Before “Before Watchmen”

The image I’m post­ing this time is not a new one (it’s already over in the Gal­leries side of my site), but I’ve had some friends make the case that with DC Comics doing all their “Before Watch­men” books right now, it’s a good time to call atten­tion to it anew here on the front page.

There’s a story behind this piece. A friend of mine in the ani­ma­tion field, Lance Falk, has these sketch­books he passes around. They have art by some amaz­ing artists. Chances are if you can think of some big name artist, Lance very likely has art by him or her in one of his books. Way back when we were work­ing on “The Real Adven­tures of Jonny Quest” together, Lance asked if I’d be will­ing to do a sketch for his then-current book. It’s both hugely flat­ter­ing and daunt­ing, once you see the level of work oth­ers have done.

Lance sug­gested he might like to see the Watch­men done as if Kirby had drawn them. I wound up mak­ing a whole cover pro­duc­tion out of it, as if it were done in the mid-‘60s. Lance was very happy with the end result, and I was hugely relieved that it was well-received.

Fast for­ward some months later (maybe even a year), and I find out that this sketch­book had been cir­cu­lat­ing fur­ther. It had crossed orig­i­nal Watch­men artist and co-creator Dave Gib­bons’ path in Lon­don. When I first heard he’d seen the book with my draw­ing in it, I must admit I was taken aback. But Lance assured me that Mr. Gib­bons actu­ally got a big kick out of what I’d done. Once again, I was hugely relieved.

Fast for­ward to more recent times, and the pub­li­ca­tion of Mr. Gib­bons’ book, Watch­ing the Watch­men, which com­piled all kinds of back­ground mate­r­ial on that piv­otal work. He appar­ently liked this Kirby Watch­men cover well enough, he asked me if I’d mind his includ­ing it in the book. What do you think I said?

Thanks much, Lance and Mr. Gibbons!