Anatomy of A Panel: Sandman #16 by Neil Gaiman & Mike Dringenberg - page 1

in the quest to know what a comic page looks like, it used to be that one had only to refer to How To Draw Comics The Marvel Way. Fortunately, there were other approaches to be had, and certainly DC and Karen Berger exploited in the '80's, establishing an entirely new version of art for sequential comics.

It was an interesting time to be alive.

Here is the first page to the classic conclusion of The Doll's House storyline which, when collected, would be the trade to launch a hundred thousand fangirls into loving comics, when the industry, in every possible way, had ignored them for more than two generations.

It was an interesting time to be alive.

Mike Dringenberg was a classically trained artist who had no business putting his admirable skills into a monthly book, but he did anyway. His work, seen especially in the pencils, shows just how experimental and innovative he was off of Neil's scripts. Gaiman was not writing classic comic scripts, and the art had to reflect that. So, for likely the first time anywhere outside of the late Malcolm Jones' art table, here are the pencils to Sandman #16, as well as the recolored version printing in the Absolute Sandman #1.

As for me, I'm working away at The Carnival #2 for APE 2014 and looking forward to talking comics with everyone there. I'll have a new printing of  Carnival #1, as well as some prints of the Dick Sprang/yoakum collaboration of the 1950's Batman!

Who is DC making comics for? I don't think that they know

Lets get right to it and say, "No, you don't." Which is kind of like saying, "The answer is 42." and, of course, not knowing what the question is.

Well the answer is in response to this:

“Batman did pretty well, so I sat down with the head of DC Comics. I really wanted to do Kamandi [The Last Boy on Earth], this Jack Kirby character. I had this great pitch … and he said, ‘You think this is gonna be for kids? Stop, stop. We don’t publish comics for kids. We publish comics for 45-year-olds. If you want to do comics for kids, you can do Scooby-Doo. And I thought, ‘I guess we just broke up.’”– Paul Pope, relating his attempt to pitch an all-ages (or perhaps young-adult) title to DC Comics, during his Comic-Con International conversation with Gene Luen Yang.

Now, it would be one thing if DC had a focus and Paul, who has a distinct creative voice, was not going to be part of that, but, and we can put this right on the table, DC is NOT making comics for 45 year old men. 45 year olds were brought up on Frank McLaughlin and Carmine Infantino and Joe Giella and Cary Bates and the Flash, and the classic JLA and Superman coming from Kansas and this new 52 is not their DC at all. 

Perhaps DC thinks that the hypersexualized fanboy driven new versions of the characters, and the darker Green Lantern will appeal to the adults in the audience who haven't really grown up, but its clearly not happening. None of the these versions of the characters are recognizable to anyone in their 40's. Those of us in our 40's had to deal with the reordering of the DC universes when Crisis first threw a big blanket over continuity back in '85, but it was a fairly loving blanket, inclusive for the most part. But now they've rebooted so many times that all they have done is made a point of pushing away older fans to an extent that we've never seen before. Welcome to the NEW DC!

Now, combine that with Karen Berger's exit interview in the New York Times and you have the other interesting side to this:

Dan DiDio, the co-publisher of DC Comics, said there was “some truth” to these feelings of a shifting landscape, which he said were industrywide. For comics published by Vertigo and by DC, he said: “There’s not a challenge to be more profitable out of the gate. But there is a challenge to be more accepted out of the gate.”Mr. DiDio said it would be “myopic” to believe “that servicing a very small slice of our audience is the way to go ahead.”“That’s not what we’re in the business for,” he added. “We have to shoot for the stars with whatever we’re doing. Because what we’re trying to do is reach the biggest audience and be as successful as possible.”

So lets parse this: Vertigo, the line that primarily would bring in female readers, is being cancelled because "servicing a very small slice of our audience is [not] the way to go ahead.” How is it possible to go service a wider part of your audience when you've just cut out 50% of the population? 

So, really, who is DC producing comics for? Do they know?

I going to go with: catering to the needs of 25-year old fanboys who don't need a lot of old continuity to deal with, like the Reis/Lee art style, don't have wives bothering them over blatantly sexist comics coming into the house, and don't want any of that DC produced "alternative shit" messing up their comic lines. Now, is this any different than the individuals who were going to enjoy Dr. Light raping Sue Dibney? Not really, but i do think that its already a different generation of young men pushing what meager sales are out there, young men who don't have daughters that they don't want to sexualize, young men who believe that they have a slightly nihilistic attitude towards life because they've played too much "Tour of Duty". Not the sort readers that  might wander by the Top Shelf table at a con. 

Will DC succeed with this audience? Perhaps, but i'm thinking no, and it will be just a matter of time before they retrench. Again. And its not going to be pretty. Again.

Heath Ledger: The Joker

Just finished watching the Oscars, one of the most boring in recent memory, but the one endearing memory that i will remember (given that this is a comic book blog) is Heath winning for his portrayal of The Joker. It was a devastatingly dead-on accurate job of acting in front of a director who completely, utterly got the character.

That sort of thing is rare, far rarer than we would suspect in the movie world, but even more so when a beloved character is taken from other fiction and brought into the movie world. Harry Potter has been aptly served by some very competent directors and the excellent casting of Daniel Radcliffe. The Joker has been tortured by any number of directors and actors who never quite got the essence, only skimming the surface with the white face and leering laugh.

Even Bob Kane didn't get what he was creating back in Batman #1. The Joker is an insanely clever jewel thief with a creepy gimmick, but he is not a howling force of nature, given to utter unpredictability in his actions. If the essence of acting is not to simply mirror surface mannerisms but to understand why your character acts the way he/she does, then playing a tabla rasa murderer can be both freeing and maddening. As Michael Caine's Alfred makes the point in the movie, men like that can't be bargained with, or reasoned with, they are simply something that can't be understood in any logical context. You have to deal with them as they are. In our modern day they can be a metaphor for the unreasoning terror the urban dwellers can feel over the possiblity of another terrorist attack, another missing child, another chemical spill, another tsunami.

If the essence of The Batman is to impose order on the orderless world, a way to revenge/prevent the killing of his parents again by another criminal, then The Joker is the giggling essence of disorder and chaos. It delights in its ability to simply do things, whether small or large. The tidal wave has no morality, can't be bargained with, is disconcertingly random in its choices. Nolan gets both The Batman's and The Joker's premises, which is why he's been able to put together not flawless films, but films that engage the hearts of those of us with four colors under our fingernails.

Not too long ago, Heath would have been relegated to having lowered himself to act is a stupid genre picture, and even as recently as a few years ago, I was certain that the Academy would not give the best picture Oscar to Peter Jackson for Return of the King because I was sure that they didn't "get it". That a science fiction picture, fantasy picture, genre picture of any kind would never be given its due. I was wrong, happily, that night, and I'm even more overjoyed to see that the voters do "get it". Ledger's Joker is as much the Oscar worthy villian as Lecter in Silence of the Lambs. It is vindication for the characters of DC Comics, and, since we'll never have definitive answers as to who did what, vindication to Kane, Finger and Robinson as makers of an enduring American mythos.

Heath, an extremely talented actor, will always remain for me any number of people: the Aussie protagonist of 10 Things I Hate About You, the cowboy of Brokeback Mountain, The Joker. Its a shame that he's gone, but we're left with a wonderful, albiet small, body of work to remember him by.

Comics as Metatext: These Are The Days of Our Lives

So why is it that I know more about Tony Stark’s heart condition than I do my own father’s? Why am I more curious about Wolverine’s past than my family’s own checkered and mysterious past? Why, sadly, do most fanboys know more about Diana Prince’s bust than… well… then about any real busts?

Are comics the true metatext for our times? Have the long running series developed a life of their own in our memories, and our discussions, and our continuing their lives into other media? Have the Fantastic Four become more real to those that had their brains permanently scarred by Lee and Kirby, or those whose chromosomes were altered by Claremont, Byrne and Austin?

For all those that will claim movies as our fictional consciousness, can six hours in the life of Indiana Jones compete with months and years of following the minutea of Reed, Sue, Johnny and Ben? Like the album that was playing when you had your first kiss, your first break up, your first make up sex, these serials become the soundtrack to our lives. I can recall not only the 7-11 where I would purchase the X-men comics, but also all the little bits surrounding going down there on Wednesdays after school, getting that hideous Charleston Chews to go along with the new comics. What else can make all that come back?

As well, comics have provided the same sort of story stability the music can provide. When all else is going to hell, you can go back, again and again, to stories and watch everything going to hell, and somehow come out all right yet again. Comics can personify the cathartic element in storytelling as our heroes confront an endless series of troubles that should seem to overwhelm them, and yet somehow do not. While we might expect that somehow there will be a point where they breakdown over the troubles and yet they do not.

If there is a furthering of the metatext, then it is in the addition of the breakdown that has taken heroes one step further than they ever went before. Daredevil breaks down with Karen Page as she returns from her drug addiction, and takes his life as Matt Murdock down with it. Jack Knight, father and girlfriend gone, breaks down with his newborn son in his arms, his precious Opal City no match for his personal losses. Comics grow up when our characters face real dangers, but those dangers act as a real advancement of the characters, which is a danger to the corporate metatext. Perhaps the only way to continue then is to follow the prince Valiant path, where the characters do age, obviously not in real time, but slowly and surely, so that their path eventually mirrors our own.

It is perhaps The Batman who personifies the longest running metatext currently available to those of us who follow popular fiction. Superman has been rebooted enough times that only the very basics of his Jewish origins have stayed true: Ma and Pa Kent, Smallville, and a few others. Batman, on the other hand, has been the true Gilgamesh, whether written by Kane, Fox, Miller or Moore, he’s never quite been able to shake Joe Chill pulling the trigger on his parents. Whether it was from a distance or so close that the pearls break and spill to the ground, it matters not. Two-Face will always be Dent on his worst day, the Joker always the rogue force of chaos, Catwoman his own self with a looser set of morals and a greater sense of who she really is.

Bob Segar once sang, “Come back baby, rock and roll never forgets” but comics do forget. DC and Marvel have, in some measure forgotten where they came from. There is nothing wrong with adult heroes, but we need the heroes of our children as well. While Civil War was heavy handed allegory, Secret Invasion takes the very underpinnings of the Marvel Universe and spins a tale out of Skrull cloth whole. Right now, the Marvel Universe is an odd mix. DC had dragged the entire universe into Morrison’s world, and it is not a happy place with Final Crisis. Oddly enough, Grant knows almost better than anyone how to mix the light and the heavy into a delightful stew that many different ages can enjoy (see his All Star Superman). Somehow, in all the politics and editorial decisions seem to have driven the fun out of it. A selective memory is what is called for here.

And memory is what its all about, then, isn’t it?

In Review Of: Modern Masters -#12 Michael Golden

The Modern Masters series from Twomorrows Press has counfounded me a bit, starting with making Alan Davis their first book. I think that Davis is really, really good, but not the artist that I think that I would have started the series with. Still, that is a moot point. What concerns us today is the 12th volume in the series: Michael Golden.

I was there in the beginning of Golden's career, and was immediately taken by the fact that, within a few months it seemed, DC comics in 1977 has lucked on to two very striking talents: Marshall Rogers and Michael Golden. The early stories by Golden, one stand alone issue of Batman, and the Batman family stuff in the dollar comics were eye-catching in the extreme. There was a two page Man-Bat splash, as well as a two page Demon spread that were more dynamic than almost anything published at DC over the last decade. After years of fairly pedestrian work, DC would discover two greats right before the now infamous Implosion. Looking through this book should have been a real joy.

I emphasize should have been. Oh, the book has been put together with care and love by John Morrow and Eric Nolen-Weathington, the reproduction is very nice, the interview covering a great scope of Golden's career. The problem is mine really. I was so dis-satisfied with the reality that there is no deeper to Golden's artwork. To paraphrase, to him, its a job and one that he took to pay the rent and to try to do the best he could. he sort of drifted into the work from doing vans and skateboards, without a great love of the medium, and was pushed into going to NYC to visit Marvel and DC.

Feh, thats what i have to say. Reading the interview and reading his rather non-commital answers to questions about the Nam, or the single greatest annual story since Kirby drew the monumental FF Annual #1, Avengers Annual #10, leave me flat. I want there to be some more emotion, some more reaction on his part. after all, I found his art to be so interesting, so dynamic that I want to believe that there is something more there than craft.

And its clear that there isn't.

And its my own fault as a fan really, to have put my expectations on the artist and the art, and now I find myself reading it with a different sense of how the art came about. I have one Golden original, from a clever little Batman/Talia/Ra's Al Ghul story from the Batman Spectacular issue also featuring art by Rogers and Nasser. And yes, the art betrays the slightly muddied lighting sources that plagued Golden's work in the first year or two, but otherwise is a fun little piece of art. And I never saw any sweat stains or deep pencil grooves in the bristol.

And now I know why. Because it was easy.

San Rafael Italian Street Painting Festival 2007: The Batman piece

Had the great experience of taking the weekend to finally participate in San Rafael's Street Painting Festival. Sponsored by Youth in Arts, which benefits local high school arts programs, it draws some absolutely tremendous artists to the street, and they produce come amazing work. After 6 years of walking down it and each time promising myself that I would remember to sign up for the next year, I would always forget. Didn't happen this year though. I signed up early, and then had do decide on a piece to do.

The square was 6x6 feet, a good area size, and while looking at a number of more classic pieces, I learned that Marshall Rogers had died, and I then decided to honor him by doing one of his works. I almost settled on the cover of Detective #475, but decided finally to go with the best plate from his 1981 Batman Portfolio, with Joker menacing the Batman with his joker fish. Its a particular version of the scene that I doubt that most people have ever seen.

Started to work at about 9 am on Saturday, and finished around 3 pm on Sunday. Got some good props from the folks walking by. While you can't see it in this picture, I did a bio labeled "Marshall Rogers 1950 - 2007" and taped it to the pavement. Had a lot of people stop to read it.

I'll post a finished picture later when I receive it, this picture is from early Sunday morning.

In Praise Of: Batman Spectacular (DC Special Series #15)

Ahh, the dollar comic, the mistaken idea that we bought comics as if they were baseball cards: the more the merrier. No, we thought and bought like candy: we didn't look to see that the Snickers weighed more that the Reeses Peanut Butter Cup, we bought which one was tastier.

And there was nothing tastier than this dollar comic. Three Batman Stories by Nasser, Golden and Rogers, an artistic collection that would be hard to match until the Batman Black and White series well over 20 years later.

Nasser and Rubenstein open with a Dave V. Reed story "Hang the Batman", that, for once, made excellent use of Reed's propensity for gimic driven maguffins, and deliver a great Detective story along the way. Very few writers have the wits to actually write a story with Detection along the way, and this has both solid plot and excellent, witty lines along the way. Nasser is controlled and Rubenstein givens him a great polish.

Next up, a young Michael Golden and Dick Giordano deliver a solid Ra's Al Ghul story with Talia and the Batman "...I Now Pronounce you Batman and Wife".

Golden is still a few year away from the height of his powers, but his innate sense of storytelling made for a single disturbing moment as Batman has to strike and knock out a naked Talia on board Ra's ship. i another artists hands, the scene would be one of simple plot mechanism, but golden render's Talia with such sexiness, that when we see her deliciously '70's dress flat on the bed, we don't need to see her naked to fill the panel out in our head. I doubt taht the image of Batman knocking out a naked woman with a single blow would have made Jeanette Kahn's day back then.

Finally, the semi legendary O'Neil and Rogers text/illustration piece, "Death Strikes at Midnight and Three".

My pages have been yellowing for years on this copy, and it only adds to the flavor that O'Neil is channeling Walter Gibson with the perfect compatriot of an artist in Marshall. Characters are a lead in to the plot as the late February chill hovers over Gotham. Within a page the Gotham prosecutor is dead, telling Wayne to "...meet the blind man at midnight and three..."

ONeil's introduction to the Batman brings us the genius of a writer who has thought through his protagonist:

His upper face was concealed by a cowl that subtly altered the coutrours of his head and a voluminous cape billowed behind hime. Against the gloom of the alleyway, he was nearly invisible.

I always wished the DC would have reprinted this as part of the Black and White series. Roger's linework and design would have been striking and introduced a whole new generation of readers to his brilliance. I'm sure that the art is long gone and scattered to the four winds, glued down text yellowed brittle, if not already fallen off, but the sheer magic of the design at full size would be mesmerizing to see.

I wonder if Denny or Marshall kept any of that art.

Marshall Rogers: A Remembrance

I just received the word that Marshall Rogers had died and I still don't want to believe it. Marshall, who I've written about before, was, in my opinion, the greatest Batman artist of all time. What he lacked in technical ability at anatomy at the time that he burst on to the scene in 1977 was far overcome by his natural gifts in storytelling, and his unique vision.

The scans are from my originals of Detective #478, Eclipse Magazine #8 and an unpublished page from a Goodwin/Rogers/Austin that was abandoned when Archie died. The Panel from Detectives Inc. is scanned from the book.

Why should we remember Marshall? I only met him once in person, as a teenage fan, and I was looking forward to seeing him at the Super-Con on June 2nd and getting the chance to chat with him. But not knowing him moves his work in to a totally different realm for me: I don't have the chance to know that man behind the curtain, and now I never will. His Batman will remain enigmatic to me, a creation of Englehart's brain and Marshall's and Terry late hours at the drawing board.

DC, has, by a loose count, reprinted the seminal Batman tales that the three did in Detectives #471-476 more than 6 times in the last 30 years, which must be some kind of record. For all that people say that O'Neill and Adams reinvigorated The Batman, I believe that it was the Rogers/Austin Batman that set the template for the many more years to come, until others decided to subsume Miller's future Dark Knight persona in to the modern day.

Oddly enough, I always believed that those issues were the pinnacle to the three teaming up to produce such a rare and perfectly balanced masterpiece of a story, and yet that was hardly the truth at all. Steve wrote all six issues and delivered them to DC and went off the write his first novel, the underrated Point Man. The pacing of the books was modified by Marshall in places, as was some of the dialog, to fit the story on the board. That's incredible. Marshall was just channeling this new version of The Batman from his head and filling pages with it. The movement of the cape alone was so... different... than those that had come before it, that I still can't quite figure out how he decided to put so much air under the thing.

I fully intend to do a long look at the O'Neill Rogers Batman text story someday. And I'm not even biting into the Mister Miracle issues, which had their own mix of Rogers and Kirby pastiche. I don't think that they were as successful as The Batman work, but they should have been.

Leaving DC, Marshall was on the vanguard of alternative publishing, with Don McGregor on the inaugural Detective's Inc: A Remembrance of Threatening Green. Filled with beautiful odd moments, Marshall pulls out all the stops, including using a whole art store's worth of zipatone on the opening night sequence alone, and the panel here, with its reverse sihlouettes on the trees.

I Am Coyote, my personal favorite, was serialized in the B&W Eclipse Magazine, and was a stunner of a story. Off on the deep end of magik ans science with Englehart again, Rogers took the art to town and went big (the originals are much larger that regular art, and seem to have a much more epic feel to them, just as Kirby and Ditko did on the twice up art) and went weird. Coyote and the Void were scary and funny at the same time, and you got the uneasy feeling that you had stumbled onto some bizarre part of Steve Englehart's brain that wanted to put one hell of a fresh twist on the usual shadow cabinet rules the world story.

While Coyote would continue as a character on Marvel's Epic line, it would never have Roger's unique vision on the art again.

Scorpio Rose, the Strange Apparitions portfolio. The Madame Xanadu one shot. Oddities that crept out of Roger's studio, but that never scratched the itch that the prior work had given us. Marshall was a visionary, but his vision let us to the Foozle and that wasn't what we wanted at the time. Mainstream comics were not at the right spot for Marshall.

I wish that we had had more issues like those of his '70's work. I wish that Levitz hadn't gone to the Dollar
Comics and simply left his and Giordano and Wein on the regular book for a year. Just so that we could have see where it all would have, could have gone without the interruptions. Most comic fans don't need the history lesson, but I want to go down memory lane, when Marshall was an innovator whose work floored me, and I wanted for people to see some of exquisite work in all its original black and white glory.

I wish that i had had time to go to dinner and bullshit with him for a while. But I can't, and it violates my cardinal rule: find the people whose work you love and tell them that. Buy them dinner and beer. Give them their props. I just ran out of time. Damn.

A nice quote from Steve in the LA Times Obituary:

"He drew a total fantasy world, but he wanted it to be a very real fantasy world," Englehart said Tuesday. "It was very striking, it jumped off the page … another artist could have worked on pages every month for 30 years and not made the impact Marshall did."