Categories
Comics I Make

Post DEATHZONE!

I brought forth my Deathzone! comic a few weeks ago, and the world responded:

First off, big thanks to Tucker Stone and his Factual Opinion for contributing to the actual comic in question, and for discussing it some on his Comics Are Burning In Hell (Episode 0.3) podcast, co-hosted with greats Joe McCulloch and Matt Seneca, entrusted comix allies all.

Another podcast that favorably mentioned us was War Rocket Ajax (Episode #115), hosted by Chris Sims and Matt Wilson. Chris, a huge fan of the Squad himself, also wrote a piece on Deathzone! over at Comics Alliance before seeing the final product, so I’m really glad he liked it. Oh, and the Mindless Ones had some really nice things to say about it upon my revealing the comic [and after receiving it as well!]; they always come through with support.

Reviews, too! The first one came in straight from Siskoid’s Blog of Geekery, a blog which has extensively covered the Squad throughout its exhaustive blogging schedule. I appreciate It’s a Dan’s World and Nowhere / No Formats for taking note of the comic, too. Further thanks to Comics Reporter and Spandexless for mentioning Deathzone! And big thanks to Zack Soto for dropping the name and the love all over the webs. A special shout out goes to Annie Koyama, who has helped and supported me in more ways than I can ever repay.

And of course, thank you ALL for checking out, inquiring about, and referencing Deathzone! … and for buying its accompanying print.

Having this comic out there has also connected me with other Suicide Squad fans, such as Brannon Costello, who remarked on John Ostrander’s work over at Pretty Fakes, as well as blogs such as Subject: The Suicide Squad (Task Force X) and Omega Agent 1’s Bronze Tiger.

In other news, I will be at Heroes Con in Charlotte, North Carolina this June 22-24!

I’m quite excited to be able to exhibit at Heroes Con; I’ve been wanting to simply attend for years. This will be a fun show, so drop by Indie Island and say hi!

–Fiffe

Categories
Interviews I've Conducted

Tony Salmons Interview

I interviewed Tony Salmons over at The Factual Opinion (in three segments). Salmons talks about his comic art development, breaking in and staying afloat, and a brutal behind-the-scenes overview which spans several eras in corporate comics.

What Salmons has to say will strike many chords with working cartoonists, and it will definitely rub a few the wrong way. He’s up front about the reputation that supposedly precedes him and about his relationship with editorial, perhaps burning bridges that were never really there.

Getting a chance to feature Salmons like this was an opportunity of a lifetime, being a long time fan of his work and all, but also because there was little to nothing out there about the artist himself. It took us a few tries over a stretched out period of time to cover his career in detail, and I thank Tony for being so patient in my conducting this expansive and revealing, almost purgative, interview.

Aside from the interview, I followed up with two of collaborators from the past: Mark Chiarello and Martha Thomases.

Martha Thomases and Tony Salmons worked on the sharp and short lived Marvel series, Dakota North.

Martha Thomases on Dakota North’s development: “First of all, let me point out that this was about 25 years ago, and my memory is not what it used to be. If my version contradicts anyone else’s, please believe them. I had done some writing for Marvel’s humor magazine, which was edited by Larry Hama. He and I would discuss gender roles in pop culture. He had the idea at the time, which I think is genius, that Wonder Woman should be written like Charlie’s Angels, and would then attract a huge audience. Through these conversations, we developed the idea for Dakota North. Larry brought Tony in. He was living in Connecticut at the time, and we’d meet occasionally in Larry’s office. Because I was new to script-writing, most of my collaboration was with Larry. I’d write something, he’d explain how it wasn’t useful for the artist, and I’d re-write. And re-write. And re-write. For someone who has read comics since I was five years old, I was extremely stupid about telling a story visually.”

On working with Salmons and further stories: “I based a few of the characters, visually, on friends of mine. Dakota was Norris Church Mailer. Another character was my friend David Freelander, a fashion designer who died from AIDS a few years later. Tony never met them, and yet his drawings looked remarkably like them. It was supposed to be an on-going series. That said, I have no idea where I planned to take it. However, I do have a draft proposal for a mini-series, so I guess the characters have stayed with me.”

On cancellation: “I remember sitting in Larry’s office when Jim Shooter poked his head in to casually announce the cancellation, just after the third issue came out. I think it was because of poor sales. I know the first issue sold more than 120,000 copies, but I guess subsequent issues tanked.”

Mark Chiarello has worked with Salmons as his colorist on Vigilante: City Lights, Prairie Justice and as his editor on Batman: Black & White.

Mark Chiarello on coloring Tony’s unorthodox style: “Anytime you color artwork as inspired as Tony’s stuff is, you just get a little more jazzed than usual. You don’t do anything different per se, other than simply being a little more excited about the material you’re working on, which always makes for a better end product. I talked with the editor, Archie Goodwin, a bit about my approach but then just ran with it. As I recall, it wasn’t till after the series was printed that I called Tony to buy a few pages of the original art.”

On Salmons meeting deadlines: “Tony is pretty much the worst with deadlines, or at least he was on the few DC projects that we worked on together. The cause? Oh, I have my own theories, I’m sure it’s some deep seated fear of becoming too rich and too famous. Yup, [Vigilante] was that late. Bret [Blevins, fill in for the series] pretty much saved our asses on that one!”

On working with Tony as his editor: “Again, Tony lived up to his reputation as an astonishingly brilliant artist and a total flake. I’ve always thought of Tony’s work as a cross between a fine artist like Jeff Jones or Kent Williams and a totally dynamic, vibrant commercial artist like Jack Kirby. The pages were just a thing of beauty , but they were ridiculously late. [Batman: Black & White] was really the project that told me it’s probably better for me to be a fan of this guy’s work, rather than a business associate. Tony is an incredibly sweet guy, but sometimes it’s best to step back and just admire the talent from afar.”

– – – – – – –

Many thanks to Martha, Mark, and Tony for their time.

–Fiffe

 

Categories
Discussion & Analysis

One Artist Anthology Comics

My latest love letter, made up of historical and critical kisses, is One Artist Anthology Comics over at The Comics Journal. I trace the trend from Crumb to Ditko, and focus on the strongest of the contenders such as Clowes, Ware, and the Hernandez Bros. I also examine the glut in the mid 90s, the fallout from a beat up industry, the [not as thin as I thought] herd of modern examples and why cartoonists can greatly benefit from such a specific publishing pattern. Check out why the one-man anthology is the format of choice around here.

 

Categories
Comics I Make

D E A T H Z O N E ! my Suicide Squad comic

I told myself that it was a silly idea, that it was nothing but a distraction, a nostalgic impulse at best, and that I had more important things to do. Next thing I knew, I had written, drawn, and colored sixteen pages of my very own Suicide Squad comic. I called it DEATHZONE!

You know about the Suicide Squad already, right? I’ve gone on about it before, and always kept a close eye on those who did the same. It was one of my very first and favorite comics as a kid, and during the tail end of my previous project, I couldn’t get them out of my mind.

Recap: Suicide Squad was DC Comics’ version of the Dirty Dozen. John Ostrander wrote it, Luke McDonnell drew it, and John’s late wife, Kim Yale, joined in on the writing chores early on. Suicide Squad was a task force made up of C-list bad guys and obscure, throwaway characters used as fodder for dangerous government missions. Some of them didn’t always make it back. Turnover was pretty high as a result. Just look at the line up below… that’s only the first year’s roster. Also, they lived in a prison in the middle of a swamp.

One of my favorite issues is #10 (Feb. ’88), “Up Against The Wall”, where Batman pretends to be a prisoner in order to get some dirt on the Squad. He’s then outed, hunted, and taken to task… all neatly wrapped up in 22 pages. No issue better illustrates Amanda Waller’s verve as a leader, the Squad’s rag tag group dynamics, and the visual cool of their Belle Reve headquarters.

Oh, man, look at that last panel… arghk!… classic McDonnell. Anyway, I couldn’t articulate all that as a 9 year old, but I had to channel my excitement somehow back then. I took the weird relationship that Batman seemed to have with the Squad and made up my own ending to “Up Against The Wall”. In my version, Batman still gets away but has at least a few cuts and bruises.

Shown: stairs, rooftop, Batarang, home, bed, in that order. Shortly thereafter, I made another comic that featured an exhausted, pummeled Batman, this time against Shade the Changing Man (another Squad member). Shade, who is usually a good guy in the regular comics, stands as a redesigned, demonic villain under my direction. Shade’s mission was to take Batman and his Justice League teammates into a hellish dimension in order to torture them… slowly!

What you’ve witnessed here is the classic example of a cartoonist’s typical pattern: falling in love with this stuff at an early age, wanting to replicate that thrill, and then stubbornly trying to follow through on that desire as best one can. That’s the spirit of the industry right there.

That’s how I’ve ended up with DEATHZONE! A sixteen page, full color comic that’s been over 20 years in the making.

Here’s the line up…

… and here are some preview pages…

As if that wasn’t enough, Tucker Stone came through with a treatise on the last super hero comic that mattered, an essay which could only be titled:

So don’t delay any longer… get it now!

Finally, here’s the last page of my Shade vs Batman story.

 

–Michel Fiffe

Categories
"ZEGAS"

ZEGAS #2 Reviewed & In Comic Shops

Zegas #2 made its debut recently… and it’s been reviewed!

Bleeding Cool
Warren Peace
Spandexless

You can also get a copy of both issues at these fine comic shops:

Bergen Street Comics (Brooklyn, NY)
Desert Island (Brooklyn, NY)
Jim Hanley’s Universe (NY,NY)
Book Court (Brooklyn, NY)
Quimby’s Bookstore (Chicago, IL)
Meltdown Comics (Los Angeles, CA)
Comix Experience (San Francisco,CA)
Flying Colors (Concord,CA)
Star Clipper (St. Louis, MA)
Cosmic Monkey Comics (Portland, OR)
GOSH! (UK)

Or you can always get it directly from me if you’d like.

We all had a great time at the Stumptown Comics Fest last week. It was too short a visit in Portland, but we hope to visit sooner than later. Here are a bunch of photos from the Fest via Comics Alliance (thx, Caleb!), and here are a couple more for good measure.

Oh, and Zegas is also available at the Multnomah County Library in Oregon! It’s cool to think of those comics being checked out… do so if you’re in the area!

Categories
Dear Friends

Stumptown 2012

This weekend I will be at the Stumptown Comics Fest in Portland! I’m here in the city right now, actually, making the rounds and such. I’ll be joined by Kat Roberts, who will be selling her mini comic as well as prints, and by Chris Sinderson, who will have a variety of handcrafted books and comics for sale.

ITEM! Our pal Jason Thibodeaux will be hosting our stay, which is a good way for me to see how the hell he managed to create things like this video for Japanther’s“Lil Taste” (with the help of Nightshade dynasty, of course… but still, it’s incredible.)

So if you’re gonna attend Stumptown, make sure you drop on by and say hi!

–Fiffe

Categories
"ZEGAS" Discussion & Analysis

Panel Über Alles

With Zegas #2 out from the printer and into the world, I wanted to take a closer look at the super panel breakdown, which I use all throughout the issue.

You’ll recognize the trick, it’s simply one larger image broken down into pieces OR one larger image with characters moving within it . I wanted to take advantage of a double page spread to choreograph Emily Zegas’ body language  through her several moods and locales. The tricky part was making sure the eye was led exactly where it should go. Turns out the heavy lifting is done by the words, the conversations, the thought balloons. The flow goes down the panel , then up the next, then back down, etc.

You can call these my “Marcos Martin” pages. I won’t deny it, he’s been an influence for a while and I’m sure sequences like this were around at the time I was originally cooking my pages up:

Marcos has made a career of leaving his peers in the dust. He doesn’t toy with a layout, he commands it, and no one in contemporary adventure comics comes close to achieving what he achieves on a regular basis. The scene up there is just one big room in one panel, also used in a double page spread. We follow Spider-Man, our eyes being led to the right then back to the left, punctuated by inset panels.

THERE’S A TIME AND A PLACE

Another main influence on this approach is Chris Ware, another storytelling master who occasionally uses the panels to reflect different seasons, eras, or time signatures. This Big Tex page does it all.

It’s no secret that Ware had been influenced by Richard McGuire and his seminal story “Here”, from 1989…

… but the real godfather of the page-as-map is Frank King and his Gasoline Alley strip.

[Matt Seneca wrote a great piece on King over at his recently defunct column Your Wednesday Sequence. Seneca also tackled the same Marcos Martin scene I was talking about.]

GUTTERS

Going over the overblown staging in these pages reminds me of the smaller examples, the panels that are broken into  fragments in order to delay time, build tension, or reveal story details. In We3, Frank Quitely took a Grant Morrison story and took it into visually innovative territory. This modest sequence, however, is nicely paced.

Was it a callback to Harvey Kurtzman, that scene? I’d like to think so. Kurtzman was a true virtuoso of all of these narrative tics and bumps, his war comics being prime vehicles for strong and smart material. These three panels are works of beauty, captions be damned.

This batch, courtesy of Jim Steranko, works well enough but isn’t quite necessary. The image’s story does progress, and the gutter breaks do make the eye start and stop. Steranko was more than capable of managing subtlety,  and this scene certainly  tries to build up a sense of weight, but it still feels like a faint attempt.

Same here (Steranko again). As if mid-air speech wasn’t hard enough to swallow, the gutter breaks seem to be used as mere window dressing. Maybe it was to show that more… panels had been drawn? Steranko, after all, was once nearly denied payment for writing a silent page. Either way, the balance of dialogue and movement can make or break a moment; this one’s a dud.

Just one more dud. Actually, the panel break would’ve been useful if the image actually revealed something, maybe the very thing that’s being explained. I gotta admit, this is a pretty funny out of context scene, but that may have something to do with those tears. Deluxe Format tears.

Here’s a pretty simple but effective Frank Miller shot…

… and here’s another one that justifies the breakdown treatment in a different way. The gutters stagger the eyes one panel at a time while the monologue unravels at its own pace. It’s confident work, and in Miller’s pre-Sin City comics, this type of rhythm is dominant.

Oh, and punchlines. They’re good reasons to break up a panel. Julie Doucet knows the score.

BRING IT HOME

Back to the page as a setting, Gianni De Luca did some incredible, jaw dropping sequences in his time. As far as I can tell, his work was serialized in Il Giornalino. This il Commissario SPADA page is from 1979…

… but his most revered work continues to be his adaptation of Hamlet. Here’s a two page spread from Amleto, from 1976 (the entire story is made up of double page spreads, with a usual change in location per page turn). Click on it and bask in its glory.

I can’t help but think of this John Romita Jr. two pager, perhaps his most imaginative and ambitious sequence yet… and it’s only a walking figure. Such simplicity!

So there you go, a few drops of inspiration on how to stretch and maximize the real estate within an image, a panel, or a page or two. I’m not sure whether the reader should be made aware of such mechanisms, but some of these pages are too bombastic to ignore or be taken passively.

I should shut my yap. Let the work speak for itself and all that, right? Case in point, click away:

   

Buy Zegas #2 online or directly from me this upcoming weekend, in case you find yourself in Portland’s own comic-fest Stumptown!

–Fiffe

UPDATE: Criminally Left Out

Thanks to Marc Sobel for reminding me of this great scene by Jaime Hernandez. 

I don’t recall Jaime using this method very often but when he does, it is spot on (from Love & Rockets #29, “Flies on the Ceiling“, 1989). Calling him a master storyteller isn’t enough, so let’s just agree that the guy’s a genius. Thanks for the reminder, Marc!

 

Categories
Art & Illustration

You Actually Can Dance To John Zorn (4 drawings & a shirt)

First thing’s first: Zegas Number Two finally came back from the printer this week! It’s kinda difficult to contain my excitement! It looks great, and I’m really happy at how it turned out. Place your order over at our Etsy store. For more online consumption, I also made two prints to go along with the comics, as well as a shirt… A SHIRT.

I got to draw some commissions, too, as a result of the Zegas crowd-funding that ran a couple of months ago. Here’s my version of KOYAMA…

…JUNO for Alison Sampson’s ever growing collection…

…and a Paul Smith-era Storm (couldn’t help but include the rest of the team).

In the spirit of sharing, he’s a pin up I did for Paul Maybury’s D.O.G.S. of Mars (out May 2nd!)

I have to be honest, receiving Zegas #2 was cool and all, as was drawing stuff for people, but sometimes you need something more out of life. Well, I recently conceived that something and it wasn’t exactly a happy accident (I thought to combine two things – a video & a song – in order to amuse myself). I wasn’t prepared, however, to see how truly perfect they were when combined (danke, BG).

Don’t let me cheapen it more by trying to explain it.

” A lot of my life has been reacting against those fucking assholes that say ‘you could do much better.’ … Go fuck yourselves. This is who I am, this is the best I can do and if you don’t like it, drop dead.” –John Zorn

That about sums it up for now. I’ll post some Zegas preview pages soon, as well as different type of “process” post.

–Fiffe

Categories
Interviews I've Conducted

Wasteland: The John Ostrander Interview

I interviewed writer John Ostrander for a piece on the dark humor anthology comic, Wasteland, over at The Factual Opinion. In the article, Ostrander talks about his involvement in the title, as well as his working relationship with Wasteland co-writer, the late Del Close. It’s  a comic series I always return to, as it features the work of some of my favorite creators, but the most recent — and most important — detail I’ve discovered was how deeply connected Wasteland is to the art of Improv. That would make perfect sense to anyone familiar with the work of Del Close, but Ostrander shed some light on just how defined that writing dynamic was. Read the interview, then find out for yourselves how great these comics really are.

Categories
Art & Illustration

F. D. A.

Here are some of the characters from the comic Faunamancer Domination Ascendancy written by Benjamin Marra & drawn by Michael DeForge. I’ve been gearing up to do some commission work and some fan stuff, so what better way to get into it than to do these amazingly designed characters? F.D.A. is a favorite of mine (which recently appeared in #11 here, but catch a page there), and I’d normally hope for more, except it sorta has the ultimate ending. Also, this specific cast is a mere drop in the vast sea of comics these guys put out individually. It’s sick… seriously, it’s crippling to even think how about how they must do it.