Marvel's Open Space #3 (1990)

In late 1989, I illustrated a Will Shetterly story for the short-lived Marvel Graphics series Open Space, an experiment in a shared science-fiction universe packaged in an anthology "prestige" format, and issued under an imprint separate from the mainline Marvel superhero universe.

I'm not sure how I landed the assignment, but I'm sure it had something to do with my science fiction series Border Worlds, which began as a color back-up in Megaton Man and became a moody, "mature readers" black-and-white series. Carol Kalish was the nominal editor of Open Space, but I mostly dealt with assistant editor Kurt Busiek, who was unknown to me at the time (this was long before he wrote the groundbreaking Marvels).

I had already met Will and his lovely partner Emma Bull at a memorable convention in St. Paul, Minnesota in late 1985 or early 1986 (run by the late John Annunziata, on whom I based a nameless "snitch" character in Megaton Man #6 and subsequently drew as The Comics Warrior, the namesake of his store).

I don't remember much about the original script (my copy is now lost); I don't believe I ever discussed the story with Will before or even after publication. But the editors must have like what I did well enough, because I drew another story in the series which never saw print because it was canceled. I do recall a huge "Bible" being sent to me along with the script: over 200 pages, photocopied, explaining the backstory of the universe, the various planets and star systems, the general organization of the political structure of the society, etc. 

I don't know how well the shared universe concept was carried out throughout the series; I imagine it was cumbersome, given that virtually each story was a stand-alone with different creative teams responsible for only a tiny portion and few, if any, continuing characters. Admittedly, I only read the stories I was assigned to illustrate, although my sense is there was a bit too much emphasis on consistency and continuity between the stories and not enough on imaginative adventures in and of themselves (although I seem to recall these concerns weighed and discussed).

Somewhere I remember reading a description of a planet (either in the Bible or in the script for this strip) as having 83 percent of the gravity of earth; that detail always stuck in mind simply because it seems so utterly trivial and beside the point. Stories, after all, should have human interest, in other words, emotion, not simply be compiled from formulaic recipes of made-up scientific facts.

I still possess most of the original artwork for the story (I don't believe I ever got the colored bluelines back), so please contact me if interested in acquiring a page.

Elsewhere, I will comment on the significance this story had on my subsequent career. But for now, enjoy the artwork.

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Lost Marvel Sample Pages from 1983-84!

Below are some sample pages I began but never finished that were intended to get me work at Marvel circa 1983-84. Ostensibly a Fantastic Four story (with Doctor Doom and Daredevil), it was no doubt an update of FF #73, a battered copy of which I had in those days. It was one of the few mainstream superhero comics I had lying around, having sold my collection of well-read comics I'd accumulated as a reader in the 1970s; by the 1980s, I was into undergrounds, French Les Humanoides Associes or Heavy Metal science fiction, and classic reprints of EC, American newspaper strips, and so on. (That copy of FF #73, by the way, sacrificed its price and issue box as well as the Comics Code seal for a mock Megatropolis Quartet cover in Megaton Man #1.)

Judging from the page numbering, the story was originally to run to six or more pages; no other notes, thumbnails, roughs or anything else exist but these three pages (2, 4, and 6), and since these are unfinished, it leads me to believe I never even started the others. The penciling looks so tight in spots as to appear traced (a good example is the Daredevil figure in page 4, panel 4); if so, I would have been working from some kind of rough layouts (now lost). Maybe pages 1, 2, and 3 were sold long ago to collectors; I honestly can't recall at this point.

All three pages are on Strathmore one-ply Bristol, also evidence that I was tracing roughs, but where I would have had access to a light table in those days is a mystery, since I didn't own one. (Perhaps former roommate Mike Kazaleh permitted me to use his animation table? He was still living in the neighborhood within walking distance from my Detroit apartment on West Forest.)

What is evident from looking at the art is that I was using white Zip-a-Tone (like over the space ship in page 2, panel 1 and the Sue Storm figure in page 2, panel 3), a regular Zip with scratched highlights on Doc Doom (page 2, panel 4). These techniques were employed on the early issues of Megaton Man (see #1-4), and I might have assayed these samples after completing Megaton Man #1 and awaiting to hear back from publishers in the spring of 1984.

Also of note is the use of white-out and the panel borders on page 4, the corners of which await cleaning up. (British artists, I understood at the time, ran their borderlines past the corners and whited out; I didn't often do that after I turned pro.)

Why I didn't complete them is unclear. The most probable reason is that Megaton Man #1 found a publisher, and ongoing issues kept me busy. But I was conflicted about work-for-hire for the big publishers anyway. Whether my interpretation of the characters or my style would have sold to any of the Marvel editors is anyone's guess; whether I would have been satisfied as a mainstream freelancer is also an open question. While I set these aside unfinished, I did attempt other samples years later (mostly for Marvel), many of which I have published elsewhere on this blog.

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Characters that are not my property are ™ and © the respective owners. All other character names, likenesses, words and pictures on this page are ™ and © Don Simpson 2021, all rights reserved.

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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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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Please read my YA prose experiment Ms. Megaton Man Maxi-Series and tell me what you think!