Radiant Comics

For the last fifteen years or so I’ve been using alcohol/dye based markers to make art. Mostly I’ve used them for my “Covers to Comic Books That Don’t Exist” series. I like them. They have bright and consistent color that blend well and I only buy brands that have refill inks so that I can refill the markers when they run dry.

The main downside to dye based markers is that the dye, and therefore the color, is fugitive. It’s not archival and with the passages of time and exposure to light the color will fade. Not tomorrow but some time in the future. This is something I’ve had to come to terms with in working with these markers. Nothing has faded yet but I know it will someday.

That brings me to a statement that I learned in art history class though I don’t remember who said it. It was along the lines of, “Do you want to make something good that lasts a day or a piece of crap that lasts forever?” It’s a little binary and I’m sure there are lots of shades in between those two extremes but I think about that idea a lot. I probably wouldn’t be doing this series of works without the markers so maybe it’s okay if the color fades someday.

I scan in all the pieces so there will be a record of them as long as the digital files last. Plus the black line on the covers is done with India ink and that’s archival. Someday when the color is gone the line drawing will still be there. It started as a line drawing and it’ll end up as one. There is a little poetry to that.

That brings us to the new Pantone markers that I bought last year. Instead of being alcohol/dye based they are water/pigment based. The pigments are much more lightfast and archival. They shouldn’t fade anytime soon.

I started making my pieces with the Pantone markers (which are refillable) and even added some Pitt and Staedtler brush pens to the mix. Both of those use pigment but aren’t refillable. Those two brands are also smaller than the Pantone markers and not as good at laying down large areas of color. But they’re good for details.

I haven’t even had them a year yet but I’ve learned to use the pigment based markers pretty well. They work a little differently than the dye based ones but I’ve developed some techniques for them. At this point I’ve been working with them for almost ten months and I’ve grown to like them.

That brings me to the question of do I still want to use my dye based markers? I have a lot of them and a lot of refill inks for them. Do I just want to abandon them? I liked them just fine before I got the pigment based ones. Is the fact that they’re not archival mean that I should give them up? I was okay with them fading away over time before so why not now? By the way none of the pieces I’ve done over the last fifteen years have even started to fade.

In contemplating that question I actually picked up and used those dye based markers today. I usually draw my “Covers to Comic Books That Don’t Exist” series on paper that’s called Bristol Board. It’s a heavy paper and what comic books are usually draw on. It’s not a marker paper though in that it’s very absorbent and sucks up ink. Marker paper is usually a little bit less absorbent so the ink will sit more on top of the paper for better blending.

There are two types of Bristol Board that I buy: Vellum and Smooth. Vellum has a little bit of a rougher surface and feels slightly thicker. Smooth is smoother. I prefer smooth and probably use it over 90% of the time. Except a few weeks ago I ran out of smooth ( I ordered more) so I made a couple of “Covers to Comic Books That Don’t Exist” on the vellum paper. No big deal. I’ve done this before.

The problem came when I went to color the cover with the Pantone markers. Since the paper is rougher than the smooth it would usually absorb even more color when I was working with the dye based markers. I was used to that. But with the pigment based markers the color sat on the surface and stayed wet for a while. I’m talking twenty minutes. I have no idea why.

I discovered this when, as I was drawing, I unknowingly set my hand in the wet ink and then as I moved my hand around it left blotches of color behind. As you might image I was confused by this and it made me have to be very mindful of how I laid the color down and where I put my hand.

I managed to color two covers on that paper with my Pantone markers and I switched back to my regular paper as soon as I got some. But there were still a couple on the vellum paper in the pipeline.

Yesterday as I was contemplating what I wanted to work on I looked at a cover that was on the vellum paper and ready to color. I wasn’t really in the mood to be extra patient with it as I would have to be with the Pantone markers. That’s when I decided that it was okay to use the dye based ones. It would be okay.

So that’s what I did today. Despite a bit of a layoff from using the alcohol markers it was easy going. I have been using them for fifteen years so that shouldn’t be a surprise but you never know. That’s one of the crazy things about creativity. After a layoff in doing something the fear that you won’t be able to anymore always makes one doubt. But that’s another line of thought for another day.

The Reading Material

This week I’ve been getting some reading done. Not any novels. Usually I read those during the semester when I commute into NYC. I usually have about an hour to sit on the train and read. An hour each way two days a week so that’s a bit of reading time.

Another thing that I read on my commute is magazines. I have two long time subscriptions that I’ve had since sometime in the early 1990s. One is a literary magazine called “The Sun” and the other is a history magazine called “Archeology.” It’s about archeology of course. I also just subscribed to “Smithsonian” magazine. I had a sub to that many years ago but I only resubscribed to it this year.

For some weird reason as my semester ends (in May) I stop reading my magazines. It’s July 30 as I write this and I had June and July’s “The Sun” plus July/August’s (it’s bi-monthly) “Archeology” lying around unread until this week. I just couldn’t seem to muster up the interest to read them. That is until this week.

I think I started reading them on Monday and it’s now Thursday and I have the two issues other The Sun read and the issue of Archeology started. All week whenever I’ve need a break I’ve just picked them up and read a page or two instead of scrolling on the internet and apps. I did a little scrolling too but also got some reading done.

Last week I made it a point to sit down and spend some more time reading and so pulled out some comics that I’ve been meaning to read. I had to make it a point because I was working too much. In my younger days I could work on my art from eight in the morning until eight at night. Sometimes even a couple of hours longer. These days it’s more like eight in the morning until six at night. Sometimes four or five. That was until I started learning book binding.

Book binding is a different task than making art. It takes a different type of energy and a less intense form of energy. As a consequence I ended up working longer hours than usual. I’d work on art from 8AM until about 2 or 3 and then do some book binding until 8 or 9PM. Not always that late but sometimes.

Since book binding felt like it took less energy I was okay with it. Then a month passed and I started getting tired. Run down and if I didn’t stop and rest I’d get sick and tired. That was last week. So I decided it was time to do some reading.

As you can see from my “Comics I Bought This Week” posts I buy comic books every week. Lately it’s been a lot of comics. Almost ten a week. I read them all each week. Twice. It’s my habit to read each comic that I get on Wednesday before Friday so that I can talk about them on my Friday night YouTube show. Then I read them again before the following Wednesday. I find that I get more out of them by reading them twice. But that’s twenty comics a week on the regular.

This past winter I bought a lot of “Firefly” comics published by Boom Studios. I’m a fan of the TV show but I never bought any of the comics that came out from 2018 to 2024 or so. I barely even noticed them. But last winter I was looking at some other comics online and stumbled onto the “Firefly” ones and liked a lot of the covers that I saw.

I often find comics based on TV or movie properties disappointing. I heard of a phenomenon described as “You want more of the TV show when reading the comic but it’s never more of the TV show.” It’s a different thing and usually disappointing. That’s because it’s not what you really want. The comic often doesn’t capture the feeling or allure of the TV show or movie.

In looking (online) at some of the many covers of the “Firefly” comic I thought they were really nice. They caught the spirit of the show pretty well. So I decided to buy some of them. There are thirty six issues of the main title plus another twelve or so one shots and spin offs.

I bought in lots on eBay and they were fairly cheap. I think I payed about $2 a piece for them on average. With so many covers that I liked I ended up with duplicate issues with different covers. I think I bought about ninety “Firefly” comics in total over a few months. Then they just sat there.

I may have been a little bit afraid to read them for fear of being disappointed but last week, when I was tired, I decided to make the time to read them. So far I’ve read the first twelve in the series and I’m liking them. Maybe it’s because the show was over so long ago (and I haven’t watched it in a decade) but I’m not expecting it to be like the show and I’m enjoying it as a comic. Comic books are my favorite medium after all.

One final source of reading material in the last few weeks has been the library. I haven’t been there in years but last month decided to start going back again. I like to take out collected editions of comic books that I wouldn’t want to buy but want to check out. I have the omnibus of Steven King’s “the Dark Tower” out right now and I’ve read a few issues in it. It’s pretty good so far.

During the commuting part of my year I also take books out on the library app “Hoopla.” I don’t have anything out right now (besides an audiobook) but that’s one of the ways I read on the train. With comic books I prefer physical media but with novels and such I like digital. I have so many comics that I don’t have room for other books.

I make so many mistakes. That’s my conclusion when it comes to me learning book binding. I’m much better at art than I am at craft. That’s something I’ve known but this book binding is making me confront it again. It’s amazing the things that a person can have patience for compared to the things a person has no patience for.

What’s the difference between art and craft you ask? Art is about creation and craft is about recreation. Of course there is art in craft and craft in art but in art you usually have to make something only once. In craft you have to make things over and over.

For example I once saw a show that was all about restoring a staircase. Along the banister of the staircase was a series of carved wooden heads. There must have been thirty of them. That was craft. The craftsman had to figure out how he was going to carve, not just one head, but thirty of them. On at a time and under budget. They all have to be the same size, the same quality, and look like a set.

Compare that to an artist making one sculpture of a head. He decides on size, material, and technique all on its own. He only has to do it once and not repeat it ever. That opens up a lot of time consuming techniques that can’t be used on a set of twenty.

The steps for doing one sculpture can be anything. The steps for doing twenty sculptures all have to be the same. This is a huge difference. If I’m doing book binding and it takes ten steps to make a book then I have to do those ten steps the exact same every time. That’s craft.

The problem is that if a step takes twenty minutes sometimes my brain says, “I bet if I move quickly I can get it done in fifteen.” Then, because I’m moving quickly I make a mistake and have to start over. Suddenly my twenty minute step is half an hour. I can’t seem to help myself.

With art there are steps but often I rearrange them to try to get something new. Sometimes I mess up but usually I don’t. And if I mess up I might find something new in the mistake. With craft mistakes usually just ruin whatever I’m doing.

Since I’m new to book binding I’m also always finding new ways to do something but that means a whole new set of steps to follow that are unlike the old sets of steps. I really have to write the steps down because they are beginning to blur together in my mind.

The step I’ve messed up the most is putting clear contact paper down on a cover. I print out a piece of art to use for the cover and then protect it with the contact paper. The contact paper has to be put on very precisely. The cover is 11×17 inches and it’s easy to mess up.

First of all the contact paper comes on a roll. It’s good to flatten it out a bit first with a book. But this takes time. There is wax paper that covers up the sticky side of the contact paper and I have to peel up a small corner of the waxed paper and stick it to the cover. Very slowly and carefully I have to pull back the wax paper and burnish the sticky side down to the art.

At least four times in fifteen books I’ve messed up that process. I get impatient and don’t wait for the contact paper to unroll or I just move too fast. It’s the part of the process I’ve grown to dislike the most. I’ve been coming up with other ways to make strong covers.

How I was messing up today was with printing the covers. I’ve been working on a “Golden Ratio” sketchbook and that’s the cover I’ve been doing. I thought I had it done but when I was looking at it after I printed it out there were extra graph paper boxes outside the Golden Ratio. This made it not the Golden ratio. I had to remove them.

My cover printouts have two sides to them. The side with the art and the other side with the guidelines of when to fold and glue the cover. Pretty simple. Print one side then the other. All of the parts are in layers in Photoshop. When printing the front side I accidentally left the guide lined layer on. So they printed on the art. Whoops. Two pieces of good printing paper wasted.

That’s been just today too. I have a pile of hard cases for the books I’ve been making that haven’t come out correctly. At least three of them have been because I didn’t measure correctly. You know that old saying to measure twice and cut once? Well I didn’t. Probably because I was impatient.

I’ve been having some other problems that weren’t my fault. One of the steps in book binding is to glue the cardboard that makes a hardcover hard onto the paper or fabric of the book cover. For some reason this week that has not been going well and the glue has been staining both the paper and the raw canvas that I’ve been using. You can see the outline of the glue as it discolors the cover. It wasn’t doing that before so I’m not sure why it’s doing that now. But I can’t have it. It looks terrible.

I have all the patience in the world for making art. I can work on a painting, drawing, or photograph for endless hours until I get it done. But craft I’m a lot more impatient with. Following the right steps over and over can wear out my patience. I have no idea why either. I do know that I have to write some steps down.

Books that I bound!

I’ve got to take a moment and look at the different types of sketchbooks and notebooks that I’ve made over the last couple of months. I have to get it clear in my own mind and write up some descriptions as I want to sell some of them. It’s been a bit of a whirlwind learning bookbinding and making a few different types of books. I’m not even sure how many I’ve made so I have to do a bit of an inventory.

Upscaled hardcover book. This is the type that started me out. I saw someone else doing it on TikTok. I take an interesting hardcover book, cut the pages out, and use the hardcover case wrap to make a new sketchbook/notebook. I use nice writing or drawing paper plus some of the pages from the original book and rebind them into a new book. I can even put different types of paper in the book. So far I’ve used colored paper, vellum, and marker paper so far.

Upscaled hardcover book with new cover. Sometimes the hardcover books that I’m upscaling are a little uninteresting. In that case I make my own cover and attach it to the existing book. This is a lot more work but it does make it more fun. I think I’d rather stick with already interesting covers though.

Watercolor Sketchbook. This one is made with twenty sheets of 110lb 5×7 inch cold press watercolor paper. Its back and front covers are two sheets of board with one of my art prints attached to both sides. The whole thing feels sturdy in my hand and opens up flat for easy drawing.

Monster Journal. This one is made with 50 sheets of 5×7 inch 32lb lined writing paper. Bound in every five pages is a double sided print of two of my monster drawings. So this one is an art book as well as a journal to inspire your writings. It hard a hardcover that is wrapped in raw canvas and bound with glue and waxed thread.

“I survived… Nature Attacks!” Journal. I made a monster journals out of an upscaled hardcover book. I put my own monsters into an “I survived… Nature Attacks!” book. It has 30 lined sheets of 32lb writing paper plus it has six double sided monster prints bound in. There is also a few sheets of green paper in for accents plus some of the original book’s pages. It’s bound with glue and waxed thread.

NYC Street Photos Watercolor Sketchbook. This one has thirty sheets of 110lb 5×7 inch cold press watercolor paper. Every ten pages I have bound in three double sided prints of my NYC street photos for a total of 18 photos. So you can get inspired by New York City scenes while you draw. It hard a hardcover that is wrapped in raw canvas and bound with glue so that it opens up flat.

NYC Street Photos Notebook. I made one of these from an upscaled hardcover. It’s about 6×9 inches and is filled with 80 sheets of unlined drawing paper plus some color paper, tracing vellum, pages from the original book, and eight double sided photo pages. That’s sixteen NYC street photos. It’s bound with glue and waxed thread.

Blackout Poetry Book. This is a little invention of mine I made as I was learning to upscale hardcover books into sketchbooks. Since I had to remove the pages from the hardcover I was using I ended up with a bunch of loose pages from random books. So I decided to bind them into a Blackout Poetry book.

Blackout poetry is when you take a printed book and blackout most of the words. What’s left are just the words you want to make your poem. It’s a way to turn a book into your own writing.

Each book is 3.5×5 inches with a hardcover. There are about thirty pages in each book. It’s small enough so that you can take this with you and write your own Blackout Poetry in a park.

Golden Ratio Sketchbook. I haven’t actually made one of these yet but it’s in the works. The golden ration is a spiral shape that goes way back in time. Artists have been using it forever. I made a digital file of one sitting on graph paper and I’m going to print it on every page. So every page of the sketchbook with have a golden ration on it to draw over and use as a guide. That’s the plan anyway.

Even after writing this I still don’t have them all straight in my head. I’ve made a bunch of different types and the upscaled ones come in different sizes too. I think I’m going to have to find a place to physically lay them all out and organize them. That way I can see what I’ve got.

In doing this I’ve noticed that I’m a lot better at art than I am at craft. What’s the difference you ask? With art you only have to make something once. With craft you’re looking to make something over and over again. Of course there is overlap but I find I have much more patience for art than for craft.

When I’m making a piece of art I have all the patience in the world for the process. I can stand for hours and days on end through the whole making of a piece. With craft, such as this book binding, I can figure out the ten steps I need to do but then I have less patience the sixth time through.

I ruined quite a few case wraps and sheets and paper while making these books just because I got impatient. I thought I could take a step or two for granted and not pay much attention but then things didn’t go right. I had to start over more than a few times. It’s amazing what I have patience for and what I don’t.

I think the whole reason I came up with so many different types of books to bind and make was that is the most creative part for me. The art is in the ideas and the craft is in the making. I’ve got way more patience for ideas than for following steps. But I still have enjoyed book binding.

In the mail today I got a package of large ellipse templates. The auction actually said “Vintage Ellipse Templates” and that is because not many people use them anymore except me. There isn’t much mechanical drawing that is done by hand these days but ellipse templates used to be used by comic book artists all the time. That’s why I first started using them.

First off I better explain what an ellipse template is to those who don’t know. It’s a piece of hard plastic, usually around 8×10 inches, that has a bunch of different size ellipses cut out of it. Ellipses are squashed circles or symmetrical egg shapes. They are organized by degrees. A one inch 45º ellipse is wider than a one inch 30º ellipse.

When drawing a comic book there are all sorts of reasons for having to draw an ellipse. Anything that’s a circle in a straight on shot is an ellipse when turned at an angle. Some artists draw them freehand but some want the perfection of an ellipse template. You can make a drawing exact with them.

Most of the drawing I do these days that require ellipse templates are my “Covers to Comic Books That Don’t Exist” series. I’ve done a lot of them. I don’t really draw exacting perspective in those but I do draw a lot of design elements. It’s these elements that are often ellipses and I still hand draw them.

Back in the early 1990s I used to collect ellipse templates. By that I mean I wanted all the different sizes and degrees of them. A basic set of ellipse templates had 20º, 30º, 45º, and 60º in them. The templates stared out with an ellipse 7/16 of an inch high and went up to one 2 3/4 of an inch high. The main brand was Berol RapiDesign and I think I bought this set in my school days in the mid-1980s.

It wasn’t until I got to Marvel in 1990 that I started going to the NYC art stores regularly and started collecting as many different ellipse templates as I could. They weren’t easy to find individually but the base set was everywhere. I eventually filled out my set so that I had from 10º to 60º in increments of 5º. Except for 50º. For some reason I have two 55º templates and no 50º one. They’re all Pickett brand too.

All of us young would-be cartoonists who were working in the Marvel Bullpen were always looking out for ellipse templates. We wanted more of them because we never had the right size or they weren’t big enough. One day we heard of a big set of them. A large series of ellipse templates by Alvin (formerly Lietz as it says on the envelope). Ellipses from 2 1/8 of an inch to 4 inches. I, and my friends, trudged down to Pearl Pain to check them out.

There were actually three sets of ellipse templates but it turned out that they only had one set at Pearl. The least helpful set it ended up being. The set was a set of five and had 10º, 65º, 70º, 75º, and 80º. The 10º one is really narrow and the rest were the ones closest to a circle. There was just less call for them for whatever reason.

The two sets they didn’t have was the one set of ten with ellipses from 15º to 60º and a set of 15 with 10º through 80º (in other words the first two sets put together). That 10º to 60º was the one I wanted to match the smaller temples I already had.

Pearl Paint didn’t have any of the last two sets but tons of that first one that nobody really wanted. That’s probably why they still had them. I’m pretty sure the sets were old in 1990. The package looks like 1950s industrial design and I’m pretty sure they were going out of style even in 1990s. They were still expensive though. I don’t remember what I paid but it was probably around $60-$70 for the set. I used to pay $6-$7 for an individual small ellipse template.

Just recently I decided to look for them on eBay. They might have been hard to find in the early 1990s but we have eBay now. Sure enough all three sets were listed and for various prices. Fairly expensive prices too. I ended up getting set two (ten with ellipses from 15º to 60º) for $45 shipping and taxes included. It was the cheapest one as it was listed for $40 bucks I made an offer of $30. It was accepted right away. I’m guessing these aren’t in high demand.

A separate story that goes with these ellipse templates is that they’re not bevelled. The plastic lies flat and flush with the paper. When you use an ink pen with an un-bevelled template the ink can leak under the template and smear. To cure that Pickett makes something called a Template Ink Riser. It’s a punch that puts little dents in the plastic of the template. These dot dents raise the template off the paper just a tiny amount. That is the equivalent of a bevel.

These ink risers were harder to find than the templates. I don’t think I ever saw one in an art store but I may not have looked very hard. It’s not a tool you need all the time. You only need it when you buy a new template. I just used to bring my new templates to Marvel and use the “Beveler” (that’s what we called it) there.

The problem was that someone was always walking away with the beveler. I don’t think it was expensive. It was probably under $20. Probably some freelancer needed one for his templates at home and just took it. In those days Marvel was always handing out art supplies to their artists so why not? Usually when someone noticed that it was missing a new one was ordered.

I never took a beveler home until the very last one at Marvel. In the early 2000s Marvel moved out of their 1980s to 1990s building on 28th Street up to 40th Street. By that time the Marvel Bullpen had been digital for at least six years. The days of the endless supply closet and Marvel handing out art supplies were long gone.

After the move everything had to find a new place and the beveler popped up. It didn’t have a place and most people there didn’t even know what it was. After months of it kicking around in random spots I decided to take it home. I still have it and now I have a use for it. I’m going to bevel these new templates.

Let’s hear it for some old technology. I can’t help but wonder if I’m the last person bevelling templates.