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What Do I Look For in a Comic Book Artist?

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By D. Lynn Smith

I recently answered some interview questions, and one of them was something like what advice would I give to artists wanting to work for Kymera Press. I talked about getting your work up on sites like Deviant Art and not being shy about displaying your work. But I thought it might be helpful to tell you what I look for when searching for an artist.

Kymera Press is a new publisher and we want to support young artists so they can continue to grow and develop. This does not mean, however, that we are going to hire an artist just because they can draw. Yes, drawing is important. But more important is if you can tell a story with pictures.

My previous entries about the writer made the point that, for the most part, the writer of the comic book is invisible. That’s why I’m not a huge fan of narration. I’m constantly trying to cut back on the number of words that appear on my pages. That’s really difficult, but if you have a good artist, it’s much easier.

When I go to sites like Deviant Art, I’m looking for an artist who has posted more than just illustrations. I want to see sequential pages. I want to see how you arrange your panels, if your art tells a story that flows from one panel to the next, if you left some room for dialog bubbles.

I really like to see artists experiment with panel arrangements. A comic that plays with this is Gotham Academy, written by Becky Cloonan and Brendan Fletcher with art by Karl Kiershl. I’m continually delighted by the creative panel arrangement in this comic. So play with the panels: maybe have a full-page illustration with panels arching across the page from the top left to the bottom right. Or have a two-page spread where the panels go across the top of two pages instead of just one.

Something different and interesting always catches my eye. I’m also looking to see if the artist draws a background. Many young artists draw the action, but forget that the characters are somewhere, not standing in the middle of a cloud of nothing.  If they are in a restaurant, are there tables, people, wait staff? Is there food on the table, pictures on the wall?

So if you’d like a job as a penciller or inker on a comic book, post some pages of sequential art. If you don’t have your own story, ask a writer friend, or look for a script online and draw up one of the pages just as a sample.  Show me you can tell a story in pictures.

One of my favorite comics is Bitch Planet written by Kelly Sue Deconnick and drawn by Valentina De Landro. In one of the issues, the action is happening in the foreground while a whole different action, the beginning of a prison riot, is happening in the background. It’s absolutely brilliant. And yes, Kelly Sue wrote it that way, but that’s because she also fills in the background, something I’m working on learning to do. The point is, the background can be as important as the foreground.

Many young artists post a lot of fan art. While these are usually interesting to see, it doesn’t show me that these artists are able to conceptualize their own characters. Building a character is a very important part of the storytelling process. I may post reference pictures for a character, but it is the artist who actually brings that character to the page. When I’m searching for an artist, I want to see if they can create original characters. Fan art simply doesn’t do that.

Finally I’m looking for consistency. When I’m doing a series, I expect my character in Issue #30 to look like she looked in Issue #1. Some artists have a problem recreating a face from one panel to the next.

These are the main things I look for in an artist. Of course there are other things as well, like professionalism, price and just plain niceness! Don’t underestimate the value of being easy to work with.

Translation of Comics

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By D. Lynn Smith

Earlier this year, my friend Lorraine Watson started a discussion on Facebook about dialog. Since it was very interesting, I thought I’d give a synopsis of that conversation here.

Lorraine asked, “Do you know if word and/or bubble placement changes for comics written in languages read right to left?” I had to admit that I had no idea, but when you think about the popularity of Manga, it makes sense that the bubbles would be placed differently. Mary McFarland chimed in and said that Arabic and Hebrew were also read right to left. Mary describes herself as an Aramaic amateur researcher and a girl geek, so she was very interested in the answer to this question as well.

I went out to a board I’m on and that very same day, I had the answer courtesy of Laura Sneddon. She said, “Manhua, Hebrew and Arabic comics/cartoons are all read from right to left.  Japanese, Chinese and Korean were all traditional right to left vertical languages, though left to right is now more popular, and Hebrew and Arabic are of course, right to left too—all comics and cartoons in these languages are right to left.”

I never stopped to think about how my comics would translate into other languages.  My new colorist for Gates of Midnight, Sandra Molina, is a Spanish to English translator and has offered to translate Gates into Spanish. But that wouldn’t involve the kind of changes these other languages would entail.

So when Mary asked me how I would go about getting my comics translated into these languages, once again, I had no idea. This is where Chris Krone joined the conversation. Chris said he’d seen some manga which was relettered for English sales, the artwork had been flipped into a mirror-image before the bubbles were added.

So a new letterer would have to be hired to reletter the pages. However, that’s not what really struck me. When I was talking about writing each page, I talked about placement of some of the panels. The penciller does a lot of the arrangement, but the writer has a certain rhythm in mind—meaning I place things inside the panel in certain places for a story reason. To do a mirror image of the page, well wouldn’t that change the flow that the writer established?

I know this seems like a little thing, but it really got me thinking about the integrity of the work. Maybe the mirror image wouldn’t have much of an impact except in the writer’s mind. I mean, the pages would still be read the same way, right. But if you think about the bleed and the safety zone of the pages, how much you leave on the side so that art and words won’t get lost in the fold… I don’t know.  I think there’s a lot more to this than simply printing mirror images.

The conversation then moved on to how the deaf and hard of hearing community who use sign language might be depicted in comics. A friend of Chris’ gave him a great link to a web comic that does just that. You can see it here.

You can see that putting together a comic book is much more involved than one might originally think.

I’d also like to say that this conversation was probably the most fun I’ve had on Facebook. It’s amazing how we have all of these connections where we can get answers to questions that stump us in less than 24 hours. Thank you Lorraine, Mary and Chris for expanding my mind!

Richard Matheson and Lynda Carter in New Comics

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By D. Lynn Smith 

You all know I’m a big fan of horror. I can’t remember a time when I didn’t love a good horror story. Like many people my age, I used to run home from school to watch Dark Shadows every afternoon. During the same period of time, I discovered the late-night horror host Ghoulardi and saw horror movies that would never be considered anything other than B-movies, but were great fun to watch.

It was also during this time period that I saw the movie, The Incredible Shrinking Man, adapted by Richard Matheson from his own novel. The thing that really has stuck in my head after all of these years is the scene of a man, tiny enough to make a bed in a matchbox, using a needle to fight off a spider that towers over him. It’s the stuff that nightmares are made of. So imagine my delight when I go to my neighborhood comic bookstore, Alternate Realities Comics, this past week and find The Shrinking Man comic! Just looking at the title, with Richard Matheson’s name prominent at the top, took me back to my childhood.

At lunch that day I described the “spider” scene to my husband who has never seen the 1957 movie. He promptly googled the movie and found a picture of the very scene I was describing, delighting in my shudder when he showed it to me on his phone.

In case you don’t know who Richard Matheson is, he’s one of the most revered horror writers there’s ever been. He wrote I Am Legend, Hell House, Duel, Trilogy of Terror (who can forget Linda Black fighting the little devil doll) and Nightstalker. And then there’s the lesser known Dead of Night, with the segment called Bobby, which scared me even more than the Devil Doll ever did.  Richard Matheson inspired more of my nightmares than any other horror writer and I love him for it! (For those of you who are not horror enthusiasts, Matheson also wrote the movie classic, Time After Time, staring Jane Seymour and Christopher Reeve.)

What’s great about the comic is that Ted Adams, who did the adaptation, lifted some of Matheson’s dialogue right out of the novel. This is a man who loved Matheson’s work and who has created a comic faithful not only to Richard Matheson, but to my own memories. It’s now on my pull list.The Shrinking Man

 

Whereas The Shrinking Man took me back to the 60s, this graphic novel brought back memories of a decade later. In the 1970s, Lynda Carter starred as Wonder Woman on CBS. The graphic novel, Wonder Woman ’77 Special, celebrates the television series. The art is all based on the actors from that series and there are six vignettes that come straight from actual episodes.

Reading Wonder Woman ’77 Special transported me back to when I was just graduating high school and trying to figure out what I was going to do with my life. Wonder Woman presented a strong, independent woman who was an undercover spy right alongside her male counterpart. She claimed her place in history as a modern heroine in a man’s world. (I was a big fan of The Bionic Woman, which was also airing at the time.)

Wonder Woman 77 SpecialThe WW graphic novel took me back to a time when I was trying to figure out what it meant to be an adult woman and it reminded me how far I’ve come since then.

So this past week was about nostalgia for me, a time for thinking about where I’ve been and where I’m going, and a time for being very proud and happy I’m working in this field.

A Chat With Pati Nagel

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By Autumn Daughetee
For those of you who are not familiar with Pet Noir, it is a novel by Pati Nagle about Leon, a talking, genetically engineered cat who is indentured to a police department on an off-world space station. Leon works off the price of his creation solving crimes with his human partner.

Now, take my advice. As soon as you finish reading this post, visit Amazon, Barnes and Noble or your favorite online book retailer and purchase a copy. Then pull the blinds and pretend you’re not at home while you read this book.

After you are familiar with the antics of Leon, I know you will be unable to resist following his adventures in comic book format. Kymera Press recently released issue #1 of Pet Noir at Comic-Con International: San Diego. This special edition had a special numbered limited-edition cover exclusive to Comic-Con. Although it sold like hotcakes, there are a few copies left. If you are interested, contact us for more information on how to get your copy.

Now, without further ado, here is my interview with the author of Pet Noir—Pati Nagle.

Do you read comic books?

I read comics a lot as a kid. Less so now, because of other demands on my time (like writing), but as an adult I’ve enjoyed more sophisticated comics such as Elfquest and various manga. I also adore Sydney Padua’s 2-D Goggles. Ada Lovelace is a wonderful comic hero!

What made you decide to adapt Pet Noir into comic book form?

Cats in zero-g. Need I say more? Seriously, I think the stories that make up Pet Noir would really come alive even more in a comic. It’s got kind of a comic-book feel already, with the science fiction setting and the noir atmosphere. There’s a lot of rich potential for expression through visual media. I’m excited to see what happens!

Kymera came to me and I was absolutely delighted. I love working with other women, and I love the concept of a press that focuses on women’s creative efforts.

 Where did the idea for Leon come from? A crime-solving, genetically engineered, talking cat isn’t something that one passes on the street.

Gosh, not sure I remember. Sometimes ideas and characters just come in fully formed from a side door and present themselves. I think Leon came to me that way. ‘Here I am, a talking cat who works as an undercover detective. Tell my story!’

I’m a cat-lover and I’ve thought about how they might (or might not) adapt to living in space. I love the juxtaposition of futuristic outer-space with the mood of old noir detective stories. All those fun ideas kind of jumbled themselves together in my brain and started coming out as stories.

Are there more Leon stories to come?

I definitely plan to write more Leon stories, and they’ll be prose first.  There’s more to say, not only about the crazy adventures of a cat fighting crime in space, but about some of the more serious underlying issues, such as his indenture. He’s stuck fighting scummy space criminals until the expense of his genetic engineering is paid off. He would probably sympathize with a lot of college graduates these days.

Is there anything else you’d like to share about Leon or this project?

Just that I’m so pleased whenever a reader tells me they like Leon and his stories. People really get into it. I had one reader tell me, ‘That’s not how cats talk!’ I just had to laugh, because if they were that engaged in the story, that they had their own opinion of how a cat would talk, then I did my job.

What Fun Home and Bitch Planet Have in Common

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By D. Lynn Smith

A while back, Fun Home won the Tony for best musical. And guess what? It’s based on a graphic novel written by Alison Bechdel. Here is what Fun Home is all about…

"Funhomecover". Via Wikipedia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Funhomecover.jpg#/media/File:Funhomecover.jpg
“Funhomecover”. Via Wikipedia – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Funhomecover.jpg#/media/File:Funhomecover.jpg

“In this groundbreaking, bestselling graphic memoir, Alison Bechdel charts her fraught relationship with her late father. In her hands, personal history becomes a work of amazing subtlety and power, written with controlled force and enlivened with humor, rich literary allusion, and heartbreaking detail.

Distant and exacting, Bruce Bechdel was an English teacher and director of the town funeral home, which Alison and her family referred to as the “Fun Home.” It was not until college that Alison, who had recently come out as a lesbian, discovered that her father was also gay. A few weeks after this revelation, he was dead, leaving a legacy of mystery for his daughter to resolve.”

In this world where superheroes dominate the cinema, it is exhilarating to see a graphic novel about a very real woman in a very real relationship garner so much public attention and accolades. It also lends credence to the fact that graphic novels aren’t just for kids, but are great reading for everyone. However, reading a graphic novel is not the same as reading a prose novel.

The other day, a friend of mine who had asked for copies of Gates of Midnight, but was not a comic book reader, told me he had a very difficult time reading the comic until he remembered what I had told him, the story isn’t told by the words, it’s told by the art. Once he remembered that, he went back and was able to enjoy the comic, though it was a lot slower reading than he expected.

Alison Bechdel is quoted as saying, “It’s very important for me that people be able to read the images in the same kind of gradually unfolding way as they’re reading the text. I don’t like pictures that don’t have information in them. I want pictures that you have to read, that you have to decode, that take time, that you can get lost in. Otherwise what’s the point?”

Graphic novels and comics are an art form that takes time to appreciate. It also takes time to learn how to read them in order to catch every nuance, every bit of storytelling on the page. Whenever I hear someone say that they don’t read comics because they don’t have the depth of story as a short story or a novel, I have to think that they simply haven’t taken the time to learn to read the art as well as the words.

"BitchPlanetcover01" by Valentine De Landro - https://imagecomics.com/comics/releases/bitch-planet-1. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:BitchPlanetcover01.png#/media/File:BitchPlanetcover01.png
“BitchPlanetcover01” by Valentine De Landro – https://imagecomics.com/comics/releases/bitch-planet-1. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons – https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:BitchPlanetcover01.png#/media/File:BitchPlanetcover01.png

Kelly Sue DeConnick’s Bitch Planet is a great example of the art telling the story. Bitch Planet is a women-in-prison sci-fi exploitation riff. Any woman who is noncompliant is sentenced to Bitch Planet. It also happens to be the place… “…where inconvenient women are disappeared.” It is unapologetically feminist and great fun to read.

In issue #2, artist Valentine de Landro draws three women running and talking. One woman falls behind. The action in the foreground revolves around the two women as they keep running; this is where the dialog happens. But in the background a guard is attacking the third woman. As each panel progresses, there are more guards and more inmates joining the fray. While we get important information from the women in the foreground, a full-blown prison riot erupts in the background.

So if you’re only reading the words, you’ll completely miss the prison riot, which adds loads of layers to the story, and is important in showing just how brutal Bitch Planet really is.

I’m still working on my ability to write layered stories like this. But when I read something like Fun Home or Bitch Planet, I’m inspired to keep working on my craft in order to bring a richer reading experience to Gates of Midnight.

On a side note, I highly recommend Bitch Planet not just for the awesome, in-your-face, no-holds-barred story, but also for the excellent essays included in each issue.

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