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Release the Hounds! Dean Haspiel Talks “The Fox” #1 & ‘Fox Hunt’ [Interview]

By | April 15th, 2015
Posted in Interviews | % Comments

 

You’d be hard-pressed to find someone who has less free time on his hands than Dean Haspiel. See that cover for “The Fox” #1? I’m pretty sure that’s a self-portrait. Between his work on that Archie Comics hero for their Dark Circle line, putting out his new Billy Dogma comic “Heart-Shaped Hole”, getting ready for even more of his distinct brand of semi-autobio comix in “Beef With Tomato” coming later in 2015, plus showing up at conventions and lectures and festivals with his HANG DAI Editions brothers Gregory Benton, Josh Neufeld, and the wonderful-to-see-back-in-business Seth Kushner, Dean is what we like to call, in professional terms, a busy dude.

But, thankfully, not too busy to spare a few minutes with chat with us. Because today is the day “The Fox” #1, kicking off the ‘Fox Hunt’ arc, hits stands.

So after you check out our own Brian Salvatore’s advance spoiler-free full review of the issue, come back here for Dean’s guided tour behind the curtain of what goes into bringing The Fox from his head to your hands.

I’m always curious about process, especially in situations where someone is handling more than one job. How much does Dean Haspiel the plotter give to Dean Haspiel the artist to work from before the pencil touches paper? (Full script w/ no dialogue? 1-page-per-line breakdown on note paper? Thumbnails on napkins?)

Dean Haspiel: When I’m developing a story, I scribble ideas on any piece of scrap of paper I can find. I also spark a document on my laptop to assemble concurrent notes and arrange them into some kind of narrative order, littered with motivations. Once I know the direction of the story, I’ll go back in and seed certain scenes so I can prepare the characters and give their agendas credence for what’s to occur. In my search to build an elaborate story, I’ll seek similar stories and get inspired by plot twists and images and think about the kinds of things I want to draw and insert what makes sense into the tale. I don’t know the end of the story until I get there. Usually, the characters tell me how it’s going to end and I’m often surprised.

Then, in the case of The Fox, after the pitch is approved, I break down the plot into pages and panels for the editor and my co-writer, Mark Waid, to review and make sure it still works.

Once I’ve received notes and a thumbs up, I draw the story sans interference. My team trusts me to design, graphically compose and serve the story to the best of my ability in a certain amount of time.

Once drawn, Mark takes my story breakdown and artwork and writes the wonderful text it needs to read seamless and intelligent yet entertaining while I go over color concepts with Allen Passalaqua and he wields his magic, bringing four-color life to my black & white line art.

It doesn’t feel real until John Workman letters it.

So Mark’s basically riffing off your pages & previous conversations?

DH: Mark and I spoke on the phone a little bit more during our collaboration on “Freak Magnet,” but less so on “Fox Hunt.” I provide good enough notes for plot and character motivation. And, whatever is questionable in the notes is made concrete in the art. I see my collaboration with Mark like jazz. I beat the drums while Waid rocks guitar.

You’ve done mainstream super-hero work before (most recently in “Fantastic Four” #5 of this last volume) but you haven’t done an extended consecutive-issue run on anything prior to “The Fox” (that I can find). And I know “The Fox” isn’t a monthly series, per se, but ‘Fox Hunt’ is coming out pretty quickly after ‘Freal Magnet’. How is working on “The Fox” and getting a chance to finally use those mainstream-geared creative muscles for more than just a back-up here or a fill-in there?

DH: I’ve been dreaming of drawing a regular comic book series since I was 12-years old but I was never good enough to get hired for a job like that. So, I dawdled. Drew this and that. Finally decided to skip being sanctioned by professional editors and publishers and make my own comix. And, because I was influenced early on by C.C. Beck, John Byrne, Harvey Pekar, and Chester Brown, I became too indie-oriented for the mainstream and too mainstream-oriented for the indie crowd. So, I learned how to write because, frankly, drawing comix IS writing. I got interested in other things like movies and realized a regular series might not hold my attention. I always admired Stan Lee & Jack Kirby’s 102-issue run on The Fantastic Four, and other artists like Curt Swan on Superman and Jim Aparo on Batman, who put their definitive stamp on those characters. Nowadays, you’re lucky to keep a team together for six-consecutive issues. And, as I come to the end of drawing my ninth consecutive issue of The Fox and diving into my tenth, I’m just starting to get a familiar feel for the character. It’s something I’ve wanted to do for over 35-years and it’s something I’d like to continue to do for awhile. I might just get The Fox right by the time he meets The Silver Surfer and Galactus! WAIT-A-MINUTE!

Continued below

The first thing that popped out at me when I saw your first image of The Fox was the ears. I know you weren’t the first artist to use them like you do (I want to say, maybe, Toth?), but I can’t help but think there’s something special about The Fox and making that character work visually that has to do with those ears. Am I putting too much thought into that?

DH: Alex Toth figured out a beautiful way to show light on The Fox’s dark blue costume, a feature I’ve yet to successfully crack. However, those Fox ears spoke to me and I realized it was one of the only ways to show his expressions. For a very simple character design, I like to sometimes draw The Fox in an abstract way. Sometimes he appears to be like a Looney Tunes silhouette dancing on the ceiling, while other times he can appear like an eerie German Expressionistic painting. The Fox’s sophisticated simplicity yields a lot of graphic latitude.

You’ve mentioned that you are digitally inking FOX HUNT interiors but still using a brush for the covers. How does that process work and what went into that decision? Why keep the brush for the covers?

DH: Economics of time, pay and style were the deciding factors for producing art on The Fox. I tend to pencil really tight. After I spend way too much time on thumbnail layouts (the most critical part of making comix), I work out the drawings with a light blue pencil and then find the shapes and lines I want to go to print with a 3H lead pencil. I then scan and tweak the levels and rid most of the unwanted artifacts and fill in the dark areas and clean up the line art in Photoshop. This process allows me to work faster and I rely on the colors to add a certain amount of volume, texture and lighting. On “The Fox”, I often ask my colorist Allen Passalaqua to add tonal values akin to shading that help shape and define the dimensions. In ‘Fox Hunt,’ we’re purposely limiting our palette to flex emotional concerns while selecting certain panels and sequences to flourish with psychedelic flair. As much as I loved the Silver Age comics colors of ‘Freak Magnet,’ I feel that Allen and I are truly caramelizing our sensibilities on “Fox Hunt.”

I miss inking with a brush but I felt that my thick style was blotting out some of the nuances I was discovering in my pencils. With ink, I was forfeiting details for simplicity. Normally I cherish a chunky, thick, round brush style akin to Dick Ayers, Joe Sinnott and Chic Stone on The Fantastic Four, but I also like some of the gritty, broken-line art I was doing when feeling spontaneous and loose. When frustrated, I sometimes draw something random in 5-minutes on a piece of scrap paper and usually like that better than an entire 22-page comic book I spent two months to craft. It bugs me that I can’t access that part of me on a constant basis. So, I try to do that for the covers, dragging my dry brush across the tooth of watercolor paper and allow for deliberate accidents to surface. It’s bold and pulpy. There is a sequence in “Fox Hunt” issue 4 that I just had to ink because the narrative begged for it. I hope I get to work on a future project (perhaps the next Fox story?) that will allow me the extra time for me to draw it with more scattered and blotchy ink.

Duane Swiercynski’s “The Black Hood” showed everyone that Archie Comics is more than willing to let its creators go dark if they feel the need to. Has the switch from Red Circle to Dark Circle changed how you think about The Fox in ‘Fox Hunt’ and moving forward? What do you think about or use to help you know where the lines are for your handling of The Fox?

DH: I love the new Black Hood and I look forward to the new Shield and Hangman comics, too. At first I was resistant to go “dark” on The Fox for Dark Circle. ‘Freak Magnet’ established a zany antihero where anything goes and the violence was more akin to Jack Kirby fisticuffs and laser blasts. By the second issue of “Fox Hunt,” I’ve illustrated exploding heads and blood-splattered costumes and it only gets more gruesome. I’ve claimed before that I don’t want my superhero stories to get subsumed by horror but we also live during a time where parents and their children cos-play as zombies slipping and sliding in their own intestines every other week at any given comicon. Gore has become the norm. So, the current culture expects a certain amount of entrails and trauma. I’m not a prude and horror is my favorite genre (someday I aim to write “The Poetics of Leatherface”), but I believe it’s important for the hero to stand tall, rise above the viscera and find the a will and a way to perform extraordinary feats of heroism against all odds sans murder. I recently pitched a concept for the next Fox story and it gets really dark really quick. It might even be too dark for Dark Circle. But, I think I can pull it off.

Continued below

Anyone in particular you want to have do a Fox cover that hasn’t yet?

DH: I’m happy with a lot of the artists Dark Circle got already for “Fox Hunt,” and I’m excited to have secured Bill Sienkiewicz to draw one, who did amazing things with Meerkats and a Bikini. David Mack brings a super-graphic yet fine art poetry to The Fox. I would love to see Walter Simonson, Dave Gibbons, Frank Quitely, and Jim Steranko’s version of The Fox, too!

“The Fox” #1 hits stands today. It’ll be easy to spot because it’ll be the comic with one of these awesome covers wrapped around it:

David Mack
Thomas Pitilli
Chris Samnee
Ulisses Farinas

 


Greg Matiasevich

Greg Matiasevich has read enough author bios that he should be better at coming up with one for himself, yet surprisingly isn't. However, the years of comic reading his parents said would never pay off obviously have, so we'll cut him some slack on that. He lives in Baltimore, co-hosts (with Mike Romeo) the Robots From Tomorrow podcast, writes Multiversity's monthly Shelf Bound column dedicated to comics binding, and can be followed on Twitter at @GregMatiasevich.

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