Over the course of the past week, we’ve been shedding extra spotlight on several artists here on THE SOURCE. We’ve been in conversation with these artists, their creative teams and their editors to provide you with exclusive sneak peeks of the incredible work that goes into creating the art you see in our books week after week.

Some of the people we talked to included Art Baltazar and Franco, who explained the art of cartooning, Nicola Scott and Doug Hazelwood, who walked us through their collaborative process on TEEN TITANS, and Scott Snyder and Jock, who shared with us how they work together to turn a script page into final art.

Today marks the final post of this artist spotlight series. We reached out to editors Brian Cunningham and Darren Shan to talk about GREEN LANTERN artist Doug Mahnke. Take it away, guys:

For the past 16 years, artist Doug Mahnke has made DC Comics his home, and we couldn’t be happier!

From MAJOR BUMMER to SUPERMAN: MAN OF STEEL to JLA, Doug has continued to grow and evolve as one of the business’ top talents. What’s more impressive is that Doug can draw an issue every four weeks, the mark of a true professional that has mastered his craft.

Nowadays, Doug plies his talents on GREEN LANTERN, one of our top sellers, issue #65 of which is on sale right now.

Check out his pencils here for GREEN LANTERN #65 page 1, followed by Christian Alamy’s inks and Randy Mayor’s colors. The page 1 pencils show a work-in-progress pencil rough that Doug polished off in his usual tight style.

Pretty cool, right? Take a peek at some more GL #65 pencils-to-colors below.

Be sure to read the entire GREEN LANTERN #65 to ogle more of Doug’s incredible art.

Hey DC Nation,

My first blog here, coming at you from the 6th floor of 1700 Broadway, home of the DC Comics’ Editorial Team. From my window I look down on the front of David Letterman’s Ed Sullivan Theater, where every afternoon the shouts of fans of a different kind can be heard. And out my door are the offices of my Bat-Group comrades who have made me feel so welcome; Mike Marts, Rachel Gluckstern, Rickey Purdin, Janelle Asselin, Harvey Richards and Katie Kubert. In other words, from where I sit, life looks good!

Some of you know, some of you don’t, I was a member of another comics editorial staff for years. A few people have asked me if it’s hard to go work for the “competition.” Huh? Half the faces I meet in the halls are people I’ve worked with before – half the creators, too! In fact, years ago, I did stints as assistant editor for current DCers Mike Carlin and Bob Harras. Sometimes it’s about the characters you love, but a lot of times it’s about the work. Putting together a fantastic creative team, helping to craft a terrific story line, working with an interesting, talented new writer or artist, messing with the lives of great characters… And with the DC Universe, there are a LOT of great characters to mess with.

I thought, when I started two weeks ago, that I was going to have a few weeks to learn stuff, keep my mouth shut, absorb the ways of the new co., but instead they threw me into the deep end of the pool. What might that pool include? Well … more next time about the projects I’ll be working on. For the moment, they’re a bit hush-hush.

Now back to catching up on a few years’ worth of continuity…

Bobbie Chase

Featuring two pieces of extremely rare pin-up art, the newly reissued and repackaged HITMAN, VOL. 4: ACE OF KILLERS collects issues #15-22 of Garth Ennis and John McCrea’s acclaimed series. The first is a cover that was never before published and the second is from our previous WHO’S WHO series. Take a look at both of these below.

In these issues, Tommy Monaghan sends Etrigan the Demon into the depths of Hell to retrieve the Ace of Winchesters, the only weapon that can defeat the demon Mawzir. Once he has it in his possession, Tommy, along with Catwoman, Natt and the crazy heroes of Section Eight, can fight Mawzir and his gangster henchmen on Earth. Featuring such landmark issues as the Steve Pugh illustrated “Kiss Me,” and the Christmas-centered “The Santa Contract,” HITMAN, VOL. 4: ACE OF KILLERS is available now.

Ongoing JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA artist Brett Booth’s distinctive drawing style allows for some of the most exciting and eye popping work currently out there. One of my favorite things about Brett’s work is his ability to capture the subtlety of facial expressions so vividly that sometimes it’s easy to forget that you’re not looking at photos.

For instance, on page 3 of JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA #56, the last panel is a close-up of Batman’s face as he feels like he let Supergirl down. It is no easy feat to zoom in on the sorrow and disappointment in a face covered by a mask, yet Brett’s illustration showcases Batman’s devastation and vulnerability without question. From the tilted head to the cracked frown, Batman is undoubtedly in pain. And furthermore, his art supporting the Rise of Eclipso proved that not only can Brett give attention to subtle detail, but that he knows how to tackle events and characters of epic proportions.

It’s not just with JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA that Brett excels. Just take a look at his thought provoking cover to the upcoming FLASHPOINT title, THE WORLD OF FLASHPOINT #2. Pretty cool stuff, right? Working with him has been nothing short of a pleasure, and I look forward to all the art that’s yet to come.

JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA #56 lands in stores today.

Bernard Chang’s done some great work on books like WONDER WOMAN and SUPERMAN over the years, but he’s been straight up killing it on his most recent gig as an ongoing artist for SUPERGIRL.

We asked Bernard to walk us through his artist process and how he creates the stunning art currently appearing in the pages of SUPERGIRL:

“I’m all about ‘story’. Choosing the right images and compiling them in layout and sequences that create the most impact. Everything should be in service of that concept.

I break down my creative process into two stages — the layouts and the drawing. All of this encompasses approximately one day’s workload. The layout stage is where most of my brainpower is used. From the script, I need to decide what images best tell the story, what panel construction to organize them in, the tempo and pacing of panels, and other important details like research and design. I’ll use SUPERGIRL #63, pages 2-3 as an example. The script called for eleven panels, starting with a closeup on Supergirl as she’s waking up from being knocked out at the close of issue #62, finding the three Harvard friends, Justin, David and Elise. We recap her previous fight with a brainwashed Miss Martian and our new villain, Alex, and then she takes off to go rescue Robin and Blue Beetle.

My first thoughts were to take advantage of the double-paged spread and designate the two action flashback panels (five and seven) as the “money shots”. I then figured the two should be about the same size since they held about the same weight, one reintroducing her allies in the story, and the other their capture and the villain(s) intro, so that helped form four tiers. The top tier, panels one through four, focused primarily on her waking up and coming to, the middle two tiers on the flashbacks, and the bottom tier, panels eight through eleven, on her flying off and the three students talking amongst themselves.

Then I felt we needed to drag out her waking up moment out a little bit longer, really show the effects of her being knocked out from before, so I decided to expand a sequence of close-ups of Kara’s eyes opening in varying stages, intermixed with establishing shots of her in the Harvard courtyard surrounded by the three students. The close-ups of her eyes would culminate in panel six, when she is fully awake — and aware — of the events of the last issue. And lastly, in the bottom tier, the movement of the characters would flow left-to-right, pushing the action from one panel to the next, and then building a crescendo to page four, exposing a full splash page.

The second part is the actual line drawing. This is mostly technical, and not a lot of design or research work is going on here because everything should have been solved in the previous stage. I take my thumbnail layouts and rough them out on the back of the bristol board, loosely putting down the figure work, laying down the perspective angles. I’ll then begin to flush out certain details and then I flip over the page and lightbox a tighter pencil on the front.

I’ve been using this process since the mid-90′s, and learned it from my good friend and fellow comic book artist, Sean Chen, when we were both just starting out at a company called Valiant Comics. Sean had learned this process from Chris Sprouse, so you know if Chris is doing this, then it must be good! Flipping the art and viewing it on the lightbox allows me to catch any errant drawings, like skewed faces or misproportions. I tend to erase a lot, so this allows me the freedom to erase to my hearts content, without damaging the front of the board.

When I’m done pencilling, I’ll move straight to inks, employing a variety of pens and markers. For the SUPERGIRL books, I’ve been keeping a consistently thinner line than my previous books, like SUPERMAN or WONDER WOMAN. My intent was that this thinner line would be more subtle and delicate, and being that Supergirl herself is a teenager, this linework would re-enforce that approach.
After the inks are finished, I scan the page into the computer and move to the digital phase, prepping the page for the colorist, and adding a layer of greytone shade and shadowing, as well as additional special effects. The greytones are something new that I’m experimenting with and I think I will continue on my future books as it allows me to open the lineart more and create additional sculpting of the figures.

All the digital work is done in Photoshop, although I have used Illustrator in some cases when I’m adding text or other graphics. Finally, when everything is finished, I upload the file onto the DC server and send over a layered version to the colorist extraordinaire, Blond.

Equipment used:

Pentel graph 1000 .05 mechanical pencil – H lead (rough pencils on back)
Pentel graph 1000 .03 mechanical pencil – H lead (tight pencils on front)
Pentel clic eraser
Micron pigma ink pen .01
Micron pigma ink pen .05
Micron pigma brush pen
Copic 110 marker (for larger areas of black)
DC Comics smooth plate bristol board
Apple Mac w/ Cintiq 21
Photoshop cs3”

SUPERGIRL #63 lands in stores today.

Here on THE SOURCE we spend a lot of time talking to writers about where they get their ideas; we also have the pleasure of showing off a lot of pieces of process artwork from our many talented artists. These are nice peeks behind the scenes, but we sometimes overlook the important process that happens in between these two steps. How does the writer work with the artist to put together a cohesive comic story?

Scott Snyder, Jock and Francesco Francavilla have been putting together a killer story in their current DETECTIVE COMICS run. But how does Scott’s Point A get to Jock’s Point B?

Let’s look at an excerpt of Scott Snyder’s script for page 11 of next week’s DETECTIVE COMICS #876. Check out the direction he gives, but also the room for creativity he leaves for Jock to go wild in:

PAGE 11
11.1

JOCK, I’d like this to be a page where you show off! The idea is that the first panel is an aerial view of Gotham, with BATMAN dropping towards the roofs. We are directly above BATMAN, as though we’re falling right behind him. The next panel, BATMAN (and WE) have dropped closer to the city, the next closer… And in each panel, you can pose BATMAN differently, highlighting DICK’S acrobatic style with the PARACAPE. In the final panel – and feel free to do 3, 5, 7, anything you want]. We should see a penthouse patio beneath him. Like he’s been dropping towards it the whole time. This is the patio/balcony of SONIA ZUCCO’S penthouse apartment. The place should be sleek, modern, with a rooftop pool, steaming in the cold, a table, a bar, tasteful, sharp … Something along these lines?

Of course, as always, if you have an idea for a better composition – go for it!

As you’ll see from the image masterfully colored by David Baron below, Jock did end up taking a slightly different approach to composition with this page:

Jock explains his approach to the piece:

Basically the script called for something a little different (multiple panels – with the viewer following Batman down) which was super cool – and something I’d like to do again at some point – but I went for a splash idea. Hopefully keeping all of Scott’s original intent!

When a page turns out as dynamic as that one, you have to imagine everyone’s thrilled with the results!

For more behind-the-scenes on Detective, check out our cover design posts from Francesco Francavilla here and here. DETECTIVE COMICS #876 is on sale April 27th.

Earlier today we revealed a sneak peek at GREEN LANTERN CORPS #59. Now here’s a look at the variant cover of issue #60 featuring Hal, Guy and John by Clayton Crain:

Striking, right?

Comic legend Mike Grell has covered a wide range of the DC Universe during his remarkable career, from his early run on Superboy and the Legion of Super-Heroes to his long tenure as the ongoing writer of Green Arrow, and most famously as the creator of The Warlord.

What’s next up on his plate for DC? Drawing a sequence telling Iron Maiden’s backstory starting in issue 7 of T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents!

T.H.U.N.D.E.R. editor Wil Moss explains Mike Grell’s contribution to the series:

We’re thrilled to have an artist as legendary and as talented as Mike Grell on board to help us kick off the second arc of T.H.U.N.D.E.R. AGENTS with May’s #7, joining writer Nick Spencer and the regular art team of CAFU & Bit. Mike will be drawing a sequence starting in #7 that dives into the backstory of the classic TA foe The Iron Maiden, revealing the crucial role she played in the current team’s formation. Also starting in #7 is a sequence set even further in the past by the über-talented Nick Dragotta, channeling his inner Wally Wood. The secrets revealed in these two timelines will have shocking — that’s right, shocking! — consequences for the team in the present. So don’t miss it!

Check out a sneak peek at Grell’s art from the issue below! T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents #7 is on sale in May.

Yesterday, we told you that Earthborn Green Lanterns Hal, Guy, John, and Kyle came up with a shocking and dangerous strategy for battle—but standing in their way is Kilowog, Salaak and all their comrades. As the war heats up in part five of the War of the Green Lanterns, the consequences of their decision begin to come to fruition. Are they prepared to hurt their friends in order to save the Corps?

Written by Tony Bedard and with art by Tyler Kirkham and Batt, GREEN LANTERN CORPS #59 lands in stores tomorrow.

Art and design magazine Imprint has posted a great feature on Will Eisner’s three-dimensional title pages from The Spirit, featuring not only a gallery of Eisner’s original work but many samples of comic covers that were influenced by it.

Check out “The Spirit of Stone Type” over at Imprint Magazine.