Steven Cummings Interview
By: Jim Bush |
Sunday March 18, 2007 |
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Sheena comic artist spills it. |
| Sheena, Queen of the Jungle, is a creation of one of the masters of American comics, Will Eisner. Starring in her own title beginning in 1942, Sheena was one of the few lead female characters to display strength, cunning and power in the early days of comics. Sheena has the ability to communicate with animals, and frequently uses basic weapons such as ropes, knives and bows to battle. The character has been the source of a number of ventures in different mediums, including two television series and a movie released by Columbia in 1984. Devil's Due is publishing a new series of Sheena comics (including a $0.99 preview issue), written by Robert Rodi & Stephen De Souza, and illustrated by Steven Cummings. Steven Cummings has worked with Marvel, DC, IDW, Devil's Due, Arcana Studios and TokyoPop. Perhaps best known for his work on the "Deadshot" mini-series in 2004/5 and acclaimed for his work on "Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight" in 2006, Cummings is drawing the new Sheena series for Devil's Due. Jim Bush: Since Sheena has such a history, how much did that affect the way you drew the book? Did you intentionally look at other artist's conceptions, or did you avoid this? Steven Cummings: I don't have any of the old issues from back when Sheena was an ongoing series, so I was pretty much on my own art wise. But the internet is so useful I was able to go online and look her up and find some of the old covers to see what she was supposed to look like. Knowing that this was supposed to be a modern version I used those covers as a "what not to do" guide in my approach. How would you describe the tone of the new "Sheena?" It is a fun action filled book but it also has elements of the real world in it. There are issues of deforestation, the rich versus poor, crazy third world dictators, all problems that face us today. They are integrated really craftily into the story in subtle ways that I think they really help to bring the tale to life. From the description of the book, it sounds like the book is updating "Sheena" for the 21st Century. Did this affect the way you approached the character's look? Like I mentioned earlier, this Sheena is a modern take on the original. For that reason there are things that will remind the reader of real event and people in the real world. The character of Sheena herself reminds me of a certain "famous for being famous" celebrity that I am sure everyone will pick up on. Everything is modern about this girl. The environment she fights in, her weapons, even the scale of the relationships she finds herself in. What artists would you say were a big influence on your style? I think there is something to be learned from just about every artist. When I was young and first trying to draw on my own the paintings of Norman Rockwell were fascinating to me. When I started getting into comics and trying to learn how to draw them in high school, Jim Lee had a huge hold on me. I wanted nothing more than to figure out how he was doing what he did. After that during the years I was in Japan I loved the works of Hojo Tsukasa and people like Buichi Terasawa and Yasuhiko Yoshikazu. I've read that you learned to draw in Japan. Do you feel like this influenced your style in a way that was different from if you had learned to draw in the States? Absolutely. We pick up things from our surroundings and when I finally decided I was sick of school (I was in grad school) and that I wanted to draw comics for a living I was in Japan. All that was around me was Manga of one form or another (thanks to all the 100 yen corners in the Japanese bookstores, all that I could afford at the time) and it naturally just seeped into what I was drawing. But it was more than just a look of the art. Japanese comics are completely different from American ones storytelling-wise as well, and that's the way I learned to layout my pages and construct a story. When my wife and I moved back stateside I realized the way I was approaching comics was a complete non-starter from the industry's standpoint here and I had to basically relearned everything I thought I knew about comics right away or I would never be employable. It is very hard to learn to think in a completely different way and that is what I had to do. Other than Sheena, what character did you most enjoy working on for this book? I really liked the wife of the evil third world dictator. She only appears on one page in this, but she was fun. She had to be attractive and a little sexy but also look like she was used to people doing what she wanted and that she wasn't afraid to hurt people. It was all hard to put in one package, but also an enjoyable challenge. Your art has a very clean, fluid look, which is nice in action sequences (which can become confusing in some comics). How do keep things orderly when there is a lot happening in the panels? I try to keep my whites and my blacks very distinct from one another and to keep my lines from a thickness standpoint as I would want to see them when the pages would be inked. That's all there is to it, really. Your wife has done inking on the "Pantheon High" manga book you did for TokyoPop. How was that different from working with other inkers? Will you work with her on any upcoming projects? My wife Megumi has helped out on many books over the years, but this was her first major project with me from the very beginning where we both knew she was going to be doing all the inking, not just helping out when I started getting overwhelmed because of too much work or sudden schedule crunches. Her being in the same room as me inking for me meant that I had almost complete control of the inking and was therefore able to pencil knowing exactly how the finished product would turn out. I think the addition of my wife to team Pantheon High really kicked up the efficiency of my work. You have worked with many different comic companies, from large to small. How is working with Devil's Due different from other companies? All that matters when you work with a company is that editorial is nice and easy to work with and that they pay in a reasonable amount of time in a regular way. Devils Due got an "A" in each of those categories. Are there any characters in comics that you haven't work on yet, but would really like to? I would like to have a go at more of the classic big characters: Superman, Wonder Woman, Captain America, any of the X-Men. All of the big title characters that I read as a kid but haven't gotten to work on at this point in my career. |
