Draw #17 by TwoMorrows Publishing

NUMBER 17 SPRING 2009

THE PROFESSIONAL “HOW-TO” MAGAZINE ON COMICS AND CARTOONING

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SCOTT PILGRIM’S

BRYAN LEE O’MALLEY INTERVIEW & DEMO

HOW

GUY DAVIS

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WORKS ON B.P.R.D.

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SPRING 2009

CONTENTS

VOL. 1, NO. 17 Editor-in Chief • Michael Manley Designer • Eric Nolen-Weathington Publisher • John Morrow Logo Design • John Costanza Proofreader • Eric Nolen-Weathington Transcription • Steven Tice Front Cover Illustration • Bryan Lee O’Malley

DRAW! Spring 2009, Vol. 1, No. 17 was produced by Action Planet, Inc. and published by TwoMorrows Publishing. Michael Manley, Editor, John Morrow, Publisher. Editorial Address is P.O. Box 2129, Upper Darby, PA 19082. Subscription Address: TwoMorrows Publishing, 10407 Bedfordtown Dr., Raleigh, NC 27614. DRAW! and its logo are trademarks of Action Planet, Inc. All contributions herein are copyright 2009 by their respective contributors. Action Planet, Inc. and TwoMorrows Publishing accept no responsibility for unsolicited submissions. All artwork herein is copyright the year of production, its creator (if work-for-hire, the entity which contracted said artwork); the characters featured in said artwork are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners; and said artwork or other trademarked material is printed in these pages with the consent of the copyright holder and/or for journalistic, educational and historical purposes with no infringement intended or implied. Envy Adams, Lost at Sea, Scott Pilgrim, and all related characters ™ and ©2009 Scott Pilgrim • B.P.R.D., Hellboy and all related characters ™ and ©2009 Mike Mignola • Red Raja ™ and ©2009 Guy Davis • Metropol ™ and ©2009 Ted McKeever • Batgirl, Batman, Dr. Sivana, Mary Marvel, Supergirl ™ and ©2009 DC Comics • Captain America, Daredevil, Nova, Silver Surfer, Spider-Man, The Thing, Wolverine, X-Men ™ and ©2009 Marvel Characters, Inc. • Flash Gordon, Johnny Hazard, Secret Agent X-9 ™ and ©2009 King Features Syndicate, Inc. • Conan ™ and ©2009 Conan Properties International, LLC • Tarzan ™ and ©2009 ERB, Inc. • Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser ™ and ©2009 Fritz Leiber • Pan’s Labyrinth ™ and ©2009 Picturehouse • This entire issue is © 2009 Action Planet, Inc. and TwoMorrows Publishing and may not be reprinted or retransmitted without written permission of the copyright holders. ISSN 1932-6882. Printed in Canada. FIRST PRINTING.

The Super-Awesome BRYAN LEE O’MALLEY Interview!!! Interview with the creator of Scott Pilgrim

GUY DAVIS Marquis of the Macabre

The Super-Awesome BRYAN LEE O’MALLEY Gallery

COMIC ART BOOTCAMP

Interview with the artist of B.P.R.D.

Full color gallery

“Breaking Down the Masters” by Mike Manley

FROM THE EDITOR pring has sprung here at DRAW! central, and life renews itself all round us. I have visited several museums recently and renewed my spirit in the waters of many great artists, from the Wyeths to Cézanne. I encourage every reader to do the same, to get out and explore the art world beyond the panel borders of our four-color medium of comics. Take in the local galleries in your city or town and visit the art museums to study, learn, love, and be inspired. I always feel so charged up when I come back from the Brandywine River Museum in Chadds Ford, PA, just a 30-minute drive from my home. It’s the museum and home of the Wyeth family collection of art featuring the entire Wyeth clan— NC Wyeth, Andrew Wyeth, and Jamie Wyeth—as well as many important illustrators such as Howard Pyle.

Figurative interpretation by Bret Blevins

Many of the formal elements I talk about in analyzing the art of the great cartoonists in my Bootcamp article this issue are the same elements you see in all great art, and seeing how great artists use, bend, twist and sculpt these principles to their will is both a learning experience and sometimes just what the doctor ordered for the slagging artist. We can also see how comics as a medium is connected directly back through the work of each proceeding generation to the great illustrators and the great masters of fine art as well. I’d like the thank Eisner Award-nominee (for “Best Penciler/Inker” for B.P.R.D.) Guy Davis for his time and inviting us into his studio to talk about his work, as well as Philadelphia brother Jamar Nicholas for his great interview with Eisner Award-winner, Brian Lee O’Malley. A hearty shout out as always to my publisher John Morrow and my man of action-scripts and page layouts Eric (Modern Masters) Nolen-Weathington for making this issue look so good. Now get out there and DRAW! something!

Mike Manley, editor

E-mail: mike@drawmagazine.com Website: www.drawmagazine.com Snail mail: PO Box 2129, Upper Darby, PA 19082 DRAW! • SPRING 2009

THE SUPER-AWESOME BRYAN LEE O’MALLEY INTERVIEW FOR WORLD SUPREMACY!!!

Interview conducted by Jamar Nicholas and transcribed by Steven Tice

ith the latest graphic novel of his hit series, Scott Pilgrim, selling out, and a film underway of said character in Hollywood featuring all the rock ’n’ roll, 20-something slacker lifestyles, and super-ex-boyfriends it’s known for, it seems the world is going BRYAN LEE O’MALLEY’s way.

JAMAR NICHOLAS: What kind of material were you reading as a kid? What influenced you? BRYAN LEE O’MALLEY: As a kid I was really into Calvin & Hobbes. I always tell the story of how I got into comic books because we didn’t have cable, so I couldn’t watch Transformers, and I discovered the Marvel Comics version and the rest is history. I was really into Marvel comics through my youth, then jumped to Image when that happened, and eventually got disillusioned with that stuff in the mid’90s and got really into manga and anime. From there I branched out to a lot of different stuff. Jeff Smith’s Bone and Zander Cannon’s Replacement God were a really big help in that department. The other thing was video games—I was always pretty deeply into them when I was younger, and that probably helped the Japanese aesthetic creep into my system.. JN: How old are you? You’re under 30, if I’m not mistaken. BLO: Yeah, I’m turning 28 in February. JN: Wow, man. That’s pretty neat. You seem to be really far ahead in your career at a young age. BLO: I think I just got lucky, hit at the right time. JN: Tell us a little bit about your background. Where were you born? Do you have siblings? Is anyone else in your family artistically inclined?

electric guitar, painting, bookmaking and stuff. We used to play music together, but now I live pretty far away from them. My dad is French-Canadian and my mom immigrated from Korea when she went to college, which is where they met. JN: All of you are creatives—you don’t see that a lot. BLO: Uhh... yeah. They’re both collegeaged, so I can’t really tell you what they “do” yet. JN: Were your folks artistic? BLO: Yeah, my parents always encouraged that stuff. My dad used to paint a lot and he likes to sing. My mom isn’t too artistic. When she was in teacher’s college I remember she had to create a children’s book for a project, and she got my dad to draw it for her. JN: Did you want to be an artist when you were young, or was there something else? BLO: Nah, I always wanted to draw. There was a brief, pretentious period, maybe in senior year of high school, where I wanted to be a writer, but I gave up on that pretty quickly, probably because I couldn’t stop doodling in class. JN: Was your family supportive of your art?

BLO: Yeah, you know, they kept all the little scraps of paper I ever drew on, which is kind of impressive. They recently brought all that stuff BLO: I’ve lived my whole life in Canada and I was born out to my house so it wouldn’t be cluttering up in London, Ontario. I have a younger brother and sister, theirs anymore, which is nice both of whom seem like they’re going to become teachand also kind of overwhelmers at this point, but they’re still in school. They’re ing. And annoying. Anyway, at both musically inclined and my sister, Stacey, most there were gentle prodalways did a lot of painting and stuff, but I guess dings from my parents to get a real they’re not “going pro” with it or anything. My job, to finish college, to have a backbrother (the youngest) Eddy is a great up plan, etc., but I didn’t feel like wastdrummer and has taught drums to kids Bryan’s somewhat mod take on Batgirl. ing my time on a backup plan. BATGIRL ™ AND ©2009 DC COMICS since high school. My sister dabbles in

DRAW! • SPRING 2009

JN: Did you go to art school? If so, where and what kind of experience was it for you? BLO: I didn’t go to art school. I went to university for Film Studies, which I thought might be applicable to my studies of comics, but it didn’t really pan out for me. I couldn’t stop doodling in class, so I failed all my tests, and I wasn’t interested in the college social life, so eventually I left. The way I look at it is, I gave up on everything else except drawing comics. I’ve been drawing comics since I was a really little kid. I always finagled it so I could do comics for projects in school, instead of whatever. I remember filling an entire notebook with a long fairy-tale comic in third grade, and I was still substituting weird art-comics for film projects in university. But I was a bad student in university, and I dropped out after less than two years. I actually quit after my first year, then I tried again a year later and only lasted three months or so. JN: How was your family about that? Did they support that? BLO: They’ve always been supportive. After I dropped out the second time, I told them I was going to California to hang out with my comics-making friends, and they were okay with that, too. I stayed there for about six months in 2001 working on

Last Shot and some Udon stuff. JN: Seems like you were spared the “you'll be eating dinner out of the dumpster,” hard-luck horror tales that most families have in those situations. BLO: Yeah, I had a good family to help me out along the way. They helped out with the tuition and stuff even though I dropped out, and I tried not to lean on them much during my starving-wannabe-comic-artist years.

BREAKING IN JN: So when did you officially start doing comics work? 2001? BLO: Yeah, I lettered Last Shot, which came out through Image, and I did some mostly-uncredited ghost work for Udon, and then I got introduced to the Oni Press guys and started working my way up. JN: You were lettering at Oni too, right? BLO: Yeah, I still am! I’m lettering Local. I think that’s the last one, though. Brian Wood asked for me and Hope [Larson] to do DRAW! • SPRING 2009

GUY DAVIS

Marquis of the Macabre

DRAW! • SPRING 2009

Interview conducted by Mike Manley and transcribed by Steven Tice DRAW!: What are you working on today? GUY DAVIS: Today I’m inking the first issue of the new B.P.R.D. storyline, “The Garden of Souls” and it’s turning out to be my favorite B.P.R.D. series to work on yet—but then I always say that with each new storyline. DRAW!: Tell us a bit about growing up and how you became interested in drawing comics for a living. GD: I guess I was always scribbling and drawing when I was young. My father did painting and sculpture as a hobby so I grew up with artwork being done around me, and my parents were always very encouraging and supportive of me drawing all the time. When I graduated in ’84 I wasn’t really sure of what I wanted to do with myself—just that I wanted to do something with my artwork. I thought about looking into storyboard work or film design, but around that time I started working on a local fanzine (Fantastic Fanzine) and they became Arrow Comics which led to my first job penciling a fantasy comic called “The Realm.” So I just sort of fell into drawing comics, and each company and project sort of opened doors for another and I kept at it for 20 years now professionally. DRAW!: Did you go to college or have art training or art-related jobs before comics? GD: No, there was no outside schooling or art-related jobs before I started doing comic work. I’m pretty much self-taught; the only art classes I had were in high school and they were all useless. I learned the most just by jumping into doing comics from start to finish and then learning by seeing my mistakes glaring back at me in print. DRAW!: Our mutual buddy—and your writer on B.P.R.D.— John Arcudi, tells me you are a really fast artist, churning out several pages a day. Is this true? I know maybe you won’t want to really truthfully answer, as an editor might be reading this interview. [laughs] GD: John’s a great guy (and writer), but I can’t really churn out seven finished pages a day. I can pencil comfortably four pages a day and in a pinch anywhere from six to eight, but I pencil for myself, so it’s loose work. Inking takes me longer and I like to try to do at least two finished inked pages a day, more if deadlines are knocking. But these are on separate days, not all in one! Penciling one day, inks the next.

I’m sure there are a lot of faster artists out there—and I'm in no race. I just try to get done what has to be done for deadlines. I actually have slowed down a bit, but I can’t spend too long on a page or I feel the art gets stiff or overworked if you know what I mean. DRAW!: So what B.P.R.D. are you doing right now? GD: Right now I’m working on The Black Goddess. I’m finishing that up, which is the one that starts this month, so I had a pretty good lead-time on it. This starts next week, actually. This week was the first of The Wild Hunt #2. I did a back-up in that, which Mike wrote. And then I’m doing two other back-ups in issues #3 and #4. DRAW!: And that’s for the Hellboy miniseries that Mike’s drawing now? GD: No, it’s for the Hellboy that Duncan’s drawing, The Wild Hunt. DRAW!: Duncan Fegredo. The first issue of that miniseries is coming out, so, since we’re conducting this in January, it will be out in January. GD: Yeah, that’s coming out on the 14th, so I guess you want me to mention what I’m working on; it would be finishing up Black Goddess. DRAW!: I’d like to talk more specifically about your working methods. You pencil, obviously, more pages in a day than you ink. I was just wondering if, when you did that, if you tried to break it down, like, “I’ll do this sequence this day,” or, “I’ll do this sequence or section this day”? GD: Yeah. Y’know, I always jump around when I pencil, and when I ink. In laying out that I do it in the order of pages. I mean, if I take too much time at the beginning, it’s going to look rushed at the end if I’m running out of time, whereas, if I start or end with the middle, or this or that, it sort of all mixes

DRAW! • SPRING 2009

together when it’s finished. I actually don’t sit down and say, “Okay, this I’ll pencil.” A lot of times it’s just whatever page I seem inspired by to draw. Like, “Oh, today I feel like drawing apes, so I’ll draw a couple of ape pages,” or, “I’m getting behind, so where’s Johann? He’s easy. I’ll do him real quick.” DRAW!: Do you do this because John is giving you a full script, or is it Marvel style where it’s a plot, and you go through and break the whole book down as little thumbnails, and then jump through to doing pen or pencils? How do you go about breaking that down?

GD: Thumbnails first. Whether it’s a plot or a script, I work the same way. I go through John’s script and read it through once, and then the second time I read it through I’ll make really small scribbles for me saying this is what I’m seeing as far as the breakdown in my head for this page. And then I go on to the cheap, lined notebook paper and basically pace out the pages based on the script. “This is where parallel would be horizontal, Abe will be on this side, Johann’s on that side, and we need this much room for dialogue.” It’s really rough, because a lot of times, when I actually get to the actual page, and the dimensions are different than the little squares I was just scribbling out, I’ll rework things. DRAW!: Oh, because the proportion of your design then changes from your initial— GD: Yeah. DRAW!: So you read through the script, and then you do quick, little thumbnail notations on the script that you later take to another stage—or do you go right to the full page? GD: No, I take it to the second stage. The first scribbles are just, like, for the second read-through. The first read-through is sort of like feeling out what’s going on in the story, just reading it for the enjoyment, and the second read-through is visualizing in my head what each page should look like, and that is when I make the quick, like.... I mean, these are, like, one-inch high doodles, just saying, “Okay, three horizontal panels. This page needs to be broken into ending on this page and beginning on the next page.” And then from there I go on to the lined paper, the notebook paper, with thumbnails that show just, like—I mean, they’re crude. It’s stick figures and scribbles. I put notations above everybody’s heads. The scribble with the A above his head is Abe and things like that.

DRAW! • SPRING 2009

DRAW!: So would I be correct in saying this is almost like a beat breakdown of the

DRAW! • SPRING 2009

THE SUPER-AWESOME

BRYAN LEE O’MALLEY ART GALLERY!!!

DRAW! • FALL 2008

DRAW! • SPRING 2009

BREAKING DOWN THE MASTERS elcome to another installment of “Comic Art Bootcamp.” In this visit to our basic training camp we are going to study the work of some Master Cartoonists to analyze formal aspects and fundamentals of their approach to the art and craft of cartooning to see where they have commonalties and differences in the way they approach their work. The hope and purpose of this exercise is that we will begin to be able to take apart the work of these great cartoonists, find out why what these artists have done works, and learn how to take what they do and add it to our work to make it better. This is something I did as a young artist, though not in as clear and cut a fashion at times. Several years ago I read an interview with Jack Kirby, the Godfather of comics, These Kirby layouts were done for other artists to finish. Here we have (left) a page of the and in that interview one thing he said real“Captain America” story from Tales of Suspense #70, done for George Tuska, and (above) a ly, really stood out to me. He said, “One page from Daredevil #13, done for John Romita. man can be a school for another.” What a great and true statement; it rang so true to me as a young cartoonist, as I was always studying other cartoon- hunting in the old comic shops, used bookstores, and libraries around Ann Arbor, where I grew up, in search of any kind of ists, like one would study subjects like math or English for book with info on how to be a better artist, drawing lessons, etc. school. I was very serious about it; I really tried to pick apart the As I began to very seriously study artists, I came to see how work of the artists I admired—my “art heroes,” as it were. They they fell into very clear camps or styles, and how one artist were really my main education, along with any good book on used the same sort of way of drawing or inking, etc., or was cartooning or drawing I could find, such as the long out of print clearly influenced by another, though I had never thought to put books on drawing by Andrew Loomis. I had no real art teachers it in such a succinct and crystal clear statement as Kirby’s. For to teach me anything about comics or even figure drawing, so it was the self-study course of hard knocks. I spent a lot of my time instance, it was very evident to see how the artists working at

DRAW! • SPRING 2009

By Mike Manley

Marvel all worked in a way that tried to emulate the energy that Kirby had in his work, the clear staging and dynamic acting and figure work. One would never confuse Gene Colan’s work or Gil Kane’s or John Buscema’s for that of Kirby, but you can clearly see that they were also sort of speaking the same language. I think Buscema spoke the closest to Kirby’s voice, though with much more naturalistic drawing, and he was coached by Stan Lee to do so. In fact, he worked over Kirby’s layouts in his early return to Marvel in the ’60s. In this article I have picked artists I really admire and in some cases continue to learn from to this day. Comics, like any popular art form, is not immune from the fashion of the day, the flashy current style or new wave of what’s hot. In the ’90s it was the Image style which came in and in many places unseated the styles of drawing and storytelling which had been standard since the ’50s and Marvel’s rise to popularity in the ’60s. As a commercial artist it’s impossible to totally ignore the waves in the pool. You have to navigate the choppy commercial waters. The danger is that one can lose one’s sense of direction and base, then you operate in the fickle current, pulled along chasing this way or that. The result is usually an art disaster and burn-out for most—or worse, that uncertainty of how to do the job, how to proceed. As a young cartoonist I had to navigate these choppy waters and often chased and grasped at false things in my quest to be a professional and earn my way—make my bones, as they say. But I always came back at the end of the day to the artists I admired, as they seemed to be able to tackle every problem. And then there were a handful of new artists coming up, contemporaries who also seemed to be drawing from these same root sources. My hope is that you will be able to use this article as a way to start your own quest of discovery of the roots and fundamentals in your work and the work of the artists you admire and study, using them as Kirby stated, as a school for your own education.

DRAW! • SPRING 2009

The X-Men panels (left) done for issue #12, were finished by Werner Roth from Kirby’s layouts. The X-Men #17 page (below) shows Kirby’s layouts, Alex Toth’s finished pencils, and Vince Colleta’s inks. Toth was unhappy with this process, as he felt that he and Kirby were incompatible.

ALEX TOTH AND FRANK ROBBINS Alex Toth and Frank Robbins were both cartoonists from the Golden and Silver Age of comics and comic strips. In fact, I wouldn’t really call Robbins a comic book artist, though he did do a lot of comics in the ’70s, co-creating Man-Bat, writing some great Batman comics, doing a stint on The Shadow at DC, and then doing books like Captain America and The Invaders at Marvel, where I first became aware of his work as a kid. Robbins was one of the all-time great comic strip artists, both writing and drawing (as well as lettering) his Johnny Hazard comic strip from 1944-1973. His previous stint was on

the strip, Scorchy Smith, originally drawn by Noel Sickles, the long-time friend and one-time partner of Milton Caniff. Sickles and Caniff were major influences on both Robbins and Toth, with Sickles being an especial influence on Toth. In the two examples I have chosen, you can see both artists employing the heavy chiaroscuro (Italian for light-dark) brush style of heavy blacks with little rendering or middle value drawing. Both artists here used mostly a brush, with the pen reserved for the contour and smaller details. The idea was to sort of emulate the way of seeing things you’d get in a high contrast photoDRAW! • SPRING 2009

This pin-up of Supergirl was done in the closed contour style. I wanted the line to swoop and curve around the forms and keep the feeling sexy and sculptural. The contour is only slightly enhanced around her hips and back to give the feeling of flesh.

DRAW! • SPRING 2009

Though this drawing is very cartoony, I kept the line weights fairly thin, but I really pushed the sculptural contours to describe the forms. This drawing was inked with a No. 3 brush.

My hope is that this article will fire you up and springboard your own ability to clinically look at the work of your art heroes, and to discover, through a close analysis of their work, keys in how to make your own work better and in doing so be better able to appreciate their art and the world of art beyond comics on a deeper level. Till next time, Mike

DRAW! • SPRING 2009