Layouts for Grimwood's Daughter

These popped up on eBay the other day. You can see the auctions here and here. Stop by and give 'em a bid or two.

Grimwood was drawn from a full script, so even at this early stage, I wanted to work out the line endings and balloon placements. These were slightly text-heavy and I was a novice so knowing exactly how much space was available for the art was important. The final lettering was done by Harvey Kurtzman's letterer at the time, Phil Felix. I think I took over the lettering myself on the later chapters to avoid mailing the boards back and forth.

And, just to see if anyone was paying attention, I slipped in a Springsteen lyric in the last panel.

A few green thumbs

Thumbnail sketches, layout and pencils for the painted page I showed you yesterday:

Hellboy: Buster Oakley Gets His Wish, page 3

Layout, pencils and inks:

Hellboy page 9, layout, pencils and inks

The second panel on this page inspired the cover drawing. We worked "Marvel style". Mike wrote a plot, I did layouts, then pencils. Working from scans of the pencils, Mike wrote the final script and did balloon placements. Finally, I lettered the pages (right on the boards... with a dip pen!) and did the inks.

Monsters in the Closet: page three

These pencils are incomplete. After inking the lettering, I inked the portions of the art that looked okay, then finished up the background, pencilling and inking in more or less one step. It would have been better to finish all the pencils at once but I often resort to this tentative, wishy washy approach to keep things moving and avoid getting hung up on the details that I'm not sure about.

My "Alan Weiss" panel

Slightly edited so that I don't reveal too much too soon...

A farm

Rural Kansas, circa 1965.

Batman inventory cover sketches

I posted the final prelim and the inks back here, but now, thanks to Ande Parks, I have scans of several of the earlier sketches:

Jack B. Quick "A Brief Geography of Time", page 6

I didn't know who Spark Watts was when I lettered this page.

Vertigo Jam: Sandman page 7

Looks like I re-drew the large shot of Morpheus a little before I started inking...

Dalgoda: The Hero of the Tale, page 6

I just noticed something about panel two. The director has a lens around his neck -- something that Jan Strnad asked for in his script -- but he also has a long, skinny object hanging next to the lens... something I threw in spontaneously, then forgot about. It made me laugh more than two decades after I drew it. Anyone care to guess what it's supposed to be?

Mr. Lizard pencils

This is as close as I ever got to doing a story with these characters. As you can see, he was a very mopey fellow.  I think this was drawn around 1987.

Monsters in the Closet: page seven

Here's what the pencils looked like when about half of the details were still unresolved. You can see quite a few changes that were made between these two steps; the mermaid's face, left arm, etc.

New Mutants #51, page 13

Boy, that's an awful face in the sixth panel. Maybe some of that hate mail was justified after all. Oh well, I like the rest of the page. Thanks once again to Mr. Simon Miller for the original art scan.

New Mutants #51, page 7

Heavy drama...

New Mutants #51 page 21

Rough layouts, pencils and a scan of the original art, courtesy Mr. Simon Miller:

New Mutants #51 page 9

Thanks once again to Simon Miller for the scan of the original art. My favorite part of this page is Storm, sitting calmly and comfortably on the flying chunk of scrap metal.

Jack B. Quick "A Brief Geography of Time", page 3

After I lettered this page and pencilled the first panel I made a small copy of the board and started working out the rest of the layouts.  I don't know what happened with Mary Lincoln's "sob"... looks like someone in production removed it, leaving an odd, empty balloon.