Ok, that title is cheesy as all heck, and I apologize already. But, you know, we had to make some kind of related pun. That’s how these things work, right?
So, we chatted with writer Ales Kot about “Change” and showed you an eight-page lettered preview to whet your appetite. Today, we chat with artist Morgan Jeske as we continue our hype train for a book we are far too excited for you to be able to next week (December 12th, to be exact.)
Read on as we talk with Morgan about digital comics, balancing three art styles at once and cats. Yes, cats. Plus, two exclusive pages from “Change” #3! What? You haven’t read the first yet? That’s ok. You’ll still totally love these.
You’ve noted that you’re working digitally. What are the reasons you prefer digital to traditional pen and ink? What do you think digital accomplishes that the old way may not be able to?
Morgan Jeske: This is the first project that I’ve produced using a Cintiq exclusively, so it wasn’t even a question of preference when I started issue 1. I’ve always used photoshop for clean-up and coloring, so I knew that starting digital would cut out a few steps. At the beginning the focus was on trying to recreate, or at least get as near to as possible, the feel of my line. That took a while, and honestly it isn’t the same. There’s a certain “warble” in my analog work that can’t make the trip. But it’s not even really about one being better or worse. I’m certainly emboldened by the freedom of working digitally to try things that don’t have the permanence of putting down a physical line on paper. It’s easy to undo that giant brush line with the click of a button, whereas on paper I might not have even tried it. A big part of that is that I’m still learning how to do this (and always will be). There are a few pages late in issue 3 where I’m riffing on Miller rain, that would have taken a lot more trial and error working analog. I think the next comic I do will be analog though, because I always want to do both. The trick will be taking that same mindset, that bold, confident hand, back to the physical page. Working on a Cintiq can never recreate the feeling of graphite dragging/pulling across the tooth of a page and it changes the way your hand makes marks in a big way, at least in my experience. I’d like to work on some over-sized pieces of paper and get my hands covered in ink on the next book.
Looking over the pages of “Change”, both of pages in this issue and that I’ve seen from Ales showing off your work, it’s kind of incredible how lush the design and landscape of your environments and characters are. How do you decide what detail goes where when working at such a micro-level?
MJ: Thanks. It depends on what the page or panel is trying to do really. There are definitely some claustrophobic pages in issue 1, specifically in sequences that follow the astronaut’s story. That’s intentional, but mostly because whenever I draw spacecraft or astronauts I tend to go a bit Darrow with the amount of line I’m putting down. There are instances where there’s a lot of negative space, and I’ve had to fight the urge to just fill them in with lines lines lines. Even when the panel would be better served by taking a breath. Part of that’s me trying to stretch what I can do, but this is also the first time I’ve had someone else coloring my pages so I’m working on leaving certain things for the colourist to handle. More succinctly, the line is only half of the story. I’m slowly learning to consider that when I initially put lines down.
Who would you say are your main artistic influences?
MJ: From comics—at least in terms of whose work mine most resembles—there’s Moebius, Pope, Mazzucchelli (Year One). There are many more that I’m simply inspired by, but those are the most direct lines I think. I’d actually like to hear what other people have to say about this. It’s a weird question for me because I’m bad at unpacking me liking a thing and how that translates to how I’m making work, beyond the surface level theft on my part.
Continued belowFilm and music are huge influences on everything I do, beyond the work I’m doing. If I get too specific here this answer will take up a few pages. If anyone’s interested in getting more granular on this stuff they can hit me up on my tumblr or twitter.
With “Change”, LA plays a big part in the story as much as the characters themselves. How have you gone about working the city into the book? Heavy referencing, I’d imagine?
MJ: I’ve never been to LA, so my only knowledge of it comes from Shane Black and Michael Mann movies. So yeah, reference has been key as is Ales’ descriptions of the city. He has lived there for a while now, so his relationship with the LA that actually exists is invaluable. There are a lot of real locations that are integral to the larger story, therefore it was important that they feel right. On top of that, Sloane’s colors add a whole other dimension to the city. At times, it’s like a radioactive LA, all sickly green magic hour glow, tangled freeways, and a flickering sea of lights.
Speaking on that same thread, what is your inspiration for the astronaut’s sequences? It seems rather Kubrick or Tarkovsky-esque in design.
MJ: Well, I think it actually said Kubrick in the script. So that was there at the start, but I think it’s only superficially Kubrickian in terms of symmetry of panels/shots. As far as the mood of the sequence goes, I was constantly thinking about the last 20 minutes of 2001 and Moebius’ The Long Tomorrow. Oh! I’ve got to include production design in ALIEN as well. Anytime I draw anything space related it’s one side of a conversation with that material. You’ll see that more in later issues of the book. I get kind of obsessed with drawing random hanging wires and grotesque folds in metal piping. I could draw that stuff for days on end.
When looking at the various characters, what went into designing the three leads? They’re all fairly distinct from one another, if not just in that they’re different people but specifically towards their designs and builds.
MJ: Ales had pretty specific reference points in mind at the very beginning, so that narrowed the field a lot for me. Sonia is modeled on Sissy Spacek in Badlands. W-2 is basically RZA physically. The astronaut was described as a frail old man in an oversized spacesuit (which borrows heavily from the ALIEN suit designs). In a practical sense, I wanted them to be different enough so that I wouldn’t get bored drawing them over and over. Those reference points are tonally relevant to the story we’re telling too, so it wasn’t an arbitrary choice on Ales’ part.
In looking at the layouts of pages, there are a few pages where there seems to be things bleeding into the gutters, like page 14, which features wires in an almost 3D panel. Can you tell us a bit about how you decided to incorporate the gutter space into the design of the page?
MJ: I think that’s the first instance of something like that occurring and it wasn’t really planned at all, at first. I later realized that it tied visually to something later in the book. Happy accident. There’s a lot more of that coming up in later pages because I’m bettering at designing pages from the thumbnail stage then I was was 30 pages ago. I do like that extra little meta push, despite the fact that meta WRIT LARGE makes my stomach turn these days.
Another one of my favorite scenes is on page 16, when the page sort of dissolves with multiple panels cascading into the corner. When creating something as chaotic as that, how do you keep it all in order?
MJ: That one was easy because we wanted it to be a little scattered and difficult to follow. There’s still a general left to right flow to it, but it’s hitting you all at once. That’s a bit of character emotional POV or how they’re perceiving it while still looking at it from a reader’s perspective. At least that was the intent, we’ll see if it plays when people pick up the book. Ours is a more violent sequence, but I went to Crepax’s sex scenes for inspiration.
Continued below
The opening two-pages are rather different from the rest of the book, which works towards the revelation that it’s a fantasy sequence. It even seems like they’re somewhat a parody of Miller’s work in “Sin City.” What went into designing the sequence, especially in contrast with the rest of the book?
MJ: Yeah, Miller was definitely on our brains, but it wasn’t necessarily intended as a parody of his Sin City work. That was me trying to do Miller, while still maintaining my style beneath it. That was the basic brief for the two pages. Plus, we thought it would be cool to start off the book in a completely different style and have page 3 be a bit of a shock to the system. One reality to another. W-2’s the type of guy who would throw a bunch of “it’s like this meets this” descriptions at a screenwriter creating a star vehicle for him, so it plays on that level too I think. Hopefully people don’t pick it up in the shop and look at the first two pages only and say fuck this Miller rip off. I’d at least like them to buy the first issue and say fuck this Pope/Ba/Moon rip off.
Given that there are three stories happening at once, what smaller elements do you put in to differentiate the three stories that readers might not notice on a first glance?
MJ: Well with the Astronaut it’s a pretty easy transition because he’s so far removed from the rest of the narrative. My line isn’t changing drastically between the three. The rest will really lean heavily on Sloane’s colors and the post-art rewrites that Ales does when issues are completed. The color coding will definitely get more intricate as each issue progresses and the line start to blur between scenes.
I asked a similar question to Ales, but given that music seems to have a very important role to the story, what do you hear when reading and illustrating the book?
MJ: I listen to anything and everything when working. When thumbnailing pages I tend to be more on theme with the music. Lots of scores in that phase: anything Cliff Martinez (Solaris, Contagion, Drive, Arbitrage etc.), Blade Runner ESPER Edition, ALIEN.
When I’m inking pages everything is fair game. I usually pick up two to three albums a week, any and every genre of music. Lots of podcasts: WTF, Comedy Bang Bang, This Feels Terrible. Director commentaries on films.
And, just to make sure this interview isn’t excessively serious, what’s your favorite thing about cats?
MJ: I love cats because they don’t give a shit. They’re independent when they want to be, affectionate when it suits them. There’s an honesty to cats that I don’t see in dogs. The neediness of dogs upsets me, but probably because I’m projecting super hard. I wish I was like a cat, but I’m more naturally like a dog: in need of content reaffirmation. This got weird, sorry. CATS!
“Change” comes out December 12th from Image Comics.
