Check out Francesco Marciuliano’s blog Medium Large
as he looks back on twenty years of writing the Sally Forth comic strip.
It Was 20 Years Ago Today
Category: Artists – Cartoonists
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Ted’s Dad Dies
A little behind the scenes on today’s Sally Forth strip.
First, Francesco Marciuliano’s script for this strip.
Monday
Scene: ONE PANEL. Interior, Hospital Hallway. Same Day. Long shot down the Palliative Wing Hallway. In the distance we see Ted and his mom hugging. They are crying but we don’t see really see their faces or any cartoon tears.
The decision for the halo of light around Ted and his Mother was decided on as I had already done a hallway scene on October 22 where I tried to convey how you can feel all alone in a crowded hallway.
For the November 6th strip with Ted and his Mom I didn’t want to show the hallway completely empty (hospitals never are), but at the same time how the rest of the world goes away at that moment.
Hopefully it read that way for the readers as well.
Francesco has given me a lot of leeway on how to portray these scenes throughout.
I appreciate the trust he has in me in doing so, and hope the decisions I made in the illustrations did the story he beautifully crafted justice.
-Jim Keefe
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The Homecoming
The Homecoming
Author: Archie Goodwin
Art: Al Williamson
Creepy #112 (August 1979)
Reprinted in Creepy #137 (May 1982)
This is a story I was incredibly fortunate enough to see the original art to when I visited Al Williamson in October of 1998.
Al mentioned that Bruce Jones scripted the original concept (if I am remembering correctly), but after Al drew it he felt something was missing and shelved it. Al then talked to his good friend Archie Goodwin about it and Goodwin offered to rewrite it (changing the focus and making it much darker than the original).
It is one of my favorite Goodwin/Williamson collaborations.
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The Secrets of Spider-Man!
I just found out that my niece Heather thought that Spider-Man’s webbing is organic (like in the Tobey Maguire Spider-Man films) as opposed to a device that Peter Parker created.
For her to make this mistake is bad Uncle-ing on my part. So to rectify this I’m posting the following pages from the Amazing Spider-Man Annual #1 by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko, Spider-Man’s co-creators, and the ultimate authority on all things Spider-Man.
Enjoy!
Click on images to see larger.
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Coloring Spider-Man
Back in 1992, when I was the colorist on staff at King Features Syndicate, I got the chance to color the Spider-Man newspaper strip. Usually this would be handled by someone Marvel hired, but if it was a reprint or Marvel hadn’t hired anyone yet, I would fill in.
Ron Frenz was approached to draw the strip at that time and recently posted the pencils for this Sunday page on his Facebook page.
Click on image to see larger.
The inks were done by none other than the legendary Joe Sinnott.
Here’s my color guide followed by the old color chart that the numbers correspond to.
And last but not least, how it appeared in the paper.
As I grew up with Romita’s Spider-Man newspaper strip, any chance to work on Spider-Man I deemed as quite the honor.
Speaking of John Romita – here’s a quick color guide I did when they reprinted his origin story back in March of 1992.
The numbers on this one were on a tracing paper overlay (for clarity).
And here’s how it appeared in the newspapers.
And just for fun, here’s how the strip originally was colored back in 1977.
(Pardon the rubber cement – it’s from my old scrapbook)
And here’s the cleaned up version from the highly recommended IDW Spider-Man newspaper strip collection.
Side note: Despite the fact that I love the limited palette of the original, I thought it would be fun to put my own spin on it.
For more check out Coloring the Sunday Comics.