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VINCENT VAN GOGH (Dutch, 1853-1890) is one of the great, tragic/romantic myths of an artist of all time – the mad, misunderstood genius, never appreciated in his lifetime, who dedicated his every waking moment to his craft; whose inner demons drove him to cut off his own ear in a fury, and later shoot himself in a wheat field, dying at age 37, after years of mental illness, depression, alcoholism, and poverty. When I was in elementary school, a teacher told me how he cut off his ear with a razor when the woman he loved left him, and he gave it to her. I still hear this disturbing romance-and-tragedy-tinged story passed on, although it’s untrue; he cut a piece of his ear off in a state of manic depression following a fight with his friend Gauguin, then gave it to a prostitute at a brothel. Van Gogh is often portrayed as a simple-minded lunatic, but if you read his letters, you see a man articulate and intelligent, complicated, wholly dedicated to art and artfully self-taught in studying masters and improving his craft, who painted with a passion that we can assume was unhealthily obsessive, neglecting his physical health. In the ten years from when he decided to become an artist until his death, he created 900 paintings! He only painted from life – still lifes, self-portraits, landscapes and street scenes  – and yet nothing he painted looked like what we see in the world around us.  Is this how he saw?? His use of brush strokes and color is bizarre and intense and rhythmic and exciting and one-of-a-kind. Possibly the most influential artist of all time, but definitely the most famous of them all.

see Van Gogh’s Self-Portraits

see Van Gogh’s Portraits of Roulin

[Extra special thanks to www.art-vangogh.com, a fantastic website with an immense gallery of Van Gogh’s work as well as some great biographical info!]

Read the comic book, “Brush with Peril”:


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I did not make a note of the date that I drew this image, however the other “first” Agent Anger image I made (Page 00a – Cover – Drafts) was done on 4/18/09. I don’t remember which I did first, although this one seems like a good candidate.

That said, however, a more likely bet is that this is the third image I ever drew of Ian Anger, with the second being a brainstorm sketch that I shared on The Global Agency of Protection – Drafts! ($7 Patrons). The reason I surmise this order is that in that sketch, Anger has a white bowtie, unbuttoned shirt revealing a cumberbun, and spats on his shoes. This below images’ more streamlined, less busy, blacker-and-whiter composition is the model for how he appears in the rest of the series. So regardless of order, this is the first “useable” full-body model for the character, and it wound up as the unequivocable first full-body publishable image.

I specifically remember having a really huge – maybe 3×4′ – heavy, wood-framed mirror, and putting it up precariously balanced and high – like leaned up crazily on top of my file cabinets – putting myself in potential physical danger under it, so that I could look at myself from more of a bird’s eye view to draw this. That might be a mis-remembered memory – it may have been a flimsy much smaller and lighter mirror. But it’s more full of suspense and spy-type excitement if it were the way I remember it.

I often draw Agent Anger while looking at myself in the mirror, in an attempt to get my anotomy a little better proportioned.

That said, I felt this image was still slightly mis-proportioned, and not dynamic enough. It’s subtle, but if you look at the published version, I made my left hand smaller, and spread the legs and arms a little wider, and put him at a slight angle with his body curved back compared to this one. It was all done in Photoshop, and not too much work since his suit is all black.

NOTE You may notice that my original Page 017  – Published composition includesVan Gogh self-portrait images, which were not drawn above as part of my original page composition. This idea to include them came later. The Van Gogh images were actually panels on page 19 – Published, drawn on 7/15/-8/5/09 (about three months later, as I worked my way through the story, up through to that page). I came back later to this splash image, and added them backward to this previous page – a literal flash-forward to the upcoming action, a teaser that the Van Gogh menace could be expected to appear later in this “novel.”. I felt this fit with the idea of this comic book being in the style of an action-packed, semi-retro novel of intrigue. )

In 2015, my best friend, Gerry Chow, began digitally coloring the comic for me. Here’s what he did for this page:

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I mentioned in my previous commentary for Page 14 – Drafts that I had enough material in that original page, I wound up deciding to “widen” it into three pages. Below you can see (again) that original page’s scan and first draft, and how this current page only contains one small panel from it – Agent Anger winking and giving the A-OK sign. Basically, panel one became Page 14 – Published, panels 2 and 3 became Page 15 – Published, and the bottom half became the basic theme of this page, but I decided on a different vehicle!                           

 

As I explained in Page 14 – Drafts, I realized I wanted to have a full battle sequence in Book Two, in which it would be necessary for Agent Anger to be flying his bi-plane, so it gave me the opportunity to swap it out for later, and use the helicopter below, instead, for this sequence. I drew the below additions on 8/6-8/8/14, basically five years after the first draft above.

At this early stage, I had envisioned additional scenes where Agent Anger would operate the same vehicles.  So for example, he’s flying from the U.S. to Europe now, and then he would fly back in the same helicopter. As the project progressed, I decided he should only be allowed to use each vehicle once, and then he’d need a new vehicle. This would showcase as many vehicles as possible.

After drawing the above, I followed the original template of having a map underneath, since they did something similar in Indiana Jones.

 

You can see above, in addition to the vehicle and a map (as I discussed in Page 14 – Drafts), I had an agent wish him good luck. This is taken from a photo of Igor Sikorski, the inventor of the Vought Sikorski VS-300. I thought this made for a fun in-joke (that no one would ever get).

Below, my best friend, Gerry Chow colored this draft of the page in 2015.

Later (MUCH later – October 2020, when I had nearly completed the project!), I thought, why am I including Sikorsky as a spy? That doesn’t really go with the theme of what I had by then begun trying to establish. And he doesn’t even have a mask! I decided I should use this early opportunity to showcase a bunch of spies, to give a glimpse of exactly what this agency is!  And that’s when I swapped out Mr. Sikorsky for four spies.  And making room for them meant swapping the map out with one of a different shape, for space.

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The Global Agency of Protection (Free!)
Wow! Meet the Global Agency of Protection! ($4 Patrons!)
The Global Agency of Protection – Drafts! ($7 Patrons)
The Global Agency of Protection – Commentary! ($7 Patrons)

The Vehicles of Brush with Peril ($4 Patrons

The Maps of Brush with Peril (Free!)

Wow, lucky $4 Patreon Supporter: 48-pg PDF of Chapter One!



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This page might come as a bit of shock, compared to what the cover wound up being. In the beginning, it hadn’t occurred to me to use an art reference for the cover image.  I assumed I’d use an image of my character, Agent Ian Anger.

I couldn’t figure out what kind of image I wanted for the cover for this project, for a long time. One of the first images I drew for this project was this one (below), dated 4/18/09, which was probably the same month BUT A WEEK BEFORE I began brainstorming for story ideas (my earliest dated note lists what paintings would make good villains for the story, and it is dated 4/23/09, followed by a half page of additional brainstorms on 5/27/09), two months before my earliest dated script brainstorms (6/15/09), and three months before I drew the first page of this comic,  and which I scanned into my computer on 8/9/09 (On that same day, I scanned in the image of Agent Anger standing and pointing his gun from Page 17 – Published.)

So once I began thinking about this project, it came together quickly, and I became obsessed and eager to begin working on it quickly, and I began pounding it out as I went, without regard for where it was headed or what needed to be done to get there.

To sum up, this page (BELOW), was the first Agent Ian Anger drawing I ever did – no prelims or sketches, JUST THIS – on 4/18/09. Then I began prepping for and then scripting around 4/23-6/15/09. THEN I made the The Global Agency of Protection – Drafts! ($7 Patrons) full-body sketch on 6/15/09 (THE ONLY prelim sketch I ever did for this project – EVERYTHING ELSE was just straight onto the page, directly, and ready to publish), and after drawing that one sketch, basically straight into producing pages of this project in earnest before 8/9/09.

So getting back to the below image. Notice I had in mind to use some texture lines, and also some solid bars of gold. But I wasn’t thinking of this as my composition, I was just drawing elements that I knew I’d be shuffing around for a composition, in Photohop. I think  I may have drawn Ian Anger first, and then added those additional  elements onto the page later, since I had all that extra space. But I don’t remember for sure.

I then took that image and those additional elements, I put in those lines and stretched them longer in Photoshop to create some borders for a series of images which I felt would help sum up this first story arc: The Arneson character making a deal with the Pope character for some gold.

I had tried coming up with a font. Notice the wonky one below. I already more or less had my bi-line!

The Arneson image with his tongue out I pulled directly from Page 12 – Published, and the Pope was an unused panel from Page 12 – Drafts.  I liked using that Pope image, because I thought it was a nice image, even though it didn’t work out to include on the final cut of Page 12. But as a result, I didn’t like that the Arneson had been used in the comic. It made me want to design a different (new) Arneson for the cover.

 

 

This next image is interesting, because it makes me wonder if perhaps, early on, I didn’t know I should use this image as a cover, or as Page 17 – Published. Notice the font is even simpler (and wonkier) than above, which makes me wonder if it were done earlier. Notice also I hadn’t yet super-imposed the Van Goghs onto the page.  If this is the case, then I had just drawn two images of Agent Anger, and didn’t know yet how I planned to use them, and was trying them out in different places to see what worked best where.

 

I was clearly never totally pleased with this as a cover, if I was experimenting with using it as a title page. In 2011, my best friend Steve Buell started coloring some of my work, and he designed and colored this below poster/cover.

As for the Francis Bacon Pope image (001 Splash) that I wound up with, it was drawn between 8/18 and 8/23/14 – FIVE AND A HALF YEARS LATER! I’ll discuss how I came upon this idea as a cover theme, on Brush with Peril, page 003 – Commentary ($7 Patrons).

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If you read Page 014 – Drafts, you’ll see how elements of this page began there, until I decided it was too crowded and needed some breathing room. I drew this on July 7, 2011, two years after first designing the original page 14, and the same day I drew the Hopper Lighthouse “spy base” addition on Page 14 – Drafts.

I then took the panels from page 14 and added them to the above image:

 

I later decided it was more dramatic to make it black-bordered. Below, my best friend Gerry Chow colored the entire first issue and a few pages of issue two, in 2015:

 

Notice in panel 2, it’s only a man who could maybe look a little like Lucian Freud or his self-portraits (and this was a tough one for me, because he was making self-portraits for decades, so how to choose what age he should be for this story??), but it isn’t from an actual painting or particular photo of him. Well in March 2016, seven years after beginning this project, I decided this would not stand!  I digitally went in and re-drew that panel’s figure to look like Lucian Freud, Portrait of Frank Auerbach (1975-76), private collection. I think this is interesting that it’s NOT a self-portrait of Freud’s, or even a portrait of Lucian Freud by someone else; but to me, the fact that Freud painted it, it just FEELS so Lucian Freud. I altered the proportions of the face and hair slightly so that it would look more like Freud, and then cut and pasted that digital image into the published page:

 

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PAGE FIFTEEN:

Panel One:  Piet Mondrian, Broadway Boogie Woogie (1942-43), Museum of Modern Art, New York City, and

Giorgio Morandi, Still Life (1953), Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C., and

Piet Mondrian, Composition No IV (1914), Kunstmuseum Den Haag, The Hague.

Panel Two:  Theo van Doesburg, Composition IX, Opus 18 – Abstract Version of Card Players (1917), Kunstmuseum Den Haag, The Hague, and

 

Panel Three:  Giorgio Morandi, Still Life (1960), Tate, London, and

Lucian Freud, Portrait of Frank Auerbach (1975-76), private collection.

Panel Four:  Lucian Freud, Self-Portrait With A Black Eye (1978), private collection.

Chris with Piet Mondrian, Broadway Boogie Woogie (1942-43), Museum of Modern Art, New York City

Above, a still from the Italian film, La Notte (1961), directed by Michelangelo Antonioni: Marcello Mastroianni with Giorgio Morandi‘s Still Life (1960), Tate, London.

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This page was drawn from 7/15/-7//19/09.

I wanted to introduce the main character as a spy who is on the case, but also to show that the villains are getting tipped to beware of him.  I also wanted to show him heading out on his adventure, Indiana Jones style, with a map in the background to show his exotic journey.

Notice I did not reference art for the Vice President character, I just attempted to draw a character who had a resemblance to Lucian Freud and/or his self-portraits. I also thought it would look interesting to draw some retro machinery in the mystery mole’s headquarters.

Here’s a funny note – Notice the bi-plane is cut off. This isn’t a matter of an incomplete scan that didn’t capture the whole image – The original art actually looked like that, where I didn’t draw it to the tip of its wing, and the wing is cut off.  If you hold a ruler to it, you can see that the ends of the lines don’t quite line up, and they’re rounded, not flat like they’ve been clipped! Years later, I thought, Why did I do that? And there was plenty of space, so I just finished drawing the wing, and then re-scanning it!

Below is the original scan of the artwork:

Below is my first draft, in which I added some exciting black background textures, and then a map behind Agent Anger’s plane, in order to give it that Indiana Jones map feel. At the time, I was really getting into old maps, when lands were often uncharted, and if they were uncharted, they were dangerous, so map makers drew dangerous sea creatures in the dangerously uncharted areas. The map super-imposed below is by Jan van Doetecum from 1594.

Notice above that at first I had considered really drawing the map! I did a compas and a sea monster and realized – I don’t want to have to draw a map!

 

I liked all the imagery above, however I decided the pacing was too crowded. I eventually divided all this up into THREE pages! (Pages 14-16.) I also realized I wanted to showcase as many vehicles as possible for Agent Ian Anger, and that I had a big battle scene in mind with this abve Curtiss JN-4 “Jenny”, so I swapped it out for the Vought-Sikorsky VS-300 yuo see on page 16.  (And since I intend for the battle scene to involve sea monsters, I swapped the map out too.)

So for this page, the idea was to have an image of the spies’ base. I had a book of cool castles and Gothic palaces, and I thought that each time I showed some spies in a base – always in a new exotic location, it could be a different ancient castle.  This decision was made and the at completed on July 7, 2011, two years after first designing the page, and the same day I drew the Lucian Freud with Black Eye addition on Page 15 – Drafts.

 

So now, the new first of three pages looked like this:

 

In 2015, my best friend, Gerry Chow, colored these for me:

And then, on June 23, 2016, now having been working on this project for seven years, I was flipping back through all the old pages I’d produced and thinking, Why would I reference castles for the spies’ base?? This is a comic about referencing art – Why didn’t I reference a famous painting for their base?? That makes more sense! And so I came up with the currently published base. On a full page, I drew a few images to replace or super-impose onto old, non-art-referenced images, including this one (I added tanks to it on 6/26/16, and inked it 7/6-7/8/16.

My best friend, Gerry Chow, kindly recolored the page with the new base, below. This page, with this new base, was the first page I went back and re-drew, and it was this re-evauating of my use of imagery that later got me altering to squeeze additional references into pages 8-13.

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