Original Art Sundays: Sharp Invitations: Curt, p. 16

Finally back.
I won't waste time saying why it took me so long to get this page done. It's unprofessional to kvetch, and nobody wants to hear it (and I don't blame them). Suffice to say it's been a tough couple months, with some days of bliss in the mix. I've been spending creative energy on music and writing, plus a whole slew of sketchbook stuff. I'll post some of that soon. For now, it feels so good to get back to The Work, my graphic memoir, Sharp Invitations.
As always, please keep clicking the "older posts" button at  the bottom of the page for more work, or just hit the "Sharp Invitations" label if you want to check out more of The Work.
When we left our heroine (moi), she was in bed with Curt, who had begun choking her as part of their lovemaking. This came directly on the heels of her meeting a trans lesbian, Sara, with whom she developed an immediate fascination. So much to sort out, and being a meat and potatoes guy, Curt's response was...
Read on.

The usual notes, personal and craft.
Personal: Curt had no clue I was afraid after his hands found my throat. He also had no idea about Sara. For my part, I was running blind, still desperately afraid of my own truth, even after surgery, for reasons I'll spell out in greater detail towards the end of this chapter (anticipated in another 7 pages, but it could run a bit longer in a 4th rewrite).
Craft notes: Minor scanning issues per usual. I will rescan everything upon completion of the book and those issues will be resolved.
Let's speak to timing. The part that hung me up was the first panel of the last tier. I toyed with going all silhouette on its ass, but I don't want to overuse that trick. There are some pages in this book that are nothing but silhouette. My mantra from The Wizard of Oz applies. These things must be done delicately or you hurt the spell.
I'm constantly torn between doing something innovative and ornate and just nuts and bolts layouts. I love ornate layouts, but I'm reminded of a favorite comic book history student who loathed J.H. Williams' work on Batwoman. He said it was so decorated that he couldn't see the story. He had a point. I think this page is a good balance between the two, and advances the story reasonably well. I kept the figures lighter and concentrated the blacks and grays in backgrounds and textures. The linear background on the second tier is a trick I picked from Terry Moore's Strangers In Paradise. I was re-watching Terry's DVD last night, trying to garner some fresh insight, or rekindle old insights. My "big takeaway": just keep doing the work.
Well, duh.
For spotting blacks on the bottom tier, I'm rekindling my fascination with dry brush, something American comic artists have underused historically. I do love the way it shows up in British work, especially from the late 80s. The challenge in dry brush is to get all the texture you want before your meager ink supply dries up.
Tools and supplies on this page:
Canson Recycled Bristol Board, rough finish side used.
Lead holder with #4B lead
#4B solid lead pencil
Miscellaneous straightedges, templates and triangles
Crow Quill and nib
#4 Richeson Snapi round synthetic brush
Tight Spot angled brush for corrections
Dr. Martin's Black Star Walnut Ink
FW Acrylic White
Magic Rub eraser
pretty much the stuff I usually use.
I have a HUGE bottle of Yasumoto Sumi Ink. Perhaps I'll give that a go on a page soon, but I do so love the Walnut Ink.
Next: sketchbook pages, then more memoir.

Original Art Sundays No. 161: Sketchbook redux

Next page is 3/4 done. With limited scanner access again this week, I opted to concentrate on other work, including the class on Comic Book Writing that I'm currently teaching, and completing an article with a deadline of yesterday (I made the deadline, BTW).
Here are some pages from that same sketchbook to tide us over.

No. 4 pencil, fine line marker and metallic blue marker

First up, a random stab at a female pirate, inspired by old friend Sarah Cardin's fascination with pirate films. Period piracy has become a bit of a fascination for me. I am vehemently opposed to contemporary piracy in most forms.
Next, an original superhero that was fully developed but whose story was never realized.

No. 2 and No. 4 pencil on sketchbook paper

I had to severely darken the image to get the text to read. I pulled out the area around the figure, upper right, for a bit of contrast. The textured gray that fills most of the image is simply paper texture taken to extremes in Photoshop. In case you can't make them out, the notes in the page are:

• Practical shoes and boots
• Costume offers protection (armor?)
• NOT skin tight
• Hair- either keep short or in back
• Mask? NO!!
• Dark tones hues/ colors/ contrast intensity
• Eliminate V-
• Go to hi-strength leotard w/Kelvar
• Chainmail vest/tunic
• Knife sheath - Hip? Boot?
• Whole thing is too medieval

This was an attempt to create a plausible female superhero, based unconsciously in part on the 70s version of the Huntress by Paul Levitz and Joe Staton, also on my meditations on Doc Savage, and inspired by a Tess Gallagher poem titled The Kiss, from whence comes the character's name. I had thought the hand-held crossbow was an original idea, until I realized I'd cobbled it unconsciously from this story- but the notion of the bow being collapsible and wrist-mounted is all mine.
Though I can find no specific record of the Gallagher poem (she wrote several poems about kisses, but I cannot find this one), I do recall hearing her read it on NPR and my fascination with it. The notion she described in the ensuing interview, that a woman's kiss could be a secret agent or a superhero, charmed and inspired me.

The Huntress, from DC Super Stars No. 17,
December 1977

Of course, many of the ideas that I considered crucial to the character have since manifested in other wonderful characters like the Andreyko and Pina Manhunter series and the  Rucka and Williamson work on Batwoman, about which I've gushed in the past. In this context, it's also important to note Ivory Madison's revision of The Huntress. Sadly, she's done only one comic story since then.

Revisions based on previous sketch.
No. 4 pencil and marker

This is my meditation on superheroes, women, and superwomen. I have the storyline plotted out and characters developed in notes- have done for decades- but as I have no shortage of current projects, I wonder if it will ever see fruition. I suspect this is one of those things on which I would write and hand the art off to someone more suited for such work.
As always, I am overwhelmed by the number of projects I start and seldom finish- a common problem, I hope!- but I do take heart in the occasional completion of one.
This is the issue I bring to my writing students. Others only see the finished product as 100% of what it is. The creator sees it as a much smaller figure, sometimes less than1%, of the vision, of what could be.
Next week, back to the Cowgirls!

Best Comics of 2011 No. 10: Batwoman

Net access remains problematic at home, so came in to work to get some stuff done. I'll post yesterday's entry and today's.
Up first, part of The New 52.
I've ignored most of the line for a while. I read the first Justice League, which struck me as a superhero hissy fit, and some of the early Superman stuff, which was well-done but didn't grab me.
Wonder Woman is well-written with decent art, but I loathe the latest revision of her origin.  I mean really? Instead of being the product of women's love of life, she's the result of an illicit union with Zeus? Really? How sad.
Batwoman, however, is something else.

J.H. Williams III has taken over the writing from Greg Rucka, and the character has retained her integrity.
And the book remains visually lush, with layouts that remind me of Colan's work on Dr. Strange.

In terms of plotting, for the most part Williams & co. are playing up Kate Kane's military background over her lesbian identity. This has created some challenges, as she takes her protege, the former Flamebird, into training, using boot camp techniques.
This is effective to a point.
The over-eager "cadet" breaks training and assumes her old costume to take on the villain of the day unassisted.
The results are, as we say, less than satisfactory.
This is my one sore spot with this run. As Flamebird is hors de combat, Kate is engaged in an amorous tryst. As Williams does parallel cuts between the two scenes, the effect is quite jarring and, for my money, more than a bit distasteful. I didn't like it when Cher and Bob Hoskins used a similar device in the film Mermaids, and I don't much care for it here. It does make some tense strorytelling, but as Trina Robbins once said about Spawn: ick.

The denouement of the scene uses an FBI agent whose appearance, at least, will be familiar to readers of Alan Moore's Promethea, also lovingly rendered by Williams.
Kane remains a worthwhile character in a perceptive book, the problematic "refrigerator" scene notwithstanding. I haven't picked up the latest issue yet, so I'm a tad behind on plot developments.
Sidebar for readers of The New 52: DC has announced TPBs of all the titles' initial storylines, with the odd exception of Wonder Woman.
One last thing I like about Batwoman: the skull-faced FBI director is a very compelling character!

Next: something familiar, yet vaguely not so.

Best comics of 2010: No. 7: Batwoman: Elegy (spoilers!)

There are spoilers in this post. The story's been kicking around for a while, but a caution seemed apropos.
An elegy is "a poem of serious reflection, typically a lament for the dead." That's the dictionary definition.
In Greg Rucka's stunning work, it's a lament for lost career, lost love and lost family, all lost to a gay woman's integrity.

But like all deaths, each implies the possibility of new life.
Kate Kane's relationship is lost to her nocturnal activities as Batwoman, a role she undertakes out of a sense of moral necessity. The first death. This is in itself a departure, as most who associate with Batman's mission do so in response to some sort of violation.
Kate's sister is lost to terrorists, the price of her father's military career. The second death. However, the sister resurfaces as the insane villain The White Queen, a sort of female Joker (though that description does not do her justice).
Kane's own military career is truncated by her honesty about being lesbian. She chooses to honor the cadet's code: a cadet will not lie, cheat or steal, nor suffer others to do so.  Like Margarithe Camameyer before her, she chose honor over career.
The last death.
Her choices were always moral, never easy.

Following her discharge, Kate meets Renee Montoya, closeted Gotham cop at the time of their meeting, who later assumes the mantle of The Question.
Like Bruce Wayne's parents, Kate is attacked by a mugger. Unlike them, her attempt at self-defense succeeds. Declaring herself a soldier, she looks up after her assailant has departed, sees a silent Batman, then the Bat signal, and knows what her next uniform will be.
This is strong on so many levels. It avoids the standard saw of a woman becoming a hero after being attacked. I agree with the late Kate Worley. Rape-based origins are insulting and unimaginative.
Most male heroes have something taken away from them- parents, family, career, home. Most female heroes have their bodies violated in some way. Seeing this tawdry trend reversed here is refreshing.
Greg Rucka is no stranger to writing realistic, strong women. His work on Whiteout and Queen & Country are exemplary. I even liked Countdown to Infinite Crisis. And I loathe most of those sprawling, galaxy chanign events storyline.
And the sexuality is not played for shock value. It's simply an important part of who the character is.

I must comment on the art. I've admired J.H. Williams' work since I first became overtly aware of it in Promethea.  Here's his cover art for Absolute Promethea, book 3.

Williams' work has that photo-realistic aspect, but coupled with a strong and highly informed design sense (his Promethea covers included homages to Parrish, Warhol, Peter Max, and the Superman/Spider-man crossover) and an incredible imagination.  Along with Haden Blackman, he's writing and drawing the new Batwoman: Zero series.
The page designs of this book are remarkable, not just for their clever and effective visual elements, but for the successful integration of those elements into the narrative. Anyone with technical skill can toss around pretty pictures and shapes. It takes storytelling talent to not let those elements get in the way.
Most significant and least discussed visual element of Batwoman: Elegy: her costume.
For decades I've been playing with a superheroine costume that's functional as well as aesthetic. I mean really. Look what Saturn Girl "gets" to wear for a fight.

And Phantom Girl...

And Dawnstar!

I'm not talking about politics as much as I am strategy. Imagine flying through the air with huge portions of your body exposed, to say nothing of the difficulty of fighting in such unlikely togs.
Batwoman has designed her costume more as a military uniform. Every part of it is geared towards its combat capacity, from the materiel used to her hair!
And those boots! Finally, a superheroine who doesn't wear CFMs to fight!

  

Granted, the costume of Andreyko and Sale's Manhunter from 2005 was also built around function, but not BY the heroine.

Kate Kane is strong, smart, resourceful, impassioned, beautiful and gay. Batwoman: Elegy is a great read.

Tomorrow: Best of 2010 No. 6. It's all about the writing!