 This cartoon is a bit of an inside joke. Since the digital revolution, comic artists have steadily shifted toward creating their work on computers and tablets. The change makes sense for many reasons: digital tools can speed up the creative process, and programs like Photoshop make it easy to revise or correct mistakes. Still, a small and ever-shrinking group of cartoonists continues to work the old-fashioned way, using brushes, ink, paper, and other traditional tools of the trade. We're a dying breed—perhaps even on the verge of extinction.
 Way back when (early 70s) I was talking to renowned comics writer/artist Howard Chaykin in his upstart studio about my inability to increase my work speed. He suggested that I pick up some cover assignments at Marvel because covers paid rate and a half, as well as having high visibility. Seemed like a pretty persuasive argument for digging up some cover assignments.
By coincidence, the next time I dropped by editor Carl Potts' office, he was struggling with the layout for a Defenders cover. I causally asked if he would be interested in having me take a crack at it. He had me look the script over and, sitting on his office couch, doodled out a rough for the cover above. (I wish things always worked so smoothly in the comics world.) He had Bill Sienkievicz do the inking. I was a bit skeptical of the decision since Bill's approach is/was radically different than mine but really liked the result. See the printed cover  Jim asked Sandy about the above artwork. Sandy: Carl Potts was the editor on this six-issue Solomon Kane mini series. This was another character dreamed up by the prolific author who created Conan, Robert E. Howard. Carl asked me to adapt "The Homecoming", one of REH's best pieces of writing, as a back-up feature. "Great," I thought, "love that poem — full of melancholy and the sorrow of a restless heart." Only problem is that Carl wanted the entire adaption crammed into two pages. I protested, but to no avail. Well, the job was a complete disaster. Bad penciling, inking, coloring, lettering and reproduction. A real embarrassment. A few years later I got it into my head to adapt the poem again and this time do it justice. Think I was planning on five pages but never got passed the first (below). So it goes.  Page 1 of a not-completed redo of Solomon Kane's Homecoming by Sandy Plunkett  Jim asked Sandy about the above drawing Sandy: This is one of the rare occasions when I inked someone else's pencils. Fortunately, I was working over a blue line reproduction of the art which meant that I wouldn't be ruining the original drawing if I blew the inks. The pencils were by Linda Medley, well know creator of the award-winning Castle Waiting graphic novels. Turns out that both of us had played around with anthropomorphic elephant characters somewhere along the line, though the results were vastly different. Hers (in my opinion) was full of pathos and mine...not so much. In any case this drawing was the result of our collaboration. Another image from Sandy's archive:  A panel from a comic strip invented for my sketchbooks called "Jungleland." The elephant in question never did receive a name. |
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