Author: Jim Keefe

Jim Keefe is the current artist of the Sally Forth comic strip. From 1996-2003 he was the writer and artist of the Flash Gordon comic strip. A graduate of the Joe Kubert School, Keefe likewise teaches Comic Art. Teaching and speaking engagements include SVA in Manhattan, Hofstra’s UCCE Youth Programs, and most recently the Minneapolis College of Art and Design.

Joe Kubert – Flash Gordon page

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Joe Kubert (1926-2012)
Tribute: Part 1

Back in 2002 I dropped Joe Kubert a line asking if he’d be interested in drawing a Flash Gordon Sunday page for the small sum I could afford to pay at the time. I figured I had a shot at him accepting as first, I was a Kubert School alum, and secondly (and more importantly) because of his fondness of the strip and its creator, Alex Raymond.

He said yes with the stipulation that he would have full control over the finished product. In essence, for the paltry sum I had offered, he was willing to do not just the art but also the lettering, coloring and color separations as well. He also wanted to include as many classic Raymond characters as possible. I sent him some reference (Raymond clip art and color specs) and a loose script that I told him not to adhere to – to just use as a springboard. I gave him the page well in advance so I would have plenty of time to fashion the surrounding Sunday pages in regards to continuity.

Flash_specs — Example of Alex Raymond clip art sent to Joe Kubert as reference.

Flash Gordon Sunday page: Loose script

Panel 1
Direction:
Reaction shot of Flash, Vultan and Thun to creature (creature as yet unseen).
Vultan and Thun are momentarily frozen to the spot.
Flash springing forward into action.

Flash and Thun have swords, Vultan has spear. See reference for costume.
Note: Flash wearing holster but gun has been removed.

Text Box: As the grisly creature enters the arena, Flash springs into action!
Flash: Vultan, Thun, no time to waste… That thing is headed straight for Dale!

Panel 2 (inset in panel 3)
Direction:
Close up on Ming in his spectator’s booth. A look of macabre enjoyment lights his face.

Text Box: Far above the horrible spectacle, Ming issues a proclamation as old on Mongo as time itself…
Ming: Let the Tournaments of Death Begin!

Panel 3
Direction:
Flash, Vultan and Thun engaging creature as it reaches Dale. Dale is chained to center of arena (see reference), straining at bonds.
Vultan flying, swooping in for the attack.

Creature is your design – go nuts!

Text Box (lower right hand corner): To be continued!

Promptly and WAY before deadline, he emailed me the finished artwork.

Kubert.print — Click on image to enlarge.

The changes he made to the script were sublime.
Flash entering with weapons? Where’s the fun in that?
Joe had Flash and his allies chained in the center of the arena – defenseless.

The layout: Panoramic establishing shot followed by reaction shots of our helpless captives leading up to the cliffhanger as the creature is released.
A master storyteller, Joe had amped up the drama from my initial script to a fevered pitch.

After the page saw print I sent Joe a copy of it from the Boston Herald’s Sunday Comics section. A few week later I got the following response…

December 2, 2002

Dear Jim,
It’s amazing and sad the depths to which syndication has sunk. I was sorry that they distorted the strip to the extent that they did, but what do people say about crying over spilt milk?

I hope the New Year brings good things for you.

Take care,
Joe

To fully understand Joe’s reaction I’ve included the following quick visual showing what Joe Kubert grew up reading in the 1930’s compared to what Sunday comics look like today.

Flash Gordon newspaper strip — Left to right: Flash Gordon 2/25/1934 by Alex Raymond – Flash Gordon 11/10/2002 by Joe Kubert

A short time afterward Mark McMurray and I (a fellow alum) were visiting Joe in his studio and I asked (if it wasn’t any trouble) if I could get a copy of his Flash Gordon Sunday page artwork full size. Joe found the art and asked me if I would rather just have the original instead – dumbfounded I accepted. He bent forward to sign it for me, and before pen touched paper he turned to me and said, “I better not see this on eBay tomorrow.”

—————————————-

Footnote: Suffice it to say, it did NOT go on eBay. As a matter of fact it went on display in the fall of 2012 at the Stamford Museum & Nature Center for the exhibit, Flash Gordon and the Heroes of the Universe. Also on display were Works by Alex Raymond, Al Williamson, George Evans and myself.

Tags Joe Kubert

Artists - Cartoonists Conventions

San Diego Comic-Con 1998

Post author By Jim Keefe
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The following are some pics from 1998 of my jaunt out to the West Coast to attend the San Diego Comic-Con. Deb found me an affordable place to stay not too far away from the convention center, with my last night staying over at fellow Kubert School Alumnus Tom Toby’s place.

Still remember playing a James Bond video game until the wee hours and laughing my ass off with how little I couldn’t control my shooter – the view from other players was my character running in circles with his head down shooting everywhere. Good times.

San Diego Convention Center – August 1998

Extensive time rifling through comic book bins – my fingers start to bleed.

Caught entering the Con without his ticket.

The people I saw dressed as Klingons only spoke Klingon as well.

Deborah Abbott in costume with her husband Manuel Carrasco behind her in the hat.

Taking pics as we leave the convention.
Here’s fellow Kubert School Alumnus Pat Lowry.

Kubert School Alumni Mark McMurray and Pat Lowry back at Tom Tobey’s place.

Some recollections I jotted down at the time.

• Waking up and going into Tom’s back yard to get some “San Diego sunshine” only to have my face immediately entwined in spiderwebs that were strung between bushes on either side of me, then running around like a crazy person trying to get them off – frantic thoughts of the huge spiders (black widows?) we had previously seen in the front yard.

• Watching a bootleg copy of a pilot for the Justice League with a pot-bellied David Ogden Stiers as the Martian Manhunter.

• Mark’s rental car having the futuristic miracle of GPS.

• Commiserating about the biz for awhile with Jim Mooney – then getting a “discount rate” of $40 for one of his signed Man-Thing pages. He also gave advice regarding selling originals, “Some pieces through a dealer will sell for top dollar, otherwise price to sell.”

• Meeting Steve Leialoha and having him sign a Howard the Duck page I had recently purchased that he had inked.

• Peter Maresca’s booth having a ton of old Sunday comic sections from the 1930’s – Beautiful!

• Looking for Mark McMurray before Eisners, but limiting my search to between two food stations.

• Excerpt from Evan Dorkin’s acceptance speech upon winning an Eisner, “Since no one else used their time allotment (for acceptance speeches), I’ll use them.”

My only regret is that I didn’t take more pictures. Hoping to make it out there again in the not too distant future…

Tags Dave Stevens, Gilbert Hernandez, Jaime Hernandez, Jim Mooney, John Romita, Mark McMurray, Pat Lowry, San Diego Comic-Con, Tom Tobey

Artist Spotlight Artists - Cartoonists Daisuke Higuchi

Daisuke Higuchi – Whistle!

Post author By Jim Keefe
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4 Comments on Daisuke Higuchi – Whistle!

From 2004 -2010 I lettered a book for Viz Media called Whistle!
The story and art were by Daisuke Higuchi. I lettered pretty much the whole run and in doing so became a big fan of Higuchi as a storyteller. The following is a brief bio that ran in the series’ final issue.

Daisuke Higuchi’s manga career began in 1992 when the artist was honored with third prize in the 43rd Osamu Tezuka Award. In that same year, Higuchi deputed as creator of a romantic action story titled Itaru. In 1998, Weekly Shonen Jump began serializing Whistle! Higuchi’s realistic soccer manga became an instant hit with readers and eventually inspired an anime series, debuting on Japanese TV in May of 2002.

In a nutshell, Whistle! is about a young middle school boy named Shō Kazamatsuri who’s one and only dream is to play soccer but because of his small stature he has to overcome adversity after adversity to do so – he also serves as an inspiration to to his friends and teammates, drawing them closer together – classic underdog story.

Whistle cast with Shō in the foreground.

Note: For the uninitiated, the accompanying pages are read right to left – not left to right..

The following pages show a great sense of design as Daisuke Higuchi freezes a moment and shows different aspects of a scene. In the scene on the left, the opposing team has just made the winning goal. In the scene on the right, Shō’s teammate Hiroyoshi has accidentally made a goal for the opposing team.

More of the same, but in these two cases the focus is on characterization…

The following is from a particularly strong sequence from Volume 12.
First a little back story from the previous issue; Shō has just made a near impossible shot tying the game – but the coaches see something else…

The scene that follows opens with Shō and his friend Tatsuya showing up at Tatsuya’s father’s house (who he is estranged with). Tatsuya’s father is a soccer coach for a rival team and has some old soccer footage he wants Shō to see – at the same time some other coaches are meeting for lunch, and Akira (the female coach) echos Tatsuya’s father’s sentiments.

There’s so much to love in that scene.
• The way the dialogue bounces back and forth between the two characters speaking.
• The look of sheer joy on Akira’s face as a young girl followed by the more reflective aspects as an adult.
• The projector on the bottom of page 42 seen as just a glowing light.
• The end shot of Shō as he stares entranced at the footage of a father he never knew.

Beautiful stuff.

Stephen King in his book “On Writing” states, “I think the best stories always end up being about the people rather than the event, which is to say character-driven.”

There are a million underdog stories out there, the ones that resonate come not from the story construct but from how deeply you’re invested in the characters. Higuchi’s strength as a storyteller is her engaging cast of characters.

You can check out Whistle! at your local library’s manga section.
To purchase, go to Viz.com or Amazon (to name a few).

Tags Daisuke Higuchi, Whistle!

Artists - Cartoonists Conventions

SpringCon 2012 – St. Paul, Minnesota

Post author By Jim Keefe
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Great time at SpringCon 2012 this year.
It was a beautiful day Saturday so the crowd lined up for when it opened went off as far as the eye could see.

The line on Saturday going off into the distance…

Setting up I was lucky enough to get a table dead center in the Grandstand.

My daughter Anna manning the table for me.

Great people on either side of me as well. Drew Blom on the one…

…and Ben Tye, Jay Rasgorshek and Kirsten Bonafield manning the MCAD booth on the other.

Lots of MCADians in attendance – best of all they were behind tables selling their wares.
More pictures at the MCAD Comic Art Tumblr.

And Speaking of MCAD, Adjuct Teachers Paul Fricke, Terry Beatty and Tom Kaczynski were also in attendance

Paul’s daughter Emily hit the ground running selling her miniature clay figurines and jewelry she sells on her Etsy shop – I may have her in to talk to my Pro Practice class if I teach that one again…

Terry Beatty – to the right of writer Martin Powell – is currently the new artist on the Phantom Sunday page for King Features. You can subscribe to it at dailyink.com.

Tom K is the publisher of Uncivilized Books. The imprint publishes limited edition, hand-made booklets and coming soon, The Voyeurs by Gabrielle Bell. Tom showed me a proof copy and it looks BEAUTIFUL.

Lots of other artists in attendance as well. Here’s a few I snapped pics of…

Special thanks to Dan Jurgens who took some time out from the NEW 52 books he’s doing for DC Comics to speak to my MCAD Pro Practice class this past semester.

And Bob Lipski is one of my daughter’s favorite cartoonists. We have every Upton Girl collection in print.

Jose Delbo was also in attendance – No picture here as I already devoted an entire blog post to meeting up with him.

All for now – wrapping up with my favorite costumes I saw…