2011: A Cartooning Odyssey, Part 2

[johncomic]

In 1975, at age eighteen, my first year as a university undergrad, I began my next major comic book project. By now I was heavily under the thrall of Barry Smith's Conan, and sword-and-sorcery and epic fantasy in general, so I decided to create a graphic novel along these lines.

At the time, I was completely unfamiliar with the concept of the graphic novel -- had never seen or heard of such a thing -- so I was under the impression that I had invented the idea. I even coined the term “comic novel” to try to explain to people what I was working on. Those were indeed innocent days...

And so I began working on Two Heroes Met, a shameless rip-off of Fritz Leiber. Hell, even my title was a nod to his series...

By this time I was finally working in ink (inching my way toward professionalism), although I inked exclusively in technical pen, which no self-respecting pro would be caught dead doing back in those days. Behold some snapshots:



As you can see, I was fascinated by light and texture and fussy detail, obviously feeling that the more lines I put in, the better the drawing was. Toward the end I think my body language was, on rare occasions, getting rather less stiff, capturing a shade more naturalism (but still with lotsa fussy lines):



A parting shot, one that impressed me mightily at the time but now strikes me as the most egregiously overdone drawing in the entire project:



I worked on Two Heroes Met until 1979, when I broke my drawing hand and had to re-learn how to draw, essentially. During that process my style morphed and I was never again able to draw so that it looked like it was done by that same guy who drew the first sixty pages. To this day I have some people claim that Two Heroes Met is my best work, and nothing I've done since then surpasses it. I don't agree, and I don't expect you to, but that's what makes horse races.