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Hey everyone. I’m going through my notes on the panel (“Craft in Comics” with Jaime Hernandez, Jim Rugg, and myself), and honestly, they don’t capture the feelings I had about the panel, or how I feel about it a week-and-a-half later.

I guess the thing that resonated most with people is my rant about Alex Ross, and I just don’t feel like turning my recollections about this wonderful panel I was on into a bitch-fest about Ross, but … ah fuck it: It’s not just Ross, it’s this culture of photo-referencing in comics that grinds my gears. It’s true, I hate Ross’s work. He’s got great technical ability, but big deal. Why is copying the nuances of a photograph such an achievement? That’s not drawing! He’s the worst example for a young artist to have, the worst role model. No one has done more harm to the form than Ross. It’s not comics he makes. It’s fumetti. There are no real panel-to-panel transitions as there are in “pure cartooning”; he’s just putting photograph next to photograph in a way that some find pleasing. But it’s not comics.

His original sketches for his pages—which I’ve seen in person—are lively drawings that capture the energy and action of the figures. I remember thinking then, “Why doesn’t he just work those up into full drawings?” Instead, he’ll literally dress models up in a costume and take pictures of them dressed as Galactus or Batman. But that’s not Galactus, that’s some guy standing on a washer and dryer in a basement. How do I know? Cuz Ross and guys like P. Craig Russell love to publish those photos for some reason.

There was a Conan book recently that I was flipped through and I could immediately see that it was referenced, because the referencing takes over. Did John Buscema or Barry Smith let their references take over their style? No, they were original enough, wise enough, to incorporate the references, to subsume them into their overall style. P. Craig Russell most often does the same, he’s good enough to really USE the reference, but I always wonder why? Why bother? It distracts me as a reader, it ruptures the balance of his drawings, his lines, because it’s clear that the drawing is from a photo. It sends the other drawings on the page that are not referenced into high relief. Photos flatten the perspective, the shape of the body, the sense of depth. And worst of all it’s not Conan! Or Galactus. My suspension of disbelief is shattered at the moments I realize a photo is being used, and then that break is re-enforced when I see the photo that the artist was using, which they’ll often proudly display like a trophy! Do they think that should be applauded? It’s maddening!! When Kirby drew Galactus it WAS Galactus. Real. Manifest. Not some schlub in his underwear playing dress-up.

Think of Alex Toth. As far as I know he only occasionally lifted a photo straight. Like Neal Adams, he’d draw from it and then integrate it into his style so that it wasn’t so jarring. These days that concern seems archaic. The more photo-realistic the better. And on top of that, look close at the more recent vintage of photo-referenced comics. Generally each photo has the same focal length. You can really imagine the “actors” sitting there on their couches, at their kitchen tables, in the car. It’s so LAZY!! Point and shoot, ah, that panel’s done, next! “Honey, will you stand over there by the window and look off in the distance? I need to nail this Catwoman drawing.”

** More soon—also I’m not responding to comments on this one. On this subject, I have patience only to be dogmatic.

*** Photo-referencing isn’t just a problem in mainstream comics either, by the way. Those guys are just easy targets.

PREVIOUSLY: Part one and Part 1.5

NEXT: Part 2.0

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Hey everyone, the following are some reflections by Jim Rugg on the “Craft in Comics” panel at Heroes with Jaime Hernandez, Jim, and myself. I thought I’d put this up while I was still organizing the second part of my notes. Please enjoy. — Frank

JIM RUGG: Frank and Jaime talked about their education first. So I added that my parents more or less insisted that I go to college so I “had something to fall back on.” Being 18, I thought that was unnecessary, but turns out that there’s a lot I don’t know. So college was very useful. I studied graphic design and worked in the field for 7 years after graduation. I learned a lot about drawing, a little about painting, etc. I didn’t really talk to professors about comics. But in high school I had an art teacher that knew I wanted to draw comics. She was pretty unimpressed with everything I would bring in (a lot of early Image books, a lot of superhero cross-hatching). The only book that I ever showed her that she thought looked okay was Bissette’s Tyrant.

I asked Jaime about his confidence as an artist, especially early on, as it is one of the things I constantly struggle with. He said that when Palomar started, he really felt like he had to raise his game to keep up with Beto. He acknowledged that as he pared down his drawing to fewer lines, those lines had to be better.

Somehow things came back around to me, and I talked about storytelling as something I felt pretty good about in my own work. And it’s something that’s easier for me to check, unlike whether a joke is funny, or a story is interesting. It’s something I can show my wife, and ask her to explain what’s happening to gauge whether it’s clear or not. We all talked a little about clarity of storytelling, something we all value and emphasize in our work. I mentioned how prevalent storytelling was in the interviews with pros that I used to read. Even submission guidelines all focused on storytelling, something I hear less and less these days – possibly a side effect of the diversity of drawing styles that fill comics today as opposed to 20 years ago when the industry was dominated by a couple of “house” styles.

Frank and Jaime discussed turning points they experienced in their own work, sort of like a light bulb going off. I don’t feel like I have experienced that yet. And I talked a little about how, compared to them, I was at the beginning of this process of figuring out how to make comics.

I brought up Jason, and how his graphic formula quickly transitions the reader into his comics, and the consistent style avoids breaking that illusion, like his use of the grid for example. Craig Fischer then asked if this was always good, like for example Kirby did those big 2-page spreads … so we talked about that. It’s not that Jason is the ultimate cartoonist that we should all emulate. But his mastery of his craft is evident, as is Kirby’s. We kicked that around like a soccer ball until it led to comparisons with Steve Rude (great draftsman, occasionally poor page layouts), and eventually Alex Ross compared to Kirby and how Kirby’s fake perspective (foreshortening) is much more effective at creating the illusion of depth than more accurate perspective.

So this is out of order a bit. Unfortunately. Two of the things Jaime talked about that I enjoyed were stories about reading comics when he was young. They had a bunch of comics, but his mother would put them away during the school year. Then each summer, she gave them back. So they would revisit the same books year after year. I thought that was amazing. And Jaime confirmed it, by explaining that one year, he started reading one of the stories for the umpteenth time, and he noticed one of the kids in the story brought along his dog, and the whole time, the dog is running around, chasing kids, playing, etc. And it created a sense of real life. Ditto the Archie story about the same story being told over and over, but it was entertaining in that the character interaction and body language was believable (usually depending on the artist), and often the body language would conflict with the dialogue (like you could tell a character was mad by the way he or she was giving someone the cold shoulder rather than exposition). The second fascinating concept he addressed was writing, and specifically the way he enjoyed conversation among characters and viewed it almost like dancing as characters went back and forth about going to the store, or someone new joins a conversation halfway through and he/she has to catch up to speed while everyone is still conversing. It was great to hear him going through examples of this, and how this quickly leads to a story for him. He didn’t describe it as “realistic” or even “naturalistic”, but hearing him explain it, that’s what I thought of. It was organic, and character-driven. Amazing. I really should have sat in the audience.

PREVIOUSLY: Part one

NEXT: Part 1.75 and Part 2.0

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The Comics Comics and PictureBox advance team has arrived in Charlotte, NC for Heroes Con. Frank and I are lounging in our hotel room, high above the convention center. So far it looks like a fun show and damn fine for back issues. Why, there’s an entire Fangoria section at one table! Anyhow, Tim will be joining us tomorrow and then we have some fun panels:

Friday, 3 pm:

CAGE MATCH: Comics Comics Vs Comics Comics! | Room 208
A live critique session with the editors of Comics Comics. Timothy Hodler, Dan Nadel and Frank Santoro will conduct a no-holds-barred argument about a comic book or graphic novel of their choice. Audience participation is encouraged. Chairs might be thrown.
Topics:
John Byrne’s FX
Kirby’s OMAC
The new issue of Mome
Kick-Ass 1-3

Saturday, 12:30 pm:

THE NEW ART COMICS
From critical favorite hits like MAGGOTS and POWR MASTRS, to prominence in influential anthologies like KRAMER’S ERGOT, “art” or “abstract” or “out” comics are pushing the boundaries of the avant garde in comics. Join Tom Spurgeon of the Comics Reporter as he sits down with Picturebox publisher Dan Nadel, KRAMER’S ERGOT editor Sammy Harkham and publisher Alvin Buenaventura for a frank discussion of this leading edge of art in comics!

Sunday, 1 pm:

CRAFT IN COMICS: Jaime Hernandez, Jim Rugg, and Frank Santoro in Conversation | 213A
Less a conversation on materials and techniques and more a conversation on ideas and beliefs, this panel will focus on tradition and innovation in composition and drawing for comics. From Jaime’s insistence on not using photographs as reference in his comics to Jim’s clarity of composition and Frank’s careful color choices, there are countless tenets of craft that are largely underappreciated by readers. This panel will investigate these ideas and attempt to illuminate and outline them in a lively conversation led by Frank Santoro.

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Rory. If it wasn’t for you, brother, the road would have been a lot tougher for us all, but particularly for young artists in the Bay Area who wanted to produce and sell difficult work. Josh Petrin bought my first zines off of me, but it was your store. And when we first met you said, “Oh, you’re that Sirk guy. Great stuff. Keep ’em comin’. We’ll buy ’em all.” When one is nineteen and only a little sure of one’s self, let alone one’s work, these are incredibly encouraging words. Like Marc Arsenault said, if it wasn’t for Rory, a lot of us wouldn’t be here at all. I wish I could write out some warm heartfelt story about how it’s all gonna be OK, but I can’t, won’t, cuz this just sucks.

See you on the other side, man. And thanks. Really. I couldn’t have gotten this far without your help.

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As a lot of you probably already know, great writer-about-comics Jeet Heer recently got into a small disagreement with another great writer-about-comics, Michael Chabon, in response to a piece Heer wrote about David Hajdu‘s new cultural history of the crusade against violent comics, The Ten-Cent Plague. I don’t have too much to say about it, other than that in his Slate article, and in several other recent pieces, Heer has been making a worthy attempt to depict the complexity of the 1950s comic-book scare. (That second link, a discussion between Heer and Fredric Wertham biographer Bart Beaty, is particularly interesting.)

I wish the same could be said of the ongoing debate about the book between Hajdu and Douglas Wolk at The New Republic (to which both are frequent contributors). Wolk’s a smart guy, and as evidenced by the Jeet Heer links above, there’s a lot of potentially meaty topics to discuss in Hajdu’s book, so why waste this opportunity with a lot of talk about how comic books are too taken seriously!? Hajdu’s answers aren’t particularly enlightening, but I can’t really blame him after Wolk starts with that bizarre hobbyhorse tangent inspired by a stray Newsarama (!) interview question that has little or nothing to do with the subject of Hajdu’s book. Can we ever lay off this tired “are comics sufficiently recognized?” stuff? Anyway, the exchange isn’t over yet, so there’s time for things to get more cogent. It would be great if Wolk followed up on some of the questions obviously posed by Heer and Beaty’s writings.

UPDATE: The second round of questions is up, and it’s really not much better. I’m curious to see if Hajdu can make more sense out of them than I can. (And Bernie Krigstein‘s artistic accomplishments should be judged only by how many of his stories are famous? Really?) Oh well.

UPDATE II: Since Tom Spurgeon linked to this post this morning calling these comments “unkind”, I wanted to point out that I have found Wolk to be a very likeable person in all of my encounters with him — he very generously gave me advice before a panel I moderated at SPX (something I’d never done before), for example. This is simply meant to be friendly argument. That may not need saying, but I’m weak and can’t help myself. (I like Tom, too. I like everybody!) All the same, I really think that Wolk could (and should) have done a better job with this.

UPDATE III: In the final round, Hajdu gives it the old college try, and quite rightly defends Krigstein, but understandably gives up on answering Wolk’s weirdest question: “If there hadn’t been a conflict over morality in entertainment going on, how do you think the comic books of the ’50s might have been received at the time?” That one stumps me, too. Actually, upon further reflection, it doesn’t: I’d say about the same, but with fewer bonfires.

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This isn’t much really, especially split three ways, but it’s a lot better than the $0.00 I’ve actually made on this so far. I want a raise, Dan.

[Via Paul DiFi.]

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Inter-office memo. PictureBox.

RE: SPACE 08 Columbus Ohio

Went to SPACE in Columbus, Ohio. It was okay. Just no traffic really. The only people walking around checking things out were exhibitors. It felt like that until about 2 or 3 o’clock. I passed out some Cold Heat zines while Jim Rugg signed comics for his legions of fans (3 different people brought all their Street Angel comics, from home, to be signed. I’m not kidding! That shit never happens to me!) A little frustrated early on, I looked up to the end of my aisle — and there was Dave Sim. It’s not 1987 or 1995, it’s 2008, and there’s one of the most recognized figures in comics, still on tour, still hawking his vision.

I watched him sign books and look through fans’ artwork a few times, and I mean he really looked at it and gave advice and encouragement. Each time when the exchange was over, he stood up, shook the person’s hand, and thanked them for stopping by. Geez. I don’t care what anyone says about the man, ‘cuz really, he busts his ass and makes it work, whatever it is he does. I went up closer and checked out the exhibit of pages from his new work, Judenhass, which hung unpretentiously behind Sim’s table on wire racks. I was impressed. Like it or not, Sim has made a beautiful photo-realistic pen-and-ink comic book about the Holocaust. I talked to one of Carol Tyler’s students, who had just finished reading the whole book (at a table beside the exhibit set aside for reading it). “It was powerful. I feel sad now,” she said, before walking away. So there it is. I guess he just “reached” someone, right?

I got in line & when I met Mr. Sim (“Call me Dave,” he said), I handed him issue 3 of Comics Comics, and gave him my spiel on my on-going old color printing process series. I told him that I’ve been in touch with Steve Oliff, Kevin Nowlan, Michael T. Gilbert, and — I took a breath here — would it be possible to reprint the section in his Following Cerebus interview with Neal Adams where Neal explained the real reason ’60s DC characters’ skin was pink? (Because DC cut corners at one point and got rid of “tone yellow” when making separations for its books.) “Sure,” said Sim, and then he asked if I’ve been in touch with Richard Corben.
“Corben figured out that he could do full color for the Warren magazines by making his own separations with grey paint,” Sim said. “He did it all by hand, and kept in his head how the seps would overprint to create complementary colors when it was printed.” Did you know this, Dan? I didn’t, and it was like some guarded secret had been revealed to me, production nerd that I am. Sim said that the color articles sound like they are turning into this complicated tangential narrative, that’ll turn into “a book about out-dated color printing processes that no one knows anything about, ha ha!” And I thought, “Hell, YES! That’s my kind of book!”