Original Art Sundays no. 303: Sharp Invitations: Curt, p. 43

 Next page!

When we left our hapless couple, Curt was preparing to throw an ashtray. Anyone taking odds on him following through?

Content notes: This happened, but not quite this way. I didn't see him trash another guitar, but I did see the wrecked guitar afterwards. This guitar, which I also loved, was a replacement he got me for the one he destroyed a couple months prior. That will be covered in the text of the next page.

Craft throughts: Time in comics is so elastic. I can cover months or years in one panel, or cover one night in multiple pages as I'm doing here, or make a single moment so elastic as Scott McCloud does in the exquisite framing sequence for The Sculptor. We're also manipulating perspective here. The first panel is from my POV, the second from his, while the rest of the page is back to my viewpoint.

I would like the darks to have more weight in the first two panels. I like clean lines (the clare ligne technique used in Tintin is so delicious), but it doesn't always serve the narrative. Also, it's not really my style, although I certainly lean towards it! I love the iris on panels three and four. While it was intended as just a design device, the iris on the last panel resembles an eye opening shape- a happy accident. The inks on Curt's face in the final panel went someplace strange, so a bit of Photoshop cleanup was in order. I've been considering trying different illustrative programs, as I sometimes find Photoshop limiting for my purposes and my Illustrator chops are very rusty.

I continue to prepare for the MCAD Faculty Biennial, doing digital prints of some pages, cleaning up others, meeting with the new gallery director to go over the plan for the work's exhibition. Fall semester also looms large, so it is indeed the busy season! But new pages continue to present themselves and evolve on my board, sort of a Petri dish of comic art. I have two comics and an illustrated novella in the hopper after this work is completed. Keeping joy, pace and spirit remain crucial.

Tools for this page:

• Canson Bristol board, plain paper slipsheet, masking tape
  
• iPhone for photo reference.
• T-square, triangle, Ames lettering guide
• Tech pencil, Paster 6B pencil, HB Woodless pencil
• Dr. Martin's Black Star Matte Ink
• Blick #6 Round Brush
• Pen nib & holder
• Micron .005, .01, .02, .03, .05, .08, 1.0
• Faber Castell Brush Tip Marker
• Plastic eraser
• Photoshop

Next: Hang on, dear readers, I'm nearly done with this chapter. But as I told one of my readers last week, these things must be done delicately, or you hurt the spell.

Recent reading lists

As you may be aware from my other blog, money is a bit tight at the moment. As such, I'm not really buying comics now, much as I might like to.
But that doesn't mean I'm not reading any!
Here are my recent new reads and a few thoughts:
Secret Invasion

Finally got around to this. I figured I owed it to my students to read it so I could honestly discuss it.
This thing is a mess.
Mind, I love a good superhero slugfest. One of my favorite books of the last decade was the JLA/Avengers crossover.  I mean really. Superman with Cap's shield and Thor's hammer. How many kinds of cool is that?

 

But that worked. The plot was every bit as convoluted as Secret Invasion, but it retained its charm, and most importantly, its characterizations. Secret Invasion was largely about profaning the heroes, for no discernible reason other than to see if they could. Bendis' work on Daredevil, Powers and Alias was engaging on every level, but this is just loud and unpleasant. I'm not sorry I put off reading it for more than a year.

I reiterate: this is a mess.

Pax Romana

There. That feels so much better...

Joanthan Hickman is the cause celebre in comic writing circles these days because of his Fantastic Four death issue, ostensibly also the final issue of the title (yeah, right). I enjoyed his early take on Reed Richards on the run, and his work on the Illuminati cum Alfred Bester "secret history" of SHIELD was quite engaging.
This book, a compilation of the four-issue mini, revolves around the Catholic Church developing time travel and using it to re-imagine and relive history. It's smart, complex, bloody where it needs to be to tell the story, and beautifully rendered by Hickman himself.
My one issue, the thing that led me to shy away from it in the first place, is that the typeset sans serif text is quite dense and a challenge to read in places, just because it's hard on the eyes. But with these innovative and effective layouts and these tightly controlled palettes, it's well worth the effort.
To round out today's trifecta, Charles Burns' X'ed Out.

Created as homage to Herge' and specifically the Tintin adventure The Shooting Star, this slim volume (56 pages!) evokes William Burroughs as much as it does Tintin, with its layered inner journeys that double back on themselves.
Burns never fully settles into the claire ligne' approach of Herge, shifting back to his standards of masterfully controlled darks coupled with unsettling borderline-realistic figures before returning to a simpler line. His disturbed innocent in this one lacks the wide-eyed melodrama of Big Baby, and avoids the noirish crudity of El Borbah. The central character shifting in and out of three identities (or is it three aspects of one identity?) should make empathy with the character elusive. Surprisingly, it doesn't.
The story will be continued in the next volume, The Hive.  The final panel is as much a scene from Naked Lunch, as our hero is guided by a piggish and crude dwarf through a desert city towards a giant hive.
The coloring says Tintin. The imagery says Burroughs. But it's all pure Charles Burns.
I both wish that Burns was more prolific and am relieved that he's not. If we get one book of this caliber a year, it's worth the wait.
Up next in reading adventures: Chicago, operations and a Beagle.