All during the convention, we kept stopping by JH Williams III’s booth and telling him we wanted to spend some time with him, whenever he was free. Maybe dinner, if he was available. It turned out, he gave us a call one night about having dinner, but we missed the call and blew that opportunity.
We did get some nice time with him in the bars one night. He told me how he was disappointed with the Desolation Jones project, it had been giving him a lot of stress, and finally quit. He was very professional. He gave them plenty of notice, and finished the story arc he had started. Wildstorm, who put out Desolation Jones, is owned by DC, and so his editors switched him over to Batman. But he was still due to draw the bookend of Grant Morrison’s “Four Soldiers,” and so after doing only one issue of Batman, he’ll be pulled off that book.
He said that Grant Morrison is asking him to do insane things with the artwork, and one page took him four days. This in an industry where you’re expected to draw one page a day, and you’re paid by the page, so it just shows Jim’s dedication to assuring his work looks absolutely as fantastic as possibly, regardless of his paycheck.
He showed me the Batman book, which just came out, and he tried some interesting new things that got the editors a little nervous. He told me he was actually doing ink washes with these pages. With the way colorists do their work, I can’t tell anymore what’s done by who. I didn’t realize how much Jim is invested with his artwork. He has very high demands of his inkers and colorists (now he’s inking his own stuff, but he gives very specific instructions to the colorist, in notes and on the phone). He hadn’t worked with this colorist before, and was nervous how it would turn out, but he said he was pleased. He gave the colorist instructions, and the colorist told him, “Really, you want that?” and Jim said, That’s exactly what I want. And so the colorist did what Jim asked, and when he was done, told Jim, “Wow, that turned out really nice,” and Jim said, “I know that. That’s why I wanted you to do it that way.”
Jim said he’s got a list of “dream writers” he’d like to work with, and he’s been fortunate enough to be able to slowly go through and check all these amazing names off his list as he goes.
We spoke about my work a little, and Jim gave me suggestions for different publishers I might try and approach. He said it might be worth my while to try Slave Labor, and for some reason I was never sure if I would fit in with them or not. I told him I was thinking of trying Image. He told me that Image is basically set up where you self-publish, but that they help you out with an upfront loan and advertising. And of course, if your under Image’s banner, then stores are more likely to look through all the books listed there and give your book the benefit of the doubt. As opposed to being a self-publisher stuffed in the back of the order catalog, which no one will flip through. And of course your book will be listed in other Image books, things like that. So you are getting a number of bonuses.
I didn’t realize this about Image, that you’re just self-publishing under their banner. But it makes sense, knowing they were started because artists wanted to own their own projects. That’s the logical conclusion for how to own it. To literally be responsible for everything. Jim told me he knew one or two editors at Image, and he’d try and introduce me.
And then he wound up being responsible for me speaking to Erik Larsen, Mr. In-Charge-of-Image, at that very same bar.