Real Christmas

These articles seem to have engendered some questions about my comics that repeat themselves more often than not. So, armed with a head full of useless knowledge (and bad wiring), I’m going to attempt some answers here in this third installment. So, here are some of the Christmas Comics Frequently Asked Questions…

What sort of education did you have?

I have a Bachelor of Science degree in Graphic Design from La Roche College, a four-year liberal arts college in Pittsburgh, PA. As for specific classes in cartooning, that’s all pretty much self taught. I had one or two “cartooning” classes in college, but those were SO basic that I knew more about the subject going in than was actually taught to me. For any aspiring cartoonists out there, I’d recommend doing the four year thing, with English, Writing and Composition classes mixed in with the Anatomy, Drawing and Design courses. Makes you a more well-rounded individual, you know!

Who writes/draws your comics?

Although I do work with collaborators from time to time, ALL the Christmas offerings from Cool Yule are written AND drawn by me. Good thing I took all those English and Writing classes, huh?

What inspired you to do Christmas Comics?

I pretty much outlined that in the first installment of Creating Christmas Comics. You can read it here.

Do you plan to produce any faith-based Christmas Comics?

Good question! The short answer is “Yes. That was always part of the plan!” The longer explanation is only if and when I can do justice to the Gospels (especially Luke) and tell it in a clear, concise and entertaining manner. It’s a daunting prospect and I want to take the time to do it right. Someday. Keep watching.

How long does it take to produce a Christmas Comic?

Again, see installment two of this series here.

How long have you been doing Christmas Comics?

I’ve been working steadily on Christmas comics since 2005. I’ve been working professionally in comics since 1982. You do the math.

Are your comics based on anyone or anything in your real life?

Not directly, no. That’d be pretty silly. But certain ideas for situations come from conversations I’ve had with friends and family, just like certain personality traits are culled from the people around me. All these outside influences (and more) go into my fertile little brain and spill out in the form you see on the comic page. This is where that “bad wiring” thing applies.

Do you do other comics besides Christmas Comics?

Yes, indeedy do! Thanks for asking! If you’re interested in seeing some of my other non-Christmas work, feel free to visit my creator web site. Please and thank you.

Any plans to have your characters animated?

Sweet Sisters of the Poor! I sure HOPE so! Right now, I’m working with some people to animate several non-Christmas characters I co-own with one of my collaborators. My Christmas themed concepts are wide open, though. Producers and studio execs take note!

Do you take suggestions for comics?

Not usually. I have so many ideas rolling around that there aren’t enough hours in the day to draw them all. I’m afraid that someone will (coincidentally) suggest something that I’m already working on and we’ve ALL heard THAT one before! It’d devolve into a he said/she said argument for creator’s rights. That can get so messy. But I encourage anyone with an idea to try their own hand in drawing it out. C’mon… it’ll be fun.

Why aren’t comics ten cents anymore?

This wasn’t the specific question but it amounts to the same thing. Everyone remembers comics being cheaper (and thicker) when they were a kid. I used to buy ‘em for 12 cents when I was a boy. But that was forty years ago and the cost of everything has gone up. What most people mean when they ask that is why aren’t comics so easy to find anymore? Seems you can only get them in comic book stores these days and who wants to go into places like that? They’re scary! The truth is comics NEVER were a money maker for drug stores and Mom and Pop groceries. Their relative low price meant much less profit per unit sold than, say, Time Magazine or Playboy, which had much heftier price tags. For comics to stay competitive in the current market, they’d have to come in somewhere in the neighborhood of $7-10 each, and who’d pay that for a comic? But fear not! There’s this remarkable new sales generating tool at our disposal that helps cut out the middle man and keep prices lower. It’s called the “internet”.

Well, that’s all for this go-round. Hope I answered all you questions. If not, all I can say to that is… Merry Christmas! See you next time.

By George Broderick, Jr.

In our last installment of Creating Christmas Comics, I discussed a little about my background and what brought me to the momentous decision to spend my time crafting my happy little holiday tales.

And what a decision it was!

Comics, or more specifically, working professionally in Comics, is a lonely, sedentary life. You don’t really think about it much, but a great deal of time and effort goes into crafting a single comic book… and Christmas comics are no exception. Sure, they’re fun… but a LOT of sweat goes into that fun.

To create even one issue of a Christmas comic… say, Christmas Eve Winter Carnival, a book I just sent to the printer in early October takes almost an ENTIRE YEAR for one person (me) to produce.

“How can this be?”, you ask, aghast, mouths open in utter disbelief.

Well…

We start with the story. The script, as it were. I began writing the script for Christmas Eve Winter Carnival last December, during the break between Christmas and New Year’s, while the holiday spirit was still fresh within me. This volume, rather than one long 52 page narrative (as the first Christmas Eve book was), would feature five shorter stories, ranging from one to twenty-three pages in length. They’d all be around a central theme, different aspects of the winter holidays, and I wanted to showcase a different cast member (or members) in each one, not make them all just about Christmas Eve. One story would feature Eve and the girls in typical Christmas Eve action, one would mainly center on Eve (in a cautionary tale), one would be about the Sugar Plum Fairies, Holly, Noel and Carol (with guest star Greta Poinsettia), one would be a New Year’s tale, featuring Eve and Father Time and add to the Christmas Eve mythology and, finally, there’d be a one page, silent “gag” strip starring Ol’ Tannenbaum, The Talking Christmas Tree.

With my line-up set, I began writing. The scripting took me until mid-January. I’m a freelance artist and I DID have other paying work to schedule in. With the scripts written, I now could start drawing the entire book in pencil (still, remember, working on those other paying jobs simultaneously).

When I “pencil” a comic (as most comic artists do) I work bigger, on 11 X 17 Bristol board. The art will later be reduced to the printed comic book size of approximately 6 5/8 X 10 ½. But that’s waaaaay later. I choose to do my pencil work in non-reproductive blue pencil. Non-repro blue won’t show up on most copiers or process cameras, so it saves me a step in that I don’t have to go back and erase the stray pencil lines later.

On a good day (one without interruptions), I can pencil up to three pages. I RARELY get good days, so my average is 1 ½ to 2 pages. Working on this and another book simultaneously, the penciling takes me to Easter week to complete. Easter was March 23^rd this year, so I finished the penciling just before the start of April. Plenty of time until Christmas, right?

Not so, friends and neighbors! The next step in the process is what we call “inking”. Inking involves going back over the pencil art in India Ink with a pen and/or brush, adding detail, texture, light source and last minute flourishes. It’s way more involved than simply “tracing”… just ask any of my inker colleagues.

Anyway, I can ink 1-2 pages a day. But I don’t work on weekends (I have to spend SOME time with my family) and it’s nearing the end of the school year and my daughter is a graduating senior this year. Plus, when summer starts, I begin teaching my Kid’s Cartooning Summer Camps at the local Art Centers, five days a week, three hours a day. Lots of fun, but very time consuming. So, this part of the process took far longer than I was comfortable with, but I finish inking by mid-July. Just in time for my family vacation! Tick, tick, tick… time is running out.

So, now we’re all August! The next step is to scan the pages into Photoshop, color them, letter them and format them according to the printer’s specifications. Scanning is quick and relatively painless. But… and here’s the hard part… to color the pages in an appropriate manner, I need to channel my inner Christmas Spirit (in such abundance back when I first started scripting in late December).

In my hometown of Pittsburgh, PA, we get some honkin’ hot summer days. 85 to 90 degrees and humidity with a capital “whew!”. It takes a LOT of induced Christmas Spirit (and central air) to get in the mood. So, out come the Christmas CD’s.

I play them long and loud.

That, coupled with some Merry Christmas Radio, visiting the forums at My Merry Christmas and watching some Santa and Rudolph DvD’s and I’m good to go. I drive my family nuts, but I’m good.

The rest of the summer is a flurry of coloring pages and lettering the dialogue balloons and placing them in such a way as to cover up as little art as possible. Wow! It’s a good thing I saved that erasing step back when I started inking! Way to go, non-repro blue!

So, here we are in mid-October. The book is done and gone off to the printer. Almost an entire year has elapsed since I started, with a lot of the work being done during the hottest, most “non-Christmas-y” months of the year. Time to start the process all over again for next year.

And now you know how I spent my summer vacation.

Christmas Eve Winter Carnival 2008 cover

By George Broderick, Jr.

I love comics.

Newspaper comics, comic books, animated cartoons, paperback collections, even Ziggy greeting cards. They’re a part of who I am, stretching back to that dim, misty long gone day in January 1966 when an eight year old budding artist first saw Adam West play Batman on TV. The wacky, over the top, good natured fun of that TV series was infectious and I just KNEW that this is what I wanted to do with my life and career. I wanted to make comics and I wanted them to be FUN! And for the better part of the last twenty-five years, I’ve been doing just that. Sometimes for others (The Simpsons, DC Comics, Marvel Comics, Innovation Publishing), but mostly for myself (Courageous Man, Stardust & Thor, The Twerp and the Blue Baboon). Lots of hard work, but mostly lots of FUN.

I love Christmas.

Well, DUH! This pretty much speaks for itself. The gifts (both giving and receiving), the music, the decorations, the food, the love… I mean, who wouldn’t love Christmas? You there in the third row… sit down! It was a rhetorical question.

So, with these two great loves in my life, making Christmas comics seemed like a perfect fit, right? Well, it was a little more complicated than that. It took several years before the (twinkly) light bulb went off in my head.

It was 2004. I’d been producing my creator-owned comics for several years at that point and had been making the rounds at the various comic book shows around the country, setting up my table and hawking my wares to a generally positive but oh-so-sparse fan base. Things were clicking, just not very loudly. I remember standing at the table one day at one of these shows, looking out over the crowds, seeing them milling about, showing far more interest in much darker fare than I was producing… vampire bloodbaths, anti-heroes who’d just as soon eviscerate their foes as incarcerate them, death, carnage, demonic possession… and I was a tad despondent. But then, in a moment of clarity (some might say madness), I sighed long and loud and said to my friend next to me… “I just want to have fun… I want to make comics that are fun… I think I’ll quit all this hoo-hah and just make Christmas comics from now on”.

We laughed.

Then we went on about our business, had a nice lunch at Johnnie Rocket’s and said no more about it.

But the seed had been planted. That particular Christmas tree was about to do what all fir trees are supposed to do… grow straight and tall and point the way to God.

See, part of my credo in producing comics was to maintain a certain moral standard. I would NOT do comics that I couldn’t show to my five year old daughter (who’s now in college, by the way… thanks for asking). And, too, I realized that much of my talent was a gift from God and it was my duty to use that talent to glorify Him and give a little back.

Christmas comics, even the ones featuring Santa Claus and the more fanciful, non-biblical characters would allow me to do that. Whether it’s a retelling of the Gospel of Luke (and there are plans afoot to do just that through Cool Yule Comics) or fun holiday romps with Santa and Christmas Eve, as long as the message of love and sharing is evident, it’s still a reflection of God’s love (sorry to disappoint the secular progressives that may be reading this).

So, to sum up. I wanted to make comics that were fun. I wanted to do comics that provided some morality. I wanted to honor my Christian roots.

I figured that doing Christmas comics would allow me to pursue ALL these goals simultaneously.

And you know what? For once, I was right. And, not surprisingly, the more I get into this, the more of that love seems to be coming my way and now I couldn’t even stop if I wanted to (and trust me, I don’t).

But how, exactly, do I go about producing these four color gems? Well, that’s a question best left for the next installment of Creating Christmas Comics. In future installments, I’ll be discussing the nuts and bolts of creating these comics, some of my favorite Christmas comics (other than my own, of course), my future (off season) plans for Cool Yule, a little background on me, myself and I, and a FAQ segment where YOU, the reader of this series, can ask me specific questions that you’ve always wondered about concerning my comics. Ya wanna? C’mon… it’ll be FUN.

So, stay tuned. We’ll be right back… same Christmas time… same Christmas channel… er, URL…