Hello, and welcome to the first edition of Artist Alley, a new column on Multiversity Comics celebrating the creative contribution of artists to comic books. While artists are rightly celebrated for their visual craft, they are not always given their due recognition as storytellers, and the key role they play in conveying narrative meaning on the page. So, for this column, I’ll be interviewing comic book artists and talking in detail about their work, choosing a selection of sample pages from their comics and asking them questions about their creative choices. Due to the nature of the column’s detailed page analysis, SPOILERS are inevitable… you have been warned!
The focus of this first column will be “Drumhellar” #1, released this week from Image Comics. And today, our interviewee will be none other than Riley Rossmo, the widely-acclaimed artist of such titles as “Proof”, “Green Wake”, “Cowboy Ninja Viking”, “Bedlam”, “Dia Los Muertos” and more. For “Drumhellar”, he fills the role of both artist and co-plotter, which could add a further interesting dimension to his artistic contribution. So, let’s dive right into the questions, and get the ball rolling with our first case study page:
PAGE 1
Okay, one of the things that really struck me with “Drumhellar” #1 is how it breaks a lot of the rules of how you’d typically structure a page in a comic book. Right away, in the very beginning of the first page, you’ve got a striking example of that (no pun intended) with our first look at Drum Hellar. In a script, you might read that on page 1 you have your hero getting struck by lightning, which you’d think would be a no-brainer for a dramatic opening shot. But instead you go for having the actual lightning strike be a small box panel at the top of the page, the moment it hits Drum happening “off-panel”, and our big splash-type reveal of Drum comes in the moment immediately after he’s been struck by lightning. Was this a conscious decision? And if so, what was your thinking behind it?
Riley Rossmo: At first, I just do what’s intuitive, then go back through it and refine. I try to do it in the layout phase of my work. The lightning being contained by the box still leaves a little mystery; despite the fact Drum’s housecoat is smoking there is still the possibility that that lightning didn’t hit Drum. It also gives the viewer a chance to get a good look at Drum without the confusion of big lightning effects.
Something else that’s odd about the scene that I didn’t notice on the first couple of readings is that you have a lightning strike with no sound effect for it. In fact, there’s not a single word on the entire first page, it’s totally “silent.” Silent pages aren’t necessarily uncommon in comics, but having an opening page be silent is certainly rarer. Was there any particular affect you and Alex were hoping to create with this approach?
RR: Ah, nice catch! The first two drafts of the script had sound effects, but I asked Kelly to remove them and let the images do all the work. The sound effects broke up the experience of the page. I guess in some ways I was trying to imitate the effect you get in a movie theatre when a scene is silent despite the fact that you might be watching images normally connected with sound, and secondly it reinforces that the thunder from the lightning might have just deafened Drum and you as the reader.
When Drum is introduced here, he’s dressed in a purple housecoat. Do you call them housecoats in Canada, or is that a British thing? Is it bathrobe over there? Anyway, he’s wearing purple, which over the course of the first issue is a color that recurs with the various supernatural phenomena: the peacock, Harold, the triceratops, the lotus flowers, the hue of Drum’s crazed fever dream, even how Padma sees Harold for the first time and Drum attributes it to the light of the full moon, which as presented here casts everything under a kind of purple glow. Is this just a motif on your part, or is there some greater significance of the color purple within the story that we should be keeping an eye out for?
Continued belowRR: I love color as a storytelling device. I try to use it as much as possible, it’s a great tool to transition scenes and build atmosphere. Pink, magenta and purple are indicative of certain kinds of phenomena for sure. And yes we call them housecoats here or bathrobes, we also have chesterfields.
See, a Chesterfield is a brand of cigarette here! As far as Drum himself goes, he has a pretty distinctive appearance. What were your influences on his design? Am I off-base in suggesting he looks a little like you?
RR: I think most artists at least unconsciously draw themselves or the people they’re most intimate with. I don’t know if I’m flattered or not that you think I look like Drum! At the outset Drum was influenced By Bill Murray in Ghostbusters. But as I started issue #3 I realized I’ve been drawing him more like Ogami Itto (from Lone Wolf and Cub) and Captain Haddock from Tintin.
PAGE 6
Right, this might not seem like the most exciting page to hone in on. Every page up until this point had been laid out in quite an unusual way, with panels cascading or overlapping or peppered around the page in unusual ways. Here we have a more conventional 9-panel grid, but there are some unusual things about it that stood out to me. First, there are the two really weird incidental characters hanging out in the diner: the guy with the massive beard and the black nose, and the weird-looking fella with blue hair and purple eyes. It seemed like you were focusing on them at unusual points, and they were too strange to be just incidental figures. So, can you tell us? Throwaway characters or are you slipping some kind of Easter egg in here with these folk?
RR: My favorite part of this page is how Drum and Wanda talk over the images, it creates a cool effect and lets us get a little taste of the diner. The bearded guy is just mostly in there from watching Duck Dynasty, nothing too special about him. The blue haired guy is a regular at the diner, but more important is that he’s having lunch with Wilma from the Flintstones. It reveals a bit about the nature of the diner.
Hmmm… interesting! The other strange thing about this page was Panel 4, where you give us a tight focus on Drum’s neck, and we can clearly see the bite mark that Wanda the barmaid remarks on looking nasty. But from the next page onwards the bite mark is never seen again on Drum’s neck, and no one else ever remarks about the bite or how bad it looks. Now, I’ve got a pet theory on the story about how Drum is not so much getting visions of things that are already there as he is actually shaping the reality around him with the visions he’s having, and so I’m attaching some significance to the fact that the first and last time we see this prominent bite mark on Drum’s neck he’s saying “I just wish it would heal.” Should we be paying close attention to the vanishing bite mark? If you just forgot to draw it again after this one time, here would be a great opportunity to pass it off as a flourish of thematic genius!
RR: The bite is of the utmost importance to the first arc and actually comes into play later in the issue: again, good catch…
The diner is really well-realized in its little observational details, and has a real lived-in feel to it. Is it based on any actual place?
RR: I had a model build of a generic diner that I could manipulate but could retain some consistency. The colors are sourced from a place older people go to hang out and have coffee every morning in my hometown.
PAGE 18
I just had to pick this page, as any page that features the hero of your comic getting kissed by a long-decayed bogman corpse is worth recognition! The first and most pressing question here is… was there tongue involved?
Continued belowRR: All tongue all the time. After 300 years in a bog I’d make it count.
Haha, hawt! But seriously, one of the things I liked about the staging of this moment is, again, it kinda breaks the rules. The moment when the corpse comes to life is typically presented as a big scare moment, and conventional wisdom would have it happen as a big panel on a page-turn reveal. But you present this horror moment almost as a casual, innocuous act, so much so I had to do a double-take to make sure I’d even seen what I thought I’d seen. It’s like a jump-scare that breaks all the rules of jump-scares, like that famed hospital corridor scene in The Exorcist 3. What was your thinking behind how you framed this moment of revival on the page?
RR: I’ve been struggling with the idea of the big scare in comics for a long time. In “Green Wake” and “Rebel Blood” I was always trying for the big page turn reveal. I’ve never being comfortable with cat scares in comics. So, we opted for the double-take, hopefully the reader has to look over the page to realize yes, an animated corpse just kissed Drum. The bit that’s more important is what’s revealed in the visions on page 19 and 20. I also like that Drum is just kinda hanging out, then sort of dares himself to get close to the mummified remains.
Speaking of Bogdan the bogman, he’s quite convincingly horrific in his design. Were you drawing from bogman lore in general, or did you glean any specific influence from the bog people of the Windover site near Florida?
RR: An exhibit came to town in 2004 that fascinated me that consisted of mummified remains recovered from bogs in Europe. Bogdan’s appearance is heavily based on the remains that where exhibited. The mummified remains were visually striking: I’ve fooled around with images of figures without bones a few times since then. For cover 17 of Proof I referenced the bog people too. It wasn’t until now that I had an opportunity to realize the concept into a character. I didn’t even know about the Windover site! That’s going to take up the rest of my day.
I also want to talk about the appearance of Harold, who I immediately loved and wanted to have as a cuddly toy. He’s bouncing all over the page, in sharp contrast to Drum’s stillness. What went into the design of this character, and what informed his sense of motion?
RR: I love drawing Harold, on many levels he’s a pleasure to draw. I can use him as directional tool to guide the viewer through a page, since Harold’s so mutable I can make him do pretty much anything: I can use him as a literal question mark, have him take on the form of other animals, or objects. Harold’s a visual wild card. Harold’s role besides helping Drum is to respond emotionally in ways Drum doesn’t always seem capable of. Harold’s visual representation is reflective of who he was, more of which is revealed as the story progresses.
PAGE 20
Surely the weirdest page of the whole issue here, with Drum on a mad psychedelic trip from eating the lotus flower. I was immediately put in mind of how you presented the scene with the teachers coming up on acid in “Wild Children”. Was this a deliberate callback to that?
RR: That was a test run for this in some ways. I like distorting linear forms, when I can color them too I gives me little more range then I had on “Wild Children”, where I was just doing pencils and inks.
Stylistic touches such as Drum’s astral form slowly dissolving into rain over the course of 3 panels… how do you devise that kind of beat? Is it something you and Alex come up with as a cool effect at the scripting page, or is it something you discover in the process of drawing the page?
RR: Alex beat me up with that scene! I had no idea how to draw “Drum turns to rain evaporates and falls as rain.” I stared at the page for 30 minutes then just made it happen. In this scene too I think the colors make all the difference. Sometimes with offbeat pages like this it seems better for me to approach it intuitively and just draw ‘til it works.
Continued belowI take it that the woman with the big black hole where her head used to be is supposed to be Lupe?
RR: Yup! I love Lupe, she makes her first real appearance in issue #5.
Of course, this whole scene is quite cryptic and opaque. But is there anything in this page that you’d point out to readers as being something that’ll prove significant later?
RR: Lupe and Padma’s reaction to Drum even in the vision is significant, as is panel three on the previous page.
Thanks so much to Riley Rossmo for taking the time to answer those pretty detailed questions. I found the answers pretty fascinating, and it’s a testament to just how densely packed with meaning a comic like “Drumhellar” is. If you haven’t already, you can get “Drumhellar” #1 in comic shops now, as well as on ComiXology.
Join us again soon for another edition of Artist Alley, where we’ll be dissecting more panels and picking more artists’ brains!
