Original Art Sundays (Saturday) No. 260: Sharp Invitations: Curt, p. 17

Here's the next page. Discussion will be light- not much time!

I'm satisfied with this page. Good balance of light and dark, nice flow, poses appropriate to mood and action, respectable backgrounds, and it advances the story.The first panel in the third tier has poses stolen from the Sandman issue 20.
It must be said up front that the real Sara has apologized repeatedly and profusely for saying that. We remain friends and it is not an issue between us. Still, it happened.
It speaks to so many issues in the trans community.
Whatever that is.
I'll elaborate on that in the next post. I'm very anxious to get this online, so I'll just give the supply list for now.
Canson Bristol Board
Straightedge, T-sqare, French curves
Ames Lettering guide
Staedtler Pigment Liners .01, .03, .06, .07, .08
Renaissance Silver Sable brush #2
Princeton Round Synthetic Brush #4
Doc Martin's Black Star Walnut Ink
FW Acrylic White ink
Magic Rub erasers
Photoshop for scans and minor cleanups.
Next: a soliloquy page on the issues this page raises.

Original Art Sundays (Friday), no. 255: Sharp Invitations, cover draft and poster

Well, this is rather a bit of cheating in a way.
I got my minor Adobe license issues resolved, and was able to complete the revised version of the alternative (far from final) cover for Sharp Invitations.

Lately, I've been fascinated by David Mack's evocative watercolors. He gets such mood and intensity out of what appear, at first blush, to be random spatters. While I don't have his level of control, I do enjoy testing the waters (so to speak) with this stuff. This was done with Windsor & Newton colored inks, as I believe I mentioned in my previous post. I much prefer them to conventional watercolors- so much more vibrant!
The typography is more dynamic here than on the previous version of the cover. The colors work, but not as consistently as I might like. There are places in this where I'd like the brush strokes to be less prominent. I'm compelled by the profile silhouette, even though the hairline is iffy.
I know, I know. I should take the advice I give my students and not point out flaws in my work.
In general, that's good advice. But if you don't see the flaws in your own work, you won't try to fix them. No need to improve if you think you're already perfect!
I probably won't use this for the cover. But I'm far from completely happy with the previous version. I have a resolution in mind.
But there's more for right now.

As I work on this book, I find myself considering and reconsidering the issue of detail. My work has often had a more stripped down quality, but I revere the detail work that many artists do. Trying to seek a balance on this issue, I remembered Marc Hempel's innovative work (shades of Krigstein!) on the Sandman story-line The Kindly Ones. Sparse and stark, almost crude in spots, it still felt elegant, full and complete.
In re-reading the story to reconsider the art, I chanced on this passage that hit me right in the gut. This blog is just about the only place I haven't talked endlessly about the profound and absolute rejection I got this summer from a woman I liked for years (possibly loved, who can say?), abruptly truncating years of hope. Oh, she was more than decent about it, especially considering that I just dropped my feelings on her out of nowhere, and I was treated with compassion and with great respect.
Still.
I was so proud of me! I had finally and completely resolved my weepy school girl feelings. I was actually becoming a grown-up about it, very sophisticated. Then I read this, and it was right back to primal scream tears.
In a few lines, Neil Gaiman has summed up the inevitable, dreadful and devastating nature of this experience. I'd like to think that as a lesbian trans woman, I have a special brand of this stuff. But no. Love is love and pain is pain. While nobody may know exactly how I feel, everybody knows how I feel.
Inspiration struck. I added Neil's thoughts on the subject to this image. I left out Neil's last line, "I hate love". I hope he'll forgive my chopping his words, but I don't hate love. I just wish it would pop in a bit more often.
This adaptation of Neil's ideas works. It's not perfect, but then, what is?
Next: back to Sharp Invitations, the story proper.

Best Comics of 2015: no. 1

Here's the list to date:
15. The Undertaking of Lily Chen
14. Lackadaisy Cats
13. Marvel Star Wars titles
12. Brok Windsor
11. Ms. Marvel/Captain Marvel
10. Story of My Tits
9.  Wuvable Oaf
8.  Lady Killer
7.  Invisible Ink
6.  Archie
5.  Martian Manhunter
4. Bitch Planet
3. Inner City Romance
2. Unbeatable Squirrel Girl

And the No. 1 Comic of 2015, according to me...

This may not be much of a surprise. Then again, this was on a great many lists this year, but I don't recall seeing it in the top spot on any others.
Some creators have a comparatively small output, but a vast impact. To date, Sam Mendes has made only six films since his directorial debut in 1999. Darren Anonofsy, five. Stanley Kubrick, a dozen, if you don't count the early shorts, or One-Eyed Jacks or AI. Harper Lee wrote two books and a handful of short stories. My favorite band, Gentle Giant, made a scant 12 albums in their time together, including the live album. Kate Bush has made 15 albums, if you include EPs, live albums and box sets. Jim Steranko created 35 comic stories in the last 45 years, not including covers and collections, most of those prior to 1970.
More is not always better. And more isn't always necessary.

The wonderful cover under the dust jacket

Scott McCloud has fully created (in mainstream, not including his early self-published work) one creator owned series (ZOT!), one set of stories featuring a licensed property (Adventures of Superman, author only), a nonfiction trilogy on comics (Understanding, Reinventing and Making Comics, of which I find the last the most consistently useful), one stand-alone experimental book (The New Adventures of Abraham Lincoln, which I really liked), arguably invented the 24 hour comic and- well, that's it, not counting his online comics and teaching and lecturing careers. So depending on how one defines one's terms, this is the seventh book in McCloud's 32 year career as a comics professional (using the first issue of ZOT! as the barometer for the inception of that career). We've been waiting 18 years since his last solo book.

Back of the dust jacket

And how is the book itself?
The first time I read it, my reaction was a small, satisfied, "Huh. Okay then. Nice little story." A couple days passed and a lightning bolt tore between the hemispheres of my brain. I suddenly realized just how much I'd missed. I had to go back and re-read this book ASAP.
McCloud has a way of writing just plain people that makes them eminently empathetic, even the ones you don't like. This makes his stories flow, seemingly effortlessly. This is the mark of a master craftsman. As Coco Chanel said, "dress poorly, notice the dress- dress well, notice the woman." The reader gets sucked under because the tide of the story, to torture the metaphor, is so regular and comfortable. He's at his best when dealing with what is commonly called "magical realism", unexpected or impossible things happening in everyday settings. There were some hints of this in New Adventures of Abraham Lincoln, as everyone but the hero casually accepted the narrative's outrageous events. As this is one of my favorite sub-genres, I get sucked into these very easily. For want of a better term, I classify much of Gaiman's Sandman as magical realism.

The Sculptor at work.

Museum dialogue, page 1

This is the story of David Smith, a frustrated sculptor who fears the common enemies of artists - anonymity, starvation and death, both of body and of spirit. David's uncle joins him for lunch one afternoon when David's life and career have both reached their nadir. Shortly into the conversation, David remembers that his uncle Harry is dead. Harry offers him a Faustian bargain, but not for the soul, at least not in the conventional sense. David will be given the talent he imagined for himself in the comic he made when he was a kid. He will be able to sculpt anything he envisions with his bare hands. The price is that he will die in 200 days.
As he sets out to sculpt with his new abilities, he encounters unexpected but inevitable obstacles, including overcoming his own fears of the work, facing the slights he's given others in the art world, and dealing with the arbitrary caprices of art dealers and critics.
Oh, yeah. Right after creating his first significant body of work since making the deal,  he's kicked out of his apartment and forced to leave the work behind.
Luckily, he meets an angel (don't worry, it's not the It's A Wonderful Life moment you dread, it's something both plausible and unexpected), falls in love, and manages to rebuild his life- while he counts off his days.

Museum dialogue, page 2

Many moments here echo the classic 20th century mainstream works about the worth, frustrations and joys of life. So often, during the fifth re-reading of this book (!), I found myself remembering the line in Our Town: "oh, Earth, you're too wonderful for anybody to realize you."
The Sculptor clearly has a strong emotional impact, much to offer the intellect and the spirit. The writing is there, and the themes are solid and well-considered, no question.
But few have commented much on the art.
You'd think people would be all over the art on this, since McCloud's Understanding Comics was the book that mainstreamed Comics Theory 101 for a larger (read: not exclusively comic book geek) audience. Do McCloud's theories on comics structure hold water in his own work?
Well, sure. At the risk of being simplistic, it matters a great deal and it matters not at all.
He uses the devices of visual narrative to full effect. He's varying camera angles, using open panels to create moments of pause or introspection, varying the distance he puts between the reader and the scene, and maintaining a sense of flow on every page and throughout the text. He's not adverse to throwing in a silent panel when called for, recognizing that there are such moments in life, and trusting that the image is strong enough to propel the story without words.

Museum dialogue, page 3

Beyond all that, these are well-drawn pages. The facial expressions are spot on. Like the work of Jeff Smith, another less prolific creator whose work is justly lauded, McCloud's art is direct and, at least on the surface, simple. The proportions are good and consistent, and the tonal color is well handled. In most B & W works, that's an issue of placing and controlling blacks to give full and appropriate range of values to each scene. However, McCloud has opted to add a range of blue hues. So in addition to the values given by placing lights and darks and by hatching, the reader gets a second set of tonal values from the range of blues, akin to an old-school duotone effect. The blue is alternately calming and somber, and serves the mood of the story well throughout.
The art goes beyond simple, however. McCloud throws several splash pages at the reader at key moments, but he also goes to town with two page montage spreads that take the viewer on an emotional storm through what has gone before in the story. The splashes and montages create a marked contrast to the more (again, for want of a better term) conventional narrative pages.

Montage on parade!

What's the book about? It's about triumph over adversity, even if the adversity is a result of your own screw-ups. It's about love overcoming frustrations and fears. It's about that moment when you look at your life and see it for what it is and was, both good and bad, and are at peace with what you see.
I hope we don't have to wait so many years for McCloud's next book, but if it's this good, it will be worth the wait.
I've been privileged to meet Scott McCloud on a few occasions and to work with him briefly at Minneapolis College of Art & Design. I hope I get to meet him at least once more. My copy of The Sculptor is a signed limited edition, so as much as I revere a signed book, that's not why I want to see him again. 
I simply want to thank him for creating a book that made my life richer for reading it.

Best Comics of 2012: No. 1

Time to announce the Best Comic of 2012.

This has it all. Spellbinding beautiful art, three compelling stories woven into one, serious subjects including immigration and gay issues, and spirit. So much spirit.

I haven't read the author's book PUG yet, but I used Derek McCullough's Stagger Lee as a textbook in my recently ended Graphic Novel class (the students loved it), so I'm familiar with his deft handling of music as a narrative vehicle.
In Gone to Amerikay he ties together the stories of two Irish immigrants separated by ninety years with the tale of the wealthy descendant of one who's searching for his musical heritage, forty years after the fact.
In many ways it's a classic Irish tale, full of ghosts, ballads, drinking, joy, sex and life, set against the backdrop of New York. The dialects are spot on without being demeaning. The stories flow well and intertwine cleanly, though there are a couple points where less than astute readers will have to double back and check on something.
On matters Irish: the art is by Colleen Doran, who shares my love for the band Horslips, and who keeps up a "No Irish Need Apply" sign in her studio, as a reminder of hard times and harder people past.
I've been following Colleen's work since A Distant Soil debuted as a preview in the Pini's Elfquest. I've enjoyed her work on J. Michael Straczynski Book of Lost Souls, some key issues of Sandman, Wonder Woman, Legion of Super-Heroes, one of my favorite graphic novels, Warren Ellis' Orbiter (I happened on a signed and sketched copy in a used store, more fool the anonymous "Curt" who got rid of it) and of course, A Distant Soil, which she is closing in on finishing. She's a canny businesswoman, informed and strengthened by the hard knocks life has given her (mostly in the form of creeps trying to take advantage of her in some way).
Sidebar: I purchased a Book of Lost Souls page from Colleen last year, but neglected to ask for one featuring that wonderful cat, so I guess I'm as much a fool as that "Curt"was.
Back to Colleen:
She's produced a formidable body of work over the decades (has it really been that long?), and though she chooses her material carefully to balance time, deadlines and the likelihood of the person or organization promising her payment honoring that commitment, she does continue to create, and just gets better.
Ahem. Case in point.

Can Colleen draw beautiful men or what?
Also, the precise illustrations of mundane daily activities, like shaving, enhance visual storytelling no end.
Here's a page from the sequence set back in time. Remember, while each story is told chronologically, they are intertwined in the book.

Lewis Healy, the magnate
whose search connects the stories

Sometimes I read things with too critical an eye, noticing structure, editing, artistic flourishes and so on. while this has its uses, it can be demoralizing, like that moment after you realize that cartoons are thousands of drawings, and the time afterwards where all you can see is the individual drawings, before cartoons get their magic back. The best stories are the ones in which I forget to critically dissect the content and get sucked into the story's world. Gone to Amerikay is one of those stories.

So we have the tale of Clare O'Dwyer, 1870;
Folk singer Johnny McCormack, 1960;
and Irish billionaire Lewis Haely, 2010. It's his search for the music he loves that ties them together.
But there's also a tie between Clare and Johnny.
Through a meeting with the ghost of her lover, Johnny learns the song he wrote for Clare, and finding her granddaughter quite by accident, learns that Clare's daughter is still alive. He meets her and is able to return the song to its family.
Having just watched What Lies Beneath on TCM tonight, it's nice to see a ghost story with a happy ending.
Being who I am, I have to mention the book itself- a slim but handsome hardcover, apparently PVC bound with black head and tail bands. And the cover of the book beneath the dust jacket holds a lovely blind stamp.

The coloring, by Jose Villarubia, whose work I've loved on Promethea and the bound edition of Alan Moore's The Mirror of Love, is subtle and suits the art perfectly.

So congratulations to the Gone to Amerikay team.
You made my year.
I'm taking a couple days off posting to deal with work matters, but will return by week's end with some thoughts on Basil Wolverton.

Original Art Sundays (Saturday) #88: oddment: sumi-e and haiku

The day before the next Tranny Towers page is scheduled for posting, I'm getting around to catching up again.
This oddment comes from coursework done in my Master's program on Haiku and suni-e.
While I'm too guarded a writer to ever make a great poet, I do enjoy haiku and related forms, probably because the brevity serves to limit my options for self-editing.
I enjoy the sumi-e technique a great deal. The idea that the brush contains all the values and the artist can release them all with one stroke is a very powerful, calming thing.
These three are not my best nor my worst. They're the ones that presented themselves as I was organizing a stack of old work.

This technique is quite versatile.
I've toyed with the idea of using it in comics, as Jon Muth did in the Sandman story Exiles, in Gaiman's final story arc The Wake.

Here's a You Tube that shows the scary talented Muth's brush technique.



It's all about simultaneous control and release, coupled with understanding of light and dark as facets of each other. You know- Zen.
Tomorrow, a "new" old Tranny Towers page.

Love and pain and the whole damn thing

Ah, Valentine's Day.
Another day of stresses and celebrations. Whether you're alone or coupled (or more, depending on your chosen life), the day has stresses, strictures, real and perceived obligations, all tied to a biological, societal and personal imperative to share our lives with one another at different levels of intimacy.
As to St. Valentine, stories vary, but most hold him to be a martyr and savior of persecuted Christians. Small wonder that he's embraced over the much more personally sacrificing (at least in contemporary material terms) St. Francis. After all, how could you merchandise the story of one who took a vow of poverty?
While the connection between St. Valentine and romance is tenuous at best, it's also moot. The day is what it is. The cultural connotation is not be be undone.
In comics, several images come to mind.
First, this Birds of Prey cover.

I'm not much on Chuck Dixon's writing. All that smug macho nonsense leaves me cold. Battleaxes was the least entertaining comic I'd read in years. I have the same problem with Beau Smith's work, and on occasion that delightfully irriataing Mike Baron.
But I did really like Dixon's work on this series.
I also rather enjoyed the TV series, even with its flaws. You can watch the whole thing on HULA now for free, You have to put up with a few commercials, but he, that's what the mute on your laptop is for, right?
The cover below also comes to mind in terms of romance, even though that's not exactly what's going on here.
Such a smart book!

I find it interesting that books about women and superheroines invariably come around to the romance stuff, while it doesn't seem to surface nearly as frequently in "guy" superhero narratives. There are notable exceptions, but the superhero scared of romance in the 1950s mode remains the default for many comics.  One wonders if that's still the presumption of the marketing folks (that this is what the readership wants) or if that's where the writers are at. In some cases, I suspect the latter- smug little bully boys who are ascairt of girls.
There are many emotionally mature writers working in comics. And it's possible to write strong men without resorting to this macho garbage. Bill Loebs, Warren Ellis, Alan Moore (whose characters all seem injured in some way anyway), even some aspects of Mike Baron's writing succeed in this arena.

Surprisingly, many of Neil Gaiman's love stories  involve his characters behaving very poorly towards one another, in different ways. Consider Morpheus imprisoning his lover in Hell for ten thousand years, for the "crime" of rejecting life with him. Or the poorly defined manipulative behavior of Miraclewoman in Gaiman's Miracleman run- an act of jealousy, as the last panel imples, or a mistake pure and simple?
The narrative of Foxglove and Hazel is just as messed up. A naive lesbian gets preggers, and her abuse-surviving girlfriend sticks with her, grumbling the whole way. But that has a happier ending, or if you prefer, a resolution, since they get to go on.
That's the thing about love stories. If they're going to be realistic, they're messy.
There's only a small percentage in hearts and flowers. Most of us have to deal with the messy aspects of trying to understand one another. If doesn't matter if you're gay, straight, bi or polyamorous, though the latter relationships have far greater complications (but when they succeed, they're great!). People are complicated, screwy and self-contradictory. We want someone to love us forever, and when we get them, we want time to ourselves, or we're let down that they're who they are and not who we expected/hoped them to be.
It's a balancing act that never stops.
In comics, the love story as primary plot is becoming more prevalent. I can think of two splendidly successful narratives of the last 20 years.
First, the remarkable Strangers in Paradise.

Never mind that there are some incredibly implausible aspects to the story, and some wild inconsistencies. Is Katchoo an alcoholic, as mentioned in a couple issues, or not, as indicated by her apparently controlled drinking in subsequent issues? How could Casey be in the employ of her true boss and be such a ditz? Sometimes it felt like a Tezuka narrative- the character playing a variety of roles, some of which contradict the roles played by the same "paper actor" in another story. You also see this phenomenon in Barks' Duck stories, and it's worth noting that Barks was irritated,  bordering on insulted,  by Don Rosa's attempts at imposing a unified narrative on the loose aggregate of Barks tales.
That aside, Strangers works despite its occasional implausibilities. This is because:
a) Moore is a strong enough storyteller that he was able to pull it together in a way that worked, and
b) No matter what else it is, it's a love story first and foremost. The issue is not that the people love one another despite all this stuff happening. It's that their love sees them through this stuff, even when they're at one another's throats over real or perceived wrongs.

The last comic to consider on this day dedicated to the ideal of romantic love (and to the sale of cards, flowers and chocolate) is True Story, Swear to God.
There's this guy, Tom. Nice guy, comic book nut.
Takes himself a vacation to Disney World. Meets a Puerto Rican woman at a bus stop. They fall in love instantly. He moves to Puerto Rico to be with her.
It's true. Every last bit of it. Tom has photos and everything to prove it.
The story is about all of the above: miscommunication, frustration, dealing with life, trying to understand each other. It's told simply and cleanly, with honesty that avoids being maudlin.
Tom published about a dozen issues himself, then took the book to Image, where it has currently run 12 more issues. The book deals with everything from a Californian living in Puerto Rico during 9/11 to his spouse wanting to shave her head in support of her cancer afflicted sister. This is what comics can do best- say something about our lives.
I've deliberately not discussed the other great comic book romance that affected my life, Omaha, tonight. Too many memories, not all of them good for this particular day. But I do hold the book and its creators in a treasured place, and will write about them again when appropriate.
For right now, let's just leave it at the default optimistic thought:
Ain't love grand?

The Madoc Curse

As I read and reread (and reread) the Absolute Sandman, I find myself returning to a handful of stories repeatedly: A Dream of a Thousand Cats, all the Hob Gadling stories, and Calliope.
Calliope is the muse of words, held in the power of a writer to feed him ideas.
The story spoiler comes next, offered as a caution for the six people in the comics/ horror/ SF worlds who have not yet read this story.
When she is rescued by Morpheus, he floods the writer's mind with more ideas than imaginable.
The ideas prove beyond the hapless writer's control.
What strikes me as a bit of a dodge in this story, probably not intentionally on Gaiman's part, is that it's not ideas that are hard. It's execution.
It's easy to mull and wax philosophic about all the wonderful things that are going to happen after your work comes to life: you have shelves of books with your byline, you are celebrated for your innovation and genius, and when you travel to discuss the work and ideas, you don't ahve to pick up the tab. Oh, yeah. Your home is magically bigger and cleaner.
The ideas are crucial, but without execution, they truly are a curse: this is what could be. Make what could be into what is.
Well, I'm off to go into the studio.
But then, I'd have to be!