Joe Kubert Comics: 2003-2012

YOSSEL

In order to capture the immediacy and urgency of the raw pencils, Joe drew the original art for this book on typing paper. Although they looked like rough sketches, each page was drawn exactly as he wanted. When he finished drawing some of the pages, he would apply graphic white in places.

The trick for me was to find a way to scan the art and capture the texture—the cracks, the shadows and the thickness—of the graphic white. Once I realized that the paper was transparent while the graphic white was opaque, I put a manila envelope behind the page and then scanned the page. The result: pencils on a gray background with bursts of white glowing among the drawings.

SGT ROCK:
Between Hell and a Hard Place

Joe illustrated Brian Azzarello’s script which, if I remember correctly, was light on direction being primarily dialogue. That was the kind of script he preferred to work from; one which allowed him to find his own way to tell the story Brian wrote.

After my ill-fated attempt at computer coloring the book, Joe chose to color the book himself, working with Doc Martin dyes and colored pencils on blue-line art boards—these were boards where the line art was printed in what used to be known as ‘non-reproductive’ blue (but in these days of digital scanning, everything reproduces). We had the boards scanned by Frank Cuonzo of Mada Design, a graphic design company in Manhattan founded by Stan Madaloni, a Kubert School alumnus, and heavily staffed by Kubert School alumni (full disclosure: I worked there for a year after I graduated from the Kubert School in 1996; Frank was a classmate of mine).

Once everything was scanned in, I had to line up the black line scans with the color scans using Photoshop; every page was “off” by a just a little bit. Not a difficult task, but a time-consuming one, especially considering the book was 140 pages in length and we were producing PS full-time at that point as well as working on this book AND Yossel. It got to the point where one of the Vertigo editors wanted to know when they could expect the materials to be delivered to them so they could print the book. Joe’s answer: “When it’s done.”

JEW GANGSTER

This book, originally published by Byron Preiss’ iBooks, was first going to be published by DC Comics. There was at least one objection to the title made by someone high up in the ranks which led to DC passing on the book. Byron Preiss heard about it - maybe from Joe, maybe because he always seemed to know what was going on - and told Joe he’d publish it sight unseen.

Byron came up with the cover idea for the iBooks edition of the book (I believe he came up with the cover idea for YOSSEL as well, now that I’m thinking about it) while we were sitting in his office. I’m not sure who came up with the logo, but I wish someone else had.

Joe had plans for a second and third book in the series and actually wrote and roughed out the entire second book but never took it past that stage. Some other job was always coming along; although he would’ve gotten to it eventually. I remember a big multi-page fight between Ruby (the main character) and someone else, but not much else.

The size of the iBooks edition was inspired by Joe’s looking at manga publications (I’m not sure which ones, but they were showing up in his box of DC comps every month for awhile) and his initial desire was to get something published on newsprint or a similar paper stock.