Ted Naifeh ([info]tednaifeh) wrote,
@ 2005-11-17 14:37:00
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Polly and DJ, sittin' in a tree...
Polly and the Pirates issue 2 is officially out, as is the Death Junior trade collection. Look for them both in all quality comics shops. DJ is also available in the graphic novel sections of Many fine bookstores. I'm told that Image has already burned through the first print run of the DJ trade, and is going back to press. This is a first for me, that a book I worked on has gone back to press the day it came out. I'm pretty stoked. I imagine the awesome Mike Mignola cover didn't hurt.

In other news, it looks like I'll be flying to France to appear at the Angouleme Festival at the end of January, to promote the French edition of Courtney Crumrin. More news on that as it comes.

By the way, Polly and the Pirates is getting universally good reviews so far. Thanks especially to TheFourthRail.com, Millarworld Magazine and AICN.

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[info]julzerator
2005-11-17 10:48 pm UTC (link)
Polly *rocks*!!

I loves it!

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[info]tednaifeh
2005-11-17 11:16 pm UTC (link)
YAY!

(Reply to this) (Parent)
AWSEOME...!
[info]violet_hemlock
2005-11-17 10:52 pm UTC (link)
How cool is that that someone I know and dig is doing so well. Rock on TEDDY BOY!

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Re: AWSEOME...!
[info]tednaifeh
2005-11-17 11:17 pm UTC (link)
Cheers.

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[info]blissitate
2005-11-17 11:43 pm UTC (link)
I really enjoyed issue 2. I'm imagining you're having a fun time trying to write out exactly how that one crazy, Irish pirate speaks, and having the spelling still make sense. Keep up the good work. On a sidenote, Dan Brereton thinks very highly of you. I still wish you guys could team up to create something amazing and long lasting. Better yet, both of you just come to Wizard World Texas next year. I'm still waiting for that new Courtney tshirt design. I'll settle for a Polly one if it's cute. :)

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[info]tednaifeh
2005-11-18 12:11 am UTC (link)
Dan's very busy with his own stuff, as am I. We've talked about doing something together, but the price has to be right. I'll bring it up with him again. Personally, I'd like it to be something we co-write and co-draw, but I'm not sure we could survive the process.

Wizard World Texas is a maybe. I totally need to come out to Texas and promote. Long overdue.

Courtney and Polly shirts... that's up to Oni. I need to light a fire, though.

Scrimshaw is Irish, but Kutner (and his brother Percy) comes from the London slums. His speech impediment comes from the pointy teeth. Percy has it too.

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[info]julzerator
2005-11-18 01:13 am UTC (link)
Aww.. I have *so many ideas* for Polly t-shirts!!!

*sigh*

Can't wait for ComicCon next year!

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[info]blissitate
2005-11-18 02:31 am UTC (link)
Dan thinks that you don't need him art-wise since you're very talented. But co-writing and co-drawing would be amazing. Keep us posted. Maybe you could use Iron Kitten as a base. I'm still waiting on those postcards. :)

Thanks for the info on your slumy pirates. You're so good about replying for your fans.

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[info]tednaifeh
2005-11-18 02:50 am UTC (link)
Dan's just lazy and doesn't want to do any of the drawing. We've talked about it at length. But I think we make a great art team, especially when He's penciling and I'm inking.

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Off-topic
[info]dj_spider
2005-11-17 11:51 pm UTC (link)
There's a good chance I'll be out in you area the 2nd week of January as a birfday prezzie (since I'll need a break from holiday retail and Das Pet is out there every 2 weeks now). Dinner, p'raps?

Oh, and yay Polly!!!

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Re: Off-topic
[info]tednaifeh
2005-11-18 12:04 am UTC (link)
Definitely dinner. Tell you pet to give us a buzz.

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[info]ghostgecko
2005-11-18 12:07 am UTC (link)
Yes, I managed to snag the last copy of "Polly" at my fine local comic book shop (Beyond Comics). I'm enjoying the humor, action adventure, and psuedo-Victoriana. When I heard "girl pirate" I sort of went, "Eh, I'll get it but I don't know if I'll like it.". Glad I got it, since it gets better with each reread.

I only have one nitpick - well, a personal nitpick - and a question.
The nitpick concerns the wash shading. Your art is so stylized and sharp-edged that the wash looks a little odd, like and afterthought. Otherwise, I'm enjoying drowning in the details - the hybrid architecture and carvings on the houseboat school walls, the foam dripping from the Emporer's moustache (great character!), and that sort of thing.
The question - is Kutner a really strange looking human, or is he some kind of Night Critter?

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[info]tednaifeh
2005-11-18 12:20 am UTC (link)
I see your point about the wash. Truth to tell, the whole book is drawn on a small scale than Courtney, since it's to be reproduced small for the trade. I may not do it that way for the second series, but overall, I still think it looks pretty good. The wash was to try and give the piecea, frankly, watery feel. Also, I didn't want it to have a sharp and stark a look as Courtney, for obvious reasons.

The Emperor is, of course, Emperor Norton, who was a real historical figure from San Francisco. You should check him out on Wikipedia.

Kutner is human, just barely. Being born and raised in the London slums hasn't done anything for his looks, or course. The teeth were part of an initiation to a particular pirate crew, from which he and his brother Percy jumped ship to join the Titania.

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[info]ghostgecko
2005-11-18 12:35 am UTC (link)
Oh, watery feel! I get it now LOL. You know what would be nifty, if it was repro'd in sepia tone. I suppose this would rack up the printing costs, though.
Personally I just tend to like stark black and white art - I hate seeing fine line work muddied up by incompetant, omnipresent coloring. Shoot, I bitched and moaned when I saw DJ was colored, but I was totally won over by the time I saw the Evil Dead 2 poster in his room, and it fits the more childlike, humorous story. GREAT story, so cute. Were the undead dinosaur skeletons an homage to "Dr. Mordrdid" or just great minds thinking alike?
And yes, Emperor Norton! There's a Robert Silverberg story where America has fractured into tiny nation-states and he actually *is* ruler. "The Palace at Midnight", I believe.

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[info]tednaifeh
2005-11-18 07:54 pm UTC (link)
I'd love to get Oni to do an extra color, but it costs more. Four color, of course, costs four times as much. With each extra color, they have to do an extra plate for every eight pages. A plate is a huge piece of steel with the artwork etched into it. It is, to put it simply, wiped with ink and pressed onto the paper. For comics and books, they press eight pages at a time, so each sheet has eight pages on each side. Then the whole thing is folded into book form and the edges of the folds are cut off, so that the book is exactly the right size and each page lines up precisely. To add a second color, like sepia, you have to create a whole extra plate for that color. I did this for the How Loathsome trade. You could skip the black, and just print with the sepia tone, but I don't think it would look as good. Printing, in my opinion, needs a solid black.

I've never heard of Dr. Mordrdid.

I'll have to read that Silverberg story. Sounds interesting.

The evil dead poster was tough, and I'm not sure it worked, but I'm glad you liked it. The Grateful Dead poster was a bit too messy. I wish I'd chosen something simpler and less liney. I think it clashed a bit with the rest of the artwork, being too busy compared to everything else. The Evil Dead poster I ran through a smart-blur filter in photoshop to break it down into simpler, smoother shapes of color, so that it wouldn't look out of place. I worked pretty hard on the DJ color schemes to make sure they worked well with the flavor of the book. All that vivid, happy color went against my instincts, But I think it worked out. There were a few pages where I finished it and looked it over, and realized that it was too monochromatic, and I needed to throw in a whole extra color theme. Page 2 is a great example. If I hadn't made the umbrella stand red, the whole page would have had a different feel. It would have been a blue, beige and yellow page with a little red in one corner. It needed more red.

By contrast, I'm going to be coloring the Courtney Crumrin series for the french edition, and I'll be leaning far more toward monochrome colors, similar to the original covers. That should be a blast.

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[info]ghostgecko
2005-11-18 11:16 pm UTC (link)
Ah, you MUST see "Dr Mordrid". It's a cheesy yet enjoyable low budget movie - at the climax, a pair of extradimensional sorcerers animate two skeletons, a tyrannosaurus and a mammoth, that fight each other as part of a wizardly duel.

I know about the printing stuff - I've done some of that myself. I just thought the wash would look interesting. I did like how it came out in How Loathsome, since the characters were more realistic in proportion and detail the added shading really gave them solidity. But with really stylized characters it seems to have an Unhappy Valley effect. Like, you don't notice Courtney doesn't have a nose until you see her face shaded in because the more stylized the art is, the easier you can accept a convention like that. I did take the issues of Coven of Mystics into my advanced Photoshop class as the good examples when we had to bring in examples of shopping done well and done poorly. IMHO, covers look better when there's a unity of color effect or something is monochromatic with one exception (like #1). When you're standing back scanning the comics shelf and everything is a riot of overly bright color and new-toy syndrome (let's use every filter Photoshop offers! Yay!), a more reserved color scheme creates a little block of unity that draws the eye. But, y'know, that's just one dude's opinion.

The color in DJ for sure fit the book. Fight those instincts! The whole Grim Reaper as a cuddly father figure, the idea of a beginner's scythe, Pandora going to family therapy for her obsessive-compulsive disorder - so much great stuff, and when you think about it, despite all the zombies, ghosts and death gods, it's just like an episode of Leave It To Beaver.

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Polly and the Pirates
[info]markboss
2005-11-18 12:55 am UTC (link)
when did issue 1 come out?? I have TWO shops near me. I did not see it their, and I asked!!! Kill them all!!

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Re: Polly and the Pirates
[info]a_cline
2005-11-18 03:07 am UTC (link)
look at Ted's earlier nov. 28th post titled "When Will Polly's Ship Come In?" he gave me details on how to order the book, which i did last week. im still waiting on a reply from my comic store.

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Re: Polly and the Pirates
[info]tednaifeh
2005-11-18 08:04 pm UTC (link)
Issue one came out a month and a half ago. We're adhering to a strict month and a half schedule. Err.... Yeah. Really. Has nothing to do with my Hawai'i vacation in September.

Anyhoo, It should still be available, and if not, your local store can order it from Diamond. I know this means talking to creepy 'comic book guys' who're too socially backward to have odered the coolest chick book on the market in the first place, but sometimes you have to work to get the good stuff. Otherwise you just end up with Spidergirl, the Britney Spears of comics. Snore.

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[info]divalea
2005-11-18 02:17 am UTC (link)
Ooooh, France! AWESOME. I know you will knock them dead.

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[info]tednaifeh
2005-11-18 08:05 pm UTC (link)
I hope so, and I hope it won't be because of my hideous attempts at french.

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(Anonymous)
2005-11-18 10:39 pm UTC (link)
Hi Ted,

Speacking of colors,
have you received my mail with the color tests ?

French polly fan number one Nicolas

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[info]tednaifeh
2005-11-18 11:20 pm UTC (link)
No. Send them to rottensquid@gmail.com.

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Great reads
(Anonymous)
2005-11-21 02:11 am UTC (link)
I'm enjoying Polly tremendously, and #2 was great. I like the Wash because it gives the book a softer tone and is quite distinctive from Courtney. Best of all is the ship designs - I'd love to live in one of those Victorian boats. Briefly, this is one great series.
I also bought Death Jr this week and had a nice weekend reading it; the story is great and I laughed out loud several times. Your artwork was fantastic as always, and I especially loved DJ's bed design! I enjoyed the color, although I found them sometimes a bit bright for the story, although that might have been a concious tone to emphasize that "Death living in Suburbia". Sequel, sequel!
Finally, will the Courtney French book collect a complete series? I¿d love to have one, especially because you're in charge of the coloring and because of the way the bigger format will surely show-off the art.
Have a great time at Angouleme; I've heard its THE place to be if you are a comic book creator or fan.
Have a nice week,

Juan Manuel

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