Alex Ross Dons Pulp-Era "Masks" for Dynamite

[CBR News]

Alex Ross discusses his return to interior artwork with his and Chris Roberson's "Masks," explaining why the heroes hold a special place in his heart and in art history and plans for more pulp hero titles from Dynamite.


Full article here.

[Michael24]

One question I've always had about painted comics: how are they reproduced at regular comic book size? It sounds like Ross paints as one would normally paint, on a board propped up on an easel, so is each board then scanned in a big machine at ultra-high resolution or something?

[Nicholas]

Just brought it yesterday and was impressed.

But, the upcoming subsequently issues won't feel the same without Alex painting art work in it.

What about promotional sketchbook of characters in the back pages that he always did with other "pulp" titles?

[Ed Love]

Seems to me I have made this correction before, despite what the interview says, there was no Green Hornet pulp. Be cool if there was. But, in the 1940s, as the Green Hornet was primarily a radio character, there were only two sources as to how he possibly looked, the comics and the movie serials. The looks were pretty close, primary difference being the mask in the comics was cloth and he didn't wear all green, though the color schemes differed between the companies that produced the comics. The serial was b/w so didn't matter too much about the color and they tended to play a little loose with the color tones of the costumes anyway (Robin in the Batman serials, and Spy Smasher's shirt and pants become two different tones vs the monotone of the comic).

Not crazy about the Spider redesign for this title. I think it's a fine design for their ongoing comic which takes far more liberties than the costume. Plus, the look of the Spider never seemed quite set in stone anyway. But, since this is a reworking of an actual Spider story with him interacting with his peers, it'd be nice to see the REAL version of the Spider as he was in that story.

Shame they didn't work in the Black Hood into the story. He is one of the very few comic characters that did make it into the pulps and on radio and the original golden-age comics are public domain.

[Ed Love]

One question I've always had about painted comics: how are they reproduced at regular comic book size? It sounds like Ross paints as one would normally paint, on a board propped up on an easel, so is each board then scanned in a big machine at ultra-high resolution or something?

Depends on how big his painting is I would assume. There are large flatbed scanners used for commercial work. More expensive are drum scanners but give far higher resolution. Since that uses a cylinder, the painting would have to be taken off the frame so it could be taped to the cylinder or drum. Or, they could use photographic methods, much as how traditional artists produce various sized prints and lithographs of their work. If the image is close to the actual size of the comic, they don't really need a high resolution, especially as it's painted and not line art. It may seem counter-intuitive, but something with more line work or a book shot from the pencils should be at a much higher resolution than one that's painted or more photographic. The latter need only be about twice whatever the screen frequency is that the presses are using. The former should not be below 400 and ideally 600 or higher.