Typically the direct working relationship - me taking his script and drawing it - is done on my own in my studio. But by the time I’ve gotten the script from him we’ve already talked a ton about the story and the themes and characters we’re working with, so I’m not starting from nothing, if that makes sense. It’s a fluid, organic process and the actual work of drawing the pages from his script is only one part of the whole.
As it turns out I moved back to Texas about a year ago to be closer to family, but while I lived in Portland we’d have regular get togethers with a lot of comics folks who lived in town. It was a great opportunity for us to talk shop and brainstorm and you’d be surprised how many projects start with a random joke or conversation over dinner.
I miss seeing all those folks - Brian, Kelly Sue DeConnick, Matt Fraction, Mike Oeming, Kevin Maguire, David Walker, Greg Rucka, (I even convinced Nick Derington, an old pal, to move up). But Brian and I and a few of the others text almost every day.
Focusing specifically on my work for DC, there are a few that stand out. I’ve already mentioned characters like Black Adam, Black Canary and Naomi. I especially love drawing young characters so Naomi offers some contrast from the rest of the team (buncha old fogies lol). Similarly for Brian and my story in Detective 1027 I really enjoyed drawing Damian (Robin), as well as the rest of the bat-family. And recently I convinced Ben Abernathy, the Batman editor, to let me draw a Batman and Grifter cover. I’m an old school WildCATs fan and Grifter may be my favorite character ever, so that was a blast.
When answering another question I mentioned that I got to do a redesign for Hippolyta that shows up a bit later in the story - really happy with how it turned out, too
it was both really tough and really easy, even if that doesnt make sense at first. For me Black canary is always about the tights and the leather jacket and I wanted to keep that iconic design in place while also giving her a prominent logo/symbol like most of the rest of the team has. It’s not easy to try to thread the needle and have something look both timeless and fresh. I really like how the design came out and I hope y’all do too!
Right? That’s the 1st behind the scenes work ever presented during a Q & A. That’s the closest I’ll ever come to sitting in an artist’s studio during the process.
Ha, I’d probably be a teacher or a lawyer. Before I got into doing art professionally I was on track first for a graduate degree in political science. Bailed on that and was going to be a highschool teacher, then went on to be a test prep tutor for a few years (SAT, GRE, LSAT, MCAT,etc). But all my notebooks were always full of Batman sketches, so you can tell where my heart really was