The first SHADOWMAN comic I made was inspired by Art Speigelman’s Prisoner On The Hell Planet . This is a graphic narrative in the Expressionism style, rendered in scratchboard. Scratchboard is a heavy sheet of white paper covered with a black clay coating. To get the white lines, you have to scrape away the black part. So when you render in the way you normally would, you get an eerie negative image. Using this form for comics was brilliant, and I wanted in! I played with the idea of darkness, shadows, and positive/negative parts of both visual and emotional realities. Here’s my scratchboard comic, made in 1983: Over the years, I’ve drawn several SHADOWMAN comics. I moved the style from scratchboard into into ink on paper which is a lot faster. I think of them more as comic book haikus. Here’s one that, by my best guess, was done in 1995: And here is a SHADOWMAN comic I made today, Feb.10 2010.
Paul Christley Tumey's comics, writings, and creative stuff