final pencils for the Batman vs. The Hulk cover. Next Page: Back cover art to Batman vs. The Hulk.

There was one story where he was up in the air above a typical city street with vegetable stores and things like that—that was fun. MM: There was a story you did for the 36

MM: In the early ’80s you did several Batman stories—a Brave & the Bold, a couple issues of Batman— but the one I particularly enjoyed was the chapter of Batman #500 you did featuring Elongated Man. The opening page of the chapter was a brief overview of the writing career of Edgar Allan Poe. Did that bring back memories of the biographical stories you used to do in Argentina?

JOSÉ: You know what? Those kinds of stories were good to do. I would love to do more of those, because I felt more free when I did them. There is no pressure; nobody is expecting Superman. I’ve got nothing against Superman, I’m just using him as an example. The fun part is I was doing the pencils and the inks. Then in the inks I would try and do things. Not too much— because the printing process at the time was limited—but I tried to give a different feeling to the inking than what was in a normal comic book. You can do that in the short stories with the secondary characters, because no one is going to complain that they didn’t get what they were expecting.

MM: Oh, really? JOSÉ: Yeah, but most of them are inked by Dick Giordano, and you can tell— MM: Who inked the other pages? Someone from Continuity Studios? JOSÉ: I don’t know, but you can see the difference in a couple of the pages.

MM: Another Batman-related project you did around this time was another tabloid-sized book, Batman vs. the Hulk. Did you have any concerns about the expectations a book like that would generate, especially after the success of Superman vs. Spider-Man? JOSÉ: Superman vs. Spider-Man was far in the past, and I had already incorporated many things from that book into my work. I remember taking a look at the way John Buscema drew the Hulk. It was a job I really enjoyed, but not because of the Hulk or Batman, but the Joker. I think the best pages were the Joker pages. MM: What was it about the Joker that you enjoyed so much? JOSÉ: He looks like an opera character, and you can do anything with him. He’s fun to work with. There was even a page where I had to imitate different artists, like Dali, Picasso, and so on—paintings related to the Joker. It was fun. I liked what I did, and I like Dick Giordano’s inks also. [laughs] There were a couple of pages that he didn’t ink. 37

Interlude 2: Below: Back cover of Jose’s first foray into licensing art—a 1978 brochure used to sell DC promotional comics to restaurants, utility companies, etc. Inks by Dick Giordano. Next Page: Pencil art for 1980’s (DC’s first) style guide. All characters ™ and ©2005 DC Comics.

MM: How did you get involved in doing style guides and art for the licensing department? JOSÉ: Well, again, everything was decided by others, not by me. I left New York at the end of the ’70s—1979 or 1980. I lived for a year to a year-and-a-half in Miami. While I was there I did several stories, including Batman vs. the Hulk, a DC Comics Presents with Robin [#31]. And I’m not sure, but I think it was just before the Star Raiders graphic novel, I got a call from Joe Orlando. Joe Orlando was interested in getting me back to New York. They

License to Style

brought me to New York for about a weekand-a-half and told me about the project they had in mind. Warner already had style guides done for animation—the Looney Tune characters. The idea was to do something similar for the characters at DC. They wanted something that would unify the DC character line so that no matter who was drawing them, the characters would still look they belonged in the same world. I remember we had a meeting with an executive from Warner, and we had a supervisor from Warner, also. I went back to Miami Beach and started working on it.

I did sketches—the sketches included all the costuming and the design elements of each character—and they selected the ones they wanted to use. Then I took those and did the pencils; Dick Giordano did the inking. Some of those sketches were based on classic poses, especially with characters like Superman and Batman, which they already had in mind that they wanted to use. At the same time, I had the freedom to come up with other poses, other ideas. We worked that way, and everybody was very happy with the results. When it was finished, it was something all the artists wanted to have. At least, that’s what they told me. [laughter] Some people told me they were going to do a job for DC just to get the book. MM: How did you approach that job as opposed to how you would a story? Did

you have to have a different mindset going into a project like that? JOSÉ: Not really. It’s more fun to do a story. After all, you get tired of working with the same character with nothing else to draw and no story to tell. But basically it’s like the opening splash page of a comic book. You have to think of something dynamic that will attract the attention of the viewer, even if it doesn’t tell any story. Most of the time in a comic book, the opening page doesn’t really tell any of the story, so you just think of it in that way. MM: They seem to update things fairly frequently now, but back then how often did they ask you to update the guides? Was it just when a costume would change? JOSÉ: After doing the first one, every year they were adding something. Also, there would be work to be done for a 41

Right: José had to come up with an inventive layout in order to tell the story in this Japanese print ad for Nissan. Below: Artwork for an unrealized Superman movie. Next Page: Mattel packaging art for the Wonder Woman/Star Riders line of Barbie dolls.

specific line. They could pick up the drawings that were already done, but they didn’t always do that. Sometimes a client would have specific needs. When I moved back to New York, I remember doing a good amount of stuff. That was one of the reasons I didn’t do too many comic books, and when I did, it was without deadlines. The last few years they’ve had a policy of updating the style guide. And not with one or two new pages of poses, but with ten, 15 pages with new poses and new themes—like Gothic Batman or Techno-Batman, things like that. Then there are the movies, etc., etc. MM: Didn’t you do the Got Milk? ads for the DC books?

MM: Have you done many of those kinds of jobs?

JOSÉ: I did two of them: Superman and Batman.

JOSÉ: No, not too many. Sometimes I wouldn’t be available because I’d be working on another project. But I’ve done several things for Mattel and things like that— Batman board games, several things. MM: Can you get as much satisfaction from those projects as you can from a story? JOSÉ: Well, there are two kinds of satisfaction. [laughter] You have the satisfaction that a lot of people will see your name and artwork and they’ll see you at a convention and tell you how much they like it—that’s good. When you do the other stuff, nobody knows about it, but the satisfaction is financial. Perhaps you won’t get famous from that work, but you’ll have more money in your pocket than you can get by doing comic books. Both kinds of satisfaction are good to have.

This Page: Concept sketches for Batman Returns. Next Page: More pencils from the 1980 DC style guide.

From Outer Space to New Orleans and Back

MM: Star Raiders was the first graphic novel published by DC, and the first time you colored your work for an American publisher. Did you use colored pencils for the figure work and then go in with watercolors? JOSÉ: When I first started, I didn’t have a clue how to do it, really. I did color at art school, but the coloring we did at Columba were only guides for the printer. You would put a sheet of paper over the original, and with color pencils you would show what colors you wanted. Most of the

time the printer would use some other colors or the wrong intensity of the colors. [laughs] In this case, it was direct color, and the first 20 pages I was just figuring out what to do. After those pages I knew more or less what I wanted and how to get the results I was looking for. I’m really happy with the drawings, but I’m not happy with the coloring. If I had to color again, I would prepare myself better beforehand. But, you know, it was something they put in front of me. I told Joe Orlando I had never done coloring, and gave him every reason I could think of

why I shouldn’t do it. I told Andy Helfer, too. I met Andy over the phone at that time. MM: He was a special projects editor then. JOSÉ: Yes. But they convinced me. Joe told me, “No, you can do it. Go ahead, I trust you.” And so I did the job. MM: That says a lot about their faith in you that they would give you a job doing something you’d never done before. JOSÉ: What happened was it wasn’t originally meant to be a graphic novel. First of all, this was related to Atari and their video games; they had a game called Star Raiders. The idea was to do comic book stories with painted art that were related to the games. There was a list of four to six projects they were going to do at the same time. I remember Ernie Colón was doing one, which later on was published as a graphic novel, also. Atari was supposed to publish the stories in a magazine with two or three stories, 20 pages each, in each issue. While all this was getting started, I don’t know what happened, but DC decided to publish the stories themselves, only as graphic novels, and they chose the one I was doing to be the first one.

just drawing the story. Then they called and told me they were going to publish it as graphic novel and they were going to have to change part of the story and the ending. MM: Did you have to change anything in what you had already finished? JOSÉ: No, I had only done about 20 pages, and the changes they had to make were later in the story. At that point I only had the script for the first chapter, which was 20 pages—I didn’t know how the story was going to end yet. MM: How did you prepare for the job? Did you do a lot of preliminary work since you were coloring the book, too?

MM: So it was originally intended to be serialized in a magazine—something similar to Heavy Metal?

JOSÉ: Yes, I did a lot of warm-up drawing, especially with the coloring. But before that, we created the characters, and because it was in the beginning solely an Atari property, they had to approve everything. We had to pay special attention to the design of the characters—we worked closely with Andy Helfer on that. He provided me with ideas, suggestions, photostats, to help me understand the look that they wanted. Then I did several color sketches and eventually we agreed on the look for the two central characters. I got photostats of the Hukkas;

JOSÉ: Yeah, something like that. MM: Had you already started work on the story before they switched formats? JOSÉ: Most of the book I did while I was in Miami Beach, so I wasn’t aware of a lot of what was happening—I was 47

the proper preparation. I was learning on the job. MM: Did you start on Atari Force right after finishing Star Raiders? JOSÉ: I think so. MM: You had to go through the approval process all over again, right? JOSÉ: Oh, yeah. By that time I was back in New York, so I went to the office every week and was more aware of what was happening than I was while living in Florida. But, yes, for Atari Force I did a lot of sketches, and those sketches were revised by everybody, from the editor to the writer to the publisher. We spent several days working on this—meetings with Andy Helfer and Gerry Conway. MM: Was it your idea for Professor Venture to always be smoking a cigar? JOSÉ: I think that was my idea. [laughs] You know what? When you aren’t sure what to do with a character’s hands, it’s always nice to put something in their hands. At that time it was still okay to show someone smoking a cigar. But I think it was my idea. I don’t think Gerry was smoking then. [laughter] MM: I think it also added to her personality. She didn’t get a lot of face time, but when she’s there she really stands out. Did you have a favorite character in the series?

they were already created by Ross Andru and Dick Giordano for the mini-comics. MM: So the Atari Force mini-comics had already been done before you started Star Raiders?

JOSÉ: Morphea and Dart. Tempest to a lesser degree. Babe was fun to do as well—and Pakrat.

JOSÉ: Yeah. In Atari Force I had to use Martin Champion and the spaceship from the mini-comics. MM: You used a couple of the other characters, too, but they were only around in a few panels. Looking back, did you enjoy the coloring process? Would you like to try it again sometime? JOSÉ: Yeah, I enjoyed it. I worked twelve hours a day on that story, with the help of my wife, but I was into the job and the story and the characters. I really enjoyed it. It was hard work, but it was something new for me— something I had never done before. I remember reading a comment from Bill Sienkiewicz about the coloring—and he was right—“too many colors.” [laughter] But, you know, I was trying to find my way, and it was difficult from one day to the next without time for

MM: What was it about those particular characters that made them favorites? JOSÉ: I guess that the characters I enjoyed most were Morphea and Babe. I don’t know why, because I usually feel more comfortable 48

with a very classical, human form. Perhaps because I was able to play with those characters. Andy scripted one story devoted entirely to Babe, and it was the most fun I had on the series. I wish I had had a similar chance with Morphea. MM: You were on the series for twelve consecutive issues. You obviously had more of a commitment to this series than to any other you worked on. Did you add anything to the plots? Did you have input into the stories? JOSÉ: Well, working with Gerry I had more input than with any other writer, because practically everything I did with him was from plots. I had the freedom to pace the story and use different layouts on the page. Usually I try to see what is important to the story in the plot. I try to follow the writer, of course, because he knows better than I where the story is going. When I see a chance to do something in a different way, sometimes I'll take a chance and change things. Sometimes I’ll talk to the writer first. But it was very, very easy

to work with Gerry and Andy. I don’t remember ever having any problem of any sort. MM: What was it about this book that enabled you to stay with it for so long? JOSÉ: You have to remember that two of those issues were penciled by Ross Andru and I only inked. That gave me a little more time. When we got to the tenth or eleventh issue I was already a little late. They wanted 22 pages, but the reason I was able to keep up was I did 17-page stories and they put in back-up stories. MM: In the letters page, Andy wrote that inking Ross Andru had been one of your professional aspirations. Did you have any input in having Ross come in to pencil those two issues? JOSÉ: No. MM: Was inking his work a pleasant experience? JOSÉ: It was a good experience—and educational— because his pencils are very, very strong. You get everything; you don’t have to change anything. All you have to do is figure out how to bring forward the power of those pencils in the inking. He used to use a very broad pencil stroke, and sometimes you had to choose the width of the line. The only thing I regret is that I never knew what he 49

Far Left: Page 6 of Atari Force #3. Inks by Ricardo Villagran. Left and Above: Pencils for “Fact File” pages which appeared in the back of Atari Force— Pakrat, Morphea, and the Dark Destroyer. Atari Force, Dark Destroyer, Morphea, Pakrat ™ and ©2005 Atari, Inc.

thought about my inking job. [laughs] But I really enjoyed it. MM: Let’s talk about the people who inked you during the series. For the first several issues you were inked by Ricardo Villagran. JOSÉ: He was great. MM: I thought he fit your pencils very well. He’s from Argentina, as well. Did you know him before you worked together on Atari Force? JOSÉ: Oh, yeah. Not very well—he was already a bigshot at Columba. [laughter] Yeah, he was in the big leagues. I knew him, and I knew his work. It was great to have him as the inker, because he can do anything with a brush. MM: Eduardo Baretto—who took over the series as penciler after you left—inked an issue. JOSÉ: And Bob Smith. I was very lucky with the inkers I had on that series. I also liked Bob Smith very much. MM: You made a lot of new fans while working on Atari Force. Were you surprised at all with the response the book got? JOSÉ: No, because I was used to the fanmail. I had gotten some good comments about my work on “Jonah Hex” and Hercules Unbound. It was not my first experience with fans, but it was good to hear. MM: Did the book sell well enough to earn royalties? DC had just started their royalty program. JOSÉ: The first book paid well. The rest of the books were a different story. I guess a lot of crazy people were buying two copies of the first issue. [laughter] MM: Were you happy working on the series? Was it a series you would have kept doing if you could have? JOSÉ: Yeah, yeah. They had to take me off by force. [laughter] MM: Was it difficult to see the characters you created be drawn by someone else? JOSÉ: Yes and no. I didn’t want to leave the characters, I wanted to stay with the book. I’m slow, and I was going to have trouble with the deadlines sooner or later, but I got used to the characters. I liked the characters, I liked the stories, I liked working with Gerry Conway and Andy Helfer. It was like they were taking me away from all the things I enjoyed. But they insisted, and I had to give it up and move on to something else. Baretto did a good job, and he knew that the series would not live much longer. They had already told me that the series was going to end at issue #19 or #20 because of Atari’s troubles. 50

MM: Was that frustrating, knowing that once the series was done there would be no way to use them again? JOSÉ: It was very frustrating. I put a lot of myself in those characters and into the book, and we had great expectations. Then to find out they had no value because we cannot use those characters again.... I think they were very good characters. They were the kind of characters you could use for any kind of story. But it happens. MM: You went from Atari Force directly over to New Teen Titans to fill in for George Pérez, right? JOSÉ: The reason they took me off Atari Force was because of the Titans. They insisted that they needed me to do the Titans. In the end I agreed to do it, but on the condition that I would come back to Atari Force when I was done. I even had Andy Helfer

write a letter—which was then signed by Paul Levitz or Dick Giordano, I don’t remember which—stating that if there was a viable future for Atari Force I would be the artist. [laughs] I was very sorry to leave those characters. I had nothing against the Teen Titans, but I felt that if I was enjoying myself doing Atari Force, why did I have to change to do something else? Also, the Titans were very popular and George’s work was a lot to live up to—the readers were always going to compare my work to George’s. With Atari Force there were no comparisons, because I was the only artist. [laughter] MM: New Teen Titans was DC’s best-selling book at that time. They had just started the directonly Baxter series with the idea that those stories would be reprinted in the newsstand title one year later. So you were filling in for George while he worked on the Tales of the New Teen Titans newsstand book to bridge that oneyear gap. Did you feel 51

Previous Page: Dart doesn’t take kindly to her lover’s betrayal. Atari Force #11, pages 17 and 18. Inks by Bob Smith. Left: José’s first page of art for New Teen Titans, and what a way to get started! Inks by Romeo Tanghal. Above: A panel from New Teen Titans #11.

any added pressure due to how important that book was for DC? JOSÉ: The only pressure was from having to work with so many characters. I wasn’t used to working with that many characters at the same time. I’m just glad that Marv Wolfman did a script that was a good fit for me. MM: Right, your first storyline revolved around mythology—the gods, the titans. This Page: José’s rough layout and pencils for the cover to Deadman #3. Next Page: This page is a great example of the texture work José did in the Deadman mini-series. Deadman #4, page 9.

JOSÉ: I was a little nervous in the beginning, but I don’t remember having any problems. And I was getting feedback from Marv Wolfman almost every week. Every time I delivered pages he would tell me how he felt about the job, and it was always good. MM: After your stint on Titans, Atari Force was pretty much done, but you did get to work with Andy Helfer again—this time on the Deadman mini-series. Andy was the writer this time and not the editor, but did he arrange for you to be the artist, or did it just work out that way?

JOSÉ: We were in contact every week. I think he told me about the project, and he asked me to do it and I said yes. MM: You did full art in this series, and it looks like you used a lot of duo-tone—things you hadn’t really done before. Were you using the series as a chance to experiment? JOSÉ: Well, I was trying to do it in a different way. I think Deadman is good for that kind of look. And I always liked the look of duo-tones, but I never had the chance to do it. MM: Had you experimented on your own before, or were you just trying things out as you did the job? JOSÉ: I practiced over a couple of boards. I liked the way it looked, and I showed it to Andy and he agreed. MM: At the end of the last issue there was a “if you liked this story, let DC know” plea. Were you hoping for another Deadman mini-series or an ongoing? JOSÉ: I guess that was the idea, but Deadman was published around the time John Byrne was doing the new Superman. That took all the attention away from everything else. But the hope was to perhaps have success with the mini-series and then have the chance to do a regular book. MM: In the mid-to-late ’80s, you did three “Phantom Stranger” stories—one for Secret Origins and two for 52

This Page: Pages 3 and 6 of the “Tommy’s Monster” from Action Comics Weekly #641. Next Page Top: Nexus #30, page 19. Next Page Bottom: Preliminary character designs of Cinder and Ashe. Cinder & Ashe, Phantom Stranger ™ and ©2005 DC Comics. Nexus ™ and ©2005 Mike Baron and Steve Rude.

Action Comics Weekly. You did full art for each one, but your style looks very different from what you had done up to that point. Did you make a conscious change in how you approached your art at that time, or were you just trying new things? JOSÉ: Perhaps I was trying to simplify my artwork. We still had the same kind of printing and paper that we had in the ’70s, and I felt it was a good idea to do something a little different. I never got the chance in all the years I had worked to regularly pencil and ink. Six months I’d be doing only pencils, then I’d have the chance to do a few pages of inking and I’d have to

remember how to do it. [laughter] That’s a problem. When you do a short story, you don’t feel too committed to what you are doing. You think, “Okay, I can do this with brush or with pen. I can learn a little from this experience, because no one is going to tell me, ‘No, we want you to do this the same way you did Atari Force or Superman or Wonder Woman.’” So I tried to do new things. For this I used a different kind of pen. MM: With the two “Phantom Stranger” stories you did for Action, the art style is dramatically different. There’s a lot of movement in the figures, to the point of almost being cartoony. But both stories had touches of humor, so the art fits very well. JOSÉ: I did those stories while I was doing licensing art. Perhaps one thing was influencing the other, I don’t know. For licensing, we tried to keep the pencils simple. Sometimes too simple. [laughter] MM: One job you did that was a bit unexpected and perhaps gets overlooked is the fill-in issue of Nexus. That was a very fun story. How did you end up doing that? 54

JOSÉ: Well, it was Steve Rude. [laughs] He asked me many times to do an issue, and finally I said yes. I had an opening in my DC schedule. It was fun. I remember one page with the big party. MM: In that party scene, is that Babe’s head with a piece of fruit in his mouth on the serving tray at the bottom of the page? JOSÉ: I don’t remember. MM: From what I can find, you only did one job directly for Marvel, and that was just a Wonder Man illustration for the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe. Was that the only one? JOSÉ: Yes. I did that because of Joe Rubinstein. He always told me that he wanted to ink my work. I guess the only chance we got at DC was a small “Green Lantern” story in the ’80s. I don’t know if that came first or the pin-up for Marvel. MM: Up until fairly recently, you weren’t under exclusive contract with DC, right? JOSÉ: I never had a contract with DC. It’s funny, because last year they announced everywhere that I was signing a contract. I thought to myself, “Big deal. Where’s the news here?” [laughter] For more than 25, 30 years, I’ve worked mostly for DC, but I never had a contract. I never wanted to have a contract. And I realize now it was a mistake, because they always kept me busy enough that I had no free time to do anything else anyway, so I was losing the extra benefits that came with a having a contract. But that pin-up was the only thing I ever did directly for Marvel, even though they tried several times to get me in the ’80s. MM: Did they mention any specific project they wanted you to draw? JOSÉ: They were starting a color line. MM: Would this have been the Epic line? JOSÉ: This was before Epic. I was contacted about Epic also, but that was later on. I remember talking with Jim Shooter, Ralph Macchio, and Rick Marshall, but nothing happened. I just felt comfortable at DC. Even without a contract I was unable to do more than one job at a time, so doing something for Marvel while I was doing something for DC was going to be very hard, and I didn’t want to leave DC. MM: Let’s talk about Cinder & Ashe. At first glance, it appears to simply be an Americanized version of Modesty Blaise, but on closer inspection it is quite a bit different. JOSÉ: Are you talking about the script or about the art? 55

MM: Just the basic set-up. Both Modesty and Cinder are orphans who grow up to be tough women in dangerous lines of work, they both are very sensual, and they both have close, platonic relationships with men who are highly capable with firearms. There are several parallels there as far as the characters go. JOSÉ: Really? I knew Modesty Blaise, but I didn’t know the story. I suppose if there are similarities, they end there. Myself, I like the art of Modesty Blaise, but at that time I was looking at another British artist, John M. Burns, who was doing something similar, and I liked him very much. Columba published his strip and I had a chance to see more of his work than Romero’s. What Romero did on Modesty Blaise was very good, but I liked Burns’ art better. MM: Which strip of his were you seeing—George & Lynne, Jane?

tle unusual for a comic strip at that time—at least the ones I was aware of—perhaps with the exception of Neal Adams in Ben Casey and Stan Drake in Juliet Jones, even if they were of a different genre. The composition, with the intelligent use of blackand-white, and his “style”—the confident and spontaneous strokes of brush—I think—and pen. At the time he was, for me, at the level of artists like Alex Raymond, for instance. And finally, the girls he drew. Remember, I was in my teens. [laughter] It was a pity that Columba was a little puritan and deprived me of the “complete” Burns art.

JOSÉ: It was a strip reprinted in Argentina by Columba at the end of the ’60s. I don’t remember the name, but they used the same English title. It was about a couple— a blond man and a brunette girl with short hair— involved, I think, in spy adventures. The girl always showed a lot of breast and behind, but Columba, I’m sorry to say, covered most of her attributes. MM: What was it about his work that appealed to you? JOSÉ: The movement, the dynamic action; it was a lit-

MM: Since Cinder is half-American, half-Vietnamese, did you use reference to pick out what features to use in her character design? JOSÉ: Well, it was difficult. I don’t know if I got what Gerry Conway wanted there. I tried my best, but it’s difficult sometimes to get that feeling of a mixture of races. MM: I imagine you did quite a bit of research on Vietnam and New Orleans, since the bulk of the story is set in those locations. 56

JOSÉ: I remember on the first page of the first issue there was a cemetery in New Orleans. The little things you see there belong to a real cemetery there. There are traces of New Orleans throughout the series. For the sequence in Washington, DC, I had been invited to the Museum of American History because they were having a Superman display and were using several of the drawings I had done for the style guide that were inked by Dick Giordano. They had blown them up on big panels and placed them all over the exhibit. While I was there, since I was working on Cinder & Ashe, I took photos of the Vietnam memorial, which was new at that time. MM: Were you working from a plot like you normally did with Gerry, or was this a full script? JOSÉ: It was a plot. MM: So you had the same

amount of freedom with the layouts and pacing that you usually did with Gerry? JOSÉ: I didn’t have any problems; it was a very easy job. The credit goes to Gerry, because he was very clear. I just read the plot and I got all the inspiration I needed. Besides, I didn’t try to do anything fancy with the layouts. I tried to tell the story without showing off. MM: When you did use large splash panels, it was always for the key dramatic moments. Like with the scene where Lacey rapes Cinder. The splash panel at the end of the sequence really provides an emotional impact. Speaking of that scene, this was one of DC’s first titles to carry a “Suggested for Mature Readers” label. Did you have any trouble detaching yourself emotionally from the story you were telling? Did it bother you having to draw some of the more disturbing scenes?

Previous Page Top: Preliminary drawings of Cinder. Previous Page Bottom: Panel from page 1 of Cinder & Ashe #1. The cemetery drawn here is based on an actual cemetery in New Orleans. This Page: Pages 21 and 24 of Cinder & Ashe #1. Cinder & Ashe ™ and ©2005 DC Comics.

Right: A page from José’s six-page chapter in 1988’s Wonder Woman Annual #1. Below: Preliminary design of Twilight’s Tommy Tomorrow. Next Page: More preliminary design work for the Twilight mini-series— Tommy and Ilda.

JOSÉ: Well, I suppose I was able to approach it in terms of the story only. When I’m doing something and I’m into it—not only Cinder & Ashe, but certain drawings or sequences—I get tense. I am acting what I am drawing. That’s a good sign, because it means the writer is doing his job. When you work with this type of comic, where the emotions are more important than the actions, then you try to reflect that in the drawing. I don’t know if I explained it well, but that’s the general idea. MM: Was there ever talk of doing a sequel? JOSÉ: I would like to do one, but it doesn’t look like DC is interested. They did try at one time to sell it as a TV series, but they were unsuccessful. MM: You did a sixpage story for the first Wonder Woman Annual that also relied heavily on emotion. JOSÉ: It was scripted by George Pérez? MM: Yes. JOSÉ: And the editor was Karen Berger. I remember that story, but I don’t remember the storyline. It was my first and only chance to work with Karen Berger. But even though I didn’t work directly with George Pérez on Teen Titans, I was looking at what he was doing. It was a nice job, I guess. I did almost all the inking with a brush. 58

MM: Did you design all the characters for Twilight, or did Howard Chaykin do some of them? Because a few of them have a somewhat Chaykin look to them, particularly the women. JOSÉ: No, I did the designs. What Chaykin did, as usual, were very rough panel layouts—showing that he would like six panels or three panels or whatever—and that’s all. You know what? Some people have asked me if I was influenced by Howard Chaykin on that job, and I tell them no. Actually I was influenced by Chaykin—by American Flagg— when I did Atari Force, but not with Twilight. But when he’s writing, he uses a lot of text. Just for one panel he might have five or seven balloons, for instance. You have to establish where to put those balloons, and sometimes it’s useful to add inserts.

Because of his writing, I suppose I established a page layout very similar to what he would do himself, but I think that’s where the similarities end. While working on Twilight I was looking at a lot of European material. MM: Anything in particular? JOSÉ: Not really. Moebius was prominent at that time, but there were other artists equally good with a similar style. It was more in terms of how they drew the line and how they thought about color. I used black as a color. I tried not to put too much light and shadow in the drawing; I tried to leave that to the colorist. In this case, Steve Oliff did a wonderful job. I think it was the last job he did without a computer. MM: It sounds like Chaykin was pretty specific about what he wanted. Did you have any input at all into the story? JOSÉ: No, no, I didn’t have any input. I just tried to understand the story. [laughter] MM: It was a rather complicated story with a large cast of characters. Was it difficult to juggle so many characters? JOSÉ: No, I didn’t have any problems. I had spent a lot of time working with the characters before starting the books. I probably spent at least 15 days trying to get the feel of the characters, because there were so many. But the good thing about working with Howard was his sense of humor. The other thing was the characters all had distinct personalities, and you can play with that. MM: You seemed to put a lot of effort into giving each character their own body language and movement as well. JOSÉ: When I got the descriptions of the characters, Howard had put things in like “he spends a lot of time looking at himself in the mirror”—things like that. Those little things that Howard put in, I took note of them and I tried to develop the body language and expression of each character according to their personality. MM: At the start of each book, on the very first page, there is a woodcut-style illustration. Was it your idea to do those illustrations in that style? 59

Right: Preliminary sketches for Twilight. Below: Page 21 of Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight #19, the fourth chapter of the “Venom” storyline.

JOSÉ: No, if it wasn’t wholly Howard’s idea, it was at least partly his idea. He sent me a book on an American illustrator from the ’30s—I don’t remember his name, and it’s a shame for me, because he was a great illustrator, like most of the American artists of that period—and I was looking at his work. I didn’t really do woodcuts—they’re fakes. I used a special paper and then used an eraser to get that feeling. MM: Did you have a favorite character from that series? JOSÉ: I really enjoyed all of them. I had a lot of time to develop the characters, and everyone was happy with the sketches I did, so I felt that they were mine. I worked very happily and easily with them. MM: How long did you work on the series? All told it was about 140 pages of artwork, and some of those pages were pretty dense. JOSÉ: I guess I spent two years. This is the reason I’m not doing a regular comic book. [laughter] I was also working on licensing art during that time. MM: After Twilight you took a bit of a breather and inked the “Venom” story in Legends of the Dark Knight. JOSÉ: You know, I have this great relationship with Andy Helfer, who was the editor—he was the editor of Twilight, also. He knows my limitations. He knows the way I work and the things I prefer to do. He tried to find me a good project I could enjoy, but still have enough time to finish. I guess after two years on Twilight, what he wanted from me was something he could show right away. He offered me the inking job, and I was very happy to accept it. The layouts were by Trevor von Eeden and the pencils were by Russell Braun. In some ways I was trying to use the same technique I had used in Twilight. Andy wanted a different look than what the pencils presented. MM: Did you have to make many changes in the inks? JOSÉ: No, not really. What I did was to simplify some of the pencil rendering. I tried to be true to the pencils. I don’t know if they were just being polite, but they were happy with the final results. 60

Interlude 3:

In preparation for his work on Twilight, José spent over two weeks sketching and designing the characters and their world. The following is a sampling of those drawings:

Twilight Gallery

Part 4: MM: For the next few years you worked mostly on the Elseworlds books. Between the historical settings and the finite lengths of the stories, the Elseworlds line really seemed to be tailor-made for you.

Other Worlds and the World Beyond freedom even though it was written full script? JOSÉ: Yeah. You know, I take a lot of liberties when the writer is not clear; when that happens I try

JOSÉ: They certainly kept me busy with those. [laughter] Again, for me it’s easier to work on books that don’t have a deadline. And I liked the storylines. They were more interesting to me than the regular Superman and Batman characters—they were different. MM: The first one you did was Superman: Kal, which was set in the Middle Ages. I guess this gave you another opportunity to pull out your old reference files. JOSÉ: Oh, yeah, sure. MM: What did you use for the painting on the cover? Is that a watercolor? JOSÉ: I used the same tools I used when I worked on Star Raiders, but I was a little more confident by that time. They didn’t use it for the whole cover. MM: It only took up a quarter of the page and ended up being just an element of the cover. JOSÉ: Yeah. I like it. After Star Raiders I didn’t do any coloring until this cover and a cover for The Spectre. It was a nice to do it for a change. MM: How was your working relationship with Dave Gibbons? JOSÉ: Oh, terrific. Because if I were to write, I would probably write in the same way he did. We were on the same wavelength. It was a full script, but only with the obvious indications. MM: So you still had a little 67

Right: Superman: Kal, page 18. Below: José’s character design for Access, the reality-hopping centerpiece of the Amalgam storyline. Next Page (Clockwise): The cover to Doctor Strangefate #1 — inks by Kevin Nowlan. Before and after—Jose’s pencils and Kevin’s inks. And penciled pages introducing the cast of characters.

to make things clear for myself. Sometimes the writer leaves it for you to decide how to do things, and sometimes they are so clear that you don’t have to worry about anything—the moment you read the script the images immediately come to you. In this case—as with most of stories I worked on—I was lucky with the writer. I’ve never gotten into an argument with a writer. [laughter] MM: After Superman: Kal, you penciled a book that wasn’t an Elseworlds, but might as well have been. I’m talking about Doctor Strangefate, which was one of the Amalgam crossovers between DC and Marvel. I assume you designed the characters for that story. Did you have to get approval from Marvel and DC, or just DC since they were handling the editorial on that particular title? JOSÉ: First I did a couple of sketches of a character they needed for another story. Then I did the characters for Strangefate and sent them the sketches, and they chose the ones they liked. Then I just did the story. There were no problems. MM: Was that the first time you were inked by Kevin Nowlan? JOSÉ: I think so. They told me, “...and we’ve got Kevin Nowlan to do the inking,” and I said, “Great!” [laughter] MM: He actually changed a couple of things in the inking. Did that bother you at all? JOSÉ: Really? I’ll have to take another look. MM: There’s one panel where the White Witch is looking up at Strangefate seductively and you had her head tilted, but Kevin drew it as straight upright. JOSÉ: I didn’t know that. MM: I hope I didn’t get Kevin in trouble. [laughter] JOSÉ: What I notice is when the inker is doing something that doesn’t work. If I draw something that feels right to me, then there is no reason to make a change. But if the inker makes a 68

change that still looks good, then I have no problem. It doesn’t matter if he does it my way or his way as long as it looks right. MM: Do you enjoy that story, even though it was super-heroes? It looked like you were having a lot of fun with it. JOSÉ: Oh, yeah. I spent more time on it than usual. I put in a lot of blacks, I tried to play a lot with light and shadow, things like that. Yeah, I enjoyed it. MM: There were several elements of humor scattered throughout the issue, too. JOSÉ: I like humor. I don’t know why everything is always so serious. [laughter] MM: You don’t tend to get many stories that have humor in them. Do you think that may because your style is so grounded in realism? JOSÉ: You can do realistic work, but it’s up to the writer to put in the humor. You don’t have to have a caricaturistic style in order to do humor. I did a story for Penthouse which was never published. I don’t remember the script very well, but there were a lot of humorous touches. MM: With Batman: Reign of Terror you got back to swashbuckling type of adventure story you hadn’t done since the early ’70s. Did you do a lot of research on the French Revolution? JOSÉ: Yes, it was something that I did with pleasure. [laughs] Most of the reference I used were things I brought from Argentina. I had one book on costumes, another on ships—things I hadn’t had many opportunities to use since I moved here. MM: You were credited as the cover colorist. There was also a color separator, so I assume you just did a color guide. JOSÉ: I don’t remember. I probably did a

color guide, but it was only a suggestion. I suppose I did what I had done with Cinder & Ashe, where I did color sketches of the covers for myself and I enclosed them with the cover art I sent in, and they used them as guides. MM: It seems like you have a special feel for the swashbuckling adventures. Is that a genre that appeals to you more than others? JOSÉ: No, I think every period has something. When you learn as you work, you enjoy the job more. I learned a lot about the Middle Ages when I did Superman: Kal; I 71

Previous Page: Pencils for an unpublished story—tentatively titled “Founding Fathers”— intended for Penthouse Comix until the magazine ceased publication. Above: Page 5 of Batman: Reign of Terror. Vive la Revolution! Batman ™ and ©2005 DC Comics. Founding Fathers ™ and ©2005 respective owner.

Above: Batman: Reign of Terror, pages 31 and 41. Next Page: In 2002, José drew a series of covers for The Titans. This cover was done for issue #45. Batman, Damage, Jonny Quick, Robin ™ and ©2005 DC Comics.

read several books on the subject. I don’t know how much of what I learned I consciously used in the artwork, but the best part about these stories is that you are working, but at the same time you are learning something new. The same thing with the French Revolution. If not for working on the story, I might not have given it a second thought. And I was trying to do good work. After all, it was an idea Mike Barr had wanted to do for a long time. I remember talking with him every time we met at DC, and he would always tell me about the idea behind the story and that he wanted to do it with me. When we finally had the chance, I said yes. MM: Tell me about the cover for Superman, Inc. Did you put together the entire cover yourself, or did you just do the small illus72

trations and then someone else pieced it all together to get that newspaper clippings feel? JOSÉ: I did the layout for the cover, then I did the illustrations in such a way that they could use them in the various elements. I think the idea came from Steve Vance and Andy Helfer. Steve Vance took my drawings and did the things like the trading cards and newspaper articles on the computer. Sometimes—like with Cinder & Ashe—I would come up with cover ideas and submit them; other times it would start with the editor and the writer, because they are more familiar with the story than the artist—and that was the case with Superman, Inc. MM: One thing Kevin Nowlan said to me

in regards to the opening sequence of this book was that he was very impressed by the accuracy of the landscape. He could also tell by the information road signs—with the town names and the mileage—which real life highway the salesman was driving down.

JOSÉ: Yeah, it was nice, because I hadn’t drawn that period before, and it was another chance to learn new things visually. Also, I enjoyed working with Steve Vance. I like his writing; he’s a very good comic book writer for my tastes.

JOSÉ: I put the map I used in there somewhere, I think. I tried to put more or less the right locations into the story. I looked up Kansas in the encyclopedia for the reference.

MM: You also worked with Steve later on a two-part Deadman story. How would you compare working with Steve on Deadman, as opposed to Len or Andy?

MM: This story required you to draw a cartoon version of Superman. Had you ever drawn that cartoony before? I imagine this was a more simplified style than any of your licensing work even. JOSÉ: Oh, yes. It’s the kind of thing where you don’t spend too much time doing it, so you don’t spend much time thinking about doing it—it comes out fresh. MM: Are you a sports fan at all? JOSÉ: No. MM: Did you sit down and watch any sports on TV to get a feel for the movement of the athletes? JOSÉ: No, no, I just looked at some photos from Sports Illustrated and things like that. If they had asked for specific actions from a game, then I would have had to call the editor or the writer to get an explanation of how to do it. MM: The Elseworlds line was ended before you had a chance to do another, but you did do a story for the Realworlds series, which was three or four books, one on each of DC’s biggest icons. Did you enjoy drawing the ’50s setting of Realworlds: Superman? 73

JOSÉ: I don’t know how to compare them, and besides I don’t like to do that. [laughter] The last Deadman I did is, of course, more fresh in my memory. It was a pleasant experience; it wasn’t better or worse than working with Andy or with Len Wein. With Len, they were self-contained short stories. When

I did the mini-series with Andy Helfer, it was a different thing, telling a larger story. With Len, we already knew the character and Len could just tell the stories. Andy was developing and changing aspects of the character, and there was more conscious work involved. The two-part story with Steve Vance was more like the self-contained stories— there was no real development of the character there, just the story. MM: It was a detective story, in a similar vein to Len’s stories, just with more room for character interaction. Plus, you were able to spend two issues drawing a beautiful girl in her underwear. [laughs] JOSÉ: Yeah! [laughter] MM: Just a couple of years ago you revisited Hawkman with a fill-in issue. Did you like him a little more this time around since you didn’t have to draw him in costume? JOSÉ: Yeah, yeah. [laughter] And in the only shot of Hawkman in his costume that I drew, I took off his mask. [laughter] I don’t remember that it called for that in the script, but I took the mask off anyway. [laughter] It’s a difficult mask, really. I guess you have to spend time drawing the character in order to develop a way to do it. Just doing the character here and there is difficult.

Part 5: MM: What’s your typical work day like? Do you have a set time period in which you work, or does your schedule tend to change depending on what you are working on?

JOSÉ: When I can, I try to do most of my work in the mornings—at least the hard work of inking, layouts, and things like that. [laughter] I spend a few more hours working in the afternoon, and depending on the deadlines, I might work one more hour in the evening. But, really, I don’t have too much discipline—but don’t tell my editors. [laughter] I mean, there are so many things that need to be done besides the work. MM: Well, sure. You can’t sit at your drawing board 24 hours a day. There are normal, everyday life things that have to be done. JOSÉ: Some weeks you can put a lot of hours into work, and some weeks you have other important things to do and you spend less time working. So I don’t have a strict schedule. Some days I work six hours, some days I work eight hours, some day I only work four hours—it depends. MM: What are the tools you normally use? Is there a certain density of pencil you prefer? JOSÉ: It depends on the weather. [laughs] Because if the weather is a little humid I use

Storytelling and the Creative Process a softer lead, and if it’s too dry I use a slightly harder lead. Really, to do penciling you don’t need to much—just the pencil and the eraser. [laughter] For the inking, I can’t really say, because I don’t do too much. Whenever I get a chance to ink, I have to cover two or three pages to refamiliarize myself with the pens and brushes, and to decide on what I’m going to use. And it depends on the density of the ink, the kind of paper I’m using—things like that. It’s not something I’m doing every day, so it’s a little hard to say what I use. I might use one thing today and something else tomorrow—I never know.

MM: You also said earlier that you like to try something different each time you ink, but is there one particular pen or brush that you come back to more often than the others? JOSÉ: The brush I use most is a Winsor & Newton series 7, #2 or #3. The pen I like is a Gillot #170, but I can’t find that specific nib any more, so I use a #303 and another brand of pen—I can’t remember the name now. But I used the Gillot all my life. MM: Did you choose them because it was what you saw the older artists use when you were first breaking in, or did you settle on them after trying out several different brushes and pens? JOSÉ: I learned to use the brush when I was a kid. I went to this publishing company to show my work, and they showed me professional originals and they were all done in brush. It was a shock to see what could be done with a brush. I always liked working with a brush, but it’s very intense. You have to really concentrate on what you’re doing. It’s a little more relaxing when you work with a pen. MM: It’s a little more forgiving. JOSÉ: Yeah, because you can feel the paper through the nib. With a brush, it’s like you are working in the air above the page. But it’s a terrific experience, working with a brush. MM: Where did your knowledge of anatomy come from? Did you study books on anatomy, or did you learn more through observation? JOSÉ: Everything. At first, I try to forget about anatomy. When I do a sketch or a layout, I try not to think about the problems I’ll find later. Once I’m ready to deal with the problems, I’ll work them out by looking in the mirror, looking at books, looking at photos—even photos of myself, especially if the shot is from the back. But I try to not think about anatomy when I’m doing the initial sketches. Otherwise they

will all look the same. MM: A large part of comic book art has to do with exaggeration, and an artist’s knowledge of human anatomy can only take them so far when drawing superheroes. Does there come a point when you just have to say that if it looks right then it is right? JOSÉ: Well, if it looks right, I suppose it is right. [laughter] Sometimes you don’t have a clear idea of how the muscle works. Then you have to take a look in the mirror—if 77

Previous Page: DC generally asks their cover artists to submit three or four different layouts, e.g., José’s roughs and pencils for Showcase ’93 #5. Above: This cover to Titans #44 has a nice mix of brush and pen work. All characters ™ and ©2005 DC Comics.

you still have any muscles [laughter]—or at a photo or something like that, in order to do it right. MM: Was the “Guardian” story you did for the Batman Black & White back-up series the first time you had done work specifically for black-&-white printing? I’m pretty sure it was the first time for a US publisher, but had you done that type of work in Argentina? JOSÉ: Oh, yes. Basically, I started out working in black&-white. Color printing was not the standard in Argentina when I was there. I lost a lot of that experience of working for black-&-white over time. For Columba, I did several stories in black-&-white. Only in the last year I was in Argentina did I do a lot of color work, and that was because they paid more for it. The books Columba published were thick, with at least ten stories, and usually two would be in color with the rest in black-&-white. MM: For “Guardian” you used a technique in the backgrounds that looks like a soft pencil rubbed over a textured paper. JOSÉ: I used a grease pencil—a lithographic pencil. You can use it over paper with a special grain to get that look. MM: What made you decide on that look? JOSÉ: I did a lot of drawings for the Batman Returns movie—licensing art—and I used that technique for the backgrounds. All the characters were clear line drawings, but in the backgrounds I used that technique quite a bit. So it wasn’t new to me. 78

in black-&-white again, but you didn’t do the full art so you weren’t able to take full advantage of the chance to experiment again. Even though you only penciled the first and third books, did you try to approach the job with that same mindset? MM: You also had to take into consideration the print size of the book, since it was printed as a digest book. Did it throw your timing off at all doing only three or four panels per page? Was there an adjustment you had to make in terms of pacing?

I enjoyed the job. My problem is I don’t ink often enough, so I don’t have a lot of trust in myself when I do ink. With a short story that’s more of a handicap, because with a full story you can start inking in the middle of the story and do a little here and a little there so that by the time you get your confidence back it....

JOSÉ: No, it was actually easier. Well, it was easier, but at the same time it meant more effort, more work on my part as an artist. When you do a regular comic book page, perhaps you can do a large panel and then two, three, four smaller, perhaps less important panels—some insert panels, some close-ups. You can spend more time and effort on the large panel and then balance that with less time and work spent on the small panels. Perhaps if you don’t have much action or movement going on in a page, you can try to lay out the page in a way that at least conveys a sense of movement. In the case of

MM: You get a more consistent look. JOSÉ: Yeah, it’s more consistent looking than with a short story. MM: With On the Road to Perdition you worked 79

Previous Page and Left: José liked the textured look he used in the backgrounds of these Batman Returns concept sketches, so used it again in his “Batman Black and White” story. Below: Pages 20 and 21 of On the Road to Perdition: Oasis. Since the print size of the book was 5 1/2" x 8", José drew two pages on each board. Batman, Catwoman, Green Lantern ™ and ©2005 DC Comics. On the Road to Perdition script ©2005 Max Allan Collins. On the Road to Perdition artwork ©2003 DC Comics.

On the Road to Perdition, you have two or three panels, and that’s it. You have to tell the story in those panels, and you can’t really play with the layouts. If you go to the cinema or watch TV, everything takes place within the same sized frame. It’s the same thing with this type of comic: everything is happening within more or less the same sized panels. You can’t pull one image out to focus on like you can in a normal comic book. MM: You’ve talked about your layouts being conservative, but I see them as often being quite dynamic. JOSÉ: If you compare me to some other artists, I am very conservative. I don’t think I’m very good at exaggeration, which puts me at a disadvantage when drawing comic books. I try my best to be dynamic, but it doesn’t always come naturally to me. MM: Do you think that maybe that comes from being heavily influenced by the newspaper strips early on? JOSÉ: Perhaps. The super-hero is a different thing. You have to learn different tricks in order to do them. I’ve been trying to learn those tricks from the time I arrived here. MM: How would you say your style has changed over the years? Have you ever made conscious changes in your approach? JOSÉ: I don’t remember ever making changes in a conscious way. I would say any changes in my art are the result of a natural evolution. Maybe in certain stories I would 81

Previous Page: Layouts and pencils for On the Road to Perdition: Detour, pages 18 and 40. The layouts are actually quite colorful, as José will go over the pencil roughs with colored pencils to pick out which lines he wants to use. Left: On the Road to Perdition: Detour, page 70. Above: While José may not think he’s good at exaggeration, he uses it to great effect in this Batman and Robin action pose from the 2000 DC style guide. Batman, Robin ™ and ©2005 DC Comics. On the Road to Perdition script ©2005 Max Allan Collins. On the Road to Perdition artwork ©2003 DC Comics.

improve on? Maybe ink wash or anything like that? JOSÉ: I would like to have another shot at a book where I could pencil and ink without being a slave to the deadline. Lately, everything I’ve been doing has been on a tight deadline. I am very fond of certain books I did, because I had the time to do them the way I wanted. MM: Would you ever like to try your hand at writing? JOSÉ: In Spanish, perhaps. [laughter] MM: Well, say you had someone to help you with the dialogue.

try to achieve a certain effect, but I don’t think I ever changed simply for the sake of change. Of course, everything you see has an impact on you and the way you do things, and that will be reflected in your work. I guess I’m just trying to do the same things I did 30 years ago, only better. MM: Is there anything you feel that you haven’t fully explored and would like to 82

JOSÉ: I would need the time to do it. But sometimes I feel it is something I would like to do. Especially when you are doing something where you feel that you could improve it, or when you feel you are better than the writer. [laughter] Nothing serious, though. All the writers out there can rest easy. [laughter] MM: If you ever did a project of your own, is there a certain genre that you would like to work with? JOSÉ: Something that interests me greatly is the idea of time travel. Say somebody

This Page: The opening splash page to Atari Force #3. José clearly drew Dart sleeping in the buff—notice the swirl pattern on her skin—and Ricardo Villagran dressed her in the inking stage. Next Page: Twilight promotional art. Twilight and all related characters ™ and ©2005 DC Comics. Atari Force, Dart ™ and ©2005 Atari, Inc.

from two or three centuries ago here in present-day New York, or somebody from one culture transplanted to another, that kind of thing—the differences between cultures. MM: During the early ’90s when Image was so successful and comics were booming, did you consider doing a creator-owned project? Did you think about creating characters you could control without having to worry about what editors thought or what financial troubles Atari was having?

JOSÉ: Oh, yes. I try not to look back, but to look forward. But sometimes you look back and see that a lot of those years were lost, because hopes were not fulfilled. And, of course, I would like to do a project where I could say, “These are my characters,” but you have to just do it. There is a saying that goes something like, “I never made any money, because I spent all my time working.” This is more or less the same thing. That doesn’t mean that if I had done something which I created myself that I was going to make money yesterday, today, or in the future. But perhaps I might have been happier. But I can’t complain, and I don’t regret anything I did. Everything is an experience, and if it’s not useful in this life, then perhaps in the next.

García-López

Art Gallery

These two pages and the page following consist of José’s warm-up sketches and doodles.

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Left: Batman #353, page 14. Right: DC Comics Presents #41, page 18. Below: Licensing art, inked by Ed Barreto.

Above: José’s cover roughs/color guides for Cinder & Ashe #3 and #4. Left: Rejected cover rough for Cinder & Ashe #4. Next Two Pages: Rejected cover ideas for Cinder & Ashe #1. Cinder & Ashe ™ and ©2005 DC Comics.

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Previous Page and This Page: Preliminary sketches of Ezekiel Vicker and Tomorrow Hardtack for Star Raiders.

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Preliminary sketches of Tomorrow “Tommy” Hardtack for Star Raiders.

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

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JOSÉ LUIS GARCÍA-LÓPEZ Ask any comic book artist who the best draftsman in the business is, and you’ll come up with one answer: José Luis García-López. A master of anatomy, of composition, and of storytelling, he not only astounds his readers, but his peers as well. He is also one of the most visible artists in the industry, as his illustrations can be seen on toy packaging, in DC’s “Got Milk?” advertisements, and even on jars of peanut butter. In a sense, he is the face of DC Comics, yet most of his fans know very little about him... until now. His work on Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman are only the tip of the iceberg of a career which has earned José Luis García-López the title of Modern Master. MODERN MASTERS is an ongoing series of books celebrating the lives and work of the greatest comic book artists of our time.

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