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Are you a penciler or an inker

Dave B

All of the above, sort of. Stick with me here… it’ll make sense. Sometimes in order to stay gainfully employed or get a ‘gig’ you have to learn something new. I’ve had to do that a lot over the last 25 years or so. To that end, when it comes to comic books, I’ve had to do it all. Being a jack of all trades is a blessing and a curse. No matter what a client needs done, I can do it. Am I a master at any of them? Maybe inking. The downside- no one really thinks of me for one thing over the other. So I’m usually not a name that pops up on anyone's list for penciling, inking, or coloring. Yes that sucks. But it’s never stopped me from getting work or paying the bills. But just as any editor will tell you. It is better to be known for one thing. So don’t be like me, sometimes, just sometimes, it can be better to be typecast.

Along those, lines it’s come to my attention that X-men: Sword of the Braddock’s #1 has become

a bit of a collector’s item. And because of how I wanted the credit description. No one understands what I did on that book. Even Marvel doesn’t understand. So on the official website, heck even a bunch of fan review sites, I’m not credited in any way. In order to set the record straight I’m going to briefly explain how Scott Clark and I worked as a team from 1997 onward until his untimely death in 2013.

Roughly, whatever he didn’t want to do on any given day, I did it. Sometimes that meant penciling some figures based off his roughs, inking some figures he had penciled, digitally painting characters, digitally painting backgrounds, building CGI props/ backgrounds, compositing pages from pieces both of us had worked on, and more. Scott spent a lot of time working with and training me to be essentially his ‘back-up’. We always dreamed of renting and office space and starting a studio. Sadly that wasn’t meant to be. Here for your perusal are several pages at various stages from the “Psylocke” book as we called it. Much of this has never been seen. Including some of Scott’s rough layouts and you’ll notice I only pasted the “classic” version of Captain Britain. We were asked to change 13 pages after it was realized he wasn’t wearing his MI-13 costume. I prefer the “classic” look and the MI-13 stuff was so rushed. If you look close in the printed book you can still see hints of the other costume. But it was completed on deadline. Replacing 13 pages worth of figures overnight? Yeah, that was fun… But I'd happily do it again if it meant Scott was still here.

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