Nick Cardy: Behind The Art by TwoMorrows Publishing

by Nick Cardy and Eric Nolen-Weathington

All Characters TM & © DC Comics.

Behind the Art

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Behind the Art

TwoMorrows Publishing • Raleigh, North Carolina

NICK CARDY BEHIND THE ART

Written by Nick Cardy Edited and designed by Eric Nolen-Weathington Introduction by Todd Dezago Published by

TwoMorrows Publishing 10407 Bedfordtown Dr. Raleigh, North Carolina 27614 www.twomorrows.com • e-mail: twomorrow@aol.com

Trademarks & Copyrights

All illustrations contained herein are copyrighted by their respective copyright holders and are reproduced for historical reference and research purposes. Aqualad, Aquaman, Batgirl, Bat Lash, Batman, Bat-Squad, Black Canary, Black Manta, Congo Bill, The Creeper, Deadman, Enemy Ace, Flash, Green Lantern, Hawkman, Kid Flash, Man-Bat, Mera, Metamorpho, Nubia, Robin, Speedy, Spectre, Supergirl, Superman, Teen Titans, Tomahawk, Wonder Girl, Wonder Woman, and all related characters are ™ and ©2008 DC Comics. All DC Comics logos and indicia are ™ DC Comics Bat-Fart, Josher are ™ and ©2008 Twenty-First Century Communications, Inc. Lady Luck is ™ and ©2008 Will Eisner Estate. Tarzan is ™ and ©2008 Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc. Casey Ruggles is ™ and ©2008 United Features Syndicate, Inc. Cotton Coleridge is ™ and ©2008 Todd Livingston, Robert Tinnell, and Neil Vokes. Roiya, Sigil, Zanni ™ and ©2008 Walt Disney Publishing. Tellos and all related characters are ™ and ©2008 Todd Dezago and the estate of Mike Wieringo. C-3P0 is ™ and ©2008 Lucasfilm Ltd. Adventures into Fear, Guardian Angels, Jumbo Comics, Planet Comics, Senorita Rio, Sheena of the Jungle are ™ and ©2008 their respective owners. Editorial package ©2008 Eric Nolen-Weathington, Nick Cardy, and TwoMorrows Publishing.

Dedication

To my late wife, Ruth, who recently passed away, and to Eric Nolen-Weathington for doing such a beautiful job with this book. — Nick To Donna, Iain and Caper, for their love and support. — Eric Special Thanks

Todd Dezago, Jim Halperin, Will King, and John and Pam Morrow

The 8 -Track Tape

or those of you unfamiliar with the concept of the 8-Track tape, please indulge me for a moment. Developed, at the time, to be one of the most innovative and convenient new formats of recorded music, 8-Track tapes revolutionized the music industry in the 1970s — for all of about five minutes. They quickly proved to be awkward, cumbersome, and inefficient, and were labelled dinosaurs within the span of just a few years. This is the analogy Nick uses to refer to himself every time we talk on the phone. Every. Time. Oh, not the awkward, cumbersome, dinosaur part. That’s not Nick. What he’s referring to is the one, single caveat that 8-Track offered that the other listening formats of the day did not. Continuous play. Unlike traditional vinyl records and the relatively new cassette tapes, each needing to be turned over when a side was through, 8-Tracks had four sides and, when each was over, with a brief pause and a clunk!, would automatically continue on to the next side! Continuous play. Almost like a magical Moebius strip of music! This is what Nick compares himself to. An 8Track tape, apologizing to me as he rolls over the same old stories again and again and again. He doesn’t listen when I tell him that I delight in hearing them, that each telling brings a little something new to it, and that his stories never get old. In the ten or so years that I have known Nick Cardy, we’ve spent countless hours in conversation. We talk about life, our families, relationships, old movies, new movies, soup recipes, and the problems of the world. I have heard tales of his time in the War, his career in comics, and his life as a storyteller. I’m hoping that I’m learning to be a better storyteller. 3

And, of course, we talk about art. And not just Nick’s art — all art. I have, over the years, had the privilege of being schooled by the Master in art history and appreciation, in arts fine and commercial, in design and technique. Nick has described to me details from classic works of art (that, thankfully, I was able to Google on the computer while he was talking...) and examples from his own work (my Teen Titans collection and John Coates’ The Art of Nick Cardy never far from hand...), giving me lessons in composition, design, and, yes, sequential art. Unlike John’s book, which was a wonderful celebration of Nick’s life and his career in comics, this book is more about the art, the nuts and bolts of it, if you will. The details of how (and why) he does what he does. These are the things that Nick thinks are important or valuable or exciting. Or all three! This is your chance to hear the stories and tidbits and anecdotes from the man himself! He is a Master, a teacher, a storyteller. I have, as I said, heard many of the stories you’re about to read before. Several times. Nick will tell you too many times. I disagree. Our once, sometimes twice-weekly phone calls always go on for an hour or more and always end with Nick apologizing for the 8-Track tape. And me telling him that it is always my pleasure. Always. Also, let it be known here, that Nick Cardy paid me that $5 he owed me. Todd Dezago Elizaville NY June 5 2K8

Todd Dezago is a writer of comics and other things, most notably the Sensational Spider-Man for Marvel Comics and his creatorowned comics, Tellos, with Mike Wieringo, and The Perhapanauts, with Craig Rousseau. 4

Ruth Cardy (above) Being recently married, Ruth became my wife and live-in model. Once I had some oil paint left over on my palette, so I sketched a portrait of her on a piece of illustration board. (upper left) I left this pastel unfinished, because her face at this stage captured an interesting mood which I felt more detailing would destroy. (lower left) This pastel was another quick sketch of Ruth. By this time I had done many sketches of her. Unlike my artist idol, Degas, I didn’t sketch my wife in the bathroom. I probably wouldn’t have gotten out alive! 5

“Mom” (below) After World War II, I did many sketches of my family in many mediums. I liked this pastel of Mom looking out the window. (right) My mom at age 83. I put little, quick slashes of color in the background to create a flowery atmosphere. Anything green that she touched grew. Sadly, none of it rubbed off on me.

“The Governalis” A pencil portrait of my sister, Angie, and her husband, Pete Governali.

“Pop” (above) This pastel self-portrait was to study color for overtones and undertones on skin color from light to shade. (left) My dad was a good model — he didn’t move. Years later I felt that I should have toned down his pipe a bit. I felt it was a little overpowering. Now that I look at both portraits together, they could have been passed off as pipe commercials.

“Self-Portrait” (left) Mozart composed a symphony of all the mistakes his students made, and called it “a musical joke.” This self-portrait I call “a wishful flop.” I love blue eyes, so I made my eyes blue; I had a wide space in my front teeth, so I closed it.... A tuck here and there, I felt like a mad plastic surgeon. In the end, the portrait didn’t even look like me. On the other hand, my female clients seem to love my plastic surgeon qualities.

“Peter Cardy”

(above) During the printing of the second edition of my book, The Art of Nick Cardy, my wife suggested that I put Peter in the book. While I was doing this sketch, he passed away from a heart arrest. His heart just stopped. He was 45 years old.

“A New Son” (above) While visiting my studio, this young lady’s freshness and fleshtones intrigued me. Blushing, she finally agreed to pose for this quick color sketch. (right) This painting is nostalgic to me, because it takes me back as a young man studying the Renaissance period with all its Madonna and child paintings and sculptures. This design is circular, with small circles within circles. A bundle of joy and tenderness. 10

The Raimondo Family (left and above) This portrait is one of my dearest friends, Nanette. Our friendship goes back about thirty years. The pencil sketches of her children was my 1982 Christmas gift to her. The head at the far left is of her deceased daughter. I drew her head with a 3H pencil to make it appear ethereal in contrast to the other heads, which were done darker. (right) This oil painting of John Wayne was a commission.

“Hedy Lamarr” (above) Many years ago, a shy, attractive, young lady named Donna asked me to do a drawing of Hedy Lamarr and gave me photo references of the movie star. My memory is vague, but she spoke of her husband’s business. I interrupted, “You mean he exposes himself?” “No, no,” she corrected, “he exposes the artists.” Again I questioned her, “But what do you mean he lays them out?” “No, no,” she explained, “he lays out their art for books.” “Oh, I see. He makes them famous.” The way she raved about him, he must have been about seven feet tall. Finally, I asked if he could expose me. I don’t remember the husband’s name... he worked on a derrick or something. Well, I’ll think of it tomorrow. By the way, that reminds me — uh oh, my two nurses found me. (right) An advertisement for one of the operas produced that season by the Sarasota Opera Company. 14

Love and War (above) This watercolor was done for my portfolio. I tried to make a twentieth century rendition of the shotgun wedding. (right) My public library asked me if I could do something for a Valentine’s Day promo. The lovers were on an old DC romance comic book cover. On a print I added the heart, similar to a sunset.

“Washer Women” (above) One of my favorite black-and-white illustrations. Some fifty years later, I used this as a Christmas card. (left) A watercolor illustration for a 1948 cover of Pepper magazine.

1948, watercolor, © respective owner 16

“Washer Woman” (left) Another watercolor cover for Pepper magazine. (below) A second version of the “Washer Women” drawing.

watercolor, © respective owner

“The Flamenco Dancer” Every now and then I catch myself smiling as I’m doing an illustration, and that was the case with “The Flamenco Dancer.” I have seen children throw temper tantrums with their arms flailing and their feet stamping and their faces starting to turn purple in order to get attention. Suppose that after seeing he had an audience, one of these children decided to make it pay off. Naturally, he would have to control the yelling and the purple face.

“As a boy, he turned his violent, foot-stamping temper tantrums into a profession.”

“San Francisco,” 1960, pen and ink with sepia wash, © respective owner

“San Francisco” A black-and-white illustration for a travel agency of a trolley turnaround in San Francisco. This was drawn with pen and ink, then I went over it with a sepia wash. The scene was taken from photo reference the agency sent me. 20

“A Square in Switzerland” (above) One of a series of illustrations for Handy Crosswords magazine. (upper right) Portfolio illustration in motion. Leonard Bernstein conducting. I did more of these, trying to capture motion in the performing of classical music. I did one of Pablo Casals, a world-renowned cellist. Instead of the bow going in one direction, I had about three arms and bows in different poses. (right) This was a black-and-white illustration for a travel agency of a Switzerland square. I used it as part of my portfolio.

“A Square in Switzerland,” 1948, pen and ink with wash, respective owner 21

“Reginald van Gleason, III” Two caricature renditions of the Jackie Gleason character, Reggie van Gleason, III, done in gouache for my portfolio. I liked the stovepipe hat, and made it longer to form a design. I made little circles of light in the background to look like spotlights and to serve the purpose of sparking the figure. I also had that hunchbacked feeling in the figures, because that’s how Gleason would walk in with that cigarette as this character. The one on the right has a neutral, grayish background. I think it was actually done on green paper. A lot of artists, like Bob Peak, paint on colored paper, and use that color as a shadow. For this I put medium highlights and then bright highlights over it in opaques, and that covered the green of

the paper. In the shadows you still have the green showing through. It requires a lot of manipulation. Sometimes, instead of using colored paper, I’ll put a wash over the paper and go from there. Some artists will put, say, a brown wash over the paper. Then they’ll put watercolors on. After they’ve done as much in the watercolors as they can, they’ll go over it with pastels. If you were doing it in the form of Degas, which is the way I like, then you just put layers and layers of color on — you don’t blend them. This way they give almost a stippled effect. Each line is separate, but accumulatively they blend.

“Scrooge” The two close-ups were panels in Teen Titans #13, a Christmas story, published by DC Comics. The full figure of Scrooge and the kids were from my portfolio. Many years later, I put them together and used it as one of my Christmas cards.

“Red Cross” During the ’60s, the National Cartoonists Society participated in a Red Cross blood drive. As a member of the Cartoonists Society, this illustration was my contribution. It was done in pen-and-ink.

“Russian Cleaning Women” (right) This shows St. Basil’s Cathedral in Moscow. The plaza of the cathedral is right alongside the Kremlin. This is one of the places they always show pictures of tanks and soldiers marching up and down. It reminded me of the squares in Venice and Rome. Those squares are full of pigeons pecking for food, but here all the specks you see on the grounds are women with brush brooms sweeping the long, cobblestone plaza.

“Russian Cleaning Women,” pen and ink, 15" x 20", © respective owner 25

(left) I got one of the cleaning women to pose for me and photographed her. When it snows, they come out with big shovels instead of brooms. This woman had her shovel, which had a bridge at the bottom with two blades. I was so impressed with these women, I made up the monument to them. The plaque is like the U.S. Post Office motto, “Neither rain, nor sleet, nor snow...” These women did everything; they even painted decorations on bridges. At every floor of the hotel, they had a woman sitting at a desk when you came out of the elevator. You had to sign in so they’d know where you were going. So I made this monument to them, and at the bottom I had the women cleaning it up.

“The Caterpillar in the Onion Patch,” 1976, pen and ink with Dr. Martin’s dyes, © respective owner

The Russian Tour (above) My lady friend, Sylvia, had toured Moscow, and she convinced me that I should go with her the next year. I called up the Travel and Leisure magazine, who I had done some work for, and they said that any drawings I did from the trip, they would buy. All the people in this piece are the actual people in our tour group. I call this piece “The Caterpillar in the Onion Patch.” The flashes from the cameras are the eyes, the bags the older ladies are carrying look like a smile, and the pointing arms of the man and woman are the antennae. My lady friend and I are in the back, with my arm holding a light meter acting as the tail. Of course, all the legs of the group are the legs of the caterpillar. The domes of the Kremlin in the background make it look like we were walking through an upturned onion patch. (left) This is St. Isaac’s Cathedral in Leningrad. Every open space of ceiling and wall is covered with a painting. All the American tourists are looking up with their cameras, while the native Russians are more interested in looking at the Americans.

“St. Isaac’s Cathedral,” 1976, pen and ink with magic marker, © respective owner

(right) This is the pencils for a cover I did for an electronics magazine. Pictured are: Bo Derek, Clark Gable, Mae West, John Wayne, Groucho Marx, Woody Allen, Humphrey Bogart, Bette Midler, Marilyn Monroe, and Marlon Brando. 26

watercolor, © Hearst Communications, Inc.

Cosmopolitan

This was one of my first magazine illustration assignments after leaving DC. It’s a montage of several actors, all of whom were featured in this issue of Cosmopolitan. After I pencil something like this, I usually spray the pencils with a fixative so that the black of the pencil marks don’t get mixed into the paint, making it muddy. But when I sprayed this one, I used the wrong can — not the fixative. When I put the watercolor over it, it made a lot of these speckles and dots. Rather than take the time to repencil it, I went ahead with the painting, and ended up with a speckled look all over. It didn’t look too bad that way, but then the art director said to me, “You have the water around June Allyson going right up to the border. Could you vignette that so that it corresponds to the vignette on the right side?” To simulate the dots, I took a toothbrush and put it in a little white paint, then I tickled the brush to get a little spray. 28

watercolor, © Twenty-first Century Communications, Inc.

National Lampoon (above) This double-page spread was a take-off on Gone with the Wind, where you have a fire in the sky. The art director wanted an up-to-date version. As he described it to me, “I want this fat wop kissing an Anglo-Saxon dame. On the other side, have an AngloSaxon guy holding this lusty female wop.” What else is there to say? I’m a peaceful Italian. (left) A mock cover for National Lampoon spoofing on Batman and the Joker.

Lady Luck (above) In 1940, I worked in Bill Eisner’s apartment in Tudor City in New York City. Bill drew The Spirit and handled business out of his room. Bob Powell, who drew and wrote Mr. Mystic, and I, who drew Lady Luck, had our drawing tables in the living room. We were doing a newspaper supplement featuring these three strips. (left) A pencil commission of Lady Luck. (right) This figure of Lady Luck was auctioned off at the 2002 American Association of Comic Book Collectors dinner. Bill Eisner and I were guests to receive their Hall of Fame award. I used to like the old brownstone buildings. Everything was a little crooked, not quite right. Back when I was drawing Lady Luck, these were the streets I was drawing. I wanted to put a cat in one of the garbage pails, but decided that was pushing it too far. 30

Tarzan ™ and © Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc.

Tarzan (above) When I was first asked to do the Tarzan daily strip in 1950, I envisioned drawing the jungle and all the animals, apes, etc. The first week was set in the jungle, but the following strips were all set in the desert, with Arabs and horses and castles and nothing else. I killed several chained killer lions. Toward the end, some jungle panels finally came along. (left) This commission sketch was done with magic marker. Tarzan’s hair is a lot longer here than it was in the strip I drew. With the strip, I more or less followed the tradition that had been established by the previous artists, but when you look at it, they don’t have barber shops in the trees of the jungle. So I envision his hair as being long.

Sheena (right) Sheena was one of a series of “Cardy heroines” that I was going to illustrate, along with Black Canary and Wonder Girl, etc. Sheena actually had a pet leopard, but my friend who commissioned the work wanted a lion instead. (below) Pencil rough of a Tarzan illustration I drew to sell at a convention.

Sheena © respective owner. 33

Casey Ruggles (above) In 1951, I was asked to illustrate the Casey Ruggles daily strip of Warren Tuft’s. I assume that he was either late, sick, or whatever. I drew it from 1951 to 1953. I enjoyed doing it because of the horses, the characters, and the time period in which it was set. (left) A guest illustration of Cotton Coleridge from The Wicked West for my friend, and the artist of the book, Neil Vokes.

pen and ink, © Todd Livingston, Robert Tinnell, and Neil Vokes. 34

Fiction House (upper left) At Eisner’s, quite a few artists used a Japanese brush — made with bamboo — which was finer than a pen. Hairs were tied in the middle and pulled through the bamboo to make the points. Some of them were very sharp. Once I put one in my drawer without washing it. I reached in later and it pierced my finger and I got blood poisoning. At Fiction House, I used a Winsor & Newton series 7 sable brush #5 and #6 for a meatier, more flexible brush line, as shown in the main figure of Señorita Rio. (upper right) Whenever I drew animals I did plenty of research, as with cars, planes, women, and muscles, etc. 35

Standard Comics I don’t remember many things about Standard publications. I do recall meeting and working with many young artists at the time, like George Tuska and Jim Mooney. (above) I very seldom used a pen. All the feathering lines here were done with a brush. I may have used a pen on the tutu and some of the other fine details like the outline of the suit. I had stopped using the bamboo brushes, because the lines got so fine that they looked very weak when they were printed. By this time, I was starting to make my lines a little heavier.

DC Comics Adventure I drew around five hundred covers for DC from the time I started doing work for them in 1948 until I left in late 1974. (above) I did an awful lot of research for Daniel Boone. I found out which Indian tribes he fought, what their clothes looked like, and what markings they used whether they were Iriquois or Algonquin. I made it as authentic as I could find, including the type of rifles they used. I also like horses, though the one time I rode one, it took off down the lane and I thought I was going to wind up dead. I did the same reference for Tomahawk, as well. Once, I drove my wife out to Michigan to visit with some of her family. There were three kids in the family, and I drew them as a team of youngsters fighting with Tomahawk. 37

Aquaman Prior to my drawing Aquaman, it was done as six-page stories by others. Then I was asked to do a Showcase issue featuring Aquaman. After that I wet my feet with Aquaman #1 as its own book. I started that in 1962 and drew the series until issue #39 in 1968. After that, I inked the covers for issues #40 through #56, which were penciled by other artists. Initially Carmine Infantino gave me cover layouts, but later on we would bounce ideas back and forth. We respected each other’s talents, and I received great freedom with my covers. (upper left) When you get to the middle of the “Aquaman” title, you get to Mera’s head. The head leads to the hair, which swirls around with Aquaman and Aqualad. It has a very feminine feel to it, which emphasizes Mera and the horror in her face. (upper right) I asked to put the title logo at the bottom, so I could incorporate it into the ledge of the volcano. In order for the title to be seen on the newsstand, they put “Aquaman” in smaller print in the upper lefthand corner. I like this cover for its simplicity. (right) This is one of my absolute favorite covers. I really like the design of this. From the tip of Mera’s feet on the left, to the end of Aquaman’s foot on the right, to the top of Aquaman’s head, makes a triangular design. In back of him, that triangular design is repeated in the stalagmites. There are also smaller triangles with the water splashing off Aquaman and the walrus. And as Mera’s arm comes down, she’s more or less pointing to Aqualad. I think Jerry Serpe did the colors on this cover; he did a very nice job with it. 38

(upper left) Because someone else was going to color this piece, I put in outlines of the waves. Nowadays, the colorists can put in the shadings and eliminate the black lines. I enjoyed doing the backlighting on the figures, and I like the heavy vines or tentacles coming up, because they add to the tunnel effect of the whirlpool and also provide contrast. (upper right) A pencil sketch I did for a convention. (left) When I was doing this piece I couldn’t find my projector, and I didn’t have time to go and get the sketch blown up. So I drew a grid over the sketch and a larger, proportionate one on the board I was using for the final drawing, and used that to keep my proportions. It’s an old trick, but it’s a pain in the butt to do. (right) I like the effect of the perspective here. I made the soles of the characters’ feet darker, and the pen-and-ink lines get lighter as they go up. The sense of perspective comes as much from the thickness or thinness of the lines as from the characters’ proportions. The clouds I stippled with the tip of a brush. The little swirl on the left added an ethereal, otherworldly feel.

Teen Titans At the time I was doing this issue, I was trying to get a raise. I spoke with the editor, and he said, “You mean you haven’t had a raise since you’ve been here?” I said, “No.” So we went to see Donenfeld, who was then in charge. Donenfeld said, “Well, you know, we’ve been trying to get rid of a lot of dead wood around here.” I figured he probably meant me, because I didn’t get the raise. I decided I’d do one last bang-up job before leaving, and this way they’d miss me. So I started working on this Christmas issue, and I told

Carmine that after I finished it I was going to leave. He said, “Hang in there, Nick, because there are going to be a lot of changes.” He soon became the president of DC, but I don’t remember if I ever got a raise from him, either. It’s too bad they made the background around the spotlight on the cover so dark. You can barely make out the junkyard. But both Neal Adams and Joe Kubert saw the cover when it was lying around the office and said it was a nice job. Maybe I should have had them talk to Donenfeld. 42

(upper left) I like this one. It has a simple triangular design with Wonder Girl at the top transformed into a witch. (upper right) I really like the big skull. It makes an impact. It looks like they’re going over a waterfall into this giant skull’s mouth. It’s too bad they cropped it so much with the title and the characters down the side. I would have liked the image to be bigger. My work at this time was a lot tighter as compared to my work on Bat Lash; there’s a lot of hay in this one. Bat Lash was done heavier, quicker, and a lot looser. (left) I was going to use this sketch of Wonder Girl as part of the same series of heroines the Sheena sketch was for. I may end up doing this as a painting someday.

(right) This is another one of my very favorite covers. The book stands as a monument. The characters form a circle around it, with the heroes looking for Wonder Girl running to the right, up through Wonder Girl getting pulled into the book, back to the left with all the characters coming out of the book, and back down to Aqualad. I usually sign my name “Nick Cardy,” but my middle name is Peter. Peter is also my son’s name, so I figured I’d put that in to give him a little kick.

The New Wonder Girl (above) A convention sketch of Wonder Girl. (below) This is another of my favorites. Wonder Girl’s breast, where it extends into the white area, is the center point of the action. The lines in the pink area, the arms of all the characters, and Wonder Girl’s left leg all come out of that point in straight lines. It’s like an explosion. I mixed up the legs of the guys to keep it from being too geometrical. I think it’s effective.

(right) With this I wanted to keep the other Teen Titans in the background make them secondary to Wonder Girl. I tried hard to make the pig-tailed Wonder Girl pretty, and with her hair down the new Wonder Girl looks a little older. With the costume I designed, her belt doubled as a lasso, and the amulet she wore around her neck had a lot of gizmos in it, but that stuff didn’t get used very much. © DC Comics 46

Bat Lash I enjoyed doing Bat Lash, because there were no men in long underwear flying around. As with Casey Ruggles, I enjoyed doing Westerns. I liked exploring different periods or our history. I started doing Bat Lash in 1968, while I was still doing Teen Titans. Carmine Infantino, Joe Orlando, and I formed the Bat Lash character. After his appearance in Showcase and seven issues of Bat Lash, the series was cancelled. So were most of the Westerns on the big screen and TV. But at the same time, Westerns were growing quite popular in Europe. Bat Lash was a hit there, but it wasn’t enough to save the book. (above) A montage of art from the Bat Lash series. (left) This was a scene from Bat Lash #5. This isn’t a regular kissing scene. The girl that he’s kissing is playing him against the Mexican character, and she doesn’t care if he gets killed or not. The shading was to delineate the male from the female, while their closeness keeps them in the same shadow. It could be the Rodin sculpture, “The Kiss,” only standing up. I’d like to do a painting of this someday. (right) This is another of my all-time favorite covers, partly because I wrote the story for this issue. I like the simplicity of the cover, and I like the little child. The story had a lot of emotion to it. Sergio Aragonés, who usually wrote the series and who I normally got along fine with, complained because I used Indians on the cover. I didn’t see any problem with it. They were just passing through; they weren’t doing any violence. 48

(above) This illustration didn’t come out of the book. I penciled this with the intention of making a painting. I like the vignette effect, with the gun in limbo. (left) In the old school, they used to say if you want something ethereal and holy, keep to vertical lines, like the columns of a temple or trees — something very strong in feeling. If you want someone sleeping, you work on a horizon line. If you want to show action, you put it at an angle, and that’s what I did with this cover.

(upper left) This is one of my favorite drawings. I was going to make this a painting, along with the illustration on the previous page. The only thing I don’t like about this one is that I made him looking too angry. I don’t want him to look villainous. (upper right) Another Bat Lash cover. 51

The Spectre (above) Bat Lash #5, page 6. As I’ve said before, I like drawing horses, so I really enjoyed doing this page. I particularly like how Bat Lash is framed by the horse’s reins in panel three and his face in panel six. (right) This is another “explosion” design, this time coming off the tip of the Spectre’s finger. In this variation, I drew a lot of pencil lines radiating from that fingertip, and the colorist did a fine job of getting in between those white lines. That’s meticulous work, and I like what they did except for the logo’s coloring. 52

Black Canary (above and left) These pencil drawings were studies for the series of heroine paintings I had planned to do. (right) The design of this cover is based around circles. You start at Black Canary’s head and move to her feet, then Batman’s hand, and you keep going around through the back wheel of the motorcycle, down through the handlebars, through Batman’s feet to Black Canary’s arm, and back to her head. There are also circles in the background: the curve of the road and the curve of the city lights.

Brave and the Bold (above) This Batman was done for a friend who like cobblestones and bricks, so I put Batman in the same alley that Lady Luck went through in 2002 on page 31. (right) This story was set in London, with a Jack the Ripper sort of atmosphere, so I used a lot more pen and heavier blacks. When you have a mystery, good blacks help. The main thing with this cover was to try to create a fog throughout the illustration. And as you open the page, the fog leads from one page to the other. I did a lot of crosshatching to make the fog work. I think it turned out pretty well. The only thing that louses it up is the sign. It would have been better had they made the words look like they were scribbled on the wall by hand. 56

Detective Comics (above) A pencil Batman convention sketch. (left) I called this one, “When the bats play in Las Vegas.” Too bad it was crowded by the side panel. I liked the Man-Bat figure, and wish I could have used the full page. (right) I enjoyed playing with the menace behind Batman. This background was done in black-and-white, but I asked them to do it in a deep color and they had it separated to come out as purple. © DC Comics 58

Superman (above) This cover has the feel of the “man in the forest” scene in Disney’s Bambi. I like the Superman and children grouping in the sunbeam. (right) Out of every hundred covers I drew, I can pick maybe ten that I like, along with pieces of others. This cover of Superman #265, along with Superman #257 above, would be among the ten. I was very happy that the raindrops looked like raindrops. Sometimes in cartooning the effect gets lost. 60

(upper left) You can see that a mobile influenced the design of this cover. (upper right) I call this one, “Superman and the Big Crunch.” I looks like I was trying to keep my Superman covers simple in design to avoid clutter. That’s more than I can say about my house. (left) A 2006 con sketch of Superman. Here I wanted impact. (right) This cover, along with the cover to Spectre #3, are two of the very few covers where I ruled lines. I hate ruling lines! I put more blacks on top and made the lines thinner as they approached street level. Then I had to leave it up to whoever was coloring it.

Wonder Woman (upper left) Rough pencil sketch for the Nick Cardy heroine series of paintings. (upper right and next page) Poor Wonder Woman! The messes she gets into. This cover should have been a big hit. (right) Wonder Woman versus sister, Nubia, with Mars refereeing. A simple symmetrical design.

The Flash (above) This illustration was done for the Michigan Clinic to hang in their rec room. The supervisor hinted to my son, Peter, that the young patients would enjoy it, and Peter asked me if I could do it. (right) In this design, Flash is framed very tightly by the falling buildings and the cracking road. There is literally danger all around him. I think I got the effect I wanted here. I only drew Flash covers, never interiors, but I always tried to look at cars and things moving at high speed. At first I wanted to draw him as separate figures, but that’s a lot of work, and there are different ways to handle it. I also wondered what type of material his shoes were made of, because he really puts on the brakes here. 66

Romance

Of all the romance covers I drew, I particularly like the cover I did for Girls’ Love #139. The design is very simple. In the background are couples hugging each other, while the girl is all by herself isolated from the others, which makes her look even more lonely. They did a nice coloring job on this one. There’s a scene in the movie, The General, where Buster Keaton’s character tries to enlist in the Confederate Army, but is refused because he is the chief engineer of the train. Everyone starts leaving town, and the soldiers are riding around him on horseback, and soon he’s left all alone in the middle of the street. You can feel the loneliness. In High Noon, you have Gary Cooper’s character getting ready for a showdown, and no one in town is going to help him. He’s walks out into the middle of the street all alone — that’s what you call loneliness. I tried to capture that emotion here. I like the single figure in a sort of a no man’s land. 68

Plop! When this pilgrim ignored the warning from the Indian medicine man, he had a spell cast upon him. He gradually turned into a turkey and was served at Thanksgiving dinner. His face becomes more and more turkey-like throughout the story. 69

Horror I illustrated many Witching Hour covers, especially the ones with the Witch. These covers were on the dark side. I used more blacks in contrast to my covers for Aquaman and Teen Titans. I enjoyed doing them instead of the flying heroes in longjohns. Now I had witches flying on broomsticks.

The Witch (left) I couldn’t figure it out, but this witch puzzled me. She resembled someone who hung around the DC office. Whenever DC moved, she seemed to tag along.... On the other hand, she could have been one of my old lady friends. This was done in pen-and-ink. (below) Another Witching Hour cover, this one with a touch of humor.

Marvel Comics (above) I love drawing pretty women, and the Scarlet Witch was no exception. This was a con sketch. (left) I have no recollection of this illustration. The work looks like my pencils, and the signature looks like mine, too. I did some cover paintings for Marvel’s black-and-white magazines in the ’70s, and this may have been a layout sketch for one of them.

The Greatest 1960s Stories Ever Told (left) I started off with a rough design. It just dawned on me, but here again is an explosion design. Maybe I’m getting too repetitive. (upper left) After I had the design for the cover, I put a sheet of tracing paper over the illustration, which was about 10" x 16" or so, and drew individual pencil sketches of the characters. (upper right and next page) Again using tracing paper, I did tight pencils of the characters. The red lines you see indicate how I want to place the figures on the big master page. 74

(above and left) More tight pencils of the characters. (right) Using the composite master page, I traced the image onto a gesso board. Then I put down a tan background color, drew in the character outlines, and filled in the color. I made the background a monotone color of burnt sienna with some green and some little spots of blue. I think I used acrylic, but I may have used a heavy Designers gouache. The stippling was done by rolling up a piece of cloth into a ball, dipping it in the paint, and dabbing it over the painting. Sometimes, rather than coming directly down on it, I came down and quickly rubbed off the side to get the distance from where the rub was coming. The cover was done for a book called The Greatest 1960s Stories Ever Told, which was to be the second in a series of books from DC, but the book was cancelled. Apparently the first book didn’t do too well.

The Art of Nick Cardy (above) I made various thumb sketches and layouts for this cover. These are early attempts using Bat Lash as the central figure, before settling on the version shown in the upper left. (left) DC didn’t want me to put Superman or Batman on the cover of the second edition of the book, so I had to come up with a new layout.

(above) I finally got my rough sketch of where I wanted to place everything, and this design left room for the title on top. This sketch is the actual size I drew it at, and the final art is only slightly larger than print size, so it’s pretty small, too. (right) A study of the Bat Lash face, which is also shown here at full size.

(above and upper right) On the left are tight pencils of the final layout, shown at full size. I then enlarged this by 260% to 11 3/4" x 16 3/16" and drew the final pencils shown on the upper right. (left and right) Pencil sketches of the characters done in between the tight pencil layout and the final pencil layout. With Aqualad, I changed his arm position, because Mera had her arms up and Aquaman had his arms down, and I thought the symmetry would look better. Plus, with his arms down, Aqualad’s elbow gets cut off making his arm look a little chunky.

I like the Mera pencils on the left better than the way she came out in the painting. The pencils have a little more spark in them.

Roiya, Sigil, Zanni ™ and © Walt Disney Publishing

“Guardian Angels” (upper left) Rough pencil layout of the lithograph poster, “Guardian Angels,” for the former ACTOR Fund (now called The Hero Initiative), featuring the former CrossGen’s Sigil heroines. (upper right) One of many color layouts for the poster. I did three or four of these, all in the same pose but with different color schemes. (right) A pencil sketch posing the girl in the position to be holding the gun.

Roiya, Sigil, Zanni ™ and © Walt Disney Publishing

(upper left) Final line drawing before inking. (left) Another figure study. (above) Final printing of the lithograph to be sold, with all proceeds going to help comic artists in need of assistance. The coloring was done by Laura Martin. (right) My inks for the piece.

Roiya, Sigil, Zanni ™ and © Walt Disney Publishing

Tellos ™ and © Todd Dezago and the estate of Mike Wieringo

Tellos There were these two guys — a writer and an artist — who followed me around at several comic conventions and repeatedly asked me to do a cover for their book. When I finally agreed to do it, they jumped for joy and threw their baseball bats away — my kneecaps were safe. Now that I think about it, I’m grateful to Todd Dezago and Mike Wieringo for letting me do this Tellos cover. This was colored by Paul Mounts, and he did a nice job. 86

Tellos ™ and © Todd Dezago and the estate of Mike Wieringo

Alter Ego #65 (above) Two thumbnail sketches, both shown here at full size, for the cover of Alter Ego #65, which featured an interview with me. (below) An earlier idea for the design of the cover. (right) The pencil layout where I positioned the figures within the shape of the design.

(above) Tightened pencils of the heroes done on separate pieces of tracing paper for positioning in the composition. (left) A rough color layout. I decided I wanted the undertone to be a light yellow ochre. (right) The final full illustration, done in watercolor and burnt sienna colored pencil. If you look very closely, you’ll be able to see little crosshatchings done with the colored pencil. I’m always trying something different.

Caricatures The above illustration was done for my portfolio. I depicts celebrities in various situations that occurred in the year 1973. Among the scenes pictured are plays on Marlon Brando in Wounded Knee, George C. Scott in The Day of the Dolphin, and a Robert Morley commercial for British Airways (hence the flying teacup). In the background you can see Bobby Riggs kneeling before Billie Jean King from the famous tennis match.

Funny Girl This was done on a thick illustration board. I did the whole background in brown. This wasn’t a commercial job, it was just for my portfolio, but I called Barbara Streisand’s agent anyway. She said, “We have to approve all the images.” When I got off the phone with her I said, “The hell with it. I’m a nobody. They’ll never see it,” and I went ahead with the piece. But, just in case, I did Streisand’s face pretty much straight, and I put the caricature in her body. Then I put a spotlight effect around her. I believe this was done in acrylics. I like how it turned out. 93

The New Adventures of Snow White (upper left) A tight pencil before coloring the illustration. This was an X-rated movie version of “Snow White” (and what I called “Snow White and the Seven Horny Dwarves”). (upper right) A cropped detail of the painting for the movie poster. (left) This was my first movie poster. Later I bumped into Hetty Galen, the leading actress of the movie. She said, “I loved the poster. That was the best thing about that movie.” I told her that I still hadn’t been paid, to which she angrily remarked, “Neither have we!”

When in France... This 20" x 20" pencil tracing was for a French movie poster. Each head was the actual French actor’s, but the bodies were mine. I was paid for my work, but I never found out what became of the movie. But I like the poses and figures of the girls in this one.

The Pink Panther These are several characters that Peter Sellers created for Revenge of the Pink Panther. The image in the upper left was the gangster he portrayed. Like Marlon Brando had done in past roles, I put cotton balls in his cheeks. The heads above were done with colored pencils.

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Serial (above) A pencil tracing for the movie, Serial. (right) One of two paintings for the movie poster for Serial, each done through a different agency. When I went to the president of Paramount to show him the poster, I told him, “I’m competing against myself.” I was a monopoly for this job. They ended up choosing the other painting, and this wasn’t used. This was painted in oil on tempera board. The actors in the tub are (from the left) unknown, Bill Macy, Sally Kellerman, Martin Mull, Tuesday Weld, Tom Smothers, Peter Bonerz, unknown, and dog.

illustrations © respective owners

Nickelodeon (above) This poster layout was for the movie, Nickelodeon, starring Ryan O’Neal, Tatum O’Neal and Burt Reynolds. (left) This pen and ink illustration was for a newspaper ad for Every Which Way But Loose, starring Clint Eastwood and friend. The ads could run pretty small, so it had to be fairly simple.

illustrations © respective owner

The Bad News Bears (above) A pencil sketch for the then-titled The Bad News Bears at the Astrodome. (right) The movie was later renamed The Bad News Bears in Breaking Training. This is the finished pen-and-ink illustration. (lower right) The finished watercolor painting for The Bad News Bears Go to Japan, featuring Tony Curtis, who is in the middle between the motorcycle and the cart.

illustrations © respective owners

Walter Matthau (above) Tight pencils and finished painting for California Suite. The movie was set in the Beverly Hills Hotel, which is where they would put me up whenever I came in to do something, so it was easy for me to reference. From the left are Elaine May, Maggie Smith, Walter Matthau, Alan Alda, Jane Fonda, Michael Caine, Bill Cosby, and Richard Pryor. (left) Rough layout for the Casey’s Shadow poster. (right) A pen-and-ink poster for the movie, The Taking of Pelham One Two Three. They wanted me to do it like a comic page, and this is what I came up with. The woman in the bottom right of the poster was a lady friend that lived around back of me. The guy in the fedora with the glasses and mustache was a caricature of my dad.

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illustrations © respective owners

Those Lips, Those Eyes (upper left) A watercolor painting for the cover of a Pocketbook novel. (upper right) A pencil layout on tracing paper, ready for the painting. (right) Final painting for Those Lips, Those Eyes, starring Frank Langella. For this illustration, I used one male model and one female model for all the bodies, on which I then put various models’ heads. I had the two models pose, with a photographer taking pictures for me. Once I was in the studio, I put all the figures on tracing paper. When they make movies, they have a guy that goes around with a still camera taking pictures of the actors and sets. Then the studio will send you a sheet that’s full of these shots. If you want a certain shot to use as reference, they’ll enlarge it and send it to you. That’s how I got the reference to put the head of Frank Langella onto my model’s body. The guy climbing up the ladder was Tom Hulce, who a few years later would play Mozart in Amadeus. The face of the girl on the bottom right was the actual face of my body model. I’m not sure why I changed Langella’s face to be looking at the camera rather than the girl. I must have thought it looked better, but with that girl in his arms, he should have been looking at the girl! 102

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Meatballs II (above) A pen-and-ink illustration for Between the Lines, starring several then-unknowns, such as Jeff Goldblum and John Heard. This was done mainly for newspaper ads. (right) The pencil layout for the Meatballs II poster. (next page) The finished watercolor poster for Meatballs II. The title was later put directly onto the board. They showed me photographs of all the people, but I came up with the little scenarios myself. The guy looking out the middle back window of the bus is Paul Reubens of Pee-Wee Herman fame. © respective owner 104

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Movie, Movie (pages 106 and 107, top) These strips were originally done in pen-and-ink to run in black-and-white. I don’t know who colored these; it may have been me fooling around.

(pages 106 and 107, bottom) After I had the layout, I did studies of the heads. Movie, Movie was two movies in one. All the actors played characters in both movies. George C. Scott was the lead in both; in one he was a fight manager and in the other he was theater promoter. Eli Wallach played a gangster in one, and a floor manager in the other, and so on. The only problem was they didn’t send me any photographs of the actress who played the heroine or the actor who played her boyfriend. (above) I did the poster as a mirror image with the actors in their different roles opposite themselves. (left) Two different versions of George C. Scott for the poster. These didn’t work too well, but I got him worked out in the poster.

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Apocalypse Now They asked me to do a poster for Apocalypse Now. Marlon Brando was a villain in the movie, but I made him look like St. Anthony or St. Peter — someone very holy. I put his head to the side, and gave him a book of Shakespeare’s sonnets. He’s a contradiction of his pose. He has all these weapons and a guy tied up behind him. The picture is cropped, but over his head, the palm trees are placed in such a way that they look like horns coming from his head. They paid me for the poster, which I did in acrylic, but they didn’t use it. They said he was a caricature and I made him look too fat. I think Bob Peak got the job, so I was in good company.

Star Wars When Star Wars came out, a special agency was formed for the people who made lunch boxes and thermos bottles. They had about ten different art directors trying to get this stuff done before the movie came out. This was a tracing of one of the two robots — I don’t know what happened to the other one — for the side of one of those lunch boxes. 109

Inside the TV Guide (above and right) These were both advertisements for The Movie Channel which ran in TV Guide. It may not look it, but the girl on the loveseat (see above) was my lady friend beside a broad caricature of me — I never smoked cigars. I loved doing all these little characters. Have you ever been doing something and you just start laughing because you’re having such a good time? Well, that was the case with me while I was drawing this. For the one on the right, they said, “We want you to do a montage of all the movies that we’re going to show. We want Fred Astaire dancing with Ginger Rogers, Darth Vader from Star Wars... but make all these characters generic looking.” So I did a rough layout and made a few changes for the final colored piece. This ran as a double-page spread. (left) Columbo was a sloppy character, which made him fun to draw. I remember hearing that in between tapings, the studio would just wad up the coat Peter Falk wore and toss it in the storage closet so that it would always look rumpled. © respective owner 110

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“Mexican Vegetable Stand” (above) In 1976, I went with my lady friend down to Mexico to visit her children who were staying in a “free living” camp there at the time. We saw lots of vegetable stands, and I thought this one with its beautiful, bright colors would make a nice little watercolor. In fact, this painting won an award from someplace or other. (right) Detail from the pencils for “Sugar Cane Kids,” shown at full size.

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“Sugar Cane Kids” I don’t remember what the name of the city in Mexico this was, but they had a little mall where all these vendors had their wares on the floor and in carts under canopies. In back of the stands were these young kids — children of one of the vendors — eating sugar cane. I thought they were very striking, so I took some notes and photographed them. I like the design of the painting. I made the white wall look like white wash, by putting the watercolor on and then sort of mopping it up with a cloth. I put little blues in it, then dabbed it with the cloth and picked it up. You can still see some underneath, but it gave a texture to it. As a result, there’s a nice contrast between the wall and the children.

“Mexican Vendors” The design of this one is a cross. The lighting on the figures was influenced by a 16th century artist named Pieter Bruegel the Elder — he had a son that painted, too. He used to do faces in mainly burnt sienna, and then would pick out white highlights. I have a copy of one of his paintings entitled, “The Wedding Dance,” in which he uses that technique, and that’s basically what I was doing here. I like the way the highlights came out.

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“Going Home” (upper left) The young girl I used as the model for this painting was the daughter of my lady friend’s niece. We were visiting them in upstate New York, and I found a place nearby that had a painted pony. We went there and I took pictures of her on this horse. While I was taking pictures, I backed up and got the shock of my life — I had bumped up against an electric fence! (upper right) I’ve always loved horses — their anatomy and their balance and the way they stand. I did studies of the pony, and once I got it right I put the little girl on it.

(left) I decided to make the girl in the painting look as though she had been captured by Indians and then freed by the scout. She has a little cochina doll, and I put moccasins and the Native American dress on her.

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(upper left) I made several pastel color roughs, before settling on what I wanted. This is just one of many. (lower left) A pencil rough of the scout. (upper right) With the painting, I wanted to try to get across the feeling that they’re out across a great distance. Through the hills and valleys, I tried to keep the light and the main focus on the girl. The light comes down in streams from that middle cloud in order to justify the light that is on her head, which gives her a holy quality. It came out fairly well, but I struggled with this painting. 116

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“The New Hand”

With this I just tried different poses to get the right action. I had to fool around with it to find the right angle. Then on the painting, I had the dust at the bottom of the horse’s feet going up in a circle around the horse to the horse’s head. It was a nice, little stream of design. And the rider’s falling backward coincides with the smoke coming from the chimney of the cabin. Everything goes in a circle. I did make one mistake. Normally when they break horses, they don’t do it near the entrances of any buildings. They do it in a separate corral so the horses don’t hurt themselves trying to escape. I had to change the title of the painting from “The New Horse” to “The New Hand.” That way it’s just a new guy getting thrown from a horse. I got by with that one.

“The Encounter” (upper left) I started by making some sketches. The first square is a very basic design with an arrow pointing from the lower right up to the upper left, with opposing angles going the other way. The main thrust of the design was that tandem of the angles. Then I put the figures into the design with the troopers in the background. The two main figures fit into the arrow shape, and the cliff they’re falling over is the opposing angle. The shadow area of the cliff in the lower right is the other opposing angle, and holds up the picture on that side.

(lower left) These pastels were from an earlier design of an Indian being knocked off his horse by a buffalo. Many years later, I saw a sculpture by Remington where he had a buffalo hitting a horse, the horse is up in the air, and the Indian rider is sent flying. Talk about feeling good! (upper right) You’ll notice registry numbers on these sketches. I drew each figure individually on overlay tissue, and then put them together, maybe moving one up or moving one down.

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I went to West Point, and there they had displays of this period of the West. They had a statue with the uniform of Sitting Bull, and the weapons his tribe used. They also had U.S. Cavalry saddles. I wanted to make everything just right, so I took several photographs for reference.

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The Work in Progress (left) A charcoal base for the painting to establish the figures and the black-and-white tonal values. I also did a pastel color rough which I kept on the easel while I worked.

Light oil washes are applied over the charcoal. A color rough done in pastels sits atop the easel as a guide.

Light washes of color are applied to check the color balance.

At the easel laying out color washes.

With the washes complete, the paint being used is now thicker. 123

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Once you lay a base down, then you know what goes on top. Sometimes the undercoating effects what you put on top. Some people are very sure of themselves; they put it in impasto, which means very thick—almost like painting with a palette knife. But I like to capture undertones. Say there’s a woman. I would do the outlines and the shading of her face in a blue. Then I would put glazes of fleshtone over those blues so they would get a delicate color. Some women, when you look at their skin you can almost see their veins—there’s a hint of blue. Some are very dark and you don’t see that. With a man’s face, where the beard is, it’s a little gray, a little off-tone. So you can put that in a blue and put a fleshtone over it to catch that. That’s what I did with this painting. On the lower right-hand side, in the shadows of the cliff ledge, I put in some warm, but contrasting blues. On the left-hand side, the blues give a dimension of depth to the painting. As an aside, I don’t know why, but I really liked how the cavalryman’s horse (shown below) came out.

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9 781893 905993

ISBN

978-1-893905-99-3