The Comics Super Blog!
‘It’s complicated, but good complicated.’
The final issue of Kieron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie’s The Wicked + The Divine arrives Sept. 4. Gillen discussed how he feels about reaching the end of the series in his email newsletter this week:
Continue reading “Quoted: Kieron Gillen on finishing ‘The Wicked + The Divine’”The creator of “A Distant Soil” not only encourages readers to create fan fiction featuring her characters, she also says she does it herself.
“There is an A Distant Soil fanfic site that sometimes links updates to the A Distant Soil webpage. I’ve been asked if I am OK with this. I am not only OK with this, I fully support not-for-sale fan activity. If you want to make fanfic and fanart of my work and link it from the FB page or the website, you are welcome to do so. I not only got my start in comics doing fanfic, but when trying to break through a creative block fairly recently, sat down and worked on some myself, posted it anonymously, and it got me through that creative block like a charm.”
—A Distant Soil creator, renowned artist and fan fiction writer Colleen Doran
The writer of Black Hammer, Bloodshot, Thanos and many other titles provides a look into how he gets all his work done — and why he loves it.
Jeff Lemire, writer of Black Hammer, Old Man Logan, Bloodshot, Descender and many, many, MANY other projects, in a long process post where he talks about how he balances his time. It’s impressive and a bit humbling to hear how far ahead he is with all the titles he writes.
Continue reading “Quoted: Jeff Lemire on his work process, what makes him happy”
The “Justice League International” and “Hero Squared” co-writer talks about his co-writer.
It’s the late 80’s. We’re standing in the halls of DC Comics on a Friday afternoon. Keith is telling me his idea for a new story: the secret origin of one of our most ridiculous characters, the brain-dead Green Lantern named G’nort. Keith spends five or ten minutes spinning the entire tale, in detail. You can see he’s excited. He likes this wonderfully goofy story and he wants to do it—just the way he’s envisioned it.
The problem is, I don’t like it. And I tell him that I don’t.
Does Keith get angry? Does he tell me I’m a talentless jackass who has no right passing judgment on his incandescent genius? No. He just looks at me for a second, takes a breath, shrugs—and then launches into an entirely new origin of G’nort, which he’s creating on the spot. And it’s perfect. I can’t think of many people who could switch creative gears like that, but Keith has more raw creativity than just about anyone I’ve ever known: a tsunami of stories and characters and odd, brilliant notions.
—Writer J.M. DeMatteis on his frequent collaborator Keith Giffen.
The award-winning letterer celebrates his birthday by discussing how he got his first job at DC Comics.
In grade school, a vocational test decided I should become a forest ranger. I thought that sounded okay, I loved the outdoors. In grade school I did well in math and science, but less well in high school with more competition. I didn’t head in the Art direction until senior year when I finally realized art class was my favorite, and had been all four years. I went to art school for two years, then ran out of money and had to get a mundane job to support myself. I worked at several paperwork jobs, and at one was able to use some of my art training to design air conditioner user manuals.
–Letterer Todd Klein, who turned 65 last week, explains on his blog how he broke into comics when DC Comics offered him a two-week stint filling in for a vacationing production artist. He says Vince Colletta “must have seen something in those air conditioner manual paste-ups.”
Also, happy belated birthday to Todd Klein!
The Sandman and Batwoman artist says if he had never discovered Micronauts, “I seriously doubt I’d be working in comics at all.”
I’ve cited in many interviews and general conversations just how this series impacted my childhood, I grew up a bit with those comics, and read them for as long as they were published. But ultimately what hooked my loyalty was the very beginning of their adventures, created by masters Bill Mantlo and Michael Golden. They were so very smart. If I had never come across their work on Micronauts I seriously doubt I’d be working in comics at all. Their brilliance on the title forever changed my direction, much to the dismay of many of the adults in my young life. However, along the way, I proved I was right. That deep down, from that very long ago discovery of the work on the series, I knew then that I was meant to do what I do now. And so when IDW announced they had garnered publishing rights for a new Micronauts series, and Rom as well (another very influential series), I had to reach out to them to see how I could be involved, even if only a little. To make an inner child’s dream come true.
–Artist J.H. Williams III, paying tribute to the creators of Marvel’s long-running Micronauts series from the late 1970s/early 1980s. Williams will do “a run of covers” for the new Micronauts series by Cullen Bunn and David Baldeón that kicks off in April from IDW Publishing.
Continue reading “Quoted | J.H. Williams III on Bill Mantlo + Michael Golden’s ‘brilliance’ on ‘Micronauts’”
