Actually, You Would Probably Like Me A Lot When I’m Angry
So, today’s Rack.
Before starting it, I watched the latest episode of America’s Best Dance Crew 2. Not only is the awesomeness of about half the dance crews on the show pretty much unparalleled, but the judges’ table is actually a really solid source of constructive criticism and guidance for your every day creative life.
One refrain across this (very young) season, is the idea that this is the second season, that the bar was raised by the winners of the last season, and that to impress the judges, one has to unequivocally ”bring it”. It sounds abstract, but it really boils down to just refusing to rest on your laurels, to rip your shit like there’s nothing else you ever wanted to do besides pop and lock and then pop.
And so, with those exhortations fresh in my mind, I sat down at my desk to draw this strip. Now, we’ve all seen the very uneven results of my courtship with brush-based inking lately. But last night (this morning?), I don’t know if it was the ABDC2 in my head or the fierce anger and frustration that led to the creation of this strip (which you’ve already read about underneath today’s strip), or (more likely) a combination of both; whatever it was infused my drawing hand with an almost unshakable steadiness, it beat back the demons of Only Two Hours Sleep, and erased any ill effects from a Medium iced coffee.
Working to a soundtrack made up completely of Girl Talk jernts, I (let’s be frank) DEMOLISHED this strip. A lot of it had to do with a very concerted amount of pencilling, a lot of it had to do with the fact that I was paying tribute to one of my favorite artists and favorite comics in the final panel, a lot of it had to do with the fact that I knew I was making a statement with this comic and that the art had to stand up to the scrutiny (”Tt! Whatever, brah. Learn to draw first and then tell me what I’m supposed to or not supposed to pay attention to.”), a lot of it had to do with this consistent reminder in my head that I wouldn’t be able to put off drawing Kevin Analog #1 for much longer and that time was running out for me to get good at this.
Whatever it was, it worked.
Who knows if it will be enough to carry me through everything else from here on out, if the next time I sit down to draw I’ll be able to land such an imaginative and well choreographed routine. But no matter what, this strip is here. I did it once, at least. When it really counted.
As old Shakey Legs Bartlett famously said, “What’s next.”
Shame Breeds Hope
So, yeah. There were some missteps in today’s The Rack. I took, let’s say, a less than ideal approach to inking with a brush. I imagined the lines of my heroes being rendered in broad swoops of the arm, landing in perfect swaths of the pitchest blacks.
Then, our man Kevin clued me in to this little pouch of YouTube gold, an inking demo by Chad Cole. I was legitimately surprised, heartened if you will, by seeing such a careful and meticulous approach. I realized the frenzied and breathless jabs of brushery I engaged in last night were deeply flawed.
And so, in a haze of mourning (seriously, this Tim Russert thing is hitting me damned hard), with a new approach in my heart, and the buzz of a mood-lightening and pitch perfect new episode of The Venture Brothers all rattling around, I inked this sketch of a random Kevin Analog thug. Obviously, there’s a lot of backstory and cleverness I’m not yet at liberty to divulge, but enjoy this sketch, inked by brush, as a kind of penance for poor decision making.
Like Art School, But Free
Comic Book Resources has a 50 page preview of Ray Fawkes and Cameron Stewart’s The Apocalipstix. Like all of Cameron’s work, every panel is an insightful tutorial on PWRFL LINE POWER. (No, I really do not like that Esurance commercial or that song.)
Shown here is my favorite page of the lot. Action packed and, hey, take a look at the wear and detail on that shotgun for a second. You see what I mean now?
Commemorating The Invisible
Kevin Analog is, as I’ve pointed out here (I think?) an idea I’ve been messing around with for a long time now, and recently I’ve put it in the front of my mind in the hopes that I can come up with a solid three issue comic book story to pitch around.
The problem, for a while now, has been what do with with the 45 or so pages I’d need to fill after the rip-roaring opening scene I’ve had written in my head for a few months now.
There have been a lot of different paths I considered, most of them way too big and unwieldy for a three issue story, or way too aimless, which has always been a problem for me. It’s why instead of having tons of finished scripts for Limited Serieses in my drawer I have a bunch of mini-comics and never resolved webcomics.
Well, say what you will about temp work, but it tends to free up your mind to wander and imagine up all sorts of things. So, as I was going through file directories today, my brain totally came through in the clutch and birthed an amazing and charming and fun and straight up awesome story. The perfect thing to introduce Kevin and the new face of Manhattan, the borough many refer to as “The Genre City” because it’s so packed to the gills with inexplicable strangeness.
I won’t share every single detail that I scrawled feverishly into my Moleskine (I know, I might as well be wearing a scarf), but there was one thing that really crystallized the sheer fantasticness my brain is occasionally capable of:
“What Is The Terrible Secret Of…Conference Room 16B?”
So, gang, we are officially on our way. At some point I’m going to pick a page to focus on and I’m going to walk you through every moment of its creation. I’ll show you the chicken scratch from whence it came all the way down to its final splash of color.
This post is the smashing of the champagne bottle on the hull of the good ship Kevin Analog: Temporary.
Please Pack Your Knives And Go
So, tonight we bid farewell to another delightful season of Top Chef, possibly my favorite in terms of the acumen and affability of, well, at least two of the final chefs. Thanks in part to my newly ignited zeal for drawing (I got my brushes today, and, well, we’re getting there) I decided to spend my viewing time sketching. Which is something I really need to do a lot because holy cow I love every single thing I drew tonight.
First off, was Lisa. To be sure, she was the impetus of this whole endeavor, so captivating and alive in her grumpiness. It took a lot of tweaking but I’m quite happy with how I ultimately captured the nuance of her scowlingness. The whole gang here at Chateau Exclamation Point was so pleased with the results, I was urged to continue on with the rest of the final three.
I was also really happy with this one. Sketching while you’re actually watching people move around and talk really helps you pin down their primary distinguishing characteristics. And, of course, Blahzey-Blaise’s mad scientist toolkit is something that must be captured accurately.
And, finally, my favorite chef of the season hands down, who I charmingly refer to as Chef Yoda, thanks to the affinity she showed to the beloved character in her audition video in the first episode of the season. Note, I drew this before the final verdict was handed down, so at that time it was just wishful thinking.
Sometimes things just…work out.
The Best Thing I Saw At MoCCA 2008
One of the best things to come out of my visit to MoCCA last year was an extended gawping session at Cameron Stewart’s original art. I immediately went home and completely revitalized the way I inked comics. Going from a completely bland straight line to introducing actual weight and heft to lines, basically getting all I could out of a Hunt 103. It was a beautiful improvement.
Now, one year later, everything is upended once again.
Basically, the same thing served as impetus. As fantastic as Cameron’s art looks on the printed page, when you get a look at his original art, it’s a whole other world. His pages for The Other Side are simply jaw dropping in both their intricate detail and their effortless line. Along side those pages are his work on the upcoming Apocalypstix from Oni Press (coming this summer-ish). And that work is just as detailed but with a completely different and more cartoony style. You can’t help but stare at each page, each panel, and look at the choices he makes with every line. The dude is a living inking class, and I don’t even think he knows it.
(Also, I overheard him telling someone at the table that he pencils only very lightly and most of his work is done directly in inks. Go open up to any page in The Other Side, think about that, and then just jump in front of a bus. I mean, that’s just ridiculous.)
So, Kevin Church, Mike Rosenzweig, and I were sharing lunch today across from the Puck Building and just, you know, talking comics. And Mike and I started just randomly drawing stuff, and he busted out this Pentel ColorBrush inkpen, one that I used to have quite enjoyed messing around with. I tried drawing some stuff just with the pen and was pretty horrified at the result, just like all the other times I had tried using it. But Mike rightly pointed out that I wasn’t taking enough care with the linework. I also realized that as ridiculously gifted as Cameron might be at drawing just with a brush, I realized I’d need some hefty pencil work to back things up. I quickly realized, sketching the Lydia you see above, that just thinking about inking with a brush really freed up my design in terms of the pencils. So I had a really nice, loose Lydia from the get go.
Then I sat there and carefully inked it, took a step back, and was like, “Whoa.”
I mean, seriously. You can see it up there. It just came out spectacular.
So, as you saw in today’s Rack, I’m inking with a brush now. It’s going to take some finessing, as you can see in the furniture in Aaron’s place, and to that end I just ordered some Raphael 8404s, which I have heard are really top drawer brushes. So while I thank Mike and the Pentel ColorBrush for getting this train rolling, I think I’m going to need some better tools going forward.
But I think I’ve finally gotten to point, after drawing for over five years now, I think, where I feel like I’m ready to ink with a brush.
It’s going to be a bumpy ride at first, I’m sure, but I need only to look at this absolutely amazing Lydia and I’ll be able to say (in Henchman 21’s voice, of course), “Dude. Seriously. You can totally do this.”
The Rack: Carnegie Hall
In today’s installment, we take some creative liberties with the Rock Band play list.
Your Panel of The Week: 06.04.08
From Criminal #3 by Ed Brubaker, Sean Phillips, and Val Staples.
What got me first was Danica’s mom’s face. It’s just cartoony enough of an open mouth and simultaneously just real enough to be an almost perfect Comic Book Expression.
But when you take a closer look, you see the fantastic composition of both the figures and the dialogue balloon and captions (all of which are taken care of by Phillips, undoubtedly the source of such consistency).
Staples’ color work is also great, not at all showy, even in such a Photoshoppy trick as the cigarette’s glow.
Phillips, who as far as I know letters the book as well, was made a pretty great font by, if I’m not mistaken, the heroes at Comicraft. Normally I hate that sort of typeface. In any other page environment, it reminds me of bad Wolverine lettering, but it works so well with Phillips’ style.
And there’s some really infuriatingly great brush work by Phillips here too. He makes it look so effortless, especially in Danica’s mom’s jacket. And how did he find the three perfect little dabs to put outside the car window?
I mean, really, how does someone do that so dang well?
I Review…Lots Of Things
I’ve got a lot of catching up and house cleaning to do, as my website has been pretty spotty performance wise, lately. So, here are a sizable amount of my reviews for Comic Book Resources.
One of the great joys of Matt Fraction and Ed Brubaker’s run on “The Immortal Iron Fist” — and it’s sad to call it simply a run and not just “series” as only one issue of their work on the title remains — is the incredibly detailed mythology they have woven into the title. There are enough Iron Fists with enough sidekicks and cohorts and villains to populate their own Comics Imprint. All of them appear with such vibrance and weight of character that they are instantly seen not just as two-dimensional scenery, but instead all part of a richly fabricated world, even if they only show up for a few pages.
There’s a wonderful moment in the midst of what, for all its huge wide screen action and spectacle, is really just a prologue for the final issue of Morrison and Quitely’s run on this book. Superman has gathered a small army of his Superman Robots to battle Solaris, The Tyrant Sun, who is gearing up to help Luthor conquer Metropolis and the rest of the Planet. Superman has spent the opening pages of this issue touring his Fortress, walking wistfully among artifacts that call back nearly every issue of the series. Charmingly disfigured animal victims of the Bizarro effect, the photo he took with Lana and Pete in Smallville, Superwoman’s costume. He knows that this is to be his final adventure, that he will never return to the Fortress, and that all these precious items must be taken care of.
It was December, 2007. “The Sinestro Corps War” had just ended and “Green Lantern” #25 closed it out, not only with one of the best finishes of a major storyline in recent memory but with, as Geoff Johns is often wont to do, a teaser of storylines yet to come. And so, with the promise of multi-hued Lanterns and the whisper of the hint of the possibility of Batman going toe-to-toe with the reanimated corpses of Thomas and Martha Wayne fresh in my mind, I eagerly perused next set of DC Solicitations. What would be the start of such an exciting journey into a bold new direction of the Green Lanterns?
I have to admit, I was never really into Thor. Sure, like any other red-blooded comic book reader in the early nineties, I loved The Asgardian Wars (anyone who doesn’t find an Art Adams drawn Loki watching Storm pummel Frost Giants in a crystal ball on top of some intricately detailed, Terry Austin-inked Mountain-Throne is kind of missing the point of comics in general), but as far as his regular series went (in its many, many incarnations) they just never landed with me.
Bagley’s art — much like his brothers in defection, the Kuberts — seems to have benefited greatly from a change of scenery. His work on Batman especially is quite dynamic and displays a unique take on his overall look. Busiek also does a nice job of meditating on the fundamental conceits of Bruce, Clark, and Diana’s secret identities. In the second half of the book, there is also a pretty intriguing hint at a kind of “Days Of Future Past” wrinkle to the storylines that are coming.
Justice Society Of America #16
It’s difficult for me to necessarily review this book objectively with a completely new reader in mind, and I think, to be perfectly honest, it’s a little unfair to. From “LOST” to “The Venture Brothers,” modern pop culture is rife with artifacts that simply place the burden on the audience to keep up. And there’s really no other way a book like this with twenty-plus characters, could ever work. You just have to hope that everyone is caught up, otherwise you’d be taking up twenty pages just explaining who everyone is.
The Venture Brothers & The Narrative Ideal
So, I just finished watching the latest episode up on the ol’ Adult Swim Friday Night Fix and it struck me how well this show sustains its inherent (and fantastic) wackiness while evolving into a really well made and melancholy character study.
This particular episode is all about Rusty and, yeah, it’s hilarious with plenty of great references to all kinds of great stuff, but I realized that over the course of two seasons they’ve really done a fantastic job fleshing out these characters.
This season so far (sure, it’s only been two episodes) has shown a lot of skill in focusing on a character instead of a conceit, as in most previous episodes. But of course there’s been a lot of groundwork laid over the past couple of seasons that can bring about an episode like this latest one, which in a lot of ways is a point which Rusty Venture’s life so far has been leading to for a very long time.
Anyway, it got me thinking about the primary project I’ve got in the back of my mind: Kevin Analog. One or two of you might remember a mini-comic of the character I put together a few years back, and also my webcomic Genre City, which ran on Modern Tales for quite some time.
This is basically going to combine the two and redefine the way “Genre City” works. One of the main reasons I wanted to rejigger this blog here is to start keeping a work blog of the process of getting the project out of my head and onto some Bristol Board.
Oddly enough, talking about The Venture Brothers is kind of a perfect place to start. It’s got exactly the kind of approach I want to take with Kevin Analog. There’s a lot of high concept craziness, which I will naturally be getting into with all of you in the weeks and months ahead, but I also really want there to be some weight to the characters.
Trust me, when you see this latest episode (I know not everyone feverishly hovers over AdultSwim.com on Fridays, hitting refresh until the latest episode of The Venture Brothers shows up), you’ll get exactly what I mean. I can’t think of any other show that strikes such a great balance between tone of character and just plain hilariousness.
Also, Jackson Publick’s general style of cartooning is a massive inspiration, and I’m sure I’ll get more into that in the future as well.
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Benjamin Birdie
Suddenly kind of aged, Benjamin lives in Queens with a wife and cat. His Master's Degree in Creative Writing has helped him immensely with his primary responsibilities of drawing things.
He can be reached at benjaminbirdie (at) gmail (dot) com.
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His Comics
Every Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday, this charming comic strip by myself and Kevin Church receives a sparkling new installment. A Comic Strip About A Comic Shop.