Dream Comics

Dreams are mostly visual in nature, but they also contain dialogue and other verbal elements. Cartoon art is the perfect means of capturing their magic. Only, I didn’t realize this until 1994.

Roarin’ Rick’s Rare Bit Fiends #1, 1994

Upon seeing the first issue of Roarin’ Rick’s Rare Bit Fiends on the spinner-rack, I distinctly remember wondering what yet another comic book about dreams was going to be like. Then it dawned on me, this wasn’t about dreams, these were dreams.

In his letter-column Rick Veitch also published dream art from fans as well as that of other cartoonists like Rick Grimes, Ashley Holt, Bob Kathman, Aleksandar Zograf and others who had been doing dream comics.

For someone like me, who couldn’t write a script to save his life, the notion of comics based on exciting visual scenarios that play out in dreams was ideal.

Technical term: Continuity. Continuity, in comics, is the panel-to-panel storytelling element that makes a comic book more than a series of pin-ups, character studies or cover illustrations. It requires all of the elements that cartoonists tend to avoid when just doing a pretty picture; characters seen in partial views, in the distance, different camera angles, details that set the scene &tc.

A dream, just like a script written by another person, is going to challenge the cartoonist to do further research and draw things that are out of their knowledge-base and comfort-zone.

So in the mid-90’s I set out drawing my dreams.

Hell Transfer

Better Baby Name

When I got back into doing fanzines through APAs ( Amateur Press Alliance; look it up, ) I did some more dream comics.

Nymphs in Arcadia

Death the Hard Way

Clone Wars

Towards the end of this period, I was starting to experiment with a hybrid “manga” style done in the Japanese comics page size.

Butterfly Bows

And most recently I was doing some to show off at the Creators Social a comics meetup hosted by my local comics shop ( pre-Covid. )

Obam1

Obam2

Obam3

I’ve got more in the pipeline and hope to post about the process and what goes into these.

Note: All my art featured on this page was done in black and white. The red areas and lack of detail underneath are for the benefit of timid tech companies.

Now that’s one way to solve the ol’ lettering problem

From Bécassine Aux Bains de Mer (1915)

Who sez comics lettering has to be difficult for the creator?

Most of us would rather be drawing a page or hammering out a script than be fussing with the Ames lettering guide or struggling with software.

It hasn’t always been the case that the creative types were expected to also be masters calligraphers par excellance.

From Little Nemo in Slumberland by Windsor McCay

Back at the dawn of time comics hadn’t yet settled on the classic look of hand-lettering.

I learned the style from reading too many bronze age funny-books. Heck, it was even a requirement in a drafting shop-class I took in High School.

As for the comics industry, by the time the dust settled in the silver-age, the job was done by a lettering specialist assigned by the editor.

(Somebody needs to do a book on the great Japanese-American letterers: Morrie Kuramoto, Irv Watanabe, Ben Oda, Bill Yoshida…….. )

These days it usually falls to the artist/creative team to either learn to hand-letter or to master the digital tools. But this isn’t the only way to letter.

At one time it was the publisher’s job to typeset the verbiage.

(I’ve heard that there are entire countries where this is still the way its done.)

The great Mitsuru Adachi

Mangaka deliver art with the balloons and caption boxes in place and the text penciled in. This leaves space for the typesetter to lay in the text.

But back in ye olde times, the typesetter wasn’t up to all that work. Hence we’ve got them there floating captions as seen with our gal Bécassine. …. or our mate Rupert the Bear. … or our pal Prince Valiant.

Now to mine eyes, the floating captions are a bit unnerving.

I mean they’re there on the page occupying space with the characters. But just WHERE are they, man?! *shudder*

Note how the line art respects the captions but the colors don’t.

This is what #&@%ed-up a page from The Airtight Garage when, in their infinite wisdom, the fine folks at Starwatcher and Epic convinced Moebius that the whole B&W master-opus was actually meant to have been colored.

* cue Pee-Wee Herman’s “I meant to do that.” *

But don’t get me started on the same bunch convincing the Master that all his SFnal work should be part of one vast Moebius shared universe.

In an alternate timeline, American indy creators aren’t struggling to learn how to add lettering to their skill-set. — And mangaka are forced to learn zen calligraphy so they can hand-letter their comics.

By the way, in the art-style we see what Scott McCloud refers to as the masking effect.

Bécassine is much more cartoony than the other characters. Her simple spherical noggin leaves more room for empathy–the tabula rasa that you fill in as you project your notions onto her.