Yeah. Strikingly ugly-beautiful. I’ll take that. Sounds great. Comics Alliance gave a nod to a cover Nathan Fox drew and I colored for the zombie comic series Key Of Z. The other covers included in their list of best comic covers for January 2012 are really beautiful. You’ll have to scroll down to nearly the end of the post to find the Key Of Z cover. Comics Alliance always has cool posts that point me to other cool comics and really amazing artists. The rest of this cover really is a treat, so check it out when it hits the stands. This was a beast of a file. I think I colored it at 720 dpi, so you could make a giant back drop of this if you wanted and it would really hold up. I used the sort of garish colors to make the piece pop. Working on my own zombie comics for years and buying numerous other ones makes me fully aware that there is a standard aesthetic for producing traditional comics involving zombies. Nathan’s first couple of covers really established that this wasn’t going to be traditional. I took a key from his previous covers and then added my bent take on it. The details in the piece are really cool, and when you see the full piece, you can appreciate what I’m talking about even more.
Seeing this cover today, reminded me of another piece I colored for Nathan a few months back. I decided to see if I could hunt it down and there it was. Cool. A take on a rather famous cover, you can tell I had fun coloring it. I believe Nathan is currently working on the Haunt comic right now. Real perdy. Well, I have a book due tomorrow, so I best be going.
-J
Update: Cool… CBR is digging the cover as well. Check it out.
Danger Girl: Revolver numero uno came out this week. I provided the many colors that saturate the book. Danger Girl is an interesting book for me to color for a number of reasons. The book itself is a bevy of beautiful adventurers taking part in many over the top action sequences. The artwork, provided by Chris Madden, is very open and wonderfully dynamic. It looks a lot like some of my favorite Disney character designs. Upon picking the actual book up at the store, I cracked it open nervous that it may have printed too dark. I hadn’t had anything printed through IDW in quite awhile and was nervous my settings for other printers might not work. I’ve been doing this for years and I still get bad print jobs from time to time. Happily, this issue printed perfect. Really solid glossy paper that really matched my screen well. The book is a fun romp and I wanted the colors to match the tone of the art and story. My first thought, “mmmm, yummy candy.” Now I know I’m talking about my own artwork here, so bare with me, but the colors printed all colorful and fun. That’s
one of the things I was aiming for. I also, wanted to match a bit of the cinematic feel Danger Girl has. Chris draws every detail you could imagine and Andy Hartnell, the writer, mentions even more details in his scripts and notes. Overall, it’s a bit laborious to keep up with, but the finished product is well worth it.
Mentioning Andy takes me back a bit. Cue soft focus and dreamy music. Candle’s light. Ahhh, the good ol’ days. Danger Girl takes me back to Wildstorm studios many, many moons ago. One of the first books I worked on, after Stormwatch and WildC.A.T.S., was the first Gen 13 series. Jeff Scott Cambell was one of the new artists brought in from the Wildstorm talent search. He was at Wildstorm well before I showed up, but I actually worked on bunch of the first series. Back then, Joe Chiodo (art god in my book) with a few assistants would mock up these amazing color guides in markers and colored pencil. If you’ve ever seen these guides, you know I’m not exaggerating when I use the word amazing. Anyways, the four or five computer colorists that were at Wildstorm would divvy up the pages and all gang up to color the books. The color guides helped us keep our styles cohesive and provided an overall look for the books. The computers we used back then were so slow, we were lucky if we could finish one page in a day. We were also developing the first real digital coloring styles along with some of the other Image studios coloring departments. Joe’s guides elevated our collective look and made us all much better artists than we were when we started. I dragged out some old “make ready’s” I had, to illustrate where we’ve come from in those early days of computer coloring/painting. Make ready’s were the uncut books we got from the printer to see if anything went majorly wrong. The Gen-13 cover on the right 
was one of the first pieces I did without a guide. My coloring was fairly weak when I first started at Wildstorm, I just had some really good talents with computers and drawing at the time. I had been working in animation and video games, and I had self published my first couple of issues of Zombie Love, but none of these really focused on color, per se. Wildstorm acted as part job/part school. This particular cover I wanted to play with some techniques I had been imagining but had not yet had the chance to apply. I crumpled up a piece of paper and threw it on the scanner to then use as an alpha channel on the manilla envelope and the classified document. I added a texture one the wall behind the Gen-13 kids. The biggest thing I did was went ahead and manipulated the line work. Back then, the comic industry was moving from basically fill colors on comics and most artists didn’t want their line work messed with. I decided it would look cool to add creases to the photo and slightly blur the smoke coming off the cigarette. Everyone seemed happy with the finished cover, though some were nervous I was taking too many liberties with the line work. In hind sight, that would pale in comparison to what colorists/painters are now responsible for in the creative process of producing comics.
Okay, off that tangent of working with Jeff and Alex (Alex Garner was the inker for Gen-13) from way back when, move forward to, I’ve left Wildstorm to work at Angel Studios (Rockstar West) as an art director on a Disney ride for their new Disney Quest project. I was down in La Jolla to visit friends, namely Guy Major, and see what’s up with the studio. Guy and my friend Justin Ponsor (both whom I had a hand in hiring… mad props to me.. woo woo) were working on this new book by Jeff that was being written by another friend who I totally got hired, Andy Hartnell. The name of the book was Danger Girl. Andy is a great guy to hang out with and shares so many of the same likes and tastes that it feels like we were both grown in adjacent vats. I have fond memories of playing Doom II on the coloring computers until the wee hours of the morning, and trekking to Xena conventions to track down Lucy Lawless, and another trip with our friend Ian to a convention where we had the worst road side dining experience of all time. Fun stuff. So, Andy, is writing this new book and Guy and Justin are coloring it and I’m thinking to myself, let’s see what these kids are up to since I’ve left. Damn. I really couldn’t believe what was on the screens in the “pit” (common work area for the colorists). Justin and Guy had moved up a giant notch (that’s one of my stage names). Their colors were bold and so colorful in all the right ways. Jeff’s artwork took off in this whole new direction that had a more cinematic feel and all of his figures were now way more solid and stronger than what he was doing on Gen-13. Thumbing through the print outs, I could tell this book was going to be gangbusters. But I wondered about the story. Could Andy pull it off and live up to this great artwork. Well, of course he did. Why would I start this thread and not have a plan to tie it up. Andy’s fun adventure style of writing is exactly what ties the whole book together. His love of Empire Strikes Back, Indiana Jones and Army of Darkness shines through in what’s just an enjoyable read. Is this Tolstoy? No. I don’t want to read a Tolstoy comic.. well, okay, maybe I do.. but that’s not my point. That’s where I’m going with all of this. I have a lot of admiration for what these guys had/have done and I’m going to do my best to live up to it. This is the first of four issues. Check it out (here’s a good preview of the book) if you need need some good escapism, and really, who doesn’t at this point. Have fun!
-J
Wooo…. I received comp copies of some of my comic work this week. First off, the Avengers Academy Volume 2 trade printed amazing. These colors are way closer to what I had intended and what the actual images looked like on my screen. The individual issues didn’t necessarily print bad, but they just lacked or printed a slight too saturated. There were three pencilers on this arc. Mike McKone, whom I’ve always enjoyed working with, Sean Chen who really knocked it out of the park and gave me plenty of room to play with colors and the third is my good friend Tom Raney. I first met Tom years ago at Wildstorm in La Jolla. I immediately liked his style and realized he was the guy that came from Marvel doing some, I think it was Infinity War or some other Adam Warlock story. Tom worked on Team One: Stormwatch at the time and I dug his style. I really grew to love his art a few years later when he, a bunch of other Wildstorm artists and I were doing a signing in Florida. I was sitting next to Tom and the quick sketches he was doing for fans were just great. Flash forward 15 years or so and I’m at a New York comic con party at the Empire State building and Tom comes up to me and says something like “Isn’t it great?” and I say “What?”. He told me we would be working together on Avengers Academy. Such cool news. I immediately knew what I would want to do with Tom’s art and then the story arc that Christos Gage came up with was just pitch perfect for what I felt Tom and my strengths are. Korvac showing up and battling all these Avengers and the Avengers Academy kids. Fun, fun stuff. The colors in this trade really sing. Hats off to Jen Grunwald and everyone in the Marvel collections department. This made me extremely happy. Oh, and the back cover is the cover that was deep fried on Thirty Rock last year.
The other trade I received from Marvel this week was the newest collection of X-Factor. I only colored around two issues in this collection, but they printed just as well as the Avengers Academy trade. This story arc is where I was weened off the book as it were. Somewhat sad because I enjoyed working on Peter David’s stories and I really did want to stay with the book. In this trade, new artist, Emanuela Lupacchino took over. I’d never seen her stuff before but it is really sharp. I would have loved to have colored it but lucky for the book, my friend Matt Milla took over the colors and is doing a pretty insane job. 
Really rich colors. Matt came into Wildstorm shortly after I left, but we have a ton of similar friends. I think Matt also used to work with Brian Haberlin, and old friend of mine that ended up running Top Cow’s color among a million other things. If you get a chance, check out what Emanuela, Matt and Peter are doing on that book. Really cool story line.
Lastly, I received my copies of Dark Knight 4 and the final issue of DMZ. Dark Knights cover is colored by Alex Sinclair and the cover to DMZ 72 is by John Paul Leon. John’s cover is perfect and I’m happy that the colors actually printed good. I had some problems on some of the final issues running a bit dark because we switched printers, I believe. There are so many variances in colors and printing that it can be a bit unnerving if you let it get to you. So many things are out of your hands, that when you finish, you just sorta half to let go of it. These two issues printed great though, so no complaints. I need to get an iPad or an android tablet so I can start seeing these issues in their digital download versions.
-J
I mentioned that the last issue of DMZ came out last week, but another book I worked on also came out. Issue 4 of Batman: Dark Knight to be specific. I’m really trying to go all out with this book. I’ve limited the amount of work I’m taking (I just had to turn down a book, not ten minutes ago… ugh.. I hate turning down work) and I’m trying to get pages done early so I can get a vibe for entire book early on. On this issue, I zeroed in on the last page. Without giving it away, its’ a nice reveal and I really flexed my photoshop skills to compliment such a cool image that David Finch drew and Richard Friend inked. I don’t want to show you here, you have to go buy it. Sometimes rendering out of order can give you bench marks to reach or live up to. It’s like in screen writing books when they say know your ending. By establishing a really cool ending shot, you have a destination to travel towards as you work on the rest of the book. Also, coloring specific scene changes in a book can give the other artists on the book and the editors a chance to see what you’re thinking and whatever problems that come up can be worked out early, as opposed to closer to the deadline. You can then use these approved pages as color keys for the rest of the book. I tend to be graphic in my storytelling. The comics I read when I was younger were very direct in their color choices. Loud, bright and vibrant. Big color changes can be used to indicate scene changes, or plot twists. Going from a saturated scene to a more subdued palette can help the reader discern things have changed. Another good place to start when just beginning a book is a good hero shot. That’s a page where the main character is dominant on the page.
Making the strongest images in the book look well rendered and solid is beneficial to do early, so that if you’re have to pick up pace as you move closer and closer to the deadline (these things come out ever month) you’re not rushing a really important image that takes up a lot of space and importance in the book. Still, another good place to start is with new characters that aren’t normally in the book. Again, letting everyone else that works on the book know and see what you’re doing puts more eyes on the page. With this particular issue, the Flash and Wonder Woman show up. I render these up so that completely different editors for those respective books can have time to make comments or point out what may be going on in their storylines. An example would be, the DC Universe recently had a huge relaunch and a lot of the characters costumes changed. Flash has this new piping that runs across his costume and sort of powers up when he really gets going. These are all things I had to learn and apply to this book. I read a lot of comic books, but you’re always figuring out new changes and details the more and more that you work on these titles. A few years back, my friend Guy Major and I colored a big company crossover book for DC entitled Infinite Crisis. That was a real crash course for me to learn so many of the different DC characters I’d never even heard of. I could keep going, but that would take time from you gathering up your wallet and rushing to your local comic store to buy this wonderful book. I’m finishing another issue of Batman for next week, so I gotta go.
For six plus years now, I’ve been occupying a spot as colorist on the Vertigo title, DMZ. I’ve worked on hundreds of comic books and this is definitely one of my favorites. This past Wednesday, I made my way to my local comic store and picked up the last issue. Issue 72. That’s a record for me. I colored a ton of Catwoman comics and a number of Promethea comics, but not 72 issues. Well, 71 to be exact. Brian, the writer handled all the art chores on one of the 72. I get free comp copies of all the comics I color, but I’ve been going to comic stores for years now and I still like the feeling of picking the books up and buying them at the actual comic shop. Call me crazy. I didn’t know what I was going to feel seeing the last issue, but I couldn’t help but smile. Lots and lots of smiles. I probably looked strange to the people I passed as I walked to my car, the clerk at the pet store that was ringing up the crickets for my gecko and spider or the waitress as I sat down for breakfast at lunch time. Just lots of smiles. I’m not sure what it was. A sense of accomplishment, a sense of pride, joy in rewinding all of those issues and all of their individual stories in my head. I can’t explain it and then I thought to myself, I don’t want to explain it. I just want to enjoy it like I imagine everyone else has that have liked the book.
DMZ is not really a book to smile about. Dystopian future New York is not necessarily party material. Unless you’re into that kind of party, I guess. But you know what, good comics are something to smile about. Take me out of the equation, and this is a damn fine comic book. The book totally works with out color. Great lettering, great artwork, good personal stories, nice character development, politically engaging, put together well, cohesive. This book rocks.
Okay, put me back in. (Egosaurus) I was lucky enough to get the chance to color this book. Thanks Will. At some point, if you really get into coloring, you realize you’re like the DP of a movie, only for comics. You get to light the scene and apply a mood that best fits the story. DMZ was ripe with opportunities to paint different moods. Riccardo’s art, and some people hate when I say this, is completely strong enough to work without colors. Quite frankly, that’s how I get the pages. Black and white with no lettering. And the story is there. All of the artists that have worked on DMZ have this strong sense of black and white contrast and great storytelling. So my job has really been not getting in the way. That is, unless the storyline called for it. Sometimes you just leave everything flat to let the art breathe or allow the pace of the storytelling to move along. Other times you just wow the crap out of the reader by rendering the heck out of a scene or a bowl of noodles or a gun.
I learned a lot working on this book. I really got to play with colors. I’ve been told that I handle primary colors well without looking childish. I take this to heart, because I grew up loving comic books and primary colors really speak to that visceral first impression. Then again, sometimes primary colors can really work against a mature mood. That’s probably one of my least favorite parts of my contribution to the book, but I really don’t regret it. When you’re working on a monthly schedule to get a book done and out on time, nuance really is a treat that you don’t always get to taste. You’re really going with your gut reaction as fast as possible to get 22 or 20 pages done and look as good as possible. One thing you’ll find if you’re working at this pace is happy accidents are your friends. Now, did that accidental drop of red on the page really come from some inner artistic genius, or did you look at it and think “…that looks good, how will that effect the rest of the page or the entire story?” 72 issues allows such experimentation.
Most people that are interested, usually ask which of the issues was my favorite. I most likely will say the snow issue, and while true, I’ve grown to like individual issues less and less as years have gone on and like the entire series as a whole. The entire breadth of the work as it were. Probably sounds cheesy, but that’s the way it feels. There’s usually striking moments in the story lines that stand out, but that’s usually set up by good writing issues before. That explosion tears at your emotions because your cared about the character being ripped apart. Or that neighborhood being bombed is an actual borough in New York, so you can imagine this scene that much more. I actually felt guilty for a time working on the book, because I hadn’t actually made it to New York and all of my depictions were from my own imagination. Sure Brian’s reference, Riccardo’s renderings and Google Maps helped, but I hadn’t felt the actual vibe. Well, I did get a chance to see New York for myself and I think my imagination was pretty good. Upon visiting a couple of years ago, I kept thinking to myself, “Wow, for as much as New York has been depicted in film and television, they really haven’t got it right. I think the closest
people have got is part Midnight Cowboy, part Woody Allen and part David Letterman exteriors, but not really. Naive, I know, but I think my point is, that the city is too massive to really capture. The sheer amount of people and their individual diversity is ridiculous. Again, it makes me smile. It makes me want to go back. All the things I did wrong and all of the things I want to do again. I didn’t mean to go off on a New York tourism pitch here, but I think that’s at the heart of this story. It’s a story about New York and if you find your chance to pick up the trades and read our take on it, you’re gonna get a different view of the city. Sure, we’re destroying it, but that makes you reflect on how much you appreciate the place and it’s people. Or the freedoms we take for granted or the trust we surrender. Okay, I’m getting to far off into the weeds here and I’m all out of tinfoil. This was a fun book to work on. I hope I get a chance to work on a book like this again, but then again, I don’t think most people get a chance to spend days in such worlds, let alone six years. I guess you do as a reader, but imagine that plus you’re turning on the lights or changing the colors of the vehicles, or shading a impending disaster. Cool stuff. My brain overfloweth. Let’s wind this up. Hit up your local comic store this week and pick up the last issue if you’ve been reading along or pick up that first trade and dive in. Heck, I think DC even made the first issue available for free. No excuse, loser. (smile) It may not be your cup of tea, but you may also find yourself thinking “I didn’t know they made comics like this.” Well, we did and it’s over and ready for you to read.
-J
Years ago, in a galaxy… okay, I guess I can leave the galaxy part out. Many moons ago, I used to color a comic book called Leave It To Chance for a comic imprint entitled Homage Comics. Homage was a sort of a boutique of quality comics, if I do say so myself. I had been coloring a number of pages for various Wildstorm titles like WildCATS, Gen 13 and Stormwatch, to name a few and around 1995 or 96, Homage Comics was started. At this time, the artwork for the first couple of fledgling titles started to come in. I think I was in charge of handing out work at the time and when I saw this amazing artwork from Paul Smith come in, I was floored. We had to turn the first cover and poster around in a matter of days (if not hours) so I wasn’t going to be able to assign it to myself (it’s good to be the King). Alex Bleyaert and James Rochelle handled the first two pieces and then I did some sample pages to submit to Paul and James, the writer. For as much as I knew about comics at the time, I knew very little of Paul’s work. I had actually read the X-Men comics he had done, but I hadn’t connected all of the dots, as it were. Paul’s artwork was so strong and open that I really was dying to color this new book. Well, all things worked out and to this day it is still one of the most enjoyable titles I’ve worked on. Image comics has reprinted all of the stories in some nice over size collections, so if you get a chance to check them out, please do. I’ve posted more of the photos from this small signing/tour of sorts over at my Google+ page, if you’re interested. The image quality is terrible, being that the photos were taken with an early digital camera. You can find some Busiek’s, a Marder, a Layman… I feel like I’m calling out rare bird species… go check out the photos.
-J
I just finished the colors for Batman: Dark Knight 07 cover, but I can’t post that just yet. I’m really happy with it, so I’ll just have to post it for viewing later. In the meantime, here’s the colors I did for issue six, which comes out in February. The best part about working on Dark Knight is the fact that it’s a single character book and I get to spend all the time on the single character as opposed to working on a team book, where you’e having to color any number of characters. There’s a real balance of wanting to do some really interesting dark colors and not wanting the cover to turn out, what colorists tend to call “muddy”. My first version of this cover was much more mono-chromatic and dark, but upon viewing and working with David, Rich and my editors, we brought in more colors. This helped define the shapes that make up the figures and helped with the overall composition. Obviously, a book like the Dark Knight is a great place to use some really nice dark colors, but readability is a must. This cover inspired me to push myself even more with the issue 7 cover.. but more on that later.
-J
New comics day. If you’re not familiar with comics, than you may not know that new comic books come out on Wednesdays. Today, I had two new comics that I colored come out. The first is an issue of Batman: Dark Knight, number 3 to be specific. If you click that link, it takes you to the DC site and shows you some of the cool covers. The colors on those covers are by my friend Alex Sinclair who colors some of DC’s top books including Geoff Johns and Jim Lee’s JLA. I did this Batman issue as a fill in but was happy to be asked to continue on as the regular colorist. The penciler on Dark Knight is David Finch and he’s turning in some incredible pages that really challenge me in a good way as an artist. The inking on the book is handled by my good friend… Richard Friend. We go way back as some of the earlier Image / Homage / Wildstorm artists, so it’s great to be working with Rich again, to say the least. If you haven’t seen some of Rich’s original non-comic art, you should check it out. Gorgeous stuff. Paul Jenkins is writing this dark tale and just today I received some cool art for issue 5 that you’re just going to love if you’re in any way a fan of the bat books or comic art. These books are also available as digital versions as well, so fire up your iPad.
The other comic that I colored that came out today is the second to last issue of DMZ. I think I’ve been working on this book for nearly six years now. That’s really strange to type. This is issue 71, so you have a lot of worthwhile catching up to do if you haven’t been reading this great comic
all along. I’m working on the last issue right now and I can’t convey how strange it is to be putting a cap on it all. I’ve been really afforded a great deal of experimentation on this series and my art is that much better because of that. I’ve mainly been coloring Riccardo Burchielli, the
regular penciler and co-creator of DMZ, art for the book, but I’ve also got a chance to work with some the comic industries best artists that came in as fill in artists. Artists that range from Danijel Žeželj to Nathan Fox or from Kristian Donaldson to Ryan Kelly. Lots of fun for a colorist. Jared Fletcher has been a great letterer and have you seen the incredible covers by John Paul Leon… stunning. I was going to say some really mean stuff about my editors Will, Mark and Casey, just to mess with them but you really have to be at the top of your game to make a book like DMZ run so smoothly. 72 issues with multiple artists? Yeah, you try making that come out every month on time as successfully as they did. And I guess finally, Brian really is a breath of fresh air for comics and getting to work on his book has been a great joy. If you want to hear me go on and on even more about how much I’ve appreciated working on this comic, check out this interview I did a couple of months ago over at the DMZ comic site. Can you tell I don’t want it to end?
-J