Todd Klein's Blog, page 207

Still on sale: JOYRIDE by Gene Ha!

The Neil Gaiman print is sold out, but another in my Holiday Sale is this one by the fabulous Gene Ha. He helped me tell a new story about a favorite Greek myth, Pegasus the winged horse. I’ve received so many sale orders I’ve run out of mailing tubes, but I’ll get more in a few days. The sale runs through Friday.

ALAN MOORE & NEIL GAIMAN PRINTS IN HOLIDAY SALE!

Alan Moore on the magic and power of alphabets and language, an exclusive new work, each hand-signed by Alan, is one of many prints in my Holiday Sale.

A chilling poem by Neil Gaiman, again each copy hand-signed by Neil, is another. Do you have them in your collection? Order these and other prints in collaboration with Alex Ross, J.H. Williams III, Mark Buckingham, Bill Willingham, Shawn McManus, Steve Rude, Dave Gibbons and Gene Ha by emailing me. The sale runs through Dec. 4th. Follow the instructions on the BUY STUFF page of my website. Offered at up to 50% off for the first time ever, they make great gifts!

KLEIN PRINTS HOLIDAY SALE!

Image © Todd Klein

Have you looked at the signed prints on my website? They include new, original work by ALAN MOORE, NEIL GAIMAN, ALEX ROSS, J.H. WILLIAMS III, MARK BUCKINGHAM, BILL WILLINGHAM, SHAWN McMANUS, STEVE RUDE, DAVE GIBBONS and GENE HA, all in collaboration with me, and each print is individually signed by the creators. As seen above, I’m offering them at up to 50% off for one week starting this Friday, Nov. 27th. I have never offered prints at this kind of discount before, and may not again. Hope you’ll take advantage of the sale. For details go to the BUY STUFF page on my website, but don’t order there, follow the instructions for this unique deal!

And Then I Read: JUSTICE LEAGUE 45

Image © DC Comics.

Darkseid is dead. This issue is about what happens next. One thing is, apparently members of the Justice League are becoming gods themselves, Newer Gods, perhaps, taking on aspects of the fallen or disappeared. The Flash, for instance, is the God of Death. Superman is the God of Strength. Batman is the God of Knowledge. Some of these make sense, not sure about Flash. I enjoyed the ideas being flung about this time, and the art by Francis Manapul is always a delight. My real problem with the story is that I don’t believe Darkseid is really dead. Or, not for long. That takes me out of the drama, and turns this into an academic “what if” rather than a tale I can get absorbed in. Your reactions may differ, of course.

Mildly recommended.

And Then I Read: GREEN LANTERN LOST ARMY 5

Image © DC Comics.

The GL Corps, or some of it, is lost in the very distant past, and in a space prison. This issue is all about the jailbreak, and it’s well done. B’dg, the chipmunk Lantern has an important part to play, and we continue to see flashbacks of John Stewart’s military days on Earth before he got his power ring. The art on this issue by Jesus Saiz is back to excellent, and the writing by Cullen Bunn is fine. The story feels like it’s moving more this time, and gaining freedom is always a good theme. I didn’t care for the cover, but otherwise, it’s a winner.

Recommended.

And Then I Read: VERTIGO QUARTERLY SFX: KRAK!

Image © DC Comics

I love the idea of these Quarterlies with a sound effect theme. Maybe the title SFX (comics shorthand for sound effect) is a little too insider for some, but it does make for great visuals in the logo, as here. These anthologies are a much-needed place for young talent to take the stage, and Vertigo always throws in some seasoned pros to enrich the mix. I don’t have comments about all the entries, but here are the ones I liked best.

The lead story EKOH by Nathan Fox is visually stunning and full of great art and lettering, but a bit hard for me to follow. It’s also continued, presumably in the next Quarterly.

Veteran writer/artist Peter Kuper has a nearly wordless entry that showcases his painted art and his interest in environmental issues. Quite good!

KRAK(en) is a great story by Robbie Thompson and Claire Roe that puts sea monsters and a fearless girl together for a charming result with excellent art.

THE KRAK IN THE WALL by Corinna Bechko and W. Scott Forbes has lovely art, but a story that didn’t live up to its promise for me.

THE AUDITION by Mark Buckingham and Jessicia Martin is a delicious showbiz story with a nice twist ending, and nearly without words except for the ever-present sound effect.

Finally, KRAK! by Gilbert Hernandez is as wacky and endearing as a story about an alien invasion of Earth can get. Bravo!

In all, lots of fun reading here, and recommended.

And Then I Read: THE TWILIGHT CHILDREN 1

Image © Gilbert Hernandez and Darwyn Cooke

A small seaside fishing village, perhaps on the Pacific Coast of Mexico, though we aren’t told that, is introduced and explored, as are the people in it, in this brilliant new comic. There’s Tito, a looker with an adoring husband, Nikolas, and something else going on with the fisherman Anton. There’s old Bundo, living in his creaky shack on the beach, a little weird and scary to the three kids who like to play there. And onto this scene comes a glowing white sphere floating on the ocean, something like the white balloons in the TV series “The Prisoner,” but even more sinister. The local sheriff is called, and a scientist, but before they get very far with their investigation, the sphere vanishes. The next sphere appears suddenly in Tito’s bedroom at an awkward moment, and then a third in a cave where the children are playing…or is it all the same one? When one of the children dares to touch the sphere, a violent reaction follows. What does it mean? And who is the beautiful naked woman on the beach?

I love everything about this book, from the enchanting characters—to the mood and mystery—to the clear, classic art where every line and shadow is important. Writer Gilbert Hernandez and artist Darwyn Cooke are each wonderful storytellers on their own. This collaboration promises to combine their strengths and ascend to new heights. I can’t wait to read more.

Highly recommended.

And Then I Read: ASTRO CITY 28

Image © Juke Box Productions

When young Ben is bitten by a wolf spider in Australia, his brilliant scientist mom figures out a way to save him, but the side effects change Ben’s life. First, he goes small. VERY small. Then, with his mother’s help, he gains four extra mechanical limbs, and finally he grows up to fight crime as the new hero, Wolf Spider. Along the way, Ben becomes fascinated with the TV super-hero cartoon show in Australia, “QueensLaw.” Imagine his shock when a real QueensLaw group surfaces and begins to fight crime. Ben is determined to join them, but all is not as it seems…

Kurt Busiek is having way too much fun in this issue, and it’s a fine read. The guest art by Cary Chaloner and Wade Von Grawbadger is quite fine as well. Nicely done and recommended.

Drawing and Inking Like Will Eisner

Images © Abrams ComicArts and Will Eisner Studios, Inc.

Some time ago I was asked by Charles Kochman of Abrams and Paul Levitz to provide a title and chapter headings for Paul’s upcoming book about Will Eisner. They were looking for work done in Eisner’s own style or styles, and as I’m an Eisner fan, I was happy to agree.

The project was to be a large art book with lots of Will Eisner art, handsomely produced like all Abrams products, and it was only when I started working on my small part of it that the realization hit me: I had to produce work that would stand up to all the brilliant Eisner art around it. In other words, I had to draw and ink like Will Eisner! Or at least close enough that my efforts would not stand out as sub-par. As Charlie Kochman, Abrams Art Director Chad Beckerman, Paul and I began to trade ideas about what was needed, I began to think I’d taken on more than I could handle. Yes, they wanted title lettering in Eisner’s styles, but more than that, in some places they wanted actual artwork to go with it. I’ve done some drawing, but have never been good at figures. I thought if I could avoid that, I might make it work.

The book’s title lettering  was the last thing I did on this project, but the first I’ll discuss here. For inspiration, I looked to the title page of Will’s landmark graphic novel, “A Contract With God,” above. I like the informal quality of the letters, and the way he left small openings or voids in it, not filling everything solid black, a style he developed later in his career. The letter forms are in a traditional serif style that mimics book type in some ways, except for the word GOD, but in others is unique to Will.

Here’s my rough layout for Paul’s title. Once that was approved, I did a much tighter version.

Chad had suggested he might want to use pencilled letters on the book cover and title page rather than inked ones, as he thought it would meld better with the the original art scan from “A Contract With God” that he planned to use there, and I think it does that well.

I also did an inked version in case they needed it, but I haven’t seen it used anywhere.

Moving on to the chapter headings, the first and last ones Paul provided both suggested a stage performance: “Overture” and “Curtain Call,” nice metaphors for the life of an artist at least sometimes in the public eye, I thought. I looked through the Eisner material I had on hand for theater references, and found this SPIRIT title page that I thought would work, or at least the rounded arch and curtain part.

Here are my pencils for the first chapter. In each case, I waited for approval from everyone before moving on to the inking stage. And that had me the most nervous. Will Eisner was a masterful inker, especially with a brush. I’ve never felt comfortable inking with a brush myself, and haven’t done much of it, but for this project I had to give it a go.

Since there would be two chapters using the arch, I inked that separately. I used my lettering pens, Faber-Castell TG-1 technical drawing pens, for the arch itself, along with a compass and straight edge, but the curtains really needed a brush. I cheated a bit here and there with my tech pens, but most of the curtain is inked with a brush in my best imitation of Eisner’s original SPIRIT page.

I then inked the title on a vellum overlay…

…and combined the two pieces digitally. Some fine tuning was needed to get the lettering to match all the curtain folds correctly. I lettered the final chapter and combined it the same way.

In the printed book, all the chapter headings are in a dark blue-gray that suggests fountain pen ink to me, and I’m quite happy with the way that looks.

Will rarely used the same style twice for THE SPIRIT’S own name on his title pages, but over time he did tend to drift toward this serif style. Figuring out a way to make RISING work was tough, I settled on block letters on separate pieces of paper being blown up in a breeze.

For the final I was asked to make it less wide, and I moved RISING below the rest. I don’t think it’s completely successful, but I did what I could with it.

For Chapter Three I thought of a book with the pages coming out of the middle. The tall letters are a bit hard to read in the pencils…

…so I tried to give them a little more air in the inks. The spirit art on the book cover is by Will, and what you see here is just a “position” copy, a better image was dropped in by Abrams on the printed version.

I can’t say what influenced this design, other than the fact that Will liked to use lots of variety in his titles. Is it a bit too much? Maybe.

I added a few shadows in the inks. The brush is rather odd, but I wasn’t about to attempt to draw a hand using it. In retrospect, I probably should have left it out.

While it doesn’t reference a particular Eisner title, I think most Eisner fans will recognize the kind of three dimensional letters and shadows that Will often used. It’s a very long word, so I saved some space by stacking the NN, something Will probably wouldn’t have done, but who knows?

This was an exercise in perspective that was fun design and letter.

The title of Chapter Six was “Teach the World,” and this had me stumped for a long time. I searched for any reference to schools and teachers and finally found this school slate, giving me half my design, with globe art found online for the other half.

I was really getting into major drawing with this one, and it worried me. I did know I wanted to reverse the first half so it would look like chalk on the slate, but how to handle the shading on the globe?

Here’s the end result. It’s telling that the original for this one is about twice the size of the others, giving me a little more room for errors not to show when it was reduced. I’m not sure how I managed that curved shading on the globe. I think I used tech pens and a french curve.

For the last few chapters I was able to use some of Will’s own art and add lettering to it, much to my relief.

Here’s the original section from Eisner’s graphic novel “To The Heart Of The Storm”…

…and the lettering inked. It doesn’t show much here, but on these last chapters, I left small voids in the blacks to mimic Will’s later lettering style.

One letter to show what I mean.

Chapter Eight once again looked to “A Contract With God” for inspiration, and included a bit of art from it.

The printed version.

Chapter Nine was titled “Center Stage,” another theater reference. I found this image to use, again from “To The Heart Of The Storm.”

The inked version with the lettering reversed on the black background. I thought a circus poster style for the title worked here, a bit old-fashioned, but again going for variety.

And Chapter Ten brings it back to the beginning, now representing a falling curtain rather than a rising one.

This project was a stretch for me, but I enjoyed the challenge. And, fortunately, my work is mostly pretty small in the book, so it has less chance to add any jarring notes to the end result. The book is just out, and I’m looking forward to reading my copy and enjoying Paul’s writing performance.

Other articles on Comics Creation can be found on that page of my blog.

 

 

And Then I Read: CASTLE CORONA by Sharon Creech

Illustration by David Diaz

The setting of this social satire fantasy is in and around the Castle Corona, where we meet the royal family, who seem generally ill-suited to and unhappy with their roles, and some of the peasants in the town near the castle, subjects of the King, with the main focus on two servant children who are brother and sister, Enzio and Pia. They are orphans taken in by Master Pangini, a temperamental man who punishes them often, and they are also unhappy with their lot, dreaming of what it might be like to live in the castle. Other important characters are a mysterious hermit who lives in a hut on the castle grounds, and who serves as a sort of advisor to the King, and a wise woman of the town who is recruited by the Queen to be HER hermit and advisor. The story begins with a theft, and a stolen purse which comes into the hands of Enzio and Pia. It has tokens inside made of gold, and they are torn about what to do with it: turn it in to the authorities, or keep it for themselves. The theft has unsettled everyone at the castle, even though no one is quite sure what has been stolen, and as the King orders an inventory of the royal belongings, he is soon baffled to find all kinds of other things missing. Or is it just the faulty records of his staff? As the story develops, the royals, the peasant children, and the hermits find their lives intertwined in unexpected ways, and everyone ends up doing things and going places they never thought they would. A wise storyteller at the castle puts them all into his stories, helping them see themselves in new ways.

I enjoyed this book, though it’s pretty lightweight emotionally, and the characters all follow the threads of the plot rather woodenly. The plot is clever enough to make it a good read even while sometimes predictable, and no one seems to get into any real danger. The illustrations are many and nicely done, but the medieval flavor doesn’t help draw one into the story, I found. I would not put this book on the same level as Creech’s earlier modern-day works that I’ve read.

Mildly recommended.