*D'oh! Dept. #1: When I left you on the edge of your seat last week, discussing a dude named Dex succeeding me as Dave Johnson's assistant, I neglected to give his surname: Dexter Vines, inker of Superman/Batman fame. Sorry, Dex. I usually write down my blog free form, then rearrange and lazily edit a bit, and somewhere I must've deleted a sentence that introduced Dex by his full name. I don't agonize over the typos because the internet is rife with them, so I've joined the mob who favor speed over proper punctuation and sentence structure. Hey, I'm squeezing this in around my day job, entertaining millions with my idiosyncratic inking. Okay, thousands. At least dozens. Somewhere between millions and dozens, I think.

   *D'oh! Dept. #2: I also neglected to mention last week, that not only was my 'pro-inker' ten-year anniversary celebrated with the release of my final issue of Captain America, #32 (Somehow Marvel's promotions department must've forgotten to include that in the Diamond solicitations), but the cover was pencilled and inked by...Dave Johnson. Full circle. Oooh, spooky. Time to dust off the Oujia board in time for Halloween!

   *Random Pretention of Profundity Dept: I miss the days of hand-lettering on the original comic art page, so I could read along as I ink. Now I just wait until the book comes out. I can request a script when I have questions, but I don't enjoy reading the script and the art isolated from each other. An artform now born with it's elements apart, the elements looking sad, waiting to be united in print.

   There I go again, off on a tangent...

   Flashback to 1995. I'm inking Justice League America (with Nuklo, Obsidian, Metamorpho, Fire, Ice, The Yazz...) over Chuck Wojtkiewicz's pencils. After inking Dave, this was a whole new ballgame. Chuck and Dave have very different individual styles so I had to learn how to ink all over again.

   Dave was a supportive teacher to me, but he didn't always fully articulate the reasons behind what he did, style-wise. For example, he was very insistent about "No broken lines" in the rendering. It took me some time for me to understand that he meant specifically on his artwork! What's good for the goose is not neccesarily good for the gander.

   And when I took a gander at Chuck's work, I mistakenly assumed that it needed to be transformed into Dave's dead-inkline, cold graphic style. Unless you're one of the top artists hired to ink specifically to bury a penciller's style (as Kevin Nowlan and Bill Sienkiewicz do brilliantly), that's a no-no. I was nowhere near confident enough to properly interpret Chuck's art yet. So I used cold graphic inks where Chuck's work could've been better served using more variety of line.

   I fumbled a lot on Chuck's pages. From the offset, I had a lot of time to fax Chuck inked pages for his approval and make the changes he requested. The first issue (#103) came out pretty good, as a result. That's because the next issue was a fill-in, offering a deadline buffer, which I squandered fussing over my first issue.

   Then came JLA #105 with a real deadline, and I switched from the Raphael #8404 brush that had served me well to a Hunt #104 quill. I don't recall if it was a suggestion from Chuck or if it was faster for me. Maybe both.

   Whatever the circumstance, I couldn't get the hang of the quill, and the results were tinny and unsatisfying. Chuck was losing patience with me, and I don't blame him. But I was cranking at a faster rate, which is a panacea for editors, at least in the short term. I was learning some hard lessons fast, the tug-of-war between speed for editors and perfection for pencillers. With every page, I was losing confidence, and it shows in the final work. To this day, when I get copies of #105 or #106 to sign at conventions, I cringe. I was convinced my inking career was over before it got rolling.

   It's funny how the smallest kind gesture can turn you around during a crisis of faith. Alisande Morales, Assistant Editor to Brian Augustyn, left me the nicest message on my answering machine, informing me that Brian was pleased and was taking the latest inked copies to San Diego It was a real morale boost (a Morales boost, as it were). I saved that message for months. In fact, I taperecorded it for inspiration. I don't know where the tape's been all these years, but it served it's purpose. Thanks, Ali, you were an angel when I needed it!

   Ali and Brian were letting me know they were happy with my performance, so that was enough for me to take stock in myself and rethink my approach and possibly redeem myself artistically. I stopped returning Chuck's phone calls.

   JLA #107 was a step up in quality, in my opinion. I returned to the brush to at least get back to the quality of #103 as a starting point. I went into #108 more comfortable in my abilities, but faced with a two-week deadline. There was no way I would go back to heated hack-ery, so I told Ali and Brian up front, and they appreciated my honesty (Lots of artists make promises they can't fulfill). I completed the first 11 pages, content that the Powers That Be would come up with a suitable inker to finish the issue. The inker was Rich Rankin. Little did I know that my break in mid-story, as well as my break in communication with Chuck would be the catalyst to permanently change inkers. Chuck recommended Rich and this was his 'in'.

   A week or two later, I called Ali, wondering aloud when the next issue was coming. Ali had to inform me that I wasn't doing JLA anymore. I was crushed, like anyone who's felt rejected would be. Ali had assured me that things could be looking up for me. I thought she was just salving my wounds, but later I learned the good news that she wasn't at liberty to discuss at the time.

   A year later, Chuck and I met in San Diego and, over some expensive wine, made up. We were like, "Sorry I was an a-hole to you..." "No, man, it's alright, I was an a-hole to YOU!" and back and forth, like a drunken, demented version of those chattering chipmunks from Looney Tunes.

   So, after five issues, I was let go, but better things were in store. I will elaborate next week, because-D'oh! I've run out of time again! Deja Vu, baby!

   By the way, the PROPER way to dispose of a Oujia board is to tear it up into several pieces, sprinkle it with holy water and bury it. I read it on the internet, so it MUST be true...