Sketchbook Stuff

Okay, so the reason I'm posting so much sketchbook stuff today is that I had to learn to scan and import images this afternoon, and in the process thereof, convert said images to jpegs, so that I could park them somewhere on my computer and have them available to attach to emails. This may seem like a simple undertaking to most people, but I am among the least computer-intuitive creatures alive and learning how to do this sort of thing doesn't at all come easy to me.

        But there were an important couple of images I had to scan and have ready to send off to DC Comics tomorrow, for a new project in the works -- about which more later. And my usual do-everything-for-me-computer-friend was at work today (Hi, Brad). So, with a little bit of help and guidance from him, snuck in over the phone between important grownup man in a grownup job duties, I had to mostly suss out how to do this myself.

        Once those two actual bits of business were taken care of, I didn't want to lose this new hard won skill set, so I broke out one of my sketchbooks and started scanning pages, to retain by repetition this bold new ability in my old-dog-can't-learn-new-tricks sort of life.

        I don't think I have anything to say about any of the actual images on this page of doodles, other than I may want to someday find a use for the funny little gobliny creature in the lower part of the page.

Sketchbook Stuff

I'm not sure I have anything to comment about this sketchbook page of doodles. These are all done originally in pencils of course. Then, back when I was producing a good deal of comic art -- back in the Ironwood and Coventry days -- I would warm up my inking hand by first inking a few of the sketches in one of my sketchbooks. That's how the majority of them came to be inked, and that's where I tried out new inking a pencilling styles.

This Week's Fine Fellow is...

New York Times Bestselling author Marjorie M Liu is this week's Fine Fellow, most likely because I'm reading one of her books just now and so she's currently on my mind.

        I met her only a short time ago, at the 2008 World's Fantasy Convention in Calgary (lovely town), where she was kind enough to give me several of her books (comped by her publisher to give out to her fans at the show) to read. She introduced herself as a Fables fan at the bar -- which is where most of the convention took place, in the sense that all of the real business of matching writers to publishers, editors and agents is done there. Okay, she reminded me then that we'd also met a bit more briefly at this year's San Diego show, when she came over to introduce herself, but I have a good excuse for not remembering her from that occasion. The San Diego show is a huge affair and I meet hundreds of people there for the first time on any given year. And I try to be on my best public behavior there, which means that breathtakingly beautiful women actually have a strike against them, as far as my remembering them is concerned. This is because, as I said, I'm trying hard to behave. The more heart-stopping you are, the more likely to be quickly scrubbed out of the old memory banks. Besides, Mark Buckingham is the big, shameless flirt at the San Diego show now. He has to be seen to be believed. And oh my, oh dear, oh lordy how he can exude innocence, harmlessness and bashful sincerity -- a talent I could never quite develop with any finesse. Even if I tried to compete, he'd leave me in his dust.

        Sothenanyway, I met Marjorie at the Calgary World's Fantasy Convention and she gave me some of her books to read. I'm in the middle of her first one right now and find myself in awe of her ability to put words together in sparse but entirely engaging and evocative sentences. Look at this line from only the second paragraph in her novel: The world trickled light. If I could craft a sentence so simple and yet so compelling, I'd really have some confidence, now that I seem to be intent on entering the prose fiction trade.

        The book is called Tiger Eye, and it's about what happens when a young woman gets caught up in a world of supernatural danger and intrigue after innocently (she thought at the time) purchasing a demon-filled Chinese riddle box at Beijing's famous Dirt Market.

        Tiger Eye is the first of her Dirk and Steele series, all of which are described (by her or the publisher -- I'm not sure) as paranormal romance thrillers. I'm pretty confident I'll be reading the other books in the series, which include, Book Two: Shadow Touch; Book Three: The Red Heart of Jade; Book Four: Dark Dreamers; Book Five: Eye of Heaven -- and so on, totaling seven books so far in this series, plus books in two or three other series she's started. She's very prolific.

        Confession time: I doubt I would ever have picked up one of Marjorie's books, had I not met her in person. The reason is they're categorized as Romances, which is where they are shelved in bookstores. Though I have no justification for avoiding it, the romance section is an area in bookstores I seldom wander into. Her novels also have traditional-looking romance book covers, which are occasionally a bit off-putting to us mighty manly men. Then again, who knows? I don't carry many biases where good storytelling is concerned. I'm willing to find it anywhere, as too many of my friends will attest, when I try to drag them to wonderful movies that they aren't eager to go to, simply because they fall under the chick-flick rubric. So, in any case, I'm glad I did meet Marjorie Liu in person, because it would have been a shame to miss out on the work of an author this talented due to whatever degree of cultural prejudices I might still possess. I trust you who read this won't make the same mistake.

        Marjorie writes, and as long as she does, I'll continue to read. I believe this more than qualifies her as a truly Fine Fellow.

        If you want to learn more about her -- and there's tons more to learn -- go to her website at: marjoriemliu.com

Sketchbook Stuff

Many of the members of the so-called Pre Raphaelite Brotherhood, a movement that came along decidedly post Raphael by the way, kept drawing this one woman named Jane Morris. Some used her as the model for whatever painting they were doing, while she simply shows up in the sketchbooks and discardia of others. When I finally ran across an actual photograph of Miss Jane Morris, I understood why, and had to copy it for myself. Captivating woman.

        At this time I was just beginning to get a wildness to my brushstroke that I liked and continued to pursue and develop. If I can ever recapture it someday -- it faded when I stopped drawing as much as I was doing back then -- I'm going to try to introduce it to my comics work. Assuming I can ever get around to drawing comics again.

Sketchbook Stuff

In the very same sketchbook, which was started at least two years before I began to think about the series Pantheon -- so this would have been around 1989 or '90, but don't hold me to that because my time sense is a bit spotty in some areas -- I also drew this character whom I called Fortress America. In fact, I had the name Fortress America first and tried to design an image to fit, unlike in the case of Dynasty, where I had the image in mind first and eventually found a name and an identity to fit. An armored character who has the word 'fortress' as part of his name has to be big and solid, and I think this fellow fit the bill nicely.

        As you can begin to see, with this and the previous post, when I began to think about the series Pantheon, I went shopping among my old notes and sketchbooks for characters to people it with. If you're going to write or draw comics, or both, you have to keep notebooks and/or sketchbooks. This seems a no-brainer, but it took me a while to figure that much out.

Sketchbook Stuff

This is my first run at drawing the character Dynasty, who would later star in the 13 issue maxi series Pantheon, published by Lone Star Press. I'm still quite fond of this design and by this time I was beginning to get results I liked with the inking brush. Of course, by this time I had no idea who the character was or that she'd be named Dynasty. I only had an image in my mind of the dragon symbol wrapped around one leg, before showing up on her chest, where most self-respecting superhero symbols appear.

        I think it's sort of humorous that several critics of the Pantheon series went out of their way to point out what they considered a mistake in the character design, because the woman was clearly (East) Indian, but the dragon design was obviously Asian. Apparently, according to these critics, I don't know one culture from another. So let's get this straight: American superheroes can adopt all sorts of symbology from other cultures, but non-American superheroes are required to stick within the culture of their origin -- period. Got it. Understood.

        Do I work in a silly profession, or what?

        By the way, the character to the left of Dynasty was going to be a superhero called Unicorn -- part of the super team called The Bestiary. But the Bestiary never actually made an appearance in Pantheon. I intended them to, but simply ran out of room. Though they were referred to once or twice in other character's dialogue, they ended up on the funnybook equivalent of the cutting room floor. That happens.

Robin # 121

In 2003, after Fables got up and running at Vertigo, I began actively looking for a DCU series to write, my reasoning being that with two regular books a month to script my recent (and some might say legendary by then) financial woes would be ended and I could actually start socking some money away -- which had always been a rarity for me.

        I made some calls, talked to some editors, floated a few ideas -- standard job-seeking behavior in the funnybook field. Eventually I got a call from a fine fellow named Michael Wright who was one of the Bat-Editors. Specifically he edited the Robin series and wondered if I might be interested in taking it over and (hopefully) punching some new life into it.

        I was interested and told him so immediately. But, as I explained to him, it had been some time since I had read any of the Robin comics and so I would need to do some serious catching up before making my final decision.

        First digression: I made the mistake of repeating the line directly above in some of my pre-Robin # 121 online interviews, when the word had gotten out that I would be taking over the series. I clearly mentioned that, in preparing for the series, I had to reread many of the books I had read in the past, and read for the first time many issues that I hadn't read before being faced with the prospect of taking over the series. Now, to a reasonable person, this would seem like a fair and prudent, and even professional, thing to do, to make sure one is up-to-speed on an important subject, before making a decision involving said subject, right? But I had not anticipated the current (then -- just as it largely is now) internet culture, which specializes in taking things boldly and blatantly out of context, added to the general culture by then of what I (and others) called the new Indignation Industry, where special status is conferred on all victims, and members of victims groups. And apparently anyone who screamed and cried enough received the coveted status of victimhood, without any actual victimization needing to be demonstrated. So no sooner had I mentioned the fact that I had to read up on past Robin issues, before deciding to take over the series, than someone on the internet, unhappy with my take on the character of Tim Drake, remolded that statement as, "Willingham even admitted he didn't bother to read any Robin issues before taking over the series." And that fabricated statement got repeated over and over again, until it became the official history.

        So, since part of the stated purpose of this journal is to point out my many career mistakes to those newly starting out their comics careers, with an eye towards helping you avoid some of the blunders I've made, let me mention now an increasingly universal truth that so many have had to learn at their peril: For the most part the internet is a garbage dump and a wasteland, and like any garbage dump, it's ruled by the biggest, meanest and most disease-ridden rats, who've made it their special home.

        So, be careful what you say and how you say it.

        Am I indicting all people who post on the internet? No, of course not. I'm merely pointing out the well-proven axiom that, in any venue, throughout human history, the unreasonable people will always trump the reasonable ones -- if you let them. And the internet seems tailor made to let them have their way, unfettered.

        Then what's the solution? That's simple enough. The internet isn't one vast venue, it's thousands (millions by now I suppose) of separate venues. Therefore, chose the places where good behavior is enforced and stay far away from those places where it isn't (such as the vast cesspool of the official DC message boards). Try to set the record straight when and where you can, but don't make a fetish of it, since the weasel-contingent is always going to have their say somewhere. By entering the professional comics book field, you've willingly entered the public arena, where a certain amount of shit is going to be thrown at you as a matter of course. Try to console yourself with the knowledge that these shitcasters will never accomplish anything of worth with their wretched lives, will always be the dependents of those who actually do make the world, and will always resent it and lash out in indignation.

        Now, back to our essay: Michael Wright sent me the last fifty issues of Robin, to catch up on, including the photocopies and as-yet-unillustrated scripts of those issues which hadn't been published yet. I did my homework, found that I liked the character and could come up with some interesting (to me at least) ideas, and told Michael that I'd take the job.

        My initial plans for the Robin series were pretty basic: 1) Build up a more healthy rogues gallery of new villains for Robin, so he isn't constantly in the position of having to borrow whatever well-known Batman villain isn't being used in the other Batbooks that month. 2) Tell the adventures of someone in the process of learning the superhero trade from the greatest expert in the (DC) world.

        Our second digression: This second plan turned out to be something of a sticking point for many of the die-hard Robin readers -- at least the more vocal contingent (see the first digression above for some important context). It seems they much preferred a Robin who was already a seasoned hero on his own -- one who metaphorically sprang fully grown from the forehead of Zeus, dressed, armed and ready for battle. They wanted a Robin who didn't need constant help, advice and training from Batman. As a result they chafed and squirmed at my intentional depiction of a Robin who, though obviously talented and well on his way, was still very much a boy in training. In this respect I simply had to disagree with these vocal critics and do the stories I thought best. A Robin being trained by Batman interested me greatly. I had many tales to tell about such a character. In my mind, a Robin who had already learned all he needed to should give up the name and identity, choose a new identity (like Nightwing did) and move on, making room for another Robin in the Batcave. As it turned out, in later issues, this is what would happen, though not exactly as one might envision it.

        Returning again to our essay: But there was one big condition on taking over the Robin job. It had already been decided by then that the character Spoiler was going to die. I had to figure that into my plans for the series. No problem. Having just read a veritable deluge of Robin stories, Spoiler didn't stand out as a particularly interesting character. Put those stones down, this is just my opinion. You can disagree. I wasn't exactly happy to kill off Spoiler, but it didn't bother me either. Unknown to me at the time, I had yet to think of the one development that would make Spoiler truly interesting to me -- but too late to save her. By editorial dictate, she was doomed.

        Take a look at this wonderful first-issue (my first issue at least) cover from Jason Pearson. It absolutely captured what I wanted my first issue to be all about. Why Pearson doesn't have awards and accolades and parades in his honor is beyond me.

        The title of Robin # 121 was Johnny Got His Gun. I wrote it. Rick Mays pencilled it. Aaron Sowd inked it. Right off the bat I decided to get the ball rolling by introducing what was to be one of Robin's new villains, the truly evil Johnny Warlock. He's the fellow on the cover holding a shotgun to Robin's head.