Wayback Wednesdays: Superman Cover

In my third year of classes at the Joe Kubert School of Cartoon and Graphic Art, we had a class taught by Joe himself. One of our assignments was to do five pages from a comic, as well as a cover. I decided to do a Superman book.

Big surprise, right?

I've got the interiors somewhere, but I couldn't dig them up. What sticks out in my mind was the cover. I got this idea to impose two characters over a three-point perspective background. This was back in my George Perez crazy detail phase.

Backgrounds weren't my favorite thing, and while I understood perspective, using it in a panel always seemed to trip me up. So, I drew a complicated background on a separate sheet of tracing paper, and blew it up to ink it. But, when I made it larger and put the characters in front of it, I thought it looked cool as it was.

But, the assignment was to ink the cover, so I inked the background on a sheet of vellum. When I showed it to Joe, he said "You know, the pencilled version looks better. I'd keep that" So I went back to the enlarged pencils.

Happy accidents, I guess.

What always got me about this assignment was some fellow classmate who didn't like the cover. He said he didn't like those tight three point perspective covers where the buildings were so close to each other that there was no room for streets or anything. I thought it worked. In fact, I had ideas of drawing stock backgrounds like this and dropping flying characters on top of them.

So I was surprised and a little validated when I saw DC do a series of covers for the Superman books featuring the same idea just a couple months later. (And no, in no way am I suggesting DC borrowed my idea. They never would have seen it. It was more, as noted philosopher David Addison once said "Mediocre minds think alike.") I can only find one of the covers online, so my memory may be off. But I'm pretty sure that all the Superman books that month used that idea.

Zuda Zuda Zuda

I've been working with Bill Williams of Lone Star Press for years now. So, one day, he comes to me and says "You want to pitch something for Zudacomics?"

For those of you not in the know, Zudacomics is DC Comics' online webstrip portal. They run a competition, kind of like American Idol without the cloying backstories and makeovers. Every month, it's a new competition. And this month, Bill and I are competing.

So, click to read The Urban Adventures of Melvin Blank. Bill wrote it, and I drew it. Here's the official description:

Melvin Blank has the mind of a child and the strength of a brute. After the passing of his parents, he lives in his Mother’s house in the heart of a big decaying city. He works as a dishwasher at a nearby greasy spoon and he has his urban adventures as he travels to and from work. Melvin thinks its hilarious that the mass transit system he rides, the City Area Rapid Transit System, is called "the CART", but he doesn't understand why a nearby diner is called "Joe Mama's". In a world of grays, Melvin sees things in black and white. Good and bad. Day and night. Cereal and pizza.
Melvin is pretty sure that the house down the street is haunted, but don't worry, he plans to do something about it. He is in love with a beautiful co-worker who has an abusive boyfriend, for now. He is selling items from his parent’s estate to pay for an elaborate headstone for the pair. At home, he has an angry cat named SOCKS and he never, ever misses SPACE PATROL RANGER. Melvin is absolutely sure that he is living the American Dream and he wants to share it with the rest of the people in his neighborhood whether they like it or not.
The first story is a complete eight screen story. It has a beginning, middle, and an end. Melvin is like that, he likes things simple.

We've created the strip. That was the easy part. Now we have to rock the vote. Well, you have to rock the vote. You can only vote once per person, so despite having a long line of dead Irish relatives, I've used up my one. It's your turn. Vote for us! We promise a webstrip in every pot! Two webstrips in every garage.

But please, check it out and vote!