Going into the last day of the con, I still felt pretty good, but didn't have a lot of events I wanted to hit. I took a speculative took at Magic events on the day, then decided against burning my time on any of those (especially since I plan on doing that in late August). Following another Ulster Fry (hurrah for meat, another meat, a third meat, a fourth meat, eggs, beans, toast, and a slice of fried tomato) I immediately went for the Exhibit Floor. This was my "buying a handful of cheap trades" day, including almost the entire current line of trades from Virgin Comics. I've been curious about Virgin Comics' line, but as always, am not a fan of picking up individual issues.
I also picked up some other books I've been wanting to read. I expect I'll have reviews in the next few weeks as I read my way through new stuff.
Other than a whole lot of hiking around, only one panel enticed me into the meeting rooms. That was Cover Story: Art of the Cover, led by Mark Evanier. Much more on that panel, with notes and pictures, in the extended.
The basic format of Cover Story was Mark Evanier and his laptop showing off pictures of covers by the invited artists, then asking them to talk about those covers. Notably, the covers were picked by Evanier, and the artists didn't know which ones they'd be seeing. Just as notably, not all of the covers were necessarily good. I came into the cover art panel a little late, so I missed any covers from Linsner's work.
A recurring theme throughout the entire panel was just how problematic certain design constraints of covers can be. Repeat offenders include the UPC bar code, the logo for the comic, the little "corner logo" that used to be more common, and inability to control the overall layout of the cover.
J.H. Williams
This Promethea cover was intended to be Warhol-esque, while still containing storytelling features related to the content of the actual issue. It was done as a collage. Some digital work was done on the individual picture of the Painted Doll (the villain whose face is repeated on the cover), but then the copied images were individually collaged together to form the picture. Williams notes that this was before he ever owned Photoshop.
The UPC was used as a design element here, recalling the placement of the UPC on a can of Campbell's soup (again, referring to the Warhol-style pop-culture art approach).
This is Williams' "least favorite" Promethea cover. He felt it reflected the severe lack of planning involved in the creation of Promethea, and that it was both over-colored and too busy.
This cover contains no black, and was meant to be poster-esque. Williams chose to make the two villains in the issues nearly symbolic, circling Superman more like metaphors than actual characters. One of the other creators (possibly Wagner?) mentioned that montage covers work on first, second, and third looks. In other words, this cover succeeds because you initially notice Superman, then do a second take and suddenly realize that those colors around him are two more characters.
Williams hates the "Peril of the Parasites" text, and thinks it ruins the composition. One of the other panelists agreed, saying that it makes him wonder "Why is Superman holding a red sign that says 'parasites'?" Williams said this is why he insists on total control over cover design.
This was part of a set of five Weapon-X titles, so Williams gave all five covers similar designs -- one larger character, one smaller inset box showing a different character. He didn't design the logo, but was allowed to place it. Mark Evanier noted that the UPC was incorporated into the design (and as a trivia point, you can have any color except blue in the UPC, because blue screws up the scanners).
Matt Wagner
Matt Wagner hates the normal monthly Batman logo, because it includes Batman in the logo. As a consequence, he appears twice on every cover, which totally screws up the focus. Thus, Wagner asked to be able to design his own logo for this book (in this case, basing it on logos used to advertise 30s and 40s horror movies).
When he's doing a cover, he traces the logo, copies that tracing a bunch of times, and then does quick sketches on those copied sheets. This lets him know how the final product will look.
I like this cover a lot.
"It's okay," is Wagner's official word on this one. He colored it via the blue line process, which uses acetate overlays and is now completely out of date and no longer used. For the texturing on the statue (the thing the Demon is standing on) he dabbed acrylic on until it was chunky like stucco. For the lightning bolt, he sprayed at an angle with an airbrush, effectively giving a "halo" effect on the sides of the bolt.
"There's nothing special about Jesus in comic books." -- A panelist, remarking on how often comics characters are resurrected.
This was the cover for the relaunching of the until-then-dead-for-a-while Green Arrow. Wagner started with a cover showing a scraggly Green Arrow, but this felt like too much of a spoiler for the actual surprise ending of the issue. That cover was bumped to issue two, and he instead tried to do something "Evocative and iconic," that would say "Green arrow without saying Oliver Queen."
This is the cover for a double-feature issue of Grendel Tales. The lead story is by a writer who's a former Anglican priest, thus the religious look. Wagner chose to use colors to separate the two stories (compare left and right images). To accentuate the lights of the stained glass windows, he made the leading (the lines between panes of stained glass) with a cake decoration tip filled with acrylic -- that makes very, very solid lines.
"I hate that God damn logo." -- Wagner, on the logo to this comic.
Wagner got to do the cover and choose what story he was doing in the issue, so he went with Spider-Man and Wolverine and did a classic take on the superhero team-up cover, with both heroes literally in the spotlight.
"Oh shit." -- Wagner, recalling this cover as a cover for an awful movie.
Mark Evanier thought the texture on the arms sold this cover. He also pointed out that the UPC actually covers Wagner's name credit on the picture, which is just sad.
Rowena
Rowena had trouble recalling this one, until one of the other panelists said that they thought this was on a Moorcock book in the U.S. Given that the image is oddly cropped and somewhat bleached out, Rowena said she thought this one might be a bootleg.
A cover for an issue of Heavy Metal magazine. She had a lot of freedom on this one. The sole requirement was that the girl had to have very large breasts. The woman in the picture is a model Rowena used for five years, until the model married a very rich man and left New York.
Mark asked if she used the (large) Heavy Metal logo when she did her composition. She said that she just knew that it took "X amount of space at the top," and that the whole process was "Very cut and dried." When asked about reference for fantastic creatures, she said she had pictures of fish, reptiles, and so forth. When asked about the distinctive pallet on this picture (yellow and purple sky) she said that "Probably it was 4am and I didn't know what I was doing."
Of all the artists, Rowena was the only one who sounded purely jaded and not at all enthusiastic about her work.
She said she's done many portraits, and really liked Aasimov, because his face was easy to paint. Aasimov, however, was very reluctant to pose, so she mainly worked off of news clippings.
"Yeah, I hate that one."
"Why?"
"Because I hate babies."
She dislikes painting babies and finds it hard, so for this one, she looked at how Peter Paul Rubens painted babies.
She used a lot of Indian structural and religious components in here. After the fact, she worried that she might be offending people by sticking a largely naked fashion model on a Hindu deity's lap.
This was one of her few digital editing jobs. The Pegasus originally had a rider, but it looked wrong, so she cropped him out, then swapped in a unicorn from another picture using Photoshop, to cover the guy's leg. She said that people don't like her unicorns because they're too muscular.
Joe Jusko
This was a one-day painting.
Mark Evanier noted that this book had a terrible logo. Jusko added that the painting faded when it was printed on the cover, and that the stupid little square in the left corner once again adds the problem of "same character twice on the same cover." This was a vestigial trait of racking -- these days, you don't need a little bit of the left corner to help people see what comics are what.
Adam Hughes liked how this title was "everything Conan's ever been called."
"It was 19. I had no idea how to paint." -- Jusko, describing this cover.
Jusko also mentioned that this cover was meant to be "topical." Thus, the Hulk came out as a defender of nuclear power (since he's benefited so much from it...).
Mark Evanier: "Notice how the UPC symbol completely destroys the depth of the cover."
Jusko: "No. What destroys the cover is the painting."
He'd been painting for just a year when he did this cover. He said that he's lucky painted covers were uncommon when he started, or he wouldn't have succeeded, as bad as he was at the time.
He likes this book, as it's very different from his normal work. Others on the panel agreed, saying that if you put this up next to his other work, you wouldn't think it was part of the same set.
The basic story of this book is that Dorothy and Alice are called back to Oz and Wonderland as adult women. Jusko had this to say about what's shown on the cover:
"In the actual book, Dorothy reverts to age ten. On the cover, we wanted to emphasize that it's the adult women, so we have a grown-up woman in a fetish Dorothy dress."
On this cover, Jusko got to paint over John Buscema's layout. This is the cover for an issue featuring all splash pages -- this was the original last page. Buscema for some reason didn't like it and drew another final page. Given the chance to nab the discarded art, Jusko grabbed the original layout and painted over it to make the cover.
Adam Hughes notes that this is a "great example of a logo working in harmony" with the cover image.
This is one of his favorite covers. He wanted something iconic, more like a poster. It took just three days, and kind of "painted itself." He sketched it, shot pics of the model, and painted.
Jusko cites this as an example of the benefits of a female EIC. He wanted a non G-string Vampirella shot for a change, something that recalled the glamor of the original character, and not modern versions where she's "more of a hooker than a heroine."
This cover ran without a logo. In fact, it was available as a "virgin" cover, sold with no cover copy of any kind.
Adam Hughes
Adam refers to this as his "pimplicker cover." The idea was to have an image that reflected a darkier, edgier girl experiencing schizophrenia (properly MPD, from the look of things). He was told to be as edgy as possible, handed in the sketch, and was told to "stop being as edgy as possible."
He mentioned that editors like to feel like they control something. In this case, he was told that he could go with his cover idea, as long as the woman's tongue was actually touching the man's forehead.
"So it's less obscene if her tongue's touching him? Okay. Good call."
(In the original sketch, she was just sticking her tongue out in the guy's direction.)
Mark Evanier really liked this one, because he could really feel the connection between the characters.
Adam said that everyone's worked on those "any job" assignments, but sometimes you get these "things you love" covers. He is a huge Firefly/Serenity fan, and said "I knew the characters inside and out." With nine characters (or ten, counting Serenity), the cover could be a real mess, so he was happy to be allowed to just show Inara and Mal.
This was a Superman Returns prequel book. There were four covers, each in a different primary color. Adam said he did them all in a month to pay for an operation for his girlfriend. He agreed that the tangent formed by the word "Prequel" is a little bad. For all these covers, the placement of the Superman logo and associated text meant he had a "V' to work on with the actual art.
It's a really busy cover by dint of all the text.
This was a standout cover for Adam. Although some people don't like the "girls chatting" image with Wonder Woman and Lois, Adam really wanted to do a "happy" Wonder Woman cover, since she's angry all the time on all her covers. As another panelist said, "Whenever I see Superman hovering overhead with his eyes glowing red, I think 'That's a villain!'"
Great panel. I think I need to hit more of Mark's panels next year.