Radiant Comics

I’ve mentioned that I make my own hand bound sketch covers on comics before but I don’t think I’ve ever written about exactly how I make them. As a kid I remember figuring out how to fix badly damaged comics since I always ended up with some hand-me-down comics that were in bad shape. It was mostly figuring out how to use Scotch tape in the most unobtrusive manner but one of the things I figured out how to do was to reattach a cover.

I would take the smallest piece of tape possible, maybe a half an inch tall by a quarter of an inch wide, and tape over the staple holes on the inside of the detached cover. Then I would open the comic to the centerfold and use needle nose pliers to bend the staples back into their nearly original state. With the prongs of the staples straight I could pull them out of the spine of the book.

After that I would poke holes with a pin in the tape that I put on the spine. The holes go right where the staples were originally. To finish up the repair I would wrap the cover back around the comic and then, by hand, put the staples back through their holes and bend them down again in the center. The cover we reattached and the comic ready to be read. Using tape on a comic is frowned upon these days but when I was a kid in 1977 a little bit of tape was far preferable to a detached cover.

When I draw one of my hand bound sketch covers I to use that very method (minus the tape) except that I prefer to draw the whole thing on a flat piece of paper first and then bind it rather than bind it to the comic and then draw. The first thing I have to do is figure out what comic I’m going to bind my new sketch cover onto. I’ve used a lot of 25¢ comics, such as The Walking Dead 144, as well as some old World’s Finest issues from the early 1980s that I’ve had lying around. Anything cheap is good with me.

The second thing I have to do is figure out the correct size paper to draw on. I measure the comic (comics from different eras and companies are slightly different sizes), print out a box to those measurements on an 11×17 inch piece of paper, cut the box out, fold it in half, and wrap that piece of paper around the comic. In a perfect world that would be all there is to it but usually the piece of paper isn’t the exact right size so I have to go back and adjust the size of the box in my template and print out another copy. This is why I use plain paper and not my good drawing paper to figure out the correct size. It takes a couple tries.

After I have the paper size right I go in and make my logos. If I want it to look like the book underneath, say The Walking Dead, I digitally recreate the Walking Dead logo. Sometimes I use my own logos, such as my Acid Ram one, and the sketch cover has nothing to do with the book it’s bound around. After I have the size set and the logo placed them my template is done. At this point the “Chose your own adventure” can go in either of two directions.

I usually like to draw and ink on separate pieces of paper. So if I have a drawing done already I scan it in, convert it to a non-photo blue line, and place that blue drawing onto my template to be printed out. After I print it out I ink over the blue pencil lines. I don’t always have a drawing done first though. In some cases I print out the logo and box on a blank piece of drawing paper and pencil and ink right on the same page. Either way I do the finished drawing on a flat piece of paper.

After I finish the drawing, sometimes it’s in black and white and other times I color them with markers, it’s time to attach it to the comic. As part of my template on the outside of the box I have small lines where the middle of the box is. That’s where I have to eventually fold the paper. So I hold the paper up the the light, transfer those marks to the back of the paper, and then draw a line between the marks on the back of the paper so I know exactly where to fold it.

It’s at this point that I trim the paper to size using an X-Acto knife and a metal ruler. Since my template consisted of the correct size box I just have to line up the ruler with the inside edge of the box and cut off all four sides. There should be no black line when I’m done cutting just the art I drew. Then I flip the paper over to where I drew the center line, line up my ruler along that center line, and (I learned this part from a friend) run the round edge of a paper clip along the line (and ruler) to compress the paper a little along the fold line. This makes it easier to fold. I then fold the paper along the edge of the ruler and after its folded run a burnisher along the fold.

For the final step I’m back to my childhood. I use pliers to unbend the staples, straighten them out, and pull the staples out of the comic. After that I remove the cover an set the cover inside my folded drawing. With the drawing wrapped around the cover I take a pencil and poke it through the four staple holes of the cover to make four corresponding pencil marks on the inside of the drawing paper. I then remove the cover from inside the folded drawing, unfold the drawing so it’s flat, and use a pin to poke holes in the paper right where the pencil marks show where the staples have to go. Then it’s just a matter of lining the drawing, cover, and inside comic up and putting the staple back through the holds and bending them again.

Be patent when putting the staple back in. It takes a steady hand to get them back through their holes and it can be frustrating at times. They don’t always want to line up as they should. But I’ve done it and so can you. Plus at the end you have your own sketch cover.

Sometime a few months ago I started a new comic book habit. I have a section on my comic book collection called “I bought them just for their covers.” These are comics that I don’t have a lot of interest in but I liked their covers. Sometimes that’s enough to make me buy a comic. That and if it’s cheap. I’m not spending more than a few dollars on a comic just for the cover. My new habit is that I keep one comic laying around, on top of my printer, so I can pick it up and look at the cover. It sits there for a few days or a couple of weeks depending on my interest or indifference to the comic. It’s usually indifference that makes it stick around longer because I forget it’s there. But eventually I take a new one out. Often from my “Just for their covers” section but not always so.

Let’s take a look at the one that’s there this week. It’s “Creatures on the Loose” #23. It has a May 1973 cover date which means it was on sale in February of 1974. COTL was a Marvel Comics series from the 1970s that had a bunch of different main characters over its lifetime. It was a genre tryout book of sorts and this book’s genre was monsters. Except Thonogor wasn’t a monster. Thonogor was born of the 1960’s popularity of Conan. Lin Carter wrote a series of novels staring our sword and sorcery star and then Marvel licensed the stories to make comics out of them. After all Conan was a success for Marvel so why not copycat yourself?

This cover was drawn and inked by John Romita. You can see his signature on the left side in the wood grain of the door so there is no need to look up who drew it. Romita was on the Marvel staff at the time as Art Director and he also drew a bunch of covers for them as well as drawing various interiors. I often wonder who colored these Marvel covers. I know that George Roussos came on staff at Marvel some time in the early 1970s and colored lot of Marvel’s covers but he wasn’t credited for them. This could be his work but who knows?

The cover has a lot of logos at the top of it. It has the Marvel Comics Group logo, the COTL logo, a small “Featuring”, the Thonogor logo, and finally a “Warrior of Lost Lemuria” tag line. That is a whole bunch of words to fit on one cover but they’ve done a good job of it. They even threw in two cover copy blurbs for good measure. We get a story title and a brag blurb. If you were to describe a comic cover with that many logos on it I’d put money on the fact that the cover would look really crowded but this one doesn’t. The top logos stack into as small a place as possible and the blues are even compact. I question the necessity of the “Sword and Sorcery” brag blurb as it doesn’t seem to add much and gets in the way of the composition a little but it’s still fairy inconspicuous. Overall the type and trade dress might be too busy but they get an “A” for making it work so well.

The first thing that jumps out at me is, of course, the giant green monster. He takes up most of the cover and is the dominant figure in the composition. Our hero doesn’t even get to be very heroic as he’s getting his butt kicked by the creature. I think the green is a little bit dark. It almost works as this cover is supposed to take place in a dark setting but I flattens the picture too much. Even with the rim lighting along the creature’s back it’s tough to get any visual separation between the creature and the background. The green and the blue have similar values and blend together easily. The bright yellow rim lighting on the creature’s arm is odd. I think it’s supposed to represent the light from the flame that Thonogor is holding but it’s not quite in the right place for that.

Thonogor stands out as much as the creature blends in. His light pink color is the brightest bright on the cover so it moves forward in my eye. It moves forward so much that it messes with the perspective of the flame lamp he’s holding. That flame is supposed to be the thing closest to us in this picture but because the light pink moving forward in my eye the flame looks about even with his head and back arm. This visual confusion tend to flatten things.

I like the drawing and inking on the cover. The monster is suitably monstrous and has some nice heavy inks and texture to him. It’s tough to draw a menacing monster head at that angle but the sharp teeth and horn help. I can imagine them wanting the teeth even sharper but not being able to get that passed the Comics Code Authority. They wouldn’t let you make the monsters too scary. Thonogor’s figure is also well done. He’s bent over at such an extreme angle that he doesn’t even have both feet under him. That is an unusual twisting pose and tough to pull off but Romita does it.

It’s strange how little details can stand out at me when looking at a cover. Like why does one entranceway have a door on it and one doesn’t? The top right doorless exit lets out eye move into deep space but storytelling-wise I’m not sure why there is no door. But the bigger mystery is that flame that Thonogor is holding. It’s obviously a floor lamp because it has those four feet on it but why isn’t it a regular torch? It would make sense to be carrying a torch in a dungeon. Did Thonogor pick it up off the floor to use as a weapon? It might be explained by reading the story but for now I’m just looking at the cover. Looking at it and contemplating its mysteries.

I always find it shocking when I’m rummaging about the place and I find some piece of art that I’ve forgotten I ever made. Though I’ve made a lot of stuff over the decades it really doesn’t happen that often. I scan my art into the computer and look through the files when I need to find something. That mostly means I only glance at things but since I see them it’s rare when something takes me by surprise.

As a lot of folks did back in the 1990s I used to make mini-comics. That’s where you write and draw comics and then print them up as a booklet on a photocopier. They were usually photocopied onto an 8.5×11 inch piece of paper and then the paper was folded in half so the finished comic was 5.75×8 inches. Some people even went smaller and used the paper folded into quarters to get more and smaller pages out of a single sheet of 8.5×11 inch paper. I still have a few copies of mine stuck in a closet somewhere and I remember them all but what I didn’t remember is how I made the last two I ever did.

My usual method for making a mini comic was similar to my method for making a regular comic. I draw the art on individual pages, shrink those pages down to the correct size, paste those pages onto a master sheet (a mechanical in the language of print production) and then use those master sheets to make photocopies from. After the photocopies were made I’d line the sheets of paper up in the right order and then staple and fold them. I even have a long reach stapler because a regular stapler was too short. It’s pretty much a craft project and was easy to do but took time.

What I found while looking at some sketchbooks on a shelf was the original art from my last two mini-comics, a “Delia Charm” and an “Organics” mini. Except the art wasn’t on individual pieces of paper. I actually made a book out of the original art. A mini-comic that was itself a piece of art. Each little book has twelve pages made from three sheets of paper each, drawn on back and front, and then folded in the middle. I didn’t even use staples to hold it together. I used thread to bind them in the place of two staples each. I have the say the thread gives it a nice look. I’m glad I went that route. And yesterday I didn’t remember I ever made such a thing.

The first mini-comic is “Organics.” That’s the name of a style of comic that I do where there is no literal connection between the story and the pictures. It’s all about making connections. Finding the faces in the clouds. I especially like the front and back covers on this one. The front cover is a twice done picture. I first drew it as a spontaneous ink drawing on textured paper in the late-1990s when I was first learning that technique. I always liked something about the drawing. There was a look in the character’s eyes that works for me. I even recaptured that look when I remade the drawing for this cover. It’s not always possible to recapture a look like that but somehow I did. The back cover is a strange boat and wind thing. I think the inking technique on it is nice and I like the general weirdness of it. The “Knees, bees, trees, squeeze” type is something I used to write all the time when I got stuck and couldn’t think of anything to write. It calmed me.

The inside story has to do with a broke guy named Tony going to an ATM to get twenty dollars and the thoughts that roll through his head on a cold winter day. I think I accidentally called Tony by the wrong name for a panel. Suddenly a Ray is named and not mentioned again. That threw me. There is also a text piece the runs on the inside front and back covers about supernatural silly stuff. I used to write editorial text pieces in my comics as a sort of precursor to blogging.

The second mini-comic is one of my slice-of-life Delia Charm stories. She’s having a rough day and is trying to get through it without losing her mind. She contemplates the very nature of rough days. There is also a terrible Stephen King joke in there. It’s a contemplative little piece over all. The front cover is a decent illustration of Delia and the back cover gives us a cartoon of a man who is also contemplating a bit of life. I like the text piece in this one better than in the other one. It’s about growing up and not going out into the snow anymore.

As physical objects I really like these little books. I think that was my goal with them. I wanted to make precious little books that could be admired even without being read. They’re made on what feels like 140 pound watercolor paper. That is a real sturdy piece of paper with a creamy feel. Touching it is nice. None of the edges are cut either. They’re either the original deckle edges that were on the paper when I bought it or my own deckle edges as I folded and tore the paper rather than cut it. The paper even has a watermark on part of it. Together with the stitched staples it looks really cool.

It was really weird finding these. It’s not like they were really hiding either. They were sitting on a shelf in a couple of small white envelopes. It’s the shelf where I keep my ink books and a bunch of other sketchbooks that I flip through ever now and then. So how did I not notice these for years and years? I don’t know. Just life I guess.

The Acid Ram is back this week with the cover to issue number eleven. Since it’s one of my faux comic book covers there is no actual issue but I’ve got a cover. It was one of the half dozen covers I penciled and set up to be inked and colored a couple of weeks ago and the only one of those that was a “The Acid Ram” cover. What is an acid ram you ask? I’m not sure but it’s something very weird. I imagine all sorts of weird stories revolve around it. Maybe it’s some sort of object that people revere. Or maybe it’s a title. A person could be the Acid Ram and that person could be the center of a strange world. It’s a title that makes me contemplate stories. It’s reserved for my most mysterious images. If I’ve got something that’s really out there it’s going to become an Acid Ram cover.

Of the six covers I had set up five of them were “Dreams of Things” covers and the sixth was this “The Acid Ram” one. Over time I inked them all and then they sat around waiting for me to color them with markers. Number eleven was the trickiest one to color because it has the most complex space of all of them. There are three different horizon lines and three different landscapes in one image. I wasn’t quite sure what I was going to do with all that when I started out.

The first thing I colored was the main figure. That’s one of my Mod Man figures that I’ve been drawing for years. He’s both modular and modern as he’s made up of shapes of color. I have no set design for him and I vary the shapes on his body each time I draw him. I also vary the color. Most often I use the three primary colors, as I’ve done here, but if there are more than one Mod Man figures in a drawing I’ll add in some secondary and tertiary colors.

The second thing I decided on was the very bottom bit of water and sun. One of the things my set of markers is missing is a variety of blue greens. I’ve got plenty of blues and plenty of greens but not enough blue greens to really give me satisfying water. I even mixed my own blue green ink and put it in a marker so I could have a base color but one day I’m going to have to track down some more blue greens. I kept the water simple with three different colors and did the same with the sun. I knew I wanted the sun/sky to be totally orange without any blue and ended up laying down three low contrast oranges. You have to look closely to see the three different shades but they still vibrate a little even if they can’t be seen distinctly.

The next color I dropped in was the pink sky behind the Mod Man. This took some pondering. It is the biggest piece of real estate on the cover and I had to get the color right on it. I didn’t want it to be a blue sky, because that would make the piece too normal, so I opted for a hot pink, a light pink, and a really light pink that’s so light that it’s almost white. I use that really light pink a lot because it changes the tone of the paper just a little bit in an almost undetectable way. It’s a subtle change. I also like how the sky acts as the whitest white on the page and moves forward in space more than a background should. It surrounds Mod Man quite well.

With that pink sky done my next move was obvious. I had to color the third sky and make it blue. Plus the land had to be colored and I went with green. Two blues and two greens. A simple and harmonious pairing that grounds the picture in a kind of reality that we know. I find that it’s important in a picture that’s all about weirdness to have a small anchor in reality. Some place for the viewer to relate to and let them enter into the picture. A little bit of fencing and a landscape can help with that.

The hardest part of this coloring process was deciding on the colors of the giant face. It was foreground, middle ground, and background all at once and that gave me a bunch of trouble. The first color I chose was the lighter purple for his nose and eyebrow. Then I brought some bright orange into the picture up top in the hair. That lead me to add more of the purple on the jawline and in the hair. I didn’t want the orange too dominant so I needed more of the purple. That made the dark purple of the chin/ground an easy call because I needed something heavy and dense there and it couldn’t be more orange with the sun right below it. One choice leads to another.

I went with a greyish blue for the left side of the face because I needed a neutral there. I had to settle down that part of the picture so that the pink sky could come forward a bit. The orange marks under the eye add a little exclamation point to the face. The last choice in the face color was the eye. I went with bright green to make it stand out. With neutrals surrounding it the green looked extra bright so I dulled it down slightly with lines of darker green so it wouldn’t fight too much with the pink. The pink has to be the master.

The very last color choice in this piece was the building behind the Mod Man. I had no idea what color to make them. I didn’t want them too bright but I also didn’t want them to be a neutral and blend in with the blue/grey of the face. I eventually settled on a light yellow. That’s a color that normally moves forward in space as it’s so bright but I dulled it down with some light purples and oranges. It ended up more of a gold color than a yellow and it stays in its place well.

So there is a color walkthrough for you. A little bit of my thought process to chew on.