Artist August: Reilly Brown (Interview)

While he hasn’t been in the industry that long, Reilly Brown is someone who has made an indelible mark through both his work and the way he attempts to push himself and the medium. His work itself, on titles such as Cable & Deadpool and Incredible Hercules (including MC EIC Matt Meylikhov’s favorite image from that series), is top notch, but his work on designing a lot of the characters in Greg Pak’s Vision Machine as well as the way he is attempting to push the medium in his ComiXology powered creator-owned book Power Play is inspired and inspiring.

All that, and he’s just a cool as hell guy, and the co-founder of one of the great art studios online – Ten Ton Studios.

Check out our interview with him after the jump, as we talk about Power Play, what it’s like to work with Greg Pak and Fred Van Lente, reboots, and a whole lot more.

Is there a single moment in your life you can look back on as the moment you knew you wanted to work in comics? Or was it more of a natural progression that led you here?

Reilly Brown: I’ve enjoyed drawing for as long as I can remember, and even when I was a kid, I’d tell people that I wanted to be an artist when I grew up. It wasn’t until I was in middle school that I really got into comics specifically. It was at a friend’s birthday party, and he was handing out comics as party favors, and that’s when I realized that comics were drawn by artists– and not just that, but artists who get to draw cool things like robots, aliens and mutants on epic adventures! It was everything I loved rolled up into one thing and I just said “yep, from now on, that’s the plan.” So going on from there, I just stuck to that path, and this seems to be where it took me.

Who or what has influenced the development of your art?

RB: I was talking to some friends at the studio the other day about this, because I feel like so many different artists have influenced one aspect of my work or the other over the years, and I actually don’t think my work looks like any of them. But what I kept coming back to was, back when I was first really getting into comics in middle school, my favorite places to look to for art were Jim Lee’s X-Men, and the instruction booklets for the Mega Man video games. Heh, pretty big differences there! So I’d say my style falls somewhere between those two things.

In the past few years, you’ve put together a lot of work, mostly with Marvel. What would you say your favorite effort has been so far?

RB: My favorite things I’ve done so far are the last couple issues of CABLE & DEADPOOL, which I did with Fabian Nicieza, because at that point I’d been drawing the characters for two years, and was really in a good groove, and also I had the opportunity to write the final two issues as well, which was really exciting. In those issues I felt like I could really do whatever I wanted, and in the end I think it turned out pretty well.

My other favorite thing was the INCREDIBLE HERCULES stuff I did with Fred Van Lente and Greg Pak, particularly the “Replacement Thor” storyline, where Herc disguised himself as Thor, and had Zeus as a child tagging along the whole time. That was just a really fun storyline, and included so many things that I like drawing. It’s also the rare type of story that people who read it won’t forget, because it’s not a premise that comes around that often, so there were situations and jokes that you’d never quite seen before– or at least didn’t see in that way. So it just felt like something new, which isn’t easy to do with characters who have been around as long as Herc and Thor have been.

Currently, I’m working on a creator-owned book called Power Play, with my writer-friend Kurt Christenson, which is an absolute blast to work on, because it gives me a chance to really break out of the Marvel mold and create new characters and situations that are all me, and not characters created by someone else 40 years ago. Also, we’re doing a lot to work with digital technology, so there are a lot of new storytelling tricks that I pretty much have to invent to get the most out of the story. I’ve never felt more creative than I do while working on this project!

If you haven’t seen it yet, check it out.

Does feedback (both positive and negative) with fans and critics via social media push you as an artist? How does that aspect affect your art?

RB: It doesn’t effect my work that much. It mostly just provides an immediate audience reaction for anything I do, and when I post something up on my Deviant Art account, or the Ten Ton Studios message board, or Twitter, I just hope for applause rather than boos.
I can’t think of a time where I realized I needed to change my approach to something because of what I read on public forums online.

However, in private artist groups or e-mails, I’ve gotten some excellent feedback from other artists that have caused me to approach things in different ways, and taught me a lot.

You’re developing your own creator-owned work right now called Power Play with Kurt Christenson. What can you tell us about this upcoming comic? What’s your role for the project?

RB: Actually, you can download it right now on Comixology! Both through their website, ComiXology, or through their app on handheld devices such as the iPod, iPad, or Droid.

That’s just a preview that’s available at the moment. The actual series will be starting this fall, most likely around the time of the New York Comic Con.

The basic premise of the story is that a bunch of characters get superpowers one way or another (often powers conveniently associated with the neighborhood or industry that they’re in) and rather than trying to fight crime, or take over the world, they start an extreme sports league!

It’s an action/comedy story, and we’re trying to approach it from the perspective of what kids nowadays would ACTUALLY do with super powers. I think Stan Lee hit it on the head with Spider-Man, where the first thing he tries to do is make money, and that’s definitely a part of our story, but today I expect there would be a lot of showing off on YouTube and Facebook, and trying to get the most hits, rather than running around at night in tights trying to find crimes to break up.

It’s going to be a fun, goofy story, with a lot of cool and interesting characters.

According to your Tumblr page, you said that Power Play is being specifically designed as a digital comic and that it is looking to take advantage of the technology to tell a story in a new and dynamic way. Can you tell us what we can look forward to? What do you think the future holds for digital comics?

RB: The thing with a lot of digital comics today, is that they’re actually just comics designed to be in print, that are scanned in and read over a computer or hand-held device. They’re not typically MADE for those devices, and so there are frequently problems translating the comics to the screen, which leads to a less than ideal reading experience. Comixology does the best job of trying to overcome those problems with their Guided View comics reader, but even so, there are times where they can’t get around the fact that the comic just wasn’t made for that format, it was made for print.

What we’re doing is flipping that. We’re making Power Play to be designed to be read on a hand held device like an iPhone, Droid, or iPad. The panels are all aligned horizontally, to make the best use of the dimensions of the device’s screen. Also, the way that the camera moves or fades from one panel to another opens up new storytelling possibilities that you simply CAN’T do in print, and those are some fun things to explore and play around with.

Not many people have really explored these new storytelling possibilities to the extent that we have, so it’s fun to be breaking new ground in this way.

Also, to those people who are wondering, we WILL do a print version eventually, but it’ll take a bit of re-formatting to make it work on a printed page. I think that a story should be designed to work best in whatever media it will appear in.

As for the future of digital comics, I expect it will be a lot more things like we’re doing here. Eventually more people will have access to electronic devises, and it will simply be easier and more convenient to get things digitally, and at that time more comics creators will realize that they have to plan their story to take advantage of the media the most people will be experiencing it on.

When you’re working on a purely creator-owned work like this, what’s the experience like in comparison to a for-hire work? Is it more exciting? Scary? A little more of everything?

RB: Definitely a little more of everything. Actually, it’s A LOT more of everything! It’s so awesome to be able to create our own world, and our own characters, and not have to rely on stuff that’s been around for decades made by other people, and to not have these larger corporations telling us what to do! But on the other hand, we don’t have these larger corporations footing the bill, and we have to do all the jobs of all the people from the big companies that we didn’t normally do ourselves. There’s a whole lot of learning on the fly, and we have a lot more at stake, too.

The Original Design for Buddy from Vision Machine

After working on Incredible Herc you have went on to work more with that book’s writers Fred Van Lente on Amazing Spider-Man and Greg Pak on Vision Machine. What is it about working with them that is so great, and when might we see more with you and one of them?

RB: I mostly just like torturing myself. Heh, actually working with those guys is great, and it’s particularly convenient since they both live a few blocks away from my studio, so we’re able to get together every now and then to talk about story ideas over lunch. That’s real benefit to working with them– how available they are, and how open to suggestions from the artist. A lot of times in this industry the artist is just given a script by the editor, and expected to turn it into a comic without asking any questions or offering any input, so it’s great to work with writers who you can reach out to and discuss things with, and I think it leads to a better story in the end.

The other thing I love about working with these guys is their passion for research when the story calls for it. There are so many great, obscure facts about things that you wouldn’t know if you didn’t look them up, and once you uncover them they can make a work so much more authentic and interesting! Fred and Greg both understand this and make use of it. Even if they’re going to be inaccurate about something in their story, they’re willing to do the work to at least make sure they KNOW they’re being inaccurate.

Like I hinted at earlier, Fred and I are currently in the planning stages of a creator-owned project that involves a lot of research into history and legends of Ancient Rome, and that passion for research really comes in handy.

That’s one of the things I like about working with Kurt on Power Play as well, although since Power Play is much more contemporary than Ancient Rome, research doesn’t involve going to the library as much as actually walking the streets and seeing what’s out there to make use of. But whether it’s a story about ancient legends, or contemporary NY, it’s all about immersing yourself in the world that the characters live in to understand where they’re coming from. It leads to much richer storytelling every time!

You’re co-founded Ten Ton Studios. What is it exactly, and how did it come together?

RB: At the moment, Ten Ton consists of me, Khoi Pham, Chris Burnham, Charles Wilson, Nick Pitarra, Jason Masters, Jason Baroody, Jeremy Freeman, Doug Hills, Steve Wilhite, Aaron Kuder, Scott St. Pierre, and my writing partner on POWER PLAY, Kurt Christenson.

Heh, did I forget anyone?

Ten Ton came together soon after I graduated from college, and was going around to a lot of comic conventions. Me and a bunch of other aspiring comics creators met each other on online art forums, and we got along so well that we started going to conventions together. Having that network of people worked out great for us as far as splitting convention costs and meeting new people. Eventually it just naturally transformed into a website and message board for us to share our work with each other and give each other advice, and a great way for us to help out other aspiring comic artists.

A number of people have come through our message boards as newbies, and eventually worked their way up to getting professional gigs.

Hell, we ALL did that exact thing!

We all started off as complete unknowns a few years ago, and this past spring we had Ten Ton Studios guys working on Spider-Man, Batman and X-Men.

I’m really proud of how far we’ve all come together.

You also co-founded Outpost 51, a studio in Brooklyn. What artists do you share that space with, and what does sharing space with other talented artists do for you as a creator?

RB: Actually, I’m not in Outpost 51 anymore. We broke up after a year, because different people were going in different directions in their careers, and not everyone needed a studio space any more.
Now I’m in the studio Hypothetical Island, with George O’Connor, Becky Cloonan, Joe Infurnari, Kat Roberts, Jason Little and James Smith.

Outpost 51 wasn’t all comics artists, but Hypothetical Island is, which is pretty cool.

It’s great to share a working space with so many other awesomely talented people because they’re constantly inspiring, and forcing me to up my game. It’s also great to have people around to get tips from or to help out with something that’s giving me problems, and I can do the same for them.

In the digital age, new tools are available to artists of all types. How does that affect and expand your work?

RB: Man, one of the greatest tools available to artists these days is simply Google Image Search! I have no idea how artists 20 years ago would find reference for things, but these days if I need to know what Mount Rushmore looks like? Boom! There’s a hi-res picture of it! A WWII German tank? Bam! Exactly what I needed to see!

Another digital tool that’s helped a lot is Photoshop. I’ve been incorporating that into my process more in the layout stages, because I realized how much time I was spending drawing and erasing things just to move them over a few inches or change their size– both things that PS does easily.

And, of course, I’m currently publishing a creator-owned comic digitally. That effects things as well!

In the average comic book criticism or review, artists are typically given a lot less hype than writers are, even though this is a visual medium. Why do you think that is?

RB: Yeah, that’s kind of annoying, but it makes sense. I mean, usually the writer simply has more time to do interviews and promotion and stuff, plus the general assumption is that the writer comes up with a story, sends the artist a script, and the artist draws that script, the end.

The process isn’t quite that simple, though. Sometimes it is, but not usually. In the best occasions the artist and writer talk about the story before hand, and the final script will contain concepts from both of them. For instance, I did this Spider-Man story with Fred Van Lente where there’s this fight at Federal Hall. We actually went to Federal Hall together and took pictures and did research, and came up with ideas along the way. That was pretty cool.

Even in situations where the script is done before I’m even told I’m on the project, I always try to go out of my way to include something in a story that WASN’T in the script. Just something so that if some other artist had gotten the script there’s no way the issue would have come out the same way.

In the end, the reader really can’t tell at all who’s idea was who’s when a comic is published, and I think more comic book news folks need to remember that. I’ve seen plenty of ideas credited to the writer that I know were the artist’s and plenty that were credited to the artist that I know were the writer’s. There’s no way to really tell.

Comics, even with increasing acceptance amongst the mainstream, are still a niche medium. With that in mind, have your friends and family always been supportive of your pursuit of a career in this field?

RB: Yeah, that’s one thing I’m really thankful of, and become more thankful all the time when I realize that most people’s families aren’t nearly as supportive as mine were. I had always said I was going to be an artist, and they always said “cool.” My Dad would look around at any kind of drawing or graphic he’d see and point to it and say “someone got paid for that.” So I guess as far as they were concerned it was as legitimate a career as any.

You were fairly outspoken about the DC relaunch on Twitter when it was announced, noting that you didn’t think there were many good reboots in comics. Do your thoughts on the relaunch remain the same now that we know more, and did the mass reboot influence your move to creator-owned work (for now, anyway)?

RB: Well, first off, I just want to say that I wasn’t trying to dis anyone’s work or anything like that. I haven’t seen anything that’s not public and I don’t really know what anyone’s plans are for their books at DC, and I really wish them all the best.

It’s more about the idea of comic book “reboots” in general that I reacted against. I dislike them both as a reader and as a creator.

This is something we talk about in the studio a lot, and some people love reboots, and prefer them to continuing the story forever, but personally, I can’t stand them.

As a reader, I just feel that they’re cheap. They rewind characters back to arbitrary points in their past, cutting out newer ideas that weren’t any better or worse from an abstract standpoint, and even worse, saying that chapters of a story that I bought and read suddenly don’t count any more. Suddenly those chapters aren’t actually part of the story.

As a creator, I don’t like them because I feel like they’re against the whole purpose of what I want to do. If I’m working on a property that’s been around for a long time, I want to contribute to that property. I LOVE the idea that my Spider-Man stories are part of the same story that Steve Ditko, John Romita, Erik Larsen and John Romita Jr. were telling. That I was collaborating with them in some weird way.

If I were to work on a “rebooted” Spider-Man– like Ultimate Spider-Man– I wouldn’t be nearly as happy. My story wouldn’t be part of that rich history, and it wouldn’t be part of the same story. It’s really not even the same character, although he has the same name.

And it’s not really a new character either– and I LOVE creating new characters– because you’re still tied to the tropes of the original version– unless the reboot really goes off the deep end, in which case why even pretend it’s the same character?

What would be a dream project for you?

Right now, POWER PLAY is kind of the dream project. Being able to create my own characters and stories and not worry about what that characters are doing in another title is awesome.

Outside of that, I’d really like to do something with the X-Men. Those are the characters that got me into Marvel, and they’re the only characters that I really geek out over. I’ve been crazy jealous of Khoi ever since he got the X-Men Legacy gig.

You hear that Pham? I’m coming for you!

What are three things that you absolutely cannot work without?

Well, outside of the obvious tools, like pencils and paper, I’d say the three things I can’t work without are a mirror, Google image search, and audio books or podcasts.

The mirror is one of the things I can’t recommend enough to any artist of any experience level. 

Whenever I’m having trouble drawing an expression or pose, all I have to do is do it myself and look in the mirror, and I instantly know what it looks like, what it feels like, and how it works in three dimensions.

Google image search is pretty much the same thing, but to a wider extent. It’s the fastest, most in depth, and most convenient form of reference you could ask for.

For me, podcasts and audiobooks serve the function of keeping me at my seat, and keeping my mind engaged for long periods of time. Especially for the long, tedious stretches that sometimes come with art, like complicated perspective, or detailed shading, or other things where the thinking is already done, and my mind needs a place to wander. If I’m in the middle of a really good audiobook, and I finish the work I had planned for the day, I’ll just jump to the next page and keep working, because I don’t want to stop listening to the book!

Desert Island question: one book, one album, one film and one comic. What do you take with you?

RB: Heh, this is funny, because my studio Hypothetical Island was actually named after George O’Connor’s famous “hypothetical” questions like this, although his usually include a choice between eternal pain, and eternal despair!

I’d take the last Harry Potter book, The second Lord of the Rings movie, Led Zeppelin II, and Essntial X-Men vol. 2.

Who are your favorite artists working in comics today?

RB: Olivier Coipel without a doubt. That guy blows me away every single time I pick up a comic with his name on it. He knows how to make the right characters funny, the right scenes dramatic, the right things sexy, and his panel compositions are unbelievably dynamic.

Jimmy Cheung’s another guy who blows me away. He has such intricate details and powerful storytelling.

These are the guys I’m constantly looking up to.

What other projects besides Power Play do you have coming up?

RB: Power Play’s taking up so much of my time these days that I really don’t have much time for anything else, but I’ve got a couple of pitches out at Marvel, and me and Fred Van Lente have been working on concepts for a creator-owned book we’re planning on doing together as well, and I can’t tell you too much about it yet, but I will say that that it involves Romans and dragons, which are things both me and Fred have a passion for.

I’ve got a lot of things cooking that I’m really excited about, so we’ll just have to wait and see what the future holds!