Creating a Cover: The Batman Strikes #13

Here’s another breakdown of the cover creation process, this time diving further into the past and looking back at one of my covers for The Batman Strikes, specifically issue #13. It’s an interesting case study as a lot of things went wrong with this one.

As usual, we start with sketches inspired by the story for the issue. I knew that the story involved Catwoman and Batman working together against a common enemy, so I thought it would be fun to treat Batman and Catwoman as a Dynamic Duo, especially since Robin and Batgirl had yet to be introduced into this animated TV show continuity.

Batman Strikes #13 - cover sketch a

Batman #9 (1942)

Batman Strikes #13 - cover sketch b

Sketch A was the most literal expression of this “Dynamic Duo” idea, deliberately evoking the classic cover to Batman #9 from 1942 (seen above). Sketch B was a more original design, with a leaping Batman and Catwoman with some nice underlighting and casting shadows on Batman’s cape. These sketches were drawn in marker and then I added the logo and some gray tones in Photoshop to better indicate what the finished cover would look like. As usual, I’m also trying to allow space for the UPC Code box and the cover text blurb I know will be added. You’ll notice that the masthead says #9 – that’s simply the issue I scanned to grab those cover elements for my layouts.

Batman Strikes #13 - cover sketch c

Batman Strikes #13 - cover sketch d

Sketch C had Catwoman essentially taking over the book, not only appearing solo on the cover, but with her name plastered over Batman’s in the book’s logo. I didn’t think it was likely this one was gonna fly, but I love covers that play with the logo in some way, so I thought it was worth suggesting. Finally (or so I thought), Sketch D features Batman and Catwoman framed by the shadow of the monsterous true villain of the story.

Usually four cover ideas are plenty – either one of those is chosen as is, or often an editor will want to modify an idea or combine elements from two of them, leading to the final design. Not this time. The editor informed me that they wanted to have Catwoman and Batman in a confrontational posture, so none of the ideas I’d submitted were going to work at all. I thought it made more sense to play up the unique dynamic from the story rather than a more generic situation that could be applied to any other Catwoman appearance, but that’s the nature of commercial art – you’re hired for your ideas and your skills but the decisions are up to the client. So I got to do a whole second wave of sketches!

Batman Strikes #13 - cover sketch e

Batman Strikes #13 - cover sketch f

At this point I was wanting to deliver sketch ideas that were conceptually pretty generic but still visually interesting. Sketch E has Batman and Catwoman facing off on a ledge while surrounded by cats. I thought this design had some nice depth and the cats added some interest. Sketch F featured a leaping Batman and Catwoman, but surrounded by Batman’s curling cape.

Batman Strikes #13 - cover sketch g

Batman Strikes #13 - cover sketch h

Sketch G had an angry Catwoman and an army of cats facing off against Batman, and Sketch H had Batman and Catwoman simply on a rooftop, using the curling shape of Catwoman’s whip and still more cats to add visual interest again.

After all that, Sketch G was chosen, so it was time to draw some cats!

Batman Strikes #13 - cover pencils

Batman Strikes #13 - cover inks

I changed Batman’s pose slightly from the sketch to have him holding his cape up in a protective gesture, and added shadows behind Catwoman and the cats to create a bit of a sense of depth, as the drawing was looking a little flat prior to their addition. Looking back I’m not entirely happy with the Batman figure here. The art style from The Batman animated TV series that I was emulating here was stylized in ways that ever felt natural to me. There were a lot of stylizations around Batman’s cape and how it should drape and move. I always found it challenging to balance the look of the animation design from that series with my more naturalistic instincts for animation, the draping of fabric, and so on. Early on I tried hard on The Batman Strikes to stick to the rules the TV show had for how Batman’s cape should drape and move, but over time I took greater and greater liberties with it as I realized I was trying to make the cape look its best in the static images of comics, rather than in the moving medium of animation. But I digress…

I drew Catwoman to be snarling in a threatening manner. It’s always hard to keep women’s faces from looking unattractive with expressions like this, especially in a small drawing. It was further complicated here by the fact that Catwoman’s mask design included goggles that concealed her eyes, so you only have the mouth to convey expression. The expression was a little rough in the pencils, and I think was a little harsher after being inked (inks by Terry Beatty as usual for The Batman Strikes).

Batman Strikes #13 - cover colors

I was rarely happy with the color on The Batman Strikes. Batman was never colored on-model for the animation design, which used a deep, rich blue for the highlights on the black parts of Batman’s costume. For some reason in the comic based on the art for that show, Batman was always colored in grays, with little contrast between the highlighting on the black parts and the tones used for the gray bodysuit. I always thought the result was drab and tended to flatten out the figure.

The colorist chose to interpret the lighting scheme of the line art by coloring the cats in different flat colors, and then overlay a glowing lighting effect over everying behind the Batman figure in the foreground. I find the effect rather washed out and flat, and it looks like the cats are fading away like ghosts.

Most interestingly, Catwoman’s mouth has been redrawn, without input from Terry Beatty or myself. The snarl has been replaced with a smile, which I imagine was consedered “prettier”, but I consider the redrawn mouth to look a bit crude and I’d have liked to have been consulted on the change.

Batman Strikes #13 - cover w logos

Finally, here’s the published cover with the typical masthead, UPC Code and cover blurb. The colors appear a bit darker – some of which might be the result of scanning – but I suspect the brightness and contrast have been tweaked since the previous “clean” image which was used for the solicitation of the issue to retailers.

Well there you have it! Another cover breakdown. I’ll be doing more of these as well as some interior art analysis in the weeks to come! Until then, you can check out more of my cover art for The Batman Strikes – concept sketches, pencils, and finished covers – here!

Creating a Cover: Young Justice #8

I’m not going to cover some of the same basics as I did in the previous Creating a Cover post, but instead will limit myself to the process specific to this cover.

Tasked with drawing a cover for Young Justice #8, which I knew was part 2 of a 2-parter focusing on Artemis. The bulk of the story consisted of cutting back-and-forth between two action set pieces: Artemis vs. dozens of robotic MONQI droids (Mobile Optimal Neural Quotient Infiltrators), and the rest of the Young Justice team fighting the android Amazo. If you read my Creating a Cover breakdown for Young Justice #7, you know that I deliberately avoided referencing any that action on my cover for that issue, as those were both initiated as a cliffhanger ending to that issue and I didn’t want to either spoil then ending or unfairly tease action that was to mainly be found in issue #8. Well here we are with the cover to issue #8, so now my cover ideas revolve around those two scenarios!

YJ #8 cover sketch a

YJ #8 cover sketch b

I did four cover sketches this time around, although they were all variations on just a couple of themes. Sketches A and B both showed MONQI droids swarming over Artemis. Sketch A was a tighter shot, which I thought would be cool from a design standpoint, with Artemis drowning in a sea of MONQIs. Sketch B was essentially the same, but pulling out wider – the advantage of this version being that I could create greater depth by showing some MONQIs larger in the foreground in addition to the ones swarming over Artemis.

YJ #8 cover sketch c

YJ #8 cover sketch d

Sketch C showed the other major action scenario from the issue – Superboy, Kid Flash and Robin fighting the powerful Amazo android in a gymnasium setting. It  was a great visual, but I wasn’t sure if the powers-that-be would want a cover without Artemis or not. On the one hand she was prominently featured on the previous month’s cover and it’s nice to change things up from issue to issue.  On the other hand, this is still part 2 of a story focusing on the character, which led me to Sketch D, which was simply a split-screen view of sketches B and C. I thought this approach had the advantage of featuring more characters and showing both major action threads from the story.

YJ #8 cover pencils

YJ #8 cover inks

Sketch A was chosen, so the next step was the straightforward task of penciling and inking the artwork. This was done by hand with brushes and pens on bristol art paper. The scanned inks were touched up a little digitally in Photoshop.

YJ #8 cover color guide

YJ #8 cover color

The image was so busy with detail and partially seen figures that I created a color guide to clarify what everything was. The final color was again by Zak Atkinson who did his usual fine job.

And finally, here’s the finished cover, with masthead, logos and other finishing elements.

YJ #08 cover w logos

I’ll be doing more Creating a Cover breakdowns, featuring Young Justice, The Batman Strikes, and other titles!

Creating a Cover: Young Justice #7

It’s easy when you’ve been drawing comics for several years to forget how much things that have become a matter of routine to me are a mysterious and arcane process to people that don’t do this kind of thing. Or even if it’s not all that mysterious, I know I love seeing other artists’ creative process, so here’s a peek into mine.

I’m lucky enough to get to draw the covers for my run on Young Justice. I drew a number of covers during my run on The Batman Strikes, but I didn’t get to do it every month, so I appreciate getting to do all the covers on Young Justice.

Covers are actually done in advance of the interior art as they’re needed earlier than the interiors for the solicitations that are sent out to retails and the general public for upcoming issues. So not only are the covers drawn before the interior art is done, but sometimes I haven’t seen the script yet and only have a story outline or a suggestion of what might make a good cover to work from. I started my run on Young Justice with issue #5, but the first thing I drew for the book was the cover for issue #7 working two issues ahead.

Comic art is done larger than the size of a printed comic, and publishers like DC and Marvel tend to prefer that artists work on art paper they have pre-printed with the standards margins and blanks for the tracking information for all the art they deal with every month. This is a bit of a holdover from the days wen all art was physically submitted to DC where it was processed in-house to eventually go to the printer. These days more and more of the artwork is sent the the publisher in the form of a digital file, formatted to rigid specifications.

DC Comics Art Board

Here’s a sample of what DC’s art paper looks like. The art board is a bristol art paper measuring 11×17, and once the margins you can see here are taken into account the image area is slightly smaller. The lines you see here are actually printed on the art paper in “non-reproducing blue” to make it easier to separate the pre-printed lines out from the art that will be drawn on it.

When planning a cover I like to know the general area that will be occupied by the masthead and logos so I can allow for those elements in the composition. Any background in your image will need to cover the entire image area, but you need to make sure the important elements of your design – like main characters – won’t be obscured by these overlaid elements.

Cover Template with Logo

In Photoshop I’ve overlaid a scan of an earlier cover from the series to scale with the guidelines on the art paper. I’ve also included the UPC code here. The UPC code can move around, but it will appear in one of the lower corners of the book, either vertically or horizontally, so it’s a good idea to allow room for it. Similarly, most comic book covers will credit the creative team of the book, so it’s good to allow for that, too.

This all gives me an idea of the space I have to work with so it was time to start drawing. I knew that Young Justice #7 was part 1 of a 2-parter focusing on the back-story of Artemis, and chronicling the events that led up to her introduction to the team as seen in the TV show. The story showed her dealing with drama at home in her civilian identity, foiling a robbery in her super-heroine archer guise (after a fake-out making it look like she was the one committing the robbery), and a montage of additional crime-fighting, before finally she arrives upon a battle between her future teammates and the android Amazo as seen in an episode of the TV show. I really didn’t want to use any of the imagery from the Amazo battle on this cover, even though it was action involving the rest of the Young Justice team, as I hate it when covers feature action from the past act of a story. It always feels like you’re giving away the ending when you do that, and given that this ended on a cliffhanger, it seemed like referencing that sequence would be a kind of bait and switch, teasing you with a situation that wouldn’t be resolved until the following issue.

Editors often like to see multiple sketches so they have some choices for what cover concept they choose. Here are the three cover sketches I submitted, trying to evoke the elements I knew from the story in tantalizing ways.

YJ Cover #7 sketch 1

YJ Cover #7 sketch 2

YJ Cover #7 sketch 3

The second sketch was a more dynamic view of Artemis as she prepares to fire an arrow in our direction, apparently at the shopkeeper with an open till – specifically referencing the scene from the story wither Artemis foils a robbery in progress (the actual bad guys are behind the counter and the shopkeeper).

The third sketch shows the tension between the drama Artemis was facing at home and the dangers she was facing on the street in her costumed persona. I didn’t think it was likely that #3 would be the one, but it was another option to offer my editor.

In the case of Young Justice, the editor is Jim Chadwick. Cover designs are approved by DC Comics VP of Art Direction and Design Mark Chiarello. Additionally, the co-writer of the book is Greg Weisman, who is senior writer and producer on the animated TV show upon which Young Justice is based, so he has a little more involvement with the production of the title than another writer might. So all these folks get input on this, but the decision came down to me from editor Jim Chadwick – use the overall design from sketch 1, but turn Artemis to face us so we aren’t seeing her in profile. I was a little disappointed by this, as I liked having the curve of her bow echo the crescent moon shape, but this certainly still worked. On to pencils!

YJ Cover #7 pencils

The cover is drawn in pencil on the DC art paper, and as is typical of most art in comics, it needs to be approved by the editor before the art is inked. Thankfully modern technology allows me to scan the pencils and send an image file via email for approval.

YJ Cover #7 inks

Often the penciling the inking is done by two different artists, but in this case I was inking the art myself. The art gets scanned again, this time at a higher resolution. The artwork is scaled and placed on a template used by DC for all standard comic book art so everything stays perfectly uniform. The artwork is then uploaded to an FTP site so that once the art is approved DC can forward the digital file to a colorist who will ad color digitally as well. The original artwork remains in black and white and never has to be sent to DC Comics at all.

In the case of this cover, the color was provided by Zac Atkinson, who has been the regular colorist on my run on Young Justice so far. Here’s what he did with the line art for this one.

Young Justice #7 cover color

Nice, huh? Finally, here’s what the cover looks like with those logos and other elements I was trying to plan for.

YJ #7 cover w logos

And there you have it! I’ll be doing more breakdowns of the process of creating these covers in the future, but for now a lot of the preliminary cover sketches and subsequent stages of artwork are already up in my gallery.

Gargoyles: Bad Guys

Time flies.

Back in 2007 I was asked by Greg Weisman if I’d be interested to draw a fill-in issue of his Gargoyles: Bad Guys mini-series. The book was for Slave Labor Graphics, a publisher also doing the main Gargoyles comic, itself a continuation of the Disney’s Gargoyles animated TV series. The comics were written by Greg and are considered a continuation of the canon of the show. Gargoyles: Bad Guys was a 6-issue spin off featuring several characters introduced on the TV show has villains who were now working together and trying to do some good.

Greg knew the Bad Guys comic needed a fill-in on art to keep it on schedule, and we’d been looking to work on something together again following up on our one previous collaboration when I drew a 10-page story called “The Flashback of Notre Dame” Greg wrote for JLA Showcase 80-page Giant #1 back in 2000. That story was an unofficial crossover of sorts, as Captain Atom (a character Greg had written for DC in the 80s) along with some Justice League Europe co-stars encountered some small-“g” gargoyle creatures who bore an uncanny (but legally dissimilar) resemblance to their Disney counterparts. So when Greg asked me about contributing the the Gargoyles: Bad Guys book – even though he counceled me to say no due to the low page rate – I had to say yes.

I penciled and inked the 24 pages of Gargoyles: Bad Guys #3 faster than I would have liked – but it was a lot of fun to play in that particular sandbox. I was invited to bring some of my own style to it and not slavishly follow the animation models for the characters, but given that I was filling in for one issue of a 6-issue series I didn’t want to do anything too drastically different. It’s one of those projects I’d love to do again more on my own terms and with more time, but it’s best to just enjoy it for what it is and move forward. Otherwise you turn into George Lucas…

Gargoyles: Bad Guys #3 pg 11

Batman & Robin #18 – pencils & color

Last year I was called on to draw six pages from Batman & Robin #18, written by Paul Cornell. The story featured Dick Grayson as Batman and Damian Wayne as Robin encountering a villain named The Absence, a woman who discovered she had a brain deformity called Dandy Walker Syndrome only after surviving a gunshot wound to the head. Weird character. But hey, it’s a Batman villain!

I’ve posted the 6 pages I drew from the story in my gallery, with the pencil art I drew side-by-side with the inked and colored pages for comparison.

Batman & Robin #18 page 18