Early Wednesday afternoon, a backer only Zoom invite was sent out to the patrons of Stephen R. Bissette’s TYRANT Historic Deluxe Edition by LIGHTHOUSE. The event was hosted by Chris Stevens and co-host Jim Rugg with special appearances by the man of the hour, Stephen R. Bissette.
Over 150 Backers joined the call at various times throughout the course of the evening, including J.T. Streebo of Comic-Jutsu. Once the call moved beyond excited talk about the Kickstarter project and into the realm of comic creation, I knew that we were involved in something special. The following notes are my attempt to capture a few of the talking points about the finer points of creating comics and cartooning.
Date: Wednesday, April 17th
Meeting Place: Zoom Backer Only Call
Primary Attendees: CS = Chris Stevens (host), JR = Jim Rugg (co-host), SRB = Stephen R. Bissette + 150 Backers with a few special surprise guest appearances!
[The call began with excited talk about the closing moments of the Kickstarter campaign and the current funding which resided somewhere north of $312,000. After the introductory half-hour, Jim Rugg excuses himself to eat dinner for a few hours. A surprise drop-in appearance by Paul Pope (THB, Heavy Liquid, Battling Boy, Batman: Year 100) shifted the discussion to art and comics creation.]
CS: We have to give credit to Scott Dunbier for creating what we call the Original Art Edition format. Without him, we wouldn’t have access to this original art in a way that is the next best thing to holding the original art in your hand. With the exception of a few people that can afford to buy this stuff, this is as good as it gets for the rest of us.
[PP = Paul Pope]
PP: I like the commitment of drawing in ink.
SRB: When creating my comics, I like to have an edge. It’s like that old song lyric, "Bad taste never goes out of style."
[Don Simpson, PhD (Megaton Man, Border Worlds, X-Amount of Comics: 1963 (WhenElse?) Annual) appears on the call and starts sharing art in the chat.]
[Francesco Francavilla (The Black Beetle) joins the chat.]
[Mark Schultz (Cadillacs and Dinosaurs, Xenozoic Tales) appears in the chat and greets everyone.]
PP: You just need one great panel per page, not every panel has to be great.
SRB: One day at the school, we got to watch Joe (Kubert) draw several covers that he had to send off to DC the next day. He had pencils behind his ears and brushes in-between all of his fingers. He really changed my perception of how you have to draw. I used to just draw like this [holds up hand with fingers moving slightly], but he used to draw with his whole arm. Not just his hand. You draw with your whole body [sweeps arm across the screen].
PP: I draw standing. You have to get into it.
SRB: I have a kneeler. The old Catholic boy in me is used to kneeling. I draw kneeling. If my wife hears the music she knows I’m in the zone and not to disturb me.
[SRB reads Chapter One of the unfinished TYRANT story “The Smells.” ]
SRB: The great thing about working with Alan Moore would be that immediately on page one, Alan would set up a sense of smell.
[SRB is asked about his favorite paleontological artists.]
SRB: Charles R. Knight and Zdenek Burian. Those are my favorites, along with one more that people don’t think of - Ray Harryhausen. He was a paleontological artist with One Million Years B.C. and The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms.
SRB: In comics, Sam Glanzman was an inspiration with Kona, Monarch of Monster Isle. Joe Kubert’s Tor. Greg Irons determined my approach to drawing with ink. I remember holding a Winsor 7 ink brush for the first time. We were practicing inking and I was getting into it. Joe (Kubert) came over to me and said I was really taking to inking. It was the tool I had never known existed that I had been looking for all of my life.
PP: The Winsor 7 is my weapon of choice.
[Paul Pope opens a box and holds up several different brushes.]
PP: See this. It’s a makeup brush. I’m not putting makeup on my face. I use it for inking. I like (indelible) Sumi ink. That’s what I use.
[Paul Pope holds up Maggie the Mechanic: Love and Rockets Book 1]
PP: Los Bros. Jaime (Hernandez). Roy Crane (Captain Easy, Soldier of Fortune; Buz Sawyer).
[Mark Schultz holds up a work-in-progress wrap around cover he is drawing during the call.]
[Francesco Francavilla is invited on-screen. He is asked about working in digital.]
Francesco Francavilla = FF
FF: I’ll do anything. Purple sky or green water. Whatever it takes to sell the mood. I like to use heavy blacks. I’ll watch a lot of black & white movies as inspiration -- movies with heavy mood.
FF: Yes, I use flash. Digital for color as well as some inks. I've never used Photoshop.
PP: I only work in ink. I also sell original art.
[SRB holds up the thumbnails for an unfinished TYRANT story.]
SRB: Thumbnails mean nothing to anyone who is not the artist. I had the idea for Tyrant in Slumberland. What does Tyrant dream about in the nest?
SRB: I took one of my favorite Edgar Allan Poe stories (The Bells) and used it as a template to create "The Smells." It’s the story of Tyrant’s first waking day in the nest.
SRB: I used to think that I would never in a million years do more work on TYRANT, but this has really opened my eyes. The success of this Kickstarter has changed my mind. What can be done with Kickstarter and modern crowd-funding has made me want to go back to the drawing board and finish those TYRANT stories. This made me realize there is an audience for it.
[Jim Rugg returns to the Zoom after several hours eating and walking.]
[Jim Rugg is asked about Afrodesiac]
JR: I don’t have any more Afrodesiac stories to tell. It is out of print. I would like to bring it back into print if any publishers are interested.
JR: You guys (in the chat) were talking about the "Kayfabe Effect." Just share what you love. Ed and I were just a couple of guys starting a youtube channel. We started it to not drop out and lose track of things between. There’s no blueprint for this. Share what you love. If you think everyone knows about it, they don’t. It doesn’t matter if it’s a classic book or a new one. Spread the word about the books you love and someone out there will find it new. Reach out to the creators and let them know. It’s a cold world especially at the drawing board. Just let them know that you love their work.
JR: We’re in a golden age of comics. I say that in what we have access to. What is being released in great editions. For example, this great series of Richard Corben books from Dark Horse were just realeased. A couple years ago, we didn’t have that. We didn’t have access to great Richard Corben art like this. I expand that to what people are making too. If your life is comics, then it’s never been better. The discourse around comics has gotten so rich.
SRB: I agree. I stepped away from American comic conventions because they were becoming glorified flea markets, which is fine. There was a time when I was very successful selling to the market from there, but I was more drawn to the conversations and questions that originated outside of the US more so than what was coming from the US. But this has shifted, which I find remarkable. Also the questions are technical as well as the conversations around the business of comics. We were going deep into the conversations that used to be verboten because people weren’t supposed to talk about it and weren’t interested in it.
JR: We’re in a golden age of comics. Now is the time. I can’t imagine a better time than ever for comics. Distribution is also about how do readers find your comics. I have a library app that has my comics on there. It’s just remarkable now the distribution and how people are coming to comics. How are people finding comics? The distribution, the understanding of it, it’s better than it’s ever been in the past.
SRB: When you’re doing sequential narrative, the difference between a panel and two panels is enormous. It’s really alchemical.
SRB: One of the early scripts I got for Swamp Thing featured a small wire brush. A six-panel grid with a small wire brush that’s a small object. That’s not going to have any dramatic impact if you draw it as a six-panel grid. I was always looking for ways to smash the grid. I was always looking for a way to get away from that goddam rectangle when I’m drawing comics. I subtly shifted the orientation of the page by slightly cocking the panels off-center. So I was having the top panels - one, two, and three have a slight pitch to them. The panels on the bottom had no panel border, so that wire brush became the largest thing on the bottom of the page. It took up the bottom fifth of the page - it was huge. When I was working on TYRANT every decision I made was what image on a given page is the most important and how can I orchestrate the pages to give that dramatic impact that I was driving for so that the given impact would hit when I wanted it to hit.
SRB: DC would not print red blood, so they printed it in this off-orange. When you’re trying to do horror and show a character that has been skinned, you can’t fake it.
SRB: Rick’s Abraxas and the Earthman originally in Epic Illustrated, has a character whose last name was Lilly. Rick’s character was skinned and he wore his actual skin around his neck like a cape.
[The conversation shifts to Swamp Thing deserving credit for what would become the Vertigo imprint at DC]
SRB: It was Swamp Thing. Sandman. Hellblazer. Animal Man. What Karen Berger [DC/Vertigo Editor] did with those four really laid the groundwork for what became Vertigo, but we didn’t have the freedom that Vertigo had.
SRB: We couldn’t say shit. We couldn’t say fuck. We couldn’t have the color red. That’s why we did the Floronic Man. You can’t show red blood, but anybody can break a carrot. Part of the fun of doing TYRANT in black and white was that I didn’t have to worry about that kind of thing. Tooth and claw would be part of and intrinsic to the story. The berry of the crushed berry juice was identical to the color of blood I was using. It was only going to be later in the storyline when Tyrant has his first courtship, if you will. Tyrant is confused because he encountered something else that wasn’t just to deal with food. Tyrant is at a time in his life when he is dealing with something that doesn’t deal with food stock.
[SRB is asked about the return of the 1963 characters from Image.]
SRB: The money I got from working on 1963 is what let me create TYRANT.
SRB: The way that works is that I own those characters. I own The Fury, N-Man, The Hypernaut. A few years ago, I let a group of fans do a book (Giant-Size ‘63) with my characters. The problem was that when the cat’s away, the mice will play. They did stories with my characters, but they also included several of the other characters that I do not own. I had to do a lot of work to smooth over the hard feelings over that. It showed me that I need to take more of a hand in editing anything to do with those characters. There are completed stories with them out there. You never know. They could come back. Given the means of using Kickstarter and crowdfunding, it might be a viable way to bring back the 1963 characters in a way that couldn’t be done before.
[The six hour Zoom call winds to a close as the Kickstarter ends at 11:00 PM EST.]
SRB: Hey look at that! [laughs] It has fireworks. I’ve never seen one of these end before.
[End of Zoom Call]
J.T. Streebo is the creator of Mutica’s Movie Morgue, Scarecrow at Midnight, and The Blind Eye Looks Within. He is currently the editor-in-chief for Comic-Jutsu: The Art of Comics. Visit Youtube@comicjutsu.
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