The MSU Comics Forum has been doing a great job of not only highlighting the use of comics and sequential art in education but also bringing in some of Michigan’s most illustrious talent to speak. Following Michigan favorite David Peterson’s keynote appearance last year with the great Guy Davis took the keynote speaker position to the logical next step and set the bar for future speakers at an astronomical level. A full recount of Davis’ keynote address at this year’s Comics Forum follows after the jump. 

A self-taught artist, Davis won the Eisner last year for pencils and inks; after hearing him talk and seeing some of his examples of each it’s no surprising. His layouts look like sketches, and his pencils look like layouts, somewhere in between the pencils and the inks magic happens. His work transforms into intricate, often Lovecraftian horrors and rich, detailed backgrounds. Knowing that the audience expects an explanation, Davis relies heavily on the idea that he’s just faking it; that he prefers going from very rough pencils to the detail work in his initial inking because he already knows what he wants, and drawing it twice doesn’t seem too prudent. His nonchalance with this idea alone should demonstrate how deserving he is of his Eisner. Not only is his art as good as anything out there today, his method is absolutely amazing.

As he recounted his history in comics, starting with his indie work for local zines drawing his teenage creation Quonto, on to his work with friend Mike Mignola on the B.P.R.D. books, he kept straying back to the idea that he was just faking it. While showing some of his early work on the anime inspired The Realm, he kept pointing out the inaccuracies of his figure work and as he passed through the rest of his catalog, he highlighted specific and general influences which have brought him to his current style. One interesting anecdote he shared was how, just after starting work on Baker Street, he sent a Zot! story sample to Eclipse, while not accepted for publication, it was passed on to Scott McCloud. McCloud recognized his potential, but also that his exposure to styles outside of the tights and cape look was limited. About a month later, Davis received a box of European comics to peruse for inspiration, courtesy of McCloud. Bringing up early and late art samples from Baker Street, Davis showed how his work had changed with the broader exposure to more gritty work to better match the gutter punk sensibilities of his story.

The other main theme of his talk was that of typecasting. After working on the Vertigo Sandman Mystery Theater, he developed a reputation as “the guy who draws hats,” while his true love was drawing hideous monsters. After years of work in progressively more disturbing books, Davis is happy splitting his time between working with friends and on his own, getting his fill* of both mainstream collaborative work with B.P.R.D. and genital inspired demons in The Marquis.

A few of my favorite insights from his talk had to do with character design and reputation in the industry. After looking at his entire history and seeing that with some of the sensibilities of his current work, he has in a sense come full circle, Davis commented, “It always comes back to hats and monsters.” When discussing his work on The Nevermen for Darkhorse Davis discussed that one of the inspirations for the style of the book was Dick Tracy; in that the heroes are very boring looking every-men, while the villains are physically grotesque and outlandish. Initially he received some resistance from his editors with some of his villain designs. Questions arose based on the plausibility of the designs, to which Davis responded that it was not important to think too hard about the why of the villains, but to remember that they were thugs and beyond that, their eccentricities were what made them comic book characters.

This idea carried throughout the talk, from the malleability of background composition, to the design of mechanical horrors. What kept surfacing was the idea as as long as you had an idea of how something should behave that is internally consistent with the world you’re describing, the reality of the actual depiction is not as important. When in doubt, don’t be afraid to just fake it.

*Not Literally