The Big Question with Gene Ha: 2-18-05
The Big Question with Gene Ha
by Corey Henson
Gene Ha broke into comics in the early 90s, slowly building a name for himself with his work on Adventures of Cyclops and Phoenix and Nightman. It was his collaboration with Zander Cannon on Alan Moore’s Top 10 in 1999 that really caught the eye of comic book fans and made Ha a highly sought-after artist in the industry. Since then, Ha has done covers for Captain America, Fantastic Four and Adventures of Superman, and an issue of Global Frequency that was well worth the extra couple of months we had to wait to get our hands on it.
Last October, Ha graciously took time away from his work on the forthcoming Top 10 prequel, The 49ers (due this summer), to talk to Shotgun Reviews about Alan Moore, the importance of Spaceman Spiff, the lack of racial diversity in comics, and, since he’s an outspoken political junkie, his views on today’s media and the war in Iraq. (Hey, if you want to know if Superman can beat up Thor, go read Wizard. We don’t toss softballs here.) (And for the record, Ha thinks Superman would kick the Odinson’s ass from here to the Rainbow Bridge.)
THE BIG Q&A
Shotgun: What comic books did you read as a kid? Did you take sides in the DC vs. Marvel “war”?
Ha: The comics I remember reading were Gene Colan’s Daredevil, Mike Grell’s Green Lantern and Legion of Superheroes, and lots of Avengers and Iron Man comics. Outside of Mike Grell’s work, I preferred Marvel. In the early 70s, the flagship DC books were still stuck in the 50s. Superman was always coming up against some cheesy threat that he defeated in a fake clever way. I clearly remember a story where an alien had covered Metropolis with sand and then vacuumed the sand back up to collect minute quantities of nerve gas. Superman couldn’t stop him because the alien had a force field even Supes couldn’t dent. I think the alien had also kidnapped Ma and Pa Kent by traveling back in time. But if you have a ship that can throw megatons of sand, a time machine and an impenetrable force field, what do you need the nerve gas for? There’s no difference in story quality between DC and Marvel today. It just depends on whom they can hire.
You count the usual suspects like Byrne, Miller, Simonson and other American industry artists as influences, but if I had to guess, I’d say your artwork looks influenced by European comics as well. Have you read many European-produced comics, and if so, have they been an influence?
I read continental European comics when I could get them. I used to read Echo of Future Past, Epic, and Asterix comics when I could find them. I was very impressed by what I could find, but it was pretty rare back then. By the time I got to college, it was easier to find. If you include the UK, there was a minor British Invasion during the 80s. My middle school pal Lowell Francis introduced me to Brian Bolland’s Judge Dredd and Gary Leach’s Miracleman (née Marvel Man). I took a love of precision from them, and a bit of a static quality I’m afraid. Detail can kill dynamism. Oddly enough, I was into Japanese comics before they began translating them. When my mom went to Chicago to buy Korean groceries, there was a Japanese bookstore nearby. I knew Frank Miller was a manga fan, so I was excited about stealing manga techniques. But I’ve lost any obvious influences from them. The remaining influence is the detailed backgrounds I draw.
Alan Moore is famous for writing dense panel descriptions in his scripts. As an artist, do you prefer this approach, or would you rather the writer be more hands-off?
In general, I definitely prefer lighter description. It gives me more room to improvise and more opportunity to control pacing. But Alan is just brilliant with composing a page. He’ll give you the layout of the panels, and then the composition inside each panel. And his compositions always work brilliantly. I don’t know if any other writer could do this. They certainly couldn’t do this as casually as he does. He’s a true stream-of-consciousness writer. In an Alan Moore script, he’ll actually type corrections to previous sentences later in the same paragraph: he doesn’t like going backwards.
Given the high esteem in which most fans and pros hold Alan Moore, were you at all nervous about working with him on Top 10? If so, how did you overcome your nerves, and if not, how did you feel about working with him?
I was too afraid to approach him, so someone else had to kick my ass to make me do it. When Alex Ross was doing the cover to Alan’s Supreme, I told Alex that I wished I could work on an Alan Moore project too. So he told me to get off my ass and get one. After I did get the project, my enthusiasm got the better of my fear. I sent out huge piles of ideas and sketches. Somehow, Alan mined through the rubbish and polished some jewels. An example was an idea I had for an alcoholic superhero. I just asked Alan to consider what Superman’s super-vomit would be like. Alan took the idea, but applied it to Japanese movie monsters. It was much funnier than my idea. The more I worked with Alan, the more I felt comfortable with him. Alan is an amazingly easy going and friendly guy. He puts everyone at ease. He has no pretensions. Lots of quirks, but no pretensions.
As a self-described geek, what’s the geekiest thing you’ve done since becoming a working professional? Have you ever acted like a fanboy when meeting somebody you’re a fan of?
The pictures I take of myself as reference are pretty damn geeky. ‘Cuz superheroes are just people stripped to their undies in preparation for a fight. Oh, and there’s the stunts I have people do in exchange for con sketches. Like performing live audio dramas using bad 70s comics as scripts. Drawing Liefeld lines on a fan’s face and having him harass Mr. Liefeld (fortunately, Rob’s a wonderful guy with a patient sense of humor). At the last con, I had a fan swinging from a balloon as his web, and we carried him around the con while singing the 60s Spider-Man theme. But yeah, I do act like a fanboy around certain people. Folks like Eddie Campbell and Kyle Baker. Which taught me that acting like a fan is a horrible way to make friends with someone. I’m also a role-playing gamer, which might be geekier than anything else I’ve mentioned.
You said on your site that “Too much polish in art is boring. You appreciate the flash and lose track of the story. The greatest artwork shouldn’t be perfect.” To a lot of people, your artwork might look very polished. How well do you feel your work lives up to your “artwork shouldn’t be perfect” theory?
Until I get done with Top 10 projects, I can’t experiment with rougher styles. So when I talk about loose styles, I’m just pontificating on what I should do next. It may come to nothing. In a sense, the ink wash style I’m using is an attempt to introduce roughness on top of my clean lined inking style. So I am playing around there. But it’s a halfway measure. But ideally, I’d love to come up with a style that others could copy. I’d love to create an animation style studio someday. As it is, my style is killing me and I can’t hire assistants: anyone who can copy my style is already a better artist than I am. They don’t need to copy me. Ideally, I think American comics should come out on a weekly basis. This is far too much work for one artist. You need a team of artists who can create a consistent product. I think movies like “The Iron Giant” prove that this can be done without compromising quality.
On your website you call Bill Watterson “greatest sequential artist to show up since I’ve been reading”. What have you learned about sequential art from reading Calvin and Hobbes? Are there any other newspaper strips that have influenced you?
The most obvious thing I learned is that dynamism trumps polish. Looking at his style really got my mind going. Even though his style is simple, he can still achieve stunning grandeur. Some of the backgrounds for the “Spaceman Spiff” episodes are just mind blowing. His willingness to experiment still amazes me. He insisted that newspapers publish his Sunday strips uncut, so that he could experiment with panel composition. Check out his later work: there are some odd panel layouts, but they’re never confusing. And that’s the most important thing I learned from him: mess around with any artistic assumptions you like, but never let it get in the way of the storytelling. I’ve taken some influence from folks like Charles Schulz and Milt Caniff, but not nearly as much as I’ve taken from Watterson.
Did your experiences in art school teach you much about sequential art storytelling techniques? If not, how were you able to learn how to be an effective comic book storyteller?
No. At the time, most art schools considered comics embarrassing and seedy. SVA in New York was an exception. But at the Center for Creative Studies, where I went to school, there were a few brave instructors who took comics seriously. There was a comic art club, but I didn’t join it. I thought their work was predictable and boring. I occasionally experimented with drawing comics pages, but until my senior year I never completed a polished and finished page. After I decided to submit work to Marvel and DC, I began diligently studying the styles of the period. The Liefeld/Jim Lee style was known as “The Style”, and everyone thought they could get rich if they could just learn it. Fans across America were starting comics companies, imagining that their clone of the early Image books would become the next must-buy book. I consciously avoided aping “The Style”. My style was a failed attempt to ape other people. My figures were influenced by Alphonse Mucha and Barry Windsor-Smith. I also tried to introduce dramatic shadows like Mike Mignola, Michael Schwab, and Nancy Stahl. My backgrounds tried to match Katsuhiro Otomo’s Akira. My layouts were influenced by Bill Sienkiewicz, Bill Watterson, and Larry Stroman. I should stress that I failed to match up to any these artists. This is fortunate: it forced me to develop my own style.
Comic books starring minority characters are few and far between. As a Korean-American, does the lack of diversity in comic book characters bother you? Why do you think that comics haven’t been able to diversify more in the 80 or so years the industry has been around?
Laziness. Lack of originality. It takes some creativity to create a new archetype. Most attempts to insert diversity fall into two traps: bland and boring or angry and boring. An extreme example of bland and boring was Burger King’s Kids Club gang. An example of angry and boring was the Crisis redesign of Doctor Light. Or any of the endless Mr. T clones comics writers created after seeing Rocky III. Part of the fun of an Alan Moore comic book was what weird new things he’d create by twisting around everyone else’s tired old ideas. He would insert ideas completely alien to comics. He had a wonderful black assassin and superspy in Miracleman: Mr. Cream. He was unstoppable, he was creepy, and he was endlessly fun. All of his teeth had been replaced with blue sapphires.
You frequently post political and social commentaries on your website. How and when did your interest in politics and world events develop?
Always been interested, it’s just that I’m not always outraged. I’m a fiscal conservative and a social liberal. So you can see why I hate the Bush administration. My biggest pet peeve is the budget deficit. If you make a tax cut but run an even bigger deficit, it’s NOT a tax cut. You’ll have to pay those taxes later, with interest. His financial tricks could cripple America for decades. He’s destroying our status as a superpower. And you have to be willfully blind not to recognize his mismanagement of Iraq.
Do you feel it’s your responsibility as an artist to speak out about current world events, or are you doing so as a concerned American? Do you think the comic book industry and its creators have a responsibility to comment about social and political events, such as the war in Iraq?
No more so than anyone else. By which I mean that everyone is responsible for protecting and promoting our democracy. We need to be honest, tolerant, polite, reasonable, and perhaps even earnest. Within those limits, when you see wrongdoing, you need to form a reasoned plan to oppose it. I could use my art to comment about politics, but I draw too slowly.
In a recent Rolling Stone interview, Bruce Springsteen said “The press has let the country down. It has taken a very amoral stand.” Jon Stewart said much the same thing in a recent interview, and it seems like the driving force of the Daily Show recently has been taking mainstream media to task for their handling of current events. Where or to whom do you turn to for news? How well or poorly do you think the media has reported on the war in Iraq?
For news on Iraq, I turn to two websites and one print magazine. I browse www.hackworth.com and www.d-n-i.net every Tuesday. And I read the work of Seymour Hersh in The New Yorker. Most TV news is worthless. The hosts are television personalities who don’t understand the issues. Why would I want to know Bill O’Reilly’s or Andrea Mitchell’s opinions about trade policy? Or Iraqi history and culture? The best they can do is parrot the words from an interview or article they’ve read. But they look good on television and they’re likeable. The networks find it cheaper to have talking heads instead of in depth investigation. Instead we get liars being interviewed by fools.
Let’s all give a big “thank you” to Mr. Ha for taking time out his schedule to answer our questions. Make sure to check out his site, and keep an eye out for The 49ers, which has just been solicited.
As always, if you have someone that you’d like to suggest for a Big Question, let Troy know at psikotyk@aol.com.
