| Phil Hester; Artist/Writer |
| Written by Adam Tibbott | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Monday, 05 June 2006 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Marvel Comic's Phil Hester takes time away from working on the Civil War inspired ANTMAN title to answer some questions, via email, we're all dying to know! RM: Who do you credit the most for inspiring your artistic creativity? PH: Personally, my Mom for never passing judgment on what I wanted to do with my life growing up. Professionally, Jack Kirby. His work completely overwhelmed me in my youth. I was also drawn to offbeat artists like Ditko, Toth, Staton, Boyette, Wrightson, Eisner, Miller, etc.
PH: Yep. I was reading an issue of Iron Man, probably between #110 and 120 or so, that ended on a cliffhanger. Tony Stark had been tossed off the helicarrier without his armor and had to slap it on before he hit the ground. I couldn't wait for the next issue, so drew my own conclusion. It then occurred to me that comics were made by actual human beings and that someday I could be one of them.
I have a BFA from The University of Iowa, but that didn't really train me specifically for comics. It expanded my artistic horizons and made me more flexible, but all the cartooning lessons I learned I picked up on the job.
PH: We've always wanted to work with Robert, and Nightwing was winding down. The stars were aligned. We would have done any book Marvel and Robert wanted us to tackle and Ant-Man was it.
PH: Robert pretty much has the whole thing mapped out story-wise, but he's left the look of the characters up to me. It's been fun designing all these new heroes and villains.
PH: Yes. Robert wanted the book to be a very, very dense read, so we're working on a sixteen panel grid. That doesn't mean EVERY page is 16 panels, but that's the base from which we work. A ton of stuff happens every issue. Two issues of Ant-Man equals six of most anything else. That said, we're still taking chances with storytelling. I'm trying to show my love for Miller and Steranko in the layouts. As far as rendering, we using a lot of black, as always, but Ande and I have doped out a new way to spot blacks on the page that we'll be experimenting with. We're rendering inside the black areas with negative line-art. You'll have to see it to understand. Hopefully it will be innovative without being intrusive.
PH: Robert will kill me if I reveal anything. All I can say is, it starts on the Helicarrier and involves a lot of SHIELD agents. Civil War will have major repercussions in the book.
PH: It's unlike anything Kirkman's done for Marvel. I'd say it's closer to his indie work than anything he's done for Marvel before. And as I said before, it's super dense. It's sort of the anti-decompression title. Cliffhangers abound.
PH: Work. Make comics, even if they're just mini-comics. Don't wait for anyone to tell you you're talented enough to begin. Just go. Make yourself a schedule and stick to it. Nothing develops chops like work. |
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