38 - Was the Book Better?

"...maybe..."

I have been experimenting with some lost edge pieces and this is the culmination. Cloak and Dagger are a Marvel comics team. I have always loved their design and I wanted to illustrate a compelling black-and-white composition.

HOPE NEVER TO SEE IT

The writer, Andrew, is working on the conclusion and other text materials, but the visual side is ready for editors. We will send it out soon and after getting a thumbs up from the readers I can start to ink and we can hopefully get this baby printed next year.

Here is a look at the cover pencils, featuring bloody Bill Anderson, Clinton B Fisk, and Terman.

One fun thing in this project has been researching the moon phase on certain dates to make sure that it is historically accurate.

STUPID FRESH MESS

I colored two variant covers for Skottie Young. One is an unannounced image title and the other is for Avengers Beyond #1 This is my first Marvel work.

CONSTRUCTING COMICS

I was on a podcast promoting the Boys Becoming Men in a Hurry Kickstarter (Fully Funded, but there is still time to preorder your copy!). You can listen to the podcast here.

PIZZA

My son had a very special pizza topping request the other night.

JOB

I am still plugging away at illustrating the Book of Job, this past month I illustrated THE image of when God confronts Job from the whirlwind. I am really proud of this piece.

#ANDERSONARTGENERATOR

Here is a recent favorite from the AI prompt challenge on my Instagram.

ART SHOW

Infinite Realities Comics and Games will be hosting a Comic Art show on March 11th at their store in Tucker, GA I will be displaying the two-page spread from my Naturals test pages. I would love to meet you there! Event Details

With a focus on Georgia comic book artists, we’ll have over 40 original art pages on display from creators like Jack Davis, Adam Hughes, Mark Bagley, Georges Jeanty, Tom Feister, Tony Harris, June Brigman, and many, many others!

WATCH: About Time

Domhnall Gleeson is lanky and awkward and I can relate. Wow, This has cracked my top 10 movies for sure. But it’s more for the story than the film-making. (more on this in the Philosophical Rant) This movie is pitched as a Romantic Drama with some quirky humor, but it turns out to be more specifically a love letter to fathers and the amazing relationship between fathers and sons.

READ: Tumble Bumble

I have been reading picture books to my son a lot recently and one of his favorites is Tumble Bumble. Written and illustrated by Felicia Bond, the creator of the renowned If you Give a Mouse a Cookie and others, this is a wonderful short rhyming book that my son almost knows by heart. My favorite part is the line, “Zigging Zagging down the road, they bumped into a big green, FROG!” The last word is in fact “toad” but Vincent always exclaims his version before I can read the actual text. Sorry, Felicia.

LISTEN: Joseph-Whirlwind

I think that I have mentioned the band Joseph before, but the song Whirlwind is particularly gorgeous. This recommendation ties in well with my illustration of the same passage from Job. It is a great chill vibe and I love their albums as a whole.

“The book was better than the movie.” -Mr. Contrary

Does it have to be one or the other? It might be aspects of the story are best served in a visual medium. Consider the story The Great Gatsby. Which is better, the movie or the book?

The book is expertly written by F. Scott Fitzgerald. He weaves his words together into a tapestry of opulent gaudiness. I recently listened to a recording of some letters he wrote to his editor about various changes he had made to the book and how certain things could not be changed. It was clear from these letters that Fitzgerald thought about every aspect and no detail was unintentional.

The movie, directed by Baz Lurhmann in 2013, is also a masterpiece. This time, however, the opulence is displayed visually. What once was crafted in pages by Fitzgerald, Lurhmann fired in seconds into the audience with the same intentionality as the original author. Frankly, this is the only way that movies are usually under 2.5 hours. The director is able to condense a paragraph of descriptive text into a detailed background or the perfect casting of a role.

So, which is better? I would argue that they both rank high in their respective mediums. There are some books, like the Old Man and the Sea that I doubt could have a good movie adaptation because of the sheer lack of dialogue and abundance of inner thought. But it might make a great stage play, with all that inner dialogue given to a monologue.

The point: an adaptation ought not to be identical to the source material. It should be distinct and well done in the medium it is now crafted.

What is your favorite adaptation?

Cheers,

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