Hey there sports fans, Al here with the latest:
Here is a question that's not ever really asked by friends or family why are Comic Book Characters fun to work on?
In all the years that I’ve been working on comic books and comic illustration for the last probably 43 years (plus or whatever) I have to actually ask this question what is it about trying to illustrate comic book characters why do you I keep being drawn back into literally illustrating characters jumping around from panel to panel?
Why is that?
I guess from an early age when I started getting into comic books I was watching lots of science-fiction movies that were being re-run on TV. I was 7 or 8 years old at the time and I just loved everything that was science fiction and oriented stuff that was fantasy-oriented. When I couldn’t watch that stuff on TV because my parents were watching the news or some boring shit like that on the political system that was going on at the time in the 70s, I found myself getting drawn into comic books I was reading. The stories that were being told of other places in the world. And in my young mind, they were as real as anything. These fantasy tales telling stories of a man being turned into a swamp creature by a massively nasty accident in the Swamp Thing OR some kind of a future where you had typically a barbarian in the form of Killraven fighting Martians in a title called "War of the Worlds" which was vastly different from the Classics Illustrated comic I had already read about. In that book that story took place in England in the Late 19th Century or the movie I’d seen from 1953 on TV but also had the same title which took me a while to reconcile all the things that were going on in these particular stories and characters.
The more I got into science fiction the more I wanted to illustrate those particular stories with those characters, those plots. I loved everything about it.
When I first saw and read the Fantastic Four I began to really got into this reprint of and thought the Human Torch was an interesting character, I was not understanding how they got their powers or what, but I will tell you though as I looked at flaming being on fire The Human Torch as illustrated by Jack Kirby for me, was fantastic.
If these guys could make an exciting and compelling story why couldn't I?
I realized when I started putting pencil to paper that I was gonna have to do some studying of the art form so I started with a small cheap light table and start tracing images from comic books and characters that I liked. This was around the time when I start picking up the X-Men back in 1980 with issue #129. I was just enthralled with the way John Byrne had drawn these characters. I just kind of copied stuff like that. I had also found reprints of John Buscema's work in Fantasy Masterpieces.
I had a little bit of cash and started buying art books to emulate other illustrations from magazines and comics with their several different types of characters. I liked the exciting positioning of these characters on the page and I, in turn, started making a visual list of characters I could draw from not unlike the way Wally Wood had 22 panels for drawing comics. Making my own comics with recognizable characters with my own story.
What a novel idea?
As time continued to move forward so did my thirst for more storytellers - then enter Frank Miller.
Miller was completely different from John Byrne (whom I revered as a God at the time). Miller had a dynamic drawing style that stayed with the character and was not focused on the background. The mood was always set with Miller. His depiction of fighting with Daredevil VS the Hand was amazing! It wasn’t until Miller’s move over to DC and doing his independent story, "Ronin", that I realize something had changed in the comic book industry and I wanted to be part of that.
His style had also changed drastically with almost a Heavy Metal feel to it.
With Miller, I began to follow him and figure out what and how he does it. When "Sin City" came out and I was hooked! I was also branching out into other illustrators like John Bolton from The UK. Then came David Lloyd and Alan Moore on Warrior Magazine -a British import at the time with their “V for Vendetta”.
The black and white illustration was so good at that time. Such a great amount of art to choose from.
And then there is also Gene Day's work on "Master of Kung-Fu". That title alone was amazing. My oldest friend had a copy of that title that featured Paul Gulacy. His work had completely mesmerized me. I constantly kept going back and re-reading it. To the point that the cover eventually came off. Kinda feel bad about that. It was no wonder that when I met him at a show that I was completely tongue-tied.
But it showed the power of a story that took me years to understand. Eventually, I would understand how it all worked. With Gulacy's work.
it was all in set up of panels to show a passage of time in the past and leading up to the current setting depicting Shang-Chi being hurt by the enemy agent known as Shockwave. All of the stuff that led up to that particular point by interspersing the story with panels that showed the past as well as the present. Man, it was a head-trip it took me years to figure out how that worked but when I finally did, WOW.
It was almost a Twilight Zone-like episode starting at the end of the story. And it was done masterfully by Gulacy. Gene Day had in fact improved upon the whole panel layout, to begin with, you having a character walk-through in the entire two-page spread walking up a pair of stairs up and down with things and action taking place as well as the character’s introspection in the writing by Doug Moench. I think the culmination of the entire run was the best in the two issues of issues 114 and 115 when Shang- Chi was confronting a free agent named Death Dealer.
All of this surrounding and astounding artwork made me work hard.
So my natural talent of illustration really took centerstage though it took me a while to refine what I needed to know, anatomy - studying books. Learning the ins and outs of perspective which I still have trouble with to this day but it’s secondary to tell in the actual story and that is something I think some writers tend to forget about you need to keep the story moving. That’s what made it fun for me.
Corpse Cop is the latest of a long run of books I’ve been working on. He’s a fun character to work on and is visually he’s interesting. I’m trying to incorporate everything I’ve learned over the last 40+ years to make something worthwhile picking up. In the current comic books that I have read, I don’t need them to be focused on current politics or world situations of civil unrest. I don’t need to be focused on anything else that is relevant to today. Comics are in an escape from all of that. And that’s what I’m trying to do, make something fun to look at and just take a step back from the reality and of everyday life and put yourself in something someplace else.
Most of all - share the love.
And I am outta here.