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

Long time, no read. I’ve had a pretty crazy summer and sadly my blogging (and drinking) have suffered mightily. Luckily it appears that  things are finally settling down and I’ve been able to successfully hop off the wagon and hit the ground running/stumbling. If I seem a bit rusty, I hope you understand.

I picked up a bottle of Cascade Traditional Mead at Dusty’s and enjoyed it as an after dinner treat last week. I’m a big fan of meads in general but their relative scarcity makes them something of an oddity. I’m not going to lie to you good people of the aether and tell you that I haven’t considered starting an apiary for the sole purpose of brewing my own, but I’m not sure my neighbors would appreciate it. Hit the jump for my thoughts on Cascade Mead.

Cascade Cellars is a Michigan operation based out of Grand Rapids. Their prices reflect the fact that West Michigan is not known as prime grape country, but with a mead that really is not an issue. Overall I was pleased with Cascade’s offering, it is sufficiently boozy but never overpowering. It isn’t as robust as the Chaucer’s Mead that I reviewed previously, but mead doesn’t need to be robust to be good. The most prominent feature of this mead is that it has a freshness that is uncommon in alcoholic beverages. The flowery taste of most meads was much less pronounced but was certainly there, however the taste conjured a feeling of the air above the fields of clover than of the clover itself. While I would have appreciated a bit more complexity in this draught, I wasn’t disappointed. If mead is your thing it’s definitely worth picking up a bottle.

Anyway, enough of the setup. The following .gif is hands down the best summary of The Dark Knight Returns I’ve ever seen.

There’s an awesome blog up over at coveredblog.blogspot.com. The project has artists redraw classic comic covers and the results are pretty consistently awesome, or at the very least interesting. Some of the more abstract covers are especially interesting, but I love seeing alternate interpretations of the characters I know and love. 

Definitely worth checking out!

Secretary of Agriculture: Superman

The general consensus was that while Supes is ridiculously powerful, he was really too much of a knob to be in change of anything having to deal with foreign policy. Plus he’s one of the only superheroes who grew up on a farm

Secretary of Commerce: Iron Man

Iron Man was the choice for Secretary of Commerce because everyone was fairly impressed that Tony Stark could maintain a global financial powerhouse while boozing and saving the world. 

Secretary of Defense: War Machine

War Machine was chosen for Defense Secretary because he has real practical military experience and is kind of like Iron Man without the crippling alcoholism. 

Secretary of Education: Professor Charles Xavier

This one was a no brainer, Professor X is the only superhero with the chops to handle the Secretary of Education post. Of note is that we did not consider Slim Goodbody as a valid candidate. 

Secretary of Energy: Dr. Manhattan

This was a pretty controversial choice since the good doctor doesn’t really care about humanity. The fact that he is made of and can control energy ended up winning out. 

Secretary of Health and Human Services: Dr. Strange

He’s a Doctor, and actually cares about people. Nuff said. 

Secretary of Homeland Security: RoboCop

Beyond the initial, “Holy shit it’s RoboCop,” reaction, once you run down the Prime Directives RoboCop makes even more sense as Homeland Security Chief. Plus he could totally take Michael Chertoff in a fight. 

Secretary of Housing and Urban Development: Jack Hawksmoor

He’s the “King of Cities” and can feel the power and mood of any city he’s in. Plus he converted Tokyo into a giant humanoid and used it to defeat future Kansas City. 

Secretary of the Interior: Swamp Thing

The earliest Eco-hero, this one makes a ton of sense. Not to mention that Swamp Thing is actually made of the interior of the country.

Secretary of Labor: Thor

Bear with me on this one. It seems a bit odd until you realize that he wields the hammer Mojilnir, one-half of the symbol of the Workers Party. 

Secretary of State: Storm

We chose Storm because not only does she have the ability to make weather a part of international negotiations, she also was more or less the Secretary of State for the X-Men. 

Secretary of Transportation: Optimus Prime

Not only is his goal the protection of the human race, it’s also in his best interest that rail, road, and air transport in the U.S. is the best it can be. 

Secretary of the Treasury: Batman

Bruce Wayne is incredibly wealthy and a huge philanthropist, both qualities that we felt were important in steering the direction of the Treasury department in these trying times. 

Secretary of Veteran Affairs: Captain America

He’s a veteran, and has some of the same knob potential as Superman, so it was just as important to us that he would be an excellent candidate as it was that he wouldn’t be able to screw up too much while in this position. 

Attorney General: She Hulk

She beat out Dare Devil, mainly because she’s hot, but also because we didn’t feel that Dare Devil has the right temperament for the job. 

That’s all the posts we filled, and there was a lot of discussion about each post. If you’ve got comments feel free to leave them. Big thanks to John for coming up with this exercise. Up next, the National Cartoon Basketball Association Draft.

http://www.reasonablyclever.com/lego/owlship/index.html

The Watchmen comic is pretty excellent for instance, the paper cut-out method of animation fits the noir vibe really well, but the voice acting just kills it for me. The guy does a good job, but Sally Jupiter he aint. Anyone else have any thoughts on the new-media trend to animate comics for the web?