THE COUNTDOWN TO HALLOWEEN: DAY 29

(Dracula gets inked)

Compared to the bombastic pencils and mind-blowing anatomy of Jack Kirby and the structured layouts and weirdo designs of Steve Ditko, Gene Colan always seemed to take the bronze medal in the Marvel Bullpen in the Mid-‘60s.  But think about that for a minute... the guy was the third banana in a club that features not only the greatest comics artist of all time, but one of the other top artists to ever draw a tights wearing true-believer!

Gene had chops and could drive an inker mad with all of the shades he could lay down with those pencils.  His work wasn’t perfect for the super-hero, but the fluidity of his panel layout and the sense of movement he gave his figures gave his work both a sense of action and flow that worked quite well.

Gene’s real talent was in drama and lighting.  Not even King Kirby could use shadows to such effect.  Gene would add mood to scenes that would suffer without it under the pencil of another artist.  Emotive faces filled his panels and played on his stage like great Shakespearean actors.

All of this he put to perfect use when he took on TOMB OF DRACULA, a book he had to lobby heavily to Stan Lee to get.  Stan had tapped Bill Everett for the book after having told Gene he could do it and Gene quickly whipped up a sample page to convince Stan to choose differently.

Gene based his Dracula not on Bela Lugosi, nor Christopher Lee, but Jack Palance, who had never played the role (but soon would, a year after TOD started publication)!  One look at the sample and Stan gave Colan the book--did his Dracula mesmerize the Editor into doing Gene’s bidding?

Certainly it did.

Soon the shadows and mist crept in, the atmosphere of suspense and horror, the thrill of drama and fear lurked in every corner...soon,

Count Dracula stalked the night!

And it wasn’t long before a young writer would join this veteran artist on the series--Marv Wolfman won the job after a few different writers either passed on the job or were kicked off of it.  In his intent to write the series, Wolfman went back and reread the original novel by Stoker and that is the sole influence on his version of the character.  He had never seen a vampire or Dracula film and wasn’t a fan of them.

It’s a good thing for comics and horror in particular that Wolfman took the work of Stoker to heart and wrote the book with that in mind.  The series went on to be the longest-running comic book with the villain as the title character.  Seventy issues plus the odd special and what-not--unheard of in it’s time and impossible in the current comic market.

But then, that's Dracula for you... he'll grab ya!

Sources (besides my own opinion and experience reading these fine comics) cited:

http://www.comicsbulletin.com/columns/676/the-burning-cross-tomb-of-dracula/ 

http://talkingcomicbooks.com/2012/11/marvels-tomb-of-dracula-and-the-artistry-of-marv-wolfman-gene-colan/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tomb_of_Dracula

http://www.panelology.info/TombOfDracula.html

http://www.panelology.info/IntoTheTombOfDracula.html

SIX SKETCHY SCHEMES

Wanted to put River Tam in an action pose in these two sketches, but in the first one she seems a little too zen and medicated.  I like the pose, not necessarily the weapons, but it has a good sense of movement frozen, so that's something.

Anyway, click on it for enlargement purposes,

otherwise keep your cursor to yourselves!

This second one had the weirdness about River correct, but there wasn't enough baddie interaction and all of her fury directed at one person wouldn't suffice.  Again, not a bad sense of angelic danger moving around athletically...

Click her for a closer look...

Here we have an example of when a sketch goes as planned and comes out the other end looking

better than I'd planned it.  My first attempt at drawing the Vulture felt right!

Click to enjoy bigger baldness, oldie attitude, and that freshly applied coat of Ben Gay!

Marv being Marv, protecting Katie from the hard-core element, even though he's well beyond the hardest of any guy to ever visit the bar.  Really wanted to get the light and dark right on this one and I think it works as a panel pretty well.

Click it for an enhanced look at the shading and the magic place Marv's left arm disappears to.

 

Ol' Steeljack from Kurt Busiek's ASTRO CITY sure was fun to draw and I think it showed in this sketch of the guy.  Metal skin and the looks of Robert Mitchum and you have this guy down.

Ended up creating a scene in which a mother and child are being saved from a fire.

Click for a closer look at this inferno of sketchery!

Sometimes you force a not-so-good layout to work, when it would be best to leave things as they are and move on to the next attempt.  That's what should've been done below, with Thundra.

I do like how the lower half of her body came out, but the upper needs work.

Click to enhance your experience!

That concludes this session of sketchbook scans, in my attempt to move things that have been piling up on my desktop here on the computer... until then, think about what you did!

BUILDING UP FROM SCRATCH

When considering the possibilities of how to portray a battle between two characters in a single image or scene, I like to consider the finale of such a battle.  It is, after all, the result of said

battle and is one of the most important parts.

When thinking on an obvious lopsided battle, the finale becomes the more important because of the "how".  Surely we all know this was the inevitable outcome, but here is exactly how

it actually went down...etc.

So when it came down to Darkseid and Carnage in a Character Battle Royale that I was a 

participant in, it was too easy to imagine the many possibilities of the Lord of Apocalypse

destroying the tiresome Spider-Man villain and Venom also-ran.

>>>>Click on any of the images here for that bigger flavor we all crave!<<<<

I can always go "Omega Beams!" with Darkseid, but for a character such as this, I think that a

simple physical act should do the trick and what better way than removing the guy's head from

his shoulders.  Simple and to the point.

(I love how Carnage's hand comes up yearning to free himself even when his head's gone!)

But then I got to thinking about how a touch of comedy can lighten the dark mood of a 

piece of art featuring a beheading.  And so I came up with this...

(That's supposed to be Spidey being held up by Darkseid, looking down on the corpse of Carnage.)

(Found my angle with the above sketch,

Darkseid holding up Carnage's face to Spidey while asking the question:

"Why is it that your enemies keep attacking me, Spider?")

(Expanded it on the computer to show Spidey reacting to Darkseid's question with:

"That's what I ask myself every day!")

I ended up not going with the above as it was a little too unfocused on Carnage, so

I decided on the direct approach again.  Though this time in the middle of the act itself!

(Drew the above on packing cardboard from work with a ballpoint.)

(Cleaned up a bit in photoshop and tilted (always the fun part))

(Cleaned up more and Carnage's arm has been repositioned into more a defensive pose.)

(And the digital inking begins.)

(Digital inking for the figures nearly done.)

(Here we join the coloring process nearly completed.)

(And now we have the finished product!)

And, just so you know, the battle continues over at...

OUTCAST STUDIOS

THE DARK SIDE CHRONICLES VI: IT SHOULD HAVE BEEN IV

Looking back, I noticed that I neglected to post the previous DARKSEID battle in which the dark god shows up in DORMAMMU'S DARK DIMENSION...

(Don't forget to click for a better look)

Loose pencil layout...

Final digitally inked rough...