Evan Dorkin's Blog, page 38

Simpsons' Treehouse of Horror Pg #3 Pencils

Spy Vs Spy and Me vs NYCC

Mad #506 is out now and among other things has a little bitty spot illo by Sarah and I in the Fundalini section of Smokey the Bear.

Speaking of Mad, they're putting out a Spy Vs Spy Special and I was lucky enough to be asked to contribute a pin-up for it (along with Pete Bagge, Tom Bunk, Jim Lee and Bob Staake.  I swear I didn't give the art directors a kickback to get in, honest, officer). I think we did a solid job on it and it's one of the rare occasions where I actually tried hard to plan for color and, like, thought about the composition and stuff. Or something. I dunno. But it looks good, and it was a real kick to draw the characters, as I was a big fan as a kid and admire Prohias' work. This was one of those jobs that just brightens the day (week? month?) when offered, and my thanks go out to Ryan Flanders at Mad for tossing us the gig. Gush. 

I drew a lot of background figures for use in the piece and ended up not using some of them, including these two "loser Spy" roughs:



We used 12 of the "loser" images in the finished piece, I'll likely post the full images in the future after the issue ships so folks can see them clearly, the foreground elements cover up some of the Spy injury motifs and I think they came out pretty nicely. Especially the explosion. Prohias-style teeth in the air and all.. I think the Special ships in November, I'm sure I'll be plugging it again when the time comes.

I realized, while working on the piece, that as a kid I always favored the Black Spy and always rooted for him to win. I wonder why? I guess I just liked the Spy dressed in black better because he looked cooler to me, White being so blank. I dunno. Anybody out there remember siding with one Spy or the other?

Anything else? Not really. I was going to write up a long con report about NYCC, but I already shot my mouth off via Twitter regarding the terrible crowd control in the Javitz Center, and I ended up not going back on Sunday for the first time since the show started, and that took a lot of the fun out of it for me. I mean, the show seemed to be a lot of fun for most attendees, don't get me wrong. And I myself had a nice time on Friday, seeing people and saying hello, walking around the place, we bought a plush toy for Emily, blah blah blah. I didn't really see much of interest as a fan, personally, but obviously a lot of folks did.

Saturday however, was, for me, a bummer. I really wished I had stayed home. My signing went okay but I really regretted not scheduling it for Friday as DHC originally planned. It was a nice hour. The rest of the day I was mostly bored when not driven nuts by the over-crowded aisles, filled with too many inconsiderate folks walking with their heads down while texting or talking on phones, jerks stopping to talk or take pictures of cosplayers in the middle of the aisles (the larger cons really need to have a Pathetic Masturbators Photo-Op Area, because that shit's just out of control), cosplayers stabbing people in the necks, stomachs and elsewheres with prop swords, spears, and whatever-the-fucks they're carrying from Final Fantasy Infinity, oafs knocking into people with their backpacks and not even having the common decency to say "excuse me", etc.

The show is a huge success, obviously, good for them, but it's overstuffed, I mean, they have exhibitor tables right outside the friggin' bathrooms, fer corn's sake, and fate forbid a fire ever breaks out while the cattle drive is in the halls. I realize NYCC does not exist to be entertaining or even palatable to one Mr Evan Dorkin, I'm not asking for more art comics or more Godzilla events or more whatever for me, personally -- and I'm not asking anyone to change anything, or even wishing they'd change anything -- except how they handle the flow of human beings in the hall, and how they communicate to some of those human beings that they need to act responsibly and sensibly while at the event.

Especially around older folks, small children and smaller-than-average lady folk. I saw members of all three groups treated roughly and indifferently in the aisles by anxious, unthinking, inconsiderate fans (kids and adults, mostly adults, unfortunately). Uncool, people. Totally uncool. It really needs to be addressed. Because if people acted like this on the streets there would be violence, plain and simple. And nobody needs anything truly bad to happen at a show before promoters of massive, growing events finally, seriously start to deal with these crowd issues.  

NYCC

Just a quick reminder that I'll be signing at the Dark Horse Comics booth at 12-1 pm this Saturday at the New York Comic Convention. I'll be more than happy to sign any copies of Beasts of Burden that anyone brings along, as well as anything else I've worked on while I'm sitting at the DHC set-up, please come by if you can and show your support for the book with the dead puppies and piss jokes. Unfortunately, my partner in crime, Jill Thompson, won't be at NYCC this year. She's busy as hell and needs a good rest-up after the marathon job she pulled in order to finish painting the Hellboy crossover (supposedly still shipping Oct 27th, in time -- time --time! for Halloween!).

That's ot for my "professional time" at the show, no table or other signings besides the one. No real plans other than to escort Princess Emily the Great around tomorrow and catch up with some folks and friends. I might try to attend the Mad and DHC panels as an audience member if things work out (Mort Drucker's scheduled for the Mad panel. Mort Drucker, people! Cmon! Mort Drucker! Mort Drucker!). I'll likely be a satellite pest circling the DHC booth here and there until they ask me to go bother the folks at Boom or Oni or apply for a job at the Javits concession stand. And I expect I'll lumber over to the CBLDF tables at some point to try to snag a copy of the Liberty Comics Annual to see how the Milk and Cheese strip looks in print. Yeah, I'm interested in the other comics in there, but first things first.  You turn to your strip first, get upset at the stuff you screwed up, check the color, and then look at the other people's stuff to see who kicked your ass 8 Diagram Pole Fighter-style and who hacked it out for the charity book.

Anyway, I better go get me some sleep. My schedule's way off (I went to bed after 10 am earlier today) and I'm seeing double. Hope to see doubles of some of you HOF faithful at the show this weekend.

Excelsior, y'all.

Hellboy/Beasts of Burden Preview

Comic Book Resources has the first five pages of the Hellboy/Beasts of Burden comic on their website for folks to read.

The Dark Horse creature crossover is scheduled to hit the comic shop shelves on October 27th. 24 pages of Mignola-approved, Jill Thompson-delineated paranormal adventure stuff. Cats and dogs working together, a gun-toting, smoking demon in a trenchcoat, blood sacrifices, rats, monsters, mass hysteria.

Worth your $3.50? 

Yes. I believe so. 

This Week: Liberty Comics Annual And NYCC

This year's edition of Liberty Comics ships this Wednesday -- for a description of the book, a list of contributors and several preview images go here. Preview image of the Milk and Cheese strip we contributed can be found here. It's a fundraiser for the CBLDF. Shout hallelujah, come on, get happy. Etc, etc.

I'll be attending the New York Comic Con next week, no set up, just walking around like most everyone else. My only official function will be a signing at the Dark Horse booth on Saturday from noon until 1 pm, so, if you want anything signed, that's the time and place. I haven't signed any copies of the Beasts of Burden HC yet, so, hoping someone will bring a book for me to scribble on. I don't expect to be doing anything else unless asked at the last minute to sit on a panel, or empty trash bins, or carry Bruce Campbell's bags or something. So, yeah, whatever.

I'm mainly going to see some friends, catch up with Scott Allie, maybe steal a few things, who knows. Haven't seen anything really up my alley on the NYCC website as far as guests or events go. A lot of minor celebrities and other folks with capped teeth charging for autographs, panels about the shows those folks work on, a big artist's alley filled with mostly mainstream folks, very little in the way of small press stuff, at least at a quick glance. But they don't make these shows for me, do they? No, I reply, in all seriousness.

I'm sure I'll have fun goofing around, and Emily usually enjoys these circuses, bless her little heart.

Some Pages I Drew Back In The 80's

Like most folks in the comics game, I drew a lot as a kid. Drew a lot as a kid, drew a lot as a teenager, drew a lot in my 20's. Drew for fun, drew for free, drew compulsively, drew with enthusiasm, drew superheroes, drew with the hopes of one day drawing professional superhero comics featuring characters created by other artists.

About 99% of these drawings were torn up and thrown away. I almost never kept my drawings, even as a child. My parents don't have any of the art I drew as a child, as far as I know. I completed a batch of full-color comics as a teenager, started countless comics, they're all gone. I probably have less than a score of drawings done in my late teens/early 20's. Basically, my stuff was lousy, and I couldn't stand looking at it. I would draw something and be proud of it, or thought it looked okay, then I'd look at it a day or two later, or a week later, or a month, and I'd tear it up. No great loss to humanity, of course, but I do sometimes wish I could see the things I drew as a kid. 

I don't know if other folks hold onto their childhood drawings or their fan/early art, I'm sure some do, but at this point in time I don't have more than two dozen things I drew during my first, say, 25 year, if memory serves (it often does not). It's pretty much all been tossed out (a few years ago I recycled all the art I had on hand from some early comics jobs, Phigments #1 and 2, the un-inked/unused New Talent Showcase story I penciled for DC, a batch of stories done for the Bank Street series of SF and Fantasy short story adaptations that were produced by Byron Preiss, etc) or given away (the first Milk and Cheese strip), or sold (I now have nothing left from the first issue of Milk and Cheese, all of the Eternity and most of the SLG Pirate Corp$! pages have been gone for a long time now). In the early 80's I drew a lot of awkward but heartfelt and enthusiastic pin-ups to sell at the local Creation Cons (which I'd sneak into and set up at -- someday I'll write about that, nothing fascinating, but interesting, I think)  or at the Fantastic Store (where my bosses, co-owners Jim Hanley and Dave Brucas,  allowed me to sell my fan art along with flat, stand-up, color superhero figures I'd make out of bristol board and wooden coffee stirrers -- another nostalgia-lacedpost for another time). I was young, energetic, and only semi-talented. I am, by and large, a late starter, an easily frustrated learner, a fearful person and a harsh critic. SO I threw a lot of my work out, because it was bad, and I knew it, but I didn't know how to make it better.

Anyway, I wasn't expecting to start waxing nostalgic/neurotic about my ambiguous relationship with my artwork, and people tend to think you're full of shit when you're a working professional  running your own stuff into the ground. So I'm gonna cut it off here before I find myself getting into murky childhood stuff or who knows where the hell this might end up going. All I was planning on doing was posting some old amateur art of mine. So, onto that. 

I found these pages a few weeks ago. I thought I had ripped these up a few years ago, but I always think I tore these up every time they resurface. I don't know why they keep surviving the purges, I think I just wanted to keep something from those days and these do make me feel a bit wistful about a time when I really, really wanted nothing more than to do superhero comics, and I hadn't a clue as to how anything in this business worked, or how I could become a better artist, or whatever. And they make me nostalgic for a time when my hair was blonder, my stomach was leaner, the old Ritz Theater in NYC was around for Cramps and Untouchables shows, and Super Powers figures were still on the racks at K-Mart. 

One of the pages is ripped, all of them are amateurish, heavily influenced by Jack Kirby, John Byrne, George Perez and John and Sal Buscema, and almost nothing else, because I was one of those hapless, limited people who learned to draw comics by looking at comics.  I penciled these sometime in the early-mid 1980's in an attempt to work up some samples to send in to DC Comics to try and get some work. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. I would do this occasionally, draw up several pages featuring Marvel characters or DC characters I liked, and then tear them up, without having shown them to anyone save friends. I never sent my work in to anyone, I never had a portfolio, I went on ym first interviews because a writer took me with him, I only showed my work to a Marvel editor at a NYC con because Jim Hanley and Jim Higgins all but picked me up and carried me there. My leg shook like a freezing dog taking a leak the entire time the guy spoke to me, it was about as bad as asking a girl out. Worse, I guess, because I didn't get to at least look at a girl rejecting me while my guts turned to molten applesauce. When people ask me how I got into comics it's a long answer, because I got in sideways, in a pretty half-assed manner, as befitting someone who couldn't work up the nerve to show my work to editors. 

Anyway, here's the fan art:








So, yeah, these three pages survive my amateur days, which I am obviously thinking pretty hard about this morning. I've torn up the Who's Who try-out pages I worked up and never showed anyone (I remember drawing Hourman, amongst others. Hourman --?), the New Talent gig I mentioned, a bevy of pin-ups and sketches (I never owned a proper sketchbook until I was in my 20's, sad to say, and I've destroyed the few I had back then), my role-playing game drawings (Champions, for those who care), the first take on the Pirate Corp$! characters in a comic (they were the "villains" in an Avengers comic I worked up to send to Marvel, which of course, I didn't do anything with), and I'm likely going to get rid of these now that Sarah has scanned them. You can see I went for mid-carder characters even back then, Mister Miracle and the Metal Men (Hey, the Metal Men!) and some Fourth World creeps. I never worked up samples with Superman or Batman or Spider-Man or Wolverine, I liked the second bananas, the character actors and support players. Always did.

I've certainly seen worse art, and you have, too, but it isn't good. It says more about my liking comics than my being a comics artist, if that makes any sense. It's fan art, and not accomplished fan art -- the fans I saw at shows at the time drew better than me, some of them far, far better. I once had a fellow amateur artist tell me to my face that he was better than me, while I was working my artist table at a Creation show. Right in front of my customers, for holy shit. He plopped his portfolio down on the table and showed off his work. And he was good. He drew real comic book anatomy and it was fluid and powerful and looked good enough to publish. I felt ashamed of my own work, it was a real Charlie Brown moment in my life, I wanted to dry up and blow away. Thing is, I never saw the guy again. But I got into comics. Crazy. I might not be a great artist, but I'm a fairly unique and pretty good not great artist.

Anyway, gotta get back to work, got a job to finish. It's looking pretty good, if I may say so. Even after I blobbed ink on the board three goddamned times now.

Someday I'll figure it all out.

Simpsons' Treehouse of Horror Art and Lettering and Stuff

So, originally, I was supposed to letter my strip for the Treehouse of Horror. The pages were designed for it, I spent a good amount of some time working out how I'd lay in the often heavy text. My lettering isn't polished, but it goes with my art and gets the job done. Anyway, I didn't end up lettering the comic because my idea to cram in as much detail as I could into it backfired insofar as the schedule went. It took me longer to pencil everything, because of the details, because I was try...

This Just In

The Simpsons' Treehouse of Horror #16 is in stores today. I hope those of you who pick it up enjoy the story Sarah and I worked on. 15 pages of mayhem, with over 100 characters in the mix somewhere. Unless word balloons covered them up. Between 90 and 108, let's say. With one "celebrity" cameo from the show. Can you spot it? Do you care? There are no prizes being offered, let's forget the whole thing.

I will be a special guest of the Brooklyn Comics and Graphics Festival on December 4th. I'm c...

The Simpsons Treehouse of Horror #16/Liberty Comics Annual 2010

Two HOF-related projects have some PR out on them, for those interested.

The Simpsons Treehouse of Horror #16 hits shops this Wednesday. You can read about our contribution to the book ("I Screwed Up Big-Time and Unleashed The Glavin on an Unsuspecting World!") here on the Bongo Blog, and see several panels from the story. You can also see more preview art from Peter Kuper and the other contributors here.

Some preview pages and images for the Liberty Comics Annual can be found here, including p...

World's Finest

Don't ask me what Batman's Bat-line is attached to. The Bat-copter? A Bat-Contrivance? The JLA satellite?

Don't question it, love it.