Here we are again … glad to have you back! I know I say this a lot … but thanks for reading these. There are weeks where I’m really excited to get started on the newsletter, and other weeks where I’m busy, run down, or simply unmotivated … but I’m always happy I put one of these things together in the end.
First … hey, now that the story from DR STRANGE #450 has been out for a bit, I’ve added the black and white art to the gallery here on the site. And if you want to check out the unlettered pages with Carlos Lopez’s fantastic colors … here you go!
Meanwhile, I’m getting into the colors for the next issue of MALICENT BLACK. I’m not showing anything quite yet, but in future newsletters? Sure 🙂 I’ll also be able to share a bit of news on a couple of variant covers we’ll have on this one. Right now the campaign is planned to start at the beginning of October and end on my favorite day … Halloween. It’s a bit later than I had hoped for, but sometimes life gets in the way, and my insistence on having the colors almost finished before hitting that launch button … well, here we are. It’s important to me to have the book ready to go to the printer as soon as we receive those funds from Kickstarter. We’ll keep you posted and share that prelaunch page soon.
At the moment, aside from the colors for the next MALICENT BLACK, I’m laying out the short story I’m doing with Chris Ryall for this year’s DREAD THE HALLS special, doing a bit of writing on something brand new, and thinking a lot about the stories I want to tell over the next few years. Long story short, I did a podcast last week (it’s not out yet but I’ll warn you when it’s time 😉 and the podcaster noted what a wide variety of projects I’ve worked on. And I don’t tend to think back on what I’ve done too much … I generally think ahead, to what’s next.
But…
Yeah.
I mean, I have done a really wide variety of stuff. And I guess in some ways that’s kinda cool? I dunno. I always – always – try to find my way into a character or book. I always want to find something, some connective tissue, that I can work with. I try to make even the most commercial stuff have a bit of a personal hook if I possibly can. So it feels less like mercenary work. It doesn’t always work out.
But there’s also the fact that … man, drawing comics is how I pay the bills. So while I might have some stories that grab me more than others, the fact is I’ve done a lot of comics and looking back … some of them, I’d probably turn down if I could do it all again. Okay, scratch that. There are a few that I’d definitely turn down if given a do-over.
I’m only going to get to draw a certain number of pages in this life. I can only tell a finite amount of stories in the time I’m given. If we don’t manage to burn this planet down too soon (I remain skeptical) then the stories you tell will outlive you. That’s one of the cool and sad things about telling stories. So your choices matter. The stories you CHOOSE to tell … matter.
I guess all of this is just a way to say I think I’m getting pickier and pickier about what I do as the time goes by. It’s a big part of why MALICENT BLACK is so important to me. This series, despite all of the monsters and ghosts and spaceships, is about the things that matter to me. And I think the world is a better place when creative people find ways to tell the stories they care about, rather than just cashing the checks for remixing the same stuff we’ve seen a million times. It’s also another in a long list of reasons why AI sucks and will never replace art, but hey … you’re reading this, you know that too.
Anyway … before I go, I’ll drop one last thing here. It’s the process for page one of the DR STRANGE story above. I’m happy with how it came together, but it didn’t start with the same shot … panel one was a different view:
I really liked the idea of starting with that shot you can see in the thumbnail, and again in the pencils … this story is about the origin of Doc Strange’s cloak, so I thought having it be the focus of the very first shot, before the reader even knew what this story was about, was kinda sneaky. I like doing things like that.
But I also knew that with this being the first shot of Doc Strange in this story, there was the chance my editor would want a cleaner shot of the guy whose name is on the front of the book. So I went ahead and laid it out with the cloak dominating the first panel, but prepared to go to Plan B if I needed to…
And as you know by looking at the final art, I needed to 🙂 And I totally get it. Heck, not only is this the first shot of Dr Strange in this story, this is the first story in the book, so it’s the first time the reader lays eyes on Strange in this, his big anniversary issue. So I penciled a new shot of Strange on a different sheet of paper, scanned and digitally dropped it into the page for the inks. The one complaint I have is that I think the first pass had better depth … it felt like Dr Strange was going someplace, while the new version feels more like he’s arriving at his destination. It’s a small thing, and probably only bothers me, but I’d adjust that background now if I could.
Anyway, I tend to not save the various scraps of paper or layers that go unused in the course of making a comic, but since I actually have this one, I thought I’d share 😉
Alright, that’s it for this week. Be nice to each other.
See you again soon!
-LF
LeeFerguson.Art 