Dr. Spidey and My Own Mr. Hyde!

This time out, it's another Marvel sample I submitted circa 2002 to see if I could land some mainstream superhero work. Although highly regarded in some circles for my parody, science fiction, and even smutty underground work, I never broke into the mainstream or "straight" superhero ranks, where all the money in comics was to be found. Instead, I remained on the periphery with goofier or offbeat assignments like DC's Wasteland, Marvel's Open Space, or oddball Flash stories. (I did have my chances, early on: Mike Gold wanted me to ink First Comics' Whisper, and Dan Mishkin and Gary Cohn wanted me on Blue Devil after Parris Cullens' departure, but the timing wasn't right in either case).

 

These samples are unusual in that they are pencil only; I usual went after jobs as both penciler and inker, and with the Exiles. Also, I followed a garden-variety plot posted online at the time involving Spider-Man and a villain I never heard of: Mr. Hyde. I never heard of the villain and it never occurred to me to look him up online, so I designed my own villain. That's probably only one of many reasons the submission got me no work. But it is a better example of tight pencils than a Dr. Fate sample I made some years earlier.
As with most of my samples from this era, and judging from them, it's no loss to the world of art and letters that they didn't yield me the assignment desired, or any assignment. (Usually, the work from Marvel, DC, Mirage Studios, Image Comics, and even Fantagraphics resulted from them asking me, not the other way around). But I'd like to think if I had gotten past the gatekeepers and actually drawn a strip like Spider-Man, I would have done a pretty good job on the real thing. For whatever reason, hypothetical samples never brought out the best in me.
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"Chances Are the Chances Are": Munden's Bar from Grimjack #63

These are some low-res scans of pages and the preliminary rough sketches (done at full size, which I traced on a light table onto the Bristol board) for a story I did in Grimjack #63 (First Comics, October 1989). This was after working with John Ostrander and Del Close on Wasteland for DC Comics, so maybe it was felt I was ready for a Munden's Bar back-up feature.

I don't have a very clear recollection of the sequence of events, but early in my career (1985) I moved to central Wisconsin and stayed at Kitchen Sink Press, publisher of Megaton Man for a year. This meant that I was close(r) to Chicago, and frequently attended Chicago Mini-Cons and the big annual show. I recall visiting John Ostrander's home with Bill Loebs on one occasion, I think before I was hired to be on of four artists on the Wasteland anthology. I also met editor Mike Gold, who I think edited both Grimjack and Wasteland at one time or another. But again, I'm not too clear on how this happened to unfold.

 

One noteworthy thing about this story is that I chose to draw it using markers--probably Pilot pens or the equivalent--a technique Gil Kane was known for. This was a departure from my usual pen/brush and India ink approach, which is more archival. As expected, the markers have faded and discolored over the years, and I haven't used markers on Bristol board since (although I have inked roughs using tracing paper with Pilots, et al, to good effect). I still prefer the classic India ink approach, although a number of things (like patches made with Avery labels, and dot screens) have not aged well.

Cartooning is an ephemeral art, and a commercial art; it will be up to the archivists and preservationists to sort all out. I did like the freedom pens offered; it was a freer drawing process, not having to dip a brush or quill every couple minutes, or wait for the India ink to dry.

I don't have complete scans of the originals or roughs, and all of these images are culled from the internet (I sold the art years ago and no longer even have a copy of Grimjack #63), so the quality here is not the best. But I still have fans bringing these up to me at shows to autograph, which I'm only too happy to do. It was one of my more thorough freelance jobs--I was learning the craft, only five years into my career!

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Female Fate: The Doctor is In!

Here is another pitch I made to DC Comics, probably around 1989. I can't remember if this was at the bidding of editor Mike Gold (who I worked with on Wasteland) or writer Bill Loebs, or someone else, but it was suggested to me that they were looking for an artist for a female Dr. Fate series, and that I should send in some samples.

Dr. Fate leaps into action. Don't ask me who the guy with the mullet is!

I created the two pages below--one a story page and one more or less a pin-up--as a pencil sample. At the time, I almost exclusively inked my own work, and did not pencil tightly--the early Megaton Man comics of five years earlier were loosely penciled--scribbles would have been a fair description--before I inked like a neurotic madman. But by the late eighties, I was consciously trying to simplify; still, I didn't see much point in penciling tightly when I would be inking myself.

The penciling here is stiff and heavy-handed; I usually left feathering details for the inking stage. These were hypothetically intended for someone else to ink.

These Dr. Fate samples show the struggle for me to pencil tightly. They are stiff and somewhat artificial, and lack the grace of later work--were I naturally penciled more thoroughly, even for myself as inker. These days I pencil tightly mainly because I so often have to lay aside a project for long periods of time, and when I come back to it, if I only have scribbles or thumbnail layouts, I have no idea what I was thinking.

Needless to say, these samples did not result in any work, on Dr. Fate, at least, and have languished for thirty years as rejects. I've carted them around to conventions for years, where I've sold lots of rejected sample pages, but these have never appealed to collectors. Still, I thought there was something left to get out of the pages, and yesterday I started inking them.

I have no idea if my helmet design was in any way innovative, but I seem to have been concerned her to show it off. There's a clumsy Golden Age feel to the final result that I find charming, if I do say so myself.

It was fun, particularly given the high quality of DC Comics Bristol board, which beats anything available today. The result is somewhat smudgy and dirty--I'm not used to inking pencils on Bristol as much these days (I prefer Strathmore 400 Drawing), and these pencils were particularly heavy handed and smudgy to begin with. But I got some tinge of Joe Kubert, Frank Thorne, and even Lee Elias, I think, in the final inks, and something of a Golden Age vibe that pleases me, despite the 90s vintage.

I don't think it was any great loss that I was never assigned Dr. Fate, male or female, since I never was as much of a DC fan as I was a Marvel fan. I couldn't tell you anything about the characters depicted or the story--there isn't much of one. It's obvious that I was just putting some panels together in a layout and trying to demonstrate how I would handle the character in movement.

Why let a piece of quality Bristol board go to waste, even if it's from the last century?

I draw a lot differently today, and if I were doing something like this from scratch the result would be a lot more pleasing. But it's not bad for art started three decades ago. I've gotten pleasing results by finishing sketches of Ms. Megaton Man from this same period, but if I go much further back beyond 1989, I can't do it. You can't put new wine in old wine skins, and my drawing from 1984-1988 is too different from my drawing today for inking old pencils to work. I think too differently and approach the whole problem of drawing too differently. Plus, I know a lot more about anatomy and figure drawing than I did in the 1980s. (My "mature" period doesn't kick in until about 1998.)

But hopefully some collector will find my inked Dr. Fates more desirable--and it was a good warm-up for other projects I have on the ol' drawing board.
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