♪ [heroic music] ♪ ♪ ♪ - Hello, and welcome to Comic Culture.

I'm Terence Dollard, a professor in the Department of Mass Communication at the University of North Carolina at Pembroke.

My guest today is artist Klaus Janson.

Klaus, welcome back to Comic Culture.

- Thank you very much, Terence.

Thank you.

It's great to be here.

- Klaus, we're talking-- well, one, you've had a long and storied career.

But you've been recently exhibited at the Philippe Labaune Gallery in New York City.

So I'm wondering, how do you, with a career as long as yours, pick those pieces out that are going to be the ones that not only make you happy, but make the audiences happy?

- There was a couple of things that I used as criteria.

Obviously, some of the pages that I personally liked, that I thought were worth showing and discussing and maybe talking about a little bit.

But also, I wanted to entertain the audience or the people that came to the gallery.

And so there were a lot of splash pages, a lot of covers, because I get the feeling that that's what people really relate to, the individual images with the characters, with Batman on it, or Superman, or Spider-Man, or whomever.

So I think those were the two basic criteria that I used.

Stuff that I thought was valuable in terms of the art and the storytelling, and something that would entertain the masses, so to speak.

- And I had a chance to look over some of the images on the website.

And one of the things that I was struck with is that there is such a variety of eras, and yet your voice always comes through.

And whereas artists sometimes will lean into the current trends, you're able to do that in a way that is true to you, but also shows your evolution as an artist.

When you are looking back at some of your older work, maybe when you're inking Gil Kane versus when you're doing something in the last few years, how do you sort of look at your own stuff and see that improvement and maybe think to yourself, there's still room to go?

- You know, it's interesting that you mentioned Gil Kane, of all of the artists that are represented in the gallery that I've inked, including my own pencils.

I happen to have been very lucky.

My second job was inking Gil Kane on Black Panther, which was the first book that I started inking at Marvel.

I've inked him at least once or twice every decade.

And it was the very, very last job that he penciled, literally that he penciled, that I inked, which was a Green Lantern and Adam team up.

And I finally thought, you know, in my fourth decade, I think it was, or the fourth decade that I inked him, I thought, oh, I got it.

I got it.

I figured out how to ink him.

And that was an incredibly satisfying evolution, you know, to use your word.

And I could see the progress that I've made in terms of being able to deal with his pencils, which were challenging, but not as challenging as Gene Colan, who I did not think I figured him out.

And unfortunately, you know, he's passed.

So I occasionally do get Gene Colan pencils to ink for commissions, because apparently he did a lot of commissions.

And that's interesting to do.

But I, you know, unlike Gil Kane, I feel like I never really figured out Gene Colan.

- Gene's work was known for a lot of different values.

So as somebody who's dealing with really just two values, either ink or not ink, how do you sort of handle someone who's got that delicate touch compared to somebody who might be very bold and very cinematic and very, you know, noir style in their use of light?

- That's absolutely right, by the way, that he had a very-- he seemed to draw with the side of the pencil more than the point of the pencil, unlike Gil, who would draw with the point of his pencil.

And Gene would fill in and kind of model and try to get three dimensions out of his pencil shading.

And you have to interpret that.

You have to decide whether or not that's a black or a gray.

And if it is a gray, how are you going to portray that?

Is it Zipatone, you know, dot patterns?

Is it cross-hatching?

Is it wash?

You know, what do you do?

How do you balance what he's given you?

And just to say, it's amazingly fun to make those decisions.

But yeah, I felt like I still had a ways to go.

Tom Palmer, who I think of as the best Gene Colan inker ever and a big influence on my work-- and he and I became friends through the years.

He was quite a bit of a jokester, because he would tell me that I was the best Gene Colan inker.

And I knew he was pulling my leg, because there was no comparison.

Tom was by far the best Gene Colan inker ever, I think.

- When we look at comics, we sometimes don't think of the collaboration, the penciler and the inker collaboration, unless it really works marvelously or if it fails miserably.

So when you are dealing with a penciler who you're struggling with, how do you sort of find a way to represent the work in the best light without it feeling like it's not your best work?

- I try to, regardless of who the penciler is, whether it's somebody who's been working in the business 50 years or somebody who's just breaking in, I try to look at what the pencils need.

And I try to give the pencils that.

And then the other criteria that I use for trying to figure out how to approach a penciler is, what does the penciler want?

Because what they want may not be what they need, and vice versa.

So they may need a little bit more texture, or they may need some help with their anatomy or their wrinkles or their positioning of black and white shapes.

And I try to push it in that direction if I feel that that is helpful.

But what they want is oftentimes different, because I think a lot of pencilers want spectacle, and they want explosions and special effects.

And I can do that, but I try to balance it between what I think they need and what they want.

- You know, again, your career is long and has had many roads.

And I'm wondering, now, inking is done, a lot of times, on a tablet.

Have you sort of made that move?

Have you done any of this digital work?

Or are you still saying, I'm going to print out the blue line.

I'm going to ink it the old-fashioned way, scan it, and then send it back if you've got a digital artist that you're working with?

- My pages are hybrid, and I start analog.

I don't like that word, by the way.

But I start analog on paper, both when I ink someone else.

I'm inking John Romita Jr.

right now on a project written by Mark Miller, or Millar.

And it's on paper.

But it all winds up in the Wacom tablet, eventually.

So I have a big-size Wacom tablet.

I know a lot of kids are doing their stuff on the iPad using Clip Studio.

I use Clip Studio.

I like Clip Studio.

So they're hybrid pages.

And I'm at the point where I can't really not use it.

I have to use digital.

There are certain dot patterns.

I like Zipatone.

I like grays.

I like correcting the analog pages through digital.

And it's very, very useful.

But I try not to start digitally, because there is, to my eye, there is a bit of a deadness to digital.

And I try to create emotion and life in what I'm drawing or what I'm inking.

And I have a harder time with digital creating that life.

I can do it-- I can start on paper and use brush and a nib and then go to digital.

And that seems to work fine for me.

And everybody has to find their way.

And the tools that they use and the paper that they like or the software that they like, everybody has to find what they're comfortable with.

- And you mentioned Zipatone and different patterns.

I'm thinking back to your work with Frank Miller on Daredevil.

And there's a lot of those old Zipatones that would be put into the background or the shadowing would be part of that.

At that time, that's sort of the industry standard.

Now you're going in this digital environment.

Are you ever thinking to yourself, you miss those old tools that might not be even being made anymore because of the digital possibilities?

Or are you like, it's better because I don't have to sit there with a razor blade and cut these out just right?

- Well, there is that, Terence.

I have to admit that I really like applying dot patterns or Zipatone through Clip Studio.

You can draw in a dot pattern.

And it's much more versatile as opposed to just cutting the Zipatone and then pasting it on the board and then cutting around it.

Having said that, I think comics and working in comics is enormously fun.

So I don't regret using Zipatone on Daredevil or going through the laborious process of cutting it out with a razor blade.

One of the things that I really enjoyed was giving the reader something to look at.

And the Zipatone was part of that.

Instead of coloring the sky, I would use Zipatone for the sky.

And the sky then would be that color, the color of the Zipatone.

Or I would do an overlay and turn the Zipatone into a color.

Because I think that-- maybe this is a longer conversation, but there is a point on which I deviate from Alex Toth.

And Alex Toth is notoriously known for simplicity and really hammering that point home.

And I certainly don't disagree with that.

But where I deviate from Alex Toth is that I also think that we are entertainers and that we should incorporate something to look at and entertain the reader.

Because it's not all about simplicity.

And simplicity works best when there's something to contrast it with.

And I think the idea of contrast is a key element in what we do as comic book storytelling.

So if you look at my work, there is an attempt to do both.

To be direct and simple and clear in the storytelling, but also to provide some entertainment in terms of explosions or special effects or just something to look at.

- Again, going back to Daredevil, I was looking at one of the recent collections.

And at this point, you had taken over, I guess, about 90%, 99% of the art work there.

You were not only doing the pencils, you were doing the inks, and you were doing the colors.

And what struck me about this era was that you would have a page that had everything we needed to know for establishing the scene.

And then there'd be that one panel where it's just the two figures and maybe even just a silhouette or something that would make us pay attention to the emotion of the scene rather than every single detail in the background.

We couldn't read the books on the shelf.

So when you are approaching this from a storytelling point of view, again, you want to contrast the complex with the simple.

How do you find the balance in the story to know when to put your foot on the gas and when to take your foot off?

- There are a lot of ways to determine that, including intuition and instinct.

And I rely a lot on that.

I don't know if I try to do it.

This is just the way I do it.

I use the intuition and the instinct first.

And then I'll use the theories of storytelling or the philosophy of storytelling, the rules of storytelling, the rules of composition, the rules of perspective.

These are not theories.

These are dogma.

The rules of composition are the same for you, for me.

There are only 12 camera angles, maybe 13 or 14 if you want to push it.

And they're consistent.

They're the same for you, for me, for Steven Spielberg, for Martin Scorsese, for whomever.

And the trick is trying to make it look new every time you do it.

And there are ways of doing it.

I was going to use the word tricks.

But there are theories on how to actually make that happen.

And I think I try to use my intuition, what's in my head, and then use the rules of storytelling to check it and make sure that it works.

If I could digress and give you an example, I never draw the horizon line or the vanishing point or the diagonals first.

I don't do that.

In other words, I don't draw on top of the perspective.

I will draw what's in my head and then use the rules of perspective to check it, to make sure.

And I'll find the vanishing point in the drawing.

Or I'll find the horizon.

And then I'll try to figure out, does this work perspective-wise?

And usually it does at this point.

So it's the same thing with composition.

I'll draw what's in my head and then use the rules of composition to check, make sure things are balanced or unbalanced, which is also balanced.

So I go intuition and instinct first, and then the theories on top of that.

- I spoke to Lee Weeks a few years back.

And he said, one of the joys of working outside the box is having the box in the first place.

So having those rules, being able to test your work against what works, what you know is not just a theory but is, in fact, that unwritten law that we have to abide by as artists, does that give you-- again, knowing that you can rely and check your work-- does that give you the freedom to sometimes try and push something to make the reader feel something's not right.

Therefore, I should pay attention to this exchange a little bit more.

- Yeah, absolutely.

I'm rather dogmatic and severe about my approach to storytelling.

And I think that everything on the page has to have a reason and an explanation.

So if I ask a student, why did you do this or why did you do that, the student has to have an answer.

Why is this panel bigger or why is this panel smaller?

Or why are you not doing panel borders?

Or what are you trying to convey?

So to me, every decision I make has to have a reason.

And I mean every decision, meaning why is this character on the left side of the panel?

Why is this character on the right side?

Are they the same size?

Is one character or one shape in the panel bigger than the other?

And if so, why?

What are you trying to say?

Is the bigger character a dominant character?

Is it an alpha?

Is the dialogue conveying something?

I always try to-- and I think this is critical in terms of how I approach my decision making-- I always try to add something to the story and the information that is not in the text.

In other words, I could pull the text out and you still know what's happening by the decisions that I or another storyteller would make.

Everything has meaning, everything.

And you cannot get away from that.

You know, the idea-- you mentioned a box.

And my interpretation of a box is a panel.

And because the panel is enclosed, everything within that panel is in a relationship to everything else because it is enclosed.

So you can't minimize the importance of the decisions that you make in terms of size or positioning, black or white or your shapes and how they relate to each other.

They all relate to each other.

And the amazing thing about comics is that all of the panels on the page, the multi-panels, also relate to each other.

So the shapes within a panel relate to each other.

The panels on the page relate to each other.

And then in an uber way, the pages relate to each other, especially the pages that are facing each other.

- I think Walter Simonson said once that he tries to design a page so that there's usually one panel that sort of holds the whole structure up.

And I'm wondering, as you are working on a page, you're thinking about the story, you're thinking about the relationship between the panels, is there an overall design that a page must have for you to have it make sense?

Or would you be happy with that nine-grid Kirby scale?

Or would it be something where you're going to do one big panel on the bottom that's the anchor?

Or are you just going to say, it doesn't really matter because I've got a story to tell?

- Oh, it matters.

It always matters.

It never doesn't matter.

So if you do a nine-panel grid, that choice of a grid has meaning.

And the meaning is that everything is equal because all the panels are of equal size and shape.

So everything contained within those panels, the information is equal.

If you have a page where there are variety of sizes in terms of the panel, the biggest panel is the most important one.

And also the one usually that has the spectacle in it, the explosion or the punchline to a series of events.

So again, everything has meaning.

And certainly, that definitely applies to panel shape and panel size.

- One of the things that I find fascinating about your ink work is that it has a different feel than, let's say, at the time when your career was starting, Joe Sinnott's style, which had this sort of roundness, organic-y kind of feel to it.

Yours, the best way I can describe it, there's an edge to it.

It's a little bit sharper.

So as you are developing your style and you're coming into Marvel in the '70s, is there a push for you to sort of adapt that house style?

Or are they saying, you know what, you've got something special, and we're going to let you sort of explore it and find your voice with it?

- It was the latter, fortunately.

You know, nothing impresses the publishers more than success.

And once-- I think my work was generally well-received, even early on.

And part of it was the kind of Zipatoney special lighting.

You know, kids love lighting.

Kids love line work.

And I did a lot of line work.

I still do.

And once that received a positive reaction from the readers, from the audience, Marvel, which was my primary employer for the '70s and '80s, I think, or '70s at least, just let me do what I was doing, which I'm very grateful for.

Early on, I mean, I got critiqued by my editor-in-chief and by my editors when I was struggling to find my voice.

I remember Len Wein took me aside one day and criticized the fingers of Swamp Thing.

I was doing a Swamp Thing inking over John Buscema.

And I remember him saying, you know, these aren't fingers.

They're carrots.

You're drawing carrots.

They look like carrots.

Stop doing that.

But I took in everything that people told me.

And I tried to overcome whatever minuses I had.

And I think the reception was pretty good at a certain point.

So I didn't really worry about that too much after-- you know the Max Gladwell thing, 10,000 hours?

After my 10,000 hours, I was pretty good.

So I mean, pretty good in the sense that I had some stability.

Yeah.

- And we have just a moment or so left in our conversation.

Please, yeah.

Is there one project, as you look back, that just stands out to you as the one that you think we should all look into?

- Huh.

I really thought that Gothic, written by Grant Morrison, was really good.

Work on both of our parts.

Working with Grant is amazing.

And I think Daredevil End of Days, which was written by David Mack and Brian Michael Bendis and inked by Bill Sienkiewicz, was just a dream project come true.

So those two-- excuse me, those two projects, I think, yeah, they stand out as deserving more love.

- Klaus, they are telling us that we are out of time.

I want to thank you so much for taking time out of your schedule to talk with me today.

- Thank you, Terence.

I appreciate it.

- And I'd like to thank everyone at home for watching Comic Culture.

We will see you again soon.

[heroic music] ♪ ♪ ♪ - Comic Culture is a production of the Department of Mass Communication at UNC Pembroke.

Students studying broadcasting direct and crew episodes, getting real world hands-on experience while still on campus, preparing them for careers after graduation.

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