Developing a drawing style

My friend, Scott Christian Sava, once said that his art was a mosaic of all of the artists who inspired him.

That video really resonates with me. Like nearly everyone who picked up How To Draw Comics the Marvel Way, I was obsessed with drawing like “Big” John Buscema. I got the book in ’77, and I’ve been hooked ever since.

 

It always kinda breaks my heart a little when I read about how he didn’t really enjoy drawing superhero comics that much. His real love was in Conan — and it showed.

 

While I was struggling to achieve the mastery of human anatomy that Buscema exhibited, I was equally drawn to this guy’s work.

 

Berke Breathed’s Bloom County was everything I was looking for in a newspaper comic strip. Razer-sharp satire and a drawing style that jumped off the page at me. Besides… I wasn’t getting any better at reaching Buscema’s art, but Breathed? That seemed attainable to a pre-teen Guigar. The 1980s were dominated by him, Gary Larson and Bill Watterson. It was a wonderful time to be a comic-strip fan. Plenty of inspiration to go around.

Around the same time, I discovered Pat Oliphant. All of the biting wit of Breathed, with lineart that made my jaw drop every time it appeared on my newspaper’s editorial page.

 

And, of course, the eighties meant that any self-respecting comic book fan was scrambling to get everything with this guy’s name on it.

 

…and that was a lot. While John Byrne was writing, penciling, and inking Marvel’s signature series, The Fantastic Four, he launched the sublime Alpha Flight. His art was gorgeous in its efficiency and imagination. His character design for the Thing remains the gold standard for me.

My Mosaic

I tried to copy them all — plus a bunch I discovered along the way. Wood, Cole, Sneyd, Kelly, Horikoshi, the list goes on. (And it grows a little longer every year.) Hell, I even learned to appreciate Jack Kirby, thanks to night of impassioned advocacy by Chris Giarrusso. And a few whiskey sours. In the end, did I capture any of them?

 

Nah. Not really. And maybe it’s better that way.

I became me. And I’m still becoming who I’m gonna be. But every now and then, I’ll see an attempt at an Oliphant line or a Breathed character design and I’ll smile.

It’s like a visit from an old friend.

As you may recall, Krakenos, the Tentacled Terror was banished to a random dimension… Turns out… it may not have been as random as we thought!

Transcript

Evil Inc: Dec. 17, 2024

Transcript of the Evil Inc Comic by Brad Guigar

Panel 1

Caption: Epilogue Three: Thea's Home Planet.*

Mister Howell: "This... [coff]. This is it. We've failed!"

(Mister Howell stands amidst rubble, alongside Thea, Moon Maiden and Commander Heroic. Brickface and Bomber lay at their feet. The aliens are advancing on the trapped heroes.)

A rainbow explosion rips through the air behind the aliens: KRAKK!

Alien soldier: "What was that?! An attack?!"

Alien Commander: "Ignore it! Press forward! We almost have them!"

Panel 2

Alien Commander: "Nothing can stop us now!"

(A purple tentacle reaches out behind him...)

I've been excited to share this with you for a while now! I know many of you wanted an update on Thea and her mission to reclaim her home planet. I also realize that this may open some questions about the physics (metaphysics?) of how Thea's superpower works. So, let me share some of the worldbuilding behind this scene.

Moon Maiden

Moon Maiden presents the biggest potential confusion. After all, when she was manifested recently, the image was that of a younger woman.

However, when we were first introduced to Moon Maiden, she looked like the image on the right.

Here's the backstory. Moon Maiden was "acquired" by Thea when she was young. When she first appeared to hand Captain Heroic his keister, Thea was accessing Moon Maiden's power along with her own — resulting in a physical appearance that combined Moon Maiden, Thea, and any other super-powered beings whose powers she chose to exhibit as well.

Fun Fact: Thea was originally going to have a secret identity as a supervillain whose powers played off the concept of corporate takeovers. I was toying with The Acquisitioner and Miss Merger for names, but I scrapped that for the story of Princess Thea.

Theaverse

When Thea absorbs a person, they cease to exist in their original reality and are transported to a nonmaterial universe that exists inside Thea. While they're there, they do not age. And, as Mister Howell discovered, their reality is formed around their subconscious desires.

Thea has the power to access their powers — sometimes manifesting the powers of several of her acquisitions simultaneously. (Doing so is exceptionally taxing; she can't do it for long.) She also has the power to release them entirely, as she did when she reached her homeworld. Once they're released, they start aging again naturally.

Once released, her "acquisitions" have their own free will — unlike before, when she could access their powers freely. If she wants any control over them, she would have to "acquire" them once more by direct contact through her hands. That means she had to convince them to join her battle when they arrived on the home planet. As you can see in the scene above, some of them may have refused!

Krakenos

Let's face it, Krakenos was too good to simply discard after appearing in a grand total of nine panels. (And one scorching commission.) He's still a part of the Evil Inc universe, and there's still a chance he returns to the main story — if Thea, the Commander, and the rest are able to find a way back. (If they survive, that is.) The bigger question is this: Was this a random coincidence or was the "Randomizer" gun actually designed to do exactly what it did? Only one person knows for sure, and his mandibles are sealed.