Author Archives: Mark

Before “Before Watchmen”

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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!

The Original Black Cat

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This time out, for no spe­cial rea­son, here is the orig­i­nal Black Cat. I’ve kind of had a soft spot for Har­vey Comics’ ver­sion of the Black Cat from the gold­en age for a while now.

If you’re not famil­iar with the char­ac­ter, behind the Black Cat’s mask in the comics was actress Lin­da Turn­er. She’d start­ed out her career orig­i­nal­ly as a stunt­woman, but had suc­cess­ful­ly tran­si­tioned into becom­ing a lead actress. The var­i­ous skills she’d picked up dur­ing her stunt­woman career enabled her to fight crimes and solve mys­ter­ies incog­ni­to as the Black Cat. The ’40s Hol­ly­wood milieu gave her sto­ries a lit­tle dif­fer­ent feel from oth­er, more typ­i­cal­ly NYC-fla­vored super­hero comics.

Sev­er­al artists drew her sto­ries, but the artist most asso­ci­at­ed with the char­ac­ter would have to be Lee Elias. Elias was clear­ly a Can­iff dis­ci­ple, and he did that style very well. He gave his hero­ine (and the strip in gen­er­al) a real charm and appeal.

Obvi­ous­ly I did­n’t both­er try­ing to mim­ic Elias’ work here. For some rea­son, I envi­sioned this from the begin­ning as using a vec­tor-based Adobe Illus­tra­tor approach. Yet anoth­er exper­i­ment. The beau­ty of this being my site, I can exper­i­ment with all kinds of approaches.

If you’re curi­ous to see some Black Cat comics for your­self, I’m not sure where you could buy them now (with­out pay­ing the usu­al prices for gold­en age comics). I picked up a set of reprints some years back now via Bud Plant (and thanks once again to my bud­dy Eric Wight for alert­ing me to those back then!). Unfor­tu­nate­ly though, I don’t think those are in stock any­more. But, the good news is, you can view just about every issue of Black Cat online, cour­tesy of The Dig­i­tal Com­ic Muse­um (What a great resource!).

And that’s a wrap for this one!

With One Magic Word…

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Final­ly I get to show off the last of those two items I teased back in Decem­ber. I gave a fur­ther peek at it here. It’s anoth­er cov­er done for FCA, which appears in the back of Roy Thomas’ Alter Ego mag­a­zine. This one was obvi­ous­ly done up to look like one of those issues of Secret Ori­gins that DC Comics pub­lished in the ear­ly ’70s. I loved those as a kid, because back then they were one of the rare venues where you had an oppor­tu­ni­ty to see any of that gold­en age com­ic material.

I’ve talked in pre­vi­ous posts about how much I liked the gold­en age Super­man and Bat­man. But with­out a doubt, my favorite gold­en age char­ac­ter would have to be Cap­tain Mar­vel. When DC brought him back from pub­lish­ing lim­bo in the ear­ly ’70s, I was already primed for it. I’d read about the “Big Red Cheese” in our local library’s copy of All in Col­or for a Dime, as well as in The Ster­anko His­to­ry of Comics. Some­thing about the visu­al and the idea of the char­ac­ter hooked me, even with­out ever hav­ing seen a sin­gle Cap­tain Mar­vel sto­ry yet.

Not to dis­miss the sto­ries, but a huge part of the appeal of those gold­en age Cap­tain Mar­vel comics for me is the art. As the char­ac­ter’s design­er and main artist, C.C. Beck set the tone there. Most gold­en age com­ic book artists doing super­heroes looked to the news­pa­per adven­ture strips for their inspi­ra­tion. They most­ly tend­ed to fall into one of two schools: it was either the illus­tra­tive real­ism of Fos­ter and Ray­mond, or the more impres­sion­is­tic approach of Sick­les and Can­iff. Instead, Beck looked to the “fun­ny” por­tion of the fun­ny pages for his inspi­ra­tion (like Jack Cole did with Plas­tic Man). The result was a strip that had a look and feel like no oth­er. And of course, the writ­ing played a role in mak­ing that pos­si­ble too.

While the high­er-ups at Faw­cett may have want­ed Bill Park­er and C.C. Beck to just give them a knock­off of Super­man, that was not what they got. They got some­thing bet­ter. Many read­ers back then must have thought so too; at the peak of the char­ac­ter’s pop­u­lar­i­ty, they were pub­lish­ing Cap­tain Mar­vel Adven­tures bi-week­ly and sell­ing 1.3 mil­lion copies of each issue!

I know some­times mod­ern fans have trou­ble with Mr. Tawky Tawny and some of the more whim­si­cal aspects of the strip, but for me, the clas­sic Cap­tain Mar­vel mate­r­i­al is inspi­ra­tional stuff. I wish I could tell you of a rel­a­tive­ly cheap and easy way to lay hands on that work if you haven’t seen it, but it seems hard­er to come by these days.

Doc (“Don’t Call Me ‘Doctor!‘”) Strange

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Now that it’s fin­ished, I can show you one of the two items I teased back in Decem­ber. It’s a pin-up of the old Nedor Comics hero Doc Strange, as he might have appeared on the cov­er of an issue of Thrilling Comics in 1965, had Nedor still been pub­lish­ing at that point.

If you’re not famil­iar with the com­pa­ny, Nedor pub­lished (under sev­er­al names) dur­ing the gold­en age. They actu­al­ly had a fair­ly siz­able group of heroes, includ­ing Doc Strange. Nedor ceased pub­lish­ing comics at the end of the gold­en age. Since then, many peo­ple have tak­en a shot at doing some­thing with their old char­ac­ters. AC Comics has made use of them over the years, and so did Alan Moore and Peter Hogan more recent­ly in the Tom Strong spin­off minis­eries, Ter­ra Obscura.

Doc was a scientist/adventurer who invent­ed a serum he named Alo­sun, dis­tilled from “sun atoms.” This serum gave him super­hu­man strength, flight and invul­ner­a­bil­i­ty when he used it.

Enough of the his­to­ry les­son. So why did I do this pin-up/­cov­er? Easy; because I was asked. The one and only Will Meugniot is cur­rent­ly doing a new cre­ator-owned series (in the back of AC Comics’ Fem­Force) that picks up the threads of the Nedor books with the descen­dants of some of the char­ac­ters. It’s called “Agents of N.E.D.O.R.,” and is intend­ed as a peri­od piece tak­ing place in 1965. Will invit­ed sev­er­al artists to con­tribute pin-ups of the orig­i­nal Nedor char­ac­ters, and I was very flat­tered to be asked if I’d like to do so too.

As is typ­i­cal for me, instead of mak­ing things sim­ple on myself, I had to make a whole cov­er out of it. Since Will’s sto­ry takes place in 1965, I thought this should be a cov­er for Thrilling Comics (which starred Doc) also from ’65, as if Nedor had kept on pub­lish­ing all that time. I even did some math to work out the issue num­ber. How’s that for obsessive?

Doc Strange most often went on his adven­tures accom­pa­nied by his young side­kick Mike (who wore an iden­ti­cal out­fit, only with the addi­tion of a green cape for some rea­son). I thought it would be more fun though to show Doc with his girl­friend, Vir­ginia Thomp­son, as she would also some­times take part in his adven­tures. Of course, I updat­ed her look here for the times.

This will appear in b/w line art form in Fem­Force #159, since the book has b/w inte­ri­ors. But for my blog here, I want­ed to go full col­or. Because it’s how I saw this in my head from the start. I get asked to do a b/w pin-up and I envi­sion some­thing in col­or; go figure!

Thanks, Will. This was a lot of fun!

The 50th

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This is not exact­ly some­thing brand new, but done a few years back for the invites to my Mom and Dad’s 50th Anniver­sary cel­e­bra­tion. I thought maybe a few more peo­ple than just those who saw it back then might enjoy it.

I don’t nor­mal­ly do a lot of car­i­ca­ture. So I fig­ured as long as I was going to attempt it, I might take my cues from one of the best: Al Hirschfeld. It was def­i­nite­ly a chal­lenge to work this way, but I was hap­py with the result. Oh; don’t strain your eyes look­ing for “Ninas,” because there aren’t any!

Not much more to say about this right now, except; Mom, Dad, I love you very much.

The Ultimate Comic Strip

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I see this mon­th’s zip­ping by, and as busy as I am, I’m just not at a point where I can post any­thing cur­rent and new yet. So instead of that, here’s some­thing old that might be of interest.

This was done while I attend­ed Art Cen­ter in Pasade­na, back in the ear­ly ’90s. Some of the specifics are lost to time now, but I had an illus­tra­tion class at the time, and for our final, we were to do a self-por­trait. The para­me­ters of the assign­ment and how you could inter­pret it were wide open.

I was­n’t sure what to do, how to approach it, and was wrack­ing my brains. Until one of my friends in the class made the off­hand com­ment, “Oh, you’ll just do yours as a com­ic, right?” It was one of those fore­head-slap­ping moments. I was too close to it to see the solu­tion myself, though it was the obvi­ous way to go in the eyes of my friends in the class who knew my inter­est in comics.

And this was the result. Though I think I draw a bit bet­ter now (I did this twen­ty years ago now?! Yeesh!), I still kind of like this. I think most artists can relate, at some point or anoth­er. Any­way, enjoy! I hope to have some new cur­rent work to post next time.

Yet More Teasing

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Things are real­ly busy here. I fin­ished one of the projects I teased last month, but I still can’t show off the whole thing quite just yet. How­ev­er, rather than let the month pass with­out post­ing any­thing, I thought I’d at least show a por­tion of the final art. It’s anoth­er faux com­ic cov­er (some­thing I’ve done a lot of). This one I’m quite hap­py with (So is the client, which is always a good thing when you can man­age it), and I look for­ward to when the whole thing can be shown!

Once Again, a Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!

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Well, I find myself in a strange posi­tion at the moment: buried under a num­ber of var­i­ous side projects. It’s unusu­al for me to get hit all at once like this, so I’m not quite sure what to make of it. They’re all the kinds of inter­est­ing and chal­leng­ing assign­ments that are hard to say “no” to, and should be a lot of fun to see through. Got­ta keep them all mov­ing though. If you can imag­ine me fran­ti­cal­ly jug­gling to the musi­cal accom­pa­ni­ment of the “Sabre Dance,” you’ll get the idea.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, though I’ve got all these projects going, they’re all just works-in-progress at the moment. None of them are done and ready to post. Even if they were, some of the peo­ple I’m doing them for might not be ready for me to put them up quite yet. And with the hol­i­days so close, I don’t think I’m going to have time to do any­thing else spe­cial for my site right now. So in lieu of that, I hope maybe some sneak peeks at a cou­ple of the works in progress will suf­fice for the moment. It’s either that, or let this month go by with­out post­ing anything.

One brand new item I can point out: I am pleased to announce that I am now being rep­re­sent­ed by Ellen Ann Mersereau, who works with a ros­ter of some of the most tal­ent­ed cre­ators in the busi­ness. You can find her con­tact info over to your right in the sidebar.

Wher­ev­er you are, what­ev­er your cur­rent cir­cum­stances, I hope the hol­i­days are good to you; that you have a good Christ­mas, and an excel­lent New Year!

Looking Back

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This will be one of those schizo posts I’ve done from time to time, where the illus­tra­tion part does­n’t nec­es­sar­i­ly relate to the bulk of the text. And “bulk” is prob­a­bly the right word; this post will be length­i­er than usu­al, so I apol­o­gize for that in advance.

Let me explain about the illus­tra­tion first. My younger broth­er is writ­ing a book, and asked me to do the cov­er illus­tra­tion. Over the years, we’ve col­lab­o­rat­ed on a num­ber of projects (includ­ing our band, back in the ’80s). And it’s always an inter­est­ing and chal­leng­ing expe­ri­ence (in the best sens­es of those words), because I have a lot of free­dom to try things that I prob­a­bly could­n’t for oth­er clients. Usu­al­ly, I wind up head­ing into new and unfa­mil­iar ter­ri­to­ry that I might not have explored on my own. This piece is a case in point: we wound up with Michelan­gelo’s The Cre­ation of Adam as rein­ter­pret­ed through a kind of “street art” lens. Def­i­nite­ly not a direc­tion I would’ve imag­ined myself going, but I’m pleased with the end prod­uct. Though don’t expect to go out late at night and find me throw­ing it up on the side of some build­ing in the wilds of down­town Los Angeles!

Now on to my main sub­ject: I’ve real­ized that this month marks the one year anniver­sary of my site. It seemed like this might be a good point to take a look back, and give some­thing of a peek behind the cur­tain. When I first began to weigh the idea of putting up my own site, I was very reluc­tant to both­er, to be hon­est. The only rea­son I did it was because it has become absolute­ly essen­tial as an artist (par­tic­u­lar­ly in ani­ma­tion) to have a web­site. Most stu­dios now don’t want to han­dle phys­i­cal port­fo­lios any­more; they’d rather just have a link they can click on to view your work. So this was a case of “like it or not, you’ve got to do the research and get your own site up.”

But I’ve found a real­ly good thing that has come out of hav­ing the site. As a kid, I used to love to draw. I’d spend hours at the kitchen table doing it. But fast-for­ward to adult­hood, and an unfor­tu­nate side effect some­times of turn­ing the thing you loved doing as a kid into the work you do for a liv­ing as an adult, is that you can lose that love. When you spend all day being told what you’re sup­posed to draw and how to draw it, that can sap your moti­va­tion to draw any­thing for your­self when you’re off work. The last thing you feel like doing some­times at the end of the day is to pick up a pen­cil again for your­self. But the thing is, it’s impor­tant to keep at least a por­tion of your art as an out­let for your own expres­sion. Mak­ing time to draw for your­self is impor­tant. Hang­ing onto that love for draw­ing you once had as a kid is important.

And hav­ing my own site, where I can draw what­ev­er I want, and in what­ev­er style I want, has gone a ways toward help­ing me to regain that love. Though it’s a lame sim­i­le, it’s almost like my site’s become the inter­net equiv­a­lent of hav­ing a giant refrig­er­a­tor that I can tack my art to, for peo­ple to see when they come by.

One oth­er thing I decid­ed, ear­ly on, (and I guess you can file this under “state­ment of pur­pose”) is that I want­ed to stay on the pos­i­tive side in any­thing I write here. It’s very easy to go neg­a­tive. As my friends can tell you, I have my opin­ions about the things I don’t like in movies, car­toons, comics, etc., just like any­one else. But there are plen­ty of places on the inter­net where peo­ple can (and do) vent at length about things like that. I’d pre­fer to be a pos­i­tive voice. Rather than waste time talk­ing about what I don’t like (why give those things any fur­ther expo­sure?), why not spend my time talk­ing about the things that I like? Why not give those things the spot­light? So that’s what I’ve tried to do thus far, and what I intend to keep doing. That, and show­ing off new work on my big inter­net refrig­er­a­tor when I feel like it. 🙂

And that’s prob­a­bly more than enough ver­bosi­ty for one post! If you’ve actu­al­ly made it through to this point, I wish all read­ing this a Hap­py Thanksgiving!

Hydee Hits the Funny Pages

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I’ve just been giv­en the go-ahead to final­ly spill the beans about a project I worked on ear­li­er this year. It’s what I was talk­ing about in this post. I got to help with the art for a short Hydee and the Hy Tops com­ic, which is to be pro­duced as a give­away. You get to see it all above, for the first time any­where, probably.

Once again, I was giv­en the oppor­tu­ni­ty to col­lab­o­rate with the love­ly and tal­ent­ed Jim Sten­strum (who is try­ing to get togeth­er a site of his own. When that hap­pens, it will be in my blogroll). Jim pen­cilled these pages, while I did all the col­or­ing and let­ter­ing. There were no pen­cils harmed in the mak­ing of this com­ic, as there was no ink­ing in the usu­al sense. The art style has no con­tain­ment lines; just flat areas of col­or, with occa­sion­al bits of col­ored linework only where need­ed. The look of the com­ic was based on what we’d done for the flash-ani­mat­ed Hydee fea­ture, which I don’t think has been released just yet (Though you can see some of the work I did for that here in my Gal­leries).

I enjoyed work­ing with the Hydee char­ac­ters, both in the com­ic and on the fea­ture. The sce­nario was kind of “Josie and the Pussy­cats by way of the Go-Gos, but if they were being formed now for the Dis­ney Chan­nel,” if that descrip­tion makes any sense. And the client was a dream to work with (which, as any­one in ani­ma­tion can tell you, is not some­thing you can expect to hap­pen all that often). I wish all clients were that good to work with! If the oppor­tu­ni­ty pre­sent­ed itself to work with the prop­er­ty again, under the same kind of cir­cum­stances, I would not hes­i­tate to do it. It was fun.