Jim Keefe is the current artist of the Sally Forth comic strip. From 1996-2003 he was the writer and artist of the Flash Gordon comic strip. A graduate of the Joe Kubert School, Keefe likewise teaches Comic Art. Teaching and speaking engagements include SVA in Manhattan, Hofstra’s UCCE Youth Programs, and most recently the Minneapolis College of Art and Design.
Now here’s how do to a holiday issue. The Amazing Spider-Man #166 March 1977 print date but came out December of 1976.
Writer/Editor: Len Wein Artist: Ross Andru Inker: Mike Esposito Letterer: Joe Rosen Colorist: Glynis Wein
Cover: John Romita
Starts out with a beautiful splash page. Note: This comic is over 40 years old, so don’t mind the wear and tear.
No time wasted – page two and we jump right into the action…
Need a brief synopsis with plot points if you missed the previous issue? I’ll see if Mrs. Connors can’t help us out with that…
The pages that follow have some plot threads that will lead into subsequent issues so I’m going to skip those and throw you right back into the thick of things.
No more interruptions from here on in…
A fun roller coaster of a story courtesy of Len Wein and Ross Andru – with enough dinosaurs to make the ten-year-old in me just giddy.
The following Terry and the Pirates strip is from 1940 and has Dr. Ping and Hu Shee (Chinese guerrillas battling the Japanese who’ve invaded their homeland), trying to bring some holiday cheer to their injured stowaway, Terry.
Terry and the Pirates – December 22, 1940
Caniff could do a humerous take for a holiday strip, but some of his most poignant are his more serious reflections.
Note: Click on image to see larger.
Terry and the Pirates – December 25, 1945
Terry and the Pirates – December 25, 1946
Talk about connecting with the reader. It’s this kind of commitment to the craft that separates the pros from the amateurs.
One of the highlights of doing Flash Gordon was the opportunity to work with Al Williamson (1931-2010).
Al worked on two Sunday pages during my tenure. This first page ran on November 7, 1999. The layout and partial pencils are by Al, the finished inks are by me.
Click on image to see larger.
This next page is dated July 8, 2001 and is all Al. It’s also the last Flash Gordon piece he did that saw print.
Backstory on the November 7th strip:
During the summer of 1998 I was working on staff as a colorist at King Features Syndicate. King was gearing up to move from the building it had occupied for decades and I got a tip that a number of old files were being thrown out. I was told by my editor that if I was up for it I could go through the dumpsters and keep whatever I wanted. The files that were being trashed mostly consisted of decades old paperwork and proof sheets from a myriad of projects/collections that spanned back for years and years.
Rooting through the dumpster I eventually came upon a a lost treasure – proof sheets of Al Williamson’s work on Flash Gordon from the old 1960’s King Comics. I could not believe my luck. Now this was around the time that Marvel was withholding artwork from Jack Kirby. That being the case I got Williamson’s contact info from our Comics Editor Tom Daning (who had worked with Al two years prior) and after making copies for myself I sent off the proof sheets.
About a week later, much to my surprise, I got a call from Al. He thanked me, then told me how all the artwork from that first issue of Flash Gordon he had drawn had been stolen years ago. He had sent it in to the publisher and after it saw print all the artwork went “missing” and was never returned to him. He greatly appreciated receiving the package of proof sheets from out of the blue – so much so in fact that he invited me out to his studio.
Al Williamson in his studio inking a Star Wars movie adaptation – October 1998.
I am still in awe of the original artwork I saw that day. His own and also of great pen and ink masters he admired from his personal collection; Alex Raymond, Hal Foster and much, much more…
Since I was the hired hand on Flash Gordon at the time, I inquired whether or not he would be interested in doing artwork for a Flash Sunday page. Granted, I knew he hadn’t had the best working conditions/relations with King in the past, so I was unsure if he’d be up for it. As he was under deadline inking a Star Wars movie adaptation at the time he politely declined and I left it at that.
Skip ahead a year…
Al would call me from time to time just to check in on how work was going and how the family was doing. By the fall of 1999 I decided to inquire again if he would be interested in doing a Flash page. At this time he said he’d be up for it, but he had two conditions.
1: That he’d have plenty of lead time. 2: Under no circumstance would he accept payment.
He wasn’t able to finish the page due to other deadline commitments, but he did provide a beautiful layout. What follows is the inking study he worked up on tracing paper.
Click on to see larger.
Williamson’s method of working up a page starts with an inked rough (to size). First laid out in pencil, Williamson then goes over it with ink to start tightening it up. He explained that comic pages he does the whole job on (pencils and inks) he literally ends up inking the page twice.
Click on to see larger.
I believe he later changed the figure of Dale because it was derivative of a drawing he had done shortly before this for another project.
Al blocked in partial pencils onto Bristol, then sent me the tracing paper so I could see what he intended. Due to time constraints he wasn’t able to pencil the inset characters.
And here’s my inks.
Click on to see larger.
I can’t say enough about how great a guy Al Williamson was, not just as an artist but as a mentor and friend.
For more on Al Williamson’s work on Flash (including these pages) I highly recommend Flesk publications’ Al Williamson’s Flash Gordon. The book includes an essay by Mark Schultz, and the art is beautifully shot from the originals whenever possible.
If Flash Gordon isn’t in your local paper, you can check it out online at…
A yearlong subscription to all of King Features’ comics (new and vintage) plus two years worth of archives for every single strip is a pittance at $19.99 a year.
Work For Hire: For copyright purposes, “work for hire” or similar expressions such as “done-for-hire” or “for-hire” signify that the commissioning party is the owner of the copyright of the artwork as if the commissioning party has, in fact, been the artist. Work for hire strips you not only of the rights but of authorship; the buyer is the author under the law.
The Graphic Artists Guild is unalterably opposed to work for hire contracts.
For most of my professional career I have worked under work for hire contracts. When you work on a character that a company owns all the rights to – like DC, Marvel, King Features – that’s the deal.
Having gone to the Kubert School, Joe Kubert’s advice was to go in with your eyes wide open – understand what you’re signing and use the recognition of working on an established character as a foot in the door for other work. Unfortunately, understanding what you’re signing does not take away from how one-sided these contracts are.
Illustration groups like the Graphic Artists Guild and the Society of Illustrators rightly disdain WFH agreements and widely suggest illustrators refuse to work under WFH agreements. That makes sense in a perfect world, but sometimes in the real world a WFH agreement is a necessary evil.
I think you have to realistically assess the amount of risk you are taking in doing a WFH job compared to not doing it.
For Steve Bissette (Swamp Thing, Tyrant, Taboo, and past instructor at The Center for Cartoon Studies) a picture is worth a thousand words.
Click on the cartoon to read more of Bissette’s thoughts on the subject.
With the current crop of movies being released, there’s been a steady stream of properties owned by DC (Time Warner) and Marvel (Disney) making record profits. The Avengers global box office alone has been over one billion dollars.
Under work for hire, the artists who created these characters don’t receive a penny.
Steve Bissette and James Sturm’s response to this unfair practice, in particular to how comics legend Jack Kirby was treated, is to stop rewarding the corporations that do this by boycotting their products.
The take away from all this as a freelancer? Know your rights and know your options. If you want to work in this profession you have to learn the business side of the industry so as not to be taken advantage of.
GET INFORMED and KNOW WHAT YOU’RE SIGNING.
For more info – including contracts, self-publishing and other resources – you can check out my previous post: The Business of Cartooning.
