[orchestrated 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 Mike DeCarlo.

Mike, welcome to Comic Culture.

- Pleasure to be here, Terence.

Pleasure to be here.

- Mike, you are best known for your work in, I guess, working for the big two, DC and Marvel, on books like Booster Gold, New Teen Titans, and on Batman, on the famous death in the family run, doing inks over Jim Aparro.

So, when you are given an assignment over some artists, some heavy hitting artists, like George Perez, or a Dan Jergens, or a Jim Aparro how do you sort of approach those pencils and still make sure that you get to feel like you're putting your stamp on things?

- Well, I was trained by Dick Jergano, whose name should be pretty well known.

He was inker of the year several times.

He was a managing editor at DC and I was his pupil.

I studied under him for about 18 months from the summer of '79 to just after the new year of 1981.

So, Dick was a master at making somebody's pencils look good without overpowering or having his imprimatur on it.

And, that's what he tried to show me how to do.

Leave some of your knowledge, your input, your training, but don't make the pencils yours.

They're not yours.

Just enhanced them.

So, that is what that master of the inks taught me as a young fellow back then.

- And, when you get a book like New Teen Titans at the height of the run, you're working with George Perez, you're working on the now famous Judis contract.

Is it difficult for you as somebody who's getting their foot in the door in the industry to kind of step into such a high profile title?

- Well, back then, you were thrown in the water and it was up to you to swim or sink, and, yeah, I was just a fellow in his early twenties back then, early to mid twenties at the most, what is not known is a lot of that was breakdowns, was layouts from George.

I had to fill in the missing pencil, and trying to capture George's very intricate style, and then do a good job inking it in a pretty limited amount of time, because it was all heavy deadline stuff back then.

So, you either... You passed the crucible or you didn't, and they would find somebody who could.

So, there was a lot of pressure.

But, when you're that age, and you have in mind what you'd like your career to be, you simply buckle up, and do it, and don't complain.

And, that was life in the early to mid 80s in comics.

You survived or you were cast aside.

Very simple.

- George had this ability to put so much detail into every single page.

And, I feel, for a lot of anchors, it was a challenge to kind of get that all in.

And, like you say, there was a tight deadline.

There were no gaps between a monthly book.

So, is there ever that temptation to maybe take the approach of Vinny Colletta who could look at a page and say, well, you know what?

I can still have the same impact, but maybe take out some of the details so that I can get the pages done in the time required?

- No, that time was was passed, because, number one, Jack Kirby almost never looked at the finished product.

People don't know that.

He was too busy thinking about the next book, the next theme, the next concept.

He considered the finished product, the inking, to be fairly secondary.

He told the story, he did the layouts, he set the scene for the next issue or the issue after that.

He didn't go back and look to see if Vince had left out bricks in a building or taken some of the background people out for time.

He understood what the business was back in the 50s, the 60s, excuse me, and the 50s.

It was to get the product out, make sure it was colored and printed and on the newsstand, get your 12 cents, and move on to the next issue.

That was the 1960s.

By the 80s, it had changed, changed dramatically.

Now, it was not just about the theme, not just about moving the book forward, but highlighting the talents of very special people.

They were just as important as the character, as the theme.

I mean, George Perez and all those people, they had a following and their name on a book meant extra pressure on the inkers, and the colorists, and everybody.

It's gotta be done, it's gotta be done properly, it's gotta be done on time.

So, it was a different pressure.

There were Novini Colettas in the 80s.

They were dispensed of rather quickly.

So, that 15 or 20 years made a big difference actually.

- And, when you are paired with someone like George or someone like a Dan Jergens, and that style kind of works so well together and that partnership seems to blossom, I think back to the early work on Booster Gold with Dan Jergens, where everything seemed to work so well, is it difficult when you are asked to leave a a project to work on another project like Crisis on the Infinite Earths?

- Here's what it is.

As somebody who, back then, pretty much exclusively made his living as an inker, you cannot have an ego.

You cannot have an agenda.

Now, I was very, very fundamentally trained as an artist.

I knew how to draw.

So, if the perspective was off, the folds and the clothing were off, if the musculature was off, if the lighting wasn't right, on and on, the composition needed help, see, I knew how to do that stuff.

I chose to be an inker, because it was quite honestly a fairly successfully, I don't want to use the word easy, but a for sure way to make an income.

And, to jump from Perez, to Kurt Swan, to Dan Jergens, to Gil Kane, to anybody was just a matter of me studying it, adjusting my thinking, and proceed with the fundamentals, because they are also very good artists trained in fundamentals.

So, I was just always on the same page.

My decisions were for line weight, balance, whether something should be a little more graphic or a little more textured.

Like if you were working on Mike Grell, he wanted to be more textured.

If you're working on George, he wanted to make sure you were very attentive to detail.

So, a good inker had no ego, but he was very fundamentally sound.

And, that's what I prided myself on.

And, I took all that fundamental art knowledge and, by the late 90s, I had moved on really away from inking.

And, nowadays I pretty much don't ink anybody other than myself, because I am a trained artist.

I do lots of penciling.

Now, I'm working on two graphic novels.

I pretty much always just do my own penciling.

But, that was a long time ago.

I was a young fella.

I started when I was 23 having my own work, my own inking credits.

And, the 1980s were a great training ground for me.

And, I got to work with a bunch of really amazing talents and people.

And, make no mistake, I studied everything I inked.

I mean, how foolish would it be for me to not study Gil Kane, Ross Andrew, George Perez, Kurt Swan, Michael Golden, Michael Sec.

How foolish would it have been if I had neglected to see what made their work successful and quite honestly incorporated it into my own mental portfolio as to how to proceed in the future.

So, only a fool would just blankly put ink onto a page without drinking in the nuances and the thoughts behind the artwork.

- As you are working on projects now, how do you sort of build that audience to make sure that people know that you've got something new coming out that they can enjoy?

- Well, I do have a Patreon site and I'm always traveling, so I'm always at shows, and I have about 5,000 people following me on Facebook.

So, it's just a matter of networking and word of mouth.

And, I do so many private drawings for people that I think people understand now that Mike DiCarlo, the inker, which is who they maybe grew up with 30, 40 years ago, kind of moved on.

No regrets.

I look back extremely fondly at the last really golden age of comics, which is probably 1980 to 1995.

And, I was very proud to be part of that time, because I worked with the up and coming new people, the Frank Miller's, and the Todd McFarland's, and all those people.

And, I worked with the old masters, the Gil Kane's, the George Perez's, well, I would call them an old master.

But, and got to meet and be friends with John Remita Senior, and Don Heck, and Dick Ayers, and I got to meet Stan Lee, and Jack Kirby, and Steve Ditko.

What a... What a period of time that was.

And, I'm very, very grateful, because it shaped me as a man growing older who had his own dreams.

But, my goodness, what a training ground, what a magnificent time for, as I say, a young fellow in his early twenties, to go through that, and to meet, oh, my God, to meet some of these people, to Neil Adams, to sit and have lunch with Neil Adams, or John Remita, or Don Heck, and talk to Jack Kirby, and meet Stan Lee.

It was...

It was heady.

It was remarkable to sit with these people.

And, the Kurt Swan's, they were always so nice.

They were such nice guys, they were so encouraging, and, surprisingly, had very small egos.

Now, as I got older, into my fifties and now sixties, you get people who are in their twenties and thirties who want to make a fuss over you and what you've done.

And, see, I don't accept that just as those guys didn't.

I'm there to encourage and to set... To give any advice anybody needs.

And, who am I to have any ego?

I mean, Jack Kirby had no ego.

Who am I to have an ego?

So, I freely give out any advice, any encouragement, any proper roads to travel.

And, it's my pleasure.

It's the legacy that we all pass on the baton, we all pass on as artists to each other, which is how it should be.

- Before we started to record you, we talked about some comics that I remember reading, and you said, yeah, that was 40 years ago.

And, that's... That's kind of a long time, even though I don't like to think that I'm over 40, even though I'm much older than 40.

So, when you look back at the changes in comics, and I guess the fact that it's not necessarily dominated by the big two, it's not necessarily dominated by capes and tight characters anymore.

And, it's also not dominated by the traditional tools.

So, in your career, have you sort of moved on to perhaps a digital platform?

Or, are you still using the the traditional pencil, brush, and pen?

- I do all my lettering and all my coloring digitally.

However, I still love the feeling of constructing a drawing from scratch and a blank piece of paper and then finishing it.

And, then, at that point, I will scan it with very high dpi, and then I will finish the artwork from there.

And, that way I always have it saved as a file and I could send it anywhere in the world.

So, and that's what separates me at 65 from somebody who's 30, because I did it the old way, and there's less and less of us who can do it the old way.

I used to be able to do everything on Illustrator and Photoshop, everything from scratch, and I just didn't like it.

Like I said, I don't mind lettering and coloring on the computer, but I just don't wanna let go of what I learned 40 and 50 years ago.

And, that is what helps to separate me.

And, I noticed that, because you put a pencil in the hand of a 25 year old, they're not necessarily sure what to do, because they don't have both sides of the training.

I was trained by people who learned their crafts, from men who were born at the turn of the 20th century, and they passed on that ancient fundamental learning to me.

So, I am a product of 100 ago of the way the masters learn.

Now, I don't have the ability of a Foster or a Milton Caniff or those people, or a Burt Hogarth, but the people who learn from them showed me.

So, being only 65... Well, only.

I have a knowledge of those who learned 100 years ago and you can't simulate that anymore.

So, I am, I hate to use the word dying breed, but there's less, and less, and less of us who were trained in that incredible training ground.

- It's fascinating, because I've played a little bit with digital tools and Clip Studio Pro trying to do some comic work, but there is something so satisfying about a sheet of paper, a pencil, and maybe a dip pen, turning that blank space into something without having the ability to undo something, or I'm gonna hide that layer and then make another layer, or if I don't like it, you've gotta kind of work with what you have.

Is that something that you kind of enjoy about the process?

- Well, that's something I actually take pride in, because I don't...

I was in Illustrator and Photoshop and I know what it's like to be able to undo, undo, undo, undo, edit this, this, that, filter it.

I could do all that, but yet that was a denial of all the hard work I had done.

The studying, the books that I researched, the intense study of the masters.

They didn't have those tools.

They didn't have those crutches.

Maybe that's why they were so damn good.

And, that's what always stuck with me.

Yes, keep up with the times, learn how to be digital, learn how to exchange files.

Of course.

You can't remain a dinosaur, but I didn't wanna let that go either.

So, I'd like to think I'm a nice amalgam of the ancient and the new.

- And, you mentioned studying under Dick Giordano who has, throughout his career, he had helped so many great artists, Bob Laten and Terry Austin among them, when you were learning from Dick, is this something where it's you learn by doing, like here's some pages and you're gonna work on perhaps the backgrounds or is this something where he's giving you something to just practice on this and it doesn't have to get printed, but you can really try your hand and see what works and what doesn't?

- So, the beauty of Dick was he...

He was very avuncular, he was patient.

And, yet, when you made a mistake, he pointed all of them out, but he did it in a way that wasn't discouraging.

Mike, that's not bad.

Try this.

Mike, you're on the right track, but research this.

Look at how the old masters handled draperies.

Look at how Wally would handle lighting.

Look how Neil Adams uses his camera.

So, he was saying to you, you want it bad enough, I'll tell you what to do.

I'm not gonna do it for you.

Learn how to do it.

That's the direction.

To be corny, be a man about it.

Learn it.

Don't complain.

Don't worry about how long it takes, how hard you work.

This is the training process.

If you wanna be remembered and have a long career, there is no shortcut.

I will help you, but I'm not gonna do it for you.

And, if you refuse to learn, you're not gonna last.

That's the way it is.

And, Dick pushed that across to me, as I say in an avuncular manner, but in no uncertain terms, Mike, it's up to you.

It's not up to me.

I made it, now here's what I did.

Are you gonna do it?

I'll tell you what to do, but you've gotta do it.

- That's I guess a great... A great method for teaching and learning.

And, it seems as if it worked, because obviously you've been doing this for a number of years now, and, I'm wondering, as you look at the work you're doing now, what sort of... From those footprints back in the old days, I guess, how do you see those leading to where you are now?

- Well, journey as an artist, probably as a musician, a scientist, anybody, anybody who's on a journey never ends, never ends.

I still, I don't mean to keep bringing up my age, I'm a senior citizen.

I think my next drawing is gonna be my best.

I can't not think that, because I keep incorporating everything I've learned into the next drawing.

There is no...

There's no limitation to storage space in your brain.

You have to think of your brain as a computer that's able to file an endless amount of documents and information.

And, then you can extrapolate from that, because you keep filling your brain with more and more information to draw upon.

So, I studied, I hate to tell you what I study, I study everything, photography, movie direction, everything.

I study everything.

Why shouldn't I?

My...

I didn't...

I didn't stop learning when I was 50.

I didn't stop learning when I was 60.

And, I hope, when I'm 80, I'm still willing to learn.

Life is a learning process.

There is no end.

It ends when you've decided to give up.

I won't stop learning.

I will not.

How could you stop learning how to draw, how to be better?

- Honestly, I can't imagine wanting to stop learning, because it's... To me, it's endlessly fascinating.

And, I hope the folks watching the show agree that hearing someone who is passionate about something that they've been doing professionally, but it's also artistic expression, it's always interesting to me to hear how they approach that and what their philosophy is.

And, as you're working on comics now and graphic novels now, are you doing that stuff that's perhaps maybe more noir or more slice of life?

Or, are you still kind of going into the realm of the fantastic and the super heroic?

- Well, now I am somebody who tries to bring the human experience, from the tilt of the head, to the look in the eyes, to the posture, to the moving from one... See, I am a movie director.

I cast everybody.

I'm the director.

I get a script and I'm off running.

I decide how people look, how they behave, so I am making a movie with my pen and pencil.

That's how I look at it.

What am I doing to get people interested?

It's a movie.

I'm not showing everybody, oh, look at where a great artist I am.

No, that's inconsequential.

Nobody cares what kind of an artist you are.

They want to be entertained.

And, that's part of knowing what your job is.

Your job is not to show off.

Oh, look at the incredible folds in that clothing or look at how I drew every strand of hair.

Nobody cares, nobody cares.

That's for teenagers.

I don't mean to pick on teenagers, 'cause I was one, but they count the hairs and how big the muscles are.

That's not my concern.

My concern is somebody's paying me money to tell a story and they want people to be interested in their characters and their story.

That's my job.

And, I love it, because, as I say, I'm the casting director, the lighting man, the cameraman, the director, everything.

That's exciting for me.

- It's fascinating, because a lot of folks talk about the beauty of trying to solve the puzzle.

They get a script, they get a story, and trying to put it into sequential pages.

It's the magic trick as Lee Weeks calls it.

- Well, here's a very simple way to approach it.

I know what I like in a movie.

I know what I like in a TV show.

So, why not recreate what you like?

What is it that you like when you see a movie?

Well, I like the mood, the direction, the lighting.

I love the way they focus on the characters sometimes and sometimes not.

I like the subtleties, I like the extremes.

So, that's what I do.

I am trying to create something that me, a very picky human being, would find interesting.

And, if...

I guess, if I find it interesting, probably most people who look at it find it interesting.

And, when I put stuff on Facebook, little bits, it's not just I hear people say, oh, I can't wait to see what's next, or, geez, what happens after this?

That's when I know I did my job.

Am I ever gonna be Neil Adams?

Am I ever gonna be Michael Golden?

Am I ever gonna be George Perez with that kind of mega interesting style and detail?

No, that was them.

I'm not trying to be them.

That would be foolish.

I just wanna be somebody who tells a really good story and people find it interesting.

They wanna know what happens on the next page and the next page.

That's my job.

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

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

- It was a pleasure.

I hope I wasn't too garrulous there, but you get me talking art and forget about it.

- I thought it was fascinating.

Thank you so much and thanks everyone at home for watching Comic Culture.

We will see you again soon.

[orchestrated music] ♪ Comic Culture is a production of the Department of Mass Communication at the University of North Carolina at Pembroke.

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