So your pal Mike sells comics for a living, or at least attempts to (this past Sunday was bit of a wash, ugh), and as part of that living, he…or, rather, I price a lot of back issues. Boy, I do love back issues. If I could just price and sell ’em all day, I would, but I have to do other things, like “break down the new comic shipments” and “help customers” — you know, distractions like that.
But blessed are the days when I can just park at the counter with a big ol’ stack of old comics on one side of me, an Overstreet Price Guide on the other, and I’m able to just go to town, a’gradin’ and a’pricin’. And when I do, I often come across a comic that’ll get me thinking about it, and those thoughts have to go somewhere, and thus, a blog is born.
Like right now, as I want to talk about this particular cover for a moment:
That’s Alpha Flight #3 from 1983, cover by John Byrne, featuring our hero Aurora trapped in a room with crisscrossing rods, in a high-contrast black and white. It’s quite the striking image.
Every time I see that cover, however, I think the same thing: that must have been a huge pain to draw. The problem is, of course, I don’t really know that. I’m not a comic book artist, and my long-ago dabbling in cartooning was nowhere near this level of skill. It just seemed like a lot of work.
I’ve seen this cover plenty of times, but this time, I also remembered “wait, I have social media,” and I put the question to the masses:
And lo, I did get many a response. You can see ’em all just by clicking this little link here, but you’ll need to scroll down a bit just to get past the general Alpha Flight discussion. Consensus on the art seems to be “not as hard as it looks, just takes time,” which, of course, makes sense. Get those perspective lines down and you’re good to go! Anyway, take a peek at that thread to see the wide variety of answers I received.
I did get one or two replies along the lines of “gives me anxiety just looking at it,” so at least I know I’m not alone here.
Now let’s go back to how I worded my question. I asked if an artist would say “ugh, give me cars or horses to draw instead.” I made that specific joking reference because I’ve noticed comic artists saying that drawing cars or horses (or stairs, as someone added in that Bluesky thread) can be quite the drag. That generated a response from André, who said “I will draw all the ponies at any opportunity, good sir.”
And to prove that he means business, he created this beautiful piece of art to show you all how it’s done:
And be sure to visit that link for a larger version of that pic, plus a work-in-progress image! Thanks, André!
Oh, and in case you were wondering, Byrne did this for a couple of interior panels as well:
Still looks like magic to me.
I loves me some Byrne Alpha Flight! What an underrated gem. You know he made up the time he spent on that issue with the one where Snowbird fights in a blizzard, pages of white panels with just word balloons. Say what you will about Byrne, he had some ‘chutzpah’!