Feature

Throwback Thursday: Guy Davis

Published

10 years ago

February 18, 2016

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♦Back in Tripwire Volume 4#2 which was published back in October 2000, we spoke to writer-artist Guy Davis about his series The Marquis for Oni…

Revolutionary Zeal

GUY DAVIS has always managed to get himself involved in different projects. TRIPWIRE chatted to him as he reaches the halfway point of his MARQUIS series for Oni Press…

TRIPWIRE: The Marquis is black and white whereas Nevermen is full colour. Do you prefer to see your work in black and white or colour? If you have a preference, give your reasons.

GUY DAVIS: I think it depends on the project. I have a lot of fun working in black and white with the tone, okay- when it comes down to deadlines and the book’s late and I still have to greytone an issue it’s not so fun- but for the most part I probably prefer working in black and white. Nevermen was the first book I worked on where I was happy with the way the colours turned out. Although at first I thought they were a little garish, I think it definitely fit the tone of the book and Dave Stewart did a great job. It had that sort of retro Dick Tracy feel to it. Up until then I was never happy with the way my stuff was coloured, especially on Sandman Mystery Theatre. But with the Marquis I think that black and white fits the tone of the book, all winter and gloom. Pretty grey all around.

TW: Stylistically Nevermen looks a lot looser than the art in The Marquis. Is this an intentional choice?

GD: For the most part. I’m sure some of the deadlines on Nevermen added to the looseness a bit. The Nevermen was a different type of book, more flashy, so I tried to make the art a little more stylised, more angular. It was a more tongue in cheek story too so I could be a little more cartoony and exaggerated than I could with the Marquis. With the Marquis I wanted a really ornate setting, lots of baroque detail in the architecture and costumes and all, something more shadowy and mysterious feeling. Not as stark or hard lined as Nevermen.

TW: Do you work differently when you know that something is going to appear in colour?

GD: A little, I probably don’t do as much line work as I would in black and white. But then when I add the grey tones to the pages, it’s still sort of colouring it all in, but just in shades of grey.

TW: What attracted you to The Nevermen?

GD: Phil Amara actually came to me with the idea after seeing some of the artwork I had done for White Wolf games and other stuff on the side. Dark Horse was wanting some company owned projects and Phil was wanting me to design up one of them. So basically he came to me with the idea of drawing and designing a book of all the things I like to draw: weird villains and evil monkeys, giant robots! How could I refuse! I really enjoy working for DC, but after Sandman Mystery Theatre I sort of feel like I got typecast into a certain type of book. Everyone thought I could only do period settings or talking head type books. The Nevermen gave me a chance to just get really bizarre and show that I could do something more fanciful.

TW: Having just come off a very long run (Sandman Mystery Theatre), was the fact that it was a four part miniseries appealing?

GD: Not really. After the last run on SMT it was nice to take a little break from a monthly book, but when I started the Nevermen we weren’t sure if it was going to be 6 or 4 issues. We were hoping for a series, but that didn’t happen…which is a shame,because I think Phil had some interesting ideas planned. There was a lot going on in those four issues that we didn’t have the space to pan out and develop more. I think a lot of the story got crammed and cropped to fit in the four issues.

TW: How much did you alter the Marquis material from the comics that Caliber published?

GD: I had the first issue of the Marquis done at Caliber, then it was planned as 48 pages. I kept maybe 15 pages of that for the Oni issue and reworked and redrew the rest. It had been years from when I started it, and a lot of the art was pretty dated looking and rougher than what I was doing now. I also think I didn’t have as clear an idea of what I wanted to do with the series when I was working on it for Caliber. In the time between Caliber and Oni I reworked a lot of the story and plotted out the entire series, so I definitely knew where it was going and what would happen. Right now the entire story of the Marquis is told in 15 issues, 3 separate mini-series. Each series will have an ending, it won’t be a cliff hanger but they will all tie into each other to tell a full story. I also don’t really want to milk it to death or run it into the ground, there is a definite ending to the Marquis and after that I won’t touch it again.

TW: The Marquis is a very dense read with a lot of dialogue and each issue takes some time to read. Did it take a lot of research on the writing and the art side of things?

GD: Long winded me. I didn’t really set out to make the series so wordy, it just sort of ended up that way whether good or bad. The first two issues were a lot of set up. Since the series was set in a fictional world with a fictional theology, I wanted to pretty much get all that ground work cleared up- how the world of the Marquis was different from ours and all. As far as research, since it was never supposed to be historically accurate, I didn’t really have to research anything for the writing. I mean, I already had a lot of books on the time period so I had a sense of the clothing and building designs, but I wanted them to be more elaborate or fanciful than they were in history. And as far as the theology and the different Saints and their history, all that is made up and not really based on anything.

TW: As writer-artist of it, do you feel that you have more control than on something like Nevermen? Or do you enjoy collaborating with writers in a different way?

GD: Well, when it’s your own project one of the perks is that you can do whatever you want. I mean, the books I have written and drawn, Baker Street and The Marquis were both creator owned so there is total freedom to do them however you want. But then again, even though Dark Horse owned the property, with Nevermen, we were pretty much given the okay to do whatever we wanted. Dark Horse never had any input into the art or designs of the series, I don’t know about Phil’s script- but they seemed pretty hands off which was nice. I do enjoy working with writers on projects, I’ve been really lucky working with some great people like Phil and Matt Wagner and Steve Seagle on Sandman Mystery Theatre. They all spoiled me. They gave me a lot of freedom to pace the story and layout the pages or design it as I would want to. It’s a lot of fun just to worry about the art chores sometimes and not the whole thing.

TW: How have you researched The Marquis?

GD: I have a lot of books on different period architecture and clothing. The 17th- 18th century was one of the settings I had always wanted to draw, but since the Marquis takes place in a fictional world, I take a lot of liberties with the designs. I play up the ornateness of the Baroque architecture and the costumes of the time, the outfits for the General and the armies in issue #2 are based on a lot of different sources.

I’ll take a bit of the look from different countries in the same time period and elaborate on them. The same for the Inquisitors robes. I wanted something that looked like it could have existed without actually being something that did. I never wanted the series to be bogged down in real history since that was never the focus of the story. Like the setting of a world that is in a perpetual winter, I just wanted an interesting backdrop for what happens in the story and a different setting or feel for the book.

TW: Do you enjoy research? I know some artists and writers who find that the research is as satisfying as the work itself.

GD: To a point. Whether it was Sandman Mystery Theatre, which was set in real history, or Baker Street or the Marquis where I sort of play around with it- there is a point where I start to get a feel for the setting and don’t reference it as much. I guess I get to a point where I can fake a lot of it. I mean, with SMT, after doing it for so long I had a good idea on how cars or clothing or cupboards looked so I didn’t need to have actual photo reference in front of me to make it look accurate. My art’s not so clean either, a lot of squiggles fill in the backgrounds, I’m not going to try to put in every nut and bolt. I think if I tried making it realistic and perfectly accurate that it would come out looking stiff.

TW: Your choice of cover artists on The Marquis have been interesting (Matt Wagner, Mike Mignola, Charles Vess). Were you keen to set a particular tone with the covers because although all of the artists are different, there is a common underlying sensibility to all of their work?

GD: Matt Wagner, who’s great and has always been incredibly supportive, offered to provide the cover to Issue #1 back when I was shopping the series around. And then when I went to ONI I heard that Mike Mignola was interested in doing a cover for the book which was great, I was always a big fan on his work. So I figured that for the first series we should just have guest covers for the 5 issues, and I just wanted people whose work I really enjoyed. Everyone did a great job, I was really happy with how they all came out. Charles Vess did a beautiful cover for issue #3, Teddy Kristensen and Kelly Jones provided the last two issues covers and again really great stuff all around. For all the covers I didn’t give them any sort of guidelines or anything, I wasn’t as concerned about the covers reflecting what happened inside, I just wanted the Marquis to be the focal point of all the covers. One of the things I wanted with the Marquis character was to have something that was very recognisable or iconoclastic in design. It was always a great surprise to see the finished pieces, since I had no idea of what anyone was doing. They were all very different in both style and also the way they approached it. Really inspiring to see these takes on my character, now I just have to finish the rest of the series so I can use them

TW: The Marquis has now gone bi-monthly for #3-#5. Do you regret lowering the frequency or was it necessary to keep up the quality?

GD: I really regretted not keeping with the monthly schedule and all. But the NEVERMEN got me pretty behind on starting the Marquis. I had hoped to catch up on it but with the added writing chores and all the tone work, it just kept getting further behind. I was also doing pretty much full 32 page comics the shortest issue is #3 at 28 pages. Obviously if I did just 22 page stories it would be quicker to get it out, but if I have 32 pages to work with I don’t want to just cram the story it into 22 or 24 and fill it up with ads. I know that in company books ads help with the cost, but I really hated being cramped with the storytelling and told that the story would have to be cropped because they needed to make room for the ads. Anyhow, besides all that I definitely didn’t want to just hack out the Marquis so the only other option was to either drop the tonework or make it bi-monthly. And I gotta keep the tone!

TW: How different is it working with Oni to working with Dark Horse?

GD: Well, it’s pretty much the difference between owning something and work-for-hire. Even though Dark Horse was pretty much hands off, at the end of the day they owned whatever we did with it and had final say over everything. ONI is a lot more creator friendly, they let you do whatever you want because you own your property- they are publishers in the truest sense.

TW: Are you collaborating with Phil Amara again on anything?

GD: We have a project planned for next year through Dark Horse, which right now I’m not sure if I can mention. But it’s going to be great to work on and draw. Really looking forward to it.

TW: What else are you working on at the moment? Is there any sign of a Sandman Mystery Theatre one-shot or any chance of resurrecting it as an occasional mini-series?

GD: I just did a short story bit, real short, 5 pages in Swamp Thing for Vertigo. I still do spot illos for White Wolf Games on the side and I agreed to a 48 page oneshot of the old pulp character The Avenger that is slated to come out through Moonstone comics. Aside from that, I’m just working away at getting the Marquis done on time. So far no word yet on any more Sandman Mystery Theatre work, I would love to go back to the characters again and it would be great to work with Matt or Steve again. No plans yet, but you never know. I figure at some point they’ll do something with the characters, I just hope they remember me.

TW: You pencilled Brave Old World for Vertigo and had Phil Hester finish your work. As it seems to be the first time this has happened, how happy were you with the results?

GD: Phil’s great, not to mention fast! I swear he’s always doing two to three books at a time. But I didn’t really pencil the issue, I only did layouts on the series- in the truest sense of the word. I got a lot of credit on that book but Phil Hester did a lot more of the work. They made me a co-creator for designing the future people and the ships and all, but then again, Phil took those designs further and reworked them into his style. The way it worked was that I just broke down the script and paced out the story. I roughed on a page where people were at and the backgrounds and all, I mean real rough too, I usually wrote the name of the character above their heads. Phil then took those pages and light boxed them, repencilling them onto another page where he then inked it. I told them that he should have credit as artist on the book, instead of finishes or whatever, but they didn’t really understand. They think if one person does layouts then the other does finishes, because that’s the way it’s always credited in comics. It doesn’t matter who actually does what, I guess, but I did the same for Vince Locke’s run on Sandman Mystery Theatre. If I wanted to draw it then I’d draw it and ink it myself. If I do layouts, I’m only breaking down the storytelling and then I want whoever finishes it to draw it as they would in they’re style. They’re the artist after all, I’m just laying out the story for them.

TW: Do you consider yourself to be a writer-artist or an artist who happens to write?

GD: Probably an artist who happens to write. I like writing but I definitely feel more comfortable with the art chores, if I had an idea for a character I would sketch it out instead of writing a description. If I have an idea for a scene in a story I’ll sketch it out quickly with small notes instead of writing it out. I don’t have any desire to write a novel or anything, I get a lot more pleasure out of drawing it out and telling a story visually.

TW: Do you think that we are starting to see an upturn in the industry in terms of readership and sales?

GD: Boy, not if you listen to everyone talk. All doom and gloom, which it may very well be. I don’t know at this point really, it is tighter out there in getting work for hire jobs and sales seem to be pretty low for the most part. But then I have gotten a lot of feedback on the Marquis, so even if the sales aren’t so high, it’s good to know people are at least reading it. I have a feeling the industry will get a bit worse before it gets better.

TW: How much of a difference do you think the success of the X-Men film will make to the perception of the comics industry and will it attract new readers to comics in general?

GD: I never followed X-Men and I haven’t seen the movie so I’m not sure really. I guess if the movie’s a hit and gets people into comic stores then that’s a good thing, but are they going to buy anything besides X-Men stuff? As far as the perception of comics, I don’t think X-Men will do anything to help the way comics are perceived by the mass public anymore than the Batman or Superman films did. It’s still going to show that comics= superheroes, and people will always see that as a kids thing. The comics industry needs a kick in the pants right now, it needs to show that there’s a lot of different type of stories and genres that can be told in the comic format besides super heroes. And it needs to get that image out there to the mass media to make a difference. Of course, how to do that and make it work is anybody’s guess.

The Marquis is published by Oni Press.

JOEL MEADOWS