JJ Muth og Scott Hampton - Copenhagen Comics 2026

Nogle gange er det umuligt at sige nej tak, når en mulighed opstår, og hvem ville sige nej tak til et interview på hovedscenen på Copenhagen Comics? Ikk’ mig.

Derfor fik jeg pinsesøndag fornøjelse af at snakke med de herrer Muth og Hampton på hovedscenen, hvilket jeg selv synes der kom en god snak ud af.

Vi kom godt omkring og til sidst blev der også tid til et spørgsmål fra publikum om Hamptons forbindelse til Will Eisner.

Hvis du har lyst til at se snakken - så fandt Copenhagen Comics på at optage alle aktiviteter på hovedscenen. Så du kan finde video af snakken på Copenhagen Comics hjemmeside, og der er masser af andre gode snakke derinde, som intet har med mig at gøre :)

Til slut fik jeg en tegning af de to herrer. Deres første jam-tegning nogensinde, måske den eneste, der nogensinde kommer. For at se den, må du et smut forbi Tegneseriesnak på Instagram.

God fornøjelse og læs nogle tegneserier!

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:17

Hej og velkommen til Tegser Snake, hvor jeg endnu en gang åbner for godt posen fra Kopenhagen Comic. Med kort varset og grønne sygdom blev jeg spurgt, om jeg kunne tage en snak på hængen med to af de amerikanske gæster, nemlig John J. Mus og. Vi kommer lidt omkring deres vej ind i tancer i branchen, deres arbejde, og en gæst i publikumet stillede et rigtig godt spørgsmål, som førte til den måske bedste historie på Copenhagen Comic i denne omgang, så synes jeg selv selvfølgelig. Gå fornøjelse. Velkommen til Copenhagen Comic. Det er fedt, at jeg alle sammen. Bare komme nærmere, hvis I står i lidt tvivl, eller vi sidder ned. Jeg hedder Arni, og jeg er værd på en podcast, der hedder tegned så jeg snakke, og i dag har jeg fornøjsen af, at snakke med to amerikaner, så derfor skifter jeg selvfølgelig over til engelsk. Gentlemen! Welcome to the stage.

SPEAKER_04 1:16

Thank you. Would you kindly introduce yourselves? Yes, I'm John J. Meuth. Sorry, is that better? Okay, yeah. So really, you were right, right up here. Okay. Right. Uh my name is John J. Meuth, and uh Hello Copenhagen. It's nice to see you.

SPEAKER_05 1:35

And I'm Scott Hampton, and uh Jay and I have been doing comics, I guess, since the uh early to mid eighties, I guess. Yeah. Oh, I'm sorry. See, you gotta eat it.

SPEAKER_02 1:47

Yeah, we have to bring it all the way to the mouth.

SPEAKER_05 1:49

Okay, and and and keep it as you move around, right?

SPEAKER_02 1:52

Yes. So let's see how this goes. I have prepared a slideshow. Um, it is not my intent to talk about the slideshow as such, but more to showcase your work. But if you feel at some point that you want to say, oh, this piece or that piece, feel free to do so. And uh we will also be taking questions from the audience. Um and since we don't have anybody running around with a microphone, you could just shout it out. I'll repeat the question, and I'm sure these two gentlemen will answer to the best of their ability.

SPEAKER_04 2:24

Yes, yes, that's the intention. I I mean the first piece, if this is what's up there, I'll just say that's a very, very old piece. Uh I don't think I had ever been published, and I think that may have been one of the very first paintings I did when I first moved uh from Ohio to New York, uh, where I ended up getting into comics.

SPEAKER_02 2:47

And that was actually where I wanted to start for for both of you. Your artistic background and how you then moved from what looks like fine art into comic books. So what was your background and and what was your way into doing comics?

SPEAKER_04 3:05

Refers to me. No, you go ahead. Okay. Um I started out uh wanting to make uh paintings and uh realized that that's not a very good way to make a living in any real sense, or at least it's kind of a crapshoot. It's um unlikely. So uh I started to do pieces that I was going to take to Marvel. This is when I was about 17 years old, and I submitted some paintings to uh uh uh uh whoever was running the coloring section of Marvel at the time. This is a long time, would have been in 1976. And Marie Severn, probably. Thank you. It was Marie Severn, right. And uh and my parents for my graduation in high school ended up giving me a ticket to go to New York City by myself uh so that I could attend a convention where I could meet my heroes who were at the time uh Jeffrey Jones, Michael Caluda, Bernie Wrightson, and Barry Windsor Smith, because these were the gods to me. Um and uh I had a portfolio of very vapid, unimportant comic book work that I had in the hotel room, which was a very dodgy hotel room. Um, but I got the chance to meet these guys, and I I I had no idea what to expect, but when I walked in, they had an exhibit up of all of their work or a lot of their work at the time, and they were called, they were kind of like rock stars. You know, in the comic book world, they were sort of like the the rock gods, and um, at least for me, I think for other people as well. But they they had an exhibit up and there was a painting there by Jeffrey Jones, who you may later know as Jeffrey Catherine Jones, so I don't mean any disrespect, but the person I knew was Jeffrey Jones. Um so I stood in front of one of these paintings and I literally just started weeping because I'd never seen anybody. I grew up going to museums. My mother was an art teacher, so every weekend we would go to museums. So I was familiar with Whistler and Caravaggio and Rembrandt and, you know, uh Titian. So uh this is the stuff I saw every weekend, but I'd never seen anyone who was alive today painting the in any way that was like that kind of work. Um, so I was just completely moved. And anyway, I finally was able to say hello to him, and uh we struck up just to make this really short rather than keep going on. Um we became friends and uh I would write to him because I lived in Ohio, and I'd write and he'd write to me, he'd tell me what was going on and so on. We had no internet in that in those primitive days, so it was literally by handwritten letters and so on, a telephone. And eventually he was moving out of New York City to move to upstate. He had sold a big painting, and he knew I wanted to come to New York, so he said, Would I like to come up and join his join him in a studio? So that was kind of wonderful. And uh that was the beginning of my journey into um into working in New York City. I had $500, and I knew that would last me for as long as I could possibly need. So so uh anyway, Jeff and I lived together for a couple of years, and I got the chance to meet many of these people, and that's around the time I met Scott. So yeah.

SPEAKER_02 6:41

And what was your way into the arts and and into comics?

SPEAKER_05 6:47

Um yeah, my older brother Bo uh is also a comics artist, and he's I like to I like to put this out there for the world to know that he is indeed five years older than I am. Um, and so um I learned a lot from him. I was able to uh I think it's a great advantage to have someone who's much better than you are uh looking at what you're doing when you're growing up and uh and uh and helping you. So uh because of that, uh I I just that was my introduction to comics and to the world of you know, just art in general. Um my influences were very similar. Uh I too looked at this the studio guys, Barry Smith and Jeffrey and Mike and and Bernie as uh you know my these were art artistic father figures. Um you know, I I really studied them, and uh and when I got to meet them, they were all just so nice as well. So that that really helped to to to tell me how to comport myself uh you know to other people as well. It is very influential, very uh very very inspirational. Um I called up Marvel and I said I wanted to come in. I was coming into town uh it's November of 76 or 70 something like that, same rough time. And uh and they they said that Marie Severin, this is how I knew this, uh uh would be able to uh to to meet me. And so I went there with my portfolio. She met me in the lobby, which uh for me anyway, I think was the the litmus test. If if marie severin thought you you had some potential, you would get past the lobby and into Marvel proper. I keep pulling this away from me, but I I don't like stuffing it in my face.

SPEAKER_04 8:50

It's like it's just it's very big and you know, can I just yeah it's funny, Marie Severin, that's that's really hilarious because uh I I actually went in for the meeting as well.

SPEAKER_05 9:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 9:01

And I was sitting outside and she came out. Oh, really? Yep. Except she noticed someone else sitting there. And when she noticed who it was sitting there, suddenly I vanished. I completely disappeared for her because it was Jim Staranko. So she suddenly shifted all of her attention and started taking care of Jim. And me being a young egotistical artist, I after waiting there for like 45 minutes for her to come back and get me for the meeting that was 45 minutes ago, I just threw my hands up. So that's when I went back to the convention, I saw Jeff's work, I went back to my hotel room, tore up everything I had brought. Oh my god. And I went back home essentially and uh lived on peanut butter and and spaghetti for years and just painted and just painted and just painted. No comics, none of that. I don't, you know, making a living wasn't part of the deal anymore. It was just I have to do this thing. So sorry, I just that's really funny. You I love hearing that. You were conjuring up you were conjuring up the room there in Marvel for me too, and I'm going, oh yeah, that happened. Right.

unknown 10:05

Right.

SPEAKER_05 10:06

So But Marie said, okay, well, you've got painted stuff. It's it looks nice. Uh we're starting a new magazine. It's called Oracle Illustrated, and we will I want to introduce you to the editor. So she brought me back to meet a guy who was uh at that moment going to be editing this new magazine for Marvel. Um, was it Oracle Illustrated or it might oh Odyssey. Odyssey Illustrated. Okay. So I go back and I meet this fellow, Rick Marshall, and uh I show him my work, and he says, Hey, uh, I was like young, I was I was a teenager. Um, and he said, Well, you know, I like the look of this work. It's not comics, but you know, it's nice, and maybe we can, you know, put one of your pieces in the interior of one of our magazines, because I'm running a magazine-oriented uh section of Marvel. And I go, Wow, that's that's amazing. Okay, great, great, great. Uh, I'd never sold my art at all to anyone. So I said, this this is brilliant. Um, and it was right about then, and I I'm not joking, this actually did happen exactly as I'm about to say it. It's at that moment that Stan Lee walked in. Now, Stan Lee is the king of Marvel Comics, and a lot of you know that. Um, I did not expect to see him. Even then, he was not someone who was day-to-day in the office. Um, but he just walked into the office, and he walked into that office to say hello to, I guess, Rick Marshall. And Rick and I stood up and and Rick said, uh, this is a young fella who's who wants to do comics, uh, Scott Hampton meets Stan Lee, and I I was, you know, gobsmacked. And uh, and we're thinking about doing a portfolio of Scott's work in one of our magazines, as you see, these are illustrations. And uh so Stan looked at my work and he said to Rick, well, this is all nice, but you know, we tell stories here at Marvel, so give them a script. And so he left. Now I'm 17, and and and the my dream of of doing comics you know is about to come true if if only uh Rick Marshall will hand me a script. So he leaves and I say to Rick, you heard the man, give me a script. And he said, Well, I don't have one right now, but like I said, uh we'll we'll we'll print one of your pieces for a hundred bucks, you know, and uh that's whatever. And so I left, I went home, and I waited for my hundred dollar check for Marvel to arrive. And I was kind of haunting my mailbox, and finally one day I go out there and there's a postcard in the mailbox, and it shows a skyline of a city, a big city with skyscrapers. I look at the other side and it says it's from Rick Marshall, and what it says I will never forget. It said, Dear Scott, our accounting department has advised us that $100 is too much to pay for the art in question. We will therefore be sending you a poster of Spidey signed by the whole bullpen gang. Sincerely, Rick Marshall. I read this twice, and I I could not believe what I was even then. I'm 17, but even then I knew that I I was being disrespected in a big way uh on this. Now, that said, had I simply gotten that poster of Spidey signed by the whole bullpen gang, that might be worth like $10,000 right now. So, I mean, I I you know, I there there's there's that to be considered too.

SPEAKER_02 13:57

So you never got the poster?

SPEAKER_05 13:59

No, I didn't. Um, because it turns out that that was not a uh a note from Rick Marshall. My brothers had done that as a prank to me. And and and and and they played fair with me because this wasn't New York. If I look on the front, it was Montreal, and it didn't have a postmark. And and who sends postcards anyway? How what kind of business is that? So, anyway, I so yeah. So I I called Rick Marshall and I said, May I speak to Rick Marshall? And oh god. Um, and uh they said, You you really don't want to do that. I said, Why? Because, well, we sent you that postcard. So Rick Marshall gets on the phone and uh I say, Hi Rick, um uh are you gonna send me that money? He goes, Sorry, yes, that'll go out. And indeed it did go out the next week. So, anyway, that's how that happened, and that was my introduction to Marvel and to comics as such. Uh, and I'll just say, without telling you the rest of the story, but a few years later I got my revenge.

SPEAKER_04 15:09

So now we have to hear that.

SPEAKER_02 15:12

Yes, so anybody going to the signing afterwards can hear the rest of the revenge story? Exactly.

SPEAKER_05 15:16

Come to my table, I'll tell you the story.

SPEAKER_02 15:18

Oh, that sounds good. Now we've been uh I've been trying to flip slowly through the the different works, and obviously you've both done work for Marvel, which is what we're seeing here. But what what do you feel having painted Marvel characters and comics for so many years, what does your kind of uh approach to comic art bring to the medium? What what what do you feel makes your work stand out from traditional work?

SPEAKER_03 15:51

Yeah, you go boy. Okay.

SPEAKER_04 15:54

Um well when I was uh I I kind of didn't intend to get into comics. It was uh after living with Jeff, I was just painting, but it I realized I didn't I mean I I didn't have enough the $500 was not gonna last. It was just so uh he said, Well, let me introduce you to because I was just doing these paintings, um, but let me introduce you to my friend who's at uh I think he was at Marvel. Yeah, he was at Marble at the time because he had Epic Illustrated. Um my friend Archie Goodwin, who was the editor of Epic Illustrated magazine at the time. And so I met Archie, and in order to kind of have something to show him that would be useful, instead of just a painting of, you know, a beautiful woman or something, I uh I did three pages of a I just did a story, a comic book story in three pages. Because I was, I mean, living with Jeff, he was working on the comic strip Idol. If you were familiar with that, this beautiful black and white thing that ran in a magazine called National Lampoon. Anyway, uh to make it short, working in comics, I I did not know there was going to be room for paintings as a, you know, as a medium in any major way. I thought it was just relegated to magazines because that was a more advanced technology for printing at the time. So um I started working for Epic Illustrated. They they bought the story that I had done as a spec and they ran that, and then he said, Do you have anything else? So I did something else, and oh my goodness, we're getting money for this now. That's great. Um so it sort of graduated that way, and then someone, Archie said he had someone who had a uh a story in mind, and maybe I'd be interested. And JM DeMatis, who wrote um the he had been doing a bunch of things before this, but he did Moonshadow and he had a a draft for the beginnings of of a series. And I thought, well, I'll take a look at this. And and again, I thought I thought it was going to be traditional comics, which is pen and ink and then colored through a process. And um when I brought these samples in to show Archie of what I had done based on J.M. DeMatis's script, I had these pieces in just black line, and he said, What are you doing? And I said, Well, it's that's what I thought it was that that's what we were doing. And he said, No, no, take it home and paint it. And I said, Okay, so I went back and painted the pages, and that's how Moonshadow got started. And uh it was a Herculean effort for me, because I I do I do pieces over and over and over again and throw away many, many pages and many versions of things. So it was kind of uh uh a daunting process, especially since uh Mark writes long things. So it was uh 12 issues. And um, but to your question, I think what happens with painted comics for me, the it was always disappointing when I was a kid, and I came upon a comic book which had a beautifully painted James Bomber cover or something that was really beautifully rendered, Doc Savage or something, and then you'd open it, and then there was this line work inside. And I felt like, why can't they keep the story going with line? I mean, why can't they do a painted version of this? And I grew up painting, so I thought, well, it's just there's gotta be some way to do that because you get to my eye, I felt like there was way more emotion available in a painted picture of a face than a lined picture of a face. Now I come to feel differently, however, at that point I sunk all my energy into this thing because I thought that's how the medium has to end up going. It just you have to be able to do paintings, fully painted work, um, and see what kind of storytelling can be done with that. And I think um, well, anyway, that's my answer. I'll let you see what you think.

SPEAKER_05 19:56

Uh yeah, I I I only did a bit of work for Marvel. It was uh sporadic here and there. Mostly I did my work for DC Comics and uh um a few other independents and all that, but um but uh I don't know. Uh I think that that my what I could bring to bear was just very idiosyncratic. You know, I mean I was coming from a world of being influenced by such various things as Jim Storanko and Edmund Dulac and James Whistler and you know uh Charles Schultz and on and on. It's like these uh a a whole world of of of interests and and influences. So I didn't know or I didn't have a plan for having any sort of impact. And in fact, uh people do have trouble knowing where to put me, you know. Um so so I'm neither fish nor fowl. And uh, but I you know but I do love the medium and I love the potential of it. And so yeah, I was I was interested in seeing where painted work could go and what how it could how I could um you know help to create different kinds of stories in comics.

SPEAKER_02 21:18

So And now I I just want to get back to one of the things that you said that you threw away a lot of pages, that you were repainting pages and and whole pages, I'm guessing, rather than panels. Often.

SPEAKER_04 21:31

Often it was full pages, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 21:33

Okay. And and uh was it the same with you that you discard something? Oh no. No.

SPEAKER_05 21:38

No, no, no. I I I no, I was never going to put it right the first time.

SPEAKER_02 21:47

Well, the reason the reason I want to ask is that I have a dear friend who is approximately your age, uh a comics artist as well. And when I visit his studio, he will have pages and pages and pages lying around on the floor. Or stepping well on them and over them. So I'm wondering what your studios look like if you're discarding pages and well, if you're not, then if it can be clean.

SPEAKER_04 22:10

I have a friend who's got an his name on my garbage can so that anything I throw out, he he's he comes and says, I get all that.

SPEAKER_05 22:19

Was this Dan Green?

SPEAKER_04 22:21

It might have been Dan at one point, but no, not now. So so you do recycle them? Well, no, I mean, no, they they're supposed to stay in the trash. So when I when I when I throw it out, it's supposed to be thrown out. And oftentimes I'll I've I've kept pages, especially working in children's books, which is most of what I've done in the last 30 years. Um I have pages and I'll just keep them to be able to see what was I thinking, because the difference between the one I rejected or the three I rejected and the one I've accepted is a puzzle to me. So uh because often they look so very, very similar. So what is it, what is that thing that has to be there, you know, for me to accept the piece to be fit to be you know acceptable.

SPEAKER_02 23:07

We're gonna get to some of the the children's books illustrations later on. But but I have I actually find that very fascinating to figure out the process of artists. I can't draw myself, my kids can, uh fortunately, but they didn't get that from me. That was just hard work. Um and and now that we have all this technology coming to the forefront, do you guys feel threatened by AI bringing in the big bat on on the stage now?

SPEAKER_05 23:35

You go first on this. Okay. Um I I think that it is threatening. I don't know that I feel threatened by it, um, because I think I'm at the tail end of my ability to to draw comics anyway, probably. But if I was a young person uh trying and wanting to create art in in this medium, and and uh I would I would I would be very um wary of this and um and it's an awful prospect, at least to me, um that that that this can be happening, that basically you can obviate people's making a living by simply you know uh finding ways to get robots to offer options, you know, that that seem good enough. Um AI to me stands for automatic imitation. It's not it's not per se uh uh it's neither a good nor a bad thing on it's what you do with it. And and and when people can can write a prompt and call themselves a creator, well, that's disturbing.

SPEAKER_04 24:55

So um I'm not becoming someone who makes pictures as a living has always been a very precarious idea. And with each new technological advance, we've had a kind of terrifying moments like when the printing press came up or when photography was suddenly there, and and every artist or uh each person making pictures throughout their the time has had to adjust to this technology. And to me, becoming an artist uh with the idea that you want to make money is a little like becoming a priest for the for the money. Uh it kind of doesn't really make sense to me. It it has to be a byproduct of, for my mind, it has to be a byproduct. The money is a byproduct of what you're trying to do. And my experience has been that that tends to be the case. So you make the work you really believe in authentically, as truthfully as you can, and the money will find you. It may not be as much as you want, but usually you're not thinking about that. Um and as far as AI specifically goes, to my thinking, uh, AI is empty because there's absolutely no lived moment in anything produced by AI. It it is they they just physically don't exist. When I make work, I move dirt around because that's and I move it until it looks right. And at the very basic element to my mind, that's what it is. So, and it requires my physicality. And this is I I've never been able to take to making work on a screen, and I know people do beautiful things this way, but I need to feel what it is that I'm moving, and um and it's a conversation. My art is a conversation with what I take to be sacred in the world. So there will never be any relationship between AI and the sacred, as far as I can see. So this is to my mind, it's empty. Will it put people out of work? Yeah, every technology has. So, you know, you gotta figure out why you're doing it. Thank you, honey.

SPEAKER_02 27:33

That is actually quite quite a good reply. Thank you. I've I've I wonder about AI all the time. I have to use it for work. I'm sure the audience has as well. And and I feel that we are being forced into something that we none no one really wants. Um but let's get back to to the comic work and the illustrations. And I feel actually that some of the pieces that well you picked out and and I found for you um illustrate what you were just talking about. That that life in the art that doesn't exist via AI. There were pieces that I looked at that we're gonna see that were really moving um just immediately, such as this one.

SPEAKER_04 28:17

Thank you. That's uh from a children's book of uh um uh I I illustrated uh uh Bob Dylan's uh Blowing in the Wind song. Uh and uh this was one of the pieces that was in that. So thank you. Yeah. I mean it's like it's it's like the flaws that actually are the part that makes the piece live. You know, it's it's my inability to get to where I'm trying to get through the process that makes something, if I'm lucky, and I think honestly, I think I've only made maybe five good pictures in my life, but it it's so I'm not saying I get there at all, but it's like I gotta reach, and reaching for it is the thing that shows up.

SPEAKER_02 29:00

Yeah. And and that sort of brings me to a question I had written down is where what is it about a project that you want it to contain before you commit to it? And now just saying what you just said, at what stage do you feel like, okay, now I'm ready to to let go of this image, to, to stop trying to make it better, to actually just say, okay, I either I have a deadline or I need to move on.

SPEAKER_04 29:29

So well, it is it is the deadline sometimes. Yeah, yeah. It's like, well, I can't I don't have I can't make this better. I'm sorry. I you know right.

SPEAKER_05 29:40

Yeah, uh I I somebody said um art is never completed, merely abandoned. And I think that might have been uh a musician. Uh I think it might have been uh somebody can Google it and scream it out, yeah, that was somebody. Um but uh yeah, I I love what Jay just said uh because if there's anything that's that's basically true, I think across all forms of of creativity, um, it's the striving rather than the the completed image that is is the most important part of it. Because that's what humans do. We we are trying to do things. And if it's not full fully under our hand, and if we're not completely capable of of of achieving what we're seeing or wanting to to achieve, um well, that's good. That's good because it means that it gives us more to keep striving for. I will say that um in almost any young creator's life, if you keep doing it past the point of you know being frustrated and upset and all the rest, if you keep doing it and you keep building on what you've got, there will come a day when you have happened to you what happened to me one day. And that is that I was just sitting in uh just another day, sitting in my little chair in the living room while Dark Shadows is playing in the afternoon, and I'm drawing um something, and I finished it that night, and then I went to bed, and then I got up in the middle of the night, and I went to look at the drawing I'd done. And I turned on the light, and it was suddenly there before me. I'd been building it little by little all afternoon, but I kind of forgotten some elements, and I turned on the light, and there it was, boom. Which is about as close as we're ever going to come to knowing what it's like to see our work, you know, the way other people see it, you know? And and and I can tell you that it's maybe the happiest moment of my life because I was better than I thought. And and and and it really is, it's weird to think that you you actually succeeded at creating something and and and it's it's actually better than you thought you could do. I was so used to thinking I had limitations. And and I went, wow, this is actually better. And and that means that I've kind of reached a point where I'm no longer saddled by uh limitation. Now I can have what Jennifer and I sometimes refer to as open field running, um, the ability to just now go and start really growing. You give yourself permission finally at the end of the day to do that. But it's born of striving and striving and striving until finally you get over some sort of pneumonia or some sort of period of frustration and anxiety, and and you get to a point where you have that gift of having surprised yourself that you were able to do that. And if you get there, baby, from that point on, you are an artist and you're gonna keep getting better. It's not gonna be irreversible. You can have all kinds of defeats, but you are going to be able to surprise yourself, and that is a great feeling. It's one of the best things about being an artist.

SPEAKER_02 33:31

That was a wonderful reply. Thank you. I know we have a few minutes left. So if there is anybody in the audience who has any questions, please raise your hand. Yes.

SPEAKER_03 33:45

Yes. So I didn't say six times.

SPEAKER_00 33:51

Thank you. So in 76, both you and your brother studied under Eisner, correct?

SPEAKER_05 33:57

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 33:57

Yeah. So what I was able to find was that your brother did studied under him at the Visual Arts School, but I couldn't find anything for you, only that you studied under him. I was just curious, did you get to do it with your brother? How was that like?

SPEAKER_05 34:10

Oh, what a wonderful question. Thank you for asking that. Um, for those of you who don't know it, Will Eisner is the grandfather of comics. He's one of the greatest creators of all time of comics. He moved the medium forward at a time when um uh uh many did not see it as as as expansive, they saw it as just limited. And uh, but Will Eisner saw it, saw its saw its potential. Um in 75 or so, he decided to do a gr what what he would call a graphic novel, and that's where the term comes from. Uh it's called A Contract with God, a graphic novel. And in 1977, it was published. And from that point on, we've adopted that term. Uh and and it's uh but it's more important than that. Um it's it was it was a it was a fully realized adult story in comics form, and it wasn't done to curry favor with any given demographic, it wasn't done to uh to make money, it was done because it just needed to be done. My brother had studied under him at S SVA School of Visual Arts in New York, and he was his assistant, and I was visiting that summer, and I would go in once a week to Eisner's studio, and I would also help. And what we were doing, what what Eisner had given us was essentially busy work because he liked having young people around to help. But it's not like he was necessarily going to use the work we did. Uh he was paying us to do it, which was very nice of him to do. I would have gladly done it for free. Um, but what we were doing was adding red dye tones that would be on pieces of acetate over the pages of a contract with God. This was a gray process that was going to put gray tones into the book. Now he was going to publish the book in s in in like a uh burnt umber sort of looking ink. So these tones would then be in the same rough vein as that. But we got into it and we ultimately just told him, no, don't use this. The inkwork is so solid, you don't you don't want to mess it up and muddy it up with these tones. So we finally, you know, kicked ourselves off the book, you know, and he did indeed publish it without the tones. But before that happened, I came in and I was working and I started putting the red dye down, and it was going down a lot uh a lot better than usual. It wasn't as slippery as as it sometimes feels on acetate. And it was at that point that I realized I was painting the red dye onto the original page. I had forgotten to put the acetate down. So so I I this was not a happy-making moment for me. And I turned to Bo and I said, Bo, I've just ruined one of the pages of a contract with God, and I need you to go and tell Will that you did it. And and Bo said, uh, that is not going to happen. And so I had to go to Eisner and say, Mr. Eisner, and I had to interrupt him because he would spend the morning on the phone with accountants and business people. You know, that was his favorite thing with a cigar, uh, with a pipe in his mouth, and and he would talk numbers with them while we would, you know, do whatever we're doing. And I said to him, I just ruined this panel, and uh, sorry. And and he he looked at me and he said, You Hampton boys will do anything for an original uh piece of original art. So he took an X-Acto knife, he cut out that panel, and he gave it to me, which I still have, with my red markings all over it. He then taped up another sheet of rice paper, essentially. This was he was doing it on some thin rice paper kind of thing. And without so much as penciling it, he simply drew the panel in ink again and said, you know, I think I improved it. That's that's the kind of gentleman he was. Yeah. So no, I did not study at SVA. I I did not study at Pratt. Many of my friends did, and uh, and and and I would come to them and I'd say, How do you do this? And I uh and they tell me, and I'd get in almost no time just the technique I wanted, and I would just start using it, but I didn't pay for it. And the thing is, they didn't either on some level. The the the I find that that most people when they go to art school, and this is my last point, sorry, so so so much, but the best thing they get is the camaraderie, the the the learning to to to to comport yourself with other artists. And yes, they learn some techniques from brilliant, brilliant illustrators. So, yes, Baron's story, Dave Pastelaca, on and on. They brilliant, that's great. But being with each other, you know, and and feeding off each other's enthusiasm and interest, uh, many of them say is the the thing that really they they they got so much from. So so yeah, I didn't pay for art school, but I have learned some techniques and I've got many great friends who did go to art school.

SPEAKER_02 40:06

So I think that's our time, even though I want to continue.

SPEAKER_04 40:15

Well, we're over there all day, I hear.

SPEAKER_02 40:17

So if if you so I just want to end on on this piece. This is uh something that for me illustrates what you were talking about and what what I was saying that the the life in your art that that captures.

SPEAKER_04 40:30

I really enjoy seeing this piece. Thank you. That's from a children's book. I appreciate it. Thank you for having us and doing this, honey. And thank you guys for coming. This was fun. Great men on great to see you.

SPEAKER_01 40:53

Tak fordi I kom. Thank you. Det var god. Thank you. Det var enjoyable. Det var det for den gang. Og om to uger vender jeg tilbage med et nyt afsnit for Kopenhagen Comic. Husk at smide en like på podcasten, skriv en kommentar, smut forbi nogle af de andre gode danske podcast som Tangser, Radio Rakom, Super snakk, Hærden i Fløt i serie magasinet og mangek. Måske teknisk set ikke dansk, men produceret i Danmark. Og så altid læse nogensker.