Sometimes the world IS black & white

Fanart of the underrated Cybersix

A lot of people, when they think of comics from the 80s, they think of Miller's Dark Knight, Watchmen, Claremont's X-Men, Crisis on Infinite Earth, or even the Secret Wars. (Though no one should really think of the second one.) Basically big epic comics that often spanned time and space, and truly gave birth to the notion of the 'comic book event'. But not me. When I think of comics in the 80's, I tend to think of things a little more black and white. I think I've mentioned before that I got a lot of my first exposure to independent comic books at the cusp of the Black and White comic book boom of the 1980s. And as a result, the way I often look at comics is at the lineart itself, and less at overall picture. Coloring techniques have come a long ways since the bright tacky colors and lens flares of the 90s. But before that, IF your comic was lucky, you might get a colorist that can add in things like an extra shade. Essentially, if you wanted shading done in your book, it was going to have to be done in the lineart stage. Stark shadows, line thickness, shading, textures... It was done all in pen and ink. It had to be. Today, the digital stage of the comic page production can do all that with a few clicks of a button. Now understand, I am NOT taking away or belittling anyone who digitally inks. I admire them and I'd be lying if I said there was no digital touching up done to my own lineart. There's things that can be done with digital inking that just cannot be done quickly, cleanly, or efficiently in hand drawn ink.

Early Shadowgirls
concept cover

Simple point I'm trying to get to is that I've always had a love to do black and white art, even though people's never seen a lot of it. Back in the early days of my artwork, I honestly never really imagined that I'd have a comic (much less several comics) produced in color, so I kinda always settled on the notion that I'd be a black and white artist. A lot of people's love for B&W comics came about from the days of the Manga and Anime book of the early 00s, and some people from the indie comics of the earlier eras, such as myself. There was a time that I actually was going in a totally different direction than the art most of you have come to know me for today, and some of the art you're seeing to the sides there. There was a bit of life and love that you can see in an artist's lines. Even if there's a lack of talent, you can always see the effort and the... Well, not to get esoteric with this... But basically, you can see the artist's soul in their work.

When I started Shadowgirls, I never planned to be the colorist. I was just happy being the lineart guy. But the colorist we had didn't work out. (I believe the World of Warcraft was involved.) So that's when I realized I had to be the colorist too. It wasn't until Shadowgirls got to about Issue #4 that I started to become comfortable with the process. I had spent a few years trying to incorporate animation tricks and techniques into production, to speed it up. Cutting time consuming line work, and replacing it faster and sometimes more efficient coloring. And I had done this for almost three years straight. As a result, I'm extremely confident in my coloring skills and for the most part, it made the artwork look nice. But I bring this up, because way earlier this year I had an epiphany about my own lineart, the heart and soul of the work.

I hated it.

It became manufacturing, as opposed to creating art. I'm the last person in the world to get all arty-farty on you folks. I mean it. But this was really driven home to me in this picture I drew about this time last year, of the fake DC cover, “Red X and the Outlaws”.

You look at the earlier lineart and you look at THAT lineart and you tell me that there wasn't a SEVERE loss of effort and quality. Oh sure, the lines may be more confident and refined, but... Christ... I was doing 80% of the actual work in the coloring stages. There are entire pages in the last bunch of issues of Shadowgirls that didn't even have backgrounds drawn, that I went in and digitally inserted them, because it was faster. Yes, I know the coloring is nice, but it's not the same. It doesn't have that finished feel. It felt compensated to me, like I was trying to cover up mistakes. And I believe I was. And ALL my artwork was looking like this. (This is not an exaggeration. I picked this one, because it really showed the point well I thought.) But through all that, I became a better colorist, because as the old saying goes in comics: Good coloring can make substandard lineart look good. Remember that sentence, it's coming back up in a few paragraphs. In short, I knew at after realizing the above that I was not going to be ready to do another comic book, until I got myself back up to a level of quality I expected and demanded of myself.

So what happened next? Well, I sort of fell off the face of the Earth for a bit, as far as art wise goes. Doing small bits of fanart here and coloring gigs and assists there. But the truth was, I wasn't happy with my artwork. I needed to rediscover that right balance of quality I've always wanted. I know many people assumed that I just threw my arms up and left the whole thing completely, and that me talking about making a new was basically empty talk. And for a while there, I almost believed it too. I spent most of the year, sketching, drawing, and just trying to rediscover that spark that drove me to want to make comic art in the first place. I threw myself into a bunch of older comics I used to read from the old days, and even dug into some newer ones, like Terry Moore's Echo and Jeff Smith's recently concluded RASL. (I'm currently waiting on the final collected book for that.) I wanted to see how others do it in the old black and white. Seeing Moore's passion for wonderful and dramatic characters, and Smith's stark black and white mastery of storytelling. With the help of a few friends and some actual real soul searching... Earlier this June, I sat down with a picture, just to produce the best line art I could.

This was the result.

An amalgam of everything I had learned over the years, with the clean lines and the more focused textures and the less sporadic crosshatching. I picked Transformers because they're generally more complex than your average people drawing like Batman or the Thing. Apparently, my time spent drawing and inking tightly resulted in some people thinking I digitally inked this. (I didn't as you can see HERE. Though I did touch up the clouds.) After that, I did another one of the old Argentinean comic, Cybersix, which you can see in the intro image up there. And then I did a couple more. And that's when I realized that I was almost really to dive back into comics again. But I needed to one more test... When I mentioned that good coloring can save a bad lineart? Well, what would my coloring skills put to this new art look like?

I think I'm ready. It's feeling like the right blend again. (Better than before actually.) It's not perfect again, but I'm loving the artwork I'm making and that spark that had been missing for a long time now is back. And for those curious what the Black Banshee promotional picture from last time looked like without color...

More soon on Black Banshee soon. There'll probably be another project underway too, a small B&W one as well, unrelated to the Banshee, other than it's in the same universe. But that's too early to talk about right yet.