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Ethan Van Sciver is known today for penciling Superman/Batman, Green
Lantern and X-men. Prior to this, he worked on Cyberfrog and Impulse. In
this revealing interview we go through his early career in comics and
discover how those experiences shaped his current career outlook.
Jamie:
Was Cyberfrog you first pro work?
Ethan:
Cyberfrog was my first professional work if you don't count about
a dozen children's books I illustrated before that. Books with titles
like Messy Cat, Queen Fussy and Timmy the Turtle - or Timmy O'Turtle, I
don't remember, it's been a long time. And in fact, I did get paid to do
those. After Cyberfrog #1 was published at Hall of Heroes the author of
those books decided he would like to try out his children book
characters as comic books. He basically flew me out to Mesa, Arizona and
locked me in his house, literally locked me in his house and said, "You
will eat when this is done." He made me do 22 pages and said I couldn't
leave until the book was done. This is a true story, the guy was a
maniac. So I actually managed to do 22 pages in 3 days because I wanted
to go home. That book was called Fuzzy Buzzy and Friends. It was
solicited through Diamond and it was probably the lowest selling comic
book of all time. I believe it sold 30 copies. And that might be on the
high end, it might be more like 27. It's probably the lowest selling
comic that Diamond has ever solicited and I will bet it's why they have
strict guidelines for independent comics today.
Jamie:
The Cyberfrog character, you created that I assume?
Ethan:
Jamie:
What inspired that? It's such an offbeat character I wonder where
that came from?
Ethan:
Well, I've always loved frogs and well, I wish it were a more
interesting story, well it is interesting. There was this Puerto Rican
girl and she had just come back from a trip to Puerto Rico and she liked
me. She brought me a present, a porcelain frog from Puerto Rico as a
gift. She used to come visit me at my Dad's law office which I was using
as an art studio. She would keep her boyfriend in the car while she
would come in and make out with me. It was really, really strange.
Anyways, this porcelain frog sat on my desk. I needed to create a
character to draw pages about as I didn't want to do Wolverine pages or
Superman and Batman samples. I didn't see the long term good in doing
those. I created Cyberfrog because it sounded like every other Image
Comic out there. It was bland.. well it wasn't bland, it was sorta Brand
X, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, that kind of thing. And I created him
for that purpose.
Cyberfrog was created for the sole purpose of drawing comics, that's all
it was, just to draw pages. I designed him to cover up some of my
drawing flaws, anatomy problems. He had big lobes around his shoulders
so that I wouldn't have to learn right away how to connect the arms to
the pec's, etc. You know, things like that. Gradually around the office
I learned how to do human anatomy a little better. It was kinda weird to
learn how to draw human anatomy through a frog. Is that why they make
us dissect frogs in high school because they resemble people or
something like that? I don't know. Anyway that's what Cyberfrog was
about and we would go a lot bigger because I ended up getting paid to
draw CyberFrog comics. Which was great.
Jamie:
You did that through Harris Comics. How did you break in with them?
Ethan:
I went to a convention in Philadelphia. I worked for Hall of
Heroes doing Cyberfrog with 2 issues. So I had these comic books which
were the perfect calling card. It's so much better to give editors a
comic book than it would be to show them your portfolio or look at
sample pages. The mere fact that you have a comic book means you know
how to do comic books in some ways. So I made the editors at Harris take
the book back to their hotel rooms and I cheekly said I would be back
the next day and ask for their thoughts. And they liked it. I came back
the next day, it was a Sunday and they said this was a cute book, but
it's different from what we do at Harris. At Harris we do blood sucking
female vampires and things like that. "I don't know where a cybernetic
frog would fit in, young Ethan." But what they would do is give me some
work inking Shadow Hawk / Vampirella, and I probably did some trading
cards around that time. Before you knew it Harris decided their one main
problem was that all they published was Vampirella and they really
needed to diversify. They had Cyberfrog and decided it might be a good
idea. Little did they know.
Jamie:
You mentioned in the back of one of your comics a woman sent you
a naked picture of herself?
Ethan:
Jamie:
Ethan:
Yeah, it was really weird. Some woman sent me a polaroid of her,
spread eagle on her bed with a stuffed frog covering her special area.
It was upsetting, she wasn't attractive, she was just a very strange
looking woman.
Jamie:
That still happen to you now?
Ethan:
No. When I was doing Cyberfrog I would give people my mailing
address and request fan mail and I would get it. Nowadays I would
never do that. I've got a wife and a son and I don't want everybody to
know where I live.
Jamie:
Ethan:
Well, it was fun. It was really fun hearing from fans. I would
get one or two letters a day and it was something to look forward to.
But it's not part of my life anymore.
Jamie:
Eventually Cyberfrog ended and you broke in at DC.
Ethan:
Jamie:
Did Cyberfrog end first and you had to get into DC or..?
Ethan:
What happened was Cyberfrog was doing so well at one point we
were working with Surge Enterprises and they were doing the marketing.
They had secured me a deal at Playmate Toys for a toy line and Mainframe
Animation (they did Beastwars) was going to do the Cyberfrog cartoon. It
was going to be on Fox Kids and I was traveling and meeting people,
shaking hands and everybody was saying, "Oh this is going to be great.'"
And all of the sudden I woke up to get a phone call from the guy I knew
from Playmate Toys and he'd just been fired. The Japanese contingent had
come in and fired everybody in Los Angeles. They were scrapping all the
projects they had on the table and that meant Cyberfrog, too. Next thing
I know, Harris Comics said, "Hey, we'll still publish CyberFrog but at a
3rd of your salary." I hung on, did about two issues of that and
realized I would be evicted from my apartment under those circumstances.
I had no choice but to try and get work at DC Comics. At DC Comics,
that's where the real comic book artists were. I knew a lot of
professionals from Harris that were freelancing for DC and they always
seemed like my big brothers. They were people that I looked up to, I
thought I might not ever get to DC Comics because I was just small potatoes.
I decided I would have to get very crafty to get in at DC. I saw that
Impulse was sort of faltering a little bit in sales. I thought I could
do a better job as the artist of that book. So I started to talk to that
editor. I sent him and faxed him drawings of Impulse. I got a short
story, then a pin up, then a fill in, then given the book and that's how
you do it.
Jamie:
They made changes to the Impulse character recently, what do you
think about that?
Ethan:
Jamie:
Ethan:
I think it's great. I always wanted that for the character, when
I worked on him I was thinking this guy, Bart Allen he might be a
goofball now but the whole point of this book, the reason he's being
entrusted to Max Mercury, this elder statesman speedster, because
everybody knows that in the future Bart Allen will be the greatest Flash
that's ever lived. I loved that idea. He'd be better than Barry, he'd be
better than Wally, but right now he's a little screw up. He was a lot
of fun and I miss him, but I'm glad DC did go ahead and do that and let
the character progress instead of just ignoring him.
Jamie:
In another interview you mentioned in picking projects you picked
by how you thought they would perform.
Ethan:
Jamie:
You didn't want to do a bad project. How do you decide which ones
you think are going to work and which ones won't?
Ethan:
Instinct. Although sometimes I get talked into things I'm not so
sure about. For the most part, if I get on a project that's written by
Geoff Johns, I'm pretty sure it's going to have an audience. It's not
about money even though money is important, it's about having an
audience. I would be very sad to be working on a book that nobody was
reading. It would make all my work seem like it wasn't worthwhile at
all. It would be depressing and I'd end up having to stop. So you have
to keep that in mind when choosing a project, you have to ask yourself,
"Are people going to be anticipating this and is it going to be read?" And
that's the first thing that I think about. That's why I haven't done
Plastic Man yet. I honestly love the character, but I'm worried nobody
will read it if I pour my heart out into it and it won't have an audience.
Jamie:
You also said you try to work with writers that are on the same
or equal footing with you. Have you turned down any really big writer names?
Ethan:
I'll say this, the one time I didn't listen to myself in that
regard was Grant Morrison and that turned out to be a really bad
experience. The idea of working with Grant Morrison . . . I knew instinctively
that was a mistake because I just wasn't ready for it yet. I had just
come off Impulse and to just suddenly be doing an X-men book with Grant
Morrison was a bad idea. But you know, it's going to be a huge book,
it's going to have a big audience, so I decided to give it a shot anyway
and it ended up being a mistake. Really the ideal is you have somebody that
knows you, respects you, will communicate with you and collaborate with you.
The thing about Geoff Johns is he's a huge writer now, he's blown up
beyond belief. He's very popular and very famous but he's never too busy
to discuss things with me regarding the stories he written or any ideas
I may have. He's always available. And he writes for me too. I think he
takes me into consideration with stories that I'm going to draw. It's a
good thing to weigh how your communication is going to be with the
writer that you're going to work with. I think that's what I meant by
that. It's not about status, that has nothing to do with it. It's
somebody that's on the same wavelength with you. Very important.
Jamie:
You said you think Johns writes stories for you. What is it
specifically that he does that works out for you as an artist with his
writing?
Ethan:
I think Geoff knows that if he writes stories with a certain kind
of darkness or horror to them, he knows I'll just run with that. That's
something I love to do and I do it pretty well. I'm not really sure, I
wouldn't be able to tell you beyond that. That's sort of superficial but
I think Geoff knows how I tell stories and he writes stories for me.
It's great, it's a good working relationship. He says I'm his Tim Sale
and I think that's funny and I hope it's true.
Jamie:
You said that you prefer DC politics to Marvel politics, can you
give us any specifics on how that is and how they differ?
Ethan:
DC is a better company to work for in every respect. The only
difference between DC and Marvel is that Marvel used to be able to pay
you more than DC does. That's no longer the case. DC books are now
selling as well as Marvel books so there is really no reason to only
work for Marvel Comics. The difference between Marvel and DC from my
experience, is that there seems to be a lot less desperation at DC. It's
a lot more professionally run, almost family like organization. Where
everybody knows each other and everybody looks after each other to some
extent and things just seem a lot more professionally run.
Marvel is a lot wilder and a lot more unpredictable. I always felt like
everybody at Marvel was always worried about their jobs at all times.
Now that may have changed. My experience at Marvel is 5 years old now,
but I was under the impression that everybody at Marvel was worried the
other shoe was going to drop and they were going to find themselves
unemployed. Thus, it made some of them act sort of ruthless. It wasn't
for me. Other people seem to be working there and are successful so it
might be my problem, I'd be happy to own that. But I will say the people
that have come from Marvel to take a job at DC all seem to be very
happy, they seem very relieved and good work gets done.
Jamie:
You are working on Superman/Batman now. What do you have planned
after that?
Ethan:
Well, I'm going to do a Green Lantern Annual with Geoff Johns
most likely, then some more Green Lantern work. The main thing is to go
work with Geoff. Big stuff is right around the corner. My work with
Superman/Batman is basically over.
Jamie:
You got everything done now?
Ethan:
Old man with a t-shirt with signatures on it walks up.
Old Man: I got room (points to an open spot on his T-shirt)
Ethan:
Normally beautiful women come up and ask me to sign their clothes
while they are still wearing them. And you sir, are not a beautiful woman.
Old Man: Well, I'm thankful.
Ethan:
(signs shirt) There you go.
Old Man (muttering): Till June, June.. hmm, I still got an open spot . . . (walks away)
Jamie:
What's the strangest thing you ever signed?
Ethan:
(pointing at the man walking away) That guys shirt right there.
Very odd.
Jamie:
Do you ever see yourself doing creator owned work in the future?
I know you did Cyberfrog, although it wasn't creator owned from what I
understand, but do you see yourself going to Image or something of that
nature?
Ethan:
I kind of did it backwards. I started with the ideal creator
owned situation then went into work for hire. I find I prefer work for
hire because I really enjoy drawing iconic characters and making them my
own. I enjoy the opportunities working on these characters provide in
terms of collaborating with other great creative talent. So will I ever
do a creator owned book? I might, but I don't want to. I'm not sitting
around saying I'm going to draw Green Lantern until I get around to
doing what I really want to do which is Cyberfrog 2 Electric Boogaloo. I
like what I'm doing now. I have no real desire to go back into the creator
owned arena. It's always an option but it's not for me right now.
Jamie:
What about writing? I know you wrote Cyberfrog, but do you have
any interest in writing or do you want to leave that to Geoff Johns or
somebody else?
Ethan:
I don't want to write anymore. I don't think I have the capacity
to write the way other writers I work with can. I don't think it would
be an improvement. If my writing would be an improvement over what I'm
doing right now then I would probably write my own stories, but it just
doesn't seem to be a good idea. I just couldn't take the criticism, I
really couldn't. Drawing is just drawing, but when you are writing
you're really putting yourself on the paper there. I mean, if your
stories are stupid it means you are stupid. That's how I would take it. I
prefer not to. I prefer to be a coward about it.
Ethan Van Sciver's blog can be found at:
http://ethanvansciver.comicbloc.com/
Regards,
Jamie Coville
http://www.TheGraphicNovels.com
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