SUPER SOLDIER-MAN OF WAR!

In April 1997, I was making my rounds around DC and Marvel comics looking for some inking gigs. At the time, I was bouncing from title to title and company to company to pay bills for me and also my mother at the time, so I had to keep my income at a comfortable spot. My mother at the time was having major medical issues and without my dad around, passing many years before, it was up to me to make sure her Blue Cross, Blue Shield, her rent, and whatever else came up was taken care of. This constant bill kept me working overtime and in overdrive but at the same time being aggressive as I was paying off. I was picking up dream gigs and working with new and established artists. Yeah, I was inking my ass off, but I found a groove and a happy place with my work and hustled my ass off in the process.

I got a call to come up to DC Comics and pick up a 22-page job they needed quickly and the editor, K. C. Carlson, thought I was the right guy for it. He said a simple thing on the phone that got my pulse into overdrive and that was “Do you like Dave Gibbons work? Well, after telling him how much of a fan I was, he said he had a special gig for me and to come in and pick it up. 2 hours later the train pulled into the subway station under the DC Building, and I was in an elevator and into his office in no time. K.C. handed me the stack of pages and said he needs them back, all done in two weeks.

Okay, here is where it got crazy for me. The pages were breakdowns by Dave, not finished pencils, no finished shading and in some panels, faces not finished other than a note of who the person was and so on. This job is what was called a finishing gig for an inker. I would have to go in and take what Dave started and make it all shine nice and pretty and add what I could along the way. The reality of the job hit me as the D-Train made its way back to Brooklyn. I was supposed to ink 22 pages in 14 days from the breakdowns of one of the biggest names in comics. I stated to lose it…. sweating as I flipped through the pages in the half empty daytime train. Each page had a challenge, and I was slowly losing my confidence along the way. This was a gig that was going to have a ton of eyes on it and if it sucked, it was all going to be my fault. This and other expectations were taking over my usual calm and cool, but seriously, I had no time to absorb that because the deadline was looming, and the clock has started. That and I have met Dave before and did not want to let him down fueled my drive and I got to work.

If you look at the credits page, it lists me as inker…when it should have been finishes which would have been the correct listing, but I was used to this kind of thing happening. You are listening to the guy that got to ink John Buscema on Fantastic Four 2099 and it got credited to Al Williamson. I was bummed that I was not properly credited, but disappointment is part of the comics gig.

So, two weeks of hard core overthinking, sweating, inking, asking for the script, and trying to make sense of everything and make it look good in the process happened in a flash. I enlisted some help by my buddy Vince Letterio on some backgrounds and hit the deadline, not really knowing if anyone was going to like what I did, a constant in an inker’s life. I walked the finished book up to the DC offices and on to the editor’s desk and waited. K.C. picked it up, flipped through it, smiled and said “GREAT JOB” had me fill out a voucher and within minutes I was back downstairs on Broadway hoping to God the colorist would save me.

As a lot of you know, I have an abundance of appreciated luck and the book was given to the master of colors Angus McKie and letterer John Costanza, two die-hard professionals that knew their stuff. I saw the finished job when I got my early comps and as I flipped though the book, I got a feeling of panic. I saw things I wish I had more time to work on, things only I would catch and a big part of me wished I added some Zipatone here and there and maybe did more in certain backgrounds and it went on and on. I drove myself insane, but the book hit, people loved it, it sold well, got reviewed kindly and they even pointed out I did a good job over the guy that usually inks himself. I was relieved. Seriously…

So, San Diego Comic Con 1997 comes up and I see Dave Gibbons at an event one of the nights. I make my way up to Dave, heart about to burst in my chest and say hi and ask him if he was happy with the inking job I did on his book. Dave pauses and looks at me and tells me as plain as a bullet to the heart that he was disappointed in it and was not a fan of the work I did. He then made small talk and walked away. Well, I just stood there and crumbled inside. My pulse was throbbing, my head was a mess and I walked out of the event just destroyed. I had let the guy I admired so much down in a major way. I was literally heartbroken. The rest of the con for me was a blur as my brain kept going over and over what he said and wondering what I could have done to make it better. It really messed me up inside.

After the con, in order to keep working, I had to convince myself that I am just not going to please everyone and move on. Some friends that knew Dave were very supportive, but it was still hard to shake that gray cloud over my head for the next 8 months. I started to really look at my work and had some strong feelings that maybe I was not cut out for the big time with my skills and that maybe it was time to try something else. That all said I had no choice to do anything but keep working and I did, mostly on Joe Quesada’s work and a few others and I had to push through this…knowing I had mine and my mom’s bills waiting. It sucked, but I had work to do. It’s funny, I won a Wizard Award that year for inking and felt I just didn’t deserve it. The brain is a powerful enemy when it wants to be.

Cut to 1999 and I am back at San Diego Comic Con, yeah, a few years later and again I run into Dave Gibbons. I was a bit taken back about saying hi, but here is the thing, no matter what, Dave has always been a true gentleman to me and always greeted me with a smile. It was a few years later and my hope was to maybe apologize once again to him and hope for the best. So, I walk up to Dave, he turns around with a smile and says my name and shakes my hand. Relief…he doesn’t hate me. Then he takes my shoulder and pulls me towards him away from the other people and talks to me and apologizes to me. He tells me that recently he was looking at Xerox’s of the job he drew that I inked and he completely forgot that he only gave me breakdowns, he forgot that some figures were not finished and realized how little he had given me to work with and when he took a look again at what I did, he was really happy with the work and apologized to me about what he said a few years back. He simply forgot what he did and didn’t do on the pages. Well, I just about smiled so wide the top of my head exploded. I told him it’s all good and I am so glad he liked it, we hugged and went on with the event.

So, in the end, all worked out, we all got a beautiful comic, my brain calmed down and once again I will repeat that Dave Gibbons is one lovely talented person and that to this day I still admire and respect him and will buy anything he does. Look, between us please, maybe he still hated my work, maybe someone mentioned I was crushed, or maybe he really forgot he did breakdowns, but in the end, he made the effort and didn’t have to, and that’s what counts. I figured you guys would like this story and here are a bunch of random pages of the book…if you hate the inks, well, you all know I tried.

Jimmy Palmiotti