Green Hornet Annual #1 – August 2010

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A new solicitation for Dynamite Entertainment’s August comics at Rick Offenberger’s First Comics News includes a cover I finished about a month ago for Kevin Smith’s Green Hornet Annual #1, for which I’m also scheduled to draw a story within the book. It’s a little difficult for me to keep such art under wraps until the publisher announces it. With a somewhat sparse career in comics that’s beginning to return to life now, the story of this cover was something I’ve wanted to tell here since the day I finished it.

Joe Rubinstein and I were asked to produce this cover in black and white line art, my pencils and Joe’s inks. As preliminary discussions about it began with Dynamite chief Nick Barrucci, it was suggested that this should be a classic “boy kneeling at his father’s grave, exuding anguish, rage and promise of revenge. Nick even suggested the Neal Adams Batman/Ra’s Al Ghul cover with a deceased Robin as inspiration.

My first instinct was to look for a new angle from which to approach such a story situation. Such covers have been seen often, which makes the task of getting a fresh result a little more difficult. It was important to find a way that would distinguish it from the classic graveside scenes. Within a few days of sketching on the computer (the entire job was done digitally), I came up with this first attempt where I used the close-up instead of the kneeling figure, intending that the expression and attitude would tell the story without needing to rely on the familiar kneeling figure, and allow the background to do the rest. I then sent the image to Nick for response.

Nick was swift in replying he’d rather go with the classic look of the kneeling figure at a grave site. He didn’t want the allusion of the Hornet hat, that young Britt Reid would himself become a New Green Hornet, because in the story, Britt Jr. had not yet made such a decision at the time. He also pointed out that Britt is much younger, college age, both things which I wasn’t quite aware of at the time. Nick also sent me a couple of known comics covers with a similar subject to use as an idea template.

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I don’t know about other artists, but such situations can become a formidable challenge for me. One problem being that these types of images have been done so much that it’s difficult to arrive at something that looks new. The other problem is a mounting expectation that the cover should look like these samples, which compounded the difficulty in achieving a special result.

So I hit the digital software again and came up with the following sketch (left) and sent it to Nick in its rough form, explaining why such a cover is going to automatically give the feeling that it’s been seen before.

Fortunately, upon seeing this, Nick agreed. But he was still pressing to emulate, or seek inspiration from, a familiar comics image of a similar story scene. So he sent along the Neal Adams/Ra’s Al Ghul cover (right) for more guidance.

This posed an even a greater dilemma for me. While I didn’t want this cover to be so much like the previous graveside covers, I wanted even less that it would be identified with Neal’s Ra’s Al Ghul cover. As great as Neal’s art has always been, there is a difference between having a style strongly influenced by him and doing a cover that looks like a shadow of something he’d done.

Still, I struggled with the idea as much as possible, but could only produce the following rough sketch (right), which I didn’t even send to Nick for a response. Instead I sent an email explaining the difficulty I’m having with the entire direction.

Nick caught on to the problem and made an effort to more precisely define the differences between the situation that Britt Jr. is in, and the classic anguish/revenge reactions in the previous samples. Nick’s familiarity with the story, which I was somewhat lacking of, was exactly the information I needed to move forward. The big reveal for me was that Britt Jr. was more of a shattered young man in this instance at his father’s grave. Not at all the vengeful would-be hero that we’ve seen in previous situations. He had not yet developed an understanding of the scope of events that would later push him into donning his father’s mantle. In that sense, the previous samples of heroic rage and promise of revenge at the grave were not necessarily indicative of what this cover should be about.

So, I returned to the computer and set out to re-think the approach. Britt Jr. would get a more subdued and broken treatment. The mood would be more sullen. A moment of mourning instead of fire and brimstone rage. This would also allow for introducing both Kato and his daughter into the scene as standing by the shattered youth to help him pick up the pieces. Soon enough, I sent Nick the following proposal.

Nick corroborated that we were finally on the right track. But now that we were heading into this more subdued direction, there was a question about whether there was a need for the his father’s image to be hovering overhead in the background. There was also the issue of color which would be critical to pulling off the mood. Feeling a little encouraged with this result, I produced the following color roughs, mainly as possible guides for the colorist. One with the spirit of the departed father in the background, and one without.

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Jason Ullmeyer, Dynamite graphic designer who was also involved in the process and followed our discussions, then suggested a third possibility of a stronger, more close-up image of the departed Britt Reid in the background. This seemed like the clincher to me as it would anchor the scene with the sweeping element that this cover was basically about. I added this possibility into the array of color roughs and produced finished line, equivalent to pencils, for each of the three options.

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By this point, I’d cultivated such an attachment to this cover that it seemed natural for me to see it through to the finish as a digital painting. This is an area I’ve been pursuing for some time as I’ve been working with a computer for more than 15 years and have become versatile with most aspects of image production. I’ve basically done penciling, inking and coloring of many pieces in the site gallery and this was a good opportunity to produce such a piece for a mainstream publication. So I made the suggestion to Nick that this would give us the best result for the cover. Nick’s answer was one of agreement with a slight reservation about getting Joe Rubinstein’s approval as Joe was slated to ink the cover for a traditional color process. A quick email to Joe settled the issue and I was all set for the final stretch of digitally painting the piece.

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The images above show the turning points in the finished digital painting process. The first image basically brings the piece to a finished rendered state before applying color filters and effects needed focus the eye on the central elements. It had seemed pretty much finished to me at this point but a few things were still bothering me. One was concerning the proportions of young Britt’s head relative to his body, which became an easy fix with the digital tools. Another issue was that even though this is a sullen moment, the piece still needed a stronger color punch as a comic book cover. At this point I sent Joe Rubinstein a copy of it to get his opinion and he corroborated my own apprehension, advising to get a little stronger with the warm orange colors. Joe, though mainly known as an inker, is one of the more talented painters in the comics community and has a very keen eye for color. His advice was enough to make the final changes which included a little more detail on the top surface of young Britt’s head.

What started out as pencils for a familiar scene on a traditional comics cover turned into a unique challenge that’s produced my first mainstream comics digital cover painting. Early reactions to it seem to be enthused. Perhaps it’s the beginning of many more.