Comics for Beginners

How to Write & Draw Comics

Peter Snejbjerg

Case study: STILETTO

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While I was working on The Devil’s Concubine, I had the idea for sort of a sequel, involving the two cops, Maynard and Alphonse. The story is heavily influenced by 70’s cop movies like Serpico and French Connection (the sequel being my favorite) and the inciting incident is more or less lifted from Bullitt. Where The Devil’s Concubine was an attempt to make a slick action movie in comic book form, I wanted STILETTO to have a more gritty and realistic feel to it. 

The style is a great departure from earlier, more inspired from my own sketchbook than anything else. Trying to draw in the very slick style of artists like Eduardo Rizzo or my own mentor Peter Snejbjerg never came naturally to me and the process frustrated me to no end. I decided to try “inking” in pencil and painting the whole thing in watercolor – something I was used to doing in my illustration work.

I did a few tests and quickly realized that not only was this drawing process much more fun for me but I could also work way faster. Since making comics takes sooo long, any way to reduce the amount of hours spent on a page is more than welcome.

For the coloringI went for a expressionist approach rather than realism. Since it’s a cop story, the use of the color blue would be obvious. So I decided NOT to use the color blue at all! I only use blue for flashbacks and dream sequences. Keeping the whole book in dirty yellowish clay tones creates a much more startling effect when the characters enter a bar where everything is red or there is a flashback or cut-away panel in blue.

By this point I had stopped comparing myself to Danish peers pretty much altogether and focused on the US market. I felt I had an intriguing premise, a solid script and a style that immediately got people’s attention, when I showed the book to people at cons. So I was surprised when IDW didn’t pick up the book. I thought I was in and then it turned out to be a revolving door!

Although STILETTO was released in Denmark to rave reviews and an award nomination, It took a few years before the book made it to the US market. It only happened because Greg Tumbarello, this guy Chris knew and we kept bumping into at cons, got a new editorial position at Lion Forge. If I remember correctly, I shot Greg a note on Facebook saying congrats on the new job and we got to chatting. He asked about STILETTO, if anyone had picked it up and I was like: “Er, no. You want it?”

Working with Greg on STILETTO (and this book btw!) has been an absolute treat and a truly humbling experience. Greg has turned out to be not only a fun guy to hang out with but also a smart and well articulated editor with a quality lacking in a lot of people working in publishing; he answers his e-mail.

Lessons learned:

Breaking in is a never-ending process and the quality of the work seems not to matter as much as luck or timing. Sometimes a project that seems like a slam dunk will have to take the long road before finding a home. Be patient and persistent. You never know where the next opportunity, ally or friendship will turn up.

This post is an excerpt from my book SOLO – Survival Guide for Creative Freelancers – Pre-order now on Amazon.

The Art of Stealing

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I have a friend who has the habit of taking things apart to see how they work. Anything from a radio to a vending machine. To me this is the ultimate approach to art.

Find something that works – a film, a novel, a painting – analyze it, break it down, take it apart and figure out why. This is how Raymond Chandler started writing short pulp fiction stories. He took a story from Black Mask, dissected it and identified the various element and then created a new story by replacing each piece with his own. 

You can become a great artist by copying what you love about another artist. This will teach you a lot. Then after a while, you can bring in other influences and start adding your own voice, thereby creating something new. If you look at my early drawings, you’ll definitely see a Mike Mignola phase, a Frank Miller phase and a Sean Phillips phase (which you could argue is not over yet).

My first 48-page comic that was published in Denmark in 1999, was the result of sitting next to Peter Snejbjerg. Peter was a master of the quill (the kind of metal-tipped pen you dip in ink) and all the “real” comics artist all used it. So of course this young whipper-snapper had to try and copy the technique, with pretty disastrous results. I learned a lot of lessons by sticking it through for 48 pages – the most important being I shouldn’t be using a quill. I learned later, that I could use a soft-tipped marker to almost the same effect and that my hand liked working with that way better. Nowadays I listen more to my hand than I listen to my brain.

As an artist it’s important to stretch your muscles, draw the things you have a hard time drawing rather than sticking to the things you nail every time. Again, it’s a great strategy to just copy. Drawing from life or recreating works from other artists is a crucial way to get better at the craft.

This post is an excerpt from my book SOLO – Survival Guide for Creative Freelancers – Pre-order now on Amazon.

Case study: THE DEVIL’S CONCUBINE

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This book was over ten years in the making, a perhaps overly ambitious project designed to kick down the door to the US market. 

I wanted the book to be look like a music video and be as stock full of gratuitous violence as an early John Woo action movie. I wanted to create a book that my 13-year old self would find it impossible not to pick up. I had a dogma that no matter where you opened the book, there should be someone getting shot, something blowing up or someone taking their clothes off.

For years I tried the traditional route of mailing test pages (this was almost before the internet!) to US publishers, getting rejection slips or no reply at all for years. I tried publishers in France and the UK as well, getting close to a deal a couple of times but never anything set in stone. The industry seemed far away and interests were slim. I knew it would take years (with no incoming salary) to finish the book and was almost ready to give up. It just seemed like it would never happen. Then one night out drinking with a bunch of comics guys in Copenhagen, I got to chatting with small press editor Paw Mathiassen of Fahrenheit. He asked what I was working on and I told him the woeful story of The Devil’s Concubine. I’m sure this dead-end project of mine was a joke among my peers at this point but apparently Paw hadn’t heard it. “Send it to me,” he said and as it turned out that slight interest from an editor was enough to kick me back into work mode.

I translated the script to Danish (it was originally written in English) and rough sketched the entire book in a few months, so I at least would have something readable to present. Paw agreed to publish the book and although it was a back end deal that never made me any money as far as I recall, I could now see the finish line and was able to drag myself out of the ditch and finish the race. I worked on the book any chance I got for the next year or so and The Devil’s Concubine was finally published in Denmark in 2009 – more than a decade after I came up with the initial premise and main characters.

With the book finished, I was now able to present to US publishers with a little more confidence. Time and technology had worked in my favor because now most publishers could be reached via email and I was able to send a full PDF with links to a cool trailer a friend of mine had made in after effects and both a Danish and and English version of a website (created by another friend, still available at devilsconcubine.com). IDW showed interest and we reached an agreement after about a year of going back and forth. The book finally came out in the US in 2011.

Lessons learned: 

Ambition is great, finishing something is better. It’s also a whole lot easier to sell a finished project than an idea. If you want to create something, do it for your own sake in your style rather than trying to cater to any market.

This post is an excerpt from my book SOLO – Survival Guide for Creative Freelancers – Pre-order now on Amazon.

The Monthly Grind – Comics for Beginners podcast episode 21

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The rabbit is out of the hat! BOOM! Studios is releasing the first issue of creator-owned book Thomas Alsop in June 2014, an occult New York story, written by Chris Miskiewicz and drawn by yours truly. Bleeding Cool did a nice little write up here: http://www.bleedingcool.com/2014/03/12/are-you-missing-hellblazer-here-comes-thomas-alsop/. I’ve obviously known about this for a while, even recorded an interview with my friend and mentor Peter Snejbjerg (http://www.snejbjerg.com) on the topic of working on a monthly book. Listen for more details.

You can read a 12-page short featuring Thomas Alsop here: http://welcometotripcity.com/2013/05/thomas-alsop-the-case-of-dead-uncle/ and watch the live action promo at http://welcometotripcity.com/2013/05/thomas-alsop-the-hand-of-the-island-official-trailer/

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