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Can't You Hear Me Knocking v.3: John Heebink   Jason: Tell me about Proof of Concept and how you came to be involved in it.John Heebink: A couple years ago I think Joe Casey offered Larry Young the chance to share a new split book at Image, alongside his thing Codeflesh. At that point I'd mostly just been colouring covers for Larry. But he knew I was good at drawing women. At this point, Rick Remender and I hadn't done but a little work on Doll and Creature, and I don't think we'd decided yet to go with AiT as its publisher. Anyway, "The Bod" [Written by Larry] is the story of Kelly Gordon, an aspiring actress who is turned invisible in an accident. It's about how that invisibility, her fame and her personality affect her fate and her relationships. Her ascent is traced partly through appearances TV shows: the Leno show, Judge Judy. "The Bod" trades on that weird overlap between the private and public realms that TV has brought about in the last decade or two. As Larry worked, he found he had more story to tell about Kelly than he could contain in four short chapters. And it turned out that readers wanted to know more about her too. There were originally pretty substantial ellipses between chapters. So Proof of Concept has added material with beautiful illustrations by our pal Kieron Dwyer. I think it'll give people an insight not only into the characters they liked, but also into Larry's creative process. It'll show how often much more is going on in the creation of a comics series than is apparent on the page. Back story, possible directions that end up not being taken, that kind of thing. The way that characters begin to chart their own destinies in the writer's mind, for instance. In addition to illustrating full time, you also teach at the Academy of Art here in San Francisco. What are your classes like? They are mostly a lab in drawing better comics but also a primer in comics' history. I would like for students to have an understanding of where their favourite artists got their styles. And where the artists who inspired those artists got THEIR styles, and so on. I want to give them a feeling for the broad outlines of the evolution of the medium in terms of art and storytelling. The students have a wide range of abilities. Perspective is a problem for most of them. I suspect that a lot of them decided relatively late - like their later teen years maybe - that they wanted to maybe be artists. Teaching ends up being a mix of remedial problem-solving on one extreme and, on the other, cheerleading the prodigiously talented few, who are going to be showing me the way around the block in a few years if not sooner. In both cases I try to get students out of their subjective headspace to see through the eyes of others how their stuff can miscommunicate and to see possibilities for strengthening it. A big part of it is encouraging them to visualize multiple possible ways of doing things and to avoid common pitfalls. I don't think it's an easy class, even though I try to keep the workload manageable. I wouldn't want to be subjected to one of my critiques. But I think the major way forward, for me with my art, was through the criticisms of friends. It still is. Elvira artist Ronn Sutton and KIller Stunts artist Scott Cohn are friends and sometimes I run my stuff past them. Not often enough, really. I've gotten some great critiques from Bill Wray of MAD fame.  What is the biggest piece of advice you would give an aspiring illustrator? Throw a wide net when it comes to influences, pay attention to the world around you and don't worry if you feel you don't have a style. You do. The saddest thing to me is people who want to stay in a manga or anime style, because those styles are confining, regimented, pre-chewed. They are a nice leg-up for beginning artists, though. The rules are self-evident and there is an accessible simplicity and appeal to the best of that kind of work. But ultimately, capital-A art is not about rules but showing someone a world through your eyes. Not about slavishly aping the peculiarities of a regional style. Most artists start imitating others and then their styles evolve. That's cool. It's just that the end goal shouldn't be to turn into one more monkey who's learned to parrot a popular style. You've done a lot of illustration work outside of comics. Looking at your website I was really impressed with the diversity of your output. Are those hard jobs to get? How is it different than working in comics? Thanks! Well, almost everything pays better than comics. But the deadlines are often more absolute. What else...? The storytelling smarts that are expected in comics are an added bonus when you're dealing with other kinds of clients. You quickly think of ways to show scenes and represent abstract ideas. Comics skills are obviously helpful with storyboarding, but also with magazine covers and such. As far as getting those other jobs, they are not too hard to get, especially when you're too busy to take them on. You're also working on the best Peter David book that nobody's ever heard of, Soulsearchers and Company. What's it like working with David and Claypool Comics? My closest collaboration is with Editor Richard Howell, who plots the stories in consolation with Peter, and with Al Milgrom, the inker, who mops up my mistakes. Peter scripts. Both Richard and Peter really know the cast of characters forwards and backwards. Because we work Marvel style and because Peter's dialog is so strong and funny, it's a pleasant surprise to read the final issues. I feel like I could do cave paintings on cocktail napkins and Peter could make a touching, coherent human story of it. There's a lot of inspiration, invention, problem-solving and resourcefulness that can come in at the scripting level. It's really beyond what most people would guess. It makes me appreciate how differently an experienced comic's writer's mind is from mine. You and Tony work Marvel-style, right? Your book weaves so easily from comedy to heavy, creepy, disturbing moments. Claypool is great. I've worked for them for about ten years! Since Archie Goodwin died, you'd be hard-pressed to find an editor in comics whose artists and writers would be as unanimous in praise as people are toward Richard Howell. He's exceedingly nice, knowledgeable and loyal. I am not the only artist he's patiently cultivated into being a better artist. To answer your question, on Less Than Hero I gave Tony page plots with sample dialogue. We had to keep the plotting tight because we had so many characters running around. I didn't write the dialogue until I was actually lettering the book. For action sequences I'd give him four pages and say do whatever you want.  As an illustrator, do you prefer full scripts or plots? Or neither? Any scripting pitfalls you could warn aspiring writers about? I don't have a strong preference. Richard's plots are broken down into panels and well-described. So it's almost like a middle ground, on the way to full scripts. I only deviate when I'm sure it's worth it or accidentally when I just haven't read the plot carefully enough. Pitfalls of writing? The mistakes that artists make, the unexpected deviations from the plot or script - having to deal with these is probably the very thing that makes a writer a pro writer. Most artists are prima donnas who follow instructions poorly. It's best not to expect much from them in that area. My pet peeve as an artist is when the plot doesn't contain a word or two describing the characters' expressions. It's hard for the artist to juggle the emotional through line of a scene - in relation to a changing situation - in addition to serving the composition, balloon room, anatomy, perspective, continuity and staging. For less-experienced writers, most mistakes come from a failure to think visually. They'll hand the artist unnecessary challenges by writing two or three successive actions into the same panel. Things like, "Bill exits the elevator and picks up the phone on his desk." Or they'll script a panel that has contradictory demands of scale and focus, like "Seen from below, through the grate, Bruno finally rises to his feet, a tiny tear forming in one eye." It has to be a close-up or a full shot - it can't be both at the same time. These aren't huge problems. There are usually simple solutions. But they are the sort of mistakes that experienced writers don't make. Luckily a lot of writers are frustrated artists who have kept a sense of how to tell a story in pictures. What I don't get is guys like John Byrne and Mike Grell who thrive as artists and then turn their hands to writing and become total windbags. They saddle artists with non-visual gabfests. What is that impulse? As much as I welcome its success, I don't understand the appeal of a book like Y: the Last Man. Visually, it doesn't show anything you couldn't see in a TV movie. The people are human-looking at least, but not particularly interesting or attractive. If a story doesn't show you something fantastic, why do it in comics? Why not prose or radio? I see your point. With some books I feel like I'm reading "Independent Film Channel: the comic book". I like Y: the Last Man quite a bit. But when I recommend it to people I do refer to it as an extended episode of the twilight zone. What are reading these days, comics or otherwise? I'm reading Trigger from Vertigo, because I love John Watkiss' work. I like that Vertigo and Image are forging a way out of the superhero ghetto for comic books. I'm not really much of a reader. I don't have a lot of time and I don't read particularly well. So it really matters to me that stuff be extra-well-written. I like The New Yorker for that reason and because it has such a diversity of subjects. I'll read anything they have, short of, like, sports or opera.  Any dream projects you'd love to work on? Not really. Some things I wanted to do when I was younger now seem either unappealing or impossible. At one time, I'd have liked nothing better than to draw Batman. And I was chasing that for a while, just a couple years ago. But in a way that doesn't appeal to me more than anything else now. I would probably be most comfortable doing a love comic, but then I'm not growing as an artist. I might enjoy doing a superhero, but my stuff doesn't seem to have the right level of tension and drama. I like to draw. That's the main thing. I like the unexpected result, the happy accident, the days when everything's clicking. That can happen in any genre. I've done horror comics. That's really fun, even though I don't have any particular love of the genre. I've drawn the Power Rangers, for Christ's sake, and I enjoyed that. Eek! The Cat was fun, even though the script was incoherent. All I'm saying is, I'm a total whore. I will draw anything for money and be perfectly happy. Wait, I've got it: Lucy Liu and Salma Hayek are lesbian pirates on the run from ghosts. And I'd do it all anime style, because if there's one thing Salma Hayek needs, its blue hair, fourteen highlights in each eye and no lips. Then she'd be really hot. Uh...I had more questions but that Salma Hayek response has made it uncomfortable for me to sit still. In fact I think it's time for a long shower. John, thanks for your time and opinions. As soon as I bring all these empties to the recycling centre I should have enough coin to purchase "Proof of Concept" from my local retailer. I saw the blue lines a few weeks and it looked awesome. If your local retailer is sold out of Proof Of Concept, Doll and Creature or Soulsearchers and Company they can still order them from Diamond Comics International. You can make it even easier for your hard working retailer and give them the Order Code: Proof of Concept Diamond Order Code OCT042321 Doll and Creature Diamond Order Code AUG021790 Soulsearchers and Company Diamond Order Codes: JAN052576 F SOULSEARCHERS #71 NOV042544 F SOULSEARCHERS #70 SEP042525 F SOULSEARCHERS #69 JUL042755 F SOULSEARCHERS #68 MAY042452 F SOULSEARCHERS #67 To contact John or see more of his work work check out his website Heebink.com Awright you varmints, good luck with the resolutions, don't shoot up alone and I'll see ya in a couple weeks. Jason McNamara
 Jason McNamara is the author of the Less Then Hero mini-series, for more be sure to visit Polite Strangers.com.  PopImage Forum - Discuss this message at the PopImage forum. E-Mail Us - Send us an e-mail commenting on this article. Ait/PlanetLar.com - Publisher of Proof Of Concept Industrial Archive - Read past Industrial articles |
