A painting I’ve been working on forever, or three times a year anyway, is in its last trimester, so to speak. A bit more polish needed, but everything's there. Unless I change my mind again.
It’s intended to be a wraparound cover for the first Concrete novel, which is having an even longer gestation.
No one will ever call me “madly fecund.”
Our foxhound Annabelle fought a mink recently. I was there. Minks emit a musk which is reminiscent of, though less potent than, skunk spray. Elizabeth said I stank of it when I came in – and I never got within ten feet of the fast-moving fighters (I sought, vainly, to break it up). I felt like a witness splattered with blood, wrongly accused.
Happily, the mink escaped into the brush pile to fight another day.
I’m working on a couple of things. One is a big project for DC comics which I’ve teased here a couple of times, though I’m not supposed to announce it. Harlan Ellison is the author, and Ken and Joan Steacy are coloring it.
Another is a graphic novel for Dark Horse, in collaboration with Mike Richardson.
Here are some images. I take the blame for the limited palette color here.
I have a linear style full of accidental self-contained sub-shapes and openly-feathered shapes that is particularly hostile to the Photoshop bucket tool. My work is hell to color. Sorry, Steacys.
It's Sunday, so it's time for a gloomy poem.
And no poet is gloomier than Joseph Payne Brennan.
DEATH
He was 109 when I met him.
One day we spoke of Death.
He shrugged. "Foolish people
worry about death,
like worrying about sleep
or the changes of the seasons."
I said nothing.
He tapped his pipe.
"Once, I was with the Army.
Arizona. Four of us taken by Apaches.
One tried to escape. Killed him on the spot,
not really intending to,
just acting on impulse.
Later, while two of us watched,
tied up like chickens,
they dug a hole.
They took Wade, the other one,
buried him up to his neck
and built a little fire
right next to his face."
The old man grimaced.
"He screamed for seven hours;
his flesh turned black and fell away.
finally there was just a skeleton's head,
still, somehow, screaming.
At last his eyes gushed out,
liquified. And then he died.
Do you think he welcomed death?"
I didn't answer.
After a time he filled his pipe.
"I can still hear him screaming
after eighty years.
I hardly ever think of Death."
As an afterthought, he added,
"They took so long with his torture,
troops rode in and rescued us.
Killed four Apaches, captured the rest.
When they found that blackened skull, though,
they butchered every one."
He shrugged.
"They got off easy."
At Norwescon last month I ran into my old friend Mark
Ferrari, an illustrator who has become a celebrated fantasy
novelist. Apart from his always having
an itch to write, just how the transition occurred I didn’t really know. I hadn’t talked to Mark in years.
Mark shared his tale: he was run over by a truck while bike riding. While he recovered fairly quickly, considering his injuries, he found he had lost the ability to render in colored pencil, which was integral to his painstaking technique.
So the time was ripe for following a different dream.
That sounds a bit pat, so let me emphasize the cold horror of this. Mark lived every artist's second most dreaded catastrophe -- the loss of the use of his hands for creating art. Only blindness could be worse.
Brr.
I never got to ask the question that occurred: has Mark ever had the chance to commiserate with Stephen King?
I visited Dark Horse Comics in Milwaukie OR recently. I was pleased to see the place thriving, despite the economy. In the rush of each day’s news, it’s easy to forget the economy doesn’t sink equally everywhere. Some parts do okay while the car and construction industries flatten like pools of astronaut gore on the surface of a cold, hypergravitational neutron star.
Mike Richardson showered me with books, and I was pleased to see a beautiful, redesigned reissue of Bernie Wrightson’s masterpiece. Throughout the seventies he issued portfolios of illustrations to Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein. Finally, in1983, Marvel published the novel with them all.
It was a disappointment. I suppose it would have to be after the beautiful oversized portfolios, which by their scale did justice to Bernie’s hyperrendered artwork. He was in thrall not only to his early influence Graham Engels, but also to Golden Age Illustrator Franklin Booth.
Booth grew up in the country and didn’t realize the intricate woodcut engravings of artists like Gustav Dorè were actually done by artisans reproducing, through cut lines on the endgrain sides of dense hardwood blocks, based on Dore’s paintings. He thought they were drawn right off by the artist in pen and ink. So he taught himself to render as finely as the dollar bill in your pocket.
Anyway, things came together for Wrightson then. He’d done his outstanding journeyman work in comics, was still without family responsibilities (I think), and living the art for art’s sake life. He must have put in thousands of hours and so created a work for the ages.
But, as I said, I was disappointed with the Marvel book. The design was perfunctory, even hostile to reading. Small type and narrow margins created too much text on each page – it made a difficult, meandering story a slog that quite defeated me, even when I tried to read it again last year.
Presumably Dark Horse hasn’t tightened up Shelly’s maddeningly indirect tale (she was nineteen, after all, when she wrote it – and who am I to complain, it’s a mythic classic!). But I can unreservedly recommend this edition. The new book is much more readable, with some classy design touches and plenty of air in the layouts.
It contains one of my favorite quotes: “Nothing so contributes to tranquilize the mind as a steady purpose.”
A steady purpose. Not a bad mantra.
This weekend I attended Norwescon. It’s quite different from comic cons. While there is a dealer’s room, it’s far more modest than a comic
con this size. It’s not the point of
these things.
Costumes are everywhere – it’s a major SF fandom subculture.
My favorites: a renaissance faire lady whose dog wore actual chain mail. And the young Jedi (?) who had Jar-Jar Binks’s dripping head on a pike.
What draws me, besides some great SF illustrators, are the writer’s panels. There’s nothing like smart writers talking about their craft, and their struggles (which I certainly share) with blockage, finding time, being focused. Misery not only loves company but everybody has tips to offer.
Some stuck with me:
One was James Glass’s habit of keeping story outlines on 3 x 5 cards (naturally, they’re terse) until they’ve ripened enough to write. I keep fat files of story ideas, but I seldom have occasion take them out of the cabinet to be inspired. Chances are they will remain unwritten forever.
A card file by my computer? Heck, I’d finger through that every time I was waiting for a task bar to fill. Ten times a day.
Another: accept the fact that you don’t get into a flow state for a half hour or so writing. Just push through that all-I-write-is-wrong period. It’s as unavoidable as driving to work is for most people.
Another: Keep a “things to look up later” list on a scratch pad by your keyboard. Breaking the flow to do research is like leaving the road to pick flowers in quicksand.
Movie posters and other swag were there for the taking in a table by the entrance to the convention. This was the most curious.
A lollipop promoting the horror film Saw V.
Is there symbolism that escapes me?
Click to enlarge.
Sunday's small, relaxed convention took me back decades. Boxes of old comics, artists sketching, and that was about it -- but quite enough for a pleasant time.
A highlight was getting to know Rick Hoberg, who preceded me into the field by a few short years so that we have many people and experiences (he's done a lot more storyboarding than I ever did, though) in common.
He told an anecdote from his earliest days about the collision of two great Comics Artist Egos: Alex Toth and Russ Manning.
Rick, Dave Stevens and Bill Stout were working for Manning as assistants at the time, getting out Tarzan comics in Manning's style for a European publisher.
Alex brought in a backup story he'd done. Masterful comic art, of course: Tarzan in the desert. I can imagine the simple, graphic curves of dunes Alex would've played with like nobody else.
Manning thought it was great, but...
"Beautiful job, Alex. Of course we'll have to redraw the faces to match the way I do Tarzan."
Instantly the hair on the assistants' neck hairs prickled. "That's not gonna happen," said a steely Toth.
So they went at it, verbally, while the assistants tried to keep their eyes on their boards. The shoutfest ended when Toth tore the art pages to pieces.
"He took them with him," says Rick. "He probably knew I would've picked 'em all up and taped them together the minute he left!"
I wonder: were those pages among Toth's effects when he died? Or did he throw them out?
Tragic.
Or deliver subpoenas, delinquent bills, paternity test results.
I'll be at the Seattle Comicard Convention at Seattle Center, in the shadow of the Space Needle, at a table peddling my books and artwork. Drop by and say hello. I should be there 12-5pm.
I'll be sharing the table with friend Ken Steacy, legendary Canadian comics artist for Marvel and DC and Now and Image And Fractal Comics and Dark Horse and now a publisher in his own right.
Pic to the left is by headliner Clayton Crain. Click to enlarge. Other guests, with links to the convention site bios:
:: Ben Hansen
:: Clayton Crain
:: Greg Scott Bailey
:: Jason Martin
:: Jason Metcalf
:: Jeff Cheatham
:: John Aegard
:: Levi Skeen
:: Mark Brill
:: Nate Powell
:: Randy Emberlin
:: Randy Kintz
:: Rick Hoberg
:: Shannon Devine
:: Steve Lieber
:: Tony Dela Cruz
:: William E. G. Johnson
