Title Pages: Batman Strikes #6

Hi all! Sorry I’ve been so quiet the last few days. Busy, busy, busy. Maybe I should do like Mark Evanier and just post a picture of  soup can on days when he’s too busy to blog. Hm, come to think of it I’m not even sure what that means…

Batman Strikes #6 - Title Logo

Anyway, here’s a look at another Title Page from The Batman Strikes!, featuring another hand-drawn story title logo. This one features Catwoman, and I should say something about her design here. Like all the major villains appearing in The Batman Strikes!, Catwoman’s design is based on animation models from the animated TV show the comic was a tie-in for. This Catwoman costume had large yellow goggles, presumably influenced by the then-recent Darwyn Cooke redesign of the character. The animation design also had a loose collar, which could pull over her head as a hood for added stealth.  That’s one of those ideas that sounds cool on paper but then doesn’t get used much in practice. I could be mistaken but I suspect that Catwoman was first seen on the show lowering the hood to dramatically reveal her mask and then it never went back on. I’m pretty sure she never had it up in any of the comic stories I drew.

But the main thing about this Catwoman design that was – I’ll be generous and call it controversial – with fans were the ears. Now if you look at her, I see what they were going for. The ears are actually more anatomically in proportion with her head for certain breeds of cats, and the big ears I think actually add to the overall slinkiness of the figure. And this Catwoman was meant to be slinky! But whether it’s Catwoman, Batman, or a host of other costumed characters emulating those or similar animals, there has become something of a tradition that the ears are represented by stylized little triangle shapes, and it’s somewhat disconcerting to see these huge cat wars sitting o Catwoman’s head. I actually found the mask fun to draw, but much like this animated series’ version of the Joker, fans were vocal about their dislike of the design every time the character showed up.

Batman Strikes #6 - Title Page

Here’s the full penciled page. Notice the really elaborate city background and the tiny figure of Catwoman climbing over it in multiple images. I’m a big fan of Marshall Rogers work on Batman, and the biggest lesson I learned from his work is that when drawing Batman one of the main characters of the story is Gotham City. Putting the characters in a rich, detailed, vast Gotham really makes them sing.

As a bonus, one of my hand-drawn sound effects appears here as Catwoman’s whip takes apart an inconvenient security camera. The sound effect is a simple one, but I always like to design sound effects myself when I can, so I can better integrate their shape and placement into the design of the panel.

Batman Strikes #6 Title Page

And finally the finished page. More to come soon!

Creating a Cover: Justice League Adventures #25 & #26

This time for Creating a Cover we’re going back to a two-part story from Justice League Adventures #25 and #26. The story had Superman, Wonder Woman, the Martian Manhunter and Batman transported to the alien world of Rann where they have an adventure with space-faring hero Adam Strange as a guest star, and I got to draw a recap of his origin which was a lot of fun.

So let’s look at this issue-by-issue. I knew the first part of the story included a scene where Adam Strange comes to the aid of the League members when they are under attack by an alien T-Rex like creature. (It could shoot beams out of its eyes, too. I know, I know…)

JL Adv #25 - sketch a

JL Adv #25 - sketch b

Sketch B: This take on the same scene featured all the Justice League characters clearly in a bad way, but I didn’t think it did as good of a job showing off our guest star Adam Strange.

JL Adv #25 - sketch c

JL Adv #25 - sketch d

Sketch D: The one other idea I included was a throwback to the Silver-Age era that Adam Strange is associated with. It keeps the menace a mystery, but shows Adam Strange confidently pushing the League out of the way on the cover of their own book as he takes center stage to announce himself. I didn’t think they’d go for it, but it would have been fun to draw.

JL Adv #25 cover pencils

JL Adv #25 cover inks

Inks: By Dan Davis.

JL Adv #25 cover color

JL Adv #25 cover final

Final: It amuses me that the dialog given to Adam Strange is so similar to what I’d suggested for Sketch D. It might have been a coincidence given that it’s pretty generic expository bombast! (THAT was a fun phrase to type!) I wish the dialog balloon didn’t cover part of Adam Strange’s body.

So issue 25 left each Justice League member in a cliffhanger situation, and I’d had the brainstorm of taking advantage of Adam Strange’s costume designs to use his chest straps to create a multi-frame cover design that would tease each of the cliffhangers that were to be resolved in the pages of Justice League Aventures #26.

JL Adv #26 - sketch a

Sketch A: This was one of my all-time favorite cover ideas, so I pitched hard for it. I did a full cover sketch and didn’t offer any other options (although I obviously would have provided more options if they’d been requested. It was sad watching this one slowly gun off the rails…

At the end of the previous issue, a weakened Superman was being threatened with an axe, Batman had just found a murder victim with a knife in his back, Martian Manhunter was threatened by a pack of the alien T-Rexes as seen on the previous cover, and Wonder Woman was tied to a rocket. All these scenarios were happening simultaneously, so I really liked this as a tease for the multiple resolutions. I loved the multi-frame thing with the red areas of Adam Strange’s costume between the white straps, and I highlighted the threatening element in white in each frame for extra visual interest.

JL Adv #26 - sketch b

Sketch B: My editor liked the Adam Strange design part, but wanted the Justice League members in more action-oriented situations. He asked to have the inset scenes changed to ones where Superman was battling an undersea creature, where Batman was being held at gunpoint, where Wonder Woman was fighting a giant robot, and the Martian Manhunter scene could stay the same.

Not only did I not like this as much conceptually, but these scenarios were challenging to depict in a very small, irregular area and keep the Justice League figures large enough to be prominent. Also, this drawing didn’t lend itself to highlighting the threatening elements in the same way, so I tried highlighting the League member’s eyes in white instead. The above layout is what I came up with. It was OK< but already I didn’t like this as much as the original.

JL Adv #26 cover pencils

JL Adv #26 cover inks

Inks: The inks were again by Dan Davis.

JL Adv #26 cover color

Colors: For me this is where it started to fall apart. I don’t blame the colorist, I think this was a communication breakdown. Unfortunately, I didn’t have any input into the color on this title, so by the time I saw the color version of the art it was final and there was nothing to be done.

• Rather than more stylized color, the art is the regular colors for the characters just tinted red, and there’s shading applied to the red on the Adam Strange figure which to me makes the inset art look like weird tattoos.
• The area on Adam Strange’s belt that was intended as a highlight is colored like it’s surface detail, like an off-center belt buckle. It doesn’t look bad, it’s just wrong, and inconsistent with how the character looks elsewhere in the book.
• The color on Adam Strange’s face doesn’t seem to have the same underlighting scheme the line-art does.
• The biggest change is the addition of a space background. I think it changes the way the whole piece plays, and the sparse stars don’t read to me as a space background, the just look like hastily-added white dots.

JL Adv #26 cover final

Final: So there’s the final cover. It’s not a terrible cover, but it’s not what I’d intended. I think the “Strange Days!” text to the left of Adam Strange’s head makes the open space to the right seem oddly empty – it unbalances an otherwise symmetrical design. Ah, well. Rarely is a piece of art everything you want it to be, and the reader doesn’t know what you’d originally had in mind. Unless you do something silly like write blog entries where you do deeply into the behind the scenes process of how you design covers.

Whoops.

Creating a Cover: Young Justice #9

Time for another entry in the Creating a Cover series, this time featuring the most recent issue of Young Justice, #9.

As usual, the process starts with concept sketches so a cover idea can be agreed upon, and again this was being done before I had seen a full script for the issue. I was told that the story would feature Captain Atom sending the team to investigate a murder mystery as part of their training, which was fun since Greg Weisman (co-writer of the YJ comic and head writer for the animated YJ TV series) had worked as a writer on the early run of DC’s Captain Atom comic. In fact, the first time I ever worked with Greg was on a comic that featured Captain Atom encountering a pastiche of Disney’s Gargoyles characters, the property with Greg is perhaps most associated.

I was told that the story the Young Justice #9 and #10 would feature several supporting characters from the era of Captain Atom, including the villain The Cambodian who Greg was planning to rename. I often referred to him at this point as “the villain formerly known as the Cambodian.”

The actual first step in creating the covers then was to figure out our comics’ design for The Cambodian. Greg made it very clear that he preferred the dark gray color scheme of the Cambodian as seen on the cover of his first appearance in Captain Atom over the orange and red color scheme seen thereafter, and I thought the design looked a little blocky and didn’t fit well with the aesthetic of the Young Justice series, so that all led to a design process that I’ll detail in a separate blog entry soon.

Once a design for The Cambodian was agreed upon, I set out to create cover concept sketches, once again building over the Young Justice cover template I had created so I could plan for the masthead and logo elements.

Young Justice #9 - cover sketch a

Sketch A: So without a script, I was told that the story was full of happenings and intrigue including infiltration of the Pentagon, Robin and Miss Martian finding murder victims and more, I didn’t feel I could really depict any of that without more information about those scenes. I was told that the main action of the issue was a confrontation with the (former) Cambodian and the team members who actually fought him in this issue were Miss Martian and Superboy. There was concern that there had been a lot of Superboy-centric covers, so my first thought was this image with our villain taking a swipe at Miss Martian with his energy sword.

Young Justice #9 - cover sketch b

Young Justice #9 - cover sketch c

Sketch C: I tried another version of the same idea with the sword held vertically and only Miss Martian reflected in the blade, but it didn’t work much better.

Young Justice #9 - cover sketch d

Young Justice #9 - cover sketch e

Sketch E: Another composition around the same basic idea, this time with the villain turned away from us. With the dark armor making him almost a silhouette and the glowing sword raised over his head this one could have been interesting if refined as the final version.

Young Justice #9 - cover sketch f

Sketch F: Finally a design that doesn’t feature the villain at all, but rather Captain Atom symbolically charging the team with their mission in a classic “Uncle Sam – I  WANT YOU!” pose. I think I recall the idea being suggested by Greg, my apologies to my editor Jim Chadwick if the idea was his! It was my idea to include the reflections of the assembled team. I took care to distort the reflected image a bit as Captain Atom’s body isn’t a flat mirror, and the image is of course reversed, as most noticeably evidenced by Robin and Superboy’s costume emblems.

Young Justice #9 - cover pencils

Pencils: Sketch F was the lucky winner, so here’s the pencil version of the cover. The sketch had been pretty tight, so going to full pencils was pretty simple and straightforward. Poor Aqualad’s face is hidden, but the image of Captain Atom left very irregular spaces to fill with a reflected image.

Young Justice #9 - cover inks

Inks: Here are the finished inks. I tried to use bolder, brushier lines on Captain Atom’s hand and arm to push it into the foreground.

Young Justice #9 - cover shading guide

I had a very specific idea in mind of how I wanted the linework to be interpreted as far as the highlights and shading of Captain Atom’s chromed surface, and I also wanted to clarify what were reflection elements that should be somehow separated with color from the lineart of the Captain Atom figure itself, so I created this guide for our colorist, Zac Atkinson.

Young Justice #9 - cover color

And here’s what the finished color looked like. The addition of the glow to Captain Atom’s eyes give them a piercing quality that I love. Note the ample room left for the inevitable cover text to the left of Captain Atom’s head, and the UPC Code box was expected to be placed in the lower left corner.

Young Justice #09 cover

I was often frustrated during my run on The Batman Strikes! with cover art being saddled with text that I felt was pretty insipid. This is a rare instance of getting EXACTLY what I expected and hoped for when I drew the artwork. “Captain Atom wants YOU!” indeed. I was a little surprised that they let Captain Atom’s head cover part of the logo. I’d expected it to run behind the logo, but that’s why I try to be really precise with my layouts, making sure that two elements like that overlap a little, but not too much, and not be edge-to-edge.

So that’s the story of another cover. This is the current issue of Young Justice on sale, and you can buy it at your local comic shop or in digital form here.

I’ll be posting an article about the redesign of The Cambodian soon, as well as a “commentary” on the art for the issue. Stay tuned!

Title Pages: The Batman Strikes #2 & #4

Time for a look at more hand-drawn logos from title pages, this time looking at two more issues of The Batman Strikes!

The Batman Strikes #02 - Title Logo

This one was simple enough – with a short title and a leaping Batman figure, I thought I’d try to work the title into the highlighting on Batman’s cape. I assumed, therefore, that the logo would appear in blue. Also, I tried to create the letters in swooping, curving shapes as to compliment the flowing cape.

Strikes #02 - Title Page pencils

Strikes #02 - Title Page color

Strikes #04 - Title Logo

This one had a pretty straight-forward logo: Hand-rendered letters based on a typeface called Whoopass. Because I wasn’t leaving this for the letterer to typeset, I could position everything as to make sure that the ears of the Batman figure beneath the logo crossed the letters so as to not be lost against the black background.

Strikes #04 - Title Page pencils

Strikes #04 - Title Page color

Click on any of the images to visit my gallery where you can find more title pages and see the pages in higher resolution.

More to come, stay tuned!

Title Pages: Batman Strikes 18 & 33

Whenever possible, I always preferred hand-drawing my own sound effects and story titles during my run on The Batman Strikes! I especially liked incorporating the logo into the background art in some way, probably because of all those great Will Eisner titles for The Spirit. But I always had to work with what I was given. Sometimes I didn’t have a lot of room. Sometimes the story title didn’t lend itself as well to graphic treatment. But it almost always was more pleaseing to my eye than having it left to be typeset by the letterer.

Let’s kick this off with a pair of logos from Poison Ivy stories (boy we had a lot of Poison Ivy stories on The Batman Strikes!).

First up, from Batman Strikes #18:

Batman Strikes #18 - Title Logo

Here’s an example of a title that lent itself to graphic treatment nicely, but as part of a 4-panel page there wasn’t much room to work it into the background art. Still, I was able to give the title something of a flowery flourish, and that was fun.

Strikes #18 Title Page pencils

Strikes #18 Title Page color

Here’s a view of the full page, so you can see how the logo works in context. Inks are by Terry Beatty and colors are by Heroic Age. Which I guess you could read for yourself in the credits if you click on the image to see it full-size!

Strikes #33 - logo

In The Batman Strikes #33 we had the reverse scenario: A big splashy full page shot, but kind of a simple title. I opted to just create really organic character shapes and try to make it look as though it were wrapped around the side of this giant vine structure.

Strikes #33 Title Page pencils

Strikes #33 Title Page color

I was quite happy with this page overall. BTW – those are plant simulacrums of Poison Ivy that Batman, Robin and Batgirl are fighting. I like the dizzying quality to this shot, and the way the vine wraps through the image. The credits were colored a bit darkly, but I suppose no-one really cared except for the seven people who’s names are listed there!

More to come, stay tuned!