How Master Comic Book Artists Get It Done on a Deadline

When one thinks about the creation of a comic book, plenty of images come to mind. Stan Lee and Jack Kirby smoking cigarettes in a cramped office; Mike Mignola inking out Hellboy on a huge drafting table; Todd McFarlane surrounded by action figures of his own creation—these are the visions that persist in a sort of fairytale narrative often imagined by comic fans. But there's another hugely important player in the comic game: the deadline. In this week's mini-comic masterclass Strip Panel Naked, host Hass Otsmane-Elhaou speaks to artist Tradd Moore about the impact harsh deadlines had on one of his issues of All-New Ghost Rider.

"This issue was the tightest deadline I've ever had," Moore explains in the interview. "and I basically did have to draw the whole issue in one month." For those unfamiliar with the comic creation timeline—that's a really wild crunch. "So a lot of my decision making here wasn't so thought out in a way of trying to be artistic it was more trying to find a way to tell a story as efficiently as I could… Almost the whole back part of this issue was Marvel Method, but Marvel Method in the classic sense of: we didn't have time."

So what should young artists under a brutal deadline do when time's running out? "Basically one of the best shortcuts when you're trying to hit a deadline is to not do full-figure shots. If there's a lot of full figures on there, and they're well done, that page took that person a long time."

See more about the effects deadlines have on comics, and dig deeper into the issue of All-New Ghost Rider, by watching the full video below:

To see more, visit the Strip Panel Naked YouTube page, and check out its Patreon page to support the series.

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