Next month, Dark Horse Comics is publishing The Art of Peter Bergting, a 200+ page volume with the artist himself guiding readers through his work. It’s a hauntingly beautiful book, so I wanted to take a break from our usual comics discussions to chat with Peter Bergting and his editor Katii O’Brien. I hope you enjoy it; I certainly did.
That said, an art book is a different beast from a sketchbook section. A sketchbook often focuses on the design aspect in relation to the story, but an art book is about the artist. For me, it wasn’t just about seeing behind-the-scenes, but about you showing me the things you were personally proud of. When you first decided to do this book, what were the things you most wanted to convey to readers?
Peter Bergting: That’s a really hard thing to answer. Part of that answer would be ego, I guess, some sort of legacy. My father was a fantastic artist. He committed suicide when I was three years old. I have tons of art from when he was a child and teenager and a few scattered pieces from when he was in his thirties. The rest is spread out among former friends and neighbors. I wanted to have at least some of my own stuff collected. Especially with so much of it being digital these days.
Even if I’ve done hundreds of books by now and literally thousands of illustrations, to have the best of the best gathered in one volume is every artist’s dream. But as for what I wanted to convey, I don’t really know. Why do we do these kinds of books? For my kids? Fans? I don’t really think I have enough of that to warrant a book like this. Seriously. “Art of” books have a very small audience to begin with. Especially at this price point.
To start with, this was never going to be published traditionally—I never imagined anyone putting money behind this—so I was going to self produce it and sell a really limited number of overpriced books online and at cons. And maybe a PDF for those that couldn’t afford the printed book. When Dark Horse showed interest it became a whole different beast. So to answer your question, I wanted to have this as a legacy book. Who knows, if this caps off my career I wanted to be proud of what I’ve done, show the progress from my very first steps to working with Mike and Chris.
I started working on the book when I turned fifty, and I will be fifty-three when it’s out. If I get to remain healthy, it could be the midpoint of my career. If so, the next book will certainly be much different. But, going back to the question, I could have put only new stuff in the book, a showcase, or at least more recent art, but I’ve been working for so long now and I really wanted some of the hardcore fans from back in the day to have something, so there’s art from my time on Mutant Chronicles and Shadowrun in there. The whole RPG is fairly well represented in the book. I spent a couple of years working for D&D but that chain of ownership and rights issues made us throw out those pages. Apart from that, it’s a pretty complete look at who I was, and who I became. And with explanations along the way why I made the choices I did, to change styles over and over again for example.
For you, what was the key to finding the balance between your various projects?
Peter: There’s never been a balance to that. I’ve always worked too much. I’m slowing down now (in my old age). But being a freelancer allows me to jump from book to book. It’s only when a deadline looms that I really need to focus on just that. And the variety of jobs keeps me going creatively, and some books will teach me to do something in another book. There are too many examples, but say “Strange Girl” with Rick Remender; I had never done cities properly and suddenly had to draw buildings and windows in every panel. That became useful years later in “Baltimore.” There’s never an opportunity to sit down and just learn to draw something, all of that happens organically (hopefully).
Part of the attraction of a book like this for me is the personal aspect. In a sense, you are giving readers a tour through your work. And occasionally you point to a bit and say, “I think I could’ve done this better” or “I’m particularly proud of this bit.” When you create art you are always sharing a part of yourself, but you do it all over again in news ways in a book like this.
For example, I loved that you shared a picture of Tintin that you drew when you were six. It sets a precedent for the rest of the book right away—not every piece is going to necessarily be showy, but they’re all going to be important in framing your body work and understanding the details of it.
Peter: For sure, and I had a lot of stuff to choose from. I made my first comic when I was five, a Tarzan story with scuba divers and machine guns. It looked weird when I scanned it. Tintin was better in print. And it had a six-fingered hand to boot. I copied a lot of stuff back then, as all kids do. Like Spiderman covers in felt tip pens. But I couldn’t let that take up more than a few pages. It’s not that interesting in the broader sense, but provided a way in, into the book. I was inspired by Sean Phillips’ art book that was more akin to a novel the way he structured his creative upbringing in it. He really went into detail about his youth and shared so many drawings. It’s a massive tome, well worth checking out if you haven’t.
I’m curious, how did this project go from being a personal project to finding a home at Dark Horse?
Peter: I approached Katii (maybe it was the other way around) and I basically gave them a fully laid-out book with text and everything. I told them that they could use it as a blueprint and we started from there. I think Katii was the one who actually came up with the idea of having even more pages in it.
Ah, then thank you, Katii!
Peter: This was years ago now, and when Katii told me it was supposed to come out in 2023, my first thought was, I could be dead by then! Also, I LOVE working with this team. Everyone has ups and downs and Katii and company have been wonderful throughout. I had a bout of severe insomnia when we were working on this and I had to slow down considerably. The cover art definitely came out of that.
Katii O’Brien: We started talking about this book in 2021, and we always plan fairly far ahead so it has been awhile in the making! As soon as we saw Peter posting online about putting together an art book we knew we wanted to throw our hats in the ring to get the chance to publish it. Dark Horse has an amazing art book publishing program, and it’s really special to be able to work on a creator-specific art book with an artist who you’ve known and worked with for so long. It’s wonderful to be able to spotlight Peter in this way!
Katii, for you working on this art book, how does it differ from your comics work?
Continued belowKatii: They’re very different, except for the fact that I get to work with amazing artists on both. Art books should still tell a story like comics do, but the way the story goes is more of a progression of style, medium, and body of work. Peter had put together an early layout for how his art progression story would go, so we were able to use that as a jumping-off point when creating the book. Unless I’m working on an art book like Hellboy: 25 Years of Covers, there is also a permissions/licensing element because the creator usually does not own a fair amount of the characters and IP in the book. That can cause snags, but fortunately we had smooth sailing on that with this book!
Peter, you had a version of this book you were originally planning to publish yourself, but when Dark Horse became involved, you had Katii O’Brien and book designer David Nestelle working with you as the scope of the project expanded. I’m particularly curious about how you worked with David on this book, since in a way layouts are part of constructing an art book.
Peter: I have to say that this is the first time I’ve heard David’s name. We never corresponded at all about it, all communication went through Dark Horse. I had some suggestions whenever a new version came in and a few weeks later I received something new to look at. I was very happy with the results.
Katii: All of our books go through editorial when moving between creators and our production teams, so I would always have a chance to look it over and send Peter any notes or concerns I had at the same time I sent him the design proofs, and then also make sure to add all of Peter’s notes in with any other necessary file information before sending it back to our designer. David is one of our best designers at Dark Horse, and he knocked it out of the park with this book!
Peter, this book doesn’t just showcase your art, it also showcases your storytelling as told through your art. There’s a special kind of magic in looking at unlettered comics pages and still feeling the story play out. There’s a pair of pages in this book from the ‘Elisabeth’ chapter of “We’ll Soon Be Home Again” that I feel really show how much you can say through juxtaposed imagery.
What were some aspects of your storytelling you wanted to highlight in this art book?
Peter: Yes, I was particularly happy with those pages, if indeed you can be that about such a subject matter. But for me it was always important to juxtapose the horrors with great storytelling and “beautiful” art. Like Schindler’s List where Janusz Kamiński’s photography is as important as the direction and acting in the movie. But storytelling, I think a lot of the panels in this book are the quiet moments: The look in someone’s eyes. The almost Tintin-esque eyes of the characters are able to convey so much more emotion than just words. It’s hard, especially since it’s a retelling of a retelling. These stories were spoken to the writer of the book who handed me the edited transcripts that I then turned into a comic book. So the story initially was someone telling a listener the events, and I had to translate that to a story that was more about show and not so much tell. All while being respectful to the people behind the stories who actually lived through all of the horrors.
That was part of what makes this art book so special for me, being reminded of stories I’d read before, being shown them in a different light, and appreciating them anew. Even with stories where we’ve already seen extensive sketchbook material (like Mignola’s books), very little was repurposed for this art book. In this regard I feel like you were very careful to make sure the art book works as a kind of companion to all those existing sketchbooks.
Continued belowPeter: I would love it if there was even more of that to show, and to really show that connection. Unfortunately, I’m not that big on sketching. I do love to do it, but the creative process usually takes place on the comic page for me. I find the characters there and instead go back and forth between pages. It’s rare that something is fully formed when I sit down to draw a comic. I’m doing it now for the next book, but that is the first time in a long time I’ve done that. I did it for “Frankenstein: New World” since so much was new to that book. But even then I found new ways to draw his clothes and expressions that made me go back and edit the pages. Even Frank went through some iterations to show how he had changed. But for “Baltimore” and “Joe Golem,” I just took over art duties and added a little bit of my DNA to it. That said, I have TONS of sketchbooks down in the basement and the Swedish magazine Bild & Bubbla actually published a collection a few years back.
But, going back to this book, yes, I didn’t want to repurpose what we had done in the Mignolaverse books. I loved that I was able to take some of my favorite pages and show pencils and such before it was inked, side by side.
For books like The Crows that Dark Horse released last year, I hardly did any sketching. That entire book originated out of a couple of pieces that I came up with for an art show, just images that had lived inside my head for a while. When Anders [Fager] saw them, he started writing the text that turned into the finished book. The art was created more like you would approach a fine art painting where the image developed while I was working on it. I was never entirely sure what would end up on the page.
One interesting thing about that book is that it was created and finished entirely in black and white. With one week left until the final deadline, the Swedish publisher told me that they had more money and now wanted the book in color. I colored the entire book in that painted style in one week. It was crazy, but somehow that frenzied way of working served the spirit of the book.
I’ll have to reread The Crows with that in mind.
That said, as much as I was seeing familiar stories in new ways, there were plenty of new discoveries for me in The Art of Peter Bergting too. I’ve read you “Portent” comics (“The Portent,” “The Portent: Ashes,” and “Domovoi”), but I had no idea there was a book series too. The comics are really just the tip of the iceberg.
Peter: If I have anything to add, I guess it would be that I would love for people to one day discover my own interconnected universe. It started with “The Portent” and continued in twelve young adult novels that are so far only available in Swedish and concluded (?) with “Domovoi.” I’ve nurtured a story where all my heroines team up in a new graphic novel, but I’ve been too swamped with paying work to focus on my own stuff for a couple of years now.
I love these characters and my heroine from the YA book, a bipolar girl who grew up in the care of a crazy necromancer and who had to raise dead kittens to have as pets, went through such a journey during the course of the books that I would hate to leave her fate hanging. “The Portent” takes place in the same world and they eventually crossed paths, albeit briefly. “Domovoi” picks up in “our” world with the two spirits from “The Portent” being the main antagonists in it. (Matt Smith has drawn me Nivek and Ethr and I loved his take on them.) So, in my, as yet to be written story, Jennie from “Domovoi,” Lin from “The Portent” and the YA series, and Malda and two more girls from the Morwhayle series would team up. Me and Lloyd Levin began to develop a television series based on the premise. It would kick off with “Domovoi” and spread out from there. Still working on that on and off. Mostly off though to be honest, but it’s still alive and I wrote a rather extensive bible diving deep into the lore and mythos.
Continued belowI hope we’ll get to see that graphic novel someday. Peter, thank you for talking with us about the book. I look forward to seeing what you’ve got coming for us next. And Katii, thank you for joining us too.
Katii: I’ve had the privilege of working with Peter on so many books, certainly lots of comics in the Hellboy and Outerverse worlds like “Baltimore,” “Joe Golem,” and “Frankenstein: New World,” but also illustrated books like Festival and one of my favorites of his books, The Crows. This art book really shows what he’s capable of, and if you like his artwork here you’ll be excited to see what he’s working on next!
The Art of Peter Bergting is scheduled for release in comic book stores April 5 and in bookstores April 18. You can see more of his work at Bergting.com, and you can follow him on Instagram under the handle @Bergting.
