Comics I Made, Comics I'm Working On, Comics I Like, etc.
Author:Dan
Lives in: Cambridge, Mass.
Does: comics.
Used to live in: Topanga Canyon, California
But grew up in: Cambridge, mostly
Used to do (maybe still?): Screenwriter, journalist, teaches some too
The next page in the story I’m drawing for Fulcrum Press‘ Colonial Comics anthology.
My “script” for the page:
PAGE 8
The Mohawk children have an easy life. Running around and playing. Eunice watches shyly as they play. They call her over. Then she is playing with them. Â
Thumbnail:
As you can see I added in the element of Eunice’s Indian mother intervening on her behalf with the other kids.
 I also realized that the transition from the narrated/dialogue pages (John’s story) to the wordless pages (Eunice’s story), needed to be smoothed out with a line of narration.  Otherwise it seemed too abrupt.  The rough pencils:
The square format lets you do some fun things that wouldn’t be possible in a conventional rectangular page. Here I tried to play with the two diagonal axes of a page divided into four equal quarters. Â So there’s the parallel/contrast between the lonely girl in the first panel and the playing children in the last, in the axis running top left-bottom right between two square panels. Â And then the opposite, axis – top right to bottom left – Â in which we “ride” a rough diagonal through the series looks from one character to the others:
Does that make sense?
Final inks:
The line of narration, by the way, is invented, not from John’s book. Â I don’t want to take cheap shots to exaggerate John’s anti-Indian attitude. Â But he was quoted (I didn’t make a note of where, but probably in John Demos’ The Unredeemed Captive), referring to the Indians as “wretched.” Â So I thought it fair enough to use the word here.Thanks!
Upcoming in June from publisher Thames and Hudson, “Comics: a Global History, 1968-present,” written by Alexander Danner and me.  Here are some excerpts, and additional material including some great comics images  that we couldn’t fit in the book. Â
As the title suggests, the book covers the period from, roughly, 1968 until 2010. The introduction, though, provides some background on the development of comics around the world (focusing mainly on Europe, Japan and the U.S.) during the post-war era through the mid-60s. Â Text in italics is directly from the book.
Continuing with the post-war Franco-Belgian comics, and focusing on the two cornerstone comics periodicals of the era, we move from Le Journal de Tintin to:
Franquin’s creation Marsupilami, the unspecified-species sidekick of Spirou is one of the most popular characters in Franco-Belgian comics
While there’s much in common between L’Ecoles Bruxelles and Marcinelle (particularly on the level of composition and layout), in Franquin’s work the differences become apparent. Instead of the cool clarity of the ligne claire style, we have here a more energetic approach to line and shading, a rounded cartooning style that owes more to the Disney model, but also a more nervous, even violent “graphism” as the French call it (a great word that means more than simply “graphic style,” I think, implying greater depths of content and meaning in the way an artist composes and draws).
Franquin – Modeste et Pompom, the only strip he did  for Le Journal De Tintin (from 1955-58)
Maurice Tillieux
 In his private-eye series Gil Jourdan, Tillieux combined the elegance of the ligne claire with the expressive elasticity of L’ecole de Marcinelle, moving easily from comedy to action and drama, with a great sense of atmosphere.  You can see the influence of Tillieux’s  suave but comical style  on Yves Chaland,  one of the best artists in the revival of the Tintin / Spirou styles in the 198os (more on that in later posts).
Tillieux – Gil Jourdan – Spirou 1228 1961Tillieux – Gil Jourdan – le grand souffle – spirou 1560 1968Tillieux – Gil Jourdan – Spirou 1480 1966Tillieux – Gil Jourdan – Spirou 1231 1961
The Atom Style
In my opinion, while the Journal de Tintin / ligne claire style reached its peak in the early-mid ’50s., the archetypal Spirou look emerged slightly later, as the cartoonists working in the Charleroi/Marcinelle style fully embraced the aesthetic of 1950s-early 60s Atom-age design.  Joost Swart (another key artist in the 1980s stylistic revival, who also coined the term ligne claire),  later referred to the Spirou sensibility as the “Atom Style,” with reference to this cartoony modernism.
Even a middle-ages-set gag strip can have that “Atom style” look:
Noel Bissot – Les Hallucinations Du Baron – Spirou #1440, 1965 (detail)
Not all the content of Spirou was comical. Â There was also a large component of muscular action comics, the best featuring the heavy-lined exaggerated styles of Eddie Pappe and Jiji. Two examples, 20 years apart, of the two artists work on the long-running strip Jean Valhardi:
Eddie Paape – Jean Valhardi – Spirou 436, 1946
Jije – Jaen Valhardi – 1961 Jiji (Joseph Gillain), joined Spirou in the late 1930s and drew the title strip before handing it over to Franquin. Working for the journal through the 1970s, he was a mentor and stylistic influence on artists as diverse as Franquin, Jean Giraud (Moebius) and Yves Chaland.
Jije – Jean Valhardi – L’affair Barnes, 1957. Scan of original art, source: Galerie Laqua
As for covers, since the Spirou approach was generally to run a comic page on the cover, they weren’t as dazzling as in Le Journal de Tintin. Â By the late 60s, though, Spirou shifted to a more conventional approach to cover, with some wonderful results:
Roba – Spirou 144, 1965Berck – Spirou #1600, 1968Will – Spirou 1480, 1966. The word balloon reads “That noise – t’s coming from pages 8 and 9!” Do I detect an echo of MAD #1?
Continuing the process of drawing a short comic about John and Eunice Williams and the Deerfield Raid of 1704, for Colonial Comics anthology from Fulcrum Press…
Where the first 5 pages were primarily visual, these two switch to a dialogue mode. Â The majority of the dialogue is taken from John Williams’ text, some of it moved around from different parts of the book. Â For instance, the story John tells Eunice of the girl who’s forced to wear the cross, was actually a story told to John by his son (who was also captured) in a letter. Â I’m not sure if John had heard this story when he met with Eunice for the first time at Kahnwake, but I thought it presented his attitude toward children in captivity pretty well.
My script:
PAGE 6.
The Jesuits attempt to get John to convert (“by all means of flatteries and threats). Some of the following text to be used:
 I had many disputes with the priests who came thither; and when I used their own authors to confute some of their positions, my books, borrowed of them, were taken away from me, for they said, I made an ill use of them.
It was propounded to me, if I would stay among them, and be of their religion, I should have a great and honourable pension from the king every year. The superiour of the Jesuits said, “Sir, you have manifested much grief and sorrow for your separation from so many of your neighhours and children; if you will now comply with this offer and proposal, you may have all your children with you; and here will be enough for an honourable maintenance for you and them.†(and never expect to have them on any other terms)I told them, my children were dearer to me than all the world, but I would not deny Christ and his truths for the having of them with me.  What is a man profited if he gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?
 “After much supplication, Governour de Vaudreuil (of New France), arranged for me to see my youngest daughter.â€
 John is brought to Kahnawake see Eunice. Before he sees her, the Mohawk tell him that “they would as soon part with their hearts as my child.â€
 PAGE 7
The first meeting between John and Eunice, in the church at Kahnawake, with Jesuits present.
EUNICE: Father! Have you come to take me home?
JOHN: God has not willed that yet. Are you well?Â
She looks downcast.
EUNICE: Yes, father.
JOHN: Have you been mistreated?
JOHN: Do you remember to say your catechism?
EUNICE: Yes! But they make me say prayers in Latin, father! I don’t understand a word. Will it do me harm?
JOHN: Be strong: I have been told of an English girl bid to take and wear the cross, and cross her self: She refused; they threatened her: either to cross herself, or be whipt, she chose to be whipt; but seeing her choosing indeed to suffer rather than comply, they desisted.Â
Eunice doesn’t seem encouraged.Â
The layouts of these pages are fairly straightforward, my thumbnails were loose — extremely so in the case of page 7. Â I didn’t bother scanning the roughs, which I usually only do if I’m piecing them together from sketches and other attempts.
Thumbnail for page 6 – pretty loose.Thumbnail for page 7 – extremely loose!
Drawing these two pages was much faster than the previous ones. My main focus was on the stylization/schematization of the characters. Â The style of drawing the two characters turns out to be different. John is more of a caricature style – almost Mort Drucker-ish at times , while Eunice is more of a Manga-influenced indie-comics look, that’s a little new for me; I’m really enjoying the simplicity and expressiveness this approach to her character allows. Even so, keeping the depiction of the characters consistent from page to page is proving a challenge.
The final line art:
The Eunice Williams story, page 6 final line artThe Eunice Williams story – p 7 final line art
Upcoming in June from publisher Thames and Hudson, “Comics: a Global History, 1968-present,” written by Alexander Danner and me.  I want to post some snippets from the book, including some great comics images (from foreign lands and bygone days) that we couldn’t quite fit in the book. Â
As the title suggests, the book covers the period from, roughly, 1968 until 2010. The introduction, though, provides some background on the development of comics around the world (focusing mainly on Europe, Japan and the U.S.) during the post-war era through the mid-60s. Â Text in italics is directly from the book.
Postwar European  Comics
Edgar P. Jacobs, from Blake et Mortimer, “Le Marque Jaune.’
 This classicism also expressed itself in a sort of playfully reassuring cartoon modernism, brimming with optimism about technology and progress.
Bob De Moor, 1955
What I love most about the ’40s and ’50s Tintin are the covers.  Can you  imagine being a French or Belgian kid, running to the newsstand kiosque every week for one of these jewels of color and drama?
Willy Vandersteen
Jacques Laudy is a neglected artist from this period. Â He did some breathtaking covers:
More Laudy, from his fanciful, Orientalist series Hassan et Kadour:
Bob De Moor’s style was the closest of all the Journal de Tintin artists to that of Herge.
For French comics critic Lecigne, this stylistic simulacrum is what reveals the essence of the Hergean ligne claire:
I don’t guess the following merits the word “script,” but this is what I was working from for this page:
PAGE 5
At Kahnawake, Eunice is welcomed warmly, embraced by her Indian “mother.â€Â Her rags are taken off and she is dressed in a new outfit, in the style of the Mohawk girls.
NOTES: Â The Iroquois nation at the time practiced the “Mourning War,” in which captives were taken for the purpose of replacing members of the tribe that had died, to ease the grief of their loved ones. Â “Captives could be adopted as a family member, literally taking the name and social position of the deceased” * Â It’s unknown whether Eunice was captured for this purpose, but possible, and I’m playing it that way.
The action of this page was also inspired by a passage in a book I read for research, “The Indian Captive,” by Lois Lenski, a fictionalized account (written for children in 1942) of a similar historical case.  The sensual appeal of the Indian clothes, faciliatate the  symbolic “changing of the skin” into that of an adopted culture.
I also thought  of the early shojo manga device of the “style picture.”  Shojo manga was aimed at young female readers, and the presentation of clothing and costume was an important element.  Often, an entire vertical section of the page was devoted to showing a character’s costume, in a panel that was often only loosely connected to the narrative flow of the comic, and using a decorative background rather than spatial continuity with the story:
Miyako Maki, “Maki’s Whistle” 1960
I wanted to get something of that feeling of that for this page.
The rough version:
Dan Mazur, Eunice Williams story, p 5 rough
The final (so far):
Since Eunice obviously can’t understand the language of the Mohawks, I thought of getting the dialogue translated, so that readers couldn’t understand it either. Â I emailed the tribal council at Kahnawake to see about a translation, but haven’t heard back. Â In the meantime, I think the blank balloons might be a good solution!
The decorative pattern around Eunice in the “style picture” is based on the Iroquois “three sisters” of beans, corn and squash. Â My friend EJ Barnes, however, has since pointed out to me that, because I’m an idiot, I drew gourds instead of squashes (EJ didn’t call me an idiot, that’s my term). Â So that will have to be re-drawn.
*Evan Haefeli and Kevin Sweeney, Captors and Captives: The 1704 French and Indian Raid on Deerfield
Upcoming in June from publisher Thames and Hudson, “Comics: a Global History, 1968-present,” written by Alexander Danner and me. Â I want to post some snippets from the book, including some great comics images (from foreign lands and bygone days) that we couldn’t quite fit in the book. Â
As the title suggests, the book covers the period from, roughly, 1968 until 2010. The introduction, though, provides some background on the development of comics around the world (focusing mainly on Europe, Japan and the U.S.) during the post-war era through the mid-60s.
In the Japanese section, after exploring Osamu Tezuka’s breakthrough work of the late 40s and early 50s, we move on to the 1950s gekiga movement:
By 1956 or so, a small rebellion against Tezukian hegemony was stirring in Osaka, led by a group of young up-and-comers including Yoshihiro Tatsumi, Takao Saito¯ and Masahiko Matsumoto. Reverent admirers of Tezuka, they nonetheless felt the need for more bite in their manga, and hence gekiga (meaning “dramatic pictures†as opposed to manga, “playful pictureâ€) was created to, as Tatsumi put it, provide “material for those in the transitional period between childhood and adulthood.†* Distributed through the inexpensive rental library—or kashihon—market, the early gekiga stories were mostly thrillers and mysteries for adolescent male readers, with cinematic paneling and lighting effects inspired by French and American film noir.
Matsuhiko Matsumoto – Rinshitsu no otoko (The Man Next Door) – 1956 from Kage #1
The young gekiga artists of the 1950s, like Matsumoto, were great fans of Osamu Tezuka, and their cartooning style owed much to his. They pushed his “cinematicâ€Â qualities a little further, with more use of angles and of “aspect-to-aspect†paneling (images of details within a scene, employed to build atmosphere or, in the case of this page, suspense), and in general brought a darker, tougher mood to juvenile thrillers  and mysteries.
The covers the first issues of Kage (Shadow) and Machi (City). The manga anthologies that marked the beginnings of what would be called gekiga.  The covers are unsigned.  I’ve seen them attributed to Ryota Masami
This first wave of gekiga** creators collaborated on two anthology periodicals, Kage (“Shadow”) was launched in 1956. The magazine was a success, sparking a boom in crime-themed, short story manga collections for the inexpensive kashihon market. But Kage’s small Osaka publisher, Hinomaru Bunko, was in perpetual financial straits, and when in the following year it appeared that the firm would go under, Matsumoto and Tatsumi accepted an offer from a rival to start a second, noir-ish anthology, Machi (“City”).***  Here are some images scanned from facsimile editions of the first issue of each of those titles:
Yoshihiro Tatsumi , ç§ã¯è¦‹ãŸ Watashi wa Mita  from Kage #1, 1956
An early page by Takao Saito – later of Golgo 13 fame – from Kage 1
Masaaki Sato – Hakaba kara ki ta otoko” (The Man from the Grave) from Machi 1, 1957
Makoto Takahashi, “The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes,” from Kage 1, 1956. Interestingly, Takahashi, one of the most important creators of early shoujo (girls’) manga, also appeared in the noir-ish Kage.Fumiyashu Ishikawa, “Bullet of Fear” from Machi 1, 1957
Shoichi Sakurai. from Kage 1, 1956 (Sakurai was Tatsumi’s elder brother; see Tatsumi’s “A Drifting Life”)
Mitsuko Kuroda (?) from Kage 1, 1956Masahiko Matsumoto “Jigoku Karaki ta tenshi” (Angel from Hell), from Machi 1, 1957
*Quoted in “God of Comics: Osamu Tezuka and the Creation of Post-World War II Manga” by Natsu Onoda Power
** The term “gekiga” wasn’t yet used during the heyday of Kage and Machi. Â Matsumoto favored the term “Komaga” to differentiate their work, geared for older readers, from manga, which was still thought of as a children’s form. Tatsumi coined the term “gekiga” a few years later.
***As recounted by Matsumoto in his autobiographical “Gekiga Fanatics”
I begged of God, to over-rule, in his providence, that the corpse of one so dear to me, and of one whose spirit he had taken to dwell with him in glory, might meet with a Christian burial, and not be left for meat to the fowls of the air, and beasts of the earth : A mercy that God graciously vouchsafed to grant: For God put it into the hearts of my neighbours to come out as far as she lay, to take up her corpse, recarry it to the town, and decently to bury it, soon after.
“The next day we were made to scatter one from another into smaller companies; and one of my children carried away with Indians belonging to the eastern parts.â€
John sees Eunice led away in a different direction.
Eunice is brought to the Christian Mohawk village of Kahnawake.
John to Quebec, to live among the Jesuits.Â
This is where I started to re-define what John would look like, and I did it in the name of comedy — there is only one portrait of John Williams (that  I could find online):
…but I don’t know; not much to work with there.  I wanted to have something visual going on in these “expository” panels  — some counterpoint to the text, and I went for the laugh, caricaturing John a bit as an uptight bluestocking in the same nose-in-the-air posture whether offered a glass of wine or conversion to Catholicism.  So I exaggerated nose, chin, forehead for that effect.  And he probably wouldn’t have brought his wig along for the long march to Quebec, so I was happy not to have to deal with that!
Rough page 4:
As much as I liked drawing poor Eunice Williams senior’s beautiful tombstone…
…it seemed to me that stepping out of the forward movement of the story at that point wasn’t working. Â Eliminating that panel made it possible to add another beat, showing how John ends up with the Governeur. Â The final line art:
When I got to page 5 I realized that I had to introduce an important character in the last panel, or she’d appear from nowhere. Â Another thanks to the lightbox! Â I sketched this figure grouping:
And dropped them into the red-drawn panel 5. Â So… MAYBE now it’s final:
Hopefully they’re noticeable enough to set-up the middle woman’s actions in the next page. Â You’ll see! Â At least… you can see if you want to. Â Next time.
By the way, a great source of visual reference for this is Bruce Beresford’s film of Brian Moore’s “Black Robe.” Â I highly recommend the film!
The third page of the story I’m working on for the Colonial Comics anthology from Fulcrum Books. Â The script for this page (notice a little bit of overlap with the last panel of page 2, I split one scene into two:)
PAGE 3.
Long march begins, 80 captives and 250 Indians and French soldiers, through the snowy wilderness.
Behind them, smoke rises from the burning houses of Deerfield.
JOHN: “The journey being at least three hundred miles we were to travel …. the place we were to be carried to, a popish country.â€
Eunice (mother) can’t keep up with Eunice (daughter). Mother slips and falls into river as they cross. Mohawk warrior raises his tomahawk to kill her. Eunice (daughter) turns and sees, cries out. Another Mohawk man comforts her, picks her up and carries her on.
“My wife told me her strength of body began to fail, and that I must expect to part with her; saying, she hoped God would preserve my life, and the life of some, if not all of our chil dren, with us; and commended to me, underGod, the care of them.
“in passing through the river, she fell down, and was plunged over head and ears in the water; after which … the cruel and blood thirsty savage, who took her, slew her with his hatchet, at one strokeâ€
…Also those last couple passages are from John Williams’ book (full text available here, by the way). Â I put them in not neccesarily to use as text in the final comic, but just description to work from.
First a thumbnail:
Then I roughed out the page (assembled from sketches and pulled together on lightbox):
And finally (or so I thought):
Pretty happy with this. Â I especially like the weird awkward falling figure in panel two, and the shape created by the prone figure in the next panel (which goes back to this teeny sketch weeks earlier:)
Buuuuuut… I took the finished page into the BCR meeting, and got some valuable feedback, especially from Shelli Paroline. Â First off, she recommended restoring the lettering in the first panel, which I’d thought to do without it. Â But I think that it will make the transition from one scene to the next smoother for the reader.
Secondly, there was some uncertainty as to the attitude of the Indian who picks Eunice up at the end. Â I also realized that, in this “cinematic” style of story-telling (cutting from different angles on the same action for the fall into the water, Eunice seeing her, the killing blow, the reaction), there was an unecessary “beat.” Â The middle panel in the middle tier, looking over the mother’s head as Eunice runs toward her: doesn’t really add any new information, and it does something weird to the pacing. Â So I could get rid of that panel, and add another beat to clarify the relationship between Eunice and the Indian man:
There now! Â Thank you lightbox for allowing me to preserve what I liked in the first version (I re-draw the whole page, I guess so there’s a nice original page as an end product). Â Though I’m not sure I don’t like the “striking” panel (panel 4 in this version) better in the one above.
Oh, and in case you’re interested, the finished work is drawn with brush and India ink (Dr. PH Martin’s Black Star) on bristol (Borden & Riley).
“I cannot relate the distressing care I had for my dear wife, who had lain-in but a few weeks before, and for my poor childrenâ€
Eunice (mother) clutches her children (including Eunice, daughter, 7), as Mohawk warriors menace them.
Warriors kill 2 children: a six-week old and four year old.
(“The enemies who entered the house… ….were so cruel and barbarous as to take … two of my children, and murder them.â€)
Long march begins, 80 captives and 250 Indians and French soldiers, through the snowy wilderness. Behind them, smoke rises from the burning houses of Deerfield.
JOHN: “Who can tell what sorrows pierced our souls, when we saw ourselves carried away from God’s sanctuary, to go into a strange land, exposed to so many trials ?
One challenge was drawing the panel where the invaders grab an infant from Eunice’s mother. Â At first I tried it as a full tableau:
Then I decided the action would be clearer and more dramatic closer up:
Another try:
But as I mentioned in a previous post, I’m pushing toward a more stylized treatment of the characters.  I think that will be more expressive, and more fun to draw. I’m particularly happy with how this worked in panels 1, 3 and 5. Here’s the rough version of the whole page:
As you can see, I condensed the killing of two Williams children into one — for space considerations, but also because the opening of this story is violent enough! Â The final version of the page (unless I change it more later):
