Creating Comics!

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(Text)

Title: Powdertooth

Client: Fridge Magazine

Media: Pen and pencil on paper, Photoshop

© Gregory Benton 1998

Creative Process

This is a two-page excerpt from “Passover,”

a story I wrote and drew for an anthology

called Project: Telstar. Most anthologies

have a theme; for this one it was “Robots

and Space.” I had been working on two

separate stories for a while that I thought

might work for the anthology if they were

merged and fleshed out.

The first story was about a couple living

in New York City in the not-too-distant

future (loosely inspired by the Plasmatics’

LP Maggots: The Record, released in 1987).

A depressing urban landscape exists as a

stagnant cesspool in the summer, becom-

ing a frozen wasteland in the winter, replete

with crawling glaciers. The young protago-

nists forge ahead, pulling gorged maggots

off of old folks too slow to bob n’ weave,

and partying like it’s the end of the world.

B

orn in New York City in 1969, Gregory Benton

received his B.F.A. from the Rhode Island

School of Design in 1991. After working as an

illustrator for newspapers in Prague in the early 1990s,

he returned to New York to pursue comix and illustration.

Benton’s first comix were published in World War 3

Illustrated magazine in 1993. He created four-color strips

for High Times magazine. Slave Labor Graphics pub-

lished his comic book Hummingbird in 1996. His strips

have been featured in numerous anthologies, and in

publications such as Entertainment Weekly, Nickelodeon

Magazine, DC Comics’ Big Book series, and McGraw-

Hill textbooks. He has also created many limited-edition

handmade books.

Benton’s illustrations have appeared in the New York

Times, the Village Voice, and Fortune, among others.

He has taught visual narrative and illustration at Temple

University and at Parsons The New School for Design,

and his paintings and drawings have been exhibited in

New York, Los Angeles, and the Philippines. He is cur-

rently working on a graphic novel.

Gregory Benton

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Creating Comics

Job:05-19413 Title:Creating Comics

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Job:05-19413 Title:Creating Comics

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Title: Passover excerpt, pp. 8–9 of a twenty-three-page story

Published in the anthology Project: Telstar

Client: AdHouse Books, 2003

© Gregory Benton 2003

Title: Passover

Client: AdHouse Books

Media: Pen and pencil on paper, Photoshop

The second story involved a last person on Earth—not

because everyone had died or turned into zombies or anything

like that. People had simply made prior arrangements to leave

the planet during its dying days. This last person is responsible

for making sure total evacuation has occurred before he can

shuttle into orbit to join the rest of humanity as they spring forth

to Mars or Alpha Centauri or wherever.

After combining the stories, the last man on Earth became

the male protagonist in the first story. The process involved

drawing thumbnails of the action sequence of each page. The

story wound up plotting at twenty-three pages.

Next, I drew a larger and more detailed version of the story,

with each character’s dialogue and notes on what was going

on in the panels. Then I started drawing each page on #234

Paris Bleed-Proof Paper (manufactured by Borden & Riley) in

nonreproducing blue pencil. Once I was satisfied with the

under-drawing, I inked the entire story with a Pentel fountain

pen. I scanned the inked pages into my computer as line art;

the blue pencil does not reproduce in the scanned files. I

converted all of the files into Photoshop CMYK and added the

tones and color.

The publisher of Project: Telstar, Chris Pitzer of AdHouse

Books, asked me to contribute to the anthology, and somehow

the two stories I’d been working on made sense as one. Chris

was truly generous in accepting the twenty-three pages for

publication. I am forever thankful that he went with the story,

because it is one of my personal favorites.

Gregory Benton

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Gregory Benton

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