SwanShadow Thinks Out Loud

In last week’s Comic Art Friday post, I noted several theme commission collectors whose galleries continue to inspire my own efforts. With today’s featured artwork, I’m reaching back to one of the first theme collections of which I ever took serious notice.

Walt Parrish is revered in comic art collecting circles as “The Cliff Guy.” As you look at Phil Noto‘s drawing of Tesla Strong (daughter of Tom Strong, hero of Alan Moore and Chris Sprouse’s eponymous series for America’s Best Comics), which moved from Walt’s collection to mine about three years ago, you can appreciate where the nickname came from. Walt’s theme was “comics characters on a cliff.” That’s it — simple, elegant, evocative. His online galleries once held hundreds of artworks, from rough sketches to elaborately finished pieces, built around that concept.

Artists always seemed particularly inspired by the “Cliffs” theme, perhaps because it challenged them to come up with some unique way to depict a character on a cliff. So they played around with perspectives, angles, and poses. Characters stood on cliffs, fell off cliffs, dangled from cliffs, or even looked up at cliffs. Quite a number of the “Cliffs” drawings were intensely dramatic. Almost as many were humorous. All were unique.

About three years ago, Walt sold a large portion of his art collection. At the same time, he took down all the images from his “The Cliff Guy” website. His remaining galleries at Comic Art Fans, last updated in December 2010, showcase a smattering of pieces marked as “Art I Used to Have.” I don’t know whether Walt stopped collecting altogether, or if he merely decided to downsize his holdings and forgo a public presence for the remainder. I certainly don’t know his reasons for doing whatever he did, and it would be unfair for me to speculate.

All I know is, I miss the Cliffs.

I’m glad to own a reminder of Walt’s terrific theme. But I have to admit — it makes me more than a trifle sad to look at it, thinking of the once-inspiring collection whence it came.

Tesla seems sad, too.

At the moment, I’m engaged in a massive project: a comprehensive inventory and catalog of my comic art collection. It’s a ton of work, but it’s also been great fun, as I reconnect “up close and personal” with every single piece of art I own. I’m forced to recall how I acquired each item — both those I’ve commissioned, and the many others I’ve purchased that existed before they came my way — and the reasons for each acquisition. I’ve rediscovered a few pieces I’d completely forgotten that I owned — today’s feature being one example. I’ve certainly encountered some that made me question my judgment at the time of purchase. For the most part, I’ve experienced profound joy at seeing these creations again, at holding the paper in my hands and admiring each pencil line, pen mark, and brush stroke. The scans you see here never reveal the complete extent of the artist’s mastery. Only when observing the physical artwork directly can you truly drink in all of the magic.

Yet, with all of the laughter and wonder I draw from this exercise, there’s a darker undercurrent. I ask myself whether the day will come when these images no longer impart any pleasure to me, and I will find myself with endless stacks of paper that afford no value, tangible or intangible. Will there come a time when my galleries lie empty, save for a sorrowful sampling of “Art I Used to Have”?

I thought I might have reached that point three years ago, when KJ died. (For the benefit of any newcomers in the crowd, my first wife — referred to herein as KJ — passed away in 2010 at the far-too-young age of 44, following a 10-year battle with breast cancer.) To say that KJ tolerated my art collection is to understate the mystery that said collection — and my obsession with it — presented for her. Never having been a comics reader, she felt neither attraction nor attachment to images of fictional characters in outlandish costumes, and never really comprehended why I felt both. She certainly distressed at times over the fiscal investment that fueled my predilection. Yet, she graciously (or at the very least, mostly silently) went along as I filled ever-increasing numbers of portfolios and frames with superheroes and superheroines, with little more than a head shake and heavy sigh.

Amid the crushing, debilitating sadness that accompanied KJ’s final months, and the aftermath of her passing, I often asked myself whether she was right.

Indeed, I contemplated at more than one juncture selling off the entire lot that would sell, and destroying the rest in a bonfire. I thought perhaps that would be a fitting tribute, given her disdain for all of it. I could not see, at times, that even I would ever find happiness in these admittedly temporal, juvenile pictures again.

But eventually, the darkness parted.

And I stepped back from the cliff.

I have always been, and fear that I always will be, an insular creature. That I have lived so much in the fields of my own imagination stems largely from childhood circumstances that I’ll sketch in the briefest terms — I grew up an adoptive child, and an only child, in a family that moved constantly (my dad was career Air Force) and loved sparingly. Always a highly intelligent (I could show you the test scores) yet socially awkward kid, my closest friends were often the characters in fantasy novels and stories I read, in science fiction films and TV shows I watched — and especially, in my omnipresent comic books.

These heroes and heroines became an essential, inextricable component of my inner self. They gave the childhood and adolescent me the power to soar, to strive, to subdue, and to survive.

I’m an infinitely more complete person as an adult. These days, I read precious little fantasy literature, even comics. (Most comics being published today aren’t being written for me, anyway.) But the images in my comic art collection are like talismans, of times when I treasured the company of superheroes. I still see my would-be self in these characters. Just as I now see my daughter in, say, Tesla Strong.

These days, I just enjoy the pictures. I feel a tickle of nostalgic happiness when I look at every drawing in my collection, especially the ones I’ve commissioned. So I guess I’ll keep looking, at least for the time being.

Sure, I know they’re just fantasy. But also I remember all the times when they kept me off the cliff.

And to some extent, they still do. Even now.

Thanks, superheroes.

And that’s your Comic Art Friday.

[Note from your Uncle Swan: I’ve told this tale before — on March 21, 2005, to be precise. But since it’s been eight years to the month since I last told it, and inasmuch as that telling resides on my legacy blog which many of you have probably never visited, I think there’s little harm in telling it again. However, if you’re a long-time reader who followed me here from the old blog location, you may have read the following — minus an edit here or there — before. In that case, feel welcome to take this Comic Art Friday off.]

Someone — I believe it was Rod Stewart — once said, “Every picture tells a story, don’t it?” I don’t know whether that’s true of every picture, but it’s certainly the case with this one.

I picked up this pencil sketch of Wanda Maximoff, the Scarlet Witch, from an art dealer at WonderCon in February 2005. Drawn in 1992 according to the signature — and signatures never lie — it’s the work of the great Bob McLeod, who created the very first piece of custom art I ever commissioned, a gorgeous pinup of one of my favorite heroes, the Black Panther.

Bob McLeod is best known in the sequential art trade as an inker. In fact, in my never-humble opinion, Bob is one of the finest inkers in the business — in part because he’s also a terrific pencil artist. But because McLeod is most closely associated with inking, one doesn’t see very much of his raw pencil art. (Well, you might have if you ever checked out Rough Stuff, the short-lived magazine that Bob edited for Two Morrows Publishing, the folks who bring you Alter Ego, Back Issue, and The Jack Kirby Companion. In Rough Stuff, Bob frequently showcased uninked pencils from artists whose work is rarely seen in that condition.)

That’s one reason I was so excited to find this sketch, which shows Bob’s fine grasp of expression and anatomy to perfect, unvarnished advantage. The other reason was that I thought it would be fun to have Bob revisit and complete the drawing thirteen years after he began it.

So, a few days after I purchased it, I packed the sketch off to Bob. Below, you see the finished art, vintage 2005.

Dramatic, huh? Yes, believe it or not, both of these pictures are scans of the exact same physical piece of art, scanned (about four weeks apart) at two stages of its development. Not only can you see the amazing change a comic art drawing undergoes from its pencil origins to camera-ready inks, but you can also get a sense of the way one artist’s personal style evolves over the course of several years.

In comparing the two versions, Bob McLeod joked that the Scarlet Witch appears to have shed about 30 pounds between 1992 and 2005. I wish it were that easy to lose a few, by means of a handful of brush strokes and a strategically applied eraser!

And that’s your Comic Art Friday.

(All-new material next week, I promise.)

One of the most legendary origin stories in comics — an industry fraught with legendary origin stories — is the one about the Silver Surfer. Not the origin story of the Surfer in Marvel Comics’ fictional universe, but rather the origin of the character in the all-too-real world.

Cognoscenti will recall that in the Silver Age (the roughly 15-year period from the mid-1950s until around 1970), Marvel’s output was scripted via what came to be known as “the Marvel Method.” Instead of giving the pencil artist a complete manuscript from which to draw the story, the writer — usually Stan Lee, in those days — would instead provide a more general outline that might range from a few paragraphs (or even a few sentences) to a mere list of plot points. The artist would develop the visual story however he deemed fit. When the pages were completed, the writer would then fill in dialogue and captions that suited whatever the artist had drawn. This often meant that the writer had little clear idea what images would appear on those pages when they came off the artist’s table.

When Lee received from artist and co-creator Jack Kirby the pencil art for Fantastic Four #48, famous today as the first book in the three-issue arc that introduced the cosmic supervillain Galactus, he was surprised to see that Kirby had drawn in a character riding a flying surfboard. Kirby explained that he thought Galactus — a gigantic, supremely powerful humanoid being who consumed planets to ingest their energy — needed a herald, someone who would warn the denizens of worlds in Galactus’s path to prepare for their doom. After some initial reluctance, Lee wrote the character into the story. Later, the Surfer became a major point of contention between Lee and Kirby, who each had radically different ideas about how the Surfer’s persona and back-story should evolve.

As I’ve intimated in previous Comic Art Fridays, I tend to be a Marvel Method scripter when it comes to my commissions. Typically, I give the artist the barest of instruction — no more than the names of the character(s) to be depicted, in most cases — and allow him or her free rein to draw whatever pleases their creative sensibilities. Therefore, I’m always at least a little bit surprised by the finished product. And on occasion, like Jack Kirby and his Silver Surfer, an artist completely startles me by including an element in a drawing that I never expected to see.

The first artist ever to throw me a happy curveball in this regard was Geof Isherwood. One of my first commissions from Geof was an ink drawing of Valkyrie, a favorite heroine from her days in Marvel’s superteam book, The Defenders. My only direction to Geof involved Val’s weaponry; I wanted him to make use of both her trademark sword (named Dragonfang) and spear (named… um… Spear, I guess). I was totally shocked, then, when Geof sent me a scan of the completed artwork. There alongside Valkyrie, in all his glory, stood her winged stallion Aragorn. (Apparently someone in the ’70s Marvel Bullpen dug The Lord of the Rings.)

As you can see in the image above, Geof’s equine illustration is impeccably detailed and astonishingly accurate. How many comic book artists can draw a horse that well?

When I asked Geof why he’d gone to all that extra (and uncompensated) work, he said simply, “She (Valkyrie) just didn’t seem complete without him (Aragorn).” Of course, he was correct.

Later that same year, I commissioned an artist named Scott Jones — who frequently signs his work “Shade” — to draw a Common Elements piece featuring Liberty Belle, the Golden Age heroine most closely associated with the All-Star Squadron (and, in her present-day incarnation, the Justice Society of America), and an obscure character from a now-defunct Webcomic, Liberty the American Girl. Once more, I was blown away when I discovered that Scott had included yet another figure in his drawing, none other than the Statue of Liberty herself.

As I had with Isherwood, I asked Scott why he added the additional figure (which, again, is painstakingly accurate and beautifully detailed). His response mirrored Geof’s: “A Liberty-themed scene just wouldn’t have been complete without the Statue of Liberty in there.” And of course, Scott also was correct.

Artists who take on commission projects almost always quote additional fees beyond their typical charges when called upon to add backgrounds or extra characters. And well they should — artists deserve fair compensation for their work, and more work merits more pay. I support that principle wholeheartedly. As someone who routinely commissions multiple characters for my Common Elements themed pieces, and specialized design work for my Bombshells! pinups, I always expect to pay an artist more when I request these items. But I’ve been pleasantly surprised on numerous occasions by artists whom I’ve paid for a simple one- or two-character drawing, who have thrown in a detailed background — or even another character or three — without asking for another dime.

Why do they do it? Because they just can’t let the art their drawing tables until they’re satisfied with the product… and it just needs that extra something.

I hope I always remember to say thanks.

And that’s your Comic Art Friday.

“Hi, Michael. This is Scott Rosema.”

I’ve taken a few surprising phone calls in my lifetime — some wonderful (“We want you to come play Jeopardy!“), others horrific (“Your wife has cancer… again”). One of the more pleasant telephonic surprises began with the two brief sentences in the preceding paragraph.

The artwork you’re viewing, although officially designated as Common Elements #2, was in fact the first piece I commissioned (in December 2004) with Common Elements specifically in mind, and is the first to reflect the theme in its now-well-established form. (I know, I know — Iron Man and Iron Fist make for a transparently obvious pairing. I got better, okay?) By the time this work arrived in my hands in April 2005, I had commissioned and received a handful of other Common Elements pieces, so I sometimes forget that this one’s conception preceded all of the others.

But I don’t forget that phone call.

For the benefit of those unfamiliar with the mechanics, commissions fall into two general categories: direct and brokered. The majority of my commissions over the years have been arranged with the artist one-on-one via email. Many others, however, have been worked out through an artist’s broker, representative, or agent. At the time I commissioned today’s spotlighted piece, Scott Rosema‘s commissions were managed by another Scott — last name Kress — whose business is called Catskill Comics. (I have both commissioned and purchased art on numerous occasions through Catskill, and recommend Scott Kress’s services without reservation.) As is typical of a brokered commission, I had no direct communication with the artist during the process. I sent the payment and specifications to Mr. Kress, who forwarded them to Mr. Rosema. After the art was completed, Mr. Rosema mailed the piece to Mr. Kress, who in turn sent it to me. (I wouldn’t usually say “Mr.,” but it sounds less lame than “Scott R.” and “Scott K.”)

I’d had the art in hand for a few days when the phone rang.

“Hi, Michael. This is Scott Rosema.”

This being very early in my commissioning career, my immediate thought was that something had gone wrong. Had Scott not received the correct payment? Did he think he’d made an error in the drawing? Had he or Scott Kress accidentally stuck someone else’s commission in the package along with mine, and I’d failed to notice?

None of these fears proved valid.

The truth was that Scott simply wanted to know whether I was happy with the work he’d done. He had enjoyed the project, and wanted to be sure that I was equally pleased.

I was stunned. To me, comic artists still seemed a bit like unapproachable demigods, from whose gifted imaginations and dexterous fingers sprang the legends that fueled the fantasies of my youth. Only a few months previously, I wouldn’t have imagined that one of these lofty superbeings would even deign to draw something just for me, as opposed to the pages of comic books that were read and loved by millions of fans.

And now, a member of the Pantheon had dialed up my home number — not to rage and threaten, but to seek my approval.

It was almost too much.

I felt a bit like Ralphie on Santa’s lap in A Christmas Story. I knew that there were such things as words, and I was certain that I knew some — I was even reasonably confident that I had spoken some at one time or another — but getting my brain to unleash them and push them outward through my lips and tongue seemed an impossible task. I probably sounded to the man on the other end of the telephone line like a blithering moron as I fumbled to express my appreciation. I might as well have been trying to shout “AARON BURR!” with a mouthful of peanut butter and a dearth of milk.

Somehow, with the air as thick as molasses in my larynx, I managed to communicate to Scott that I was indeed quite thrilled with his drawing — not to mention his call.

In the years since, I’ve come to know a number of comic artists — and artist’s representatives — rather well. Several have even become friendly acquaintances and semi-regular correspondents. I’ve gained comfort in knowing that even the most talented of artists are just folks, who like to be appreciated for their abilities, and for themselves.

But I’ll never forget the first artist who picked up the phone to make that lesson personal.

And that’s your Comic Art Friday.