PS Magazine

I was in charge of the art production on the monthly PS Magazine from 2000 through 2019 when the magazine was shut down. I worked from 579 through 804; a total of 225 issues (that’s two fewer than Will Eisner’s run on the magazine).

Each issue had 64 pages and featured a combination of
two-color and four-color art. The two-color pages were articles promoting maintenance: for vehicles, equipment and weapons. The four-color pages generally featured a ‘continuity,’ an 8-page comic book story.

Included here are samples from throughout the run.

PS 579, front cover

This was our first issue. Joe Kubert drew it and I did the rest: scanning, setting up the documents, making PDFs of the finished stages. I colored it with help from several artists.

As with everything, there was a learning curve. For both us and for the Army.

The work seemed easy enough, until we started laying out and penciling our second issue while inking the first issue and then laying out and penciling the third issue while inking the second one and coloring the first one.

PS 706, page 2

This is a good example of the classic look of the magazine. It combines “head art”—the sequential opening, the text of the story and a technical illustration.

I remember we had to defend the use of the uneventful first panel in the head art. I explained it’s necessary to establish the Stryker in a normal situation which allows for the problem to show up unexpectedly—as it would—in the second panel.

PS 706, page 53

Here’s an instance where we used cartooning to accompany some fairly dry text. This was the whole point of PS: to provide memorable illustrations accompanying text that would have otherwise been skimmed or skipped without the illustrations.

Note that there’s a story being told in the panels that parallels the information being shared.

PS 797, page 42

This is a good example of where we were heading with the standard page layouts. Over the years, we pushed the boundaries of what a standard page could look like. One of the tricks is seen here: taking the text of the editorial response and giving it to one of the characters to speak.

PS 802, page 56

This is the second page of a two-page article and it’s an example of how we would take the text of the article and, with a little editing, create a dialogue between characters.

I still remember the excitement I had, in the first year of our initial contract, when I realized we could present an article—or even parts of an article—in a sequential format. It was one of those epiphanic moments that ripples through everything that comes after it.