Radiant Comics

I don’t have many free flat surfaces in my studio. I have a lot of counters and tables with things on them. My drawing table is mostly free but that’s where I work on my drawings and paintings. I have a big counter on the left of my studio that holds my computer, monitor, scanners, and printer. The only free spot there is on top of my printer. It’s a 13×19 inch tabloid printer so it has a pretty big flat surface on top. So I put things on top of it. Comic books mostly.

Actually I don’t put the comic books right on top. A few years ago the fella who runs my local comic shop asked me if I wanted a free Monopoly game. It was the Jay and Silent Bob Edition. I’m not much of a Monopoly player but I thought it looked cool. When I got it home I noticed it was about the same size as the top of my printer. So that’s where it has sat for years.

Why the Monopoly game sits there is a matter of practicality. Shortly before I got the game I started keeping a few comics on top of the printer. My “To be read” pile of comics is in a magazine holder atop a end table to the right of my chair. They sit there until I read them but they’re tucked away and unseen. But I wanted to keep a few comics where I could see them and admire them on a whim. That is the top of the printer.

Once a week I take a comic out of my collection and set it on top of the printer. I call it “My museum spot” because I can pick up and look at that comic book cover as I go by. Besides that museum comic I sometimes have another four or five comics on top of the printer for various reasons. The Monopoly game makes them easy to move. I use my printer a lot. If not at least once a day then five days out of the week. It’s easier to pick up the Monopoly box with the comics on top of it than it is to pick up six individual comics.

Only one of the comic books on top of the printer has been there for over a year. I can’t seem to put it away because of nostalgia. That comic, well it’s not actually a comic book, is Marvel Age #111. Marvel Age was Marvel Comics’ publication about Marvel Comics. These days it’s the equivalent of Marvel’s web page. It has all sorts of news, art, and articles about Marvel Comics. This issue came out in 1992 when I was working in the Marvel Comics’ Bullpen. There is the nostalgia angle.

It’s the cover that I really enjoy. The cover was drawn by Spider-Man artist and Marvel Art Director at the time John Romita. Also appearing on the cover is John’s wife Virginia Romita who also worked at Marvel Comics back then. She was the Traffic Manager as well as being in charge of the Bullpen and my boss.

On the cover Virginia is opening the door to John’s office and in her role as Traffic Manager asking John where the cover to Marvel Age is. As that is happening we see a self portrait of John with his eyes closed and his hands behind his head in a daydreaming pose. Surrounding John are eight different women he has drawn for Marvel. We have: Crystal the Inhuman, a Femizon, Medusa the Inhuman, Aunt May Parker, Betty Brant, the Black Widow, Gwen Stacy, and Mary Jane Watson. It’s a cute gag.

There is one other woman in the drawing. On the door that Virginia is opening is a poster of a woman in a cape and smoking a cigarette in a holder. This is the Dragon Lady for Milton Caniff’s “Terry and the Pirates.” That comic strip was a favorite of John’s from his youth and Milton Caniff’s art was a big influence on John’s own art. So he was paying tribute to Caniff by putting the Dragon Lady in this drawing.

Not only is this a nice cover but there is a lot of nostalgia in it for me. Double nostalgia even. First of all I grew up reading Marvel comics in the 1970s so I was very familiar with John Romita art. From a young age I enjoyed his work and knew all the women he drew on this cover well before I ever met and worked with him. Then of course there is the fact that I was working at Marvel when this issue of Marvel Age come out. You can even find my name on the inside front cover in the “Production” section. Just seeing the drawings of John and Virginia make me nostalgic.

Just writing this was making me so nostalgic that I decided to look up how much a copy goes for on eBay right now. For a brief moment I was thinking about buying another copy for no reason but the fact that this copy makes me happy. A copy is only about ten bucks with shipping and tax but I really don’t need another copy. But then I ran across a $500 copy.

That super expensive copy is a slabbed CBG 9.6 Marvel Age 111 autographed by both John and Virginia Romita. There is absolutely no way I would ever pay that much for it but for a nanosecond it tempted me. Lots of nostalgia can do that. I don’t own any slabbed comic books nor am I interested in autographs but I still think that one is pretty cool.

The top of the printer has about six comics on it but only two fit on it side by side. That means that sometimes this cover is not on top and is out of sight. The rest of the comics in those two small piles have rotated off the printer and back into their usual place in my collection to be replaced by other comics but not Marvel Age 111. I have at times contemplated putting it away somewhere (since it’s been sitting there since I bought it a year ago it never actually found its “Away spot”) but have always elected to instead put it at the bottom of the pile. That way I could rediscover it in a week or two. It can make me happy all over again.

The art that is write in front of me. That’s what I’m going to write about this morning. It’s Monday the eighth of February, 2021 as I write this and I feel like writing but don’t have a subject in mind. That’s why I’m going to write about the art that’s in front of me. Or whatever else comes to mind. Like fatigue.

I’ve had to clear the driveway of a lot of snow he other day so I’m a little tired. A week ago on Monday February the first I had to clear sixteen inches of snow. Even with my John Deere riding mower, which has a plow on the front, that was a lot of work. The next day I had to clear another four inches. The day after that another two inches. That made yesterday’s five inches seem rather easy. Five inches is a normal snowstorm for the lower Hudson Valley. Twenty inches is not.

Besides being physically tired lately yesterday was the Super Bowl. Being a football fan I enjoy the big game but it also makes me a bit pensive after it’s over. It’s the culmination of the football season and also the end of it. It’s almost like another New Year’s Day to me. A time to reflect on the year that has gone by. That’s a tough thing in this Covid year. So I’ll contemplate the art that’s in front of me.

I made a new big in drawing this Super Bowl weekend. I haven’t made one of those in a couple of months. I actually had a drawing picked out to blow up and do that size but the drawing has just been sitting there for over a month. I finally decided to make it this past weekend. But that’s not even the art that’s in front of me.

Like everyone else I don’t have as much room as I’d like to have. I make my big ink drawings on an easel in my studio. But when I finish a big ink drawing I really don’t have any place to put it. I have to scan it in before I tuck it away in a box or portfolio case somewhere but it’s a pain to scan in a 22×30 inch drawing. So I let them pile up. When I’m not working on my easel I put the pile of drawings there. When I am working on my easel I move the drawings onto my bed. When it’s bedtime I put them back on the easel.

As a consequence of all that I have a pile of drawings on my easel right now. I’m going to go over to my easel and count them for you. Twenty six. Including the one I just made I’ve got twenty six 22×30 inch drawings on my easel. I’m going to have to scan those all in sometime soon because that number is getting to be real high and any higher and the amount of work it will take to scan them in will be too much.

Out of the twenty six drawings only one of them can be in front on my easel or on the top of the pile when they’re on my bed. I change that one every once in a while. I get tired of the one on top even if I only see it as I move the pile from my easel to the bed and back. For those brief seconds I want to see another one in the pile. That’s why when I looked up at my easel this morning I was a little bit startled by the drawing I saw on my easel. I must have just put that one on top without thinking about it since it seemed a little new to me.

Yes, there are times my own work can seem new to me. As I said there are twenty six drawings in that pile which I made in the last year. Sometimes I did a drawing a week for a month. So a drawing I made eight months ago could get put in the pile after being on my easel for only a few days to a week and not been seen by me for months after that. I only lived with it for a short time. Plus I’m usually thinking about the next piece and not the last one.

“Pyramid Room” from March 22, 2020 is the piece that’s in front of me. That’s from the very beginning of Covid. Back when it seemed like it couldn’t possibly last this long. It’s one of my drawings with a large face in it and lots of geometric patterns. I think it has more patterns in it than the drawings I’ve done lately so it looks fresh to me. Somehow looking at something I did a while ago looks more fresh than what I made yesterday. That probably has to do with burnout. Sometimes I have to put something away for a while and come back to look at it with fresh eyes to appreciate it. I can get tired of a piece after working on it for days on end.

I really like the giant face on the left in this one. It speaks to me. It seems like a real face that’s looking out at me with a presence. It seems to have a sense of strength to it. The patterns are like armor and it’s well prepared to defend itself against all comers. I use the pronoun “It” because, thought the face seems masculine to me, there is an objectless to the face that demands an “It” from me. I draw many androgynous faces and figures and often assign them a “He” or “She” in my mind but not with this one.

The small face in the upper right looks scary. I think it’s the angle of the eye and lack of mouth but there is more emotion coming off this face than the stoic large head. It’s also floating like a magic talisman. I’m wary of it.

Speaking of floating that’s exactly what that giant eye is doing. Its a purely magical creature that exists in the atmosphere of the picture. It’s part of the great pattern of life. I think that eye is trying to communicate with us more than the other two faces. I can really get lost in the patterns in and around that eye.

I’m glad this picture ended up on top of the pile this morning. I don’t think I’ve looked at it since March and I’m enjoying seeing it now. It’s the art that’s in front of me.

Fonts and computers. What a waste of my morning. Some days are like that. I was planning on spending my morning sitting down, relaxing, and reading. That sounded like a good idea to me. It was February first. The day of the big snow storm. So it wan’t like I was running out to do anything that morning.

I usually get up just after 6AM. I get in the shower, eat breakfast, write my comic strips, and get dressed all before 7AM. Then I usually sit down, read, surf the web, play a short video game, or maybe get a few things done that need to be done before I start working at 8AM. I’d like to say I get to spend that hour relaxing and reading but often I have to spend half of it performing some menial task.

That morning I had planned to relax and read a pile of comics I had. After I buy my new comics for the week I read them twice before filing them away. Once within a couple of days of buying them and then for a second time a week or so later. This was my second read through. Or it was supposed to be.

Before I eat my bowl of cereal for breakfast in the morning I get out my laptop, put it on my drawing table, and write one of my comic strips as I stand there. I’m not always standing still as I get dressed and go through my morning routine as I write. This usually takes about 15 minutes and then I get my morning bowl of cereal.

I used to eat Cheerios or Wheaties for breakfast. But now I haven’t had any Wheaties in about a decade. They changed the recipe for them an I no longer like them. After that I started mixing my cereals. Right now my current mixture is about half Cheerios, a third Rice Chex, and a small bit of Lucky Charms on top. Sometimes I swap out the Lucky Charms for some other sugary cereal like Apple Jacks.

As with writing my comic strip I eat my cereal standing at my drawing table with my computer in front of me. This is when I read my morning comic strips. I have a couple of them bookmarked and a bunch more in my RSS reader. I also have some blogs in my RSS feed so I check them all out as I eat breakfast. This usually takes me until 7AM or slightly after.

The snow was falling outside my window as I ate breakfast this morning and I knew it was going to be a bear to clean it all up. But it was supposed to snow all day and into the night so I couldn’t do anything about the clean up then. Instead I was looking forward to sitting for a while and reading. I knew I would need some relaxation because that snow cleanup was going to take a lot out of me.

That’s when I ran into a computer problem. I often run into computer problems in the morning because that’s when I turn the machines on. I wake up, turn on my desktop computer, and then hit the shower. Occasionally after I get out of the shower my computer hasn’t turned on correctly and then I have to figure out why. This time it was my laptop.

Though I turn off my desktop computer every night I usually just close the laptop. This put it to sleep but doesn’t really turn it off. It’s quicker and more convenient that way. So every morning I put my laptop on my drawing table, open it up, put in my password, and I’m ready to go. Except the mornings when things go wrong.

That morning I happened to have written my comic strip the night before. I do that on occasion. So after dressing and such I got right to reading my RSS feed and eating breakfast. After that I decided to glance over at the comic strip I had written.

I use two fonts in my webcomic. One is a custom font a friend made, that’s for the words in the word balloons, and the other is the font at the bottom of the strip that has my name and the title of the strip. As I switched over to Adobe Illustrator, which is what I do my comic strip in, the program told me that my fonts were missing. This is unusual since they’re always there.

I opened up the program that manages fonts, Font Book, to see if the fonts somehow got turned off and if I could turn them on again. Font Book didn’t even acknowledge that the fonts existed. I found the original font files on my laptop and tried to put them into Font Book again. Font Book didn’t even acknowledge that the fonts existed. This was getting annoying so a restart was called for.

I restarted my laptop because that often fixes any problems I might have. This time it didn’t. I did all the same stuff again with all the same results. My fonts wouldn’t activate. I decided to restart again but this time with a Safe Boot. Safe Boot is when you hold down the Shift key as you restart and it fixes even more stuff. Then you restart again regular. This also did nothing.

I tried running Disk Utility. This is a program that fixes things on your Mac. It did nothing. After that I figured maybe the fonts got corrupted somehow. I had a copy of the fonts on my desktop computer so I copied them over to my laptop. Font Book wouldn’t read those either. I was at my wit’s end.

With nothing left to try I performed another Safe Boot and restarted the laptop. Guess what? After that everything went back to normal. My fonts were there, fine, and would open. I have no idea why. I worked for 45 minutes trying to get the laptop and fonts to run correctly. I have no idea why it wasn’t working and no idea how it got to working correctly again. I do know that it ruined my plan to sit down and read for the morning. Oh well, computers can be crazy.

Time for another “Friends” walkthrough. This time I’m on Season 5 Episode 2. I haven’t watched a lot of “Friends” lately so I’m only one episode further along since the last time I wrote a walkthrough. This episode originally aired on October 1, 1998. Over 22 years ago. I was 32 at the time. Just a couple of years older than the Friends. Now they’re eternally younger than me.

Checking my calender I see that I commuted into Manhattan that day to work at Marvel Comics. I did typesetting. No other notes for that day but I can see a couple of weeks before on September the 18th there is a receipt from Brenner Printing. That from when my friends and I published our own comic. That was a lot harder to do in those days than today. We had fun doing it but never made any money. Good times.

Meanwhile back at the show the episodes name is “The One With All the Kissing.” If memory serves Chandler was being “European” and kissing the girls hello and goodbye to cover for he and Monica secretly sleeping together. I think I’m going to watch this one on my computer instead of my TV as a change of pace.

We open with Monica and Chandler in a bubble bath together. It’s all new, secret, and romantic for them. Of course Joey walks in and Monica has to hide under the bubbles. Joey wants to know if Chandler is up for ordering food. Hijinks ensue. It’s a good opening gag. Here comes the theme song. It’s always enjoyable.

Phoebe shows up. I forgot she was pregnant in the show at this time. But she’s obviously no longer pregnant in real life. Her baby belly looks fake now. She’s feeling left out that she didn’t get to go with everyone else to London as she doesn’t get all their London jokes and references.

Ross shows up to the apartment. He said the wrong woman’s name at his wedding and even though Emily went through with the ceremony she never wants to see him again. And somehow Ross ended up almost going on his honeymoon with Rachel but instead he stood Rachel up and she went on his honeymoon trip by herself. This plot line deals with the aftermath of that. Ross is spinning out a bit. All sorts of jokes about him not being fast enough to catch Emily at the airport.

Rachel returns home after her trip and puts on a brave face for Ross. Says she’s not angry at all. She’s happy about the trip to Greece. But as soon a Ross leaves we find out she’s really pissed. Rachel decides she makes bad decisions so she puts Monica in charge of her decisions for now on. Chandler kisses Monica goodbye accidentally in front of everyone so he puts on a show kissing everyone else.

Now Rachel and Monica are at the coffee shop and we get a joke that would be an anachronism if they did it today. Monica is showing Rachel some snapshots and is getting upset that Rachel isn’t holding the photos by the edges. She’s getting fingerprints on them. This was a real thing back in the days of film photography. There was always someone telling you to hold photos by the edges. And they used that joke in TV shows and such to let you know that a character (like Monica) did things the right way and was bothered by carelessness. Not that we look at photos on screens that never happens anymore.

Since Monica is making Rachel’s decisions she is sending her over to talk to a cute guy at the coffee shop. Joey and Chandler are making funny comments in this scene. Phoebe walks in and gives us more Phoebe hates London stuff. She’s tired of being pregnant and not being able to do anything. Rachel gets a date. Like she wouldn’t.

Next Monica and Chandler get caught kissing in the apartment so Chandler pretends he’s leaving and kisses the other girls too. Joey wants in on the action! Now we’re at the end of Rachel’s date. She needs Monica to decide if she’s going to invite her date inside. Monica is not there but Ross is and he’s heartbroken so Rachel sends her date away never to be seen again.

Heartbroken Ross is funny as well as sad. Rachel comforts him but Monica shows up and, as the maker of Rachel’s decisions, wants her to leave Ross alone. Rachel admits to Monica that she’s still in love with Ross. Rachel fires Monica from decision making. That goes around and around.

Still in the apartment Rachel wants to confess her feeling to Ross but Monica interrupts. For me this is Rachel at her most annoying. She loves Ross best when she can’t have him. When she can have him she’s less interested in him. Ross keeps sending Emily love momentos to try and win her back and she keeps destroying them.

Back to the coffee shop and Rachel is trying to find someone to back up her plan to tell Ross she’s still in love with him but none of the Friends agree. Then they try to cheer up Phoebe by planning a trip to Central Park (not Perk). It doesn’t work. Rachel confronts Chandler about the kissing. Monica protests the kissing a bit to hard. New Phoebe plan. They’re all going to Atlantic City.

Rachel still wants to confront Ross. She awkwardly tries to speak to him as he’s reading his paper in the coffee shop but then actually tells him she’s still in love with him. He’s not sure to do with that and then she sees the ridiculousness of it all. They both kinda just revel in their absurd misery. What a weird scene but Rachel finally comes off as likable. She asks him to forget all about it.

Now one last scene with the girls. Monica wants to know how it worked out with Ross but then the boys come in and they cheer on their trip to Atlantic City. Phoebe’s water breaks. They’re on their way to the hospital and we end on another kiss between Chandler and Monica. This time privately.

Now it’s time to check http://links.giveawayoftheday.com/uncutfriendsepisodes.tripod.com/ and see what was cut out of this episode for syndication. A couple of lines from the opening bubble bath scene including Joey saying that his date threw up. They cut a whole lot of the Ross spinning out scene. There was good stuff in there. Especially with Monica. They also cut out Rachel running through all her recent bad decisions. That was funny too. And some Monica and the photos stuff. Plus the Joey trying to get some kisses scene. A lot of the Monica trying to get Rachel not to tell Ross scene. More Central Perk stuff. They also cut out all of Rachel telling Ross about a mix tape full of “Their Songs.” And most of the final “We’re going to Atlantic City” scene. That’s a lot.

I’m glad I watch these old DVD copies of the show with all the extra stuff still in. This must have been one of the extra length 40 minute (with commercials) shows they occasionally ran. There is more stuff cut out of this one than usual. I’d prefer they keep it in.

I finished coloring a “Dreams of Things” cover this week. Number 101. I colored it with Copic sketch markers over India ink. I used Blick Black Cat India ink on this one. For these covers I usually pencil them one day and then put them away to ink another day. After I feel like inking one I then ink it and put it away again for coloring some other time. Though I keep a calendar and write down exactly what I do each day I don’t put a date on the piece until I finish it.

I don’t know how long it’s been since I’ve mentioned this but I print out the logos and trade dress on the piece of paper I’m going to ink and color on. That’s because I want the finished piece to look like a comic book cover with all its accoutrements. I even print the production markings around the outside of the paper to make it look authentic. Comic book companies used to print up paper with similar markings to give to their artists to draw on. This ensured that the artwork was done at the correct size. I like the way the marks look.

Here is a tip for anybody interested in working with markers. Write down what colors you use for a specific purpose. I call them “Color Recipes.” I did this a lot more back when I was just starting to figure out a finished technique with the markers but it came in handy with this piece. There are three faces in this one and I wanted to make them three different colors. I went to my notebook where I wrote down my recipes and and picked three skin colors to use. I didn’t have to figure it all out over again.

The most complex part of this cover is the background. There is a lot of it. Though there are three faces and two figures they don’t take up a lot of the image. That’s unusual fo me. I count at least six major areas of background. The very top (right under the logo), the clouds on top, the landscape in the back, the side stripes, the checkerboard, and the fence at the bottom. I knew I’d have to figure out the background first.

As I was figuring out the background colors I had two things in mind. I thought the woman on the right’s shirt should be green and the little area under the D and R should be pink. I didn’t put those colors in until the background was all finished but I had them in mind. Sometimes a couple of colors jump out at me from the very beginning and it happened this time.

I’m usually a top to bottom artist. That means I don’t work on different areas of the page willy nilly. I start at the top of the page and work my way to the bottom. Most of the time. There are exceptions.

With this piece the first color I put down was the brown area underneath the logo. I went with three colors in the diagonal pattern to make that area a little less flat and more visually complex than it would be with a simpler color scheme. The clouds under the brown part also has three colors of blue in it. That was my theme for the part part of this piece. There color combos. I think that was the are that had the least going for it drawing-wise so I needed some rich color up there.

At this point I skipped over the area right under the blue to color in the landscape. I knew I wanted that skipped area to be a neutral color but which neutral I didn’t know yet. Once I decided I wanted a three-tone orange sky I decided the building should be a darker orange tone. That kept my complex tone theme going. It was natural to keep the ground of the landscape green but I also kept the greens dark since I knew I wanted that shirt green. I had the idea to make the sides red but I wasn’t sure and didn’t color them yet.

Here is where I skipped down to the bottom and made the fences brown. I went with only two tones of brown each because if I went with three tones that would be too much color change. I wanted to calm things down a little on the bottom since there was a lot of color in the figures at the bottom. I also thought to go with light purple and pink in the checkerboard at this time. So the top has color in threes and the bottom has it in twos.

Then I went on to color all three faces from three different color recipes from my notebook. These faces have the most colors in the smallest areas of this piece. For some reason I often like orange hair and the biggest face got the orange hair this time. There is some light green and yellow in there too but orange is the main theme. That made me give the top face yellow hair. I made the hat thing neutral grays and browns and then finally decided the biggest character’s shirt should be blue.

Now is when I finally got around to coloring the figure on the left. I knew I wanted her shirt to be green all along but I wasn’t sure if the pants should be green or not. I put down the two tones of green in the shirt and then decided that the thin stripe should be purple. This lead me to the purple and violet pants with a green stripe. I like the way that worked out and colored her head gear like that too. I even decided to bring that color theme into the space under the clouds. I finally colored that area.

Though I had the idea for the red sides earlier on I didn’t actually put in the red until late. I wasn’t sure if it would be too much but since I used no other red in the piece it wasn’t. It also makes a nice triangle of color with the orange buttons on the shirt. The last thing I filled in was they little bit of hot pink under the D and the R. And it was done.

I like the way this one came out. I wasn’t sure of what I was going to do with it and was hesitant going in but I took it step by step and it ended up nice. If only they could all go like that.