Sketch Fridays #37 – Katana, Part 2

May12
by on 12 May 2017

Sketch Fridays #37 – Katana, Part 2 (art by Josh Tobey)

As stated before, the superhero team that Josh Tobey and I created was an assembly of four characters (the fourth of which will be redesigned next week), of whom Josh and I divided creative responsibilities right down the middle. To that team, Josh brought the character of Katana, whom he had created previously. Katana, I want to say, was one of the earliest creations of our years-long collaboration, a power fantasy of Josh’s devising whose story and history became as complicated and nebulous as any published superhero. An immortal human sent back in time to stop an alien invasion, Katana basically embodied everything that Josh and I liked during our teenage years. In terms of comics, I think he was most inspired by Todd McFarlane’s Spawn for Image Comics, if only because that character spanned centuries as well and providing ourselves the opportunity to design century period-appropriate costumes for the character was enticing.

Josh has been watching me redesign these old characters and was energized by the efforts. When I kind of ran out of my characters to redesign (almost), I asked if he didn’t mind me redesigning characters he created for the superhero team. He didn’t mind at all. However, it was followed by e-mails containing his redesigns of his characters which I demanded to share (especially as I’m elbow-deep in grading at the moment). What is most energizing is that we both approached these characters’ redesigns on our own terms without consulting each other, so our respective interpretations are wholly unique and indicative of our current aesthetic mindsets. More than anything, it’s just fun to see what two people whose creative lives were so intertwined as teenagers would do at this point over twenty years later.

I asked Josh to write up some thoughts about his redesign:

I started with the mask because that was a big part of his identity back in the day.  Instead of a hockey mask glued to his face (he didn’t eat, by the way)––I didn’t want to go back to that––I figured that he wears a mask to take impact but also to hide what his face really looks like.  The eyes are now more of an optical aide, perhaps fish eye view, infared, zoom, etc.

As for the rest of him, he is based on some of the old Chinese martial artists that would go into an establishment and kick all the bad guys’ asses and not need a gun.  He can go into a situation light and stealthy, mess stuff up, and ideally get out in one piece.  The armor is light to take some blows but not overwhelming. His suit might be made of a material that camouflages him and might be tough to cut/puncture, possibly made of a carbon nano structure that could stop a bullet and maybe dull a sharp object or not rip or puncture.  After all, he is supposed to be a character from the future.  His weapon of choice is a katana, go figure.  His might be a different alloy but that is what he does his damage with.

What his write-up highlights between the two of us is the fact that we both focused on the mask first, the character’s defining feature. More importantly, we both took different angles on it. Perhaps it highlights our divergent paths as artists, but it shows, at the very least, how independently-minded we remain after starting at, basically, the same place. It makes sense that we spent so much time focusing on his mask, as it was the one constant throughout his development.

Josh had been drawing for a long while before I ever put pencil to paper. He was my mentor and guide and silent combatant. I always measured my ability against his and always came up short. After all of this time, I think some of that remains, but I’m also mature enough to recognize that we have become very different artists in our maturity and exist on very different planes currently, though we are forever linked through these early creations.

Showing the difference in abilities in 1994, Josh’s Katana is on the left, Dan’s is on the right.

The one thing Josh nailed thoroughly on the head in his teens was the idea of being able to render drawings clearly and tightly. His drawings always looked finished and, thusly, became a goal I strived for and still never really feel like I achieve. So, partly as revenge, partly as an earnest endeavor to chronicle our humble history, I submit drawings Josh made over twenty years ago of Katana through the ages.

 

Stone Age Katanas. Art by Josh Tobey, 1994.

Ancient Japan Katana (left), medieval Katana (right). Totally not influenced by Todd McFarlane’s Spawn in the slightest. Art by Josh Tobey from 1994.

Future Katana. Art by Josh Tobey from 1994. #trianglefeet

I don’t post these to merely embarrass Josh. Instead, they are mile markers in my own development. When I first saw these, I had no idea how he drew images that looked so final and finished, establishing, if not an aesthetic, then at least a benchark I still strive for. Until this day, I want my drawings to look “done” and, I must admit, it only rarely happens. So, to an extent, I’m still chasing the arbitrary and unknown goal posts that Josh’s incredible talent as a 15 year-old planted in my impressionable psyche.

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FCBD 2017 Retrospective

May11
by on 11 May 2017

Despite having missed last year’s Free Comic Book Day celebration at Empire’s Comics Vault, this year’s event passed like no time was lost. I’ll be honest, the main reason why I like to go back is to hang out for a day in a room with a bunch of people I know––some of whom I’ve known for years, a situation in which I rarely find myself. Personally, I looked at the event as a welcome reprieve as I had just collected about a hundred final portfolios from my writing classes (my day job) and had no problem delaying my head-first dive into them.

FCBD helped to delay the inevitable. Me at my desk with 97 writing porftolios. Photo by Shelley Blanton-Stroud

I was tabled between old friend and fellow webcomicker, Melissa Pagluica (who makes Above the Clouds), and artist Julie Okahara. All of us in our row were pretty much chit-chatting the entire time which made the time pass somewhat quickly (most of us had arrived by 7:30 am; it was a long day).

Because of the early hour, Ben (the owner of the shop) had allowed us to set up the day before the event. I fretted quite a bit with my table setup, but I ended up pretty happy with the final layout. Tabling at a show is an art in its own right, relying on visual rhetoric and some fundamental grasp on 3D design; I know a little about the former and go by feel for the latter. Ultimately, I was pretty happy with how it ended up.

My table at FCBD 2017.

This event marked the debut of the Logan-inspired print, “Legacy,” as well as my sketch collection, BackMatter (which is now on sale in the store!) and though “Legacy” may not have been the most appropriate piece for this all-ages show, most people got a chuckle out of the Long John, volume 1 cover with kids pointing in shock, joy, or horror as they waited in line to grab their free comics.

Ben also allowed us who setup early the chance to grab what we wanted from the FCBD offerings, so I picked through having only glanced at what the titles would be.

My haul of the Free Comic Book Day books. Clockwise from the top left: 2000 AD, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, I Hate Image, Guy Delisle’s Hostage, Bad Machinery, Boom! Studios 2017 Summer Blast, and Doctor Who.

So far, I’ve only sat down and read through Skottie Young’s I Hate Image, a short story featuring the protagonist from his hit Image book, I Hate Fairyland, and it is hilarious especially if you are familiar with some of the key players at Image Comics. I’ve read through the Doctor Who book as well and found it a rather clever use of art to delineate different Doctors within a single story (the Doctor is the name of the protagonist in Doctor Who who “regenerates” when actors playing the Doctor leave the show and are replaced by a new one). Bad Machinery was a surprise for me because I have been a fan of creator John Allison’s work for years back when he did a webcomic called Scary-Go-Round which he shuttered and replaced with a spinoff, Bad Machinery. While still doing webcomics, he has found success with the print comic, Giant Days, which he writes for Boom! comics. So, it was nice to see webcomics represented in the mix of Big 2 (Marvel and DC) and other major publishers.

I also picked up the most recent two issues of Melissa’s comic, which you can also get from her Etsy store.

Issues 4 & 5 of Above the Clouds by Melissa Pagluica.

Lastly, I indulged in the very generous sale the store was having and picked up some books I had my eye on for awhile but never had the guts to take the plunge. I have not been shy about my love for the work of Becky Cloonan. I first really saw her work when she did a fill-in issue on Batman during the New 52 run and was blown away by her style. Soon after, I found her store online and bought her stuff, focusing on her single-issue short stories that are rather opaque but beautiful. These comics were called Wolves, The Mire, and Demeter. Opaque may be the wrong word for it; they’re just very sparse and open for interpretation. Reading her work is challenging and begs for re-reading. However, she has done work in more mainstream comics (as with Batman) in between her creator-owned passion projects. One of her early forays into sequential art was a series called Demo for Dark Horse Comics. Written by Brian Wood, it is a series of 18 stories each about a different teenager with a power of some kind. Since finishing, it has been made available in a big omnibus collection which I picked up at reasonable discount.

Books bought on discount at Free Comic Book Day (left to right): DC’s Wonder Woman, volume 1 (New 52) and Dark Horse Comics’ Demo.

Also, with the Wonder Woman movie arriving in June, I figured I should not be a poser and actually read some Wonder Woman. Of DC’s initial “New 52” launch (many books were cancelled and new ones introduced later in the New 52 lifespan) I remember hearing very positive things about what Brian Azzarello and Cliff Chiang were doing with Wonder Woman. At the time, I liked keeping my net shallow and the only New 52 book I read was Batman. But now that the New 52 is done and that story is completed, I figured that (with a sale, to boot), it would be the perfect chance to go back and check out this run on a classic character. I haven’t dug into it yet but Nicole––my spouse––has thoroughly enjoyed it so far.

I came away from the day exhausted with some good sales and even better conversations. With luck, I look forward to doing it again next year.

 

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Sketch Fridays #36 – Katana

May05
by on 5 May 2017

Sketch Fridays #36 – Katana. Click image for a larger version.

Though covered a bit previously, Josh Tobey and I created a superhero team together whose name bounced around but always included “Cyber” somewhere in it––”Cybers,” “Cybernet,” “CyberTech.” The team comprised four members: Backfire, Razorpoint, Katana, and Shockwave. With a nice even number like that, Josh and I split the designing duties evenly. I had Backfire and Razorpoint––both previously featured on Sketch Fridays––and Josh came up with the remainder. To that end, I must redesign all of them as a Sketch Friday. I must admit, however, that the previous Sketch Friday redesigns of my old high school characters really stirred a lot of thought in me so far, trying to find a modern resonance within the swaths of ’90s aesthetics and derivative design choices. With Katana, however, I decided to lean into the absurdity a bit more, perhaps because he isn’t “my” character.

A drawing of Katana from 1994.

Katana, if I’m not mistaken, was a character that existed before our superhero team; a power fantasy of Josh’s invention. If Venture was my version of Highlander, Katana was Josh’s version of The Terminator. While talking back and forth with Josh over the last week or so, trying to remember who exactly the character was, we learned that Katana’s origin became pretty difficult to nail down. Of all the characters featured in this retrospective, Katana is surely the oldest (in terms of creation), so his story was malleable to fit whatever nebulous story we were trying to fashion at the time.

The basics are as follows: Katana was an android/cybernetic being/biomechanoid created by scientists in the far future (one of them, apparently, a descendant of Razorpoint). At the time of his creation, humanity was under extreme threat by an alien invasion in a war that had raged, off and on, for centuries but had picked up steam and humanity was losing against the surge. The plan was to send Katana back in time to eradicate the alien threat upon its initial arrival. However, they sent him back too far. At points, Katana went as far back as the Stone Age and slowly wended his way forward through time and consistently failed at his duty. The aliens arrived, but he didn’t stop them. So, he waits for them to show up again and give it another go.

A Katana drawing from ’95 or ’96.

Perhaps this is what causes him to join up with Backfire, Razorpoint, and Shockwave. Perhaps he created the team. Either way, he was the perpetual loner, wisecracker, and stoic that every teenage boy would create.

As I was redesigning him, I honestly felt to make it meet the standards of my modern sensibilities would require too much revision so as to render him unrecognizable. So, instead, I focused on visuals and doubled down on the ’90s-ness of him.

My later character, Venture, was basically a fantasy version of the sci-fi Katana––immortals moving forward through history in real time, permanently bonded face masks, big swords––and Josh and I worked hard to intertwine their stories as often as possible. So, to distinguish him from Venture––and to play with the sci-fi tropes a bit––my main focus was on his mask, and it gave me a lot of trouble. Eventually, I stuck with the permanently affixed mask but broke it up into pieces so he could still talk and emote if needed. My basic inspiration for that was a cross between (and I hate to say this first one) the designs from the Michael Bay Transformers movies and how they created emotive but mechanical faces and the faces of the Turian race of aliens from the Mass Effect video game series. For both, instead of muscles under skin, the face is broken up in to hard plates that rest on top of a muscular (or whatever) structure and shifted and moved when they talked or emoted, and I thought that, while possibly more effective in an animated form, this could be a cool effect for Katana’s mask instead of just being hockey protective gear. The final design ended up a bit Iron Man, but it still works.

Ironhide from Transformers (left) and a Turian from Mass Effect (right).

As for the costume, I focused on creating a united aesthetic between the other members of the teams so far while incorporating aspects of the classic Katana design (shoulder pads, designs on the legs, eye stripe). For his legs, I drew heavily on the design of the character Solid Snake from the first Metal Gear Solid game; since Katana has a pretty clear ninja heritage, too, I wanted to give him clothing that could move and be quiet while walking or running.

Development sketches for the Katana redesign. Click to enlarge.

One idea I didn’t incorporate more of was that he would be adorned with different pieces of armor/clothing from the ages and countries he visited throughout his millennia-long lifespan. The only real remnant of that is the gauntlets which are based on samurai armor.

So, this was basically my effort to design a “Cyber-Group” version of Katana. However, I have it on good authority that, next week, we’ll have a redesign of the character in a more “solo series” mode by Katana’s creator himself.

A drawing of Katana by Josh Tobey from 1994.

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