The Fantastic Four, collaboration, and mailtime

I saw Guy Davis speak at SAIC awhile ago and went to a signing of his, and have since been interested in reading this book. (An added bonus of the SAIC talk was that I ran into my old friend Cassandra Davis, who was teching the event.) I finally picked up a copy and it's really interesting. The collaboration is a big part of this.

Fantastic Four: Unstable Molecules (vol. 1, but who knows if or when the next two proposed volumes will come out) is written, designed, and with layouts by James Sturm; pencils/inks by Guy Davis; colors by Michael Vràna; '50's-style panels of the fake Vapor Girl comic by master stylist R. Sikoryak; and covers by teen idol cartoonist Craig Thompson.

Sturm writes an interesting story. The 'what-if' book posits that Stan Lee and Jack Kirby based the FF off of real people that they knew. What we get is a 1950's melodrama about scientist Reed Richards, his girlfriend Susan Sturm, Sue's teenage brother Johnny, and Reed's college friend, boxing trainer Ben Grimm. It plays with the tensions and preconceptions of the era, in a Rebel Without a Cause kind of way.

It even adds fake notes and research about the "true story" that Marvel "covered up" at the end. I confess that by the end of the book I believed it was real. I'm never been known by my friends to be real quick on the uptake.

Artists that do really neat stuff on their own that make something even more special together is a common story: Lennon/McCartney, Miller/Mazzuchelli. Not that this book is that good, but the principle of each artist lending a particular strength runs through here.

Seams are shown sometimes, to great effect. Sikoryak's Vapor Girl panels are thrown in as Johnny Sturm reads them (sometimes as "reading material"). The images are interspersed in the "real world" to depict the anxious, insular, comic-obsessed world of Johnny's friend, Rich "Dickboy" Mannelman.

Panels from the original Lee/Kirby FF comics are interspersed as well, sometimes as design elements, sometimes in the beginnings of chapters to parallel the action of their "real life" counterparts. A running theme is the anxieties, fears, and desires underpinning 60's Marvel superhero comics and how their teenage readers identified.

Since his lecture, I wanted to see Guy Davis work with a really strong writer. I love B.P.R.D., but I began to feel that Davis was a little better than the material he was working with. Michael Vràna adds beautiful pastel colors that complement Davis's linework and fit ideas about the time period. Sort of like the use of colors in Todd Haynes's wonderful movie Far From Heaven.

Davis said in his lecture that Sturm presented him with a "mini-comic" version of the layouts Davis told Marvel that they should be publishing those, but Marvel insisted that Davis draw it in his style. I would love to see those layouts. The different choices that artists make when interpreting the same story is very interesting to me. I've been thinking about copping this working method for a story I'm working on.

I've been thinking about the nature of collaboration for a long time now. I'm involved in a couple and I'm looking to do more. I saw a Randy Newman interview where he was asked about why he's made only three solo albums in the past thirty years. Randy said that film music is easier because it's a job. Writing, to him, started to feel really lonely.

It sometimes did for me too. Working with other people, on writing, art, or whatever, helps with an added perspective... Like a lot of people, I have confidence and editing problems with my writing. To be able to talk it out with a collaborator who has ideas about where a story can go (Renny Kissling, on Nils) has been invaluable.

Since I've been doing so much on the writing side though, I'm itching to get back to drawing comics. So I'm trying to find someone to write a comic for me to draw, to take the pressure off of coming up with the story, and also so I can learn from someone else's way of going about storytelling.

Life here continues to be unnerving and weird a lot of times, but it's also full of a lot of exciting possibilities. I guess I wouldn't have it another way.

Also:
Looking around the web for images, I came across another one of Marvel's indie creator experiments: The Megalomaniacal Spider-Man by Peter Bagge. I've never read this Steve Ditko/Ayn Rand parody, but I'm sure it's a riot.

In other news, Christmas came early this year. Just when I was getting sure that the above package was lost in the mail, I received it and the below goodies as well.

The first package were some expensive and hard-to-find art supplies that are cheaper at MCAD's Art Cellar in Minneapolis, sent to me by Abby with a package decorated by Abby and Liz Elton (of KF). Liz drew the anime version of Abby up top, which I'm really fond of.

The second and third packages were two huge envelopes stuffed with Nickelodeon Magazines, thanks to cartoonist and illustrator Dave Roman. Dave worked for Nick and put an open call out to find homes for his surplus of back issues. A little known secret about Nick Mag is that they publish a ton of comics by awesome cartoonists: Johnny Ryan, James Kochalka, Zak Sally, and many others. Dude even fronted the postage. I'm sure I'll work through them and them get them to someone of the appropriate age. I read the mag regularly as a kid so it was especially nice to see all these new ones.

Many many thanks to Abby and Dave Roman for the mail!

I promise that new drawings are coming soon... soon as I can scan them. My Christmas card commission for my uncle is nearly done. It's a riot.

EDIT: Moments after I posted this, I found John K. posting on his blog about the joys of collaboration, too.