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12-21-2007, 08:58 AM
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#1 |
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ARTISTS OF THE LANTERN II - IVAN REIS
 by Vaneta RogersBetween Rann-Thanagar War and Sinestro Corps War, it's getting hard to imagine a huge DC space battle without the pencils of Ivan Reis. In last week's Green Lantern #25, readers got the end of the Sinestro Corps War in an oversized issue with art by Ivan Reis and Ethan Van Sciver. While we spoke to Van Sciver yesterday about his work on the issue, today we talk to Reis, the Brazilian artist who has been the regular penciler on Green Lantern since issue #10. His 43 pages in this issue chronicled battles galore, from the fisticuffs fight between Hal Jordan, Kyle Rayner and Sinestro to the larger-than-life battle over the skies of Earth between hundreds of DC heroes and villains. When we contacted Reis for the interview, he warned that he might struggle with communication in English. But the language of Green Lantern ended up being universal. And as we talked to the artist (who said his name is pronounced "Ee-vonn Ray-ees"), we found out more about his designs for all those spreads we saw in Issue #25, as well as his thoughts on the characters he draws every month within the pages of Green Lantern. Newsarama: First, does it feel good to have completed the Sinestro Corps War? That must have been a huge relief when you got that last page of issue #25 done. You drew 43 pages in that issue alone. How does it feel to have accomplished it? Ivan Reis: It was one of the most entertaining comics I've ever worked on. When I was working on the book, I was sure I was doing something really big. I've thought I had to do a really epic work, and as soon as I did the last page of this issue, I immediately noticed I've worked on one of the most important comics in my career. NRAMA: For people who don't know a lot about your background, can you tell us how you first got into drawing comics in Brazil? What got you interested in doing this as a career and how did you start? IR: When I did my first professional comic, I was 14 years old. It was a short tale about vampires. I grew up reading Conan and Superman that my father always bought for us. He liked to read comics as well. When I was 16, I got work in one of the biggest comics studios here in Brazil, Studio Mauricio de Sousa. I worked for three years doing comics for children, then I left Mauricio directly to do Ghost for Dark Horse. NRAMA: Your career has taken you from working at Dark Horse to Marvel and then DC. I'm sure you've heard of people pointing to a certain comic and calling it an artist's "signature work." Out of everything you've done, what would you call your signature work? IR: I think it's Green Lantern or it will be now. I'm sure about it that before Green Lantern, my "signature work" was Lady Death of Chaos Comics, because I worked with Lady Death for above five years. It was a long time working with the same character. When I got Action Comics to do, some people said I'd do breasts on Superman. [laughs] I knew how to just do big women and demons, and to work with superheroes was a really new thing for me. NRAMA: Let's talk about the Green Lantern universe as a whole for a minute. What is it about their story that appeals to you as an artist?  IR: Everything! As an artist, I like to draw different things, and with Green Lantern, I can draw either normal people and common things or big space battles and aliens.NRAMA: Do you think your style fits well with Green Lantern? IR: I think so. I have a style I learned with classic schooling. And this style works with practically all characters, since you adapt a detail or other. NRAMA: Something that stands out in your style, at least in your recent work on Rann-Thanagar and now on Green Lantern, is your figure work and the amazing number of characters you can draw in a space battle. Do you think that's one of your strengths? And if so, why do you think you're so good at that? IR: I don't know. Really, I think when I did my first big spread with hundreds of characters, the writer must have thought, "Hey, this guy is able to do a big mess with a lot of characters," and the editor said, "OK, write another hundred pages with thousands of characters for him." [laughs] This began with Lady Death. Each of her books was a war between Paradise and Hell. I think I learned to do the same thing with space battles! But what is really hard is to do each mess different from one another. NRAMA: Any idea how many characters you drew in Green Lantern #25? More than you've ever drawn in a single issue? IR: I'll begin to count from now on! [laughs] But I'm sure this book was the single issue I've drawn more characters than ever before. NRAMA: When you draw a Green Lantern fight scene, with people able to fly, how do you imagine that and put it onto paper? You can't use references, can you? What's that process like, drawing a mid-air battle? IR: It's really fun to do. Normally I don't use references. First, I think that the scene can't be a mess. I need to understand what happens without needing colors to see what's going on. I try to do a logical way that the eyes follow on the scene without cutting off a character for another. Then with the blank space, I do the background, trying not to mess the principal scene. NRAMA: It's interesting that you use the word, "mess," because with the hundreds of characters and explosions and constructs in this story, there was a danger of it looking that way. What was the biggest challenge, for you, in drawing this issue and the whole Sinestro Corps story? IR: The biggest challenge is to do each page with thousands of characters and big battles so that it's different from another page with thousands of characters and big battles. The reader can't see a page and think that he saw the same page before in the same book. NRAMA: Let's talk about that. I'm looking at those first two splashes in issue #25 that each spanned two pages. They're both battle scenes with about a hundred characters each, but they're obviously designed to show different things and be distinct from one another. On the first one, you had to draw a huge battle between Green Lanterns and Sinestro Corps members. What were you trying to communicate on those pages and how did you design the art to show the scope of the war? IR: The first thing was to show which Green Lanterns and Sinestro Corps member were fighting in the space. You notice I used the "Lost" Green Lanterns, and I give prominence for Green Lanterns relatively unknown that were shown just in one or other Green Lantern issue. Geoff asked me to add them, but everybody knows the Lost Lanterns, then I thought it was a good opportunity to put the spotlight on these new Green Lantern members. And the detail is that they aren't rookies as it was shown before. NRAMA: They've become veterans. OK, then the next spread featured DC heroes battling villains next to the Green Lantern Corps. What was the thinking behind the design of this image? IR: Geoff just asked me to add the Green Lanterns, Prime and Anti-Monitor. I'd feel free to choose which superheroes I wanted. My concern was to show the Anti-Monitor without hiding him too much. As I did a big spread with Green Lanterns just before this, I'd resolved to put the spotlight on Prime and on the superheroes. The Anti-Monitor would be in the middle of the battle, but in order to show him perfectly, I did the battle like a necklace on the Anti-Monitor's neck, so that the whole fight would be shown without hiding him. NRAMA: A necklace? IR: Some images to explain what I mean about thinking the spreads... 
NRAMA: Oh, so this shows the flow of the scene? How they're not the same, giving the two images a different feel. And that line around the Anti-Monitor shows the "necklace?" IR: Exactly. You are correct. NRAMA: OK, and in that DC heroes spread – and a few others that you did for the series – the two-page spreads were drawn so the reader had to turn the whole comic sideways to view it upright. It had a pretty dramatic effect, but how is the decision made to do that? IR: The thing is, when you have many spreads in the same book, the most important thing is to differentiate each spread from others. Where two-pages spreads were turned sideways in this issue, you have two important elements that help in the height sensation: The big Anti-Monitor, and the Green Lanterns flying through the sky. By turning these spreads sideways, you increase a height sensation of the scene and do a different composition from other spreads. NRAMA: Is that more challenging for you? IR: Not really. You have the same challenge that you do working on a normal spread. NRAMA: Let's switch gears into something a little less technical, Ivan. Much of this issue and what you've drawn in Green Lantern concentrates on Hal Jordan. How do you approach him as a character? And what are the biggest challenges to drawing him? IR: The biggest challenge is to find an answer for this question! [laughs] NRAMA: Uh oh! Sorry about that. IR: When I got Green Lantern, [Carlos] Pacheco and Ethan had been the artists, so I thought, "Man, I can do nothing less than my best." But they had established Green Lantern for the new readers. I couldn't change what was done. I needed to just follow from where they stopped. And I've resolved to draw Hal the most classic I could, just changing some details like the flotation symbol. I don't do it in front of the GL's chest – just beside him. NRAMA: See? Answering that wasn't that big of a challenge. IR: I think my biggest challenge has been to keep the sales up [laughs], but Geoff has been doing the hard work. NRAMA: It's probably a safe bet that sales on this last issue were pretty good. What about the other Green Lanterns of Earth? How do you approach drawing John, Guy and Kyle and distinguishing between them and Hal? Are their body types different? Or is it all about body language and attitude? IR: Yes, they are different persons. Hal is athletic and confident in himself. He is a trained soldier, and he can fight with great technique with no Green Lantern ring. His body language says it. Kyle is younger. His body is less athletic than Hal. He is a designer, and when he is with no Green Lantern ring, he'll fight like a designer: No technique – just improvisation – like I tried to do in the fight between Hal and he against Sinestro. John has a more muscular body than Hal and Kyle. OK, he is a big trained soldier. You wouldn't like to fight against him, even if you had a GL ring and he didn't. Guy doesn't do anything toward keeping an athletic body. He has good genetics. He keeps the body in form by drinking beer [laughs], but he's a good fighter, so I try to do him with muscles just a little defined. Because of it, he doesn't have a uniform glued on the body – this is to hide the small belly.  NRAMA: So that's the reason for the jacket! Out of all the characters you get to draw in Green Lantern, both members of the Corps and their villains, who do you enjoy drawing the most? IR: Sinestro, of course. NRAMA: Why him? IR: I just think he is a visually strong character. NRAMA: What's your inspiration for the way you draw Sinestro? IR: This is easier to answer. Sinestro is interesting and frightening, and I try to draw him like a character from black and white horror movies – a character that could murder and is able to see you melt in an acid bathtub and even so, not demonstrate a feeling. NRAMA: Yikes. Not somebody you'd want to meet. But some of these Sinestro Corps members were fun little cameos, weren't they? Like was that a Predator in there? And there was the Yellow Lantern from Bizarro World getting hit in the face with a brick. Are there a lot of little cameos like that? IR: [laughs] I love sci-fi movies. It was a little homage to the biggest monsters of space. You also have E.T. and Alf in the Green Lantern side. Hey, It's a space battle! NRAMA: You sound like you had a lot of fun with this. What was your favorite page or panel to draw in this whole Sinestro Corps storyline? IR: I like the spread where you have Hal and Kyle flying into the sky with Coast City in the background. It was a poetic moment in the story. NRAMA: It's a more simple spread than the others we discussed. IR: You don't have thousands of characters, but you have thousands of windows! [laughs] NRAMA: All glowing green! But you're right that it speaks volumes, at that moment in the story. OK, since we're talking "poetic" moments... what was your favorite moment in the Sinestro Corps story itself? IR: It was the spread with Hal and Kyle, of course! NRAMA: Same moment? IR: I could just imagine the reader reading the story and suddenly seeing that fantastic spread in the fantastic moment. NRAMA: How has it been working with Geoff Johns? IR: Geoff is a big friend. He is a fantastic writer and unique professional. The best thing about him is he really loves comics. He thinks like a reader and not like a writer, if you can understand that. I'd love to keep working on his fantastic scripts for a long time if I can. NRAMA: What are you drawing now for Green Lantern? IR: I'm working on Green Lantern #29 [another page from the issue at top], page 8. It's a nice moment in young Hal's life where you see him as a teenager. [laughs] OK, I can't say anything more. NRAMA: You say you'd love to keep working with Geoff for a long time. Do you expect to be on Green Lantern for a long time to come? IR: Of course ...until 2009. Why? I need to do Blackest Night! Newsarama Note - to touch again on yesterday's aside, "EPA" was named as by Comic Book Guy in The Simpsons Movie as a comic book sound effect: "I believe it's the sound Green Lantern made when Sinestro threw him into a vat of acid." Accoding to DC's Dan DiDio, Johns and company added the effect in as a nod to The Simpsons Movie and Comic Book Guy. |
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12-21-2007, 09:17 AM
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#2 | |
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Without a doubt...
...book of 2007.
Of all the other Corps (other than the Black), I'm probably looking forward to the Orange the most. Quote:
WHY NOT??? C'mon. Last edited by SeamusMcClernan : 12-21-2007 at 09:23 AM. |
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NRAMA: OK, next color on the spectrum is orange, representing avarice, or greed. |
12-21-2007, 09:18 AM
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#3 |
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What a great guy, and huge insights into things I wouldn't have consciously noticed before.
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12-21-2007, 09:21 AM
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#4 |
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Yeah Ivan!
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12-21-2007, 09:23 AM
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#5 | |
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Quote:
Reading that definitely makes me happy!!!  Ivan Reis has quickly become THE Green Lantern artist. Second only to Neal Adams, IMO. |
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12-21-2007, 09:48 AM
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#6 |
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I can't heap enough praise on Ivan for his work on this event. Him and Van Sciver have really hit their stride on this book and pulled off something to rival, if not outdo the great George Perez. Geoff did alright too.
 The team has really drawn me back into the character and sold me on Hal. The best part, they've done it without discarding other Lantern faves. Great interview, and I look forward to seeing more of Mr. Reis' work. |
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12-21-2007, 09:54 AM
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#7 |
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I've grown into a huge fan of the entire GL "family" of creators. Johns, Reis, Van Sciver, Giibons, etc. are all putting forth the best work of their career, and this interview with Reis has just jumped him to the top of the charts in my book. From what I hear, the guy's like a drawing machine, and his work never slips. Reis is an excellent example of old-school work ethic combined with new-school chops. Way to go!
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12-21-2007, 10:06 AM
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#8 |
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THE BEST ARTIST DC HAS
Without a doubt the best artist DC has right now. They better do everything in their power to keep him on board!! I will be sooooo pissed if he ever left
 I agree with one of the other posts. In terms of dynamic art/poses/anatomy, Ivan is a modern day Neal Adams. Would love to see him do a Batman story (he really should have been doing the resurrection of RA'S AL GHUL storyline with his art style)!! |
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12-21-2007, 10:12 AM
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#9 |
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Reis, Johns, and EVS need to win like a damn NOBEL PRIZE or something for what they've done
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12-21-2007, 10:14 AM
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#10 | |
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Quote:
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12-21-2007, 10:15 AM
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#11 |
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Where's the Bizarro Hal?
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12-21-2007, 10:18 AM
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Man I hope these guys stay on board for a while.
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12-21-2007, 10:25 AM
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Quote:
he appeared in one panel of GL #25, getting smacked around like predicted  I hope we see more of him really soon, and Power Ring also, he should become a GL villain instead of a JLA baddy |
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12-21-2007, 10:31 AM
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#14 |
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Probably the best Brazilian artist too. Way better than Ed Benes and I actually like benes.
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12-21-2007, 10:35 AM
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...and his work keeps getting better.
Amazing talent here, I'm glad he's on GL for the long term, but I'd like to see him tackle some other properties as well. |
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12-21-2007, 10:45 AM
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#16 |
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Truly awe-inspiring work. If there is one collection of books that is just begging to be reprinted as an Absolute edition, this is it. I would love to see Ivan's work in an oversized format. Hands down the best work of 2007.
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12-21-2007, 10:53 AM
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#17 | |
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Quote:
That made me laugh, espically the info on Guy; mainly because it so fits his character. Reis is quickly establishing himself as Perez's succesor as Master of Spreads (not like Ethan is bad at them it's a 1a/1b kinda thing); but I was blown away by the back-to-back spreads in GL #25. Both are in the top 5 artistic moments of the year for me. Anybody found the ET and Alf GLs yet? |
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12-21-2007, 11:29 AM
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#18 |
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I might shock everyone but I think Ivan Reis is better than Neal Adams on Green Lantern. The way he draws Cyborg Superman is well creepy and he has a great sense of anatomy in general. I get tired of the "Neal Adams/Gil Kane/ bla bla is God and nobody is better than them EVER". These guys were great but we need to recognise that some artists today are amazing, and Ivan is one of them. I hope you'll be on GL for a few more issues Ivan!
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12-21-2007, 11:33 AM
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#19 |
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Way to go, Ivan!
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12-21-2007, 11:37 AM
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#20 |
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It's during stories like this that I am reminded that what makes comics so great is both the writing (I'm biased, I admit it) and the art. CONSISTENT COMPELLING ART!!! Nothing irks me more than a fill-in in the middle of a story, especially during an epic tale like this. For his consistency alone, Eeee-van deserves praise. The fact his drawing is amazing drives home the fact he is a fantastic artist.
And taking off on what others have said, I decree that Ivan is now bestowed the 1st Annual George Perez Splash Page Award. I hope DC gets it's act together and puts this story into a single HC or Absolute. |
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12-21-2007, 11:41 AM
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#21 | |
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Quote:
 Last edited by munsung02 : 12-21-2007 at 11:47 AM. |
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12-21-2007, 11:43 AM
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#22 | |
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Quote:
If I had to guess... I would go with the Orange Lanterns' power to be one of absorption of the energy generated by the other colored rings. |
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12-21-2007, 11:46 AM
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#23 | |
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Quote:
Though seriously - no one can match up to bla bla... |
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12-21-2007, 12:21 PM
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#24 |
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As informative and enlightening as the Van Sciver article. And Reis wants to be on the title through 2009; I hope this happens...
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12-21-2007, 12:38 PM
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#25 | |
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Quote:
Agreed. He is an incredibly talented artist/storyteller and consumate professional. Thanks Ivan! If he ever gets tired of working on GL, I would love to see his take on Iron Man. Last edited by IronJedi : 12-21-2007 at 02:03 PM. |
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