Fantastic Four ™ and © Marvel Characters, Inc. Modern Masters Volume 30:

Table of Contents

Introduction by R. Kikuo Johnson ...... 4

Part One: Stuck in a Corner, Surrounded by Art ...... 6

Part Two: Breaking in While Breaking Out ...... 11

Part Three: Back to the Drawing Board ...... 28

Part Four: The Book on Everyone’s Radar ...... 43

Part Five: Storytelling and the Creative Process ...... 64

Art Gallery ...... 77 Stuck in a Corner Part 1: Surrounded by Art

MODERN MASTERS: You were born in Florida. What had done, and my dad’s dad told him to get a job with the year was that? government like he had done. They were both artistically PAOLO RIVERA: 1981. inclined, but never really got full support.

MM: Most of your fans know a little about your father MM: Did either of them have any formal training? now, but what did your parents do for a living when you PAOLO: Not really, no. They met in a drawing class in were growing up? Orlando, so they took at least one class, but no real formal PAOLO: In ’82 my parents opened a framing shop/art sup- training. My mom does have a degree in textiles, but my dad ply store. My mom basically ran it. It was just me and my is pretty much self-taught. His dad was, for a time, a butcher, mom, and I was stuck in a corner all day, every day, with un- so my dad literally drew on butcher’s paper. [laughter] limited art supplies and the means to stay quiet. [Eric laughs] I had a lot of time on my hands, so I just kept drawing. MM: They didn’t get the full support of their parents, but I My mom did professional framing, and even though assume they gave you that support. it was my dad’s business, she ran it, and he PAOLO: Oh yeah, definitely. They always made it very would travel the country doing cari- apparent that I had to support myself, but at the same time, catures wherever he could— they weren’t going to tell me not to do it. malls and whatnot. I think it was mostly caricatures MM: And in the environment in which you were raised, at that time, but the you could see that artwork was something that you could reason they settled in do for a living. Daytona Beach was PAOLO: Yeah, at the very least it was an option. that my dad would do Whereas with my parents… all my mom’s sisters airbrush T-shirts, and are nurses for the most part, and she’s the old- back in the ’80s, Daytona est of eleven. That’s saying something. was a spring break Mecca. MM: Was being an artist something you MM: So you grew up sur- aspired to from an early age, or did you go rounded by art. Did you ever through different phases of wanting to do go with your dad on any of something else? his work trips, or were you PAOLO: It was definitely something I stuck at the store? always wanted to do. I started drawing PAOLO: No, not really. basically as soon as I was in the corner It was pretty much just of the store. I don’t think it really felt like me and my mom. I think a real option until high school he would be out for when I saw that I could go months at a time. He to an art school, and that didn’t really come back art schools had scholar- full-time until I was in ships and I would maybe grade school—kindergarten be able to get one. Our or first grade. He came back teacher in high school and started working at the mall passed away a couple of years in Daytona doing airbrush T-shirts. ago, but she was very good at My mom ran the store from 1982 to 2000. getting me on the right track for go- ing to art school. You know, there are a lot MM: Was she artistic as well? of kids in art class, but only a handful of us PAOLO: Yeah, and that’s the thing with my were considering that as a real option. parents. Neither one of them got the sup- port they would have preferred from their parents. MM: Being in the art store, you must My mom’s mom told her to become a nurse like she have been surrounded by instructional

6 books. Were you interested in those, or did you just experiment? PAOLO: Yeah, definitely. Because of where I grew up, I was heavily influenced by airbrush. Much to my mom’s chagrin, I would copy my dad’s Spring Break design, so it would be the Tazmanian Devil holding a can of Budweiser in one hand and a bikini top in the other hand saying, “Spring Break ’87.” [laughter] It wasn’t something my mom liked very much, but it was what I wanted to draw. They were a good couple to play off of each other, because my dad was always do- ing that kind of stuff. He eventually made the switch from airbrush T-shirts to doing custom motorcycles and cars, but it’s all kind of the same stuff. My mom was much more graphically oriented, much more into textiles and pattern and composition. Looking back [laughs] In high school, my mom was very on it now, I think it was very tough for her upset with my color ability. I did a mural to work in that store and be surrounded right after my freshman year for my biology by people who, to give you one example, teacher. She taught marine biology, so I did would come in to show her artwork they a big mural in her classroom. And my mom did that was obviously copied from an issue was appalled at the color, [laughter] so she sat of Playboy, and it wasn’t particularly well- me down and made me do a bunch of color drawn either. She always had very, very high exercises in paint. I was pretty decent at standards, which were above most of the drawing, but painting was something I didn’t stuff she saw, which in Daytona was airbrush really do. I give her crap about it now, but art—which was almost exclusively copied I’m glad she did it. from photos and popular culture—and tattoo art. She came from a more cultured back- MM: Did your dad draw for pleasure, or was Previous Page: A ground. it all work for him? 1995 drawing of Venom PAOLO: It was pretty much all work. I did from Paolo’s early teens MM: Did you see much fine art growing up? come across a sketchbook he had, but I think copied from a Tom Lyle Were you interested in that as well? that was from when he was younger. He figure from the “Maximum PAOLO: Yeah, definitely. Even though my was working so many hours during the day, Carnage” crossover. Above: Another “Maxi- dad did airbrushing to make a living, he I don’t think he wanted to draw very much mum Carnage” Venom always wanted to be a fine artist, I think. when he got home. He did the airbrush T- drawing from around the He bought a printing press at one point shirts until ’94 when somebody saw him in same time period, this and would do his own fine etching, but it’s the mall and asked him, “Do you want to do one copied from a Ron pretty tough to make a living doing that. that but make more money?” That was Chris Lim panel. But the store was a gallery of sorts. We had Cruz Artistry in DeLand, Florida, and he’s Van Goghs on the wall; we had a Rembrandt pretty much been working there ever since. Venom © Marvel Characters, Inc. etching. These were all prints and posters, of course, but some of the classics. MM: Was there any kind of art community built up around the art store? Were there MM: Did either of your parents ever talk regulars you could talk to and get input from? about those paintings with you on an ana- PAOLO: Not really. What happened with the lytical level? store mirrored what happened in Daytona. PAOLO: If they did, I don’t really remem- All of those airbrush artists eventually had ber. If I ever got any kind of specific instruc- to find other work, so they started travelling tion, it was probably more from my dad— to other places. They’d have us send them how to draw an ellipse on a car, and that supplies, and eventually the store morphed kind of thing. into a straight-up mail order airbrush supply

7 Below: Paolo drew this company. In 1995, I think, we moved it to a MM: If you didn’t airbrush, what mediums mock-up Panthro (of much smaller space that wasn’t a gallery at did you use? ThunderCats) cover in all. The ’80s was the heyday for Daytona. PAOLO: That was the one thing my mom 2002, just before first After that we went to straight-up mail order, did not want me to do. My dad wanted to being hired by Marvel, for and that’s when I started working there more. teach me, because at the time it was pretty one of Wizard magazine’s 1994 is when I started helping out and get- decent summer money. He went away for cover contests. ting a paycheck. the summers until 1998. He would go up to Next Page: Two of Old Orchard Beach [in Maine]—he went Paolo’s teenage obses- MM: What exactly were you doing, just there a couple of summers. He went to sions, The Teenage Mutant packing and shipping? Hampton Beach, New Hampshire, a couple Ninja Turtles (1990) and PAOLO: Yeah, it was just a summer job— of summers, and the last summer was Vir- The Tick (1995). packing boxes, answering phones. Even ginia Beach. My mom said I was absolutely Panthro © Warner Brothers though I can’t airbrush myself, I can take one not allowed to do it, so I was limited to Entertainment, Inc. and Ted Wolf. apart, clean it, and put it back together. I can pencil, pen, marker. Once I started work- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles © Viacom International, Inc. and put together manifolds for a compressor, put ing, I got myself a marker set, and they got Viacom Overseas Holdings C.V. in an inline moisture trap—all that stupid me a huge Prismacolor marker set in ’97, The Tick © Ben Edlund. crap I’ll never use again. [laughs] and that’s when I started using color more. I didn’t really paint or use color very much until high school when I had to use it for class. Which is weird, since I had access to everything, but it was much easier to draw, and I was good at drawing and bad at color. [laughs]

MM: When you got a little older, were you still mostly drawing pop culture things, or did you start doing more serious work? PAOLO: It was pretty much always pop culture stuff. My dad had a friend who drew the Ninja Turtles, Ken Mitchroney. He was drawing them for Archie when they were at their height. He gave me an original page when I was eight or nine, and I still have that framed. But, yeah, I went through my pop culture phase—Ghostbusters, G.I. Joe, Ninja Turtles, ThunderCats. Ninja Turtles probably lasted the longest. In 8th grade I loved The Tick, X-Men, and, of course, Marvel and DC stuff all the way through. Mostly I was get- ting that from movies and TV, not so much from comics. I didn’t really start buying comics until I got a car and could drive myself to the store. My dad did have some comics. He had a really odd assortment, and I was never quite sure where they came from, if they were his when he was a kid, but we had Amazing Spider-Man #33, the famous issue where he has all the metal on top of him. I would read that one over and over again, but never the issues before or after.

8 Breaking in, Part 2: While Breaking Out

MM: You had David Mazzucchelli as one of your teachers, PAOLO: He would give me very objective advice. There right? was one panel at the end where a woman was about to PAOLO: Yes, I had him at the beginning of my senior jump off a cliff. It was a fully painted close-up, and I had year. He was a major influence, because prior to that I had taken shots of a model that I was basically just copying. He really only focused on drawing. He was the first to make took a look at the panel and said, “This is a nice painting me understand what storytelling was. of a woman, but we need to see that she’s on the edge of a One of my best friends and eventual roommates, R. Kikuo cliff,” so I had to zoom way out and show this small figure Johnson, was a huge influence on me as well. He could draw, at the top of a very tall cliff. Without that, I don’t think but he was also making his own stories starting all the way you would understand that she was about to jump. It was back to our freshman year. He knew what he wanted to do little things like that. I was decent enough at painting, but and what he needed to learn, while I was more focused on I wasn’t thinking the panels through at the level I should rendering. He was in the same class have been. with Mazzucchelli that I was, and we still keep in contact. MM: While you were working on that story, you were just learning MM: So you never did sequential the process for how to produce art on your own, even back in high a comic. What was your process school? like at that point? I assume Marvel PAOLO: Not really. I always drew asked to see pencils before you that kind of stuff, and I read comics, started painting. and I always saw comics as the only PAOLO: Yeah. My editor at the option for me as to what I wanted time, Tom Brevoort, helped me out to do. My dad always told me, “You quite a bit. In June 2002 I did my don’t want to do animation, because first Marvel cover, which wasIron you’ll just end up being a tweener Man #63. Right after that is when [Ed. Note: An inbetweener draws the move- they offered me my first story. I ments in between the key frames].” [laughs] started on it the summer of 2002, It’s funny because now I know and that fall is when I got into people who tween. At the time it Mazzucchelli’s class. paid really well, but there was a lot But I used basically the same pro- more glory in comics, and I liked cess I do now. I did little thumbnail being more of an author as opposed layouts, and at the time I was taking to being part of the production line. model reference for everything. I took those photos and painted MM: What did you take out of in my parents’ garage on big 20" Mazzucchelli’s class? x 30" canvas in oil. It was roughly PAOLO: That was the first time I the same process I do now. I would had to break stuff down and tell a story. And it was funny, submit it to my editor, and they would provide me with because I was technically already working for Marvel. My some notes, but I always had a general sense of storytelling first Marvel gig was an eleven-page short story written by just from reading comics and watching movies. Christopher Priest for Marvel Double-Shot—a Dr. Doom story. I was actually doing that while I was in Mazzucchelli’s class. MM: Did you have any interaction with Christopher He knew this, and he did the same thing when he was at Priest, or did they just hand you the script? RISD, so he let me go easy on some of the class assignments PAOLO: There was very, very limited interaction. We and focus on that story. He knew I was doing that, and he did a couple of back-and-forth emails, but pretty much knew he could help. everything I needed was in the script. Almost everything I’ve gotten from Marvel has been full script. The only time MM: Were you showing him your layouts and asking him I’ve done anything Marvel-style was a couple of pages of what you could do to improve them? Daredevil.

11 MM: The core of that Dr. Doom story is emotion. Did you have any qualms about conveying the proper tone consid- ering Doom is wearing an iron mask? PAOLO: Not really. I actually made a mask in sheet metal. I used puff paint to make the rivets all over it. But basi- cally he just looks angry in every single panel. [laughter] If I didn’t want him to look angry, I would draw him in a different angle. I still treat him the same way. If I want him to look angry, I have him looking down and up, and if I want him to look a little more vulnerable, I have the reader looking up at him so that the arch of the mask reads kind of like arching eyebrows. I was there, I didn’t get to meet Quesada, but I got his email MM: What kind of reaction did you get from Marvel about address. I emailed him some jpegs that night, and he got the finished story? back to me the next day and said I was hired. [laughter] It was PAOLO: Well, they hired me again, so that was good. the next month that I did the Iron Man cover. When I turned [laughter] When Jim first took me into the Marvel offices to that in, he emailed me again and said, “We love it. We want introduce me to a few editors, none of them knew what to to bring you back to New York.” He wanted to fly me up do with me because I had a fully painted portfolio. But while and put me in a hotel so we could talk, which was amazing. I told him I was working at Olive Garden and couldn’t take the time off, [laughter] but I was going to go up anyway on my way back to RISD for my senior year. They ended up putting up me, my parents, and my friend R. Kikuo John- son in a hotel in New York City just so I could say hi and meet all the editors. That was in the midst of working on the Dr. Doom story, and when I finished that, they put me onSpectacular Spider-Man #14 with . It was a pretty quick rise. People still come up to me and say they loved that initial Spider- Man story. Right from the beginning I was getting choice projects. Right after Spider-Man, they basically made a project for me, which was Mythos, and I spent the next four years on that.

MM: You did several covers during that time too. Were you working primarily in oil those first few years? PAOLO: Yeah, pretty much everything was in oil. I think the last time I worked on canvas was the Dr. Doom story, then I switched to Masonite. “Dr. Doom” and Iron Man were 20" x 30". After that I moved down to 16" x 24". I worked in oil into Mythos. The first issue of Mythos: X-Men was painted all in oil. Then I started on . I painted the cover in oil and the first page in oil—that’s when I said, “I can’t do this anymore.” [laughter] I switched to Acryla Gouache.

MM: As a time-saver, because the oils take so long to dry. PAOLO: Yeah. That’s the year I doubled my income. [laughter]

12 MM: How long did it take you to do a typi- cal cover back then? PAOLO: I would give myself a month, but actual painting time was maybe a week or two. X-Men, I took my sweet old time on that. That took me ten months, but I was doing all the Books of Doom covers at the same time. With Spider-Man, I literally didn’t go outside. That was when we moved to New York. It took a month or two to build our loft, and I painted that story in three-and-a-half months.

MM: That was a 23-page story, though. PAOLO: I literally did not go outside at all while I was working on it.

MM: Did you feel more confident by the time you started working on the Spider-Man story? Did you feel you were able to push things more? PAOLO: Most of my pressure was time- based. Obviously I gave a lot of thought to the story, but my main concern was just get- ting it in on time. That was always the main challenge for me. I was still using models for pretty much everything, so it was like I was directing things more. I always thought of it as acting in a certain way. I took drama classes in high school—I was part of that community, Amer- ican musical theater and that type of thing. I don’t know if it helped. Maybe it did, maybe it didn’t, but it’s why I have the “Wacky Ref- erence Wednesday” [on my blog]. For me, it’s a two-step process: You put yourself in the mind of the character, and then you put yourself in the mind of the reader. You have to figure out how to convey the character’s emotions to the reader. Honestly, I’ve always MM: There are some RGB shades that don’t Previous Page: A found it to be fairly easy. You just act it out translate into CMYK. panel from Spectacular and translate it to the page. It’s not some- PAOLO: Yeah, exactly. I was working in Spider-Man #14 (top) and thing I’ve thought about a whole lot. It just CMYK, and so in order to get the colors I the pencils for the first kind of happens naturally. I think it comes wanted, I would use too much virtual ink, so page of Mythos: X-Men more from watching a lot of movies. when it would go to the printer, they would (bottom). print it way too dark. The way to get it right Above: Paolo’s gray tone MM: When it came to the reproduction of was to work in RGB and do the conversion painting (done in Acryla your work, was there a long process of figur- at the very end to CMYK. It took me seven gouache) for page 1 of ing out how your work would translate into years to figure that out. Mythos: Hulk. He originally print? painted this page in oil, PAOLO: Oh, yeah, definitely. I struggled MM: Did you take any computer classes at but didn’t even scan it. He with that. I don’t think I really figured it out RISD? Did they offer much instruction in switched to the gouache, until probably 2009. [laughs] It took about that area? repainted the page, and seven years, and what it came down to was PAOLO: Yes and no. I actually took Illus- never looked back. The that I was working in CMYK when I should trator classes in high school, so when I got color was added later have been working in RGB during the pro- to RISD I was a little ahead of the curve. I digitally. cess and converting to CMYK at the end. I knew a good bit about Photoshop. When I Hulk, , Spider-Man, know that now. [laughter] say I took a class in high school, it was me, X-Men © Marvel Characters, Inc.

13 Back to the Part 3: Drawing Board

MM: Next up was Amazing Spider-Man #577. You actually MM: Did you spend time practicing your inking before did the interior story and the cover for that. you started on the job, or did you just kind of jump into it? PAOLO: Yes, that was 2008, and it was the first book PAOLO: I did a couple of character studies just to get the where I did pencils and inks. feel of it, but mostly I just jumped right in. I think for that particular one, I didn’t even do layouts. Usually I do a 4" x MM: Why did you decide to do pencil and ink rather than 6" pencil sketch and submit that to the editor, get the ap- painting. Was that something the editor suggested, or proval, and then start on pencils. I did that for the first four something you wanted to try? Or was it more financially pages, and then, I think to speed things up, I just started based, so you could do more work? drawing straight on the final board, and I’d show them a PAOLO: It was a little bit of all that. I’d just finished rough at some point in the process. Mythos, which took way, way too long, and so we were all interested in getting me to be faster, which of course trans- MM: Were you making your pencils tighter for your inking lates to me making more money, so that helped too. than for your painting? The other thing that helped was I had done a commis- PAOLO: It’s about the same, I think. I don’t know. sion for my art dealer. It was a Wolverine and Colossus “fastball special” piece for a book he was putting together MM: Were you doing much of the drawing in the inking of his artists, and when I showed it to my editor, he was stage? like, “Why didn’t you just do this for us?” That’s when they PAOLO: Not at the time. I was doing a lot of the texturing decided to put me on Spidey. in the inking stage. Once I got the basic forms down, then I would kind of go “off-script,” so to speak, and kind of add MM: Had you been doing much pencil and ink drawing, things here and there. All the major points were locked say, in sketchbooks or something, while you were doing all down. the painting for Marvel? PAOLO: I’d done a little bit here and there. In 2004 I did MM: Did you just start working from panel one on an Army of Darkness cover that was pen and ink, but it took through, or did you jump around at all? me a really long time to do it. Beyond that, I think every- PAOLO: I pretty much drew from the beginning to the thing else I’d done for Marvel was end. You can start jumping around, and the pages you don’t painted. want to do never get done. [laughter] It never fails. With any script there’s always going to be some pages that are necessary, but aren’t necessarily as cool as a big splash page. The only time I would jump around was when I was painting in oils, and I had to, because I would get to one point on one, and have to let it dry, so I would move to the next one and come back to it later.

MM: What about the comfort factor? Were you thinking in color still, and tones? Did your painting experience inform your inking at all? PAOLO: It did. I had to kind of make a transition where I realized that I couldn’t think in values. I actually think it helped me a lot, because it made me create stronger compositions. When you’re painting, you can almost make anything work, because you can fudge it.

28 There’s an anecdote from the Howard Pyle PAOLO: I was pretty happy with it. I School of Art told by N.C. Wyeth, where remember at the beginning, my style they used to sit around and draw each other did sort of change. I’m definitely the worst possible composition they could less “noodly” than I used to be. On think of, and then they would hand it off to that issue, I would draw every hair the next person, and they would take it and, on the Punisher’s face, and I still using just the value, try and improve it. So kind of do that. I still love giving there’s a lot you can do with lighting, because him that eight o’clock shadow, but you can use it as a spotlight to accentuate not as much as I used to. I used to things or downplay things. There’s just a lot really get in there and draw each more give and take. With black-&-white, it’s and every line, and I would actu- either a good composition or it’s not. ally take this one brush that I have that was super old, and I never took MM: You stuck with a pretty clean style. Do care of it—and I specifically you think that carried over because you were didn’t take care of it so it used to drawing for painting? There’s some would age, and the fibers rendering, of course, but there’s not a lot of would split out so you’d intricate crosshatching or things like that. get with one stroke, four PAOLO: I don’t know. I just do what I like. I was looking at a lot of Milton Caniff for inking. Really, I think that’s where I get my inking style. I don’t draw like him, but I ink like him. I just draw my regular way of draw- Previous Page: The ing something, whatever the figure is, and “fastball special” piece then I’ll just put his inking on top of it, and that won Paolo a job on that’s kind of what my style is. Spider-Man.

MM: Were you inking mostly with a brush, or did you use pen at all? PAOLO: Always the brush, yeah. I’m just more comfortable with a brush. I use a big fat one, #6, which is bigger than what most people like, but for me, I find it easier because it has more variation in line width, and just texture overall. Left and Above: Preliminary sketches as MM: What about the smaller detail work, Paolo warmed up for like the Spider-Man webbing and that kind Amazing Spider-Man #577 of thing? Were you using a smaller brush or a featuring the Punisher. pen for that? Paolo made the interest- PAOLO: I still used the big brush. Occa- ing decision to go more sionally I’d use a small one if I had to do a cartoony and organic whole lot of it, but the nice thing about a with the Punisher’s skull big brush, it has what’s called a “cat tongue” emblem.

shape to it, so it’s big and fat when it gets Colossus, Punisher, Wolverine © close to the barrel, but as it gets closer to Marvel Characters, Inc. the tip, it kind of thins out, so it’s almost like having a very, very fine brush with a very big brush behind it. The big brush can hold all the extra ink, but the fine brush is what gives all the detail.

MM: What did you think when you were done with the job? Was it like, “Oh, I’ve still got a learning process to go through?” or were you fairly happy with it?

29 draw. Mark Waid was always really good about that. He’d They want something that is iconic, and can be used either say, “What do you want to draw?” Like Klaw, in that first as a poster, or a cover for a trade paperback, or whatever. arc, he said, “What villain do you want to draw?” and I said, If you’re doing a series of covers, that’s the time when you “Klaw!” [laughter] And I’ll be damned, he wrote a freaking can start experimenting. Klaw story! That’s always fun. But that being said, I also enjoy just picking up a script cold, and kind of warming it MM: Was there any extra editorial direction to what they up as I go. wanted, or was that just all on your part? PAOLO: Steve came to me and said, “Daredevil’s going MM: After doing a couple of pencil-and-ink jobs, did to Japan, so do something Japanese.” And so, of course, working in just black-&-white have any effect at all on your as soon as he said that, I thought Japanese woodprints. I painting? Did you notice any kind of change in the way showed him a sketch, and he said, “Good.” That’s still one you look at it? of my most popular covers; people just loved that. It makes PAOLO: Yeah, like I was saying before about the improve- me want to do more of them. ment in the composition, I think it’s forced me to look at my paintings in a different way. The sketches I would do in preparation for painting were more legible than they used to be. So it definitely helped both... the painting helped the inking, and the inking helped the painting.

MM: It seems like your early painted covers have very simple backgrounds for the most part, but once you had been doing more inked stuff, you had a little more background detail in your paintings. PAOLO: With the paintings, the main thing is, it just takes so long, so if it’s going to have an intricate background, that panel needed to be about that intricate background. So, I would go full on out with, let’s say, the X-Men Danger Room. I would put everything into that one paint- ing, but there wasn’t anything else going on—it was about the Danger Room. And if one panel was all about the action, I would focus on that, because I didn’t have time to put all that detail in to the back- ground.

MM: You did a short stint as the cover artist for Daredevil, and that was when you got a little more “design-y” in the covers. PAOLO: Yes, that was three covers. I think it was in 2009. I don’t know why that transition happened, but I guess because I was getting more done, I just felt like I could experi- ment a little bit more. That was one of the things I learned from Marvel is that if they ask you for one cover, they want a specific kind of cover.

33 did was an Iron Man cover, the second thing was issues #615 and 616—but as I was liter- Below: Painted (mostly) I did was a Doctor Doom story, then bam! ally laying out the first page, I got a call from warm-ups for a two-part They gave me an issue of Spider-Man. I was Steve Wacker, and he said, “How do you Sandman story which kind of amazed that I got into that so early feel about dropping what you’re doing and didn’t happen. It wasn’t on. Then beyond that, they always gave me starting on a bigger project?” I was like, “Ah, completely wasted, good projects. I don’t know, I think I did I don’t know.” I wasn’t sure, I had already though, as he did at least have that sense, but I think I always had that talked to Fred about it, and he said, “Okay, paint the covers. sense, because they were always giving me let me rephrase that: We’re pulling you off Next Page: Mary Jane exactly what I wanted to do. this and you’re going to do this much bigger remains stoic in public, but reveals her troubles project with Quesada.” So I was super happy to her aunt in “One Mo- MM: You were doing some pencil-and-ink about that, but I always felt bad that I was all ment in Time.” Amazing interior work inside some of those issues, so pumped, ready to work with Fred, and then Spider-Man #639, page 13. this was pretty high profile work. we never got to. PAOLO: Yeah, it was huge. The way that Mary Jane Parker, Sandman, Spider-Man © Marvel Characters, year panned out, I was originally going to MM: You weren’t doing every page in that Inc. do a two-issue Sandman story with Fred Van story with Quesada [“One Moment in Time,” Lente, and I still did the covers for that—it Amazing Spider-Man #638–641]. You were doing certain scenes, and there’d be framing sequences around it. Did that kind of throw you off your pacing at all, or did the script compensate for that? PAOLO: I didn’t give it a whole lot of thought. The script had Quesada’s pages in there, so I didn’t see what his finished work looked like until the very end. The one funny thing about the project, as he would always say, is that he gave me the challenge of kind of mimicking that wedding annual [Amazing Spider-Man Annual #21] style. He said that I did it too well. [laughter] He’d done that with his work before, and there’s a pretty stark difference between... like, he showed me a page of his, where he’s mim- icking a Ditko scene. There’s a pretty wide gap between those. For me, there wasn’t a whole lot of difference, especially because I matched the color as well.

MM: Exactly, I think that was probably what made the biggest difference. I had to look back at the credits to make sure it wasn’t a reprint page! [laughter] PAOLO: Yeah, it was definitely my coloring, but it doesn’t look very different.

MM: So you just pulled out the old comics and said, “I’m going to match this exactly”? PAOLO: Yes, pretty much. They gave me a PDF of that issue.

MM: Did you limit yourself to the 32-color palette or whatever they were using at that point? PAOLO: I didn’t quite do that. I thought about doing that, but I just didn’t have enough time to mess around with it. I just picked the colors I wanted and did them.

36 The Book on Part 4: Everyone’s Radar

MM: Daredevil was your first regular monthly ongoing. interesting things with the sound effects. But I don’t think he How did you get that assignment, and were you kind of actually used the radar sense. nervous about keeping a monthly schedule? Was it pitched to you as being alternating arcs with another artist? How MM: No, he didn’t. A lot of artists have done different was that all settled? things with the radar sense. Were those things in the back PAOLO: Well, Steve Wacker, the editor, pitched it pretty of your mind, “I don’t want to look like anybody else,” or well. He knew basically what my speed was, which was was it all based off of Mark’s idea of that 3-D look? slow, and he pitched it to me as alternating arcs with PAOLO: Really it was just based off Mark’s description. Marcos Martin. I think Marcos visited around that time, so It just seemed like the best solution. Later on, I found an we got to meet briefly in New York. Steve really organized issue of Daredevil where Gene Colan had done something the whole thing. He put us together and figured it all out, very similar, but for completely different reasons. Daredevil and we agreed, and that was that. I’d done four [consecu- had gotten two seconds behind reality, and saw a ghosted tive] issues of Amazing Spider-Man, and he said it wouldn’t image of himself, so the technique was nothing new, it was be any more insane than that. The thought was that since I just how I used it was something new. wouldn’t be coloring, and I wouldn’t be inking, I could hit the schedule a little more easily. MM: Did you have much of a head start before the series was launched to get going on it? MM: In that meeting with Marcos and Mark, did you work PAOLO: I can’t remember exactly how far, but Steve up how you wanted the visual effects to work, like the knows what he’s dealing with when he deals with me. I had radar sense? Did you work together to come up with that plenty of lead time. If I remember correctly, Mark Waid approach? gave me the first ten pages of the second half, just to give PAOLO: Mark basically asked for it in the script. He me something to get started on. didn’t know what he wanted, but he knew how he wanted it to feel, which was three-dimensional but not visual. MM: Did you do a lot of preliminary drawings and design At one point he said, “Maybe it could be painted,” but I work before getting started on it, or did you have time? really didn’t want to mess with that. It just seemed like PAOLO: I did about one page of it; it wasn’t very the cross-contoured drawing style was the best solution. much. I wasn’t going to do anything much different I think just because I went first, I was the one who had to with Daredevil’s look. I thought it was good the way come up with it, and so we just went from there. Actually, it was. The main thing I’d do was change the cane. Marcos had the backup story in that first issue. He did some During the little research I did online, I came across

43 46 Slott. I had mentioned having my dad ink- March, and so I couldn’t finish the cover in ing to Wacker at some point previously in time for the debut. I think I finished it in passing. I think I mentioned it to Quesada as Florida. well, but they wanted to do something that That whole year started out weird. I got Previous Page: The wasn’t a big deal. We thought that one-issue punched on New Year’s Day and ended up finished cover ofDaredevil Spidey would be a good place to start. And in the hospital, and I was incapacitated, #1, which took Paolo a then I think I had some personal crap that basically, for at least a couple of weeks, if whopping 70 hours to got in the way, and I fell behind on a bunch not more. I could get around and stuff, I just complete. Time well spent. of stuff, and couldn’t do that issue, and Dare- didn’t feel like working. [laughs] I just felt Below: Layouts for page devil was already stepping up, and I just kind bad! I think in March, on my birthday, I got 13 of Daredevil #2. Paolo of went at it. some kind of stomach bug. I was totally in- started with a loose Oh, wait, we did one cover, a Spider- capacitated for about a week. So that whole sketch of the page (left). He then imported that Man/Punisher cover for Spectacular Spider-Man beginning of the year was kind of rough, and into Photoshop where he #1000, and that was the very first thing my I just kept getting more and more behind, added perspective lines, dad inked for Marvel. But prior to that, I had and that’s one reason I couldn’t do that Spidey tightened the drawing in given him plenty of my own inked pages, issue. I actually went home to Florida—I was places, and made adjust- and just had him print them out in blue line living in New York at the time—and stayed ments. For example, he and trace them in ink. with my parents for a month, both to kind slid panel two over so of recuperate, and also to teach my dad how that Daredevil is more MM: For the cover for the first issue ofDare - to ink. It was kind of nice to get away from towards the middle of the devil, did you do all the lettering? New York out of the cold, and then show my page. PAOLO: Oh, yeah. That one took me, like, dad how to ink exactly the way I wanted. Daredevil © Marvel Characters, 70 hours. When they first made the an- Inc. nouncement about the series and the creative MM: When you pitched the idea for the team, I hadn’t finished yet. That was a tough cover, did you realize what you were getting start to the year. I’d gotten super sick around into? It was a very nice use of typography.

47 Below: Pencils for the any kind of source of light, I would totally PAOLO: Pretty easily, as I recall. Issue #9 Gustave Doré-inspired use it, and use it as an excuse to make Dare- was the first one I started doing all digital cover of Daredevil #10. devil look cool, but then if there was sup- layouts. I’d just bought a Cintiq, and that Next Page: A full-size posed to be pitch darkness, I would still draw made the process pretty easy compared to detail shot early in the something, just because we had to tell the pencil sketches on 4" x 6". I’ve worked that inking process. Paolo story. You had to see where Daredevil was, way ever since. It’s just so much easier to started with Mole Man and the basic setting. Whatever each panel move things around and experiment. The and then his Moloids, called for, I was just trying to find some kind way I worked before with the pencil sketch, working from the darkest of solution that would work. I’d do a little thumbnail scratch—chicken- areas to the lighter areas. scratch, unintelligible to anyone but me— Daredevil, Mole Man © Marvel MM: Did you have a lot of trial and error, or and once I would figure out the panel, I’d Characters, Inc. did it come pretty easily? try and place that within the page. It’s just a whole lot of trial and error, and you can do trial and error with the digital stuff, but it’s just much more trial and a lot less error.

MM: When you started using that process, did you print the layouts out, or use them as a guide off to the side? How do you work it? PAOLO: Even prior to the digital layouts, I would still be doing my perspective guidelines in Pho- toshop, and I’d print that out on the board, and pencil over the top. Once I started doing digital layouts, I would do an even more refined sketch, also digitally, and then I’d print that out and pencil on top of that. A lot of the real work was being done digitally. That’s kind of the way I’ve con- tinued to work since then. If and when I start doing my own book, I might do the whole thing digi- tally, just because it’ll be faster.

MM: Interesting. That leads us to the cover of issue #10, and as soon as I saw it, I thought Gus- tave Doré. Were you looking at a bunch of his work for inspiration for that cover? PAOLO: Oh, yeah, definitely. Mark Waid had actually sug- gested that. He knew the feeling he wanted for those two issues, so he said, “Gustave Doré. That’s perfect.” I knew I couldn’t do the crazy, crazy style for both covers, so on the first one, I just made it as if it was his radar, like a trumped-up version of his radar, and had the one Moloid in relief, and then issue #10 is when I went full out.

56 MM: It probably took extra time to add that much detail. but I thought Daredevil was going to give me a little more Was it an inordinate amount of time you had to put into it? leverage than it actually did! [laughs] I said, “I’m going to PAOLO: It took about 70 hours, which is about the same leave or get a raise,” and well, you know how that ended up. amount of time I put in on the first cover. Yeah, it took a I didn’t expect it to be. I thought they’d give me something, while. I remember that week, because my now-wife had even a little bit. I asked for a lot more, and they basically left to go somewhere for pretty much the entire week, and said, “Absolutely not,” but I thought they’d give me some- I didn’t leave the house. [laughter] Because I did that, and thing. They offered me something under certain conditions, that same week, I did #12, the last cover. like if it sold over a certain amount, and I was like, “Well, it’s not going to, and it’s got nothing to do with me.” [laughter] MM: There are a lot of figures on that cover too. But I didn’t know, and I even penciled the first five pages PAOLO: We’re talking 140 hours, a little over a week. It of issue #17, or what would become issue #18 maybe, was balls to the wall, painting or inking! whatever the Coyote story was. Because that whole arc was an idea I wrote out and gave to Mark. It was going to be MM: Going into those last two issues of Daredevil, did you my story. I was totally into it, but at the same time, I real- know they were going to be your last issues of interior art? ized what kind of risk I was taking, so I was completely fine PAOLO: No, I didn’t. That was February of 2012, and I with not doing it in the end. I always knew that was going knew that my contract was coming up in April. Daredevil was to be a possibility. I had so much fun drawing The Spot doing way better than I had hoped for, but at the same time, in those brief eight pages, that I knew I wanted to draw the last couple of years prior to that, I’d asked for a raise, but him again, but make him a little more menacing. I enjoyed they told me no. Which was fine, I was still doing all right, reading the story, just as an observer.

57 Storytelling and Part 5: the Creative Process

MM: Do you try to get up early, or are you more of a late I’m kind of disappointed in myself. [laughter] Today I did it night guy? How do you schedule your work? for about 45 minutes in the morning. PAOLO: I’m naturally more of a night owl, but ever since From there I work until about noon, doing whatever it I started living with my wife—I think 2011 is when we is I need to do. Today I spent an hour just packing up and moved in together—I’ve tried to stay on her schedule, shipping things. I need to work on that. Work until noon, and she has a normal work day. So, at this point, I get up have lunch... it usually takes me about an hour to actually around 7:30, but my mind isn’t ready to do anything until get back to work, then I’ll work until, basically, my wife gets about 8:00. So, I just try and eat, and lately I’ve been study- home. And I have like a third work shift after dinner until I ing Spanish, because I want to know it. [laughs] I did it for go to bed. It can be anything from just answering emails, to every year of school ever, almost, and I don’t know it, so blogging, to something I’ve been meaning to do for a while. Lately, it’s been writing, to try and write my own story. It’s kind of an eight-hour work day, plus something extra tacked on the end.

MM: During that extra time, do you try to say, “I’m doing things other than drawing dur- ing this period,” to give yourself a breather? PAOLO: It really depends on what’s press- ing at the moment. Right before I went to Amsterdam, I was trying desperately to fin- ish that Young Ones poster, and I was painting nonstop for a week. I haven’t calculated how many hours it took me yet, but there was a week where I was just solid painting, every waking hour. That’s why I don’t paint any more, it just takes so much freaking time. I’ll have one idea, and I’ll be like, “Oh, I’ll turn that into something,” then you just get tired of that idea. It’s kind of not worth the time you put into it, I guess.

MM: But it sounds like you do a pretty good job of keeping track of how long you’ve put into a job. PAOLO: Oh, yeah, definitely. I’m about to do a blog post about it. I use iCal, the standard calendar that comes on a Mac, and I link it to Google Calendars. Aside from putting it in the cloud and making it acces- sible from any device, it allows me to use this other website that will actually tally the hours for each job. So, I use my iCal not so much as an appointment book, but more as a log. And a to-do list—it’s like a cross be- tween the two. I put in a block of time, and I’ll put what the project is, and the aspect, whether it’s layout, pencils, sketching, or painting, or coloring, and I’ll label each one. Once a month, I go to this website and

64 they’ll tally it all up for me. So I have good records on everything going back to, oh, maybe 2007? Maybe before. Almost down to the hour, after a certain point.

MM: Is there a point where you say, “I’ve put way too many hours into this. I’ve got to find a way to finish it off now?” PAOLO: Not specifically, but I must get that feeling at some point. It always happens when I’m painting. I’ll get to the point where it doesn’t need more work, and, “You need to start on the next thing. There’s a dead- line coming.” With the Young Ones poster, it started to look done pretty quickly, but I just pored over the portraits, just hours and hours, making the most minute changes to everybody’s face, eyes, mouth, nostrils, what- ever, and who knows if it made it any better. [laughs] After a certain point, you can’t see it, so that is one reason I try to break up proj- ects. I try to work on several things at once, because when I do get tired of one thing, I can switch to the other, but you don’t always have that luxury.

MM: I should’ve asked this before, but for the poster you’re doing, what size are you working at? PAOLO: 16" x 24". I actually would’ve preferred to work larger, but 16" x 24" is the biggest I can do and still get it scanned in two pieces. Bigger than that, it’s just hard to manage. I’ve got space for 16" x 24" pieces. Right now, I’ve got two post- PAOLO: It’s all together now. We moved to ers, and then this Young Ones poster, and they San Francisco last summer, and now I have a don’t take up too much space. I’m not willing dedicated studio. We have a two-bedroom, to part with them unless it’s for tons and tons and I take up the other bedroom. It looks of money, and nobody’s offered. [laughter] So kind of like crap now, but it’s on its way to Previous Page: Pencils I’ll just keep them. being my ideal workstation. I just got two for the cover of Mythos: I’m pretty excited about the Craftsmen tool chests, and they’re the best. Captain Amer- Captain America. ica 2 poster, because they wanted something I don’t really roll them much, but I could if I Above: Painted head like a ’70s political thriller, and I did a bunch wanted, and one’s got a middle chest on top sketches for Mythos: Hulk. of sketches, a lot of them I liked, but in the of it, and they all have what are essentially Paolo painted the book in end, what they went for was kind of the joke big flat files, but for half the price. If you gray tones, which he then one, which was a 1975 Bond poster by Mc- look up flat files, they always gouge you, but scanned and colored in Ginnis. It’s not figure for figure, but there are if you put a Craftsmen logo on it and call Photoshop, so he included a lot of elements in it, like the border, and it something else, it’s the same product at his “palette”—a gray tone the lettering, and the tiny figures that are just way less money. They’re big and metal and chart—at the bottom of crazy ’70s colors. It’s not all-out ’70s, but it’s red, and I just love them. [laughter] Actually, the page. pretty ’70s. It was just a lot of fun, and I got I’ve got two of them. One is the painting Captain America, Hulk, and all to paint it at 16" x 24", which is just nice to workstation. I have a big two-and-a-half gal- related characters © Marvel work a little bit bigger. lon container of distilled water which I use Characters, Inc. as a faucet whenever I need brush water or MM: What about your workspace? Do you palette water. The other tool chest has all of have a separate painting area from your draw- my packing and shipping supplies and print- ing area, or is it all more or less together? ing supplies.

65 Paolo Rivera

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MODERN MASTERS: PAOLO RIVERA Eisner and Harvey Award-winner Paolo Rivera grew up in his parents’ art store, so it’s no wonder his life’s path is that of an artist. And not just your run-of-the-mill comic book artist, but a painter, penciler, inker, colorist, and sculptor—Paolo does it all! From the pulp magazine feel of Mythos to the cinematic adventure of Spider-Man and the sleek stylings of Daredevil, Paolo brings a fresh story - telling approach to each project he illustrates. And his grand sense of design is on full display in the many covers he’s drawn. Whether he’s wielding a paint brush or a pencil, Paolo’s thoughtful work shows he has the Modern Masters touch! Eric Nolen-Weathington goes behind the scenes with Paolo to explore his career and his technique with access to his archives of published and unpublished work, including an extensive gallery of commissioned pieces, many in in full-color. (120-page trade paperback with COLOR) $15.95 (Digital Edition) $5.95 ISBN: 9781605490601 http://twomorrows.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=1190 Çn