jeandrawsstuff:fybirdsofprey:jeandrawsstuff:gailsimone:N...

jeandrawsstuff:

fybirdsofprey:

jeandrawsstuff:

gailsimone:

No woman, no fry, dipstick!

This story happened because the wonderful Bruce Timm had written me several notes saying how much he enjoyed Birds of Prey under my pen.

Now, if you have heard of Bruce, you know that he is not prone to empty praise. He is very, very critical of his own work and willing to point things out to other artists and writers if he feels they messed up. He is the guy who told Alex Ross to ‘throw away his photo reference camera,’ for example.

But he said really lovely things about Bop, and I was such a huge fan. We worked together a bit on some animated stuff and just out of nowhere I asked him if he would draw a short story in bop, never thinking he’d say yes.

He said yes.

So I wrote him a fun, silly animated-style Canary story and he KILLED it.

Three fun things about this that may not interest many people but I found fascinating.

1) Most artists draw on pages much larger than a comic, and the art is then reduced. Not Timm, who draws the pages almost exactly the size you read them. This is so odd I don’t know of another mainstream pro who does it.

2) He puts his script questions in blue pencil right in the margins.

3) Bruce Timm does not get popular culture. Almost all his questions were, “What does this mean?”  I thought that was awesome. For example, he didn’t get the Marley reference on this page at all.

Amazingly, Bruce gifted me with a page of original art from this story. It is a cherished possession, believe me!

This is where I get to show off a little. I have this issue autographed by both Gail and Bruce.

How amazing!  I’m so jealous that you have something like that!  Did you meet them at a convention (which would entail extra kudos for you), or was it along the lines of a present?

It was at Comic Con 2012! I had met Bruce before and am friends with people who work with him, but he meets a lot of people so didn’t remember me, haha! He was nice enough to sign this issue for me towards the end of the day.

I got Gail’s autograph the next day, I was in line for her signing at DC, but it was to get her signature on the Womanthology Volume 1 copy that Jody Houser and I auctioned off to raise money for Renae De Liz’s hospital bills. I didn’t know if DC set a limit to how many items she could sign so I had my comic just in case. Gail’s amazing husband Scott happened to spot me in line and pulled me out since he knew about the Womanthology book and planned auction. He also spotted the issue in my hands and told me to go ahead and ask her to sign it. :D

This issue is very special to me for a number of reasons. Bruce is one of my biggest artistic influences and his work on Batman, Superman, Justice League, etc is one of the reasons why I work in animation. I really aspire to be as solid as an artist as him, he’s amazing, just watch him DRAW sometime. Gail is my hero. She is intelligent, generous, and an amazing writer, not to mention FANTASTIC to work with. To have been picked by her to draw our story in Womanthology is one of the best things ever and it’ll always be something hold close to my heart.

Also, the story is super fun and extremely well told. I had it next to me as I drew Womanthology: Aliens for reference! It’s inspiring!

This is the great Jean Kang, talking here, and she’s being typically modest.

I was offered lots of amazing artists for the Womanthology story but Jean’s art really spoke to me, she did an amazing job, and I was lucky to get to work with her.

She’s tremendous.