APE-Con April 8, 2006
Saturday night of APE-Con. The store, Isotope, was having a party to announce the winner of its mini-comic award, and JH Williams III had said he was planning to show up there. He came in around ten pm, and came right over with us, and he hung out and we visited for an hour or so.
We got talking about music. It sounds like he listens to a lot of music, all the time. A wide variety too. He said his genre of choice is gothic, and he recommended the band, HIM (“His Infernal Majesty”). He said everyone he’s made listen to the band at first thinks they’re okay, but then it grows on them, and next thing, they think they’re the greatest band ever. I think, these tend to be the best bands. When they do something that rubs you funny, but you realize you can’t get them out of your head, and you’re thinking about them all the time, and you have to keep listening to them and try to figure them out, and before you know it you’re starting to understand what they are and what they’re doing, and then you realize they’re quite good, actually. This was my experience with my favorite band ever, the Pixies.
I told Jim that even though it had been over a year since he’d done a monster pin-up for me, I was planning to not include it when I release my next new issue, and then put him in the NEXT one. I explained that the next book was going to be “Greatest Army Battles,” and so naturally I’d have to wait until “Outer Space Adventures” to include his pin-up. He laughed that clearly I was just waiting for his career to hit its pinnacle, so that I could cash in the most with publishing his piece.
Someone at the party asked what his next project is, and he said it’s still unofficial, but it better become official soon, because he’s already done nine pages. He was offered Detective Comics, DC’s shining star of comics. He said that Dan Didio, who’s in charge of DC Comics, came to him during a DC dinner party during Wondercon, and took him aside and said, You know I love your art, right? If you want Batman, he’s yours. Quite high praise. Batman is the character that sustains DC. He’s their biggest draw and money-maker, so offering it to Jim was a very big deal, in his oppinion.
He brought up that he hadn’t originally planned to go to Wondercon a couple months ago, but then last minute, ended up showing up. Now, he told me why. Grant Morrison had made a special guest appearance at Wondercon, and Grant asked Jim if he could come out so that they could discuss his ideas for the second installment of Seven Soldiers. Also, Grant had a creator-owned project that he wanted to do with Jim. So that’s why Jim came to Wondercon.
Jim said he knew Grant would be at Wondercon, but he didn’t know where, except at the Isotope party. At the time, he was having difficulties with Desolation Jones, and was feeling frustrated. Then he went to the Isotope party, and people were coming up to him, saying how excited they were that he was doing a creator-owned project with Grant. And he and Grant hadn’t even worked this out yet. Then Grant announced the same thing at the following day’s panel discussions.
So between this, and being offered Batman, Jim’s mood turned right around. He said it’s proof that metaphysics is real. He was having a rough time, and the universe answered.
Jim talked about working on the Batman pages. He said that the monthly Batman books have a look and style for the art, and he wasn’t interested in contributing to more of this formula. If he’s going on a Batman book, he’s going to push boundaries. He said he submitted pages to his editor, and he tried a technique for an action scene. His editor told him he had been staring at the page for an hour, and at first he didn’t think he liked what Jim had done, but after an hour he changed his mind and decided it was REALLY cool. And that’s exactly how Jim wants it. Like what he considers to be the best music. For people to feel a little uncomfortable with what he’s doing, or not understand it, but for it to affect you, and you need to keep looking at it and thinking about it and studying it, and when you’re through you realize it’s pretty fuckin’ awesome.
He said he’s made a list of writers he would like to work with, and he’s been able to slowly go through and cross these great names off his list, one at a time.
He said he began inking his own work after Promethea. He said Mick Gray is a machine with linework. His lines are really amazingly accurate and geometrical and precise. Also, he’s really fast. Jim admitted he isn’t as precise as Mick, but he’s shown his own inkings to a number of people whose judgements he respects, and they’ve given positive feedback that encouraged him he’s doing well. When he showed Arthur Adams, Arthur just said, It looks good, and you should ink all your stuff from now on. Now that Jim has begun inking himself, he says he can’t see letting an inker do the work anymore.
We talked about how a sloppy line can have an energy, even with its inaccuracies. I told him about a carpenter I knew, who carves furniture by hand. His skills are such that he could cut a perfect circle, but when he does furniture, he purposely makes them imperfect, because otherwise people don’t realize he actually did them by hand. People assume, if it’s too perfect, that it must be machine-cut, and people pay for imperfections when they buy “hand-made.” Art is similar, where sometimes you bare all the imperfections and mistakes, and it looks better than the perfect lines. The trick is to be able to do both, and make an artistic decision when it’s appropriate to use which.
I asked Jim’s technique, and he said he begins by inking with a pen. Then he fills in his blacks with a brush. From there, he studies the weights of the lines, and if something needs a bit more of a push, then he re-inks the pen lines with the brush, to thicken them accordingly.
What surprised me is that he said he’s stopped penciling. He begins his work with the pen, and works his way out. That’s gotta take some mental visualization to pull that off. I’m sure others have done it, but the only one I can think of is Sean Phillips for his Hellblazers. Jim said he has to be careful with panned out shots, because the tendency is to make heads too big in relation to their bodies. He said he has to ink inside where he thinks the lines should be, and that usually insures the proportions will turn out okay.
Hearing about all the successes Jim’s been having lately, I asked how long he’s been in comics. He said fourteen years. Yet again, here’s a very talented artist, who doesn’t just appear in comics, and everyone sees his talent and gives him jobs. He’s the same as everyone, where he’s had to work and work, and struggle, and finally after maybe ten or twelve years he started landing the good books. He said, the days of an overnight sensation, someone who puts out one book and becomes a superstar, ended after Arthur Adams.
I felt like Jim and I really connected at this party, and I look forward to spending more time with him.