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(Text)
Title: Blind Butcher
Client: Last Gasp Comix & Stories, 1998
Media: Pen on paper, Photoshop
Creative Process
Blind Butcher is a comic strip I drew between February
1997 and February 1998. As I remember, an art direc-
tor who called by phone and asked me to turn a very
complicated illustration around on an extremely short
deadline inspired the concept. From there, I didn’t need
to travel too far to arrive at “we want you to destroy the
world; can you do it by tomorrow?”
The story is also intended as an exploration of a
solipsistic notion that rattles around in my head from
time to time: in some sense, we are the world, because
everything we know about the world comes to us
through our senses. So the question is, when we set
out to destroy ourselves, is the world also destroyed in
the process?
Each panel in Blind Butcher was drawn and lettered
in pen and ink using a Rapidograph on a 9” x 12” (22.9
x 30.5 cm) sheet of drafting vellum. The drawings
were then scanned digitally as line art at 400 dpi and
assembled into pages using Photoshop, at which point
the gray halftones were added.
70
Creating Comics
D
anny Hellman has been making art for publi-
cation since 1988, and has worked for a wide
variety of clients, including Time, Newsweek,
Sports Illustrated, Fortune, Forbes, the Wall Street Journal,
FHM, Guitar World, the Village Voice, New York Press, and
countless others.
As a sideline to his work as an illustrator, Hellman’s
comics have appeared in many venues since the early
1990s, including Last Gasp Comix & Stories, DC Comics’
Bizarro World and Big Book series, Fantagraphics’ Screw
Comics, and Hotwire Comix and Capers. Hellman also
edited and published the comics anthologies Legal Action
Comics volumes 1 and 2 in 2000 and 2004. Hellman lives
in Brooklyn, New York, with his wife and daughter.
Danny Hellman
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Job:05-19413 Title:Creating Comics
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(Text)
Title: Blind Butcher
Client: Last Gasp Comix & Stories, 1998
Media: Pen on paper, Photoshop
Creative Process
Blind Butcher is a comic strip I drew between February
1997 and February 1998. As I remember, an art direc-
tor who called by phone and asked me to turn a very
complicated illustration around on an extremely short
deadline inspired the concept. From there, I didn’t need
to travel too far to arrive at “we want you to destroy the
world; can you do it by tomorrow?”
The story is also intended as an exploration of a
solipsistic notion that rattles around in my head from
time to time: in some sense, we are the world, because
everything we know about the world comes to us
through our senses. So the question is, when we set
out to destroy ourselves, is the world also destroyed in
the process?
Each panel in Blind Butcher was drawn and lettered
in pen and ink using a Rapidograph on a 9” x 12” (22.9
x 30.5 cm) sheet of drafting vellum. The drawings
were then scanned digitally as line art at 400 dpi and
assembled into pages using Photoshop, at which point
the gray halftones were added.
71
Danny Hellman
Danny Hellman
Job:05-19413 Title:Creating Comics
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