Fooling Who

Greetings from DC’s Young Animal Control Center, a.k.a. The ZOO!

We want to start giving weekly updates on the progress of the Young Animal books. This is the first. In these updates you will see art and commentary from the collaborators, editorial, and myself.

Emerald City Con was wonderful—I met so many amazing artists, writers, colorists, letterers, and editors. The support we received across the board for Young Animal has been amazing, and it is fueling us through the next stages. Those stages include conceptualizing, storytelling, scripting, drawing, building, and a number of other processes to get these books ready to go.

Each week the team goes into Dan DiDio and Jim Lee’s offices to talk direction, ideas, art, and where we are heading. It is an amazing part of the process and gives us a chance to get on the same page and shape it together. That part is essential.

Today I want to share some art and talk a little bit about things, starting with DOOM PATROL.

Here are two pieces by DOOM PATROL artist Nick Derington. The first image is a shot of Cliff Steele, a.k.a. Robotman. This is the first image Nick created for fun, and we (myself and the editorial team) were so moved by it that I knew we needed to start working together immediately. There is something about Cliff sitting there and looking off, thinking to himself, that captures some of the energy we were going for. I’m also a sucker for Cliff’s costume from Grant Morrison and Richard Case’s run.

The next image is super exciting; we get a look inside the process of creating a new character. This is a concept for Casey Brinke, one of the newest members of the Doom Patrol, also drawn by Nick.

I don’t want to give away too much about her, but some of you might notice the costume was inspired by Black Sabbath (Black Sabbath has been really important to my personal creative process for DP), Sigourney Weaver in Alien, and other inspirations like Starlight Express (!). Some may also notice that the costume appeared on an image Becky Cloonan created for the original DC pitch years ago based on my initial designs (which I will share one day). The character has since changed drastically. My first stab at DOOM PATROL involved a very cynical character that I didn’t feel like writing anymore—the whole take was fun but it wasn’t what I had in mind years later. Casey Brinke is who I want to write—as you mature, you change as a person and as a writer. The ambulance from the original pitch remains, though. Nick and I spent a bit of time creating her and Nick spent a lot of time drawing her—shaping her—so that when the writer starts scripting, the artist can start to hear the character’s voice, and then the character develops even more once the artist brings them to life on the page.

Once we started to get a footing on Casey and other members of Doom Patrol, we then moved on to SHADE, THE CHANGING GIRL.

I thought about the legacy of Shade a lot in the initial concepts/feelings/impressions. They are a character that goes through incredible change (hence the name), and is such an interesting character from the first incarnation, as created by the legendary Steve Ditko, and on to their experimental incarnation brought to us by Peter Milligan and Chris Bachalo. The character has a special place in my heart.

Cecil Castellucci and I started working together very early, and we shaped Shade, with Cecil doing most of the heavy lifting after I told her my initial concept. I fell in love with Cecil’s writing immediately—it has a visceral and dangerous quality to it—very raw, emotional, and wildly imaginative. Her first issue of SHADE is a knockout.

Putting teams together is half the fun, and the editors did an incredible job with this—bringing me lots of art to see—and we chose the teams together.

Which brings us to the amazingly talented Marley Zarcone—someone whose art Cecil and I fell in love with.

Here is an image, much like Nick’s take on Cliff that captured the energy of the character while bringing an alien couture to the table. The Young Animal team is very big on fashion—the perfect thing to juxtapose the wild and uncontrollable nature of the madness itself, and the darkness of the story.

Here is Marley’s Shade!

MOTHER PANIC!

Tommy Lee Edwards and I have been wanting to work together for some time. In 2015, Tommy and his partners flew me out to be a guest at their NC Comicon—it was an incredible experience and we bonded right away—I had been a fan of Tommy’s ever since my brother Mikey gave me a copy of Marvel 1985, and Jon Rivera (who I will get to more later) sent me a bunch of Tommy’s Star Wars art. Tommy and I talked about doing a Batman project together, but as I tried to get in the headspace of Batman, I realized I wasn’t ready to take that on—I felt like I wasn’t in a dark enough place, to be honest! Maybe one day.

But MOTHER PANIC is something different altogether. Even though Bruce Wayne is a famous person, I could bring things from my personal experience as a musician into the character of Violet Paige, a.k.a. Mother Panic, filtering these elements through a different lens: the red carpets, the galas, the weirdos you meet, the fame and the negativity, addiction, misery, combat. Tommy and I created a character that saw a very different Gotham, and we found a whole other world to explore in Gotham—the underbelly of Gotham’s wealthy and famous, the secret things that happen, the secret world. Tommy began designing the character using only some of my crude ballpoint pen notebook scribbles of the character. Mother is still a work in progress, but Tommy blows me away with every design.

Getting Jody Houser on board as writer is the part that glues everything together, and she puts her heart into making Violet come alive. She understood the character right away and immediately found Mother’s voice. Jody is one of my top favorite writers, and I expect to see her writing many different characters in many different genres over the course of her career—she is one of the most versatile writers I have ever met. She took to crime drama immediately. She’s having fun with this and you can tell. We are learning about Violet (and Mother) together. I’m overjoyed that Jody is part of this.

Another exciting announcement is the addition of artist Shawn Crystal to the MOTHER PANIC team! Shawn will be rotating as part of the art team with Tommy Lee Edwards and John Paul Leon, and we are all extremely happy to have his talents on board.

Here is one of my favorite images that Tommy created to get the initial vibe—simple and elegant, like a witch or a ghost walking the streets in downtown Gotham. This captured the energy to me.

Collaborating has been the best part about working on Young Animal. Projects are so much better to go at as a team, and you develop bonds. I feel like the entire team of Young Animal is like a band, every piece supporting the other and bringing in new ideas all the time.

Which brings us to CAVE CARSON HAS A CYBERNETIC EYE.

Writer Jon Rivera and I go way back. We met in art school and stayed very close, working on developing television and film projects together throughout the years. Whenever I needed to bounce an idea off of someone or gain some insight, I went to Jon. When I thought about Cave Carson (and his cybernetic eye) in my head, I knew Jon would be thinking the same thing—so much potential here for humor and drama and…well, caves.  

I am also a fan of his writing, and always have been—Jon has published comics of his own as a writer and an artist. He took to Cave Carson right away, as I knew he would, and we started to develop a “season” of CAVE CARSON. We laugh a lot, just like we made each other laugh back when we met during a comedy writing course at the School of Visual Arts in NYC. CAVE creates a warm place in my heart—it is an adventure series, sure, but it is also very human.

And that brings us to one of my favorite artists, Michael Avon Oeming.

I had been reading Powers for years. I remember what an exciting time in comics it was when it first came out—it was a real game-changer for art, writing and storytelling. As we got deeper into developing Cave, Mike’s art began to line up with what we had in mind, plus we know he is so great at delivering complete characters and capturing mood.

A little-known fact: Mike inked 4 of my pages many years ago, when I was trying to break into comics as an artist. Jim Krueger was one of the first people to commission me to do professional work for his comic The Footsoldiers, as well as a backup story involving a young girl Frankenstein.

So we have this interesting history together and Mike is phenomenal, but I’m sure you already feel that way. Here is his take on Cave, which I feel captures the character perfectly as a one-time action hero turned dad, exploring the unknown and answering the call to adventure.

This has been a lengthy update! I don’t know if they will always be this long, but it is nice to finally be able to share these characters with you and share some of our process. Expect many updates and images leading up to our launch in September.

Suiyobi No Campanella, much like Daoko, Dempagumi Inc. and quite a few other artists lately, is a group that I desperately want to like but haven’t been able to bring myself to. All for the same reason, their vocals.

I really love the group’s usual sound, but singer KOM_I’s style of of rapping, and more specifically the mixing of her vocals, has always put me off the group. KOM_I tends to have what I can only describe as a “bedroom” sound. Vocals with the quality you’d expect on a Soundcloud demo track.  Which is why I skipped over this release entirely when I saw it pop up a few weeks ago.

Shame on me however, as this is easily the best song Suiyobi has put out, in my opinion. I’m guessing this mostly stems from a change in producer, with OBKR penning this one. The vocals feel clearer, perhaps a little more “normal”, a little less odd and offputting. It’s a fantastic house track through and through. I can’t say I expect the group to continue down this path, but it was a nice treat for a one off song.