Today I Ar Mostly Bin Drawin'...

From Pale Witness, © 2007 Steve Murphy/Me

I'm currently working on a one-shot called Pale Witness, written by Steve Murphy, who wrote the Tales Of The TMNT issue I drew a couple of years ago. It's an unusual job for me, as I'm working "Marvel method" - so instead of working from a detailed script, I get a document describing the action. Though Steve does break the thing down by page and panel, there's no dialogue or explanation of anything but action, so aside from knowing that it's about a female cosmonaut on a joint US/Russian mission to the moon, I can't actually tell you what the story is - in fact, I'm looking forward to reading it myself!

Joint US/Russian lunar spaceship from Pale Witness
© 2007 Steve Murphy/Me

I must say, it makes a nice change drawing rockety stuff again; Victoriana is all very well and good, but as a child of the space age, there's something about spaceships that I find very satisfying. It's a different thing from drawing The Great Game, though; there I was following the classic 50's rocket designs, here I'm designing stuff based on real NASA and Soviet spacecraft.

I'm drawing Pale Witness in a composite of my old greyscale technique and the more textural Stickleback technique (see top illustration). I always try to find a fresh approach for each new project, but it's funny how some habits assert themselves, almost without my meaning to. To explain: when I drew the Tales Of The TMNT story for Steve back in 2004, it was set in New York, and I wanted to give it a slightly gritty feel, so I added much more hatching than usual. Because Pale Witness is by the same writer, working "Marvel method," it feels similar to the Tales Of The TMNT story, though the content of the story is very different. The result? More hatching is creeping in, almost without me realising.
The same thing happened back in 2000 when I drew the extra story for Lazarus Churchyard: The Final Cut. Though I'd not drawn a Lazarus strip for more than eight years, I fell straight back into the drawing habits from the earlier work, almost without deciding to.

Something else I notice creeping in is a bit of influence from Shane Oakley. I've been doing some lettering for him on his adaptation of Fall Of The House Of Usher for Nevermore, some of his chiaroscuro work is a revelation; it's prompting me to keep things simple and try and make my compositions stronger.

From Pale Witness, © 2007 Steve Murphy/Me

Eisner Nominations

This just in from Dave De Dark Horse:

Eisner Award Nominations:

Best Limited Series
Scarlet Traces: The Great Game, by Ian Edginton and D’Israeli (Dark Horse)

But better still:

Best Writer
Ian Edginton, Scarlet Traces: The Great Game (Dark Horse)

Congratulations mate, well deserved and long overdue. Fingers crossed for you.

Also, little birdy tells me that Mark Buckingham has, alongside Steve Leialoha, received his first named Eisner nomination for his run on Fables. About time too.

Scarlet Editions

Just this morning I received my proof copy of the new collected edition of Scarlet Traces: The Great Game. I have to say, this book has the best interior printing of any of our editions; the colours on some of the pages look almost luminous. Amy Arendts has done her usual wonderful job, designing the book to match The War Of The Worlds and the new second printing of Scarlet Traces, which Ian reports having seen on sale already in London. We're going to do our damnedest to acquire stock of the new editions for Bristol, so we can sell them as sets. Dark Horse are also in discussion with us about putting together some Scarlet Traces merchandise, including a poster and possibly a bookmark.

As I was photographing the books for this post, it occurred to me for the first time - we got us a trilogy here, boys!

Thanks again to Dave De Dark Horse and Amy for the love and care they've put into our projects; they've given Ian and me a library to be proud of. Not only have the Dark Horse editions been beautiful in themselves, but they've raised the game in general; I'm told they inspired Rebellion to put extra effort into their own book design for Leviathan and XTNCT.

So It Goes

Because I was travelling, I missed the sad news of the death of Kurt Vonnegut last Wednesday.

One of the foremost North American authors of the twentieth century, Vonnegut began by writing science fiction novels, but he was never bound by genre; his real subject was the irony of existence. In his best books, he approaches the world almost like a children's author, explaining every detail, no matter how familiar, as if it's new - jerking the reader out of their settled attitudes and forcing them to view the world afresh. There's a simplicity, dry humour and warmth to his work, but he never flinches from dealing with the worst aspects of life. Vonnegut was a life-long atheist, and his fictional world is an uncaring mechanism in which neither virtue is rewarded nor evil punished; the characters are elevated or crushed at the whim of blind fate. Nevertheless, his novels are among the funniest I've ever read, and are filled with hope that life persists and that contentment, if not happiness, can be found.

Self Portrait by Kurt Vonnegut, Illustration for his novel Breakfast of Champions, 1973.

Vonnegut's life and work were shaped by his experiences in the Second World War; as a prisoner of war in Germany, he survived the fire-bombing of Dresden by Allied forces. This cataclysmic event was at the core of his most famous work, Slaughterhouse Five (1969), in which the main character, one Billy Pilgrim, comes unhitched in time and experiences his own life as a series of moments in random order. Vonnegut had previously explored this idea of being adrift in time in The Sirens of Titan (1959) and returned to it in his last novel, Timequake (1997); for us comics-types it's worth noting that it was also the inspiration for the all-powerful but chronologically-challenged character Dr. Manhattan in Watchmen (Alan Moore/Dave Gibbons, DC Comics 1985).

Though he began writing in the 1950's, Vonnegut didn't really find a distinctive voice until 1963 with Cat's Cradle (supposedly his favourite of his own novels). My personal favourite is his 1973 effort Breakfast Of Champions, a riotous mess of a novel in which no one character is meant to be more important that any other, though a lot of time is given to Vonnegut's fictional alter-ego Kilgore Trout (an unsuccessful science-fiction author who remains utterly obscure because his work is only ever published as filler in porn magazines), and in which he introduces all his (male) characters by giving the dimensions of their penises. However, his best work is probably to be found in the four later novels published between 1982 and 1990; Deadeye Dick, Galapagos, Bluebeard and Hocus Pocus; of these I consider Galapagos to be the finest expression of his ironic take on life.

If I were back at home with access to my books, this post would be packed to the gills with quotations so you could see exactly what I mean; as it is, I can only advise anyone who hasn't read him to go seek him out. If you have read his work, you'll already know what we've lost.

Peace.

Alice In Sunderland

Startled into pencilling wobbly lines this morning by the unexpected but welcome appearance of UK National Treasure Bryan Talbot on BBC Radio 4's Today Programme, talking about Lewis Carrol's connections with the Northeast as a canny way of getting a plug in about his new book Alice In Sunderland.

More about the book at Bryan's Official Fansite - though be warned, you have to scroll down past a load of signing dates before you get to the descriptions and, better still, page samples.

Also out soon by Bryan is The Naked Artist, a collection of "funny, outrageous or downright weird stories that get told about comic creators and publishers in the comic convention pro bar late at night" and illustrated by (yay!) Hunt Emerson (Bryan regaled us with some of the 'out-takes' from this book on the train to Lille in December). He's also writing Cherubs!, a "supernatural comedy adventure" drawn by the excellent and much-too-little-seen Mark Stafford.

Most of the above info was culled from May's Megazine (#257), where funnily enough I make a tiny subsidiary appearance; there's an interview with Steve Yeowell in which they use a panel from Devlin Waugh: Chasing Herod that I coloured back in 1999. In the interview, Steve mentions dropping in to the comic shop in Sheffield where, as a wide-eyed A-Level sudent, I met him for the first time (at, of all things, a Bryan Talbot signing). Small world.

Alice In Sunderland is published by Jonathan Cape on 4th June.
The Naked Artist is published by Moonstone on 30th June.
Cherubs! is released by Desperado in June.