The day job has been quite taxing and busy this week; so, in lieu of a Sketch Friday I did have time to put together a video of me inking last week’s entry. Unlike previous “D. Bethel Draws…” videos––which were just sped-up videos over music––I tried something new at the behest of local comics compatriot, Kyrun Silva.
While music is still there (and I think I’ll go back in and adjust the levels a bit or remove most of the music entirely), I added commentary over the top where, in this case, I talk about my association with Hellboy and inking with a brush. Please check it––and the other videos on my YouTube channel––out and let me know what you think!
Stay tuned for interesting stuff coming down the pike!
In my teens, the art of Mike Mignola was a hard sell for me. Admittedly, I categorized him as one of the “weird” artists––where Mignola was joined by the likes of Jae Lee, Brian Stelfreeze, Sam Kieth,Larry Stroman, Bill Sienkiewicz, and Dave McKean––that is, artists who didn’t follow the norm of Jim Lee-styled superheroics and, as a result, were rebuffed of my attention.
However, Mignola stands out from those other artists in that I came around to his style earlier than many of the others. Though he didn’t draw in the highly-rendered hyper-realistic style of the Jim Lee school of comic art, his blocky, high-contrast approach to covers and interiors retained the heightened melodrama that I enjoyed with more mainstream art.
Hellboy as drawn by Mike Mignola.
To that end, I did immediately respect Hellboy when it first appeared. Though I probably overestimated its value as I compared it to the more mainstream work of Marvel’s X-Men books and their Image Comics clones in WildC.A.T.s––so, I lumped Hellboy into the comics-as-art (to my teenage brain) pool populated by Concrete, Love and Rockets, Cerebus, and even Bone (admittedly, my scope on the medium was rather myopic as a youth).
Probably my earliest exposure to Mignola, his cover work on the X-Men Classic reprint books.
Now, I find myself following the abstracted leads of art like Mignola, drawing from their stylized compositions to find new and interesting ways to present not only my own characters, but my art in general. It’s due, in part, to Mignola’s work that Long John volumes 1 & 2’s covers are the way they are. If not a direct inspiration, learning to respect the work of Mignola and his “weird” kin really opened my eyes to the possibility of comic art and finding inspiration beyond those whom I simply wanted to emulate or aspire to. In fact, following these esoteric trails pushed me to change my goals and find new, personalized, and unique paths to travel down.
After struggling to find mainstream work in the early nineties––he hit some high notes with things like World of Krypton and Gotham By Gaslight for DC Comics as well as drawing the Rocket Raccoon limited series and a lot of cover work for Marvel––he found a home with Dark Horse Comics that gave him the platform to literally make a comic about whatever he wanted. As noted in many interviews, he said that he knew he liked to draw monsters and so he created a book that allowed him to do just that (which also shows why he and Guillermo del Toro got along so well).
Twenty-five years later, Hellboy is probably the most well-known independent comic book creation in popular culture. So, a victory for Mignola and Hellboy is a victory for all independent creators.
My wife and I have realized that––to us––the most perfect place on the planet is the Eastern Sierra Nevada. One clue to this would be that this is where Long John takes place. A further clue (or clues) would be that we keep returning to the region between one to times a year for the last few years.
Originally, we tried to write-off the excursions as “research” for the comic, but that auspice quickly fell away (although every return trip proves to be more and more useful for the telling of Long John). We’ve been there while it’s dry and hot and we’ve been there while it’s been shrouded in snow and ice––we basically got cars with four-wheel drive or all-wheel drive for the express purpose of traveling out there (though we won’t admit it)––and no matter the season it has been a wonderful, trying, adventurous, and relaxing experience.
The Spring Break of my day job as a professor luckily always falls on our anniversary. So, since being hired at my current institution (or, at least, since becoming full-time at my institution) we have made a concerted effort to go somewhere for our anniversary/Spring Break every year.
Pictures from this year’s vacation to the Eastern Sierra Nevada.
This year, we decided to make an official anniversary trip to the Sierra Nevada, staying at a cabin on Convict Lake before spending some time outside of Genoa in Nevada.
As is the case with every trip we take, we––or Nicole, rather––makes big plans. The illustration above was the image I had in my head when the plans were made: chilling together (and, if possible, with our dog, Rusty) in a natural hot spring and relaxing. It didn’t go according to plan on this trip––hot springs are expensive, weather was tumultuous, the dog likes swimming more than just chilling––but the sentiment remained and, like always, we made our own fun.
This trip commemorates the eighteenth year Nicole and I have been together––eighteen years together, eight years married (we got married on our tenth anniversary as a gift to ourselves)––and I couldn’t imagine a better place to spend it and, of course, no better person to spend it with.
