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MODERN MASTERS VOLUME FOUR: KEVIN N OWLAN KEVIN N OWLAN Batman, Robin, Batgirl TM & ©2004 DC Comics

Modern Masters Volume 4: Kevin Nowlan

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The Modern Masters series continues its look into the lives and work of today’s top comic-book artists, this time spotlighting Kevin Nowlan! Nowlan is an artist’s artist—highly respected not only by his fans, but by his peers. Cover artist, penciler, inker, letterer, colorist—even writer—he has done it all, and done it masterfully. Kevin’s work on comic-book icons Batman and Superman ranks among the best in those characters’ rich histories! His humorous “Jack B. Quick” feature—co-created with industry legend, Alan Moore—not only allowed him to explore his Mid-Western roots, but won him an Eisner Award along the way! This volume features an in-depth interview with Nowlan, fully illustrated with rare and never-before published artwork, as well as a gallery section of sketches and finished pieces. It’s the ultimate look at a true Modern Master: Kevin Nowlan!

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M O D E R N M A S T E R S V O L U M E F O U R :

KEVIN NOWLANKEVIN NOWLAN

Batm

an, R

obin

, Bat

girl

TM

& ©

2004

DC

Com

ics

3

Table of Contents

Introduction by John Arcudi . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

Part One: “I’m Going to Be Drawing Pictures”. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

Interlude: Under the Influence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

Part Two: Marvel Comics and a Baptism of Fire . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18

Part Three: Kevin Nowlan: One Man Art Team . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30

Part Four: Is That Inker... or Finisher? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45

Part Five: Jack B. Quick and the Stories of Tomorrow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67

Part Six: The Theory behind “Pet Theory” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86

Art Gallery . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97

Modern Masters Volume Four:

KEVIN NOWLAN

MODERN MASTERS: You were born in Nebraska in1958?

KEVIN NOWLAN: Right. The Northwest corner ofthe state.

MM: And come from a pretty large family, in relativeterms.

KEVIN: Yeah. Six kids. I have one brother and four sis-ters. I believe I was an “accident.” My parents had threekids, then a set of twins, so my mother had her tubestied. Fortunately for me, the procedure failed.

MM: You said your olderbrother readcomics. Howmuch olderwas he?

KEVIN: He was born in ’50.

MM: Okay, so a good bit older. So you probably hadcomics around as early as you can remember, really.

KEVIN: Right.

MM: What were the initial things you read? Did yourbrother get Archie comics, things like that, that weremore kid-oriented, at all? Or did you just jump rightinto the main titles?

KEVIN: I know we had Archies, Dennis the Menace andCasper books lying around, but I can’t remember if theywere his or my sisters’. I know Mike had those reallycheap black-and-white horror knockoffs. They weren’tthe good ones like the Warren magazines....

MM: Like the Skywald stuff?

KEVIN: Worse than that. [laughter] Terror Tales and HorrorTales—they were published by Eerie Publications,not to be confused with the Warren Magazinenamed Eerie. They had unbelievable cover paintings

with bodies being dissolved in acid and corpsesdripping blood. I think the storieswere actually reprinted from old pre-code horror comics. I remember one

of the stories where a man had hismouth sliced open on the sides to make

his smile wider because he wanted to be aclown or something like that. It was pretty dis-

turbing. I kept staring at those pictures try-ing to figure it out. Instead of beingrepulsed, I just looked closer and closer.He had Mad Magazine, CARtoons, Creepy,and Eerie, and I know he had someBlackhawk comics. What else? I remem-

ber Blackhawk very specificallybecause I remember sitting

down and trying to draw thefaces, like from the splashpage and the cover, when Iwas really young. I would tryto draw the characters’ faces.

MM: Was that during theirgreen-and-red costumes?

Part 1: “I’m Going to BeDrawing Pictures”

6

7

Were they still inthe traditional cos-tumes?

KEVIN: No, theywere still in the tra-ditional ones. I don’tknow the history ofBlackhawk very well,but I believe theywere drawn by DickDillin. They weren’tthe original ReedCrandall stories, butthey were still prettygood. I loved thathawk emblem.

MM: So by the timeyou’re ten you’re see-ing the DC experimentation comics. Youwere more DC-oriented as a kid?

KEVIN: Yeah. My brother just neverpicked up Marvels, for some reason. Ibelieve he had some Tarzan comics andMagnus, Robot Fighter. Not really that manysuper-hero titles, more like “Sgt. Rock” andBlackhawk, that kind of stuff. I’m sure he hada few Superman and Batman books. Therewere probably some westerns as well. I justremember comics being around all the time.You’d go to another kid’s house and he’dhave a stack of comics. Or you’d go to thebarbershop and they’d have a few. Theywere everywhere. I know that at least once Iscrounged up enough pop bottles to turn infor the deposit so that I could buy some ofthe “black market” books at this little shopcalled the Newsy Nook. If you went in andwhispered to the clerk and she trusted you,she’d pull out this stack of books that allhad the tops of the covers torn off and sellthem to you for two or three cents each.

MM: So basically you were seeing moreillustrative artists than you were the action,Kirby-style artists.

KEVIN: Yeah. That Kirby stuff was reallystrange to me when I finally saw it.

MM: I think with every kid, it looks pret-ty strange when they first see it.

KEVIN: [laughs] Yeah. But at DC you hadthe guys who drew everything very

straight: Curt Swan, KurtSchaffenberger, Irv Novick,John Forte. No exaggera-tion. The action was veryrestrained.

MM: During DC’s experi-mentation period in the late’60s, were you trying out allthese goofy new titles, likeHawk and Dove and Angel andthe Ape?

KEVIN: Yes, Angel and theApe, definitely. That’s one Iremember specifically buyingat the grocery store, the firstissue of Angel and the Ape. Thecover had go-go girls and a big gorilla in aNehru jacket, playing a sitar. There was theShowcase tryout and then they got their owntitle, and that’s the one that I got when I wasnine or ten. I just wore it out because it wasmy only comic, so I read it and reread it overand over. I missed out on Hawk and Dove, butI kept seeing the advertisements with thosegreat cover images. The same thing hap-pened with Beware the Creeper and Bat Lash.

MM: Was the distribution in your areasuch that you were able to follow the series?

KEVIN: No, no. I didn’t even see any ofthe other issues of Angel and the Ape untilmore than a decade later, when I found acomic shop and bought some of the backissues. You could never find two concurrent

Previous Page: A 2003Vampirella commissionpiece.Above (Clockwise): TheNowlan family, 1960—front row, left to right:Michael, Joni, Jeanne,Kathy—back row: Pat,Kevin, Janine, Bill. Kevinin his cowboy boots oneyear later. And finally,Kevin and his twin sis-ters, Joni and Jeanne.

Vampirella ™ and ©2004 HarrisPublications, Inc.

issues so it washard to keep upwith the serial-ized stories likethey had in theMarvel books.The self-con-tained DC sto-ries alwaysseemed moreaccessible.

MM: Did youhave other kidsthat you hungout with thatread comics,too?

KEVIN: No.

MM: No, just you? Did you hang out with other kids atall, or were you a loner?

KEVIN: What time period are we talking about?

MM: This would be the late ’60s.

KEVIN: Yeah, I had friends in school and stuff, butnone of them were really too excited about comics.

MM: Did you like reading in general?

KEVIN: Yeah, but comics were directingmy choices there as well. Like, I’d pick upthe DC Tarzan comics and go out andfind a paperback of [Edgar Rice]Burroughs stories and read those.And the same with“Pellucidar,”because I reallyliked that series. Iwent crazy for thatAlan Weiss artworkin the “Pellucidar”series at DC, so Ifound those paperbacksand read those. And thenlater I finally started read-ing the Conan stories thatBarry Smith was doing, so Ipicked up a few of thosepaperbacks and read some ofthose. Lovecraft, I read a fewof those after I saw refer-ences to his work in DoctorStrange.

MM: So you stayed pretty much in that science-fic-tion/fantasy genre?

KEVIN: For quite a while, yeah.

MM: When did you start being able to pick out anartist, like, “Hey, I know who this guy is, he drew so-and-so?” Was that fairly early on?

KEVIN: Yeah, I think so, because DC in the ’60s,sometimes they’d have credits on some of those books—

MM: Sometimes on the splash page the artist would sign.

KEVIN: Yeah! And the weird thing was, Jerry Lewis,they would have full credits on a lot of those. Theywould even tell you who lettered and colored it in the’60s, years before it became a common practice on theother books. So I definitely knew Bob Oksner’s workand knew his name, because that first issue of Angel andthe Ape had a credit box and he signed the cover. Otherartists were easy to recognize even if you never caughttheir name. Toth’s work stood out. Gil Kane, too, espe-cially if he inked his own pencils. Russ Heath, JoeKubert, John Severin… the war books really had somegreat artists with very recognizable styles.

MM: When you’d go to the newsstand, did you lookfor a certain artist first, or did you look for a title first?

KEVIN: I think I would go toward the artists first. NealAdams’ stuff obviously stood out. I was also crazy aboutthe Curt Swan/Murphy Anderson Superman. So yeah, I'dbuy certain titles like Superman and Batman, but usually,

when I would go browsing through thecomics rack, I was looking for

some unique artwork thatwould really stand out. Andeven if it was a character that

I liked, if the artworkwas boring, I proba-bly would just put itback in the spinnerrack.

MM: What was thefirst thing you remem-ber doing where youwere actually trying to

draw continuity ratherthan just sitting down anddrawing a punch-outscene or something?

KEVIN: Well, when Iwas in high school, I tried todraw some stories. I made up

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thesefantasycharacters andstuff like that, and Iwould try to do astory. I tried to do aPlastic Man story—thatmight have been junior high. Andbefore that, I honestly don’t know. Ididn’t try to do panel-to-panel continuityuntil fairly late.

MM: So were you writing stories as well?Because you mentioned you were into thepulp kind of stuff, were you trying to writestories and then maybe do illustrations forthe stories?

KEVIN: Yeah. I never finished any ofthem. I would just start drawing a splashpage and then do a page two and reallyhave very little idea of where it was head-ed, which is probably why none of themever went anywhere. [laughter]

MM: What about fiction, did you ever trywriting fiction?

KEVIN: No. Just for school assignments.

MM: You actually sent samples to Marvelwhen you were 15. What gave you theinspiration to do that?

KEVIN: I think in one of Stan Lee’sBullpen pages he had the specific instruc-tions for submitting artwork. He explainedwhat size to draw the pages and what kindof paper and he said that you should sendin Xeroxes, not original art. And I thought,“There you go, that’s what you do.” So Iput together a package and sent it to them.

MM:Do yourememberwhat was in thepackage?

KEVIN: I remember one thingwhich I shouldn’t have sent him. Theyreturned it; it was a big Dracula oil paint-ing that—that black-and-white magazine,was it Dracula Lives! that started coming outfrom Marvel?

MM: Yeah.

KEVIN: That was one of my firstattempts at doing oil paintings, and it wasjust horrible. And I sent that to them.[laughs] And they sent it back and saidsomething like, “Thanks, but we don’t needanything like this right now.”

MM: Did you get any encouragementfrom the reply?

KEVIN: I think so, because it was from[John] Romita, Sr. It was a form letter, andthen on the bottom of it he wrote some-thing like, “Would you mind filling out thislittle card”—or form or whatever that theyattached—“so we can keep your name onfile.” So that gave me just a little bit of

Previous Page Top:During the Christmas season of 1971, the localChamber of Commerceheld a “Draw Rudolph”art competition. Here’sKevin displaying his firstprize ribbon (student division) and the winningpicture. Previous Page Bottom:Kevin’s first publishedcomic art — the InferiorFive, done for The ComicsJournal #63.Above: Cover art toAmazing Heroes #56.

Hawkgirl, Inferior Five, PowerGirl, Supergirl, Wonder Girl,Wonder Woman ™ and ©2004DC Comics. Ms. Marvel,Phoenix, Spider Woman, Storm™ and ©2004 MarvelCharacters, Inc.

Gil Kane

Gil Kane was the guy we all swiped from him becausehe had super-hero anatomy all figured out. If you were

trying to compose a page with two guys punching eachother and one of them flying toward the camera, you’d

dig out your Gil Kane comics to see how he did that, to seehow he constructed the figures. His drawings were like a text-

book on structure and composition. I loved his inking as well. Hemade the images even more poetic and exotic when he was allowed tofinish the drawings himself.

I’m resisting the temptation to list every artist who’s hadan influence on me, from the painfully obvious exampleslike Wally Wood and Mike Mignola to the less conspicu-ous individuals such as Frank Robbins and George Tuska.This is a big book, but a list like that would be gargantu-an. Let’s limit it to the comic artists who not only made astrong impression on me at a fairly young age, but alsocontinue to point me in one direction or another as Irevisit their work on a regular basis:

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Interlude: Under theInfluence

Neal Adams

From the time I first saw his work on some of the Batman sto-ries around 1971, I was just fascinated by the lighting effectsand the way he could create textures that suggested that thesecharacters were real. They really looked like they existed in aphysical world. I’ve tried to imitate his rendering style and hislighting. I just loved that gritty textures that he got, especiallywhen he did his own inks. His coloring was a strong influenceas well. He did amazing things with flat color on newsprint.

Superboy ™ and ©2004 DC Com

ics.

Green Lantern ™ and ©2004 DC Com

ics.

18

MM: Were you surprised when you gotthe initial phone call from Al Milgromoffering you Doctor Strange #57?

KEVIN: I was surprised, yeah. It was afterthat that Terry and I started talking a bit,because I had an excuse for calling him upbecause he was inking this thing and Icould just ask him those basic questions,like, “Should I X in the blacks, or should Ifill them in with the side of a pencil?” Thatkind of stuff. He was all I had for a mentorlearning the ropes, the basic stuff that Iwas clueless about.

MM: Had you seen original comic bookpages before, maybe in Fantagraphics’

offices or anywhere else?

KEVIN: Yeah, when I went upto stay for a weekend with the

Fantagraphics guys, GaryGroth was just puttingtogether a Neal Adamsissue of The ComicsJournal, and his backseat was covered, liter-ally, with Neal Adamsoriginals. [laughs] So inthe car, from the air-

port, when he pickedme up, I wasn’t holdingup my end of the con-versation because I wasjust mesmerized by this

stuff. I was just sittingthere looking at these thingssaying, “My God, there’s nowhite paint on here! Howdid he do this?” Gary’s justrolling his eyes back intohis head.

It was at one very smallconvention in Wichita yearsbefore that where I saw my

first examples of originalart. There was a

Wally Wood splash page that, again, I could-n’t believe how pristine it was. It was so cleanand so perfect that I stood there for a longtime just staring at that thing, trying to figureout how a guy would ink with a brush andmake it all look so perfect. And right next toit was a Kaluta Shadow cover that had somefascinating textures of rocks—it was the sideof a hill or something like that. And it wasgreat because, again, looking at the originalsas opposed to the printed cover, you couldsee where he used different pens, maybeeven a ballpoint pen, and all kinds of differ-ent things, to create different textures. So,yeah, I had seen a few pieces of original arthere and there, but really, I was pretty clue-less when it came to figuring out how to layout a page, what it should look like. I didn’teven know what size the margins for thepanels should be on the board.

MM: Well, you did seem to really keepthe layouts mixed up. You didn’t fall backon a standard grid. You were at least tryingdifferent things as you were going.

KEVIN: Yeah. And I remember AlMilgrom encouraged me; he asked me tolist the artists that I admired, and I randown a quick list, and he said, “You oughtto look at Joe Kubert’s work when you’rethinking about layouts, because Joe’s reallygood at creating an interesting page lay-out.” And that’s where I started using insetpanels and things like that, that I reallyhadn’t even thought of before.

MM: How tight were your pencils? Sincethis is your first time out, were you overlytight, or were you just trying to get it donequickly?

KEVIN: I think they were probably fairlytight, but I also remember there were somebackgrounds where I wasn’t sure what to putin, and I thought, “Well, here’s a chance tofind out what an inker does.” [laughter] I left

Part 2: Marvel Comics and aBaptism of Fire

Below: DC’s “hard-trav-eling heroes.” This pin-up appeared in AmazingHeroes and is the piecethat first caught TerryAustin’s eye.Next Page: Page 4 ofDoctor Strange #57. Inksby Terry Austin.

Black Canary, Green Arrow,Green Lantern ™ and ©2004DC Comics. Dr. Doom ™ and©2004 Marvel Characters, Inc.

them very sketchy, just sort of wispy pencil lines. And theywere supposed to be New York City buildings. So Terryjust—which I probably should have expected, I would havedone the same thing—Terry just ignored them. [laughter] Ihadn’t done my part of the job, so it wasn’t fair to ask himto draw buildings that weren’t there in the pencils.

I remember the last page had to be redrawn. Again, thatDoctor Strange story was done old Marvel style, with a plotand just sort of a sug-gestion of dialogue,and then Roger Sternwent in and wrote thefinal script after hegot the penciledpages. I don’t think hecould wrap up thestory with the way Ihad broken down thatlast page, so he wrotean actual script thathad specific dialogue.It was a lot easier,because I couldroughly pencil in thedialogue and leaveenough space. I prob-ably left a little toomuch space, but atleast I had a betteridea of what wasgoing into each panelrather than just mak-ing it up in the trueMarvel style.

By the time I gotto that page, Ithought, “Okay.Some of these pagesare really, reallyawful, and some ofthem are okay. Thisis the last page. Thejob is essentiallydone.” I really wasbreathing a sigh ofrelief and felt like I’dbeen through a bap-tism of fire. I felt like I was starting to get the feel of it. Iwasn’t as nervous by the time I did that last page. I wasstarting to relax, and it went fairly smoothly. And out ofthis whole story, it’s the only one where I really thoughtthat.... It’s not a great page, it’s a talking heads page, butI really felt like I was getting the hang of it. Sort of like,“Okay, now I understand how this is supposed to work.”

MM: This was the first time you saw your work in printwith another inker. What was that like for you, seeing itinked by someone else?

KEVIN: Yeah, it was pretty shocking.

MM: Terry used a much thicker line than you normallywould use.

KEVIN: Yeah. Thatwas during the timehe was starting to usea much heavier line.A couple yearsbefore that, on X-Men, on John Byrne’swork, he was using amuch more delicateline. And I thoughthe used a fairly lightline on the MikeGolden issue thatcame out a few yearsbefore this one. But,to be fair, I don’tthink I was givinghim much of an indi-cation in the pencils.I think I was pencil-ing with a fairlyblunt graphite line,so that may havebeen the way heinterpreted what Iwas putting into thepencils. I don’t know.He did a really goodjob, and it took me awhile to realize whata nice job he did,because I was soshocked seeing mywork inked by some-one else. He cleanedthings up, refined theimages, the way aninker should. Mainlyin the faces—they

looked so different from the way I had pictured them—was where the artwork was changed the most.

But it’s tough. I was such a rookie, and like you said, Ihad never worked with an inker before and didn’t reallyknow how much information to give him. And he didn’tknow what to do with my work. [laughs] I clearly didn’tknow what I was doing, so it was unfair to expect him to

19

MM: “Second Wind” wasissue #35. “When the

Music Stops,” issue #32,Carl inked com-pletely himself.

KEVIN: You knowwhat? I’m sure Iinked the last fewpages of thatSavage Skulls story.Moon Knightfights them in theirdumb little club-house, then there’s

a big splash atthe endwhere he’s

walking thekid down the street and there’s a leaf blowing. A friendof mine said, “This is supposed to be New York City!Why are you drawing autumn leaves?” [laughter] I said,“They’ve got a couple of trees, don’t they?” “Idon’t know....” I’m sure I inked those last fewpages. I think there were three, maybe four pagesthat I inked at the end of that story in#32. I don’t know if it looks like meor not, but I’m sure I inked those.

MM: There are panels here andpages there where it does seem likeyou inked. The style changes dra-matically from page to page, likethey weren’t done in chunks, theywere just kind of handed out asthey came in or pell-mell orsomething. Did that sour thewhole thing for youeven more, seeing somany different peopleinking you all at once?

KEVIN: No, I knewthat I had no one toblame but myself. If Icould just stick to aschedule, I could beinking those pagesmyself. So it didn’t sourme on it any more. Theother struggles I was havingwith the series eventuallymade me realize it was amistake to have takenon the assignment.

MM: Did you quit in the mid-dle of issue #35, or was therea mutual agreement thatyou’d leave after that issue...?

KEVIN: Yeah, it was adouble-sized issue,and again, I shouldhave known aheadof time that I would-n’t be able to pull it off.

MM: Well, you did 27pages, so that’s like a nor-mal issue.

KEVIN: Oh, that’strue, yeah. It was adouble-sized issue.

MM: It was a 42-pager.

KEVIN: I was just being naïve and overly optimistic.Yeah, Bob McLeod stepped in and finished off that

story. He did a nice job.

MM: Did you do any research forthose dance sequences?

KEVIN: Yeah, I went to thelocal library and found oldbooks, photos of ballet dancers

and things like that.

MM: Now, you seemed tobe getting a good recep-tion in the letters pages.

Was that encouragingfor you?

KEVIN: I think so,yeah. I’m just glad the

Internet and messageboards weren’t around at

that time, I’m sure I wouldhave heard it from thediehard Sienkiewicz fans

who were ready to cru-cify me. [laughter] Butyeah, they were sup-portive and printed

encouraging letters inthe letters pages, sothat helped, I think.The Doctor Strange issue,too, I think theymailed me the letters

24

MM: You finally start working for DC with the OutsidersAnnual #1. Now, in that Outsiders Annual, Mike Barr had hislittle jokey commentary in the back. How much of that wastrue? Had you been talking before about doing a project?

KEVIN: Yeah, we were going to do a Batman graphicnovel. When he called about it, I was committed toanother project—I don’t even remember what it was—soI had to pass on it. And then sometime down the road, Ithink Jan Strnad and I had proposed something at Marvel.Yeah, it was at Marvel Epic—Archie Goodwin. And wenever heard back from them, so I thought we—I wasyoung and naïve and thought that if you pitched some-thing, the editors immediately got back to you. [laughter]And you just coast right into it. The thing was in limbo.

MM: What was it? Was it a sci-fi kind of thing?

KEVIN: Yeah. I think there was morethan one. The one I’m rememberingwas sort of an Island of Dr. Moreau,sci-fi kind of thing, I think thatmight have been what it was. So Ihad planned on starting on thatproject, and then we never heardback from Epic. So I called upMike Barr and asked if thatgraphic novel was still avail-able, and found that it was-n’t—they’d assigned it toanother artist. But he said, “ButI’d love to work with you. I canthrow something else together.”That’s how I remember the thingcoming together.

MM: Was it you who asked for Batmanto be in the story?

KEVIN: Probably. I wanted todo some nice creepy materialwith the character.

MM: Well, one of the bestsequences in the book was thatlittle chase sequence at thebeginning, where Batman’schasing down the cat burglar.

KEVIN: Yeah, that’s one of those Marvel-style things,where he gave me just the bare bones of a plot for thosepages and just hit the high points of the action andasked me to just work it out however I saw fit. And hesaid he pictured it as kind of a silent, Will Eisner-esquesequence, so that’s what I was trying to do there.

MM: Did you suggest any of the sound effects thatwere used in there, and the way they were integrated, orwas that all Todd Klein?

KEVIN: I think I probably penciled in someof those. Mike and Todd added someextras. I thought a couple of them reallyweren’t necessary, so I whited out one ortwo of them before I inked the pages. Theguy was jumping from one ledge to

another and there was a big scream soundeffect that wrapped around him in a semi-circle. I thought, “That doesn’t really work.”So I took it out. In hindsight, that wasn’treally my job [laughs], to second-guess thewriter/editor. But I guess I felt like he’d givenme a certain amount of freedom to use myown judgment. They could have put themback in, I guess, if they strongly wantedthem in there.

MM: How was it working with Mikewith him being the writer and theeditor?

KEVIN: It was good, yeah. He wasvery easy to work with.

MM: I’ve gotten that from other people aswell.

KEVIN: Yeah! I wanted to ink it and colorit myself, and my coloring, at least, wassort of an unknown quantity at that time,so I remember they asked me to do somesample pages before they would allow meto do my own color guides. But Mikeseemed to be doing everything he could

to get that stuff approved by DC.Yeah, I remember it being apretty pleasant experience.

Part 3: Kevin Nowlan—One Man Art Team

30

MM: So that was 44 pages of pencils, inksand colors. How long did that take you?Because I believe that might have been theonly work you had published in ’86.

KEVIN: So I wasn’t doing covers at Marvel?

MM: Some of the covers came out at thevery beginning of ’87, so you probablystarted on them late in ’86.

KEVIN: Was “Grimwood” finished up bythen? Probably.

MM: Yeah, I think it ended in mid-’85.

KEVIN: Okay, so I probably did spend thebetter part of that year working on that andlittle else. I don’t remember exactly, but Iknow it took an awfully long time to finish.Again, I could be wrong, but I don’t think ithad a deadline when I started. Otherwise, Iprobably wouldn’t have agreed to do it. Idon’t think it was on the schedule when Istarted. But I also remember, just for eco-nomic reasons, setting out to do it as quick-ly as I could. ’Cause I thought, “I’m going todo everything I can to pencil this at the rateof a page a day.” So the first three pages,there’s a single page and then a double-pagespread. I was determined to force myself toonly spend one day penciling each of those.It was easy enough for the double-pagespread, because there were no backgroundsor anything like that. But then, as I got fur-ther into the story, and things got denserand denser, I obviously slowed down. Plus,a lot of times on those jobs, you start toreally get into it and you just don’t feelcomfortable knocking it out quickly. Youreally want to do the best you can, even if itmeans spending a little extra time on it.

MM: I guess the next year you really makeup for the lack of production in ’86. Maybeyou started some of these other projects in’86 as well. You had a bunch of covers, like Isaid. You also had the six-pager in the GreenLantern Annual. I’m not sure what came outfirst, but I know the May ’87 issue of NewMutants, #51, you did the pencils for that—

KEVIN: Which one was that?

MM: The New Mutants #51, that was inMay of ’87. And the Green Lantern Annualwas an ’87 annual. And you also had a

whole lot of covers. You probably had twodozen covers that year.

KEVIN: In ’87?

MM: Yeah.

KEVIN: At Marvel?

MM: It was a mix. You had a few at DC.You had some of the Secret Origins coversand a Batman cover at DC, and then youdid all those Strange Tales covers at Marvel,and some Alpha Flight covers, as well.

KEVIN: Yeah, I had a long run of StrangeTales covers.

MM: Yeah, issues four through eight and14 through 16.

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Previous Page: Batman,looking rather creepy.Above: Aurora of AlphaFlight.

Batman ™ and ©2004 DCComics. Aurora ™ and ©2004Marvel Characters, Inc.

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KEVIN: Yeah, because it was considered layouts, eventhough things were drawn very tight. There would be afew places where I’d think, “Well, this is a good drawing,but I’m not sure I know exactly how to ink it the way it’sdrawn here.” So I’d adjust the pencils a bit, put in someshadows and try to finish it. I always look at it as if I wasinking my own unfinished pencils. You start inking theobvious stuff that’s all worked out and then you look atsomething and you’re not really sure what to do with it,so you have to pick up a pencil and try to work out someof the details. Then, when it looks right, you feel confi-dent picking up the pen or brush and going ahead withink. Because it’s just a mess when you’re overly confidentor you’re moving too fast and you ink something thatreally should have been corrected in the pencils. And

you have to go in with white paint, ink back over thewhite paint, and it flakes off, and it just turns into a mess.

This is probably why I, a lot of times, will get carriedaway. When I’m inking something, it looks less and lessand less like the penciler, because I’m not sure how tofinish it the way it was originally penciled. I’m not sureexactly how to do that. They’re asking for a techniqueand I don’t really know how to pull it off. Shadows onfaces and stuff like that, where they’re broken up somuch that I just sort of become lost. Sometimes you haveto go in and simplify them, or move the shadows around,or change some structure, something like that. Not thatI’m setting out to put my mark on it and take over thejob from someone, but you’re just trying to do the bestjob you can, and sometimes that’s the only way to do it.

MM: Well, I would say at this point in your career, theeditor is expecting it to look like you when you’re done,when you’re hired to ink something.

KEVIN: Yeah. And there’s no question that by nowthat’s the reputation I’m stuck with. Even if I ink alot of people, like I have lately, and I’m fairly

faithful to the pencils, they see that as anexception to the rule. Now people give me ahard time when they don’t think there’senough of me showing through. It’s weird.

MM: From that point on, you’re doing a lot ofcovers. Did you enjoy doing the covers as much as

sequential storytelling? Did you find them challeng-ing enough to keep your interest?

KEVIN: Yeah, I did. Doing all those StrangeTales covers for Carl was great, because I loveddrawing Doctor Strange. Even though a lot of

them were split covers, they were still a lotof fun to do. And they were easy to do;they didn’t take a lot of time. After we’ddone a few, he allowed me to colorthem myself, and it went pretty well.

MM: How many covers were you ableto do? Obviously you did quite a fewthat year. Did you spend as much timeon a cover as you would, say, a page?

KEVIN: I look back at that run of coversand I can see that I was trying on some of

them to just work as quickly as I could,because I was still painfully aware of the fact

that I had to pick up some speed to makea good living. And I wish I hadn’t. I canreally tell the ones that I just knockedout in a hurry. They come back to hauntyou. So if I had just taken a little more

time on those,I think I wouldhave been aheadof the game. It’s just... [sighs] I’m just notone of those guys whose brain is wired forspeed. There’s never been any job where Icouldn’t go back in and do a little finessingand fix some of the mistakes and make it abetter piece by spending just a little extrabit of time. But I did have a really goodtime with those covers. I don’t remember awhole lot of covers for DC at that time—

MM: There were a couple of Secret Originscovers.

KEVIN: Yeah, for Mark Waid, and thosewere very easy to do and usually involvedinteresting characters. Again, after the firstcouple of covers they would trust meenough to let me do my own color guides.That helped a lot, too.

MM: Was it around this time that youstarted working on the Man-Thing graphicnovel?

KEVIN: Probably. I don’t know theexact date, but yeah, I guess it wouldhave been.

MM: How did that come about?Who pitched you on the idea ofdoing that?

KEVIN: Ralph did, Ralph Macchio. Idon’t know how much you want to talkabout Man-Thing. I’ve sent a couple ofe-mails and a Marvel editor is sup-posed to get back to me about it,because we’re trying to figure out a way toget the thing finished and published and allof that. It really has been this awful alba-tross around my neck since the late’80s, and it makes me cringe whenpeople bring it up, to this day.

MM: Is it something thatyou want finished just to say

you’ve finished it?

KEVIN: Yeah, absolute-ly. Just to have the thing

done, to have it published.

MM: How far along did youget on it?

KEVIN: Like 50 pages, I think.

MM: Out of how many?

KEVIN: 62?

MM: Oh, so you were practically there.

KEVIN: Yeah, and the other pages are atleast penciled.

MM: And that was written by SteveGerber, right?

KEVIN: Yes.

MM: Did his falling out with Marvel haveanything to do with the book’s delay?

KEVIN: No, no, not at all. It was 100%me. It just basically came down to me try-ing to work quickly enough to make a liv-ing, agreeing to do a book where everypanel was a painting, and finally getting tothe point where I had to take on other workto pay my rent and stuff. What often hap-pens with those things is they get put onthe backburner and it’s almost impossible to

get themback offagain. But

we’ll see.

Previous Page: Kevin stillenjoys drawing Dr. Strange. This recent commission piece comesfully equipped with Clea,as well.This Page: Preliminarysketches from the unfinished Man-Thinggraphic novel.

Clea, Dr. Strange, Man-Thing ™and ©2004 Marvel Characters,Inc.

37

called and asked meto do some designsfor aliens, and I did abunch of those. Ithink Arthur Adamsand Mike Mignoladid as well. But they

didn’t end up usingthem. So that waspretty much it.

MM: Have youever actively soughtout more animationwork?

KEVIN: No. I’dprobably have to move

to southern California.

MM: Not necessarily. A lot of storyboarders freelancefrom various places.

KEVIN: Yeah, but that’s storyboard work. I’m not surethat I’d have a whole lot of interest in storyboarding,because, boy, you do a lot of work, and very little ofwhat you do actually ends up on the screen. Evenwith the character designs for Bruce Timm, there wasonly one character that really looked like the draw-ings I had done, and that was Killer Croc. The rest ofthem were changed quite a bit. As you probablynoticed, I like to have a lotof control over the finaloutcome and that’s easierto do in comics than itis in animation. So Idon’t know. I knowquite a few artistswho have doneanimationwork like that.It doesn’t reallyseem to light afire under me, forsome reason.

MM: Okay. InAction #642, youinked a chapterover CarmineInfantino. That wasprobably the firsttime that youinked one ofthe legends, soto speak.

KEVIN: Yeah, anyone from that generation.

MM: Does that project mean any more to you becauseof that?

KEVIN: Yeah. I’d certainly been a big fan of his work,because that was the Batman that I grew up reading, the“new-look” Batman of the late ’60s. It was a bit of a chal-lenge just because the pencils were very, very sketchy. Ireally like the way Carmine inked his own pencils but Icouldn’t figure out how to do that, so it was tough to workover pencils that were so loose. Even though some of theblacks were roughed in, you’d almost have to call themlayouts because the details were so sketchy. So it wasn’teasy, but it was fun. And I remember really pestering MarkWaid, who was the editor, and saying, “I don’t know howto do this, you’ve gotta give me some guidance.” He wasvery encouraging, and when I turned in the first couple ofpages, he said, “That’s exactly what we’re looking for.” So Iguess he was happy with it, but I was a little bit lost.

MM: Did you ever get any feedback from Carmineabout what he thought?

KEVIN: Well, I’d be terrified to do that. [laughter]

42

45

MM: Well, you went from “Dalgoda” to inking anUncanny X-Men cover over Jim Lee. And he’s got a lot ofrendering in his work.

KEVIN: Yeah, a lot of rendering. Not really manyshadows, but a lot of little lines.

MM: How did you approach that job? Because that wasa little bit different from what you’d been doing.

KEVIN: That’s one ofthose things where I havealmost no memory of itwhatsoever, because it waspenciled so tightly that itwas sort of a classic “justtrace the lines” situation. Iremember it was shot a bittoo light. I probablyinked it a little lighterthan I should have, butI was reacting to thedelicate pencil work andtrying to be faithful to it.I don’t really have muchmemory beyond that.

MM: A couple monthslater you inked WonderWoman #52 over CynthiaMartin. Did George Pérezask for you to do that job?

KEVIN: No, I don’t thinkso. They asked me to inka fill-in issue, and I thinkat one point it was goingto be Jill Thompson doingthe pencils, and then itended up being CynthiaMartin. Poor Cynthia,because for the most partshe was totally buried in that job, to the pointthat, on the last few pages, she just did little quick cir-cles for faces, because she knew I was going to totallyredraw them. [laughs]

MM: Was she seeing your inks before she finished the

pencils?

KEVIN: Yeah, some of them. And she called up and wehad a talk about it. I apologized for just totally over-whelming what she had done. It was one of those situa-tions where I honestly didn’t know how to ink thosepencils. I love her work, I thought her Star Wars work

was just fantastic, but I was just completely lost onthose pencils. And it wasabsolutely no reflectionon the quality of herwork, I just couldn’t fig-ure out how to ink

those pencils. The facialfeatures she drewreminded me of MarieSeverin’s work and Ithink Marie would havebeen a good choice foran inker on that job, butthey called me and werefairly persistent in spiteof my reservations.Sometimes editors wantto pretend they’re madscientists and put togeth-er strange combinationsof pencilers with inkers.

MM: What was it aboutit that was giving youtrouble?

KEVIN: The faces. Ithink her Star Wars workwas a lot more expressiveand kind of elastic andmore freely penciled.These pages seemed kindof rigid, and there wasn’tthat range of expressionand exaggeration that I’d

seen in the Star Wars stuff. Maybe she just felt morecomfortable with Star Wars, I don’t know. But yeah, I wasreally a poor choice to work on that story, and theresults weren’t very good. It would have been much bet-ter to have seen her ink her own pencils.

Part 4: Is That Inker...or Finisher?

46

MM: In ’91 youdid some work forContinuity. Over acouple of years,you did maybefour or five coversfor them. Whoapproached youto do work forContinuity?

KEVIN: KrisAdams, Neal’sdaughter. She’dcall once in awhile and ask meto ink somestuff. And obvi-ously, NealAdams was oneof my favoritecomic artists, soI think the firstfew things I did

for them were inking over his pencils on acouple of covers. His pencils werefairly loose on the first one and Ididn’t handle it very well. Then hedid another one, a Ms. Mystic coverthat was nicely, tightly penciled,and that was a blast to ink.

MM: In ’92, you start working withJoe Quesada, inking some thingsfor him, pin-ups and things, and areally cool cover for X-Factor. Andhe was the one that kind of broughtyou in on Batman: Sword of Azrael?

KEVIN: I think so, yeah. Itsounded like it was a choicebetween me and one other guyand Jimmy pushed him toward me.

MM: How did you set up howthat was going to work? In placesyou really followed pretty closelyto his pencils. I assume he pen-ciled really tightly.

KEVIN: Yes.

MM: You came through more onthe faces, especially the mediumshots. How did you feel about thatproject overall? Was it set up going

in that this would be a big deal for DC?

KEVIN: Yeah, Joe said it was going to be abig event. He was fairly secretive, but hisenthusiasm was contagious. I didn’t knowthat whole thing about Batman getting hisback broken and all of that. But Joe wasreally excited, and it was so funny becausehe kept calling me “Mr. Nowlan.” [laughter] Ikept telling him to call me “Kevin,” and hefinally relented. After he was promoted toeditor-in-chief at Marvel I told him, “I’d likeyou to go back to calling me ‘Mr. Nowlan.’” [laughter] Bill Kaplan was the assistant edi-tor on the book and I dealt with him morethan anyone else. He was terrific to workwith. He was very supportive and encour-aging. Azrael was a lot of work.

MM: It looked like it. There’s a lot ofpanels there, and there’s a lot going on inthe panels, too.

KEVIN: Yeah, absolutely. But it was also alot of fun. Lovern Kindzierski did the col-oring, and did a really nice job. That was

Previous Page: Cover artfrom Continuity’s Armor#11.Right: Neal Adams’ pencils and Kevin’s inksfrom an unpublishedSamuree tale.Next Page Top: Coverart for Showcase ’94 #1.

Joker ™ and ©2004 DCComics. Armor, Samuree ™and ©2004 NealAdams/Continuity Comics.

53

sense of how he puts a page together, puts apanel together. And again seeing that hedoesn’t try to ink with the pencil the waysome people do, he stops right at the pointwhere an inker should take over and finishthings up. And also because he draws sowell, because his draftsmanship is so impec-cable, it’s fairly easy to ink, because you’renever correcting mistakes. You’re never try-ing to strengthen something that looks a lit-tle weak in the pencils. You’re just inking.

MM: I’ve talked to many different artists, andwhen they talk about José, they always say“draftsman.” What is the definition that mostartists hold for draftsmanship? They don’t talkabout his layouts, per se, or anything elsespecifically, they just say he’s a great “drafts-man.” Is that a wide range of things you’retalking about when you say that?

KEVIN: Yeah. I think when people saydraftsmanship, they may be being specificthat they’re referring to the drawing ability as

opposed to storytelling or other things thatcome into comic art. When you look at oneof José’s drawings you have a real sense thathe understands it, inside and out. Whether it’sa figure or a costume or a background. If hedraws a prop, you get the feeling that heknows how this is built and how it works,how much it weighs and how a person wouldmove if they picked it up. There’s not a thingthat doesn’t look genuine. He isn’t justfocused on the surface qualities. He’s just afirst-rate picture maker. He’s a terrific illustra-tor. And he’s also a very, very good storyteller,I think. The action always moves verysmoothly and clearly from panel to panel.You’re never lost, even though his layoutshave a lot of energy to them. You’re nevertrying to figure out what exactly is going onin a specific panel and all of that. But yeah,just his ability to draw figures and props andbackgrounds, and make it look 100% authen-tic, and give it just enough—he elongates thefigures a little bit so they’re not normal,

Previous Page: Enter...Dr. Strangefate. Page 5of Dr. Strangefate. Above: José Luis García-López’s pencils andKevin’s inks for Dr.Strangefate, page 8. Theflicked cigarette addsthat extra bit of charac-ter to the page.

Dr. Strangefate, Jade Nova, Myx,Skulk, White Witch ™ and©2004 DC Comics and MarvelCharacters, Inc.

everyday-man-on-the-street proportions.They look like super-heroes. They’re tall andslender and very ener-getic. And he doesn’tseem to stumble overanything. [laughs] Heseems to be able todraw everything withequal skill. I’ve alwaysassumed that he does afair amount of research.

He did a story[Superman, Inc.] whichI did not ink, and I real-ly wished I could have.The editor tried to getme to ink it, and sent

me copies of the pencils toentice me, but I think I wasbusy with some other projectat the time, and had to pass onit. But one scene took place inKansas, and I couldn’t believewhat I was seeing in the pen-cils. A guy is driving downthe road, leaving Wichita andhe sees little Kal-El’s space-ship crash land somewherenear the road, and he scoopsup the baby. It’s not JonathanKent, it’s another guy, asalesman. He scoops up thebaby, takes him to anorphanage, and then con-tinues on his way toDenver. Well, I don’t thinkJosé has ever been inKansas, but he had everysingle location worked outperfectly. In the first place,for central Kansas itlooked perfectly flat, as itshould. He had road signsalong the way that hadthe correct number ofmiles from Wichita toDenver. And I couldn’tbelieve it! That hewould—maybe it justtook pulling out a mapor an atlas or somethinglike that and looking

these things up. The character drops off thebaby at an orphanage in Hays City, which isa real town. We drive through there everytime we go to Denver. In the final book theychanged the name on the road sign to MaysCity, which I thought was a real shame,because he had done all this work, had thecorrect locations and the correct mileage andeverything. But it’s one thing to pull out amap and see how many miles it would bebetween Denver and Wichita. It’s anotherthing to really get a feeling for what centralKansas topography actually looks like. Andhe’s one of the few people that I’ve seen who’sbeen able to do that. I only bring that upbecause that’s something I’m very familiarwith. And I was astonished at how accuratehis drawings were. If he’s drawing the FrenchRevolution or something, I just have to take

his word for it that it’s correct,

54

Above: An absolutelyfantastic panel featuringSkulk and Jade Nova,from page 15 of Dr.Strangefate.Right: Page 3 of “TheBlood Red Game” fromthe Vampirella 25thAnniversary Special.Pencils by Michael Bair.Next Page: Place yourproduct here. The finalpage of Kevin and Jan’sfirst 11-page comic stripad for Details magazine.

Jade Nova, Skulk, ™ and ©2004DC Comics and MarvelCharacters, Inc. Vampirella andall related characters ™ and©2004 Harris Publications, Inc.Details ™ and ©2004 CondéNast Publications.

MM: And you picked Sean Shaw to pencil?

KEVIN: Yeah, at the time Sean and I had been talking quitea bit, and he would send me copies of stuff that he was work-ing on. He had a nice, straightforward style that I thoughtwould work nice with my inks.

MM: What about the story itself? You’d done a couple ofthings with Wildstorm. You’d done that Stormwatch and theWildCATS. Did those characters do anything for you, or was itjust the opportunity to work with those people?

KEVIN: No, I really didn’t know anything about the charac-ters. [laughs] I really didn’t.

MM: So it was more just an opportunity to work with a teamthat you’d helped put together?

KEVIN: Yeah, and to do something with Scott, because wehad been friends for quite a while. [laughs] You put it that wayand I think, “Why did I do that?” [laughter] Obviously I had nointerest in the characters whatsoever. It seemed like fun, itseemed like an opportunity to work with a couple of friendsand to do a—not a long story, but a couple of issues that wouldbe a little more substantial than the usual short things and pin-ups that I had been doing that were being overlooked.

MM: Well, that kind of brings us to Superman: Distant Fires. There’s alot of those panels where you can still see a Gil Kane face, thenthere’s other panels where you see a Kevin Nowlan face. Is it justfeel that determines what you need to add to the page? You want tokeep a consistency, as well, so how do you balance that?

KEVIN: I inked a couple of pages and sent copies in to MikeCarlin, and I had inked them the way I thought they should beinked, which was in my approximation of Gil Kane’s style, because Ialways preferred it when Gil handled his own inks. He worked withsome of the best inkers in comics; I particularly liked Wally Woodand Ralph Reese and Craig Russell. You shouldn’t even call thoseguys inkers, they’re artists. But I thought, “If I’m going to ink Gil,I’d rather do it like Ralph Reese and Craig Russell did,” which wasto maintain Gil’s style to a degree. But Mike Carlin, when he sawthe samples, said, “Absolutely not, no way.” He said, “Gil wantedto ink this himself, but we want something different than that. Ifthis was the look we wanted, we wouldn’t have called you.” Hedidn’t say he wanted me to impose my own style on Gil, but hesaid he wanted to see a combination of our styles. And I thinkthat might have been the first time that I realized that I had cre-ated a monster, because instead of just giving me an inking jobover someone like that, where—Gil’s stuff is so beautifullyworked out that you can just ink it and finish off the details andit looks terrific. Again, like García-López, the structure’s there.It just works. But, because I had done things like Superman/Aliensover Dan Jurgens’ layouts, and had done a lot of things withshadows and stuff like that, then I guess that became what edi-tors, or at least this editor, wanted. So I really sort of panickedand tried to draw Mike Carlin out on that and get some spe-

60

KEVIN: Yeah, that was definitely my inten-tion. It went from being a job I was very, veryambivalent about, and came very close toreturning to DC because I didn’t think I couldpull it off. Sitting at breakfast one morningwith my daughter, she asked me what I wasworking on. She was probably in secondgrade or something. She asked me what I wasworking on, and I told her, “Well, I got thisnew job. I’m thinking about sending it backbecause I don’t know what to do with theselayouts.” And she thought for a minute as sheate her cereal, and she said, “I think youshould do it.” [laughter] And I don’t know whatgot into her that she took it upon herself togive me career advice. But her instincts weregood, because it was an odd job, where Istarted out with no enthusiasm, but the moreI worked on it, the more I liked it. The editor,Scott Peterson, helped quite a bit. He wasjust really, really terrific to work with andsupportive all along the way. No matter whatI ended up doing, he was supportive of it.

I was really stumped by a splash pagemidway through the story, where Supermanfirst appears. When I got that, it had marginnotes from the editor and from Dave. Andthe editor just made an observation, it said,“He looks kind of thin, he looks like MiracleMan, can you beef him up a bit?” I was okay

with that, but then Dave himselfwrote a note, and he said, “Kevin,

can you lightbox this and movehim up a quarter of

an inch?

He’s supposed to be floating and I have hisfoot too close to the bottom of the page.”And I thought, “Come on, Dave! That’s notfair!” Y’know? So I just turned that page inuninked and got out a clean sheet of paperand I drew a new splash, because if you endup changing that much, there’s really nothingthere worth saving on the original board.The editor had problems with the way it wasdrawn, Dave had problems with the way itwas drawn, and I had my own questionsabout it. Starting over from scratch seemedto be the smartest thing to do but I’m suremost people think I’m nuts for doing it.

When the pages were all finished, ScottPeterson called me up to talk about colorists.Most editors don’t do that but I think Scottknew how much I’d put into this story. Ireally loved the script that Kelley Puckettwrote; I felt it was just a terrific story. As Iwas working on the pages and reading thestory, I really fell in love with Kelley’s writ-ing on that. I thought it was terrific.

MM: I think it was the best story in thewhole series.

KEVIN: Oh, really?

MM: Yeah!

KEVIN: It was the kind of thing I’d liketo see DC do more of, where it’s veryinnocent—

MM: Yeah, exactly. That got me realexcited about the series, but very few ofthe stories after that came even remotelyclose to the quality of that story.

KEVIN: Yeah. It’s a shame, because it wasa good idea for a series.

MM: Oh, yeah. And that story, the endresult really seemed tailor-made for you,because it had the whole Gotham atmos-phere, lots of shadows, but it also hadRobin and Superman to keep it light andplay to your sense of humor as well, so youkind of get the best of both worlds.

KEVIN: Yeah, I think so. And like I was say-ing, Scott Peterson and I came up with a listof colorists, and of course all the good oneswere too busy. [laughs] And he finally askedme—this was back in the days when theystill did color guides—if I'd be interested in

Below: When Kevindraws kids, they actuallylook like kids, as evidenced here in thisTeen Titans commissionpiece.Next Page: Dave Taylor’slayouts and Kevin’salmost completely redrawn finishes from Legends ofthe DC Universe #6.

Commissioner Gordon, Robin,Superman, Teen Titans ™ and©2004 DC Comics.

62

67

MM: So how’d you get involved with the America’sBest Comics line? Did Scott Dunbier approach you?

KEVIN: Yeah, Scott called and said he wanted me todraw this series called “Jack B. Quick,” but he didn’tgive me any details. When I said I couldn’t hesaid it would only be six or eight pages at atime. I had no idea what kind of stories they’dbe. I knew Alan [Moore] was creating a lineof, not quite super-hero stuff, but more of amainstream type of comics group. When I heardthe name Jack B. Quick I just assumed it wassome super-fast guy like Johnny Quick or theFlash or something. That didn’t sound very appeal-ing to me [laughs], so I wasn’t instantly sold onthe idea until I heard a little more about it.

MM: Now, Alan usually writes to thestrengths and interests of his artists.Did he create that character with youin mind, do you think? Do you know?

KEVIN: That’s the real strange thingabout that, because we had just movedfrom Wichita to this small farm town andbought an old house. And I was gettingmore and more into stuff like antiques andlocal history, just the whole environmentof this small farm town, which really, in alot of ways, more than any town I’ve beenin, feels like you’re stepping back in time abit. Because some of the turn-of-the-centurybuildings are still standing, including thishouse. [laughs] And so I was sort of in themiddle of this really strong wave of nos-talgia. And then Alan came up, with noconversations between Alan and me, hecame up with this series set in a small,Midwestern farm town, and hedescribed it as vaguely nostalgic—something no later than the early’60s and possibly earlier than that.And I was just dumbfounded. Isaid to Scott, “How did he knowI wanted to do something likethis?” And I have to assume it hadsomething to do with Scott and I

talking about all of these things, and maybe that’s why—Ihonestly don’t know. I don’t know if that’s how it happened,if Alan came up with an idea for a series, then Scott thoughtof me. Because I don’t think Alan was that familiar with my

work before that, and even if he was, I really hadn’thad a chance to do something like this before,

so I don’t think, looking at my work, hewould have known that this was the type ofthing I was wanting to do.

MM: Well, there was the Gen-13 back-upstory that takes place at a carnival. Maybethat showed them you could draw that type

of atmosphere?

KEVIN: Maybe so. But honestly I would doubtthat Alan would have seen that. Yeah, Scott wasthe editor on that book, but.... That might havemore of a nostalgic look to it or an old schoollook to it than I really intended, just because of

the carnival and the main charactersort of based on James Dean and allthat. That’s possible; that might havebeen how it happened, but it’s still amystery to me. I talked to Scott aboutit, and I think when he talked to Alanthen after that, he told Alan that I was

baffled by all this and had almost come to theconclusion that Alan had somehow read mymind. [Eric laughs] And Alan said, “Well, let’snot tell him any different.” [laughter]

MM: So how did you start off? Did youget a script first, before you starting doingthe character designs? Or did you talk withAlan first, before you started doing that,and then got a script later?

KEVIN: Alan called first and describedwhat he wanted to do with the series. But I

still didn’t know it was going to be arural setting. I knew that he was alittle boy who is some kind ofgenius, who comes up with a

bunch of strange inventions. So in myfirst drawings of Jack, he was just wearing a sweaterinstead of overalls. Later, when I got the first script,

Part 5: Jack B. Quick and theStories of Tomorrow

all that was spelled out. Itwas pretty startling to read

his description ofQueerwater Creekbecause it soundedjust like my town,especially the term

“vaguely nostalgic.” For themost part, all the informa-tion I got for the series wasin his scripts. As I’m sure youknow, they’re very detailed.

MM: Yeah. Did he havethe overalls described inthe script, or did you—?

KEVIN: I don’t think hedid. I think it just seemedobvious, because they livedon a farm and it was set inthe past at some point, sothat just struck me as beingthe obvious clothing forhim to wear. There’s apretty strict, unwrittendress code in farm towns.

If you look atold rural pho-tos all the menand boys are

wearing work boots andoveralls.

MM: You based Jack on your son. Did youfully read the script beforeyou started basing it on yourson? Because I know you’vesaid that once you realizedthat Jack was kind of a horri-ble little boy, that you almostfelt bad about using your son.

KEVIN: Well, I explained itto Spence, “You helped medraw this guy. Just don’t getthe idea that this is in anyway supposed to be you, orthat you as an individualhave inspired Jack in anyway.” Basically, Spence wasjust the right age at thattime that looking at himhelped me figure out whatJack would look like. Theone obvious change I made

was changing his hair from red to blonde.With Dexter’s Laboratory and things like that,I thought it was a good call. There are a lotof boy geniuses out there, I didn’t want himto look too much like any of the others.

MM: How much of the rest of the castare from real people? You have a lot ofrecurring characters in the cast.

KEVIN: None of the others are really basedon real people. When I drew the cop in thefirst story, he looked a little bit like BarneyFife. Not close enough to look like it wasintentional, but that was just sort of the direc-tion I was headed. As opposed to a big, burly,imposing policeman, he was sort of an under-sized, wimpy, slouching, small-town cop. Ithink he got a name and he became more ofa recurring character after that. MayorStuyvesant—again, he’s not based on anyonein particular. I think I was sort of going forarchetypes with a lot of these. And I believe Ieven found a photo in a book of an over-weight fellow. You couldn’t even see the frontof his face, you just saw the back of his head,and he looked a little like Oliver Hardy frombehind. And somehow I thought that wouldbe the right look for Mayor Stuyvesant. AndJack’s parents are pretty much made up,although there’s a guy here in town who hashis own little emporium, and it’s basically hisown private museum, where he’s archivedphotos of people’s houses, families, buildingsdowntown, things like that. And when I was

Above: Kevin’s first go atJack.Right: Officer Pete makeshis first appearance in the strip.Do you think he onlycarries one bullet withhim, like a certain OfficerFife?Next Page: The manyfaces of Teddy...

Jack B. Quick and all relatedcharacters ™ and ©2004America’s Best Comics, LLC.

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MM: I guess after that,there was the TomorrowStories 64-page Giant,where you had the twoone-page “Jack B.Quick” strips. Thosewere really fun. I noticedespecially with the sec-ond one—you men-tioned earlier you startedto exaggerate more asyou went along. You real-ly did in that second strip,especially in the secondpanel. Jack’s hands arereally big, his head seemsa little bit bigger than nor-mal. Then, later on, whenhe’s pretending to cast aspell, you had that reallywild scream on his face.

KEVIN: Yeah, as you can see, as I go alongI’m loosening up a bit and it becomes easierto draw Jack with more expression, a littlemore emphasis, so it’s not as restrained asthat first story was. And also, I’m drawingjust out of my head more instead of usingreference, because by then I sort of had....

MM: Had the feel for the character?

KEVIN: Yeah, yeah. It’s easier to picturehim with differentexpressions and from

different angles. Onthe first story I wasstill trying to figure

out how every-thing would look.

MM: You alsoinked a couple ofcovers for thatSilver Age mini-series DC did.

Not surpris-ingly, youinked Gil

Kane on aGreen

Lanterncover. Butfor some-thing differ-ent, you also

inked a RamonaFradon cover.

KEVIN: For theGil Kane, theyjust sent me a Xerox of his sketch.

MM: Oh, really?

KEVIN: Yeah. I didn’t really work over hispencils. I’m not sure why they just sent methe sketch, but it was like most of Gil’ssketches. Everything was there, becausethe structure was all worked out. It waseasy enough to just lightbox it and firm upsome of the details. Yeah, Ramona Fradonon the Doom Patrol, right?

MM: Yeah. Which is another group ofcharacters you hadn’t drawn before, I think.

KEVIN: Yeah. I think I did a piece of fan artin Amazing Heroes with the Doom Patrol yearsbefore that. But yeah, I always loved thatoriginal series. The Bruno Premiani artworkis just unbelievable. They did such a nice jobwith the Archives. Premiani’s best work hassuch wonderful, fine feathering, and theyreproduce it beautifully in the Archives. Andthen he’s also one of those guys, like CurtSwan, that it’s a delight to read a Premianistory that has such absurd, impossible situa-tions and events, because his art is 100% sin-cere, so it makes the absurdity even more

Previous Page: Kevin’slayouts and pencils forpage 34 of GreenLantern/Superman: Legendof the Green Flame. Left: For LoGF, Kevinoriginally penciled thePhantom Stranger in his1950s garb, but had tochange him to his morefamiliar turtleneck andmedallion attire. Above: Gil Kane’s sketchand Kevin’s finished artfor the cover of SilverAge: Green Lantern.

Green Lantern, PhantomStranger, Sinestro, Superman ™and ©2004 DC Comics.

entertaining, because he’s playing it completely straight.

MM: Was it kind of neat seeing your work with the go-go checks?

KEVIN: Oh, yeah! [laughter] If it were up to me, they never wouldhave gotten rid of the go-go checks. [laughter] Yeah, and Todd Klein, Ithink, did the lettering on those, and he did a beautiful job recreatingthe look of those Silver Age covers.

MM: In 2001 you got to work with José Luis García-López again on thoseDeadman: Dead Again covers. Since those covers depicted key scenesthroughout DC’s history, was there any extra appeal for you working onthose, or was it that you were working with José again that appealed to you?

KEVIN: Yeah, it was working with José. It almost didn’t matter what hewas drawing [laughs], because you know he’s going to draw it beautifully.But the Superman in particular, the death of Superman, I thought, hejust draws the best Superman, and that was terrific to have a chance toink his pencils on something like that.

MM: Now, this comes out about a year later than it was intended, but youfinally do get another “Jack B. Quick” in Tomorrow Stories #10. Were you able topick it back up right away, or did it take you a while to get it flowing again?

KEVIN: I probably spent a bit more time on it, becauseother than the two one-page stories, that was the first “JackB. Quick” story that I colored in Photoshop and actuallyhad a chance to, instead of just doing marker color guidesthat are separated by someone else, I had a chance to con-trol the final look of the colors myself.

MM: Had you been working in Photoshop long at thatpoint or had you just started?

KEVIN: No, not very long at all. I did the separationson the Neil Gaiman story, as well. That was the firstinterior work that I’d colored and sepped.

MM: Was that an easy transition for you, moving overto the computer? In some ways Photoshop is very intu-itive, but some of the more complicated features aren’tas easy to pick up right away.

KEVIN: Yeah, it did take a while to get the hang of it,but from the very beginning, the part that made it aneasy transition was you could get exactly the color youwanted. There was no more trying to come up with anapproximation of the color you want with markers orwatercolor or colored pencils, and then writing longmargin notes to the separator about what you werelooking for. I had a good relationship with DigitalChameleon and they sepped a lot of stories from myguides. But nothing beats doing it yourself.

I had a couple of false starts. I remember I coloredall of page two of that story and then realized that itwasn’t done correctly and had to go back and do itall over again. So that was just me figuring out theprogram and figuring out technically what I needed

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MM: We’re going to start with the cover.Whose idea for the layout was this? Doyou come up with the ideas yourself andsubmit them, or did they suggest ideas toyou? How does it work?

KEVIN: Strangely enough, Todd Klein wasworking as sort of a de facto art director, orat least cover editor, on that book. Hewould put together a template with all thetype and the arrangement of the face bulletsand things like that, and then—on both ofthe Tomorrow Stories covers that I did, he sentme a template and suggestions for a cover.And I believe he was speaking with Alanabout these, but I wouldn’t swear that thatwas the case. So it felt kind of strange; itfelt like something

I should be discussing with Scott. But Toddwas the one taking care of it, and he did areally nice job.

MM: Well, the first thing I notice when Ilook at the cover is, first of all, the mush-room cloud reflected in Jack’s glasses, butthen that kind of draws you right to hiseyes, which really stand out on the cover, Ithink. And I thought it was interesting thatyou made sure the glasses were down thenose so that you could see the eyes andget the expression in the eyes.

KEVIN: Yeah. Jack and his dad always havetheir glasses down on their nose, whichdrives some people crazy. [laughter] But forme, it just looks right. I don’t know why. Itmight just be like you said: you can see theexpression on their faces much better if youdon’t have the glasses in the way.

MM: I noticed also with this, even thecharacters in the headshots on the sides—

KEVIN: They’re reacting. [laughs]

MM: They’re reacting to what they’re see-ing, too. The only one that’s not reallyreacting is Jack. He looks kind of stoic.

KEVIN: Yeah, his reaction is much moresubdued.

MM: So was all that suggested, as well?

KEVIN: I believe so. At least, I have no spe-cific memory of coming up with it myself. SoI believe it was suggested by Todd.

MM: Do you prefer coming up with ideasyourself, or do you not mind which way itworks?

KEVIN: No, I don’t mind either way. If Ihave an idea, certainly I’m partial to that. ButI don’t mind getting suggestions from some-one else. And a lot of times, like on thiscover, it speeds things up. You can get

Part 6: The Theory behind“Pet Theory”

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Below: Todd Klein provided Kevin with atemplate for the cover ofTomorrow Stories #3. Next Page: It took Kevina few passes before hesettled on the final com-position.

Jack B. Quick and all relatedcharacters ™ and ©2004America’s Best Comics, LLC.

caught in thistrap where youdo dozens anddozens of littlesketches andthey end uppicking parts ofseveral differ-ent ones andcombiningthem, and itjust becomesa mess. Butthis was apretty nicelystreamlinedprocess.

MM: Yeah,it’s a veryclean cover.You’ve just

got the figures there and the type. AndTodd, I guess, worked up all these logos. Is that correct?

KEVIN: Right. Except for “Jack,” the“Jack” logo’s mine.

MM: I know we mentioned thisearlier, I think you were kind ofsurprised to see it displayed soheavily on the cover.

KEVIN: [laughs] Yeah, tomake it look like Jack B. Quick,Boy Inventor #3. You have toread the fine print to realizethat’s not the name of the comic.

MM: Yeah, was that just the bigdraw for the title at that point?Were you already getting thatmuch reaction to it?

KEVIN: Yeah, I think the mailwas fairly favorable. I think peoplereally, really did like the characterand love the stories. I don’t know,that’s really a question for theeditor, Scott Dunbier. I don’tknow if that was Scott’s idea tospotlight the “Jack” logo that wayor not. It might have beenTodd’s. I just don’t know.

MM: Well, speaking of thelogo, let’s go into your

design process.There’s almost aDeco kind of lookto it. What was thethought processbehind that?

KEVIN: I wasn’tgoing for ArtDeco as muchas maybe ArtNouveau, andsomething old-fashioned thatyou’d see on aturn-of-the-centurywooden signor somethinglike that. Iwas just try-ing to gofor something noticeably old-fash-ioned, but also kind of fun-looking. In the first script that

Alan sent me, he had some ideas for the logo,with a large B in the center and he suggested

something like the Chrysler logo. Sothat was my starting point.

MM: Okay. Well, let’s moveto the inside, then. You startwith the lettering first?

KEVIN: Right. Since Alanwrites a full script, as I’mstarting to lay out a page, hiswords are the first things that

I consider carved in stone.That’s the one thing that can’t

change. So I start by workingout the line endings, becauseI don’t like to hyphenatewords, so I want someone

reading the book to not betripped up by awkward things

like that and by balloons cover-ing up part of someone’s headand the kind of things you getwhen the lettering is doneafter the pages are penciled.

MM: Do you ever get toa situation where you’vegot your balloons set up,and then the layout justwon’t work around

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KEVIN: Usually with a pen. There’s notmuch brushwork on “Jack B. Quick”because there’s just so many small details.If you’re doing Batman with a big shadowycape and things like that, that’s great forusing a large sable brush, but there reallyisn’t much on Jack that lends itself tobrushwork.

MM: You use the Hunt 102s?

KEVIN: Right.

MM: Do you start with the larger areasfirst, or do you start with the faces?

KEVIN: I usually start with the faces firstand then work down and do the back-grounds last.

MM: I noticed sometimes you’ll changethings in the inks as you go, like with anexpression, you might open the mouth orsomething like that. There’s a couple ofspecific—on page four, on the fifth panel,the cat. You changed quite a bit there.

KEVIN: The cat through the door?

MM: Yeah. You have his mouth open, youhave the water coming off of him, whichwasn’t indicated in the pencils. Is thatsomething where you just thought, “Oh,well, maybe I should add a little some-thing. This needs a little something else”?

KEVIN: Yeah, you get up in the morningand look at it with fresh eyes and you real-ize, “Oh, I forgot to do this. I should—.”Or even just reread the dialogue and think,“It doesn’t look right for his mouth to beclosed, his mouth should be open,” orsomething like that.

MM: And actually, that panel, in the pen-cils, he doesn’t have a word balloon, but inthe inks, you’ve added a word balloon forhim, for the cat.

KEVIN: Oh, I probably just overlooked that.I’m sure I didn’t add that, because Alan’s actu-ally pretty specific about that stuff. I don’tthink I would have added a word balloon forthe cat without it being in the script. I proba-bly just overlooked it the first time.

MM: That reminds me of something I want-ed to ask earlier. When you do the word bal-loons for the animal noises, you add that lit-tle curve, that little arc in the lettering. Whydo you do that? Is it just to kind of indicate akind of modulation in the voice, just to dis-tinguish them from human voices?

KEVIN: Not only do I not know why I didit, I didn’t even realize I was doing it untilthis moment. Maybe in my head I was hear-ing a cat sound, where maybe he’s justmeowing, start out low, and then go up, andthen come down again, like musical notes. I

Below: Whether Kevinforgot to add it or not,the cat’s word balloonadds a lot to the panel,as does Kevin’s rework-ing of the cat’s expres-sion.Next Page: Even thoughthis is a very rough lay-out, Kevin makes sure heworks out the complexpositioning of the figuresof Jack and Mr. Murk.

Jack B. Quick and all relatedcharacters ™ and ©2004America’s Best Comics, LLC.

Kevin Nowlan

Art GalleryMan-Bat ™ and ©2004 DC Comics. Vs. System ™ and ©2004 Upper Deck Co., LLC

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Superman ™ and ©2004 DC Comics.

Modern Masters:Kevin

Nowlan The Modern Masters series continuesits look into the lives and work oftoday’s top comic-book artists, thistime spotlighting Kevin Nowlan!Nowlan is an artist’s artist—highly re-spected not only by his fans, but byhis peers. Cover artist, penciler, inker,letterer, colorist—even writer—he hasdone it all, and done it masterfully.Kevin’s work on comic-book iconsBatman and Superman ranks amongthe best in those characters’ rich histo-ries! His humorous “Jack B. Quick”feature—co-created with industry leg-end, Alan Moore—not only allowed him to explore his Midwestern roots, but won himan Eisner Award along the way! This volume features an in-depth interview withNowlan, fully illustrated with rare and never-before published artwork, as well as agallery section of sketches and finished color pieces. It’s the ultimate look at a trueModern Master: Kevin Nowlan!

(120-page trade paperback with COLOR) $14.95(Digital Edition) $5.95

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