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with Gene Ha
Big
Questions with Corey Henson
Gene Ha broke into comics in the early 90s, slowly building
a name for himself with his work on Adventures of Cyclops
and Phoenix and Nightman. It was his collaboration with Zander
Cannon on Alan Moore’s Top 10 in 1999 that really caught the
eye of comic book fans and made Ha a highly sought-after artist
in the industry. Since then, Ha has done covers for Captain
America, Fantastic Four and Adventures of Superman, and an
issue of Global Frequency that was well worth the extra couple
of months we had to wait to get our hands on it.
Last October,
Ha graciously took time away from his work on the forthcoming
Top 10 prequel, The 49ers (due this summer), to talk to Shotgun
Reviews about Alan Moore, the importance of Spaceman Spiff,
the lack of racial diversity in comics, and, since he’s an
outspoken political junkie, his views on today’s media and
the war in Iraq. (Hey, if you want to know if Superman can
beat up Thor, go read Wizard. We don’t toss softballs here.)
(And for the record, Ha thinks Superman would kick the Odinson’s
ass from here to the Rainbow Bridge.)
THE BIG Q&A
Shotgun:
What comic books did you read as a kid? Did you take sides
in the DC vs. Marvel "war"?
Ha:
The comics I remember reading were Gene Colan's Daredevil,
Mike Grell's Green Lantern and Legion of Superheroes, and
lots of Avengers and Iron Man comics. Outside of Mike Grell's
work, I preferred Marvel. In the early 70s, the flagship DC
books were still stuck in the 50s. Superman was always coming
up against some cheesy threat that he defeated in a fake clever
way. I clearly remember a story where an alien had covered
Metropolis with sand and then vacuumed the sand back up to
collect minute quantities of nerve gas. Superman couldn't
stop him because the alien had a force field even Supes couldn't
dent. I think the alien had also kidnapped Ma and Pa Kent
by traveling back in time. But if you have a ship that can
throw megatons of sand, a time machine and an impenetrable
force field, what do you need the nerve gas for? There's no
difference in story quality between DC and Marvel today. It
just depends on whom they can hire.
You
count the usual suspects like Byrne, Miller, Simonson and
other American industry artists as influences, but if I had
to guess, I'd say your artwork looks influenced by European
comics as well. Have you read many European-produced comics,
and if so, have they been an influence?
I read
continental European comics when I could get them. I used
to read Echo of Future Past, Epic, and Asterix comics when
I could find them. I was very impressed by what I could find,
but it was pretty rare back then. By the time I got to college,
it was easier to find. If you include the UK, there was a
minor British Invasion during the 80s. My middle school pal
Lowell Francis introduced me to Brian Bolland’s Judge Dredd
and Gary Leach’s Miracleman (née Marvel Man). I took a love
of precision from them, and a bit of a static quality I’m
afraid. Detail can kill dynamism. Oddly enough, I was into
Japanese comics before they began translating them. When my
mom went to Chicago to buy Korean groceries, there was a Japanese
bookstore nearby. I knew Frank Miller was a manga fan, so
I was excited about stealing manga techniques. But I’ve lost
any obvious influences from them. The remaining influence
is the detailed backgrounds I draw.
Alan
Moore is famous for writing dense panel descriptions in his
scripts. As an artist, do you prefer this approach, or would
you rather the writer be more hands-off?
In general,
I definitely prefer lighter description. It gives me more
room to improvise and more opportunity to control pacing.
But Alan is just brilliant with composing a page. He’ll give
you the layout of the panels, and then the composition inside
each panel. And his compositions always work brilliantly.
I don’t know if any other writer could do this. They certainly
couldn’t do this as casually as he does. He’s a true stream-of-consciousness
writer. In an Alan Moore script, he’ll actually type corrections
to previous sentences later in the same paragraph: he doesn’t
like going backwards.
Given
the high esteem in which most fans and pros hold Alan Moore,
were you at all nervous about working with him on Top 10?
If so, how did you overcome your nerves, and if not, how did
you feel about working with him?
I was
too afraid to approach him, so someone else had to kick my
ass to make me do it. When Alex Ross was doing the cover to
Alan’s Supreme, I told Alex that I wished I could work on
an Alan Moore project too. So he told me to get off my ass
and get one. After I did get the project, my enthusiasm got
the better of my fear. I sent out huge piles of ideas and
sketches. Somehow, Alan mined through the rubbish and polished
some jewels. An example was an idea I had for an alcoholic
superhero. I just asked Alan to consider what Superman’s super-vomit
would be like. Alan took the idea, but applied it to Japanese
movie monsters. It was much funnier than my idea. The more
I worked with Alan, the more I felt comfortable with him.
Alan is an amazingly easy going and friendly guy. He puts
everyone at ease. He has no pretensions. Lots of quirks, but
no pretensions.
As
a self-described geek, what's the geekiest thing you've done
since becoming a working professional? Have you ever acted
like a fanboy when meeting somebody you're a fan of?
The pictures
I take of myself as reference are pretty damn geeky. 'Cuz
superheroes are just people stripped to their undies in preparation
for a fight. Oh, and there's the stunts I have people do in
exchange for con sketches. Like performing live audio dramas
using bad 70s comics as scripts. Drawing Liefeld lines on
a fan's face and having him harass Mr. Liefeld (fortunately,
Rob's a wonderful guy with a patient sense of humor). At the
last con, I had a fan swinging from a balloon as his web,
and we carried him around the con while singing the 60s Spider-Man
theme. But yeah, I do act like a fanboy around certain people.
Folks like Eddie Campbell and Kyle Baker. Which taught me
that acting like a fan is a horrible way to make friends with
someone. I'm also a role-playing gamer, which might be geekier
than anything else I've mentioned.
You
said on your site that "Too much polish in art is boring.
You appreciate the flash and lose track of the story. The
greatest artwork shouldn't be perfect." To a lot of people,
your artwork might look very polished. How well do you feel
your work lives up to your "artwork shouldn't be perfect"
theory?
Until
I get done with Top 10 projects, I can't experiment with rougher
styles. So when I talk about loose styles, I'm just pontificating
on what I should do next. It may come to nothing. In a sense,
the ink wash style I’m using is an attempt to introduce roughness
on top of my clean lined inking style. So I am playing around
there. But it’s a halfway measure. But ideally, I'd love to
come up with a style that others could copy. I'd love to create
an animation style studio someday. As it is, my style is killing
me and I can't hire assistants: anyone who can copy my style
is already a better artist than I am. They don't need to copy
me. Ideally, I think American comics should come out on a
weekly basis. This is far too much work for one artist. You
need a team of artists who can create a consistent product.
I think movies like "The Iron Giant" prove that this can be
done without compromising quality.
On
your website you call Bill Watterson "greatest sequential
artist to show up since I’ve been reading". What have you
learned about sequential art from reading Calvin and Hobbes?
Are there any other newspaper strips that have influenced
you?
The most
obvious thing I learned is that dynamism trumps polish. Looking
at his style really got my mind going. Even though his style
is simple, he can still achieve stunning grandeur. Some of
the backgrounds for the “Spaceman Spiff” episodes are just
mind blowing. His willingness to experiment still amazes me.
He insisted that newspapers publish his Sunday strips uncut,
so that he could experiment with panel composition. Check
out his later work: there are some odd panel layouts, but
they’re never confusing. And that’s the most important thing
I learned from him: mess around with any artistic assumptions
you like, but never let it get in the way of the storytelling.
I’ve taken some influence from folks like Charles Schulz and
Milt Caniff, but not nearly as much as I’ve taken from Watterson.
Did
your experiences in art school teach you much about sequential
art storytelling techniques? If not, how were you able to
learn how to be an effective comic book storyteller?
No. At
the time, most art schools considered comics embarrassing
and seedy. SVA in New York was an exception. But at the Center
for Creative Studies, where I went to school, there were a
few brave instructors who took comics seriously. There was
a comic art club, but I didn’t join it. I thought their work
was predictable and boring. I occasionally experimented with
drawing comics pages, but until my senior year I never completed
a polished and finished page. After I decided to submit work
to Marvel and DC, I began diligently studying the styles of
the period. The Liefeld/Jim Lee style was known as “The Style”,
and everyone thought they could get rich if they could just
learn it. Fans across America were starting comics companies,
imagining that their clone of the early Image books would
become the next must-buy book. I consciously avoided aping
“The Style”. My style was a failed attempt to ape other people.
My figures were influenced by Alphonse Mucha and Barry Windsor-Smith.
I also tried to introduce dramatic shadows like Mike Mignola,
Michael Schwab, and Nancy Stahl. My backgrounds tried to match
Katsuhiro Otomo’s Akira. My layouts were influenced by Bill
Sienkiewicz, Bill Watterson, and Larry Stroman. I should stress
that I failed to match up to any these artists. This is fortunate:
it forced me to develop my own style.
Comic
books starring minority characters are few and far between.
As a Korean-American, does the lack of diversity in comic
book characters bother you? Why do you think that comics haven't
been able to diversify more in the 80 or so years the industry
has been around?
Laziness.
Lack of originality. It takes some creativity to create a
new archetype. Most attempts to insert diversity fall into
two traps: bland and boring or angry and boring. An extreme
example of bland and boring was Burger King’s Kids Club gang.
An example of angry and boring was the Crisis redesign of
Doctor Light. Or any of the endless Mr. T clones comics writers
created after seeing Rocky III. Part of the fun of an Alan
Moore comic book was what weird new things he’d create by
twisting around everyone else’s tired old ideas. He would
insert ideas completely alien to comics. He had a wonderful
black assassin and superspy in Miracleman: Mr. Cream. He was
unstoppable, he was creepy, and he was endlessly fun. All
of his teeth had been replaced with blue sapphires.
You
frequently post political and social commentaries on your
website. How and when did your interest in politics and world
events develop?
Always
been interested, it’s just that I’m not always outraged. I’m
a fiscal conservative and a social liberal. So you can see
why I hate the Bush administration. My biggest pet peeve is
the budget deficit. If you make a tax cut but run an even
bigger deficit, it’s NOT a tax cut. You’ll have to pay those
taxes later, with interest. His financial tricks could cripple
America for decades. He’s destroying our status as a superpower.
And you have to be willfully blind not to recognize his mismanagement
of Iraq.
Do
you feel it's your responsibility as an artist to speak out
about current world events, or are you doing so as a concerned
American? Do you think the comic book industry and its creators
have a responsibility to comment about social and political
events, such as the war in Iraq?
No more
so than anyone else. By which I mean that everyone is responsible
for protecting and promoting our democracy. We need to be
honest, tolerant, polite, reasonable, and perhaps even earnest.
Within those limits, when you see wrongdoing, you need to
form a reasoned plan to oppose it. I could use my art to comment
about politics, but I draw too slowly.
In
a recent Rolling Stone interview, Bruce Springsteen said "The
press has let the country down. It has taken a very amoral
stand." Jon Stewart said much the same thing in a recent interview,
and it seems like the driving force of the Daily Show recently
has been taking mainstream media to task for their handling
of current events. Where or to whom do you turn to for news?
How well or poorly do you think the media has reported on
the war in Iraq?
For news
on Iraq, I turn to two websites and one print magazine. I
browse www.hackworth.com
and www.d-n-i.net
every Tuesday. And I read the work of Seymour Hersh in
The New Yorker. Most TV news is worthless. The hosts are television
personalities who don’t understand the issues. Why would I
want to know Bill O’Reilly’s or Andrea Mitchell’s opinions
about trade policy? Or Iraqi history and culture? The best
they can do is parrot the words from an interview or article
they’ve read. But they look good on television and they’re
likeable. The networks find it cheaper to have talking heads
instead of in depth investigation. Instead we get liars being
interviewed by fools.
Let's
all give a big "thank you" to Mr. Ha for taking
time out his schedule to answer our questions. Make sure to
check out his site,
and keep an eye out for The 49ers, which has just been
solicited.
As always,
if you have someone that you'd like to suggest for a Big Question,
let Troy know at psikotyk@aol.com.
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