Radiant Comics

“Nothing. I’ve got nothing.” That’s one of my moods. It’s also a quote that comes from my Marvel Comics days back in the mid 1990s. I’d guess 1995 if I had to. In those days Marvel was in the middle of transitioning from traditional cut and paste publishing to newfangled desktop publishing. As a consequence we in the Bullpen were figuring out how to do our jobs on computers instead of on drawing tables.

The computers we were using were Apple computers running System 7. That was the name of Apple’s operating system at the time and I remember it because the sound files it used were called “System 7 Sounds.” It used those sound files even into System 8. I remember that because we made a lot of System 7 sounds. Computers were fairly new at the time. They weren’t everywhere like they are today. No one carried one all day to make phone calls on. We were discovering new things about the computers all the time in the beginning of our desktop publishing days and one of our most fun discoveries was playing sound bites and alert sounds.

Alerts sounds are those little beeps a computer makes when it wants to let you know something. They’re sort of what ring tones are today because back then you could customize them. You might still be able to customize them but I haven’t bothered to in decades. But back then when everything was fresh and new we were customizing sounds all the time. Plus we were recording each other.

There were two ways to make System 7 sounds. One was to sample things from already existing sound files such as movies or TV shows and then you would click on the System 7 sound file to play the sound. We played a lot of sound bites from the movie “Aliens” and from “Monty Python and the Holy Grail.” I swear I can still hear a lot of those sounds in my head. We used to use them all the time to punctuate conversations and amuse ourselves. “Help, help, I’m being oppressed!” became part of our everyday landscape.

The second way to make System 7 sounds was to record them and record them we did. The Macs came standard with a microphone and it was a good thing they did because they used their own proprietary mic jack in those days. No standard eighth inch jack for Apple. They had to make their own. So we’d all say goofy things into the mic to make sound drops out of. Over the months a few favorites developed.

One of my favorites happened one day as my friend John was randomly recording stuff. He shouted across the room at Thomas to get him to say something. Thomas responded “I got nothing.” Then you can hear John say “Say it again.” Thomas responds more loudly, “I’ve got nothing!” That’s it. That’s the extent of the exchange caught as a System 7 sound but it still resonates with me. It’s a mood. I’ve got nothing.

I haven’t played that sound bite in a long time but it’s still alive in my head. To this day whenever I’m trying to get something done, think of something to do, or generally try to motivate myself and fail that sound bite goes off in my head. “I’ve got nothing. Say it again. I’ve got nothing!” It encapsulates that mood so perfectly.

I bring this up because of my mood cards. They’re something I came up with this week to add to my art card oeuvre. They aren’t ground breaking or fancy but more along the lines of simple things. First I have to think up a mood. Not things like happy, sad, or chilly but more succinct. I pulled out one of my little writing notebooks and wrote things down in it that I felt during the day. Hopefully pithy things but not always.

Along with “I’ve got nothing” I have other ones like “Is this a live show? Because I want a second take” and “Something weird made me smile.” It’s not easy to put moods into words but so far I’ve been able to write down about twenty five of them in a week. It’s a strange thing but in order to write these I have to be on the lookout for whenever I feel something that can be put into words in a way that people can relate to. It’s also hard not to fall into the negative. There are a lot of bad moods a person can be in and I’ve found that dwelling in those is not very amusing. I’ve been trying to keep it positive.

After I’ve got my mood and decided I want to work with it I get one of my 2.5×3.5 pieces of Bristol board and start the lettering. I chose to go with a freeform lettering style and not even rule lines to letter between. I try my best to make them straight by hand. First I write the sentences in pencil to get my spacing correct and then I letter right over top of the pencil with an ink marker. I’ve been using a black .5mm Copic Multiliner for that task. I have other pens that work just as well but the Copic handles the task of erasing the pencil lined best. Given the chance to dry the Copic marker doesn’t smear when I erase over it. I lot of other markers smear. Even if I leave it all day to dry.

Then I draw my mood. That’s not an easy task. I draw the face of a character with simple lines. I try to muster up the mood on my face and then look in the mirror and draw what I see. Trying to find just the right little cartoon takes some doing. I draw it in pencil first and then ink it. Since it’s so small I’ve been inking them with a pen rather than my usual brush. I ink the letters, ink the face, wait for the ink to dry, and then erase all the pencil lines and it’s done. I’ve been keeping these in black and white. I think that helps with the mood. Color would create a mood of its own and maybe interfere with the drawing’s mood.

Nothing. I’ve got nothing.

I was at it again this week. I was working on my calendar. On a normal day I write notes in my calendar on my computer of what I did that day. What artwork I worked on, where I went, or any other simple or complex thing that I did. I’ve been doing that since December of 2008 in an attempt to show myself that I do get things done. Otherwise whenever I make a piece of art and put it away I tend to forget about it and it feels like I’ve never done it or anything. With a glance at my calendar I can see that I have accomplish something and it can lift my spirits.

It was back in 2012 that when I was going to clean out the garage of a bunch of old tax receipts that I realized I could use those old papers to reconstruct what I was doing back then in the 1990s and enter that information into my virtual calendar. I ended up doing research on myself. Sure it interested no one else but I thought it was cool. I made a little map of my past. It was a lot of work though. And like many things that are a lot of work for no real reward I worked on it for a while and then put it away. I figured I’d finish the rest of it some other time. Then six years passed by.

From 1999 until 2004 I kept a paper calendar. That’s where I first got the idea to keep track of some of the things that I did and I also used it to write in. Just a short paragraph a day. Over the years I’ve mined those short paragraphs for various things but I never transferred the general information into my digital calendar. Back in 2012 I was mostly working on early 1990s receipts so I never made it as far forward in time as my paper calendars. I’m not even sure why I stopped keeping the paper calendar but I did. Still it was those ones that inspired me to start up on my calendar project again.

For about a week in May I became obsessed with filling in the missing years from my paper calendars into my digital one. Early in the mornings, at lunch time, at dinner time, and while watching TV at night I entered information into my computer. Instead of reading or surfing the web I typed for the week. It took a lot of effort.

The paper calendars were easiest because all the information was in one place. It was all written down in a handy spiral book. I used to buy and write in the Ansel Adams desktop calendars every year. I guess I got bored with them by 2004 since I used a different calendar that year. It must have broken the spell though because that one odd calendar was the last one I ever used.

The other part of the project were the receipts in the garage. That were also broken down by year and by subject matter too. I had receipt categories for art supplies, transportation, equipment, and a few other things I can’t remember right now. Plus there were bank and credit card statements in there. I could tell if I bought something or if I used an ATM near me or in NYC.

As I was doing this I couldn’t decide if the receipts or the paper calendar were easier to deal with. The receipts could be broken down into pieces and handled a little at a time but they took time to organize. The paper calendar took no organization but had a lot of information in one single volume. So it took some time to do. It somehow seemed easier to just take the art supply receipts and do them but then when I was faced with a years worth of receipts to organize it seemed easier to grab a paper calendar. I, of course, ended up switching back and forth between them.

One of the little things that particularly interested me this time around was that I got the the year to eighteen months where I took the train from Tarrytown into the city instead of the bus from Haverstraw. I remembered doing that but I had no idea when, how often, or for how long that happened. I had receipts for the rides so I could tell when I was on the train and not the bus. It’s a minor thing of no consequence but it made me happy to know.

I ended up finishing a lot of years. I think I had from 1990 until 1997 already done and this time I finished up 1998 until 2004. Now I just have a gap between 2005 until 2008 in my calendar. The earliest information I now have in my calendar is from 1983 and 1984. One of the things I note is when I go to the comic shop. Usually I go every week and so I put it in my calendar. I found among my tax papers receipts from when I went to the comic shop back in high school. I have no idea why I kept them but most of them had dates on them so I entered that info.

By the end of the week I burnt out on doing it. I wanted to finish and fill that four year gap but I just couldn’t take it anymore. I even organized the receipts for 2005 so they were all ready to go but I didn’t get to them. It seemed so pointless as is the danger of doing this sort of work. It’s emotionally taxing. At first it’s fun and fascinating to go through my life and see all the small things that happened. It can be nostalgic and joyful to say to myself, “Oh yeah, I remember that.” But after a while I start to feel bad because I’ve forgotten so much. Most of everything gets forgotten. That’s the way life is. I wonder if it’ll take me another six years to finish up.

A few years ago I was talking to Carl Potts and he was telling me about a book that he, Tom DeFalco, and Jim Galton wanted to write. Jim Galton was the president of Marvel Comics, Tom DeFalco was the editor-in-chief, and Carl Potts was a group editor. Being that they all had a lot of leadership experience the book was going to be about corporate leadership. One of the points of the book was that if you want your company to have a fun vibe that has to come from the top. A place is only going to be as happy as its leaders want it to be. Their book deal fell through but I think their hypothesis rings true.

The myth of the Marvel Bullpen was something Stan Lee put in place in the early 1960s. He wanted Marvel to be thought of as a fun place populated by artists, writers, and behind the scenes people all having a good time making comics. Most of the artists and writers were freelancers who worked at their own homes and studio spaces but you can’t let reality get in the way of a good myth.

When I was working in the Marvel Bullpen around Halloween of 1991 it could certainly be described as a fun place. It wasn’t perfect by any stretch of the imagination. There were the usual suspects in any workplace: office politics, power struggles, people who didn’t get along with each other, deadline pressures, departments that were at odds, incompetence, and occasionally people who were just plain jerks. But still the overall vibe of the place was loose and fun. The Marvel vibe of having fun making comics was alive and well.

For example the Marvel Bullpen that I worked in at that time was probably about twenty people (it peaked at 35 people a couple years later) all in a big room sitting mostly at drawing tables where lettering corrections, color corrections, cover coloring, paste-ups, and general comic book production got done. It was fairly mundane and repetitive work but we were allowed to talk as we worked. And talk we did. All day.

Everyone who worked in the Marvel Bullpen was an artist or creative person in their own right. So there was always a lot of imagination and liveliness in the room. It was a place of constant humor and joking as we went about our day. And we were rarely stifled. Sometimes we would get too loud and our boss, Virginia Romita, would step out of her office and give us a look to quiet us down. Then there was Flo Steinberg who needed some quiet when proofreading and would shout “Modulate people!” when we got too loud for her white noise headphones to baffle. Even more rarely George Roussos, the staff colorist (who had been working in comics since the Golden Age), would step out and say something like “You people are so loud. They’re going to fire us all!” That’s when we really knew we were too loud.

There was a long row of offices next to the Bullpen that ran along the outside wall. This was “Editorial Row” where, of course, the editors had all of their offices. Each office had its own individual character depending on the editor’s likings but there was rarely a closed door. A few of the offices even had couches and were hangouts for freelancers, interns, people from other Marvel departments, and random assistant editors. We in the Bullpen worked directly with the editors so we were also in and out of their offices all day. If the editors wanted a break they’d also come out to the Bullpen for a few minutes and shoot the breeze.

The king of “Official” Marvel fun was Mark Gruenwald. I say “Official” because there were a lot of fun people at Marvel who were the center of shenanigans but if there was anything organized or recurring Mark was often behind it. He loved games, he loved parties, he loved pranks, he loved the idea of Marvel being a fun place, and he loved having a good time in general.

I’m telling you all this as a prelude to a video made on October 25th of 1991 of a Marvel office Halloween party. It’s a Mark Gruenwald tour de force. He’s there with a megaphone leading the office in a bunch of silly games. He’s assisted by Renee Witterstaetter and Rob Tokar. This is the stuff Mark loved to do. Not every game was a winner but he always gave it his best. You won’t find much slacking from him when it comes to having fun.

Not everybody was a fan of the types of games. Though no one was complaining about having an office party for some people the silliness was too much to participate in. They enjoyed watching the festivities but were too self-conscious to join in. Some people aren’t built to handle even a little embarrassment. Mark had to work hard at times to keep things going.

You won’t see me participating in the games because I have my own little quirk. As silly as I can be I take my competition seriously. I love to compete in games and to win. But silly games are usually not about the competition. They’re about having fun doing silly things. Somehow not being able to compete fairly in a game turns me off from playing it. That’s my own bit of weirdness but you can still see me on the tape having a good time.

All of this was courtesy of Marvel’s leadership. The myth of the Marvel Bullpen was important to them as a brand and as a creative choice. It made Marvel a better and more creative place to be. At the time I didn’t really think about that and took it for granted but then I also worked at Marvel post-bankruptcy when it had a new owner who cared nothing for the myth of the Marvel Bullpen. A lot of people tried to keep the spirit alive but without leadership at the top it was impossible. But here for just a little while the spirit of 1991 boom-time Marvel can live again.

This week I made some ink and marker drawings in a slightly different style than usual. I used my colored ink and bright colored markers. I was looking for a super hero pop art style. I think I came close.

The first thing I had to ask myself was what did I want to draw in this style? I wanted something simple so I went with a face and then I decided to do it at comic book size so I went with a Batman face. I don’t draw a lot of popular characters but when I do Batman is up there on my list because he has such a distinctive mask and face. I’m not even a huge Batman fan but he has a lot of interesting shapes in his mask. It’s almost like an abstract painting.

The first thing I knew I wanted to do was to change Batman’s colors. I didn’t want his usual blue. I decided on my brightest green marker instead. I also decided on my blue ink. I have two shades of blue ink. One is lighter than the other but it’s also more transparent. I went with the darker and more dense one. It’s a very pigmented medium blue so it did the job well.

My first attempt had to be abandoned. It can be tricky working with markers because they can smear if thing are done in the wrong order. I normally use a black India ink and that works well with the markers. If I were to take a marker and color over the black ink it generally won’t smear. Sometimes there is a little extra black pigment on the surface of the paper and that pigment will smear into the marker ink. That doesn’t happen often enough to be a problem but it turns out with the blue ink it is a problem.

I made my Batman drawing, printed it out in blue line, inked it with my blue ink, and then set about coloring it with markers. That’s when the trouble happened. The blue ink had a lot of extra pigment in it that sat on the surface of the paper. The marker started to smear that pigment every now and then but I thought it was fluke. Then it kept happening. I eventually had all of Batman’s face and mask colored but there was too much smearing for my taste. It wasn’t disastrous but it wasn’t good either. I decided to start again and do things backwards.

I grabbed another piece of paper and printed out the drawing in blue line but this time I used the markers first and then the ink over top of them. This wasn’t an easy way to work. I like to have my line in place before the color because that helps me visualize things better. But I had no choice this time so I put the color down over weak blue pencil lines. I got used to it in the end though. Especially since I was using only flat color. It would have been trickier if I was using modeled color.

I had no idea what I wanted for the background when I started the drawing. I drew nothing for the background so I figured it had to be some sort of color design but nothing jumped out at me at first. I happened to have my Haff parallel line machine out so I decided to go with lines for the background. I needed up setting the machine to two millimeters and using the chisel end of the marker to make straight lines. I drew a line across the edge of the Haff ruler, hit its lever to move the ruler down 2MM and repeat this five times. So five clicks of the Haff, five lines in a row drawn, and then five more clicks of the Haff with no lines drawn. So 10MM of color and then 10MM of white paper.

I started the background with the dark color first. Then I came in with a lighter shade marker of the same color. That way I didn’t need the Haff machine for the lighter color since the dark color would hem it in. Light doesn’t bleed into dark. Once again it’s all about the order things are done in.

After that I inked the drawing with the blue ink as usual. It all went smoothly and liked the results. I decided to try a second one with red ink. I had a little bit of a tougher time with the color choices on this one. I think the bright green on the first Batman head worked really well and I didn’t have another marker that I was as confident in. I ended up going with an orange marker and it did the job but I like the green Batman better.

I also had a problem with the contrast between the orange and the red ink line. They were too close in value. I ended up using an outline around the outside ink line. I choose the lighter shade of blue ink that I have and went to work. It took a while. It come out okay but the lighter blu ink was a little too transparent for the task. I had to go over the same line multiple times in order to get it opaque. Or at least a bit more opaque. The second one is okay but I like the first one better.

After the two drawings were completed I got tired of Batman. I wanted to work with one of my own images so I found a face that I drew a few years ago and use that. I used the same method of drawing with the colored markers first and then the blue ink and things went smoothly. The drawing looks fine but there is a funny thing about it. It doesn’t look “Off” enough.

Y’see, I know what Batman is supposed to look like and after I drew him in bright green that made him look “Off.” Looking at the drawing makes my brain a little confused because something familiar looks odd. Meanwhile despite the original drawing of the face I made having crazy colors, like green and magenta, it doesn’t look “Off.” It looks like another of my crazy faces. Weird. Crazy is so normal for my drawing that it doesn’t look crazy enough. A strange conclusion.

Here I sit and wait for the train. I commuted into NYC once a week for a few months so I figured I’d record those moments that get lost in time. Often we commemorate big events but not the little ones. I like keeping track of the little things. At least on occasion. I’m similar to everyone else and usually forget the small stuff so sometimes I like to write it down .

First of all the schedule I worked on was terrible. I worked on Wednesday’s from 2PM until 6:20 PM. That doesn’t make for a quick commute via public transportation. The peak trains have ended and the middle of the day trains run fewer and far between. I had a choice between two trains. The first one gets me into Penn Station at about a quarter to two. Being that it’s a twenty minute walk to where I need to go that’s not a very good choice. The problem is that the next earlier train is an hour and a half earlier than that one. But it’s the one I have to take. 

The worst thing about public transportation is the waiting. Any commute involves commute time plus waiting for a bus or train. With the train arriving at Nanuet station at 10:52 AM that means I have to be there ten minutes before that. It’s a twenty minute drive from my house to the station so I end up leaving the house at a quarter after ten. I also have to take into account the five minutes it takes to park and walk over to the train.

Luckily for me there was a nice glass enclosed waiting area at the train station. Since it was winter when I commuted I was able to sit in there and draw. I drew in my ink book or drew some of my 5×7 inch cartoon art cards. I had a 6×8 inch stiff cardboard envelope that I stuck some Bristol board in and the envelope doubles as a drawing board too. I even left my house five or ten minutes early, just in case of traffic, plus I know I’ll get a little extra drawing time in.

When the train comes I get on and kick back with my headphones on. I’ve collected old Howard Stern shows as mp3s over the years and I usually play some of that as I relax and ride. I put them on my old generation one iPod Touch and start listening in the car on the way to the station. Lately I’ve been listening to the Eric the Actor Omnibus. Somebody out there in internet land made individual mp3 files of every one of ETA’s appearances and posted them for us fans.

As I ride the train more waiting is up ahead. There is no direct train route from Nanuet to NYC so we have to get off at Secaucus Junction and get on a train to Penn Station from there. Being that I don’t want to get to school too early I have a choice between stations to wait at. Penn Station is a bad place to wait. It’s a terrible space not built for humans. Secaucus Junction is sunny, spacious, and vibrant. So that’s where I usually wait. I find a seat on a bench in the main waiting area and pull out my drawing stuff to work on. It’s been the faces lately. I stay there for about half an hour before getting on a train into the city.
There was a day this February where the temperature actually hit 80F. That sure was unusual during this especially cold winter and spring so I took advantage of it by not drawing and heading in to take street photos. I walked around for an hour and a half snapping photos. I have to say that was a tiring day. All that walking and then standing and teaching wore me out more than usual.

Besides that one day I usually got into the city at about a quarter to one. That means I arrive at the school about an hour early. That leaves me time to check into the office and chat a little before heading up to my classroom. I almost always get to the class earlier than my students so I set things up and then do some more drawing. I have about half an hour to work in my ink book. Then I teach.

After class things move quickly at first. We get out at 6:20 and I hustle over to Penn. it really doesn’t matter what time I get there as there are a whole bunch of trains that stop at Secaucus Junction. It’s the time of the train from Secaucus to Nanuet that matters. There is a 7PM but it’s a local. I’ve only caught this one once and it didn’t save me much time. There is a 7:30 express train and that’s the one I’m usually on. Despite it leaving half an hour later it only arrives at Nanuet five to ten minutes after the 7PM. 

So what do I do for that half an hour at the station? I read. I’m way too burnt out by then for drawing so I read. I read comic books on my iPad. I prefer my comic books on paper but as I’m commuting digital comics sure are handy. I often reread the paper comics I bought the week before in their digital version. I’m in the habit of always reading my comics twice before filing them away so this is a good opportunity for that second read. I’ll also check out some new and old stuff. Once the train comes I also read most of the way to Nanuet. No headphones on the way home.

As a change of pace today, the last day of my semester, I’m writing on my iPad rather than drawing or listening to music. It’s not easy I’m finding out. Typing with one finger on a moving train is hard on the concentration. The guy on the phone behind me didn’t help. Here comes Secaucus so I’ll catch you later.