Age of Bronze: March 2021

Monday, March 29, 2021

Casper's Epic Adventure in Space

The four issues of the new series Casper's Spooksville contain a continuing story. Casper the Friendly Ghost and his friends--Spooky the Tuff Little Ghost, Wendy the Good Little Witch, and Hot Stuff the Little Devil--journey to another solar system on a planet-hopping adventure.

Mike Wolfer wrote it and I drew it. American Mythology published it.

In all, I drew the exploits of Casper and his friends of the Enchanted Forest for three and a half years. That phase of my career ended when American Mythology chose not to renew the Casper license for Casper due to disappointing sales.

Drawing Mike Wolfer's scripts always gave me pleasure. He managed to re-capture the right tone of the old Harvey Comics Casper in the character's heyday without being slavishly imitative.

I tried my best to capture the look of those comics, attempting to channel the essences of cartoonists Warren Kremer and Howard Post. My attempts stumbled at times when I started, but I got closer the more Casper stories I drew.

When the Casper Spooksville series began as sort of a capper to American Mythology's Casper run--kind of our attempt to go out with a bang--Mike asked me if I had any ideas for stories. Back in Casper's original Harvey Comics series, the character regularly had adventures with aliens or ventured into outer space. For awhile one Harvey series was titled Casper Spaceship (later changing to Casper in Space).

I suggested to Mike that we continue that tradition by sending Casper and his friends on a space adventure. Mike asked me what I thought such a story might be like. I scribbled down a few ideas, formed them into something more coherent, and sent it to Mike. He used some of it as a framework for the grand space adventure that resulted.

One thing I realized while drawing a long, multi-part story featuring Casper, Spooky, Wendy, and Hot Stuff: to be careful when drawing all four as a group. I needed to make sure the two white characters weren't next to each other and make sure the two red characters weren't next to each other, in order to keep them all clearly separated when the story was printed in color.

In addition to the main storyline in each issue, I drew a short 5-page back-up story for each, also written by Mike Wolfer. These back-ups stand alone, though they're loosely connected.

The first back-up story features Hot Stuff the Little Devil and the mischievous Spook-cats, a couple of old single-appearance Harvey Comics characters that Mike resurrected.

The second issue features a back-up starring Wendy the Good Little Witch and the Witch Widow, another old single-appearance character Mike brought back. Instead of a broom, the Witch Widow rode a 1950s-style vacuum cleaner. I updated the vacuum cleaner's look for the new story.

The third issue features Hot Stuff again, this time exploring an ancient Egyptian tomb, and brings back another old character, this one from the 1970s, Cinders the girl devil.

The fourth and final issue features a contest between Hot Stuff and the Spook-cats. Every major character and some minor characters from Casper's supporting cast show up, including Nightmare the Galloping Ghost, the Ghostly Trio, Dumbella, Pearl, the Witch Sisters--even Gnorm Gnome. Just about the only character I didn't manage to fit in was Stumbo the Giant. You can see the original art for page one of this story below.

I'm proud of the Casper Spooksville series. Issues are still available to order here from American Mythology. And you can read it here digitally through Comixology. I hope readers enjoy it.

Monday, March 22, 2021

Shakespeare in Troy

I entered a portion of Age of Bronze in the Third Graphic Shakespeare Competition, which honors comics adaptations of William Shakespeare's works. When I first heard about this competition, I didn't plan to enter it. I sent an e-mail about it to Nicole Galland, an author I'd met at the Key West Literary Seminar in January 2019. Nicki is a Shakespeare expert and once ran by me the idea of collaborating on Shakespeare comics adaptations. I didn't take her up on that, but thought she might be interested in this Shakespeare comics competition.

She didn't plan to enter, but asked whether I planned to. When I told her "no," she suggested I enter some of the Troilus and Cressida material that I'd adapted from Shakespeare into Age of Bronze.

At first I decided my use of Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida transformed the material too radically and incorporated material from too many non-Shakespeare sources to really be called a Shakespeare adaptation. But the rules for the competition didn't specify a rigid adherence to Shakespeare's words. According to the rules, any sort of comics adaptation seemed eligible. In fact, the rules went so far as to specify the eligibility of adaptations using none of Shakespeare's words.

The maximum length for entries was eight pages. I looked over my Age of Bronze scenes featuring Troilus and Cressida's separation and correlated them with scenes from Shakespeare's play. I was surprised to find that I hadn't strayed as far from Shakespeare as I thought I had. I selected some pages, cropped a few panels to fit within the proper length for the competition and sent them in.

After that, I didn't think about the competition for a while. For several reasons, I figured I didn't have much chance of winning. I suspected that calling my work an "adaptation" of Shakespeare stretched the point. Past winners of the competition seemed much more experimental in their cartooning that I usually am in Age of Bronze. And my entry wasn't in color, while past winners made beautiful use of color.

To my surprise I received an e-mail months later informing me that my entry had been chosen as one of the runners up in the "creators over 25" category. I was surprised, to say the least. I was also delighted.

Here are all the awardees:

Over 25 years old category:

Winner:

Edouard Lekston, "Harry and Jack": King Henry IV, Part 1 (Act 2, Scene 4)

Runners Up:

Eric Shanower, "Troilus and Cressida"

Kathryn Briggs, "Macbeth, Act 1, Scene 5"

The 15 to 25 years old category:

Winner:

Naz Baquiran, "Wicked Encounter"

Runners Up:

Annie Holley, "Two Blushing Pilgrims"

Boglarka Littner, "Nostalgia"

The judges were: Paul Gravett, Fionnuala Doran, Harumo Sanazaki, Hu Rong, Jang Hyun Nam, and Ronan Paterson.

One of my pages. Click to enlarge.

The whole shebang was run by Yukari Yoshihara, who did an excellent job in my opinion.

The awards were announced in November 2020 at the 4th Conference of the Asian Shakespeare Association in Seoul, Korea. That was so far away from me that, even if Covid hadn't taken possession of the planet, I had no plans to attend. However, I sent in a short video accepting as a runner up. I thanked Yukari Yoshihara and the judges--as well as Nicki Galland for prompting me to enter in the first place.

The competition published a beautiful, full-color booklet featuring all the winners. You can read the whole book here: http://asianshakespeare.org/2020/11/02/graphic-shakespeare-competition-3/

Monday, March 15, 2021

Savagery

Back in the late 1960s, cartoonist Gil Kane created the international spy thriller His Name is . . . Savage! A few years ago I was approached to do a cover for a new His Name is . . . Savage! series. The project didn't have a publisher at the time, but eventually, over a year ago, Paper Movies released it.

Although I was told that the project found a publisher, no one told me when it came out. And I've never actually seen it. I did the cover I was contracted for, and was pretty proud of it (below right). But now that I'm trying to catch up on posts detailing recent (and not-so-recent) projects, I thought I ought to mention this Savage project.

I found it for sale online, but it looks as if it was published only in the graphic novel format, not as a comics book series. You can see the published cover to the left. Unfortunately, the book doesn't include my cover. So I've included it here, on the right.

This recent iteration of Kane's His Name is . . . Savage! boasts a script by Steven Grant and art by Jesus Antonio Hernandez Portaveritas. I read the whole project as background for creating my cover, and I really liked it. I've long admired Steven Grant's comics stories. This one thrills as much as his work has ever done. So I'm disappointed the book doesn't even print my cover in a gallery of covers in the back of the book. I mean, they paid me for it AND the book has a blank page at the end.

Monday, March 8, 2021

Classic Comedy Teams

Which classic movie comedy team do you like better? Laurel and Hardy? Or the Three Stooges?

Well, you don't have to choose in Laurel and Hardy Meet the Three Stooges #1 from American Mythology. I drew the cover for this mash-up of these screwballs.

That's not the only cover I've drawn for either of these comedy teams. How about Laurel and Hardy's Christmas Follies #1? And then there's The Three Stooges Thru the Ages #1.

Cover art has never been my strong point. I think I'm far better at panel-to-panel story-telling than I am at creating splashy single images. But I've had fun drawing these. On the whole I like the way they turned out, particularly the first two. The stylization the colorist introduced into the Christmas image was a pleasant surprise.

The Stooges covers don't end here. I've drawn several more since these issues were published. They've got a couple special twists to them. One twist is that they're all parodies of well-know super-hero comic book covers. I'll show them to you when they're published.

Monday, March 1, 2021

Amateur Status

I haven't posted any news in a while. Stuff has been piling up to announce. Within the next several weeks or so, I plan to post about a backlog of projects and announce upcoming projects, too.

I drew a few jobs for Shelly Bond when she was an editor at DC under that publisher's Vertigo imprint. More recently Shelly became an editor at IDW. Hey, Amateur! is the result of her idea for a wide range of cartoonists, who happen to also be experts in a variety of disciplines, to pass on their specialized knowledge in a collection of single-page comics stories.

Shelly asked me to contribute. I wracked my brain to come up with something to communicate that seemed visual (it would be a comics story, after all) and that I could write about with some modicum of authority. Most of my life has been dedicated to writing and drawing. I don't think I'm particularly limited in my experiences outside of those creative efforts, but I wasn't sure I could speak with as an expert about much.

One panel from my story.

I threw a few ideas at Shelly. She picked "How to Perform an En Dehors Pirouette."

I'm no dance expert, but it's one of my hobbies. So that was it. My story for Hey, Amateur! explains in detail the pirouette "to the outside."

The book also explains how to accomplish approximately twelve dozen other tasks, such as decorating a cake, keeping a band together forever, making a proper cup of tea, and surviving in the woods with a knife and a rabbit. All these concepts are detailed and drawn by "your favorite" cartoonists, including Michael Allred, Gene Ha, Peter Bagge, Paul Pope, Simon Bisley--the list goes on.

Hey, Amateur! is published by Black Crown and distributed by IDW and Penguin Random House.