To begin reading at the start of this long, long rambling essay, click here.
In the last part, I wrote about how being around professional magicians who'd devoted almost every waking moment to their craft had made me more or less give up on trying to be good at magic. This chapter and the next are about me being around some of the best comic book artists in the business…people who just seemed born to do that and had an amazing and organic flair for it. Obviously, the first person who comes to mind in that category would be Jack Kirby.
I met Jack in July of 1969, less than a month after I graduated high school and embarked on my mission to become a Professional Writer Person. Jack was not the first amazing artist I met. Some months earlier, Sergio Aragonés was a guest speaker at the comic book club I was in. He came in with a big pad of drawing paper and an easel and gave us a real-time demonstration of what he did. If you've ever seen Sergio draw…well, it's in the same category as Richard Turner and the great magicians I've seen at the Magic Castle. You know it's not magic in the cosmic sense. You know it's a human being bound by all the laws of Reality making that happen…
…and you also know you can't do it. Not as well or as naturally as that guy.
When I worked for Jack, I sometimes watched him draw. There was absolutely nothing you could learn about drawing by seeing him do it. That is, except for the fact that you couldn't do it…not the way he did, at least. It was like the image he was out to create on the paper was already there in some sort of invisible ink that only he could see and he was just tracing it to make it visible to others. Sometimes, he'd sketch a few light pencil lines on the paper just to clarify for himself what was going to go where.
And then he'd draw the image. Suddenly, there would be a finished pencil drawing on the paper where, only minutes before, there had been no finished pencil drawing.
It would usually be perfect, at least for his purposes. If he decided it wasn't, Jack would either erase it or if I was around, he might hand the page to me and say, "Take out that panel!" It was usually a gorgeous panel and it felt odd to me to be destroying it — but I did it. This should not be confused with what one of his inkers did, erasing parts of what Jack drew because he didn't want to ink all those lines. I was erasing Jack Kirby art because Jack Kirby wanted it erased so he could put something better in its place.
And what he put in its place would not be the same drawing, only done better. The erasure was for story reasons. Jack had decided he'd drawn the wrong thing or maybe the right thing from the wrong angle. The obliterated drawing had to go because it didn't tell the story properly. That was the only reason.
While working with Jack, I didn't make much use of whatever drawing skills I had. When he did a comic for DC with Superman in it, there was a problem. The folks in the DC offices didn't like the way he drew Superman because it didn't look like Curt Swan had drawn it. I couldn't help with Superman's face but on some issues, Jack had me pencil or re-pencil Superman's chest insignia. It was the only — believe me, the only — thing I drew better than Jack Kirby. There were a few other times he made use of the fact that I could draw…a little.
When I began writing comic books for Disney and then for Gold Key, I sketched out some covers, as mentioned earlier. Also occasionally I'd decide explaining a scene or a new character to the artist in typed words was insufficient so I'd add in a little sketch of what I had in mind. The artist might or might not follow it but at least he had a clearer sense of what I, the writer, had in mind.
Later when I became the editor of the Hanna-Barbera comic book department, I occasionally hired myself to draw a puzzle page or a cover or something. I did rough sketches for the artist to follow on some covers and was technically the penciler and letterer of a few like these two…
I say "technically" because when I penciled these, I was copying and tracing parts of drawings done by others. Then I guaranteed the covers would look professional by having them inked by my pal Scott Shaw! He trued up and adjusted whatever was necessary.
My interest in drawing faded each year I worked in comics as a writer and sometimes editor. I had stories of mine drawn by — this is a partial list in no particular order — Kay Wright, Pete Alvarado, Warren Tufts, Dan Spiegle, Tony Strobl, Joe Messerli, John Carey, Owen Fitzgerald, Roman Arambula, Scott Shaw!, Paul Norris, Roger Armstrong, Dick Bickenbach, Will Meugniot, Doug Wildey, Tom McKimson, Lee Holley, Pat Boyette, Alex Toth, Mike Royer, Ric Estrada, Carol Lay, Erik Larsen, Steve Rude, Rick Hoberg, Mitch Schauer, Chuck Patton, Jerry Ordway, Dan Jurgens, Richard Howell, Rick Hoppe and Jack Manning.
Even if you're an avid follower of comic books of the previous century, you might not recognize all those names. The ones you don't know are probably folks who specialized in "cartoony" comic books like funny animal comics for Disney, Gold Key or the H-B comic book department.
And as I worked with all the artists I worked with — and got to meet and know a lot of great ones I never worked with — I became increasingly aware that what I was doing when I was drawing was not really drawing. It was more like forgery.
As I mentioned, I used to be a world-class forger. I have no idea where that skill came from and I was not unhappy when, as I got older, it seemed to disappear on me. It was just like no longer being able to do certain magic tricks that required sleight-of-hand moves. But forgery had come in handy now and then. I'll tell you about some of those ways in the next installment in this series. I'll also try to tell you about the comic book artist I worked with who influenced me to pretty much stop drawing. His name does not appear anywhere in what you have just read.
