Kim S. August
Feb 14, 2002, 02:59 am
<a href="http://x-mencomics.com/xfan/images/previews/w1.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://x-mencomics.com/xfan/images/previews/w1t.jpg" align=left alt="Dan Fraga Wolverine Reference art"></a>It’s funny how people can change in as little as six months. The first time X-Fan spoke to artist Dan Fraga, he was in the middle of rendering the three issue "Bloodsport" arc that ran in Wolverine from August to October of last year. Since then, Dan’s been planning his next creator-owned title Lightwing , and has hit the drawing board again for another Wolverine assignment, issues #177 and #178.
Recently Fraga talked to X-Fan about working on Marvel’s most famous mutant, his Werewolf by Night piece for the Marvel Knights Millennial Visions, and growing as an artist. And thanks to Fraga for providing X-Fan with a series of reference images sent along to give us an idea of what to expect in Wolverine #177 and #178.
X-FAN: So you’re just about finished with your Wolverine duties, right?
FRAGA: Not really. When I finished the three, they assigned me two more, #177 and #178. They’re a fill-in for both Frank and Sean.
X-FAN: Oh?
FRAGA: Yes. They said not to call it an inventory story because inventory stories generally sit somewhere, and they try to find a place to put them in. This one they are actually going to use now in June and July of this year. It’s a self-contained two issue story that is designed to basically give that whole regular team a break. So they hired Matt Nixon...
X-FAN: Yes, he wrote the back up story in the Wolverine 2001 Annual.
FRAGA: Yeah, that was a cool story. I hope we see more of him. He’s got a great knack for Logan.
X-FAN: So does this mean you may become the regular fill-in artist for Wolverine?
FRAGA: I’d like that very much.
<a href="http://x-mencomics.com/xfan/images/previews/w2.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://x-mencomics.com/xfan/images/previews/w2t.jpg" align=right alt="Dan Fraga Wolverine Reference art"></a> X-FAN: Of the three Wolverine issues you penciled, what are you most proud of?
FRAGA: Just growing as a storyteller. In particular, there’s things in issue #168 (the second issue I did). Stuff I never really attempted before. I experimented with vertical panels, rather than the standard horizontal thing, I wanted to try to do something different with vertical panel. Also to focus on trying to keep things really, really clean as far as continuity. Something that people won’t notice, but I notice. Like in #167 , where Logan scratches Toad’s goo off his face, he leaves these scars, and by the last page of #168 Logan doesn’t have the scars any more. If you actually look through the book, page by page you can actually see them fade.
Erik Larsen’s biggest complaint when I showed him my work was the stuff was too busy. He said you know every single time you draw a shot of a crowd you draw every single person in the crowd. Joe Quesada mentioned if the script said ‘when so-and-so is confronting so-and-so’, you always pull back and draw these full figures and all these backgrounds. They were trying to tell me you can do different things; like when you can show just a hand going for a sword. Really basic stuff, but you get so caught up in the story-telling aspect of things that you forget the basics sometimes.
To me, I was like, I want to make sure whoever reads this book gets every single penny, all $2.25 worth on the pages. And to me, I felt if I drew a hand holding a sword I felt like I was cheating the reader. But in fact, it’s almost cheating the reader by drawing everything. If everything is plotted out for them then the reader isn’t as involved.
It was really difficult for me to do, because I really like to work hard. But these guys swear by it. The third issue (#169) there are things that I like better than the first two, but there are things that I don’t like as much, because I was trying to do something new. I finished the book about ten weeks ago so I haven’t even looked at it.
<a href="http://x-mencomics.com/xfan/images/previews/w3.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://x-mencomics.com/xfan/images/previews/w3t.jpg" align=left alt="Dan Fraga Wolverine Reference art"></a>X-FAN: Going back to Matt, will you be using the same priest that Nixon introduced in the Wolverine 2001 Annual story "Red Snow"?
FRAGA: Yes. The character named Father Braun...
X-FAN: The 'Mulder from the Vatican' fellow?
FRAGA: Yeah, you already talked to Matt?
X-FAN: I haven’t yet, no. Matt described Father Braun like that in another interview here.
FRAGA: Okay, yes Father Braun is in this. And it’s really cool, because I got a chance to talk to the editors during the writing process and it was more of a synergy. I’ve never really worked that way before. They had a basic plot and I actually got to talk to Matt and he tells me things that he’s excited about and I talk to him about stuff. And he juices up scenes to cater to my strengths; it was just a fun, collaborative effort as far as getting the basic plot done. I know the locales it’s going to take place in; one issue is going to take place in New York and the other is going to take place in Rome.
<a href="http://x-mencomics.com/xfan/images/previews/w7.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://x-mencomics.com/xfan/images/previews/w7t.jpg" align=right alt="Dan Fraga Wolverine Reference art"></a>The reason that I am so excited about the Rome material, is because we’ve {Dan and his wife} have been to Rome, and I have tons and tons of photographs and when I talked to Nixon about the Rome scenes, this place is visually just a feast for the eyes. So he actually wrote some scenes in there that would cater to what I had seen. And when you draw comic books, a lot of time it’s fantastic and you’re making up environments. Like in the "Bloodsport" arc, I had to make up where they fought. And I took a little from the Bloodsport movie, and a little off the WWF wrestling rings and stuff, and with this one, it’s a real place. Since I’ve been there, I know what it smells like, feels like, looks like. It’s going to be the most believable environment I’ve done because it’s real. And I’m excited because I get to draw Logan in a place where I’ve been. And that’s so cool to me.
And that’s what I’ve been focusing on drawing in the last few weeks, all this Roman architecture. It’s a really good story too. Matt has a real flair for conspiracies and that sort of thing.
X-FAN: If these next two issues of Wolverine go over well, do you think Marvel will offer you the permanent fill in spot on the title? And do Frank and Sean have any say in this?
FRAGA: I don’t know if Sean has said anything because I don’t really talk to Sean all too often. I was at the San Diego Comic Con for a couple of hours and I got to talk to Sean; he and I met back in ’93 and I’m a big fan of his stuff. I talk to Frank at least once a week, and he’s actually said that it would be good if I was the permanent fill-in guy. I got Frank’s vote. I think the thing my editors are waiting on is that I pick up my speed a little bit. I think that’s all it is, because had I drawn the three issues of Wolverine in three months time, I think I would have already had the job. It took me about three months and three weeks.
<a href="http://x-mencomics.com/xfan/images/previews/w5.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://x-mencomics.com/xfan/images/previews/w5t.jpg" align=left alt="Dan Fraga Wolverine Reference art"></a>X-FAN: So the three weeks were the determining factor there?
FRAGA: Right. They said we love your work Dan, but we want you to speed up. So they actually gave me more work to train me to speed up. So I think they’re kind of using these issues to allow me to get all of the kinks out of my work. I used to work at Image, at Extreme studios, and I learned a lot of stuff at Extreme but a lot of what I learned was just wrong.
X-FAN: You have to reteach yourself quite a bit?
FRAGA: There’s so many things in my work that makes me say why are you doing this over and over? These are things that I am trying to get out of my work. To me, it’s not fun unless you are growing. And people seem to respond more to people who try to push the envelope every time they do something. Like every time I see Sean’s work. His first issue of Wolverine (#159) compared to #166. It's night and day, #166 beats the crap out of #159. To me, that’s interesting. It’s almost like sports, you watch the rookie come in and grow. To a lot of guys, it’s a job. They just come in and do their pages and that’s it.
X-FAN: And these artists stay in one place.
FRAGA: But there’s different ways that people can grow too. Like John Romita Jr., artistically as far as the way he draws, he’s changed a lot; his tree that he drew looks like the tree he drew five years, but his story-telling has changed. When I read a John Romita Jr. book I am submerged in that world and I love it. It’s like this roller coaster ride. That’s another thing in itself too, and that’s another thing I’m trying to focus on too. Every now and again I draw a stiff figure, or the proportions are kind of weird or the hair looks kind of funny. Those are aesthetic things I’m trying to fix. What’s more important to me is that the storytelling is clicking.
<a href="http://x-mencomics.com/xfan/images/previews/w6.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://x-mencomics.com/xfan/images/previews/w6t.jpg" align=right alt="Dan Fraga Wolverine Reference art"></a> One of the things I talked to Joe Quesada and a couple of other people about, was something I used to tell people when I looked at my work, and something I’m thinking about a lot more now I’ve been learning guitar. A comic book is a composition of scenes, but you can manipulate the timing of those scenes much like musical notation. When we talked it the story-pacing, panel spacing and panel sizing shouldn’t be about flash. It shouldn’t be about ‘this would look really cool if’, it should be about the story. You make your panel the size of the pacing and almost the soundtrack where the story’s supposed to go. Those are the things I’m working on, these are the most important to me.
I teach a class every Tuesday about comic book layout at Orange County Art Studio. My class isn’t a how-to-draw class, my class is an understanding the comic book as a story-telling medium class. Some people say ‘well I can only draw a stick figure’ and you still can tell great stories with a stick figure; it’s about the mood and the impact of things. One of the exercises I go through is have a guy come out of his house and get his newspaper and draw his reaction to what he sees in the newspaper. And I tell my students to draw this five different ways; draw five pages of the same scenes. I want one to seem very depressing, one to seem exciting, one to seem scary, one to seem normal and one to seem funny. Now, it’s the same scene and the same action, the key is to make the reader feel exactly whatever they see, and that is the Holy Grail to me. That’s what I’m trying to be, a master of emotional manipulation through the art form.
X-FAN: Any news on your next creator-owned book Lightwing? Is that going to be done in and around your work with Marvel?
FRAGA: Yeah. My editors are aware of it. It never ever, ever takes precedence over my Marvel assignments. I talked with my partner Anthony Bozzi almost every day. Lightwing is a book where our hearts are really into it, and by the time it comes out it will be two years of planning. It’s six issues, we’re basically writing all six before I even draw a lick, and we’re to paste and storyboard it all out and compose it like a work of music. This is a book that is a labor of love and is just going to take time to do.
X-FAN: Will Lightwing be released through Image?
FRAGA: I think so. That’s the plan. It’s a character from the Gear Station book, but I say that this has almost nothing to do with Gear Station, since it’s a story about Lightwing. It's kind of a personal, cathartic story for both Bozzi and myself. There are a lot of demons to be exorcised in this book.
<a href="http://x-mencomics.com/xfan/images/previews/mkmv_werewolf.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://x-mencomics.com/xfan/images/previews/mkmv_werewolft.jpg" align=left alt="Marvel Knights: Millennial Visions 2001 Werewolf By Night pin-up preview"></a>X-FAN I have a question for you about the Werewolf by Night pin-up you did the for Marvel Knights: Millennial Visions 2001 one-shot. Was that something which was done by request, or was it something that your editors suggested?
FRAGA: About the Werewolf piece, Mike Marts had given me a few options to choose from and I picked Werewolf by Night . I love wolves, it was fun to do. I tried out a program called Painter on that piece. I learned a lot of things from that.
X-FAN: Wow, it really sounds like you’ve learned a lot over the last six months...
<a href="http://x-mencomics.com/xfan/images/previews/w4.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://x-mencomics.com/xfan/images/previews/w4t.jpg" align=right alt="Dan Fraga Wolverine Reference art"></a>FRAGA: I have. Personally, and professionally. I’m just trying to learn and trying to get better. And taking guitar lessons...
X-FAN: The guitar lessons sound like they added a whole new dimension to what you’re doing as an artist.
FRAGA: Back when I was a teenager, I had someone at Marvel who was mentoring me unofficially. He was an editor named Carl Potts. He was kind of responsible for mentoring Jim Lee and the big guys at Wildstorm, like Jim Lee, Scott Williams. And he was cool with a guy I knew back home. And he told me a lot of things I didn’t understand. I used to have my own fanzine back in 88-89, and he was my first interview. We talked about the process in how comic books are made, and how a person could improve. And he said in the interview that I should take sculpting, and a musical instrument so I could improve. And my reaction was what does this have to do with drawing comic books. It took me ten years but I absolutely get it now.
Recently Fraga talked to X-Fan about working on Marvel’s most famous mutant, his Werewolf by Night piece for the Marvel Knights Millennial Visions, and growing as an artist. And thanks to Fraga for providing X-Fan with a series of reference images sent along to give us an idea of what to expect in Wolverine #177 and #178.
X-FAN: So you’re just about finished with your Wolverine duties, right?
FRAGA: Not really. When I finished the three, they assigned me two more, #177 and #178. They’re a fill-in for both Frank and Sean.
X-FAN: Oh?
FRAGA: Yes. They said not to call it an inventory story because inventory stories generally sit somewhere, and they try to find a place to put them in. This one they are actually going to use now in June and July of this year. It’s a self-contained two issue story that is designed to basically give that whole regular team a break. So they hired Matt Nixon...
X-FAN: Yes, he wrote the back up story in the Wolverine 2001 Annual.
FRAGA: Yeah, that was a cool story. I hope we see more of him. He’s got a great knack for Logan.
X-FAN: So does this mean you may become the regular fill-in artist for Wolverine?
FRAGA: I’d like that very much.
<a href="http://x-mencomics.com/xfan/images/previews/w2.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://x-mencomics.com/xfan/images/previews/w2t.jpg" align=right alt="Dan Fraga Wolverine Reference art"></a> X-FAN: Of the three Wolverine issues you penciled, what are you most proud of?
FRAGA: Just growing as a storyteller. In particular, there’s things in issue #168 (the second issue I did). Stuff I never really attempted before. I experimented with vertical panels, rather than the standard horizontal thing, I wanted to try to do something different with vertical panel. Also to focus on trying to keep things really, really clean as far as continuity. Something that people won’t notice, but I notice. Like in #167 , where Logan scratches Toad’s goo off his face, he leaves these scars, and by the last page of #168 Logan doesn’t have the scars any more. If you actually look through the book, page by page you can actually see them fade.
Erik Larsen’s biggest complaint when I showed him my work was the stuff was too busy. He said you know every single time you draw a shot of a crowd you draw every single person in the crowd. Joe Quesada mentioned if the script said ‘when so-and-so is confronting so-and-so’, you always pull back and draw these full figures and all these backgrounds. They were trying to tell me you can do different things; like when you can show just a hand going for a sword. Really basic stuff, but you get so caught up in the story-telling aspect of things that you forget the basics sometimes.
To me, I was like, I want to make sure whoever reads this book gets every single penny, all $2.25 worth on the pages. And to me, I felt if I drew a hand holding a sword I felt like I was cheating the reader. But in fact, it’s almost cheating the reader by drawing everything. If everything is plotted out for them then the reader isn’t as involved.
It was really difficult for me to do, because I really like to work hard. But these guys swear by it. The third issue (#169) there are things that I like better than the first two, but there are things that I don’t like as much, because I was trying to do something new. I finished the book about ten weeks ago so I haven’t even looked at it.
<a href="http://x-mencomics.com/xfan/images/previews/w3.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://x-mencomics.com/xfan/images/previews/w3t.jpg" align=left alt="Dan Fraga Wolverine Reference art"></a>X-FAN: Going back to Matt, will you be using the same priest that Nixon introduced in the Wolverine 2001 Annual story "Red Snow"?
FRAGA: Yes. The character named Father Braun...
X-FAN: The 'Mulder from the Vatican' fellow?
FRAGA: Yeah, you already talked to Matt?
X-FAN: I haven’t yet, no. Matt described Father Braun like that in another interview here.
FRAGA: Okay, yes Father Braun is in this. And it’s really cool, because I got a chance to talk to the editors during the writing process and it was more of a synergy. I’ve never really worked that way before. They had a basic plot and I actually got to talk to Matt and he tells me things that he’s excited about and I talk to him about stuff. And he juices up scenes to cater to my strengths; it was just a fun, collaborative effort as far as getting the basic plot done. I know the locales it’s going to take place in; one issue is going to take place in New York and the other is going to take place in Rome.
<a href="http://x-mencomics.com/xfan/images/previews/w7.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://x-mencomics.com/xfan/images/previews/w7t.jpg" align=right alt="Dan Fraga Wolverine Reference art"></a>The reason that I am so excited about the Rome material, is because we’ve {Dan and his wife} have been to Rome, and I have tons and tons of photographs and when I talked to Nixon about the Rome scenes, this place is visually just a feast for the eyes. So he actually wrote some scenes in there that would cater to what I had seen. And when you draw comic books, a lot of time it’s fantastic and you’re making up environments. Like in the "Bloodsport" arc, I had to make up where they fought. And I took a little from the Bloodsport movie, and a little off the WWF wrestling rings and stuff, and with this one, it’s a real place. Since I’ve been there, I know what it smells like, feels like, looks like. It’s going to be the most believable environment I’ve done because it’s real. And I’m excited because I get to draw Logan in a place where I’ve been. And that’s so cool to me.
And that’s what I’ve been focusing on drawing in the last few weeks, all this Roman architecture. It’s a really good story too. Matt has a real flair for conspiracies and that sort of thing.
X-FAN: If these next two issues of Wolverine go over well, do you think Marvel will offer you the permanent fill in spot on the title? And do Frank and Sean have any say in this?
FRAGA: I don’t know if Sean has said anything because I don’t really talk to Sean all too often. I was at the San Diego Comic Con for a couple of hours and I got to talk to Sean; he and I met back in ’93 and I’m a big fan of his stuff. I talk to Frank at least once a week, and he’s actually said that it would be good if I was the permanent fill-in guy. I got Frank’s vote. I think the thing my editors are waiting on is that I pick up my speed a little bit. I think that’s all it is, because had I drawn the three issues of Wolverine in three months time, I think I would have already had the job. It took me about three months and three weeks.
<a href="http://x-mencomics.com/xfan/images/previews/w5.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://x-mencomics.com/xfan/images/previews/w5t.jpg" align=left alt="Dan Fraga Wolverine Reference art"></a>X-FAN: So the three weeks were the determining factor there?
FRAGA: Right. They said we love your work Dan, but we want you to speed up. So they actually gave me more work to train me to speed up. So I think they’re kind of using these issues to allow me to get all of the kinks out of my work. I used to work at Image, at Extreme studios, and I learned a lot of stuff at Extreme but a lot of what I learned was just wrong.
X-FAN: You have to reteach yourself quite a bit?
FRAGA: There’s so many things in my work that makes me say why are you doing this over and over? These are things that I am trying to get out of my work. To me, it’s not fun unless you are growing. And people seem to respond more to people who try to push the envelope every time they do something. Like every time I see Sean’s work. His first issue of Wolverine (#159) compared to #166. It's night and day, #166 beats the crap out of #159. To me, that’s interesting. It’s almost like sports, you watch the rookie come in and grow. To a lot of guys, it’s a job. They just come in and do their pages and that’s it.
X-FAN: And these artists stay in one place.
FRAGA: But there’s different ways that people can grow too. Like John Romita Jr., artistically as far as the way he draws, he’s changed a lot; his tree that he drew looks like the tree he drew five years, but his story-telling has changed. When I read a John Romita Jr. book I am submerged in that world and I love it. It’s like this roller coaster ride. That’s another thing in itself too, and that’s another thing I’m trying to focus on too. Every now and again I draw a stiff figure, or the proportions are kind of weird or the hair looks kind of funny. Those are aesthetic things I’m trying to fix. What’s more important to me is that the storytelling is clicking.
<a href="http://x-mencomics.com/xfan/images/previews/w6.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://x-mencomics.com/xfan/images/previews/w6t.jpg" align=right alt="Dan Fraga Wolverine Reference art"></a> One of the things I talked to Joe Quesada and a couple of other people about, was something I used to tell people when I looked at my work, and something I’m thinking about a lot more now I’ve been learning guitar. A comic book is a composition of scenes, but you can manipulate the timing of those scenes much like musical notation. When we talked it the story-pacing, panel spacing and panel sizing shouldn’t be about flash. It shouldn’t be about ‘this would look really cool if’, it should be about the story. You make your panel the size of the pacing and almost the soundtrack where the story’s supposed to go. Those are the things I’m working on, these are the most important to me.
I teach a class every Tuesday about comic book layout at Orange County Art Studio. My class isn’t a how-to-draw class, my class is an understanding the comic book as a story-telling medium class. Some people say ‘well I can only draw a stick figure’ and you still can tell great stories with a stick figure; it’s about the mood and the impact of things. One of the exercises I go through is have a guy come out of his house and get his newspaper and draw his reaction to what he sees in the newspaper. And I tell my students to draw this five different ways; draw five pages of the same scenes. I want one to seem very depressing, one to seem exciting, one to seem scary, one to seem normal and one to seem funny. Now, it’s the same scene and the same action, the key is to make the reader feel exactly whatever they see, and that is the Holy Grail to me. That’s what I’m trying to be, a master of emotional manipulation through the art form.
X-FAN: Any news on your next creator-owned book Lightwing? Is that going to be done in and around your work with Marvel?
FRAGA: Yeah. My editors are aware of it. It never ever, ever takes precedence over my Marvel assignments. I talked with my partner Anthony Bozzi almost every day. Lightwing is a book where our hearts are really into it, and by the time it comes out it will be two years of planning. It’s six issues, we’re basically writing all six before I even draw a lick, and we’re to paste and storyboard it all out and compose it like a work of music. This is a book that is a labor of love and is just going to take time to do.
X-FAN: Will Lightwing be released through Image?
FRAGA: I think so. That’s the plan. It’s a character from the Gear Station book, but I say that this has almost nothing to do with Gear Station, since it’s a story about Lightwing. It's kind of a personal, cathartic story for both Bozzi and myself. There are a lot of demons to be exorcised in this book.
<a href="http://x-mencomics.com/xfan/images/previews/mkmv_werewolf.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://x-mencomics.com/xfan/images/previews/mkmv_werewolft.jpg" align=left alt="Marvel Knights: Millennial Visions 2001 Werewolf By Night pin-up preview"></a>X-FAN I have a question for you about the Werewolf by Night pin-up you did the for Marvel Knights: Millennial Visions 2001 one-shot. Was that something which was done by request, or was it something that your editors suggested?
FRAGA: About the Werewolf piece, Mike Marts had given me a few options to choose from and I picked Werewolf by Night . I love wolves, it was fun to do. I tried out a program called Painter on that piece. I learned a lot of things from that.
X-FAN: Wow, it really sounds like you’ve learned a lot over the last six months...
<a href="http://x-mencomics.com/xfan/images/previews/w4.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://x-mencomics.com/xfan/images/previews/w4t.jpg" align=right alt="Dan Fraga Wolverine Reference art"></a>FRAGA: I have. Personally, and professionally. I’m just trying to learn and trying to get better. And taking guitar lessons...
X-FAN: The guitar lessons sound like they added a whole new dimension to what you’re doing as an artist.
FRAGA: Back when I was a teenager, I had someone at Marvel who was mentoring me unofficially. He was an editor named Carl Potts. He was kind of responsible for mentoring Jim Lee and the big guys at Wildstorm, like Jim Lee, Scott Williams. And he was cool with a guy I knew back home. And he told me a lot of things I didn’t understand. I used to have my own fanzine back in 88-89, and he was my first interview. We talked about the process in how comic books are made, and how a person could improve. And he said in the interview that I should take sculpting, and a musical instrument so I could improve. And my reaction was what does this have to do with drawing comic books. It took me ten years but I absolutely get it now.