Happy Hellboy Day! Today, Saturday March 22nd, marks the official celebration of the 20th anniversary of Mike Mignola’s Hellboy comic series, published by Dark Horse Comics. Various festivities have been scheduled worldwide to celebrate the occasion, and lots of excellent articles and interviews have been popping up online throughout the week leading up to the big day. Since Hellboy is one of my all-time favorite characters and comic book series, I wanted to take a few minutes to personally pay tribute to him and his legacy.
Starting out as a sketch for a comic convention in 1991, before appearing on the cover of Dime Press #4 and San Diego Comic-Con Comics #2 in 1993, then as a guest in John Byrne’s Next Men #21, and a four-page mini for Comic Buyer’s Guide, Hellboy’s look evolved before a proper coming out in Hellboy: Seed of Destruction. There was no stopping Hellboy from there. Twenty years of Hellboy comics, various spinoff series, animated features, video games, and two live-action films later, Hellboy remains more popular and beloved by fans than ever.
So how has Hellboy managed to stay at the top of his game for so long? There’s just something special about the character that people relate to. A demon summoned by Nazis, Hellboy is an outsider who resists his destiny to bring about destruction, instead choosing to help mankind. I believe the man behind Hellboy, creator Mike Mignola, has everything to do with Hellboy’s appeal. Mr. Mignola is an incredible talent (and a very kind, polite gentleman whom I’ve had the pleasure of meeting many times throughout the years). From his distinct, instantly recognizable art style; to his knack for weaving humor…
…And tragedy into his compelling stories (along with nods to classic literature and mythology from around the world), Mike Mignola has retained control of his creator-owned characters. Sure, he lets other creators come in to play in his world, but the quality never suffers. It’s clear that Mr. Mignola cares deeply about his creations and their integrity. Hellboy is everything I love about creator-owned comics. While other titles come and go from my pull list, Hellboy (and all other Mignola books for that matter) have remained a constant for as long as I can remember. With Mr. Mignola back on art duties, as well as writing, the current saga of his iconic creation is still going strong in the pages of Hellboy in Hell.
So take some time today to celebrate Hellboy. Look for an event near you. Maybe check out Dark Horse’s excellent Hellboy sale. Look for the absolutely gorgeous Hellboy the First 20 Years art book at your LCS. Go back and reread your Hellboy comics (they get better every time). Watch the animated or live-action films. Eat some pancakes or drink rum with skeletons. Here’s to 20 years of Hellboy! I hope we get 20 more.
Writhe and Shine #273 – ‘Perfect Evening’ art. [Source]
Robert Tritthardt is a creator currently living right here in Seattle, WA. Read through the impressive collections of webcomics he has created, and his wry sense of humor and keen observation of the world is immediately apparent. In addition to his wonderful webcomics (Writhe and Shine and Overcast With A Chance of DOOM!), Robert has also done art for gaming projects (Unhallowed Metropolis and Sinister Dexter). I recently had the chance to catch up with Robert to talk about all his current projects, as well as the innovative new way he is using crowdfunding to help support his creative endeavors.
Comics, and Stuff, and Things: You have not one, but TWO current webcomics (Writhe and Shine and Overcast With A Chance of DOOM!). For the uninitiated, can you tell us a little about these respective projects?
Robert Tritthardt: Writhe and Shine follows a group of friends that work at and run a goth club in New Orleans. It is an honest and heartfelt look at the goth scene from the inside. It is fueled by coffee, cloves, scene politics, bitchy exes, and mule dookie. Writhe and Shine can be described as the bastard lovechild of the TV shows, The Addams Family and Cheers.
Overcast With A Chance of DOOM! is about Doomie, a girl who attempts to flee her past and finds herself living in a haunted house in Seattle. Her four roommates (five if you include the ghost) have a wide range of backgrounds and personalities, but they all able to put up with each other… barely.
You have a great knack for seeing the humor in everyday events and exchanges. Are your characters and stories based on actual people and events, compositions of various people and experiences, complete fiction, or all of the above?
Yes. All of the above, actually. The characters in Writhe and Shine are based on a few friends and myself, while the Chance of DOOM! cast is completely made up. The events in each are things that really happened to me as well as fabricated situations. I think the funnier stuff comes from the real life situations.
Overcast With a Chance of Doom #105 – “Weird Stuff” [Source]
It seems like you put a lot of effort and care into your art. What is your artistic background, and what initially inspired you to start making webcomics?
I only drew a little bit while I was growing up, but wasn’t encouraged enough or didn’t have the right peers that would have gotten me more into doing it regularly. Either that or I was just lazy. Maybe it’s a combination of all three. I was okay in high school art classes and found that the only courses I enjoyed in community college were Painting and Drawing. From a young age I collected MAD and The Savage Sword of Conan magazines. I was always fascinated by Dungeons & Dragons illustrations as well as other role-playing games. After a couple of years of working in restaurants and factories, I told myself that I wanted to paint for D&D. I earned my degree in Illustration from NIU, where I drew a comic strip for the daily campus newspaper. After I graduated, I moved to New Orleans and missed doing my strip so much that I started Writhe and Shine. I didn’t make them specifically for the web, mainly because the internet was just starting to catch on and I didn’t have an actual computer at that point. A friend of mine out in California urged me to send him photocopies of my strips so that he could put them up on his website along with some other comic artists. That’s where it all started
If I understand correctly, at one point you decided to take a break from making comics? What made you decide to start back up again?
Yeah. I took a really long break, unfortunately. Making comics didn’t seem to be getting me anywhere, so I stopped and focused my time on doing illustrations for role-playing games. I hadn’t been doing any of that since college for the same reasons I didn’t draw much when I was growing up: lack of encouragement, lack of peers, laziness. After a while, I realized that I didn’t know how to market myself, didn’t have a good portfolio, didn’t have work that anyone really wanted or could use, etc. I was asked to do some work for a local game called Unhallowed Metropolis, and that was cool while it lasted.
Stunning “Coffin Man” art for the Unhallowed Metropolis RPG. [Source]
Then there was a period of doing nothing at all, just standard 9-5 work. That was a bad time for me artistically. I nearly let my webcomic domain name go, but for some reason I kept it. After a couple years, I just felt like doing something again and that’s when I started Overcast With A Chance of DOOM! In order to gain back all the followers I lost in my absence, I started releasing all the old Writhe andShine strips again and driving some attention to my new series. All of this helped build my momentum and in April 2013, I picked up right where I left off with some new Writhe and Shine strips.
It takes a ridiculous amount of time and effort to make comics.
Yes, it does… Unless, for some reason, you’ve got a knack for writing stuff that people find freakin’ hilarious. It doesn’t matter if you know how to draw AT ALL. Just stick a pen in your ass, wiggle it around on a piece of paper a bit, and voilà! You’ve got a hit webcomic! I’m not saying that my drawings are better than anyone else’s, or that my writing should even be considered “good.” I’m just upset that, no matter how much effort I put into my work, no matter how many times I write and rewrite, draw, and redraw, there’s always going to be someone out there that will make them better than me, faster than me, and make a whole hell of a lot more money at it. I don’t know. I think there is some sort of weird mathematical equation that I can’t wrap my head around. The more effort I put into something, the less people seem to value it. Some of the webcomics out there today don’t seem like any effort was put into them, yet they’re insanely popular. Or, maybe my comics just suck. I don’t know. Do I sound bitter?
The world of comics can indeed be a fickle and harsh mistress. I’ve seen webcomics that utilize “donate” buttons on the websites, or even Kickstarter and Indiegogo campaigns to help pay the bills. You are using a slightly different crowdfunding method to help fund your creations. Can you please tell us about that and how it is working out so far?
Patreon has got this really great concept. Instead of raising a ton of cash for a really big project like Kickstarter, it’s more of a pledge system. Someone can pledge to give me a certain amount for every comic strip I post, say $1. At the end of the month, the transaction is made depending on how many strips I made. Patrons can put a cap on their amount if they’re worried that I’m going to start posting every day, or they can pledge more if they want some of my higher rewards. I’m offering a few things right now like being able to see the strip a day before it’s posted and access to the strip I did in college to having prints and actual sketches from the strips mailed to their house.
As of this moment, I am only in the third week of crowd funding at Patreon. I’ve got 24 patrons for a total of $59 per comic strip. I’d say that’s pretty good seeing as I launched at probably the worst time of year, Christmas. I wish I would have had not lost my fan base when I took my extended break. I’d probably have a lot more support at this point. Running this campaign is like a full time job. It’s tough to do this and make the comics at the same time. I don’t really know the first thing about marketing and promotions, but I’m learning more day by day. Sooner or later I’m going to stop begging my friends to share my comics and tell their friends that the strips are being posted again. Sooner or later, the people that read my strips 10 years ago will come back. Sooner or later, I’ll be making better and better strips and I won’t HAVE to drag people kicking and screaming to the sites. All I can do is hope that the amount of patrons I have grows larger so that I can pay my bills without having to get a full or part-time job.
In addition to your work on Writhe and Shine and Overcast With A Chance of DOOM!, you are also the artist on an indie game? Can you tell us a little about that project?
Absolutely. I’m currently the primary artist on a mobile game called Sinister Dexter. Not too many details have been announced yet, but it’s a turn-based strategy game of dueling wizards set in a medieval fantasy world. Over the past six months I’ve collaborated with one other artist to contribute concept and final art for characters, UI, and icons. Some early examples are here.
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I look forward to checking it out, as well as continuing to enjoy your webcomics. Thank you so much for taking the time to talk with us and providing such thoughtful answers!
Sorry this is so late, but contrary to popular belief, the life of a humble comic book blogger is not as glamorous as one might expect. Most of us (me included) do this as a labor of love without any financial compensation whatsoever, just because we believe in the medium. I bartend and cater to subsidize my comic book addiction and meager existence. Anyhoo…
Writers always seem to get all the love, but comics are, most importantly, a visual experience. Artists are the ones who do the real heavy lifting in comics, and don’t you ever forget it. So how to decide who to pick when it comes to the Best Comic Book Artist of 2013 category? Technical skill? Composition? Splash? Cover art? Storytelling? Layouts? The “X” factor? Well, I chose to factor in all of these considerations.
My pick for Best Comic Book Artist of 2013 goes to… Francesco Francavilla! Mr. Francavilla has a brilliant, expressive style that pays homage to the pulp/noir classics and “Silver Age” greats, while being instantly recognizable and all his own. His superb composition and use of contrasts is unrivaled. EVERYONE in the industry speaks highly of Francesco—and for good reason. He’s just a wonderful, insanely talented artist and human being. You might know his work from a plethora of titles, including work on: The Black Beetle, Hawkeye, The Shadow, Guardians of the Galaxy, Afterlife With Archie (his art actually made me LOVE an Archie comic!), Fantomex, Tales from The Crypt… Too many to list! By his own count, Mr. Francavilla illustrated over 300 interior pages this past year!
But Francesco was far from done. Follow him on social networks and you’ll see he posts a staggering array of art, at times seemingly just for fun. Art and minimalist posters for films and TV shows including: Breaking Bad, Sleepy Hollow, Blade Runner, vintage horror and SF movies—whatever he feels like drawing really, sets Francesco Francavilla apart.
The ability to engage people with art on the same days new movies release or episodes of certain shows air is extraordinary. This man does not seem to sleep (or EVER stop making art). Did I mention he signs his name at conventions with a really cool little symbol (and is about the sweetest guy you could ever hope to meet)? No wonder so many other artists respect him SO much, and that he’s my pick for Best Comic Book Artist of 2013. THANK YOU for making the world a better place with your art, Francesco Francavilla. Please, keep up the superior work in 2014.
Honorable Mentions: Sean Murphy, Menton3, Fiona Staples, Dave Johnson, Becky Cloonan, Greg Capullo, Emma Rois, Michael Oeming, Paul Pope, Geof Darrow… And probably twenty others I’m forgetting right now.
Self-publishing is a topic near and dear to my heart. My love of zines and awesome little indie books is almost as old as my love for comics. There’s just something magical about checking the mail and receiving a package containing someone’s labor of love–their project that they cared enough about to overcome all the inherent challenges and see through to the end–and now you are holding it in your hands. Before the internet, this was often our only view into other scenes and subcultures. Digital projects are great, but nothing will ever come close to that feeling of holding someone’s special project in your hands. I still believe deeply in DIY ethics, and self-publishing is the very embodiment of those beliefs. Clearly, so does the creator of my pick for this category.
Best Self-Published Title
Becky Cloonan is one of my favorite artists working in comics, and has been for some time now. Readers might know her from recent work on Conan the Barbarian, or her current art in The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys, but if you haven’t checked out her absolutely gorgeous, self-published mini-comics, you are missing out.
Demeter is the third installment in her trilogy of mini-comics, which also includes Wolves and The Mire (which won this same honor last year, as well as an Eisner). Though the stories in each installment are standalone, they each deal with similar themes involving love, loss, and tragedy in an almost poetic manner. Her art is expressive, stylish, and instantly recognizable. Demeter is a cautionary tale full of lush, black and gray illustrations that you’ll instantly sink into like a dream and be captivated by. For all these reasons, Demeter is my pick for “Best Self-Published Comic” of 2013. You can find Demeter, along with her other work, on ComiXology, but I’d definitely recommend trying to find print versions to cherish forever.
Becky also just wrote a great post about self-publishing that I’d highly recommend checking out, and shared the news that two follow-ups to Wolves are in the works.
“Best Experiment” is a broad, but vital element when it comes to keeping comics from becoming stale. The industry needs bold experiments which push back against the status quo and lead us into exciting new territory. Some of the best experiments over the past few years have included the rise of digital comics and crowdfunded publishing platforms. These experiments have proven to be real game-changers. My pick for “Best Experiment” of 2013 looks to challenge what kind of stories can be told in comics, while trying to break down some of the traditional barriers in the industry.
Best Experiment
I could pretend this was a difficult choice that I agonized over for days, but that’s not the case at all. My pick for “Best Experiment” goes to Black Mask Studios. 2013 saw Black Mask roll out their titles into the world of comics and really shake things up. Finally someone is publishing stories that represent my views, and I’m sure many other people’s as well. Black Mask has it all: tales from the frontlines of the Occupy movement (Occupy Comics), Matt Miner’s comic about animal liberation (Liberator), a wild sci-fi book unlike anything I’ve ever read (Ballistic), and a crime-horror hybrid title from RZA, Ghostface Killah, and a rotating cast of some of the best artists in comics (12 Reasons to Die).
The amazing part is that every comic published by Black Mask so far has been a winner. What else would you expect from a company founded by DIY champions: Brett Gurewitz (Bad Religion), Steve Niles (30 Days of Night), and Matt Pizzolo (Godkiller)? There’s a good reason why Black Mask Studios keeps coming up in our “Best Comics of 2013” selections. Look for the new Liberator/Earth Crisis: Salvation of Innocents series and music CD to debut in March of 2014, and I’m sure many other thrilling projects as well.
David Gillette also has a great pick (and one that has been a person breakout favorite for me as well). Be sure to check it out.
![Writhe and Shine #273 - 'Perfect Evening' art. [Source]](https://comicsandstuffandthings.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/perfectevening.jpg?w=627&h=198)
Comics, and Stuff, and Things 