Legendary cartoonist and Mad Magazine founding father Harvey Kurtzman left behind a legacy of unfinished work when he passed in 1993 — including a grand , unfinished pictorial - novel adaption of Charles Dickens ’ A Christmas Carol . Now , 60 years after Kurtzman first plan to instance the series , it ’s in the end being finished and relinquish .
Published exclusively through Comixology this calendar week , Marley ’s Ghost feature new art from Gideon Kendall , inspired by Kurtzman ’s classic expressive style and build upon his own original notation and storyboarding , with new dialogue spell by Josh O’Neill and Shannon Wheeler . It ’s the chance to see Kurtzman ’s earliest plans for A Christmas Carol finally come to life sentence .
io9 is gallant to alone present penetration from Gideon Kendall about how he went about revivify just one page of Kurtzman ’s partitioning for Marley ’s Ghost — how it work every step of the way , as you may see in the gif below , from storyboards to the concluding Thomas Nelson Page in the actual Quran . Kendall ’s Good Book follow these images .
Images: Harvey Kurtzman/Gideon Kendall/Comixology. Gif by Andrew Liszewski.
Kurtzman’s Original Art
Jeez — what can you say ? Dickens , Kurtzman … those Guy know how to tell a story . All the creepy-crawly chroma and pernicious humor of Dickens ’ original conniption is on full presentation here . you may experience the American artist ’s wonder for the British bard . They ’re a perfect compeer for each other and Harvey is clearly have a blast translate the classic account into a modernistic medium .
But as much as I ’d care to , I ca n’t just sit here admire the masters ’ handicraft . I have to do my Book of Job and grow this into a dispatch graphical novel . As before long as I start mean about the project at deal , I depart to panic . How do I remain true to the material , while also regain a way to inject my own voice into the labor ?
HK only thumbed out about 50 pages , and most of them are very bumpy . Eventually I bonk I ’m going to have to make this my own . But here in the early part of the book , every time I vary from Kurtzman ’s roughs , I ’m riddled with self dubiousness . Am I changing things to make the floor better ? Or am I just changing things to essay and wriggle out of Harvey ’s long shadow ? And what are all the devoted Kurtzman fans out there extend to say ? I can just guess the brutal comment threads ! Out of all the experienced , restricted and super - gifted cartoonists out there , how did they pick THIS guy ? Who the hellhole am I to try and walk in the shoes of a legend ? ?
Ugh ! well not to think about it . Better just to start drawing …
Pencils
I ended up staying middling genuine to the original layouts on this page . And why not ? They ’re cartoon Au . I did do a small tinkering . For instance , I made the view more dramatic in the middle jury . I matte up that after zooming in to Scrooge ’s eye on the top row , and in the bottom panel having Scrooge sinking desperately towards the level in affright , it would make sense to have the camera bet up at Marley in the halfway panel , as if we were seeing through Scrooge ’s eyes .
If I can indulge in a short criticism of a cartooning genius , I recall that Harvey ’s physical body on this pageboy are a picayune starchy . Normally his drawings of people are bursting with social movement and life , but here they ’re more or less inert . So I tried to make the figure here more fluent , less balanced , more contrapposto ( if you ’ll forgive some fancy artwork terminology ) .
For the first several pages of the book Scrooge is wearing a distinctive Victorian valet ’s causa with topcoat , Inverness mantle , and top hat . It is n’t until page 15 that he changes into the night-robe that he continues to jade until nearly the ending of the story . It was at about this peak , while trying to draw Scrooge hunch over over in his chair at the bottom of this page , that I came to the realization that there was no way I could draw 100 - plus Page of a guy running around in a nightgown without having some source material to operate with . I could n’t convincingly counterfeit what wind and gravity and motion would do to the flaps and fold of such an getup . I needed a model and I need a real nightgown .
The example was the easy part . luckily , my friend Lucas was uncoerced to help me out . At 6 ’ 3 ” , with a outstanding nose and chin and approximately zero percent body adipose tissue , he fit my persona of Scrooge perfectly . The nightie was another matter . It turns out that for some reason Old Navy does not sell unquestionable Victorian night-robe for very tall human being . Nor does Amazon . Or anyone . So I had to have one made . A very talented seamstress by the name of Lynda Milliron made one for me . She made it from scratch and did an awing caper . So now , with this project finished , I remain the proud owner of a nightgown for a serviceman close to three time my height .
One thing I always struggle with in laying out a cartoon strip Thomas Nelson Page is leaving enough room for schoolbook . So I snuff it in the lead and block in the boxwood and balloon at the sketch stagecoach to see to it that I did n’t get into trouble afterward on . look at the result , one thing became abundantly exonerated to me and the writers . We were going to have to greatly dilute the amount of schoolbook . Kurtzman ’s roughs contain a huge amount of the original manuscript , but we decide that this was not a tenable resolution for a lifelike novel . The pictures should be allowed to tell as much of the story as possible and we feel that if HK had continued with the undertaking he would have probably come to the same conclusion .
Ink
That sinking feeling when you go from the liveliness and endless possibleness of sketching to the clearness — but also the snuffing out of endless possibilities — that inking results in . Inking is also where you are push to deal with all the things that you’re able to dillydally on in the sketch stage ( at least if you ’re your own inker ): what precisely do strait-laced geological era padlocks , cash boxes and threshold latches search like ? on the nose how long are Scrooge ’s sideburns expire to be ? How many top hats , bustles and dress suit will I suck up before I go completely insane ?
I want to make certain that each ghost was give a distinct graphic treatment . For Marley , I inked him with a grayish blue on a separate stratum , set up to “ procreate . ” For the inking — which , like all the post - Kurtzman stages of the art was done digitally — I primarily used two customs duty Photoshop brushes . For generally thick-skulled and more sweeping bank line , such as clothing and atmospherics , I used the Kyle Webster rocky inking brushing . For face detail and architectural elements I used a brush I made myself which is fundamentally a chisel shape with pressure sensitivity and some strewing to mimic a flimsy ink bleed .
Color
Ah , now we can reintroduce some of the deepness and atmosphere that we lost when conk from sketching to inkline . you may also hide a batch of the error you made in your inking !
Things also get more complicated . In the previous pages , the scene was lit by the orange glow of the hearth . But now the scant source is change . In the top panels I ’m attempting to gradually transition from the orange to the blue luminance , thereby implying the off television camera figure of Marley start to issue . By the bottom gore , the way is to the full bathed in his ghostly blue glow , as it will be for the remainder of the chapter .
A note on digital colouring material , and digital in worldwide : Although this entire book was done digitally , I try on my best to give the last art as much of an analog feel as possible . I ’m an old school guy . Harvey and Dickens were too . So I endeavored to give the color as much of an organic , H2O - color sorting of look as I could . I determine the number of colouring material layers to one or two , and I permit footling imperfections remain for avoid that cold suavity that digital colour often has .
For brushes I used mostly a few custom - made watercolor mount , and for atmospheric static the Kyle Webster sputter brush came in ready to hand . I strove to bring a definitive old - fashioned look not just to the color , but to the Quran as a whole . Kurtzman had figure Jack Davis as a possible artist for the project ( he even commission him to do a gorgeous sample distribution varlet ) , and Davis , along with other classic Mad artists , was an obvious inspiration for the project . I also expend a lot of metre looking at older , pre - strip artists such as Dickens ’ contemporary Gustav Dore , whose engravings have become what most people see in their mind ’s eye when they fancy Victorian London , and Kathe Kollwitz whose image of the poor and downtrodden share a similar conscience with Dickens . I also borrow intemperately from Daumier , whose satirical lithograph of nineteenth C life made him sort of a one - man Mad Magazine of his Clarence Day .
Lettering
As I mention , our goal was to reduce the text as much as possible while keep back a good luck of Dickens ’ inimitable pity and mental capacity . At one decimal point we had reduce the text on this Thomas Nelson Page to only Scrooge ’s trademark “ Humbug!”—but we decided that a wholly silent Marley seemed too passive , and came up with the text as you see it here .
Up until this project , I had always hand - letter my strip . At first I was uncomfortable switching to a digital font — but once I found Hush - Hush ( ComicCraft ) , with its combination of a classic comical book of account manner and ever - so - slightly medieval elegance , I was very happy . I drew the Holy Writ balloons and text box by hand . I ’ve never liked vector - based word balloons . I opine they make a barrier between the lector and the art , and would have been far too slick for this project in particular .
So that ’s a sum-up , with perhaps too many asides , of how we fail from the Master ’s instructions to the net intersection . In one sense , the playscript became well-heeled once Kurtzman ’s layouts ended . The atmospheric pressure of trying to do justly by him eased up a little . I stop induce nightmare about Harvey shout out at me for deviating too far from his compositions , and I was gratuitous to separate the story more or less in my own style .
But without the work he did in these former pages , I would have been lost at sea . They were the guidebook I involve for navigate the winding back skittle alley of Victorian London . They were the loving shove of a begetter as he sends his child careening down the hill on their first bike , education wheel only recently removed . His pages provide the theoretical account upon which I based the storytelling , the mood , the very centre and mortal of the total account book . And no one ever lay a better groundwork for a story , or for the entirety of modern comic itself , than Harvey Kurtzman ( Well , except maybe Will Eisner . Whoever finds Eisner ’s unfinished interpretation of Huck Finn , attend me up ! )
I desire that Harvey would be gallant . That ’s a promise I ’ll reserve onto , until that dark and blue nighttime when his ghost appears and tells me otherwise .
Marley ’s Ghost is available solely onComixologystarting tomorrow , November 8 .
Daily Newsletter
Get the good tech , scientific discipline , and acculturation news program in your inbox day by day .
News from the futurity , delivered to your nowadays .
