SOLO

Single issue, 2005
with Diana Schutz, Jeph Loeb, Darwyn Cooke, Brian Azzarello and Mark Chiarello

"Solo is a DC anthology book, double-sized, many stories but only one artist. It's Mark Chiarello's concept and baby, and he honored me by asking me to do the premiere issue."

"My idea for Solo was that it have a lot of different looks. I asked Diana Schutz to write me a romance story and she decided to write a romantic Supergirl story. I asked Jeph to write a Superman story that takes place in Smallville. Darwyn Cooke wrote a Batman and Catwoman story, Brian Azzarello wrote a film noir style story, and another told the story of my Mom and Dad's first kiss, which is very simple and Toth-y.

Solo functioned most for me as a way of flexing my artistic muscles in various ways, and also trying to mesh with different writers with their different personalities and ways of working.

Deathblow

Eight issues, 1996-7
with Jim Lee and Brandon Choi

Obviously Deathblow was supposed to look like Sin City. I was asked to do a Sin City. riff on that, and there was also a high contrast look that I was asked to imitate. I had fun drawing like that. I could bring certain things to it.

There was a quality to Miller's pen line in Sin City. that was remarkable. The way he inked folds in clothing was very interesting. Klaus Janson's inking on Daredevil and Dark Knight influenced me immensely. And I think Klaus's inks were a huge help to Miller. I'm a big fan of their work.

Wolverine/Gambit

Four issue mini-series, 1995
with Jeph Loeb

"The thing Jeph proposed that intrigued me was that Wolverine and Gambit were both macho characters who were appealing to female readers, which made the X-Men unique in the comics world. They both saw themselves as tragic figures, losers at love. They were Heathcliff figures, standing alone on the Moor pining for their Kathys -- in between kicking ass -- because they were scared and needed to affect a façade of bravado and machismo.

"It's quintessentially melodramatic, but I'm both fond of that cliché and aware that it is a cliché. These men are full of themselves, and if you turn the cliché just a little, they're misogynistic and overly macho and they're not really about relating to women. What they're relating to is an image they have of themselves. They've been hurt and feel victimized by women, and don't believe they bear any amount of responsibility for it."

Billi 99

Four issue mini-series, 1992-3
with Sarah Byam

"Sarah Byam conceived of Billi as a young, strong, female Zorro-like character, living in a burned-out near future that was so popular in fiction in the Reagan/Thatcher era. It was a bit naïve and simplistic, but sweet and empowering also, and there was lots of fun stuff to draw.

"I remember I got paid $110 a page, penciling, inking, lettering and gray-toning Billi. I was living with my girlfriend, and I would work during the day and then she would come home exhausted from teaching. I would make dinner or we'd go out and then I would go back to work until two in the morning or something. And that was four forty-eight page books penciled, inked, lettered and toned."

Grendel

Single issue, 1992; seven issue run, 1993; two issue mini-series, 1999
with Matt Wagner, Diana Schutz

"I had heard of the San Diego Comic-Con but never been. I didn't realize how important it can be when you want to break into comics. It was amazing. That first year I met Matt Wagner -- he was working on Grendel back then, and Matt knew me from Thieves' World. He was a thin, good-looking punk artiste, he had hair then, and a ripped shirt.

"I penciled and inked the fourth issue of a Grendel series put out by Comico. It was a four-issue arc, but they were individual stories, not a continuous arc. Later, I did a seven-issue Grendel story arc and I penciled and inked all of them. That was 'Orion Assante' -- each book was split in half. The first half was Orion, the second half was a vampire story.

"Devil Child was years in the making. It was two issues and I penciled an issue and a half and had to put it aside for a while. It was way more than three panels on a page and it wore me down, partly because it was an intense story. So we finished it out after Dark Victory."

The Amazon

Three issue mini-series, 1992
with Steven T. Seagle

"Steve Seagle was another connection from my first San Diego Con, and he has spoiled me to this very day because he wrote a full script for The Amazon and asked for three panels on a page. It opened my eyes and I loved it.

"It also turned out that I had an affinity for drawing jungles. It's a kind of interpretive, impressionistic look, with dots and squiggles and things like that. I didn't delineate leaves for the most part because I wanted to have the feeling of light coming through leaves and vines, so that a painter could echo that. Areas would only be delineated by the color and not by a line around it. The same way that I use dots of black for shadows cast on the side of a tree, through the leaves and vegetation, so that it could look exotic.

"So I have very good memories of The Amazon, and it started me on the path of my whining and complaining to every writer afterwards: 'three panels on a page'."

Challengers of the Unknown

Eight issue mini-series, 1990-1
with Jeph Loeb

"There were a lot of hoops to jump through for Challengers. Jeph had never written a comic before. DC hired him because they were looking for show business people and Jeph was a show business person. So Jeph kept saying 'great, I'll write Superman!' No, you can't write Superman. 'Okay, I'll write Batman!' No, you can't write Batman. He went through all these characters and they kept saying no, so he said 'Well why don't you just give me a list?!'

"So they did, and eventually they got around to the Challengers. I had never heard of the Challengers. Jeph didn't really know them either, but when he looked through the issues DC showed him, he said he couldn't tell the four guys apart but for the fact that their hair color was different. The fact that I couldn't draw the standard, good-looking, square-jawed Kirby-guy to save my life helped Jeph see me as the guy to draw his fractured take on '50s super-heroes."