Not too long ago, I was contacted by an online acquaintance about the possibility of doing some character design for an animated project that was in the beginning stages. The idea was to create an animated film that would feature Ringo Starr as a ‘secret agent’ type. Now, Ringo Starr has a very distinctive face, and so I thought it would be fun to work up a sketch or two– and it was indeed fun. I never heard anything about it afterward…. so it either didn’t get off the ground or it went on without me. Either way, I enjoyed it, and thought I’d share one with you here.

This is Entry 236.

Mike

I was reading a thread on a message board recently that asked folks to post their favorite SPIDER-MAN artists. The obvious– and admittedly well deserving– usual names were tossed into the ring: Steve Ditko, John Romita Sr. AND Jr., Todd McFarlane, Erik Larsen, Mark Bagley…. someone even mentioned Joe Maduriera because he drew SPIDER-MAN in an issue of UNCANNY X-MEN some years back. I see these lists of favorite SPIDER-MAN artists popping up quite often like brush fires on boards all over the comics fan community, and I very rarely see Ross Andru get the props he deserves. He certainly had huge shoes to fill in following up the Romita era on AMAZING…. and just as Romita rose to the challenge of following Ditko when he was called on to do so, Andru did a marvelous job on the title. He kept enough of the traditional look to make for a smooth transition– but he also put his own distinctive stamp on the character that has made an impression on ME even all these years later. Todd McFarlane was always given huge credit for creating so many wildly impossible poses for SPIDER-MAN but managing to make them work. Ross Andru did the same thing when he worked on the book. He put the character in some really wild poses that no one had managed to do up to that point. And there was a dangerous quality to his drawing style…. his bad guys looked CRAZY and very intimidating. You could certainly believe that when one of them was out to do SPIDER-MAN in, he meant it.

In a more dubious distinction– I have to also give major credit to Andru for drawing the book through some of the less….. special, let’s say…. periods of creative writing and character creation during his run. Anyone familiar with THE JACKEL and ROCKET RACER will know what I mean. And yet, he never wavered in his quality. His work made those less than stellar stories still highly enjoyable for me during that time.

And so with today’s sketch, I tried to do a sort of tribute to a Ross Andru SPIDER-MAN style…. and drawing those poses are nothing to sneeze at. I’m not sure I was all that successful. But I’ll always be grateful for Ross Andru and his great work on AMAZING SPIDER-MAN.

This is Entry 235.

Mike

I was planning on moving on from the ‘super gorilla’ drawings for a while…. maybe for a LONG while. However, after drawing the FLASH (non-gorilla version) a couple of posts back– almost immediately after I’d finished it, the image of him as a great ape, loping along at super-speed flashed in my mind and imagination. It’s like it was demanding to be drawn… and I never deny my imagination when it tells me to draw something. After mind-numbingly drawing what OTHER people tell me to draw almost all the time, I’m not likely to turn away my own subconscious when it presents me with an opportunity to do something -I- might want to do. I realize that Art Adams has already drawn FLASH as a gorilla… and I was attempting to stay away from any characters that he might have done in this manner…but this is one that I just couldn’t resist.

And thus, GORILLA FLASH.

This is Entry 234.

Mike

It was announced on the TOTHFANS forums Saturday that Alex Toth passed away while working at his drawing table– he was 78 years old. Toth was one of those comic book artists that are often referred to as an ‘artists artist’. He was revered by so many in the comic book artistic community. Toth had been very ill recently, and he was inundated with cards and letters from those who appreciated his work– something that according to his son, Eric, he seemed to be unaware of until the last couple of years of his life. He had been somewhat of a recluse in recent years and only communicated with select people via his famous ‘postcard letters’ that would often include sketches and doodles. He had garnered a reputation for being somewhat of a curmudgeon over the years… of having little patience for stories and art that he found lacking– that came up short, in his estimation, in either craft or content.

That’s because Alex Toth was an artist with a capital ‘A’.

It’s been said that Toth could say more with one line than most artists could with a hundred– and this is true. But his work was much more than an economy of line. Toth was a master of shadow and light… his work has a balance of black and white that is breathtaking. Seeing his art is like watching the best of noir film. Toth was an explorer with his work. A visual journey through the history of his output reveals that he was always striving to improve and coalesce– to refine– his work down to its essence. You can see in his early works the same roots/influences that begat other cartoonists such as Carmine Infantino, Mike Sekowski and Gil Kane. But Toth diverged at some point from those beginnings to create a visual language that he was always pushing toward something. I believe this is the core of the true artist. Most of us are nothing more than loiterers– happy to be where we are…. content to have the level of craft we’ve achieved and deathly afraid to move away from it. We fear that to change and/or grow would mean to alienate those who enjoy our work. Toth didn’t think in those terms. His sight was firmly fixed on the next level of achievement. It shows in the plethora of sketches that you can find posted all over the internet if you do a search on his name (and, wonderfully, you’ll also be able to own when DEAR JOHN– THE ALEX TOTH DOODLE BOOK is released in September by OCTOPUS PRESS– Jeff Parker’s publishing company). He was ever drawing– always sketching. I am reminded of something that Donald Early– a teacher of mine in art school– told me once during a conversation we were having. He related a story about Michaelangelo, on his death-bed, struggling with a little piece of clay, still obsessed– even at the end– with his quest for perfection. With Toth’s recent illness…. perhaps he felt that his time was short, I don’t know. But the idea that he passed away at the drawing table, still working– still searching for that thing that the true, obsessed artist looks for– is something that doesn’t surprise me.

He was an Artist.

You can find several books on Toth and his work if you search the web for them. Here’s a list of four that I own and cherish:
TOTH: BLACK AND WHITE
ALEX TOTH: BY DESIGN
TOTH– ONE FOR THE ROAD
ALEX TOTH

I don’t know if these books are still in print, or if they’re available at sites like Amazon.com– but you would be well served to do a Google search on these titles to see if you can scare them up. They collect just a small part of the brilliant works Toth has left us with. He was an original and we’re all so lucky to have his art to inspire and thrill us for all time.

This is Entry 233.

Mike

My first monthly (well, I say ‘monthly’… but I’ve never really been an actual monthly artist) assigment was the FLASH series at DC starting back in 1993 (yikes…. just seeing that date makes me feel old). I’ll say right up front that I wasn’t ready for a monthly assignment at the time. Other than sample pages, a mini series for a small publishing company and a couple of short stories for JUSTICE LEAGUE QUARTERLY, I’d never worked on something as daunting as a regular title. And it WAS very daunting. I was lucky in that my writer was Mark Waid and his stories were wonderful constructions to have to work with as a young artist. I’ve said in many interviews that Mark always challenges me with the kinds of things he asks me to draw. They’re always difficult to pull off (and I’ve had varying degrees of success)– but they’re always interesting. The thing about working with Mark on FLASH was that EVERYTHING he asked me to draw was challenging– but that’s because I’d had very little experience in drawing much of anything at the time. There’s nothing like being thrown into the crucible of working on a monthly title early on to make you grow and change as an artist. When I look at my first issue of FLASH I still cringe. I have to give a lot of thanks and credit to Brian Augustyn and Ruben Diaz (my editors on the book) for sticking with me and letting me learn and grow on the job. I also owe a lot to Mark Waid for being patient with me in butchering his terrific scripts early on– but not freaking out and asking for my head.

Now, FLASH is a character that I think I would like to revisit at some time. Maybe it’s the George Lucas in me, but I look back at those early issues, and I feel like making amends for them. I’d like to do at least a short run (no pun intended) on the book at some point to make up for those cruddy early efforts. The funny thing (or disheartening, depending on the mood I’m in at the time) is– I still meet folks at almost every show I go to that count my work on FLASH as their absolute favorite of mine. I feel as though I’ve grown immensely as an artist over the years since then– but I can see where their coming from. It’s fun to watch a new artist really learning on the job and watching them emerge. I’ve enjoyed that with many of my favorites I’ve watched since I first became a fan.

This is Entry 232.

Mike