Are there any artists you've had difficulty working with?

Very, VERY rarely. It happened fairly recently, sadly, it wasn’t a personality thing at all, they just quit communicating with everyone on the team. It was weird and baffling.

I don’t really think I can remember any more difficulty like that. I’ve had a couple artists ask for script changes for religious reasons. I had a very wonderful Muslim artist who grew uncomfortable drawing young women. I had a Christian artist who objected to a pose they felt was too close to a crucifixion. I try to respect those types of things and even if I strongly disagree, I don’t want to ask artists to draw stuff they feel truly uncomfortable with.

I have had a few artists who had a hard time laying off the cheesecake. A little surprisingly, most of those artists were women. 

OH! I have had a couple artists who had a very hard time drawing comedy, they would draw even comedy relief scenes with too much sincerity. Sometimes this happens with artists where they don’t speak English as their first language (but even this is very rare!).

I think the only time there was a significant problem like this was when I worked with Rob Liefeld on Titans. It was fun, I liked what he did, but we never formed a cohesive unit. I didn’t figure out how to write for him, that’s on me. 

I can’t think of any personal problems. All the artists I have now, I would take a bullet for them. I consider myself incredibly fortunate to work with the people I have worked with, it’s a dream come true. I am close, close friends with many of them, and almost all of them have said they want to work with me again, so they must like me okay, as well. :)

Problems are very, VERY rare for me that way, but when I start a new book with a new artist, I always do three things;

1) I ask them what they love to draw. If it’s monsters, I put them in. If it’s barbarians, if it’s aliens, whatever. It goes in. I ask what characters they like and try to get them.

2) Ask them what they hate to draw and try to banish it as much as possible. There’s an Eisner winning artist who drew a book for years that was all talking heads. Now they can’t stand that. If we work together, I will write the opposite, wide vistas and cool action. A happy artist is good!

3) I always tell them that the choreography and panel suggestions are just suggestions, if they have a better idea, they should do it.  It’s ridiculous to think a non-artist is going to always know how to design a page better than an artist who thinks about this stuff all day every day.