Transcription
And it should, I mean, it has you doing any adaptation, whether it's, uh, into film or opera or ballet or animation, it has to work in that form if it's going to work at all. So you are, I don't, I never take liberties with the meaning of the story. You know, I'm doing it because I like this story, but I will take liberties with how to tell it and, and other pictures I come up with that express that story.
Welcome to the Comics Cube, everyone. Today, I am with eight-time Eisner winner P. Craig Russell. How are you?
I am just fine tonight, thank you.
Eight times, that's an incredible number of times to win the Eisner Award. I can only name a few other people who have more.
Yeah, well, I'm very proud of them and, uh, I keep them on display in the basement studio. Not, not the first thing you see when you come in the house. I mean, yeah. One of the people who has more is Todd Klein, who you have worked with.
Oh, yeah. Yeah, because I think he's won every year he's been nominated. So I think so. Yes, yes. He's a great letterer, that's for certain.
Um, the first question I ask to anybody who comes onto the show for the first time is, uh, why do you love comics and why do you love illustration? And what was the spark that made you want to do it as a hobby and then professionally?
Well, that's a huge question. Uh, what got me started? Oh, I suppose just as a child reading comic books. That was a thing we all did. We all had a little stack of comic books on the table between the twin beds, uh, on the nightstand, uh, as a child. Uh, the Walt Disney comics and the Bugs Bunny. And, uh, my brother had all the cowboy comics, Roy Rogers and all that sort of thing, with the Rifleman from the TV show. But, um, I think I was already that early clued into the good Duck artist, Carl Barks. I could just tell those stories and I was interested in the art from an early age, responded to that.
Uh, my trajectory, I guess, was from, you know, kids' comics to, in middle, late elementary and middle school, the Archie comics. And that's where I really started recognizing styles. Didn't know names because they gave no credits, but I, I knew the difference between Harry Lucey and Dan DeCarlo and Sam Schwartz, and loved all three of them, but down to DeCarlo the most. And then from there, I think I was still in junior high, uh, into Marvel Comics. I mean, I started reading Fantastic Four with the third issue, although that wasn't exactly occurring from when it came out. But I was at a friend's house and their older brother, a couple years older than us, had issues 3 to 14. So it was just up to around the 15th issue or so when I saw them and started reading and just was absolutely hooked. You know, I was just primed for that, just the right age. So I was a teenager through that first Marvel Age and Jack Kirby's, you know, summit, as far as I'm concerned, those years in the mid-60s.
So I didn't do a lot of sequential art. I was doing, you know, single illustrations and drawings. Loved to draw. Um, but unlike some other people in my field who were doing complete stories when they were 12 years old, I didn't really start until about a year or so before I started working professionally. I think I did, when I was a senior in high school, I did a six-page story that was a satire about my older brother's workplace. He worked at a, uh, at a pottery across the river in, in the office. And then doing on the computer. But he would come home every night with stories about, you know, just how crazy everyone was that he was working with. And so for Christmas, I did this, I think it was a six-page story, just his adventures in that office, and gave it to him on Christmas morning. But I did really didn't do anything other than that until I met Dan Adkins, uh, who was working, you know, at Marvel Comics at the time. And he gave me a 10-page story for Warren Comics and asked me to pencil it, and then he would ink it. And I worked on that the, the summer of my sophomore year in college. So I was like 19. And it wasn't up to snuff, so he, he never inked it. But he did tell me that he could get me working for Marvel Comics if I would work with him for six months. I was already going to art school and, uh, showing my work. So really, the very first, my very first professional job, a six-page story in Chamber of Chills, was, um, just about the first thing I ever did in, in that form. But I was a huge student of the form through Starenko and Krigstein and, and Will Eisner, all those guys. I mean, I got it when I was just a sponge and absorbing all of that.
When I, all of these names that you mentioned, I love them all so much. Um, Carl Barks, like, uh, rediscovering Carl Barks's work to me has been like, uh, a master class in how to tell a story in 20 pages. Um, and then the three, for my money, the three greatest Archie artists who ever lived. Oh, yeah. Um, so with, but all of those guys are really so crisp and fluid. And, you know, which, which kind of defines your style as well. But do you think, uh, do you think that it's the contrast of those guys that made discovering Jack Kirby really stand out?
Well, um, I think, well, I, I knew Kirby was found, Kirby before I found, well, not Barks or the Archie guys, but, uh, the later artists. Um, but not, I don't think I learned anything from him as a storyteller in the way I did from those other guys that just had a different, completely different approach. Uh, that's why when I was already completely enmeshed in, in Marvel Comics and, and Ditko and, and Kane and Kirby and all of that, when Harvey Comics did those two, uh, giant-sized, uh, so-called reprints of, of, uh, The Spirit. Well, Eisner's Spirit. There were two, you know, 25-cent comic books. And that was, uh, a watershed moment. So completely different from the aesthetic and the ethos of, of Jack Kirby and that kind of storytelling. Uh, that, that's what really flipped a switch for me.
So would, so you would say that in terms of, uh, storytelling, Will Eisner's The Spirit was really that the spark? What about in terms of illustration, the figure work and, um?
Well, again, someone like Kirby, Ditko, Kane, that didn't really have much influence on me. Um, I think my influences came more from outside the comics field, from the, uh, uh, book illustrators of the early 20th century, Rackham and Dulac, Kay Nielsen, the Robinsons, all of those guys that had, some of them influenced by Art Nouveau, Aubrey Beardsley. And, uh, and then when Barry Smith started, Barry Windsor-Smith, Barry Smith at the time, was started doing Conan and bringing in all those influences, the Pre-Raphaelites and the Victorian artists. Um, and, and knowing you could do that in a comic, uh, really, uh, reinforced my, you know, desire to work like that. And, and, you know, you, you can't, yeah, I think it's hard to be influenced by someone like Kirby because it's such a one-of-a-kind artist that can do things with a human figure that look absolutely true, but it's his own invention. You know, those sort of lines and squiggles that add up to something for him, and he's completely convincing. If you try to do that, you can tell it doesn't make much sense. Although, I, I have to hedge that too. I think some people probably have kind of learned, uh, from him. I mean, Barry Windsor-Smith started just purely imitating Jack Kirby. And the odd thing was, when that first came out, and again, he's maybe four years older than me, so, and he was still a teenager when he started working at Marvel, I'm pretty sure, like maybe 19. So I would have been about 15. And I hated that stuff when I first saw it. And so, in a way, it was, it was, um, uh, encouraging because I thought, well, I could do that, you know, if, if this gets published. Uh, so I had a real visceral reaction. But then he started, you know, his evolution and bringing in the Art Nouveau stuff. I was a big Conan fan because of the Frazetta cover paintings on the paperbacks. And so when they started Conan, I was excited. And then I said, oh, Barry Smith's doing it. And I wasn't excited until that third issue came out, The Grim Gate Grey God Passes. And it was just, again, that light switch flicking on. I mean, he was all of a sudden becoming Barry Smith. And I, uh, very quickly became a huge fan of that. I've gone off on that tangent, but, uh, um, it wasn't that I was, oh, well, you can see some, uh, Smith-isms in my early work. Um, but, uh, it was more the influences he had that encouraged me to do the same, bring in the same influences from outside comics.
What was the comic book environment like, the comic working environment like in the 1970s?
Well, when I started, uh, I worked for Marvel for six months before I was ever to New York City and, and, and met anyone. Um, and it was the, uh, the summer, uh, convention, New York convention in the summer of, actually, was it '73? I started in, um, spring of '72, working in Dan Adkins' studio here in Ohio. He had moved back here from New York City. So I was working with him. Uh, I worked with him for six months. And I think it was the following summer we went to New York City and to the New York Comic Con. I went to the Marvel studios for the first time. Uh, I moved to New York City in January of '74. And that's when I started, you know, hanging around the office and going in. I even slept there a couple times, uh, in the reception room when I was working on deadlines. It was a much more relaxed feeling to it. You know, you could just walk into Marvel Comics in the middle of the night. That's corporate, very, very much so. And when I was inking my first issue of Killraven, uh, it was, it was late. They were all late. Dawn McGregor was even worse than I was with deadlines. So it was always a last-minute affair. And I was thinking that the, the second issue that I did of Killraven was the first thing I inked on my own. So I was, you know, pulling an all-nighter there and would sleep on the couch in the reception room and wake up when one of the suits came in in the morning. Uh, so it was, it was a very relaxed atmosphere. And, and there was an office across the hall, there was a, you know, a large office space that they hadn't utilized yet. So there were some drawing tables in there and guys would hang out. Uh, so, yeah, it was a wonderful environment and, you know, a fairly, uh, sort of like a small mom-and-pop business almost, I think, uh, between all the studios, just traveling between them.
Can, would you like to clear up this misconception that I think some fans have? I think a lot of fans have, uh, have this, uh, one-or-the-other mentality when it comes to comics art artists. It's like, oh, this comics artist is good, or this comics artist is bad. How much, but in my mind, for them to get the job at all, you have to have the talent. So how much of it being quote unquote bad is it being quote unquote late and trying to meet the deadline?
Uh, well, I'm not exactly sure I understand the question. How much do you mean the fan perception of the art?
Like when, yeah, go ahead. Basically, when something is not up to snuff, um, for you, when, when you're turning it in, uh, how much of that is because you were rushing it, you know?
Oh, I don't know that it's very much of it. I think the people who get, uh, stuck with the onus of rushing are the inkers and the colorists because, uh, maybe it's late because someone was taking their time with it and making a little masterpiece in pencil, and then the inker has the weekend, you know, to ink it. Uh, so there were a number of times where things would be look very sloppy, and it's hard to tell whose fault it was. Uh, as far as personal preference, like you, an artist you like or you don't like, like I said with, with Barry Windsor-Smith's early work, I didn't like that style at all. But so obviously, people at Marvel Comics, who at the time certainly knew more than I did, looked at it and saw promise there. You know, it's, it's like being an inker. It might be, they might be almost amateurish, but, but you can tell there's a spark there. And, and it's, let's give them a chance, which is the way most of us break into it. They give you a six-page story to do and see how you do on that, and then you just work your way up.
I was very slow in the beginning. Um, and I'm still not a speed demon, but I, it would take, I would do maybe two pages a week, pencil pages, where other guys, real pros, you know, we're doing 15 or 20, you know, like Kirby and Buscema. I wasn't good enough to go that fast and do good work, so I really had to labor over it. But I always managed to put something on the page. Even though my anatomy was was weak and my finishes were, you know, kind of rough, there would be something, some little juicy visual on that page that would grab the eye and, uh, get people's attention.
Yeah, it didn't take you long to, to get an ongoing assignment with Killraven. And you're still the artist that's most well known for that series.
Well, probably because I was, they canceled it. I mean, I, I've been on any number of books that I was the last one on it. Um, I'm not sure what that says. But, yeah, that, well, that was my first sort of full-time assignment. I was doing Ant-Man while I was back in Wellsville, my hometown, and Cincinnati, where I was going to school. But after I finished, uh, my four years in college, in '73, I wasn't getting anything from Marvel. And that's why I moved to New York City. I wasn't established enough not to be there. And so I moved to New York City in January of '74. And was able to go into the office. Well, by chance, it turns out a former roommate of mine in Cincinnati was getting my mail. And there was a script for Morbius, the Living Vampire.
Cincinnati? By chance? Well, yeah. If I had stayed there. Yeah. It was a good thing I moved. Yeah. Anyhow, even though they were now starting to send me stuff. So I had that to start with. And so I finished the Ant-Man, four issues of Ant-Man, and two issues of Morbius. And then they gave me, uh, Killraven, War at War of the Worlds, as it was called. And, uh, penciled that first issue. And the second was when I was starting to get comfortable, you know, in my living arrangement. I think that can make a big difference in the quality of your work. Just if everything is in flux, it's a little difficult, um, to, to focus on your work. Anyway, that second issue, which was also the first one I inked, was, um, when I just got going, I guess you would say. And, and other writers then, after a few issues of that, seemed, you know, interested in working with me also.
When I finished that series, and, and the Doctor Strange Annual, which was done at the end of the Killraven run, they told me, oh, we'll have, so don't worry, you know, we've canceled this book, but we'll, we'll have something for you. But I, at that time, was interested in the, uh, so-called ground-level comics and moving on and doing these personal projects because I knew that I had enough, the staff, I was established enough after three years that even if that didn't pan out, I'd find something at Marvel or DC to work on.
What did you, uh, what did you learn the most from Don McGregor? From working with Don McGregor?
Well, uh, oh, gee, a number of things. He was such a great collaborator. He was just who I was looking to work with, someone who really wanted to do, do something, you know, that, um, it wasn't just sort of another hacked-out pop boiler or something. Um, we had a, one of the things I learned with him, because we were working Marvel style, you know, you're given a synopsis. And sometimes those synopsis, like on the Ant-Man books, were real simple. It might even be to a point like, pages 12 to 15, they fight. And the artist has to come up with a whole scenario of what the fight is and, and, and how they trade blows and all of that. Well, Don, uh, was a real, uh, uh, aficionado of, of stuntmen and westerns. And so his fight scenes, he always, you know, was writing out, uh, exactly the moves and counter-moves and all of that. He, since it was so-called Marvel style, he wasn't doing a finished script panel by panel, you know, but he gave me a real solid storyline to work with, and then I would visualize it. Well, at first, I was, you know, filling the panels, and Don wrote a dense script. He, you know, those letters should have been paid double what they were being paid. He wrote a lot. And so a lot of my drawing was just getting erased and covered up, and he would agonize over that and apologize. But I then started learning, almost like in a comic strip way in the newspaper, to keep my drawings in the, you know, lower two-thirds or whatever, anyway, to leave space for, for the words. And I think towards the end, we got pretty good at working together in that, where the drawings weren't, um, I wasn't doing a lot of wasted effort on the drawings and then feeling bad that good drawing was being, you know, covered over. Uh, so I kind of started learning about designing for lettering through working with Don. And lettering design is very, to me, one of the crucial elements. Now today, if I'm scripting something, like I'm doing the Norse Mythology book layouts for other artists, or doing it for myself, I hand-letter in everything roughly. I'm not, not talking professional lettering, but I, and, and design where the word balloons are going, the way they move around the panel. And when I'm doing it for other artists, I, I definitely try to keep it in the, in the upper part, not like right in the middle somewhere, because then they're straitjacketed into their drawing as to where, you know, the people are in relation to the word balloons. But I work all of that stuff out on the page. Uh, it can be difficult for letterers sometimes, because I even get the ellipses and draw them in with their their percentages, like, this is a 35 ellipse or 40. And I might not hit the mark all the time, but I, I get those circles dancing around the page to lead the eye around it.
There are multiple times when reading your work that I actually have to check to see if you did the lettering because I'm like, there's, it's just so interwoven into the art.
Well, yeah, absolutely. And, um, sometimes before I've even, uh, inked in the word balloons, and I've stopped doing that because if it doesn't work exactly, I want the letterer to have some wiggle room. Um, but, like for Coraline, the graphic novel from Neil Gaiman's book, I, I knew they were doing computer lettering. So on the artwork, all those word balloons are drawn onto the artwork, and then the computer lettering is just dropped in.
Yeah, Neil Gaiman, that's a name I'm sure we'll get to later. Yeah. You know, so after Killraven, I mean, you, you embarked on a series of projects that really showcased you as an artist. We've got a couple of graphic novels, you were, you were doing Night Music for Eclipse. You clearly stood out in, you know, among, among the artists at the time. And I think a big part of it is your design sense and the fact that you, you thought about every element of, of the visuals.
Yeah, no, go ahead. Yeah. Did you feel that at the time that you were, that you were, uh, standing out?
Well, I was certainly trying to stand out because I was always trying to do, uh, the best I could and always pushing myself because I felt, uh, even though I have a degree in fine arts in painting, I had very little really solid training when I went to school. They weren't doing the, the hip bone is connected to the thigh bone sort of anatomy study. I've always had to learn that on my own. As I'm sort of an autodidact, in spite of that diploma. Um, and so I'm always pushing myself, trying to make this one better than the last one. And when you're starting out, especially the first 10 years, you're learning so much, you're such a sponge. I could do a drawing and know that, you know, this is better than anything I've done before. Might not be good, but it's better than anything that's come before that. After a while, you're going to plateau a bit, but I'm always, yeah, but still pushing myself to do it, uh, better than I have before. So I was thinking about it a lot. And I wasn't afraid to spend maybe five days. There was one panel in Night Music, it was a big square from the, uh, of this girl sleeping in a bed in this incredible Art Nouveau bedroom. I spent five days, uh, just on that one panel. So yeah.
And, and doing those things, I was also able to play to my strengths, you know, when they said to me at Marvel, well, you know, we'll find something else for you. I was lucky with Killraven, just because of the milieu of the story and, and the backgrounds, the things you get to draw. I was never interested in, nor do I think I would be very good at doing Spider-Man in Manhattan, you know, with the cars and the buses and, and just all the modern-day stuff. I like anything that lets me draw nature, uh, or, or the supernatural. So sword and sorcery is fine, and anything's set in nature. So all those projects I was doing were ones I definitely wanted to do that weren't foreign to me.
Speaking of projects that you like doing, you do a lot of adaptations of established works. The Jungle Book, The Magic Flute, The Ring of the Nibelung, and The Fairy Tales of Oscar Wilde. What is the appeal of working, uh, with these classic stories and interpreting them as your own?
Well, you start with something that's already worth reading, you know, you've got an established literary piece and, and a literary voice. Even though I'm maybe cutting it down by two-thirds, you know, and taking only 30 or 40 percent of the original script, um, that stuff is all good. So I know that I have something to work with. I mean, you think of how many movies are done, adaptations of plays or short stories, novels, the things that, and I'm not even, not even just Shakespeare, but, you know, just so much, you know, Kubrick doing The Shining or Barry Lyndon, Clockwork Orange, all literary properties. Elia Kazan's Streetcar Named Desire, Orson Welles's, Jesus, Shakespeare and the Trial, and Magnificent Ambersons. All of that. You start with this thing that exists already. And part of the, uh, the fun and the challenge is in those moments when they're really on visual moments. There's, there's no, there's no action going on, uh, there is maybe no conversation to stage. Say, in The Scarlet Letter, there's a paragraph talking about Hester Prynne's place in society at this point in her life. How do you visualize that? And that, to me, if you can, if you can solve that puzzle and make it visual, it sometimes is the most cinematic or visual part of the entire piece because you, you have to come up with a purely visual solution. And that's what I really enjoy the most and what I've really cut my teeth on all these years.
Do you have any particular favorites among the adaptations that you've made?
Well, I'd like short stories like, well, the Clive Barker Human Remains, and, uh, Neil Gaiman's Murder Mysteries. They, uh, and Human Remains was very much a modern setting, one of the few times I did it. There's nothing, um, well, there is something of the supernatural, and it's a doppelganger and a statue that comes to life. I mean, it's that element, but it's set in a very real, modern-day world. And it was a very complex story. I was really proud of the way I was able to, you know, cut the script down because we had a certain number of pages. So you have to fit it and get all the important points in that. And, and the Murder Mysteries, I thought was a really rich story. I love doing the Oscar Wilde fairy tales, the Jungle Book stories. Um, I can't say that there's ever been one that I was not happy to have done. It's good.
We've spoken, you know, we've brought his name up a few times, so we may as well bring him up now. Neil Gaiman. Yes. You have been one of Neil Gaiman's main collaborators throughout the course of his career. When you started working with Neil Gaiman, which was, what was it? Ramadan? Yes. Right.
Well, I had inked an issue of Sandman, but I wouldn't call that working with Neil Gaiman. It was just, you know, an editor at DC asked, are you available to issue to ink this issue that Kelly Jones? And I said yes, because that's how I was sort of making my living at that time, was inking all through the 80s and into the 90s because I was doing these projects that did not, uh, pay much at all. I mean, I was getting a hundred dollars a page for script, pencils, inks, and colors, like at Eclipse, we're going Salome and, and Magic Flute. Then started moving up. But, so Ramadan, yes, was my first real collaboration with Neil.
When you were working on Ramadan with Neil, did you realize that this was going to be such a big part of your career?
No, no. Neil was always, I mean, already by issue 50 was a big deal, um, but not like the big deal he is now, you know. He was, you know, just another writer, a very good writer. And, and I was, you know, aware of his, his work already. And when he told me the kind of story it was, uh, I was very interested in doing it. He had seen, uh, a book I did the year before called The Thief of Baghdad, and it was a novel that I did illustrations for. So one of those serendipitous things. He saw that book. My, I did 15 or so illustrations. So when he came to do Ramadan, he called me. And he, you know, gets artists like casting actors. He said, I want you to do like you did The Thief of Baghdad, only more so. So, sure, it had all fun stuff. Everything was an absolute delight to draw. Yeah. So that really played to my strengths. Okay. All that, uh, Persian Islamic design, the, the patterns and the colors. So it's just, it just worked out. And he gave me, um, instead of a full finished script, like he was used to doing, you know, panel one, panel two, panel three. Uh, I asked him to just give it to me like a short story, like all the words you want to have in it, and let me figure out, you know, the panel, the, the storytelling of it, which is what he did. And so I was, it was almost, um, like working Marvel style, except it was a fully written script, just not page by page. Um, and the number of panels. Now, when we did The Endless, 10, 12 years later, he did write a full script panel by panel. But really, yeah, um, it was, which is what I think he did for all of it. But there was one, for example, page, he wrote it in four panels, and I did 14. I've, I found this often with with, um, writers that that they'll have a line. I think this is so rich. You've got all this stuff in one panel. I could do three pages from this, you know, just from this little chunk of copy. And remember what line it was? Well, it wasn't a single do you line. What, what page? What sequence? It was, oh, the 14, page 14 panel page, yes, was, um, what was going on at the count, at this party, and how it went all on all night, and there was blood and sort of orgy and, um, yeah, I think there was so much going on in that, though, that little block of copy. When I did, um, one life furnished in early Morcoth, the short story he did, which was, um, you think, yes, the, uh, say, if the story was, as he wrote it, like 10 pages long, and I had about 26 pages to do it. His last paragraph, I gave three pages for. So it's not like you took this 10-page, say, if I had a 10-page, 10 graphic pages to do, and there was a 10-page short story, it's not like you take every page of that and give it to a page over here, you know, perfectly equal. The, the way it's divided up is way different. So something that would be, you know, this big, at the end, is stretched out like to this, and other stuff is compressed. But it was such a good ending that I really wanted to make it. It was open up into this sort of big aria of an ending. So there's a lot of squash and stretch that goes into that. The same thing in doing, in, in a feature film, you know, certain scenes from a novel are going to expand way beyond, you know, and in relation to time, uh, then way beyond the space they occupy in the novel.
I, uh, so one of the things that really strikes me about your work is how it looks simple, but it's not. So I'm looking at the first page of Ramadan right here. Yeah. How long did this take you?
Probably a couple days. Um, there's a lot of erasing going on as I try to, you know, figure out what it is. On the other hand, since it's a, for most of it, almost like a clock, there's a repetition of that pattern. Once you get the, the, the cell, the, the core pattern, then it's just a matter of repeating it, and that's just sort of manual labor. You're listening to music and all of that, um, once you start executing it. Um, but yeah, there's a lot of erasing that goes on. I've talked to Mike Mignola about this. He has the same thing. He looks so simple, the stuff that he does, but he fills, he told me, you know, he fills the wastebasket with all these tracings of trying to figure out where those big blobs of black shadow go, you know. Um, yeah, it looks simple. And some people can draw. I mean, Jack Kirby, I don't think did a lot of erasing. You know, he, he drew like some people talk. And then there are those of us who labor over it. And I, I do try to to simplify and get it down to a single line, um, and very clear that this line has meaning. It's, it's starting here, it's going there. Uh, I've been doing a lot of cross-hatching and shading in the recent years, but it's building on a very simple foundation.
Yeah, I always feel like, uh, your work is so clean that your, your margin of error is not, is not big, not once you start inking.
Yeah, well, my pencils are very pretty tight. Yeah, I'm not leaving a lot to, uh, the imagination. Where other artists may, you know, really, uh, blossom in, in the, uh, not knowing. You know, they're really working with the pen or the brush, whatever. Uh, I always had that feeling looking at, uh, Jeff Jones, Jeffrey Catherine Jones' artwork. It felt spontaneous, you know, that brushwork. So some people have that feel. Maybe they're still working it out a lot ahead of time. But yeah, when I started, I even had three steps because Dan taught me to draw in blue pencil and then do finished pencil on top of that, which sort of made sense because you did your, all of your thinking in the blue pencil and then you finished it off. But that was in preparation for an inker for someone else. So when I was doing Killraven, I was doing blue pencil and pencil and then ink before I realized, I don't need that first step. I just draw it in pencil and erase and tighten up and then, you know, you can do it in the inking stage. But it's getting all of that thought first before you nail it down with the ink.
How did you feel about the reception to Ramadan?
Oh, well, quite gratified. You know, it's, it's wonderful to have something you've worked on, uh, have that kind of, I mean, I've said it before, with apologies to all the other, uh, living writers that I've worked with, but that was the finest, uh, original script I've ever been given. I mean, he nailed that, uh, you know, the voice of Sir Richard Burton, who did the original, you know, translation of a Thousand and One Nights. He nailed that voice of Burton in that fairy tale style. No, uh, king and all of that. And, uh, and also that, uh, one thing I really haven't talked much about is that, you know, Lauran Kozerski did the coloring. And I had to fight for weeks, if not months, to get him because he was the regular colorist on every other issue. Vasso Daniel Vazo, let me check on that. That was actually my next question is how closely do you work with your colorist? Uh, yeah, Daniel Vazo. Yeah. And, and certainly professional colorist and all that, but he had that sort of, uh, that style for Sandman, which was much more muted and not colorful. And I knew with this fairy tale, Baghdad, we wanted a real rich range of intense jewel-like colors. And, and Laverne could do that. And it wasn't until the very last minute that they, you know, acceded to that. And, you know, you have a regular guy, I understand that this is his gig, and you're asking him to step aside, you know, for one. But I was working closely with him. And so luckily, uh, I got him. Yeah, because I, I sent Karen Berger a dozen roses after that came out and with a thank you for letting me have Laverne. That was, uh, that was also, uh, the point of the story, right? Was to show how colorful it was and then how, how it gets brought down. So that it was important.
Yeah, oh, very much so. And, uh, yeah, the last page, you know, color is just leached out almost entirely. That's one of the things I love about it is that, you know, you think it ends, and then there's two more pages, and okay, that's the end. And then there's another page, and that's the end. If you've ever seen Fritz Lang's Scarlet Street with Edward G. Robinson, it's an amazing, amazing movie. And it has like a series of curtains coming down at the end. You keep thinking it's the end of the movie, and then there's an even more desolate, devastating sequence. And that's the way it was with with Ramadan.
How did you feel about, well, first of all, the reception to Ramadan wasn't just the awards or the critical reception or everything. I think the depiction of Dream there is one of only two versions of Dream that have been made into an action figure. Oh, yes, yes. It's the Arabian Nights Sandman, and then the other is for The Dream Hunters, is the Japanese Sam. Yeah, yeah, man. So, but this story came out like in the early 90s when the Iraq War was relevant. And I actually read it first in 2002 when the other Iraq War was relevant.
Oh, oh, well, right. Yeah. You got it. The second time, you got it right. Yeah. So like, how do you feel about a story like this continuing to stay relevant?
Well, as long as there's a Middle East, it's going to be relevant, I would think. I, I don't know why it crossed my mind today, but the movie Breaking Away from 1978 about those bicycle teenager bike riders in a race in Indiana, I think. And someone is asking one of the young guys a question, like, how are you doing? And he said, well, I'm not happy about the Middle East situation. And that's in 1978. So it's a line you can just use over and over. Wow. But yeah, but yeah, that was devastating, that the little boy wandering through, um, the ruins of Baghdad. And yet there was something about what I liked about it. It wasn't such a devastating ending in that this little boy is, his head is still filled with visions of, of beauty and, you know, just wonder. And that, that mix of, of devastation and, and wonder at the same time, I thought was just, you know, to end that for the, with the last panel, the story, that little kid wandering through all that, it's profound. Yeah.
So speaking of that, uh, the, the Endless Night story, Death in Venice, that's another one. I feel like that was done, uh, specifically to respond to the, you know, to the climate at the time.
Oh, well, that works in with that. Now, the thing is, on The Endless, I was originally supposed to do Destiny, really the last one. And Moebius was supposed to do the one set in Venice. And he became ill and had to drop out. So Neil asked me if I would do the Venice one. But still, in my mind's eye, I can still see what Moebius would have done with that, you know, those tri-cornered hats. And I mean, he's done so many illustrations from that period of, you know, sort of French debauchery that, uh, I think he would have been incredible. But, uh, I got to do it. And I, you know, I use regular models. I knew I used real people for models for characters, sometimes for many characters. Jill Thompson has been half a dozen characters for me and other friends. So then, you know, the main character was this sort of a count, aristocratic count gone slightly to seed. And I thought, well, who do I know? Me. So I used me for that count. I was getting whipped with his powdered wig going so slightly askew. That's fun. That, that's a great story that that Moebius was supposed to draw it. And then, yeah, that's great.
Dream Hunters, you, uh, you know, we spoke about that. Yoshitaka Amano drew the illustrated version of a prose story. So did Neil even give you a script for the comic adaptation, or did you just work straight off of that?
He sent me, um, the rough draft when he first read it, wrote it. And, let's see, and I sat on that for years because I was just starting The Ring of the Nibelung, which is going to be a five-year-long project. And he said, well, you know, it's there for you when you're ready to do it. And so it was almost 10 years before I did The Dream Hunters. And I, I called him and said, are you still interested in in having me do this? And, oh, yes. And it turned out it was just in time for Sandman's 20th anniversary, and they wanted a new Sandman story for Neil. But he had other obligations and things to do. So this was perfect. It gave them a new Sandman story for the 20th anniversary. And, um, I was working with that original script that her text that he sent me and did the entire thing. And when I finished, and I spent a lot of time on those last couple pages, you know, the last, again, the last paragraph or so of of the story. And I sent in copies of it. And the editor said, well, where's that last scene with the, you know, Sandman and, and Jeremy the Raven? I said, what scene? And they sent me a finished script of it. And he had added a whole scene just before the end with with Sandman and Jeremy the Raven. Well, I'd had this rhythm built up, and this came right in the middle of it. It's like having a finished musical piece and they say, okay, you have to put this sequence in two minutes before the end. But it, it worked out, you know, it, uh, I then, those were the last two pages that I drew. And then you had the very final page, and it flowed, it all worked out. But I was really confused. And he had changed the old man who choked on a on a rice cake, but he had changed it to a peach. So I have no idea. You know, things the writers do. They look at it, maybe after they've written the the rough draft, and that should be a peach. So I don't think that got changed. I think that got got through. No one noticed it, so it's still a rice cake in the in the graphic novel.
Was there any pressure at all from editorial or or whatever to to try in any way to make, uh, your illustrations look like Yoshitaka Amano's?
No, right. Okay. That's what I thought. It would have failed anyhow. I couldn't. I mean, it's so different from my drawings. It's just gorgeous, just beautiful, beautiful stuff. Um, but it, you know, it's another artist's vision. I just would be like me trying to draw like Jack Kirby. They just left me alone to do it.
What did you think of the massive prank that Neil pulled on the original Dream Hunters where he convinced everyone it was a translation?
Well, I addressed that in the afterword. I said, he had me fooled. I cleaned it. I absolutely believed it. It was that good. And even while thinking, isn't this amazing how, you know, the two brothers, and it just lines up, [Laughter] so conveniently from top to bottom? Yes. But yeah, that's another thing. With with your work on that, that's another thing where I think your style lends itself to look both realistic or fantastical because just looking at, uh, the fox when she's a woman, in the robe, and then the way the robe flows off, and then it turns into a fox's tail. I feel like if you did work in a more realistic style, uh, it wouldn't translate so well.
Yeah, well, one of the things I got to do, I mean, even all the way back to Killraven, I've always been influenced by the Japanese woodblock artists of, you know, the 19th, 17th, 18th, 19th century. I never know how to pronounce it right, the Ukiyo-e movement, anyway. The color is very graphic and, and translates into, I think, a modern drawing style. Even the coloring. And in working with Lavern, excuse me, working with Lavern, I've always said, let's only go so far in this special effects you can do with computer, as you go with the Japanese woodblock prints, which have some sort of airbrush effects or, you know, the white dots of snow, and it's very flat, not much modeling. And that's the kind of coloring I like to do. And the, the Japanese art, Asian art in general, but Japanese art in particular, Hokusai and Hiroshige have been a bit of influence on me. So when I started doing The Dream Hunters, I was able to also augment my library with the pile of books I got from the, um, Chicago Institute of Art, that great museum in Chicago, in their bookstore. And it was tax-deductible because it was legitimately for resources. Yeah, yeah. And, and my influence from Martin Luther worked into that too, those long flowing lines, which I think, well, the French were influenced in the 19th century by the Japanese art, art from the East that was just, you know, coming into vogue. And Van Gogh and Gauguin, they were all really energized or influenced by that work. It was a great.
addition to western art to that infusion of asian art into western and certainly since this story was a Japanese fairy tale, uh, tried to put get as much of that in as I could.
When when you were working on uh, murder mysteries, um, there was a difference, a slight difference in the way the short story was and uh, the way the comic was. In that, I feel the end of the, the end of the short story was a little more ambiguous about what happened, but in the comic it was so, it was much more explicit uh, about what the guy did.
Oh yes. Was that your directive, or was that in the description?
I, um, no, it was uh, because I was working, I was working with his short story, but also, you know, there was a, a radio play adaptation and he sent me a tape of that that I could listen to. So that's where the little ringing chimes, the wind with the wind chimes come in, the beginning and at the end. On the very last page is another little wind chime going, kind of a ding. That's from the radio play, it's not in the short story, but it was part of the, the soundscape. So that wasn't my particular invention or in addition to his story, that was from his radio adaptation.
Uh, and and the other one, I think the point in the moment you're talking about is when he's on the airplane going back to England and he sees this article in the newspaper about a murder. Of course, he has no idea that he did it, but I put the photo in the newspaper of that apartment. So we know that that he did it. Yes. That we get that sort of visual rhyme from having seen that apartment earlier. And and I think it's, it's clear in Neil's script that, of course, he, he's the one that did it, but this just gives us a visualization of it and kind of really reinforces the idea that he has no memory of it. Uh, even in seeing and seeing that picture there.
There's, when I was talking about finding pictures for, um, those moments where nothing is happening, the opening paragraphs to that, uh, when he's explaining, saying like, who he was and who he is now. Uh, that I forget the text exactly, but all that staging that I did while he's talking about his life and where he is, I have him going over to a drawer. There's a t-shirt hanging out of the drawer and he's picking it up and there's some dry blood spots on it. I mean, none of that is in the script. It's a parallel narrative. It's what I call parallel narrative. Uh, those sequences that you are inventing that are illuminating or illustrating something that is completely non-visual.
So he's also, uh, looking out into the backyard. He has a family. You see the kids on the, on the swing. And I ended that sequence with a close-up of that little girl on a swing. And in the background, way in the background, you see a churchyard and you can see the tombstones. So since he, early later on, or or many years before, but later on in our story, uh, you see that he's murdered a little girl. So in this very opening, second page, I think, second or third page, you have an image of a child and death, the graveyard and the little girl. I mean, that's not in the script, but that's something I focused on is foreshadowing what came later. That's what I like about that story.
And and, uh, um, human remains are coming up with visuals that aren't there. And it should, I mean, it has you doing any adaptation, whether it's into film or opera or ballet or animation, it has to work in that form if it's going to work at all. So you are, I don't, I never take liberties with the meaning of the story. You know, I'm doing it because I like this story, but I will take liberties with how to tell it and and other pictures I come up with that express that story.
Right. You're not there just as a vessel to to translate it one to one. You're, yeah. You know, you're there to enhance it and to make it the best possible version of that story possible.
Well, yeah. This, um, otherwise, it's not fun for me. It's solving the puzzle and coming up with these things that make it fun. Uh, another example from that is that, uh, when, uh, the old man is approaching the young man for a light for the cigarette, of course, that's the angel, Rockwell. He says, offers him a quarter. Well, I, I came in for a large sort of close-up on that quarter as he's handing it and you can see Liberty on, you know, the American quarter. So at the end, when he's flying away, there's an upshot from the street, you know, there's a street sign and you see just a tiny dot of that plane in the sky, but the, the street sign says Liberty on it. So you have that rhyme. That old man is taking his memory away, is giving him liberty, as offering him, you know, freedom from this heinous act that he's done.
You weren't in that. Yeah. I'm just saying these things sometimes just, uh, occur to you. Uh, hopefully before you're done with it. What's worse is when it occurs to you after you've done it out there and you think, I could have. There was a three-panel sequence towards the end of him walking down the street and, uh, it was sort of a down shot and that's just what it was. And then I realized as it tied into the script, I removed the middle panel and put that little tin angel lying on its side from the murder scene. And that, I don't know where it comes from, but, you know, it's just sort of like a Tetris drops into place. And it's really exciting when that happens, you know, because you just made the story stronger and you've come up, you know, you've enriched it.
I get that and that's great. And now I have to ask you, if the following ever happens, do you ever do something, not realize you're doing it, and then, and then, you know, it gets put out in the world and then people say, like, oh, hey, I see what you did here. And then you go, oh, right. Yeah. Yeah. I can't think of a particular example, but yes, you know, when people start analyzing stories and making assumptions about your intention in doing that. And so this is deliberate because there's so many ways you can interpret stories. And I've, I had someone, uh, put up a picture from my original Dr. Strange annual and it was a large panel of Doctor Strange being sort of enveloped in all this, you know, muck coming up, this living planet sort of thing. And they had with an overlay drawn the, the lines of force and composition. It looked like Jack straws, you know, um, they were just imagining all of these lines. And I, I never did. But I wanted to say, here's the line, the compositional line, it goes like this. That's it. It's just there. I'm doing this spiral coming right in on him. And that. But once you start doing that, you can, once you start know how to play that game, you can interpret anything to mean almost anything.
Okay. You work with a lot of recurring themes, right? So a lot, a lot of mythological stuff, a lot of fantastical stuff. And just to pull off an example, in Murder Mysteries, you have a depiction of Lucifer. You're working with Neil Gaiman. You worked with Mike Carey on Lucifer, yes, which is a spin-off of Neil Gaiman's Sandman, yes. Like, how do you, what efforts do you make to keep all of these distinct, individual?
It's been serendipitous. I mean, um, they asked me to do Lucifer 50, I think partly because they did Sandman 50. Yeah. And then they offered me, um, the 50th issue. Oh, wasn't it The Invisibles? I forget. I forget which. It was a few years later, they wanted me to do the 50th issue of another series, uh, at DC. But it was just a really interesting assignment. And by coincidence, you know, it worked out that it was Lucifer and the Neil mythos connection. But aside from that, I mean, I, you know, I did the Jungle Book stories, and then Neil asked me to do The Graveyard Book, which is his, on the Jungle Book stories. Then I did The Ring of the Nibelung, and with a Voton and, or Odin and Thor and all of that. And now I'm doing Norse mythology, which is based on the same thing. So certain things keep coming back.
And do you feel the need to make sure that each depiction of of a recurring character is different? Right? Like, well, I was asked this question just today. Wayne Harold, you know, who I've worked with for years, he came over to do some filming, five little segments of me talking about the covers to the Norse Mythology book and some various art commissions I'm doing. And this one cover had, uh, Odin, um, on the cover as the Wanderer. And he asked, Wayne asked me, uh, if I was doing, uh, him just like I did in The Ring of the Nibelung. I said, well, when he's, when he's Odin, he knows a different costume. And but even though, you know, he's missing one eye and he's got a beard, uh, it's at least a different costume. But as the Wanderer, uh, he's wearing a long gray cloak and a wide-brimmed hat and a staff. He's got a beard. There's not too many other ways you can do that. So he looks very much like the one I did in The Ring of the Nibelung. Yeah. And it's Gandalf. Yeah. Stand off the grave. Voton. Prey. Odin. Gray. Right.
Um, I've got a book of yours here. So I showed you, uh, Ramadan, which was my first exposure to your work. This is my nephew's first exposure to your work. Yeah. The Mighty 12. Uh, yeah, that was, that's, that's another series I would like to do as a cycle. Uh, I've been thinking of of collecting certain drawings and and reworking them into sort of like a suite of drawings. Uh, so I might redo a bunch of those as finished color pieces, all of the same sort of proportions. But that's one of the few illustrated books I've done. And that was all drawn in pencil. It's not inked, really. The Coraline was done entirely in pencil. And that Lucifer issue I did. And then that, I reverted to that old way of drawing it in blue pencil and finishing it off in pencil. And now with, you know, computer, with, you know, you can do anything. You can scan anything into the computer. You can do pencils and ink wash and color, as opposed to that old four-color process where you were extremely limited in in how you could do it.
Do you have a particular favorite mythological pantheon that you that you like depicting? Greek or Norse or Judaic?
Onwards. Well, I've, it's mostly been Greek and and Norse. Uh, uh, different. Uh, I suppose the Norse mythology, I guess. Um, although I mean, I've done a number of, of not just in The Mighty 12, but other illustrations for Greek mythology. They're, they're both about equal. And I, I guess I could get into Japanese mythology and Hungarian. And Mike Mignola is the guy for that, you know, he's researched these other cosmologies. And Neil, of course, with American Gods, the Hindu mythology and all of that. So many to work. And I just thought of another Jungle Book thing. I started by inking Gil Kane's Jungle Books on Marvel Fanfare. Marvel Fanfare, then did my own, and then did The Graveyard Book. So three times that's come in. The crazy thing about those Gil Kane, Marvel Fanfare Jungle Book ones, I knew instantly it was you. Like, Andy Gil Kane's a pretty powerful artist. I think it would be difficult to overpower Gil Kane's style.
Well, I was trying to do, uh, in a sense, Gil Kane, because I'm, I'm of that, that small group of people who prefer his own inks on his work over anyone else's. With a caveat, it's when he was inking his own work in the late '50s and all through the '60s. Um, then I think later on, it became kind of, he was using markers and a little, a little clunky. But there was a real fine, uh, edge, I thought, and simple. It's pure Gil Kane, you know, he's seen it through. That's who he is as an artist. And, uh, I just love that work when he was inking his first stories at Marvel or at Tower Comics in the mid-'60s. So I, and I've always had the same, uh, approach to anyone that I think I'm trying to ink them as they would ink themselves if they were really taking their time. So I work best with very linear artists like Kane or Ditko or Mignola or Leonardi. Other ones like the Sema or like an Adams kind of character that that use a lot of cross-hatching and, uh, almost a painterly as opposed to linear, uh, approach. I don't work out so well. I mean, I did that one issue of John Buscema's Thor, and he's, it's powerful drawing, you know, and all the structure, everything is there, but it's brusque. And to try to find the line to do it, you need someone, uh, like a Giacoia or Jansen, that does these real fine cross-hatchings and then real heavy black painterly lines. So I, uh, I was just really trying to do Kane as he would do it, um, and, but not imitating his line so much. You can't do that, but just not trying to fix it. I think a lot of people inked Kane with the attitude, okay, we're gonna, you know, polish this up and and fix it and maybe make it look like Neal Adams inked it or something. And I, I just feel like there's, it, it's always kind of bothered me in a way. Dan Adkins is about as far as I would go, you know, I liked his inks on Kane. And Kane also did, and Kane liked my inks. Uh, I was told by the editor, which makes one very happy when they hear that.
I've got four last questions, but they'll be really quick, if that's okay.
Okay. Okay. Um, the last Kickstarter you did was Symbolized Fantasies and Other Things. It's a collection of your art. Um, one of which is a page called Little Nemo in Slumberland. Yes. What is, uh, over 120 years later, what, what do you think Winsor McCay's contribution to comics was?
Oh my god. It's incalculable and it was just enormous. Uh, the flights of fantasy that, that he took, you know, it was, uh, it just seemed to be an inexhaustible imagination coupled with, uh, the ability to draw anything. Uh, every character was so fully realized. And if you looked at his, like, editorial cartoons beyond Nemo, where the cross-hatching and the various techniques were just staggering. So that's why it was so much fun to do that. I tried to keep the sound of his voice, uh, as much as I could. And that, of course, then was another Graveyard Book, in relation. Graveyard, all the way back to the Jungle Book, because that's the book the boy is reading that gives him these nightmares. He's reading The Graveyard Book. Well, if you've read it, you know what I mean. And then the last panel says, he's going to write a letter to that dreadful Mr. Gaiman, writing this scary book. And then the story itself, which is another classical music, uh, uh, connection, is from the, the song by, uh, Schubert called The Earl King, which was from a poem by, um, uh, and so the Earl King is the, you know, the king of the dead. That's why he just said, my name's Earl. So that's a little tie-in because the, the Earl King is, and it's about a little boy who dies. This is a side that, that Goethe, the, the poet, the philosopher, opened his door late, like in the middle of the night. And just as he opened the door, this this horse with with a rider went galloping by. And the rider was holding a little boy. And it was like a terrifying sight. He was hell-bent for leather. And so he wrote this poem about a father with this little boy who's sick, trying to get to a doctor. And the little boy has a vision of being pursued, this thing, this death thing that that's like reaching out for him. And he sees these three sort of wicked sisters that are coming, calling like like sirens, wanting him to come to the, the world of the dead. So he wrote that poem. That's that's about that. So that ties into The Graveyard Book. Yeah. Winsor McCay. It's all, it's like all wound up together.
My favorite thing about when I see, you know, you guys do tributes to Winsor McCay is that all of you, no exceptions, no one tries to imitate his lettering.
No. I know. I was tempted. Uh, I did my lettering myself on that. That's probably the only piece that I, I wrote, penciled, inked, colored, and lettered, just that one big oversized page. And my lettering is serviceable. I mean, I can do, oddly enough, I can do the really elaborate logos like I did the Norse Mythology logo for, for this book. Um, and I could do that. But that just individual little letters, that's a real art. And, and I've been lucky with, shout out to Galen Showman, who's lettered so much of my work in the last almost 30 years now, that he, I think, is just about the best letterer in the business. It's just, you look at the lettering on The Ring, and it's just impeccable. Yeah.
Um, would you have a favorite Carl Barks story?
Oh, either "Lost in the Andes" with the square eggs, the square chickens, chickens is the guys that lays these eggs, yes. "Rock Bottom" from the professor from the university of Birmingham, Rob Betla. And only a poor old man, you know, whereas I like to dive and swim like a porpoise. And that's endlessly inventive too. And it's never explained because, you know, there's all that money and he, he's swimming around in it in front of the Beagle Boys. And they said, "Looks like fun." And he says, "Well, come on in." And they all dive in and just squash their heads. It's, it's metal. And the boys say, "How, how come you can do it, Uncle Scrooge?" He says, "Well, tell you, it's a seat." [Laughter] That's it. Yeah.
Um, what is next for P. Craig Russell?
Well, I have, uh, I'm two covers away from finishing entirely with the Norse Mythology, uh, enterprise. There's our 18 covers for the, all 18 issues. I finished my, uh, 34-page story, almost a year ago now. I do Ragnarok at the end again. I'm ending the world, the end of the world with The Ring of the Nibelung, and then it's the end of the world with this one. So all together, this is like a 300, and about 350 pages all together. I've done, uh, 50 pages of finished artwork, the first chapter and the introduction, those 16 pages, and the last 34, and the 18 covers. So once I'm done with that, I have a number of just individual commissions, artwork that I'm doing. And I hope, I say this year after year, to get to the last Oscar Wilde fairy tale, "The Fisherman and His Soul," which is 44 pages. It's, it's the culmination of the whole thing. I've had it scripted and laid out since around 1995. Wow. And I had Galen letter it a year or two ago. And other things keep coming in. And I was looking at it, and I'm not sure. I might start over. And because my layout style has changed so, uh, over the years. So I have to decide what I want to do on that. But I definitely want to get that done. Yeah.
That's, that's one of those things that, uh, that astounds me sometimes when I see, you know, Barry Windsor-Smith, when I see something like Kim working on a book for 40 years, I'm like, how do you, how do you stay with a book for 40 years?
Yeah. Well, I think a lot of times, it's laying fallow someplace while you're doing other things. And it eats at me when I, you know, there's something there. Hard for me to give it up. When I did the, the, the Young, the "Happy Prince," I always get the "Young King" and the "Happy Prince" confused. The Oscar Wilde fairy tale, it had sat there for about 10 years before I got to it. And I mean, I had it laid out and scripted. And when I finally did, and it started happening, I was like, over the moon. I just felt so great working on it, knowing it was getting done. Partly is just that weight lifted off of you. I did "The Problem of Susan" that came out last year, the Neil Gaiman story, and I just made that out. And the Graveyard Book and The Giver came in between. They just sort of needed to be done. So it was five or six years before I got around to actually doing that 26 or 28 page story. The thing is, the opening panel was of just a house. And there was this house in Kent, uh, that was the perfect house for it. I took photos. And the thing is, it was at the end of the street. It was here, here's this Vine Street comes, and here's the house. I use Vine Street all the time. So for five years, I'd drive down the street, that house would be staring at me. "You haven't done me. You haven't done this yet." It would just, ugh, the guilt. Yeah. It would just remind me every day that I hadn't done this story. And Dark Horse was saying, "When are you going to do this story?"
So I'll preface this final question with this thought, um, because I asked you earlier, what was the biggest thing you learned from working with Don McGregor? So I'll preface this last question with this, um, Coraline is a book that means a lot to me because it was a book that I was able to give to my niece for one of her birthdays. You know, it brought us closer together. And, you know, and all of that mushy stuff. Um, but, uh, so what is the main thing that you learned from working with Neil Gaiman?
The main thing I, well, let's see, that what we've worked on, yeah. He's written me two original scripts, and all the other projects have been, you know, my adaptations of of his work. Just have a good foundation of stuff to work with. He's been, uh, um, available to me when I have a question about the text. Uh, I'll send him a message. Like, early on in, uh, American Gods, there was a scene that is such a huge book. I was afraid of cutting something out early on that was going to pay off in, you know, late in the book. So I asked, "Do I have to have this sort of flashback scene?" He said, "No, you don't need that." Uh, so he's been available, and it's always been great to have that to rely on. Um, I just love his prose so much. I don't know that I would say what I've learned from him is that other than, uh, just how fortunate I am to have had that this association with him. I mean, it's been a major part of my career, coming up on 30 years now. And I've been doing this for, next spring, exactly 50 years. Just, that's the craziest thing to even say. But yeah, half a century.
Congratulations.
Well, thank you. And, uh, he's been, you know, a mainstay. Just, I would say, of all the people, starting with Dan Adkins, who gave me a career, got me into the business, and and Don McGregor, they gave me really something to work with that we could make, you know, a splash. And and Patrick Mason, a friend of mine, we were friends since teenagers, who gave me the text, new translation for The Ring of the Nibelung, and we've done several short stories together. And Wayne Allen Harold, who has done all of these projects and books. And then Neil Gaiman. Those five have been, um, the sort of bricks in the wall for me, or the pillars holding stuff up.
So, you know, it's funny because I, you know, I think of you as a comics artist, and at the same time, I don't think of you as a comics artist. I think of you as an illustrator.
Well, I was talking about this recently. Um, I'm doing a little more illustration now. Yeah. My generation, the studio guys who were just all a couple, two to four years older than me, you know, Kaluta, Jones, Wrightson, and Smith, all went on to do a lot of illustra-, a lot of illustration. They still did comics, uh, but they moved more in in that direction. And I didn't. And I feel like it's a whole, um, just direction that you can only serve so many masters, I guess. And I love sequential, uh, storytelling. But I, I just, in the last couple of years, I like doing the single illustration more. Maybe it's because I'm getting older and gearing up for these long sequential things with hundreds of drawings, you know? Uh, there was over 3, 300 individual drawings in The Ring of the Nibelung, and another, you know, 180-page graphic novel, you're going to have seven or 800 drawings. And so it's a kind of daunting starting. Then when I did Ragnarok last year, which was the first longer piece I'd done in a couple of years, because I'm doing all these layouts for everybody else, I started in early October and worked for 10 weeks, seven days a week, from breakfast until a couple hours before bedtime. Uh, it, I don't know why, but, um, when you work that intensely, you're, you start working at your highest level that you're capable of. But then, you know, after 10 weeks of that, it's kind of nuts. You should be a little moderation than that, you know, work six hours a day and take a couple days off. But I only seem to be able to work in these intense, uh, periods. So doing these single illustrations, like the cover I just did for issue 16 of the Norse Mythology, I actually got done in three work sessions in like less than 48 hours. And it's a good cover. The editor loves it. Um, so it's nice seeing, like, this is, I'm just doing this for a few days, and then there'll be something else. So I'm doing a lot more illustration, and I really like doing that. Yeah.
Mr. Russell, this has been great. Thank you so much for joining the show.
It's been fun talking to you. I've really enjoyed it. So thank you so much.
Good luck with what's next, and I hope you get to to that final pr to that final Oscar Wilde project.
Uh, yes, so do I. Thank you. Thank you so much. Good night.
[Applause] You.