MattBrady
11-20-2002, 04:40 PM
<img src="http://classic.newsarama.com/Wildstorm/Promethea14.jpg" width="175" height="275" align="right" alt="Promethea 314, after Finlay">It’s subject matter can often come across with more of a textbook feel than a straight-up comic book, but one thing that can’t be said about Promethea is that it’s boring to look at. Sine its first issue, the series’ artist has been J.H. Williams who has shown a wide array of styles on its pages, from scenes that look like they belong in Van Gogh’s notebook to a wood-block style, and issue #24’s white on white.
Newsarama sat down with Williams to discuss his approach to the series, how much he’s learned about magic since he began it, and why he’s the artist on the book in the first place.
Newsarama: Looking over your detailed work on the series, and knowing that stories continue about Alan’s scripts being mini-novels, how much minutia do the scripts go into in regards to art style and overall themes?
J.H. Williams: They’re pretty detailed. They started off a lot more detailed than they are now, because we hadn’t worked together before. That’s pretty natural – he’s not exactly sure what he’s going to get out of me, and so forth, so I would get scripts that would occasionally be the size of a small novel – 100 or so pages for a 24 page comic. As time progressed, they’ve shrunk a little. I still get heavy description when it’s setting up a new scene or something kind of unusual - he can go into a couple of pages of description, but for the most part, most of the panel descriptions are just a short little paragraph now. We’ve gotten really comfortable working together. He knows what I can do.
The really great thing about it is even though he’s so meticulously detailed, he allows me room to breathe and make changes if I so choose to do. Quite frequently, I’ll want to do something differently than he described it, and he doesn’t expect me to call him about it. He’s very open-minded. Often, I’ll get a two-page description of a scene, but at the end, he’ll add on, “But, if you see it differently…” It works out really well in the end.
NRAMA: Before starting Promethea, were you familiar at all with the brands of mysticism and magic that Alan has ended up exploring in the series, or was this all an education for you?
JHW: I’ve always had an interest in the subject, but I wouldn’t say I’m anywhere nearly as knowledgeable as Alan. I’ve learned a lot about it by working on the series, but I did have a definite interest in the subject. Even though, when we first started the series we hadn’t discussed my interest in the subject, it was just this natural thing that occurred which lend credence to the whole prospect of magic to begin with – it was already there in me, waiting to be discovered.
NRAMA: So as you progressed, it was almost like tapping something inside of you that you didn’t know was there?
JHW: Yeah – I had some books on the subject, but nothing nearly as exploratory as what Alan has done. When we first started the series, he said he wanted to have the book end up being about magic, with a lot of the series devoted to exploration. In our conversations at the time, I thought that was really cool, but never told him I had an interest in it – but it was like he just kind of knew that I would be game for that, so it was all kind of interesting.
NRAMA: Another one of the strange coincidences that surround Alan Moore…
JHW: Yeah, definitely, but all very fascinating at the same time.
NRAMA: Getting down to the looks of the books themselves, does Alan give you an overall theme for the specific issues that match the covers, say, the Virgil Finlay issue, or the issue with the Van Gogh theme?
JHW: The funny thing about the covers is that every one of them has been done before we see one page of script. Todd Klein has a big hand in the reason why the covers come out the way they do – a lot of the suggestions come from him. Todd or I would call Alan and tell him that we need to work on a cover, and ask what he’d like to see on it. From there, he’ll give us a rough idea, and Todd and I would then confer and see what we could do.
NRAMA: And the two of you decided that homages to artists was the way to go?
<a href="http://classic.newsarama.com/Wildstorm/Promethea24.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://classic.newsarama.com/Wildstorm/Promethea24_t.jpg" width="175" height="262" align="left" alt="Promethea #25" border="0"></a>JHW: Yeah. At the beginning of the series, Todd and I thought that a lot of the things about the series were going to delve into the connection between art and magic, so we thought it would be appropriate for the covers to homage different types of art or artists. As far as overall themes for issues, for example, the whole Kaballah Quest storyline, it was pretty much my idea to jump around artistically, due to one sphere being so visually different from another in the quest. When Alan said that he wanted to do this jaunt in the story, I wanted to give the reader the feeling that they had entered another reality – each sphere had to look quite different from one another.
So – in that sense, before Alan would even start writing, I lined up which spheres would be suited to different styles of art. Take the Van Gogh issue for example – having an impressionistic painting feel to the issue worked out perfectly with what Alan wrote. So – once I had them figured out, I’d suggest them to Alan, and he’d run with them. Giving him little snippets of ideas that were in my head would feed him, and he would run with them and give it back to me fuller than I gave it to him.
NRAMA: Hearing you put it that way stresses something Alan has inssted upon since the beginning of the ABC line that some people still probably just brush off, that the artists are the co-creators of the characters, and the series are collaborations in the truest sense of the word…
JHW: Oh, very much so. I think a lot of the general readership out there doesn’t realize that about Alan, and how much he loves working with different artists. If you look at his past creations, each one has had a very distinct flavor. Alan is very much into seeing what his script results in with the particular artist he works with, and I think that’s one of the reasons why he is really open to me making changes. In a way, it’s kind of a surprise for him – he’s not just dictating.
NRAMA: Basically, Alan is interested in merging your point of view with his in order to come up with something completely unique, not wholly his and not wholly yours?
JHW: Exactly.
NRAMA: Taking what you’ve said, and using an issue as an example, let’s look at #22 where Sophie and Barbara are in the garden. You and Mick [Gray, inker] illustrated it so that it’s graytone with bits of color here and there. Did Alan ask you do add certain colors, or was it all you?
<a href="http://classic.newsarama.com/Wildstorm/promethea2.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://classic.newsarama.com/Wildstorm/promethea2_t.jpg" width="175" height="391" align="right" alt="detail from Promethea #23" border="0"></a>JHW: That one was one of the toughest issues that we had to come up with. With the whole Kaballah thing, each sphere is represented by a certain set of colors – you have the main color of the sphere, and then the queen set of colors, and the king set of colors, and so on. Alan’s viewpoint of understanding the color scheme in that sphere was that gray was the predominant color of that sphere, but he pictured everything being prismatic, like the leaves and other things have slight, shimmering rainbows around them, which, in theory, sounded great. I worked with paint and tried to do a couple of pieces like that, and they just looked horrible, so I came up with the idea of just spots of color over a range of tones – some blues and reds and yellows, to give the idea of a prismatic set of colors.
The result came out really nice – Alan was very pleased with it. Making a lot of the gray art in that have kind of a soft edge to it made it all seem misty and dewy as well, which is how Alan pictured it as well. That was a true challenge, but I was very happy that he was pleased with the end result, even though it’s not exactly what he described. He was completely understanding that what he was describing was probably impossible.
NRAMA: So, in addition to adjusting your style for each sphere, you had to adjust the underlying color scheme of the issue as well?
JHW: Right. Each one of the spheres has had its own challenge, color-scheme wise and working in particular styles. For example, issue #23, the white sphere, the secondary colors are white flecked with gold and brilliant white. How do you deal with that? We could only go as white as the paper was, really. So far, now that we’ve finished the whole quest, looking back, considering how difficult it is to work with the colors of the Kaballah system, I think we really pulled off some outrageous things, and we were amazed at how well the colors worked together.
Reading the magic texts about the colors was pretty daunting – it reads fine, but while at least I was originally reading it, I was also trying to figure out how I could make it work, and when I started, I couldn’t see it. By looking back, we’ve been pleased with each and every result, and how well the combinations actually worked.
NRAMA: In all your art, what does Mick bring to the table?
JHW: He’s a phenomenal inker, to start.
NRAMA: Given the wide pendulum swings that the art can undergo from one issue to the next, is Mick on board in the discussions between you and Todd from the very start as far as tone and theme?
<a href="http://classic.newsarama.com/Wildstorm/promethea1.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://classic.newsarama.com/Wildstorm/promethea1_t.jpg" width="175" height="275" align="right" alt="Williams' Van Gogh style from issue #19" border="0"></a>JHW: The direction of the art is pretty much discussed between me and Alan, and then I fill Mick in on what’s happening, and he’s game to try anything. He loves the fact that the book gets so experimental. He just thrives in the challenges say, of the wood-block issue [#21]. He though the end result on that one was great, and it had a completely different look than anything we had done together before.
NRAMA: Speaking to your approach with the art, and your background – the looks and styles that you’re pulling off on both the interiors and covers of Promethea…this isn’t a case where you were growing up thinking you wanted to be the next John Byrne or George Perez, was it?
JHW: Not really – my influences are pretty far spread out. When I first got into comics, as a fan, I was really into Byrne’s X-Men and Michael Golden. As a kid, I would totally emulate drawing like them on my scratch pads. But even when I was a kid, I wasn’t drawn to any one particular art style in comics. I didn’t appreciate Byrne more than Golden – it was all really fascinating to me.
So as I grew older, any new forms of art or anything that I ad not seen before would just compel me. So working on the Kaballah Quest was a rare opportunity in comics where you can really flex your muscles and do an entire issue in a woodblock or Van Gogh style. It’s really cool that I’m able to bring in some outside influences that aren’t necessarily related to comics. As far as my current influences, they’re all over the place – film, European comics, and lots of stuff from American creators. I’m very much an enthusiast and advocate of exploring new art styles. I’ll read anything, from Moebius to Joe Matt.
NRAMA: In the time that you’ve been on the series, you’ve been exposed to Alan’s undiluted thoughts and beliefs through his scripts, probably more than anyone outside of his inner circle of friends and confidants. Over the run of the series, has the material affected you on a personal level?
<img src="http://classic.newsarama.com/Wildstorm/prometheapreview.jpg" width="175" height="230" align="left" border="0">JHW: Oh absolutely – in a number of ways that you can’t put your finger on. I’m still the same guy and still have the same interests, but I definitely have a different outlook on the world around me. It’s hard to describe, but it has a lot to do with being involved in the magic stuff – and there are those weird experiences in there as well that make you really think about things.
NRAMA: Is there any time, even today after three years of working together, that you still wonder why Alan picked you?
Oh yeah – and I have never had the courage to ask him that, either. I’ve written him a couple letters over the years, explaining how grateful I am to have the opportunity to work with him. It’s a mind-blowing experience, and I don’t think you can get any higher, creatively. Promethea is such a creative, innovative book in any number of ways, and it’s just very weird to think that he chose me, and I actually had something worthy to bring to the table. It’s pretty amazing to think about.
NRAMA: So Alan picking you for the book in a way was, but in a way wasn’t just a shot in the dark. After all, with your work on Chase, you really didn’t have a chance to showcase the breadth of your influences and what you can produce – it would seem like you were initially, more of a risk than a perfect artist for the book.
JHW: Yeah – it’s pretty wild. When I first got the call from Scott Dunbier, we went back and forth for two or three calls before I agreed to do it, because it was somewhat daunting. When Scott first called me about it, he was very straight up, and let me know that I wasn’t, by far, their first choice…
NRAMA: Oh - thanks…
JHW: Yeah – they were looking for big name guys like Alan Davis, but for any number of reasons, none of them could do it, so during this whole process, they were trying to find the right person, my name kept being pushed on my by Alex Ross, which was really weird because I had never met him. And then Todd Klein started pushing for me, and I had never met him either. So Scott finally convinced me to send him a package of what I had done in the past, and he showed that to Alan, and Alan picked me out and said I was the guy.
I don’t know – some of the things in Chase were designy – nothing like they are in Promethea, but still, it was there.
Maybe one of these days I have to ask him why I’m drawing this book.
Newsarama sat down with Williams to discuss his approach to the series, how much he’s learned about magic since he began it, and why he’s the artist on the book in the first place.
Newsarama: Looking over your detailed work on the series, and knowing that stories continue about Alan’s scripts being mini-novels, how much minutia do the scripts go into in regards to art style and overall themes?
J.H. Williams: They’re pretty detailed. They started off a lot more detailed than they are now, because we hadn’t worked together before. That’s pretty natural – he’s not exactly sure what he’s going to get out of me, and so forth, so I would get scripts that would occasionally be the size of a small novel – 100 or so pages for a 24 page comic. As time progressed, they’ve shrunk a little. I still get heavy description when it’s setting up a new scene or something kind of unusual - he can go into a couple of pages of description, but for the most part, most of the panel descriptions are just a short little paragraph now. We’ve gotten really comfortable working together. He knows what I can do.
The really great thing about it is even though he’s so meticulously detailed, he allows me room to breathe and make changes if I so choose to do. Quite frequently, I’ll want to do something differently than he described it, and he doesn’t expect me to call him about it. He’s very open-minded. Often, I’ll get a two-page description of a scene, but at the end, he’ll add on, “But, if you see it differently…” It works out really well in the end.
NRAMA: Before starting Promethea, were you familiar at all with the brands of mysticism and magic that Alan has ended up exploring in the series, or was this all an education for you?
JHW: I’ve always had an interest in the subject, but I wouldn’t say I’m anywhere nearly as knowledgeable as Alan. I’ve learned a lot about it by working on the series, but I did have a definite interest in the subject. Even though, when we first started the series we hadn’t discussed my interest in the subject, it was just this natural thing that occurred which lend credence to the whole prospect of magic to begin with – it was already there in me, waiting to be discovered.
NRAMA: So as you progressed, it was almost like tapping something inside of you that you didn’t know was there?
JHW: Yeah – I had some books on the subject, but nothing nearly as exploratory as what Alan has done. When we first started the series, he said he wanted to have the book end up being about magic, with a lot of the series devoted to exploration. In our conversations at the time, I thought that was really cool, but never told him I had an interest in it – but it was like he just kind of knew that I would be game for that, so it was all kind of interesting.
NRAMA: Another one of the strange coincidences that surround Alan Moore…
JHW: Yeah, definitely, but all very fascinating at the same time.
NRAMA: Getting down to the looks of the books themselves, does Alan give you an overall theme for the specific issues that match the covers, say, the Virgil Finlay issue, or the issue with the Van Gogh theme?
JHW: The funny thing about the covers is that every one of them has been done before we see one page of script. Todd Klein has a big hand in the reason why the covers come out the way they do – a lot of the suggestions come from him. Todd or I would call Alan and tell him that we need to work on a cover, and ask what he’d like to see on it. From there, he’ll give us a rough idea, and Todd and I would then confer and see what we could do.
NRAMA: And the two of you decided that homages to artists was the way to go?
<a href="http://classic.newsarama.com/Wildstorm/Promethea24.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://classic.newsarama.com/Wildstorm/Promethea24_t.jpg" width="175" height="262" align="left" alt="Promethea #25" border="0"></a>JHW: Yeah. At the beginning of the series, Todd and I thought that a lot of the things about the series were going to delve into the connection between art and magic, so we thought it would be appropriate for the covers to homage different types of art or artists. As far as overall themes for issues, for example, the whole Kaballah Quest storyline, it was pretty much my idea to jump around artistically, due to one sphere being so visually different from another in the quest. When Alan said that he wanted to do this jaunt in the story, I wanted to give the reader the feeling that they had entered another reality – each sphere had to look quite different from one another.
So – in that sense, before Alan would even start writing, I lined up which spheres would be suited to different styles of art. Take the Van Gogh issue for example – having an impressionistic painting feel to the issue worked out perfectly with what Alan wrote. So – once I had them figured out, I’d suggest them to Alan, and he’d run with them. Giving him little snippets of ideas that were in my head would feed him, and he would run with them and give it back to me fuller than I gave it to him.
NRAMA: Hearing you put it that way stresses something Alan has inssted upon since the beginning of the ABC line that some people still probably just brush off, that the artists are the co-creators of the characters, and the series are collaborations in the truest sense of the word…
JHW: Oh, very much so. I think a lot of the general readership out there doesn’t realize that about Alan, and how much he loves working with different artists. If you look at his past creations, each one has had a very distinct flavor. Alan is very much into seeing what his script results in with the particular artist he works with, and I think that’s one of the reasons why he is really open to me making changes. In a way, it’s kind of a surprise for him – he’s not just dictating.
NRAMA: Basically, Alan is interested in merging your point of view with his in order to come up with something completely unique, not wholly his and not wholly yours?
JHW: Exactly.
NRAMA: Taking what you’ve said, and using an issue as an example, let’s look at #22 where Sophie and Barbara are in the garden. You and Mick [Gray, inker] illustrated it so that it’s graytone with bits of color here and there. Did Alan ask you do add certain colors, or was it all you?
<a href="http://classic.newsarama.com/Wildstorm/promethea2.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://classic.newsarama.com/Wildstorm/promethea2_t.jpg" width="175" height="391" align="right" alt="detail from Promethea #23" border="0"></a>JHW: That one was one of the toughest issues that we had to come up with. With the whole Kaballah thing, each sphere is represented by a certain set of colors – you have the main color of the sphere, and then the queen set of colors, and the king set of colors, and so on. Alan’s viewpoint of understanding the color scheme in that sphere was that gray was the predominant color of that sphere, but he pictured everything being prismatic, like the leaves and other things have slight, shimmering rainbows around them, which, in theory, sounded great. I worked with paint and tried to do a couple of pieces like that, and they just looked horrible, so I came up with the idea of just spots of color over a range of tones – some blues and reds and yellows, to give the idea of a prismatic set of colors.
The result came out really nice – Alan was very pleased with it. Making a lot of the gray art in that have kind of a soft edge to it made it all seem misty and dewy as well, which is how Alan pictured it as well. That was a true challenge, but I was very happy that he was pleased with the end result, even though it’s not exactly what he described. He was completely understanding that what he was describing was probably impossible.
NRAMA: So, in addition to adjusting your style for each sphere, you had to adjust the underlying color scheme of the issue as well?
JHW: Right. Each one of the spheres has had its own challenge, color-scheme wise and working in particular styles. For example, issue #23, the white sphere, the secondary colors are white flecked with gold and brilliant white. How do you deal with that? We could only go as white as the paper was, really. So far, now that we’ve finished the whole quest, looking back, considering how difficult it is to work with the colors of the Kaballah system, I think we really pulled off some outrageous things, and we were amazed at how well the colors worked together.
Reading the magic texts about the colors was pretty daunting – it reads fine, but while at least I was originally reading it, I was also trying to figure out how I could make it work, and when I started, I couldn’t see it. By looking back, we’ve been pleased with each and every result, and how well the combinations actually worked.
NRAMA: In all your art, what does Mick bring to the table?
JHW: He’s a phenomenal inker, to start.
NRAMA: Given the wide pendulum swings that the art can undergo from one issue to the next, is Mick on board in the discussions between you and Todd from the very start as far as tone and theme?
<a href="http://classic.newsarama.com/Wildstorm/promethea1.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://classic.newsarama.com/Wildstorm/promethea1_t.jpg" width="175" height="275" align="right" alt="Williams' Van Gogh style from issue #19" border="0"></a>JHW: The direction of the art is pretty much discussed between me and Alan, and then I fill Mick in on what’s happening, and he’s game to try anything. He loves the fact that the book gets so experimental. He just thrives in the challenges say, of the wood-block issue [#21]. He though the end result on that one was great, and it had a completely different look than anything we had done together before.
NRAMA: Speaking to your approach with the art, and your background – the looks and styles that you’re pulling off on both the interiors and covers of Promethea…this isn’t a case where you were growing up thinking you wanted to be the next John Byrne or George Perez, was it?
JHW: Not really – my influences are pretty far spread out. When I first got into comics, as a fan, I was really into Byrne’s X-Men and Michael Golden. As a kid, I would totally emulate drawing like them on my scratch pads. But even when I was a kid, I wasn’t drawn to any one particular art style in comics. I didn’t appreciate Byrne more than Golden – it was all really fascinating to me.
So as I grew older, any new forms of art or anything that I ad not seen before would just compel me. So working on the Kaballah Quest was a rare opportunity in comics where you can really flex your muscles and do an entire issue in a woodblock or Van Gogh style. It’s really cool that I’m able to bring in some outside influences that aren’t necessarily related to comics. As far as my current influences, they’re all over the place – film, European comics, and lots of stuff from American creators. I’m very much an enthusiast and advocate of exploring new art styles. I’ll read anything, from Moebius to Joe Matt.
NRAMA: In the time that you’ve been on the series, you’ve been exposed to Alan’s undiluted thoughts and beliefs through his scripts, probably more than anyone outside of his inner circle of friends and confidants. Over the run of the series, has the material affected you on a personal level?
<img src="http://classic.newsarama.com/Wildstorm/prometheapreview.jpg" width="175" height="230" align="left" border="0">JHW: Oh absolutely – in a number of ways that you can’t put your finger on. I’m still the same guy and still have the same interests, but I definitely have a different outlook on the world around me. It’s hard to describe, but it has a lot to do with being involved in the magic stuff – and there are those weird experiences in there as well that make you really think about things.
NRAMA: Is there any time, even today after three years of working together, that you still wonder why Alan picked you?
Oh yeah – and I have never had the courage to ask him that, either. I’ve written him a couple letters over the years, explaining how grateful I am to have the opportunity to work with him. It’s a mind-blowing experience, and I don’t think you can get any higher, creatively. Promethea is such a creative, innovative book in any number of ways, and it’s just very weird to think that he chose me, and I actually had something worthy to bring to the table. It’s pretty amazing to think about.
NRAMA: So Alan picking you for the book in a way was, but in a way wasn’t just a shot in the dark. After all, with your work on Chase, you really didn’t have a chance to showcase the breadth of your influences and what you can produce – it would seem like you were initially, more of a risk than a perfect artist for the book.
JHW: Yeah – it’s pretty wild. When I first got the call from Scott Dunbier, we went back and forth for two or three calls before I agreed to do it, because it was somewhat daunting. When Scott first called me about it, he was very straight up, and let me know that I wasn’t, by far, their first choice…
NRAMA: Oh - thanks…
JHW: Yeah – they were looking for big name guys like Alan Davis, but for any number of reasons, none of them could do it, so during this whole process, they were trying to find the right person, my name kept being pushed on my by Alex Ross, which was really weird because I had never met him. And then Todd Klein started pushing for me, and I had never met him either. So Scott finally convinced me to send him a package of what I had done in the past, and he showed that to Alan, and Alan picked me out and said I was the guy.
I don’t know – some of the things in Chase were designy – nothing like they are in Promethea, but still, it was there.
Maybe one of these days I have to ask him why I’m drawing this book.