Speaking purely for myself, while I’ve greatly enjoyed Kieron’s company on those too-few occasions when we’ve been able to meet up (he’s one of the only people I’ve ever met whose conversation contains – and needs – its own footnotes), and while I have an obvious fondness for a working class chancer who’s probably much too clever for his own good, regarding his work I think the most distinctive things about it are its relentless progressive momentum and the sense of effervescent colour – probably hot pink – that Kieron brings from his gaming and his music journalism background. There’s a lot of deceptively light-footed complexity in much of Kieron’s writing – I’m thinking now primarily of his weirdly symbiotic and merged collaborations with the excellent Jamie McKelvie, like PHONOGRAM and THE WICKED + THE DIVINE – where you can see a dance-like or musical sensibility creeping into the storytelling, a kind of fluorescence that he brings to his work from a dance culture that he’s grown up with and that I’m largely unfamiliar with in first-hand terms. I recall Brian Eno talking once about how despite his usage of it, he didn’t really like computer technology, because in his words there wasn’t “enough Africa” in the technology, by which I think he meant that it didn’t involve enough physical rhythm or ecstatic sway, something which I think Kieron’s best writing aspires to and reaches. He’s also possessed of an admirable range in his storytelling sensibilities, and effortlessly avoids using the same special effect twice or continually banging away thematically on a single note of the piano, for that way lies Frank Miller. Speaking of whom, Kieron’s breadth is such that he can move from an insightful riposte to the inane 300 in his splendid 3, through some perfectly-pitched YOUNG AVENGERS space-dust and some fit-inducing PHONOGRAM strobe effects, to the remarkable and probably gaming-influenced complexities of ÜBER, currently one of my very favourite comics, and a series to which I hope I have made a tiny but significant contribution that may be apparent in the long-awaited next arc. Anyway, I better stop now: Kieron has such a reticent, retiring and self-effacing personality that I’m sure he’ll be getting uncomfortable about all this well-deserved praise. Seriously, if you tell him you like his shoes he’ll more than likely blush, giggle, and run away to hide in the washroom until everybody’s gone. I just wish he could be more confident and outgoing. And not so fat.
Above: I recoloured that recent Wonder Woman cover Frank Miller did for DC last week. Mine on the left, DC’s on the right. I did this to demonstrate a theory I have that despite the general critical consensus, there’s actually nothing wrong with Frank Miller’s recent art- it’s just that DC don’t know how to treat it.
In January of this year I tried out to be a colourist for Frank Miller at DC. Not because being a colourist for the comics has always been my dream, or because I’m the world’s biggest Frank Miller fan, but because I kept seeing some pretty awesome drawings of his being critically savaged. He’s a good artist, but people were talking as if these recent drawings were the scrawlings of a lunatic. I felt like I needed to step in.
Below is one of the Miller covers I recoloured for DC. My colours on the top, and DC’s original on the bottom. Here you can see the discrepancy between the potential I saw in these drawings, and what was actually being published.
I spoke to a couple of editors at DC and the consensus seemed to be that they loved what he was turning in. So why did every blog I read think it was the worst work he’d ever done? I believed that the colour treatment DC was giving to his art was in no way flattering to the type of work he was doing.
My friend Julian Dassai said it best: “His work is dynamic and, in some cases, verging on abstract. Trying to color his stuff with representational lighting and rendering is pointless, whereas a flat, graphic approach (or just leaving it in b&w) allows the energy to jump off the page.”
My colour job, followed by what DC actually published:
Frank is an artist who is constantly evolving, and his new work seems to be somewhere between Jim Mahfood, Sergio Aragonez and Ralph Steadman. It doesn’t make sense to colour him as if he’s an Image comics artist from the 90’s, all gradients, shadows and shiny metallic finish.
Here’s another one. Again: my work on the top, DC’s on the bottom.
All these images I’ve posted so far have two things in common- they were all widely dunked on and derided when they first went online, and they all prompted responses of “WHOA, COOL!” and “I LOVE THIS!” after I recoloured them and circulated them amongst my friends. So what happened here is ol’ Frank became the butt of everyone’s joke when actually, there was nothing wrong with his drawings.
So how did this happen?
Well, check out Frank’s work in the Sin City comics. When Frank works in black and white, he’s a one-man band. But when he works in colour, he hangs back and gives the colourist a lot of space. He knows that colours and inks are two halves of a whole.
Above is a page from 1986’s The Dark Knight Returns. You can see just how much trust Frank placed in his colourist, Lynn Varley, to finish his work. As you can see, some of those panels aren’t even THERE in the original inks. Panel 6 is just an empty box.
This approach has been proven to work very well, but the problem is it places the burden of the image’s success or failure squarely on the colourist’s shoulders. And if the colourist and Frank aren’t on the same page, we end up with terrible covers that are the laughing stock of the whole internet.
It’s funny- even Lynn Varley could screw up colouring for Frank. Two years after their critically acclaimed work 300, they made their most widely panned book of all.
Lynn’s computer colouring on Dark Knight Strikes Again has all the invention and nuance of her colouring on Frank’s earlier work. However, her experimental digital art just isn’t a good fit for Frank’s traditional, brusque inkwork. The artwork in the book suffered a generally poor reception from fans and critics alike.
I took a pass at colouring DK2, too. I include this not to throw shade on Lynn’s work, or to say that I’m a better colourist (I’m not), but just to support my claim that there’s nothing wrong with Frank’s pencils and inks in even the book that was generally regarded to be his worst. His lines have character and energy and do everything they need to do to tell the story, and with the right treatment would have looked pretty great.
We can apply the same lessons to Frank’s most recent work. I’d read a whole comic that looked like either of the recoloured images below.
DC liked my stuff, but they’re happy with the guy they already have colouring Frank’s work, and so my experiment has to run its course. Still, I want to believe that there’s something in here that we can all learn from.
It’s important to pick the right team, and to utilise a stylistic approach that’s harmonious with what the rest of the group are doing. If you don’t, you might just end up with something terrible even though you worked your butt off. As we’ve seen, it can even happen to an exceptional talent like Frank. That’s a scary thought.
Thoughtful thoughts on the marriage of comic book drawings and color by Harvey.
Wow, as someone who was really taken aback by how bad Miller’s work was looking lately, I am blown away by how much better it looks here. It’s like night and day. Real shame that DC isn’t immediately handing all of Miller’s work to Harvey.
