Recommended Reading

Bob Thompson of The Washington Post has written probably the most comprehensive and best-sourced article I've ever read about the rise of graphic novels, what they are, and "what it all means." He interviewed anyone who's anyone in the business (though it's curious that he wrote about preparing to interview Pantheon's Chip Kidd--who was responsible for one of the most delightful evenings of my life--but I don't think mentioned or quoted him subsequently).

Thompson comes at it from an interesting perspective, that of a self-described Prose Guy earnestly trying to figure out what the fuss is all about. He avoids most of the easy journalistic cliches such as "Gee, comics aren't just for kids anymore!"--Thompson already knew that--and comes to appreciate the skill and talent involved in the best graphic novels while still feeling that they maybe aren't quite his cup of tea. I thought it was a unique and honest approach.

The long article starts here; you may have to register (free) on the Washington Post website to enter, although I was able to access it directly. And don't miss the best part, a three-page comic written by Thompson and drawn by Jonathan Bennett illustrating the article's highlights. Here's a sample panel:

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Once in a while I do a convention panel or am asked a question about The Rise of the Graphic Novel. The problem is, my perspective is so narrow and the field so large that it's hard to grasp it and really come up with something insightful to say. I think that's true for most writers and artists: they know their little corner of the universe but don't or can't focus on the big picture. As one Prose Guy's attempt to figure it out, I think this article is a very interesting, informative, and worthwhile read..

CMYK and Trapping

I'm rerunning a post below on the topic of "trapping" that I originally wrote in August 2005, when it came up while we were readying Mom's Cancer for press. It's an apt time for this particular rerun because it's trapping time again with Whatever Happened to the World of Tomorrow? But first some foundation....

Most books with color art are printed in CMYK, whose letters stand for cyan, magenta, yellow and black (I believe the "K" actually stands for "key color"--which is always black). When printed in various intensities, those four inks can make most (but not all) other colors. For example, equal amounts of yellow and magenta make red. Cyan plus yellow is green, magenta plus cyan is purple, etc.

The next voice you hear will be me from three years ago. Ah, I was so young and innocent then....

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"Trapping" is an obscure but interesting part of the pre-press process. In CMYK printing each color of ink is printed separately, one after the other, so that a page actually goes through the press four times. If the paper lines up perfectly with each pass, all the colors align and you get perfect registration. Very often, though, if you look at four-color printing closely enough, you can see that the inks are just a bit off. You'll see a colored halo on one side, or colors slopping out of their black boundaries, or a gap where colors don't meet up.

Good registration (left) and bad (right)

Trapping helps minimize registration problems by spreading out the non-black colors a few pixels wherever they meet a black line. That way, even if registration is a little bit off, they still have some "wiggle room" to overlap as intended. With Photoshop, trapping is as easy as pushing a button (I can't imagine how anyone did it pre-digitally, or whether they bothered at all). Coincidentally, a private cartoonists' board I frequent just had a long discussion about trapping.

That discussion came in handy when I got word late last week that the printer wasn't happy with my color registration. It wasn't coming out right. Not lining up. Within half a second I realized the problem: no trapping. When I submitted my final image files to Abrams they were trapless. Trap-free. Bereft of trap. My trapping had shuffled off this mortal coil, run down the curtain, and joined the choir invisible. The subject never came up and I never thought to ask. My bad.

So I spent a few hours this morning speedily trapping the 26 color pages scattered throughout Mom's Cancer. I envisioned the overseas printer tapping his toe, glancing nervously at his watch, paying overtime while the presses waited in idle silence for my upload.

Assuming my trapping worked, I should have first proofs to review in a few days. Next book, I'm hiring a high school kid to take care of this.

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Me back in the present again (old and cynical). I learned a lot from my mistakes on Mom's Cancer, which might have made me a little cocky going into WHTTWOT. What I've realized, of course, is that now I have whole new opportunities to make entirely different mistakes. Despite my threat above, I did not hire any high school kids to do my trapping this time. However, I did hire some college kids to--but that's a subject for a future post.

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A Big, Satisfying Milestone

Fifteen minutes ago I drew the final inky jot on the final page of Whatever Happened to the World of Tomorrow? That doesn't mean my work is finished. I still have hours and days and weeks of coloring, correcting, cutting, pasting, editing, rewriting, and Photoshoppin' to do. I still don't expect to get a lot of sleep or surface for air for a while. Still, completing the ink-and-paper drawing is a goal I've been working toward a long time and reaching it feels like a real accomplishment.

My final page is not the last page of the book, by the way. I didn't do them in order. The page I just finished and still have lying face down in my scanner is Page 162. Remember that and check it out in five or six months. It's a good one!

Each page of a 200-page book represents 0.5% of the total. I kept a running tally in my mind. I remember how daunting it was to be at 1%, 2%, 5%. I remember being 20%, 50%, 80% done. The day before yesterday I was at 99%. Today: 100%.

Wahooo! Now, back to work.
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The Olympics

I like the Olympics. I'm still idealistic enough to think they're a little more than just another athletic event, which I wouldn't usually care a whit about. I'm a sucker for the parade of nations. And the theme music can still give me goosebumps. I am a sap.

The first one I have any memory of is 1968 (Bob Beamon!), and by 1972 I watched them avidly (Dave Wottle! Mark Spitz!). My sister Brenda and I still tell the story of our parents taking us on vacation during the '72 Games--which would've been swell, except their idea of vacation was renting a house on the northern California coast with no television. Which still would've been swell except, you know, the Olympics were on! So while our parents were downstairs enjoying their silent coastal solitude, Brenda and I were crouched in a loft with a pair of binoculars, taking turns watching the Games on TV through the window of another house fifty yards away.

I've been enjoying this year's Olympics well enough, though NBC's programming choices puzzle and annoy me. How many hours of beach volleyball quarterfinal eliminations do they think we want to see? I'm not yet convinced it's even a sport. I keep expecting to see a bonfire and beer keg at courtside. The coverage is also awfully heavy on gymnastics and swimming. Michael Phelps is an amazing athlete, but as he stocks his pantry with gold medals I keep thinking about the poor schlub from Ukraine swimming three lanes away whose single bronze medal will be the highlight of his life and who deserves to go home justifiably proud of being one of the best in the world, but you know all anyone will ever ask is what it's like to lose to the great Phelps. I guess this just wasn't his decade to try a swimming career.

My main disappointment in the TV coverage has been not seeing the less popular events that only percolate up to public attention every four years. Would it kill the network to show us 20 minutes of badminton, judo, or trampoline (yes! It's an event!)? Fortunately, we have the Internet, and in contrast to NBC's television coverage, its online coverage is comprehensive and excellent. Although I ought to be working, I just watched 15 minutes of archery eliminations online, with no commercials or commentary--just two guys taking turns shooting arrows at their targets. It was terrific.

My girls and I like archery. They got interested in it as counselors at Girl Scout camp, where they had to be trained and certified to run the archery range. They've got their own bows and it looked like so much fun I got one as well (in my August 11 post, you can see it lying on top of my desk). We're not good or fancy--we don't belong to a club or have all the counterweights and doo-dads dangling off our modest equipment--but it's a nice thing to do together once in a while. Sometimes when I'm home working in the middle of the day, I'll go out back and shoot a couple of flights just to breathe fresh air and blow off some steam. I find it very meditative. And it's fun to see how the real Olympic archers do it.

Now back to work, for as long I can resist the online allure of obscure athletic competition.
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Continuing Coverage

I inaugurated my new blog by showing what I teasingly described as part of the new book's cover:

All right. So picture that in hardcover ... then wrap it in a paper dust jacket that looks like this:


And you get something that looks a little bit like:



This is only approximate. We've already made a few changes since putting this version together, but this is the concept. Pretty cool, huh? This is how book editors and designers earn their pay.

In contrast to my experience designing a cover for Mom's Cancer, we arrived at this pretty quickly and easily. We had this basic idea and one other very different one, but didn't spend a lot of time brainstorming other options. Everyone liked both contenders from the start and we ended up going with my favorite, so I'm very happy.

Covers are important. They need to convey something about the book's content, but their essential purpose is advertising. "Pick me up, check me out, carry me to the register!" From my perspective, writing the rest of the book doesn't involve anyone except me and Editor Charlie, a relationship that can feel fairly private and intimate. However, the cover is a whole big fat hairy deal that involves a separate Cover Committee and everyone else with an opinion all the way to the top of the food chain. I think it's not unusual for authors to have very little say in how their covers turn out, sometimes to their great chagrin. One of the nicer aspects of working with Charlie and Abrams has been their willingness--even eagerness--for my input on decisions like this.

We're still working on the back. And I haven't even mentioned the silver ink yet.

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I Keep the Oompa Loompas in the Closet

This is where the MAGIC! happens: the spare bedroom of a regular ol' house that has served as my office for about ten years now. That explains the mess. I took these pictures just now without cleaning up or staging anything. My wife Karen will be overjoyed.

The first photo is of my rolltop desk, where I draw. Amber the Simple Cat is pre-warming one of the room's two chairs; when I need one of them, she hops over to the other. I wrote about this desk and provided a key to the drawers' contents a while ago, and not much has changed since. The comic strip on top of the desk at upper left is the "Pogo" daily I got at Comic-Con International last month. It'll soon be framed and on my wall. The U.S. flag behind it covered my grandfather's casket. Atop the desk at the right is the bronze "Momo" statue I received when Mom's Cancer won the Deutscher Jugendliteraturpreis, and the sharp-eyed may spot various car models and reference materials I'm using for Whatever Happened to the World of Tomorrow? scattered about.

The red box behind the chair is piled high with original pages from WHTTWOT waiting to be filed, while on the left side of the desk under the roll of white tape is a stack of blank Bristol board pages waiting to be drawn on. Sometimes I feel like one of those New Math "function machines" that receives an input from the left, turns the f(x) crank a while, and deposits an output on the right. The green box on the floor holds the originals from Mom's Cancer. Leaning against the desk beside the chair is my drawing board.

This space really ought to have better lighting--probably one of those big fluorescent architect's lamps perched right on top of the desk shining down onto my drawing board. I really should have a better chair, too. In fact, the ergonomics of this entire set-up are terrible, what with me all hunched over and squinting like Bob Cratchit after one of Scrooge's rants about the high cost of lamp oil and coal. But I did Mom's Cancer here and am almost done drawing WHTTWOT without noticeable harm. Maybe I'll fix it up properly for my next book (heh!).

The other half of the magic(!) happens here, three feet away, on the computer. The binder is open to the spreadsheet I described in my last post and contains my working draft of WHTTWOT. Barely visible at left is a Mustek scanner that can handle pages up to about 12 x 17 inches, thus saving me hours I once spent stitching several small scans into fewer big ones. I rarely recommend or endorse anything, but I don't mind mentioning the Mustek because it's the only affordable large-format scanner I ever found and has performed flawlessly for me. I've got a respectably large flat-screen monitor (thanks Karen!) and a smallish Wacom tablet. The keyboard is on a sliding tray I built into this simple student desk we've had for 25 years (since we were, well, students). The springy Santa hat behind the monitor sits on the end of my little Newtonian telescope.

It occurs to me that this looks like a lot of stuff. However, it's also been accumulating a long time. Very occasionally, someone asks me about the materials needed to be a cartoonist and it really is this simple: paper and something that leaves a mark on it. Or, these days, a computer and whatever tools and programs allow you to draw pictures with it (I've seen webcomics done using a mouse and Microsoft Paint).

It truly is one of the most economical and egalitarian fields a person could go into. It doesn't matter what you look like, how old or young you are, how much education you have, or where you live. I could set you up with everything you need to be a professional cartoonist for less than $30. After that, all that matters is your skill, your effort, and the quality of your ideas.

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Journey of a Thousand Miles

Yikes!

I use a spreadsheet to keep track of my work on WHTTWOT (which my friend Otis Frampton pointed out is a pretty cool acronym). The image above captures about half of it. I find this absolutely essential, particularly since I don't necessarily write or draw the pages in order.

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Each row represents a page, with columns indicating where it is in the process: scripted, penciled, inked, colored, etc. When I finish a step, I put an "X" in that cell. I also print out hard copies of the pages and snap them into a binder, each scrawled with notes and sketches reminding me what to revise, repair, or do next. In addition, I've got three other binders with several hundred pages of research and reference that are always open and scattered across my office floor. It's quite a logistical undertaking.

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What provoked the "yikes" was the realization that, with 208 pages and several columns, just keeping track of it all will probably involve a couple thousand data points representing an equal number of individual steps by the time I'm done.

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I have a lot of respect for anyone who tackles a project like this. Even if the result is the worst book ever written and drawn (and the verdict won't be in on mine until next spring), its creator still sat down in front of a blank sheet of paper one day and laid down the first line on the first page, fully knowing he or she had a long way to go. It's quite a commitment, even an act of faith. I feel a real affinity for that person, which makes it hard for me to criticize even the most heinous, useless, talentless work. So I don't.

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Digital Art, with Blood

Thanks for all the public and private response to my announcement of Whatever Happened to the World of Tomorrow?, and especially to my buddy Mike Lynch, who mentioned this new blog on his more popular blog. Mike's a good man and, even rarer, someone who actually makes a living as a cartoonist. Those two qualities make him my hero.

I've realized I face two problems blogging about this book. One is punctuation: what to do with the question mark at the end of the title? As in that opening sentence above, typing a question mark followed by a comma makes my writerly eyes burn, but I can't think of a better way to handle it. Ordinarily, when you get to a question mark, a sentence is done. But not around here, my friend! We break all the rules!

Second problem: I'd love to write about what I'm doing but don't want to show too many examples yet. We've got a long time before the book comes out. Still, some readers like information about the cartooning process, so let me take a wordy stab at it today.

In our digital era, I'm a proud analog cartooning dinosaur. If ink and paper were good enough for Winsor McCay and Walt Kelly, they're good enough for me. I find drawing by hand much more satisfying and pleasant than sitting at a computer. However, I'm not a stubborn Luddite about it. When digital techniques make the job faster, easier and, most important, better, I'm happy to adopt them. Also, I think we've reached a point when even the most traditional cartoonist has to be adept with tools such as Photoshop. Editors and publishers don't want you to send them a piece of paper, they want a digital file ready to import into a layout. (I think single-panel magazine cartooning might still be an exception; Lynch would know.)

When I did Mom's Cancer, what got printed on the page was pretty much what I drew. I penciled, inked, and hand-lettered each page. I used Photoshop mostly for clean-up chores that once would have been done with rubber cement and white paint. As I described in a blog post back in March 2007, I did do some computer composing and editing on Mom's Cancer so that, for example, there is not really a single original drawing of the cover artwork, just pieces that were digitally assembled into the cover.

This time around, I've gone a bit more high-tech. Almost everything is still penciled (in light blue pencil), inked with India ink using brushes and nibs, then scanned into the computer. On Mom's Cancer, that might have been the end of it; on World of Tomorrow, it's just the beginning.

This time, I'm lettering with a computer font of my own printing. In fact, I made the font myself (using FontCreator 5.5 as recommended by my best-selling friend Jeff Kinney) by sampling letters from Mom's Cancer. An insane person armed with a magnifying glass could read my first book and find the very letters used in the second. I went digital for a few reasons: I've never been particularly happy with my lettering, considering it adequately workmanlike at best.

(I am also using some professional comic fonts in World of Tomorrow, but for very particular purposes.)

Another reason for using a font is that it makes editing infinitely easier. Moving, resizing, rewording, rewriting, adding or deleting text that's been done directly on the original artwork is a nightmare. When the text is digital and kept on a separate "layer" from the artwork, it's almost as simple as typing. (Explanation for non-Photoshoppers: the program lets you layer different image elements on top of each other without affecting layers underneath, like placing different pictures in a collage; then, if you need to change one piece, you can do so without affecting the other layers.) The challenge when drawing the art, then, is leaving enough space and flexibility to allow for the words plus whatever rejiggering might be needed later.

I'm much more comfortable with Photoshop now than when I did Mom's Cancer, and when it comes to deciding between "having a cool piece of original art when I'm done" versus "getting a better-looking page done as efficiently as possible" I choose the latter. More pages of this book are composed of separate elements that I draw by hand but assemble as electrons. For example, I just talked to the Abrams art director this morning about the World of Tomorrow's cover, and we're going to move something a half inch to the right. If that element had been part of the original background drawing that task would be very difficult, but because it's on its own layer I can do it in two minutes. I'm trying to think ahead and be smart about this stuff.

I was going to write about coloring, which is digital on both Mom's Cancer and World of Tomorrow and which I think I am also handling smarter this go-round, but will save that for another time--when I may also write about hiring my first assistants ever.

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In "too much information" news, I nicked the dickens out of my nose while shaving this morning and am still bleeding like the Black Knight. "'Tis but a flesh wound!" I have no idea what the razor was doing on my nose. Evidently I shave like a drunk waving around a broken beer bottle in a bar fight. I am in fact at an age when hair has begun to sprout from ever newer and more exciting places, and some mornings are a Kafkaesque adventure in discovering what new Hobbity creature I've metamorphosized into overnight. But it's not growing from the tip of my nose. Yet.
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Post Post

Cool! I hoped a good picture of the Abrams ComicArts panel at Comic-Con would turn up, and here's one today from the Publishers Weekly website:

Calvin Reid, Charlie Kochman, Denis Kitchen, Craig Yoe, Jordan Crane, Jaime Hernandez and yours truly. So many creative people, none of whom could think of a better pose than lining up against a wall.

Someone I know read my previous post and said she found it surprisingly subdued for a big announcement I've been waiting so long to make. She may be right. I'll try to use more exclamation points.

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I am excited about this book! I am passionate about my subject, I believe I've got some nifty ideas and a novel way of communicating them, and I can't wait to show it to you! I am truly proud of the thought and effort Abrams and I are dedicating to make Whatever Happened to the World of Tomorrow? very special in both content and form! I have never worked this hard on anything in my life! I wake up every morning with terrific new details to add, and go to sleep every night praying it doesn't suck!

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Maybe that last part should've been more subdued....

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Just wanted to post the photo and I'm overdue at the drawing board. More soon.

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Welcome to the World of Tomorrow

Thanks for coming! When we left my old blog, I promised details about my upcoming second book, Whatever Happened to the World of Tomorrow?, which I've been stealthily working on for quite a while. That's part of the cover above, just finalized last week. "Part?" Yep. More about that later.

I think this'll be fun. One of the reasons I started the "Mom's Cancer Blog" was to write about the process of getting a book written and published. I enjoyed that, and now I get to do it again. But why so secretive?

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My publisher's main reason was that they wanted World of Tomorrow to anchor the first slate of books published under their new imprint, Abrams ComicArts, and wanted to announce both the books and the imprint together. That happened at a Comic-Con panel on Saturday afternoon. Also on the panel--artfully moderated by Publishers Weekly's Calvin Reid, who was a real champion of Mom's Cancer--were Denis Kitchen, Craig Yoe, Jaime Hernandez, Jordan Crane, and Editor Charlie Kochman. There's a press release about all our projects below.

This is what it looks like to be on a panel at Comic-Con. This was half the room and we pretty much filled the whole place, to at least my surprise. That Joker dude toward the back left was creepy: he was a really big guy and he was asleep, which made him look mostly dead. Wish I had a photo of the panel itself but, well, I was on it. Maybe someone else will send me one.

My main reason for keeping mum was that it took a long time to get a contract in place, and I'm insecure enough that I expected my publisher to realize they'd made a horrible mistake and cancel the whole thing at any moment. In my mind, I didn't have a book until I had a book deal, and I couldn't think of much greater humiliation than blabbing about writing a book for a year and then watching it evaporate.

I'll give more details about the book in posts to come. Here's the basics: it's a 208-page graphic novel that'll be released in hardcover next spring. I'd classify it as "historical fiction" with a smattering of "magical realism." If I saw this book in a bookstore I would absolutely have to buy it, and we think there are a lot more where I came from. I'm not done writing and drawing it yet. I've got about a month to go, I'm working on it around the clock seven days a week, and Editor Charlie and I are still doing extensive shaping and polishing.

Here's what Whatever Happened to the World of Tomorrow? boils down to for me. Mom's Cancer was and is an amazing experience. It was a comic I was compelled to create, it got a response I never could have anticipated, and I don't expect to ever again write something with that impact. Some very nice things came from Mom's Cancer, including new friends, awards, and a second career I've sought since I was a child. However, I never forgot for a moment that whatever success I had with Mom's Cancer was built on my family's misery. To put it mildly, that made it tough to enjoy.

In contrast, no matter how well or poorly it sells, no matter how celebrated or neglected it is, Whatever Happened to the World of Tomorrow? is nothing but an unambivalent joy. No one got hurt in the making of this book. And I think it's going to be great!

Here's that press release. Much more later, and thanks again.

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Harry N. Abrams, Inc., Announces New Imprint: Abrams ComicArts

Harry N. Abrams, Inc., the preeminent publisher of illustrated books, announced the launch of Abrams ComicArts at a panel at the San Diego Comic-Con on Saturday, July 26. Abrams ComicArts will debut in spring 2009. The new list will focus on books about the legends and history of comic arts as well as new graphic novels and other cartoon-based material, and will be a sub-imprint of Abrams, known for high quality art, design, photography, fashion, nature, and architecture books.

This exciting new line will be overseen by Abrams senior vice president and publisher Steve Tager and executive editor Charles Kochman, who will acquire and edit new books, develop talent, and strategically shape the list, including the backlist. Initially ten to fifteen select new books a year are planned.

“Given our tradition of publishing the best visual material in book form, it seemed both logical and the right time for us—on the eve of our 60th anniversary—to again add to the definition of art in our program. Both Charlie’s editorial eye and Steve’s publishing sense make me confident that we’re well positioned to break new ground in categories that continue to grow in the channels we serve and those that are yet emerging. Abrams ComicArts will become one of the ways we reach both new audiences and our core constituencies while celebrating our history and, at the same time, creating a brave new world for readers, artists, and illustrators,” commented Michael Jacobs, Harry N. Abrams president and CEO.

Since the company’s inception in 1949, Harry N. Abrams, Inc., has identified and celebrated contemporary and groundbreaking art, championing burgeoning creative forms and presenting them to the public in beautifully produced, and authoritatively written illustrated books.

Steve Tager, senior vice president and publisher of Abrams, sees comics as a medium in line with photography, sculpture, and painting. “In 1973, Abrams published The Art of Walt Disney by Christopher Finch—which has sold over half a million copies and defined animation as fine art—presenting this work to the public and media as art. Since then, Abrams has published many important books on comics art, such as The Smithsonian Collection of Newspaper Comics by Bill Blackbeard, Krazy Kat: The Comic Art of George Herriman, and Marvel: Five Fabulous Decades of the World’s Greatest Comics by Les Daniels. Between our growing comics art backlist and the exciting new authors, artists, and books being developed, now is the right time to start an imprint and put them all under one roof in order to maximize the sales and marketing of this highly saleable category of books. Charlie’s editorial acumen and vision combined with Abrams’ phenomenal design and production capabilities positions Abrams ComicArts to be an industry leader.”

The driving force behind Abrams’ most recent comics and graphic novel acquisitions is executive editor Charles Kochman, editor of the #1 New York Times bestselling series Diary of a Wimpy Kid by Jeff Kinney, Mark Evanier’s Kirby: King of Comics, Mom’s Cancer by Brian Fies, Jon J Muth’s M, Nat Turner by Kyle Baker, and Wacky Packages with an introduction by Art Spiegelman.

“Abrams has a reputation that is synonymous with quality. I am excited to take my background in comics and combine it with Abrams’s ability to produce the best, most distinctive books in the market. Our debut list features comics legends and legendary contemporary artists, and also includes an amazing original graphic novel—each book produced in a format and package that is unique and appropriate for the project. But this list is only just the beginning of what we have in the works.”

The lead titles on Abrams ComicArts’ debut list include: The Art of Harvey Kurtzman: The Mad Genius of Comics by Denis Kitchen and Paul Buhle, designed by Jonathan Bennett; The Art of Jaime Hernandez: Secrets of Life and Death by Todd Hignite, designed by Jordan Crane; Secret Identity: The Fetish Art of Superman’s Co-creator Joe Shuster by Craig Yoe; and Whatever Happened to the World of Tomorrow? by Brian Fies. Other authors, artists, and future projects signed on include those by and about Joe Simon, Jack Kirby, Jules Feiffer, Rube Goldberg, Will Eisner, Jerry Robinson, Dan Nadel, Eric P. Nash, Françoise Mouly, Art Spiegelman, Jim Trombetta, Stuart Hample, and Woody Allen.

Abrams ComicArts and its debut list was a featured panel at the San Diego Comic-Con on July 26. Panel participants included Jordan Crane, Brian Fies, Jaime Hernandez, Denis Kitchen, Charles Kochman, and Craig Yoe.

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