Original Art Sundays No 373: More Inktober

 Well, now that the hectic semester is done and my first Kickstarter goes live soon, I can devote more time to posting art.

FYI, the Kickstarter is a Surrealist Cowgirls 80 Page Giant! 

Here are a few more Inktober pieces from this year.

 Another one for the guitar book- good old Judy Jetson! Done on a backing board. Combination of ink and marker. Fast, loose and fun (the art, not Judy).

My stab at doing The Spirit. Always fond of this character. Eisner's work on this helped shaped my perception of everyday stories being told in comics. Almost all freehand, lots of ink and brush and just a bit of marker.

Oh, I like this one! This is Marie Severin, based on a painting by Johnny Craig. The painting ran in the book Marie Severin- the Mirthful Mistress of Comics. I think Marie's work was sometimes stronger than her brother John's work, and that's saying a lot!

Another one for the guitar book. This was based on a drawing on the inside cover of a Harry Chapin album. Harry's albums often had eloquent illustrations of the lyrics. I could have pushed this farther, but I was happy with where it stopped. Did a quick underdrawing and just went with it, correcting as I went. Lots of Micron markers on this one.

Took a couple stabs at this one. Obvious shot from The Prisoner, a perennial favorite series. It's tricky because of star Patrick McGoohan's almost complete lack of eyebrows! Marker for the mechanical lines only. The rest was nib and brush. The astute observer will note more drybrush at the base of the image.

Thomas Sondegard, artistic director of the MN Orchestra. I haven't gone very much this season, and I do miss it. This was a copy from a promo mailing. I took a couple minor design liberties. This is almost all brush work.

Original Art Sundays (Friday) Nos. 212 - 215: Speedy Recovery, pp. 8 - 11

Finally back! Working so much. New story on the board, a very ambitious 2 or 3 page thing, but I want to finish posting this one first.
When we left our stalwart group, they were planning to go to Runnovia for a gig, playing big band music for royalty.
Read on...

Notes on these pages:

I love the name Runnovia. It's so Rocky and Bullwinkle!

Page 8 (the airport scene) REALLY would have benefitted from more background in the first two panels. I was going for a remote airfield feel, but there's just too much left out for it to fully read. I do like the flying Packard. It was inspired by Harlan Ellison talking about his Packard on the old Anti-Gravity Room series and by the flying sedan Will Eisner used in a couple very early Spirit stories.

Page 9 (the grand ballroom scene) resolves much better. I had real fun inking those arched cathedral ceilings! I don't know enough about architecture to get every detail, so this is pure swipe file stuff.

Page 10 (the lead-in to the next big moment) also resolves nicely, I think. Speedy's kneeling and the reflections in the floor tiles in Panel One are nice touches. I love Speedy's little "not now" out of the corner of his mouth in Panel Two!

I'm not completely happy with the way the vibrations on the valet are rendered, but I wanted it to be less obvious than simply drawing in a ghost image and speed lines between the two of him. After all, if it were blatantly obvious, Speedy would have seen it right away!

Page 11, the cube dropping over the band, is exactly what I wanted it to be. I particularly like Sandy Beaches, the drummer, passed out over her kit. I like rendering transparencies. We learned in commercial art school that those streaky lines indicating glass or plastic just aren't right, but darn if they don't look right in something like this!

I'm stopping there because the next pages start off with a two-age spread, and rather than cobble it together from multiple scans, I want to wait until I can get to the MCAD large format scanner and get a clean scan of the whole thing. I have a mountain of scans I need to take care of, and will make time for it Tuesday or Wednesday of next week, I think. 

For this section of the book, I had a great confidence in the work, and a conviction that I really controlled my storytelling. That held for most of the rest of the book (posted soon), and was very satisfying. I look back at this whenever I lose confidence in craft. While there are always things that can be improved, looking at your strengths can help you through rough patches, even if they come from 16 years ago!

Next: more Speedy Recovery.

Happy Birthday, Will Eisner!

Just a very quick post.
If you don't know who Will Eisner was, you're reading the wrong blog.
Suffice to say that comics would not be what they are today without him.
Instead of going into some long elaborate theoretical diatribe, as is my way, I'll let today's Google search logo do my talking for me!

The First Five

Over at Flashback Universe, there was a post listing the first five comics the writer ever read.
To paraphrase Vaughn Bode', like Diana thinks, she does.
While Emo Phillips' comment on repeating the fourth grade- I couldn't do it exactly- applies, here are the first five comics I remember reading.
1. Mr. Ed

While this is probably not the first comic I ever read, it's the earliest one I remember. I associate it with a trauma. One blistering cold winter's day, my older sister and I were waiting for the school bus. I was in either Kindergarten of first grade. A gust of wind tore the comic from my hands and sent it blowing across the snow-covered field next to the bus stop. Devastated, I desperately wanted to run after it, but my older sister, always practical, refused to let me.
Little did I know at the time that the artist, Russ Manning, would have a profound influence on my life and work. His clean lines and sleek anatomy in his Tarzan and Magnus, Robot Fighter comics, to say nothing of The Aliens, his thoughtful backup strip, gave me an idea of what drawing could really do.
2. Atlantis, the Lost Continent

Again, probably not one of the first, but it sticks in my mind. Since it was contemporary to the film, I must have read it in 1961, at the age of 6 or 7. The film upon which it's based is a lesser work of George Pal, best known for The Time Machine.
There was one panel in which Princess Antilla, frustrated with the cowardice of a suitor, proclaims, "Now he takes orders from a Warlord!" My younger sister and I were fascinated with this line, and turned it into a song.
3. Batman 156: Robin Dies At Dawn

June 1963. Again more of an impact than a "true first", especially in light of recognizing the cover, but not recalling the story, of  this slightly earlier issue.

But Batman 156 contains a pivotal story in many ways. Surreal extraterrestrial landscapes, raw emotion bordering on pathos, the great Pieta cover,  and an ending involving a man coming to terms with his own fears, albeit in a trite 1962 kinda way.
4. Superman Annual No. 2

The early work of Curt Swan, reprinted here, was another exceptional influence on my artistic development. To this day, I regard Swan's Superman as definitive. The cover that stands out more in my mind is one from several years later, that of Superman Annual No. 7.

The lower left story, the dream in which Superman becomes President (only natural born Americans can be President, remember?), bring to mind another Superman story that had a deep emotional resonance: Superman's Mission for President Kennedy. Begun before Kennedy's death, the story was published posthumously and featured an added splash page that still makes me choke up a bit.

5. (tie) Justice League no. 34 and The Spirit No. 1
Since this issue of Justice League of America came out when I was 11, I already had a burgeoning comic collection by then.
My neighbor Patsy spent a dollar and bought me 8 new comics as a Christmas present. Money was incredibly tight in our household, and new comics were treasures, so opening the present and seeing this on top of the stack was a real treat.

Finally, this one.

There was this used furniture store in my old home town of Cohasset, Swelland's Used Furniture. The gent who ran the place (Mr. Swelland, of course) sold old comic books for a nickel each. Many of us built up our collections there.
One day he had this as a coverless book. Despite its not having a cover, I took  a chance on it. I didn't see the cover above till just a few years ago, when I got a copy signed by Will Eisner (with issue no. 2, also signed!) dirt cheap on Ebay.
Somehow, I still have the coverless issue to this day.
This was my first exposure to the work of Will Eisner. I had no idea what it was, who he was, or how much he meant to my chosen art form, but I knew I wanted more. I would not see any more Eisner work till I encountered the Kitchen Sink undergrounds at the Madison Book Co-op during my first year of film school, circa 1975 or '76. If I can dig up my copy, I'll post a scan of the full wraparound cover later. For now, here's the front.

The Harvey Spirit was my first exposure to Gerhard Schnobble, a Capra-esque 8-pager about a nebbish who forgets he can fly.

It also contained the classic "Ten Minutes", the story of a kid named Freddie whose life is going nowhere and who snaps as a result of a pinball game. Here, Freddy is trying to hide the fact that he's just killed the owner of the corner drug store.

This story also contains a classic panel of little kids ogling the new comics, in which one of the kids utters the classic line, "wow! Look at the true horror romances!"
In addition to the populist perspective, burgeoning in comics at this time in Infantino's revitalized Batman (often completely at odds with the TV series) and the early Silver Age Marvels, this coverless book redefined the possibilities of comics for my hungry young mind.
If I ever fulfill one of my dreams and win an Eisner award for my scholarly work in comics, I'm going to mount the coverless Harvey Spirit No. 1 right next to it.

That's The Spirit!

As I prepare to teach comics history again, I am mindful that today is the 70th Anniversary of the first public appearance of Will Eisner's The Spirit!
So much has already been said about this work. The years of study, the experimentation, the discovery of the work and the young minds that discovery opened. For me, it was the Harvey Spirit #1, which I bought coverless for a nickel at the used furniture store in my small hometown. This is what I saw that fateful day!

More than a decade later, while I was in film school at UW-Madison, I was shopping at the Book Co-op (A book co-op! What a great time to live in a great town!) and I saw the Kitchen Sink Spirit # 1 and 2 on their underground comic rack.

Then the Warren magazines started coming out, and I started to get it. There was a vast array of comics history and art about which I knew nothing!

Over the decades, other publishers reprinted the work. Denis Kitchen worked with Eisner to get new work in print, including A Contract With God, which allowed so many new possibilities for comics creation and marketing.
Of course, we endured the awful Frank Miller film. The less said about it the better.
And the whole Eisner run  is now available in hardcovers- 26 of them at $50 - 60 a pop. But they're out there!
DC is currently revamping the character yet again. I have mixed feelings about this one. The Spirit shouldn't swear. All that deeply anguished noir stuff just isn't Denny Colt. But there was a black and white Spirit story by Harlan Ellison in the last issue that was well worth the price of admission!

I don't know which is worse, anguish or sass. Both are just a bit, well, off for this character, and more than a bit annoying.
Flawed as it was, I rather like the 80s Spirit TV movie. It's kind of like Rockford Files with a mask, but Eisner did have a hand in its production, and aside from the wooden acting of Sam Jones, who also played Flash Gordon in the 80s film, it has a good look and at least a measure of respect for its source material.

Warm holidays to all!

Here we are at Christmas again. Much snow here, very quiet out in the so-called real world. Looking forward to finishing a couple little last-minute things prior to a drive North tomorrow for a slightly belated family holiday. I also plan on spending at least part of the day quietly enjoying a comic book or three. Been re-reading Bone of late, and enjoying it immensely.
Thinking of families and comics brings this image to mind:

This is a lovely prelim sketch of the comic book family of 'Mazing Man, one of my favorite superheroes. Much like The Spirit, 'Maze, as he is affectionately known, is a powerless superhero whose adventures are largely concerned with more mundane, populist matters- helping people change flat tires, watching out for the neighbors, and so it goes.

Unlike the Spirit, 'Maze is sort of nuts. But in a harmless, helpful way, not like the mania of The Badger, a comic that has a more cynical edge.

Therein lies the difference. 'Mazing Man is about hope and joy.

What better metaphor for the best of Christmas?

Frank Miller owes me two hours

I just finished watching The Spirit courtesy of Netflix.
I'm trying to work up the vitriol to be disappointed.
Oh, I was told what to expect. But this was so much worse. A mish-mash of styles, dialogue that suits none of the characters, a plot so full of holes you could fill Wildwood Cemetery with them, and visuals that lack energy.
Oh, people have commented at length about how visually striking this film is, but it doesn't work for me. It's just a sorry pastiche of Kill Bill and Sin City.
Miller was once capable of great innovation. Now he's a parody of himself, creating implausible cities in which all the women are gorgeous in a sleazy way, all the men are gruff and nobody seems to actually like each other very much. The whole thing was a bizarre nightmare vision of Sin City recast as a camp 60s TV show.
Lest you think me an uninformed grouch, unaware of the nuances of Noir, I would point you to this article.
Eisner deserves better, especially from a freind, and he and Miller were friends.
The Spirit is a pragmatic man involved in Capra-esque morality plays. while these times may seem at odds with such an outlook and such a hero (decades ago, James Garner seemed to me to be an ideal choice to play the Spirit), I suspect that the moral compass of the country is swinging to a sort of pragmatic optimism. The Spirit would fit right in, given the chance.
This page from a Paul Chadwick Spirit story shows that it's possible to be realistic and still maintain a character's inherent humanity and decency, traits that seem to have eluded Miller in this outing.
It's just a darn shame that Frank Miller let his ego interfere with his reverence for the character.
Miller's failure to create a substantial work out of an iconic comic character will in no way help public perception of comics as worthy.