OKAY ... the details of Scott and Tom's NYC Adventure!!

TOM LYLE CONQUERS NEW YORK CITY!! DETAILS AT 11:00!

Well, here goes:
You've seen the pictures of my ROBIN page layouts in a previous post, but I'll post three pages of the inks/finishes that Scott did over my work later on this post.

It's been since 2003 since I've been to New York, but as always I felt very at home there. Sue and I left on Saturday, the 13th of December with freshly deposited SCAD Presidential Fellowship money in the checking account making this trip possible at all.

We stayed in Petersburg, Virginia the first night. Very uneventful trip so far. I-95 is extremely dull to me. Traffic wasn't bad, but it wasn't great either.

Using my brother-in-law's TomTom (how appropriate for me to use that GPS device), we drove a lovely path around Philadelphia into rural Pennsylvania on the way to Scott Hanna's house in Reigelsville. Those old, stone farmhouses are beautiful. It was great to see all of that after two days of mostly concrete and crap to see.

A good friend and major fan of both Scott and me, Doug Resnick (with his lovely wife, Chris, whom I finally got to meet) was kind enough to treat Scott, his lovely and talented wife Pamela Ptak, myself, and my lovely and talented wife Sue to dinner at a really nice Inn in Riegelsville. Good conversation and good friends with a beautiful fireplace glowing nicely in the background. It was a great start to a fun trip.

That evening, Scott and I prepared for our Monday assault on Marvel Comics' offices by copying and assembling the remainder (his ink pages ... I already had my breakdowns copied and ready) of our sample page packets to hand out. Our names, addresses, phone numbers and email addresses on the back of each page of the sample packet. Take note, Tom Lyle students!!!

Here's the splash page finished by Scott:


Well, on to bed and getting ready for our trip on Monday, the 15th of December. Our first appointment is at 10:30 am, so we need to leave by 8:00 am in order to drive and get into Manhattan in time.

After a busy drive (I can't believe that people make that commute every day of the week) with no big problems, Scott, Sue and I arrive in NYC ready to rock.

Having never been to Marvel's new offices, I relied on Scott knowing about where Marvel is on 5th Avenue and he says we can walk there easily. Well, it's further than he thinks, so we arrive at the lobby of Marvel just in time for our first appointment.

We need not have rushed. Chris Allo is no where to be found. I have appointments with at least 10 people at Marvel and 10 at DC for the next two days, but this is not a great start to our mission. I even call Chris' personal cell phone number (I'm special!!!) and get no answer. I find out later that he had a family emergency to deal with, but at the time we were majorly disappointed. Chris is fine in our books, though.

Here's another of the pages he missed seeing in person at the time (just kidding, Chris!)

After that, we had three of our five pre-lunch appointments not see us at Marvel, plus we were not taken into the editorial offices. Instead we were interviewed in a conference room near the lobby. Odd.

I think it was a matter of the work day being nuts and no one wanted to really have to deal with us because of that. I knew we were pushing it coming to NYC so close to Christmas, but I had to push the trip to a week later in order to accomodate a meeting with Dan DiDio at DC and also to wait for the money from the Presidential Fellowship get deposited. It all worked out great, but it was hectic.

In the afternoon, things got better and we were taken down into the editorial offices and had all the meetings that were scheduled and more. Good responses from everyone about our pages. We were also really intent on selling the fact that we can produce a finished book together in one month - two weeks for me to do breakdowns and two weeks for Scott to do finishes. This is unheard of in the day and age. Lots of extra interest because of that.

Not being shy, I saw Joe Quesada in his office, so I stuck my head inside, apologized for interrupting his lunch and just said HI and told him that Hanna and I were in the offices selling ourselves as a breakdown/finishes team. He was gracious and said HI back and we chatted a moment before I moved on with a nice parting.

Here's the last page of finishes that I have a copy of at this time. Scott did page 5 (mostly) as well, but I don't have a copy of that.
All in all, our time went fairly well at Marvel. The coolest difference from when I used to go there in the past is cell phone technology. While we were stuck in the lobby of Marvel waiting to see about appointments that might or might not happen, I was on the phone calling to see if we could get new or revised appointments. That is so cool.

No one offered an assignment, but we left with a good feeling. The weather was gorgeous. It was almost 70 degrees on Monday. Very unusual for New York in mid December.

Tomorrow at DC Comics. I haven't worked there regularly since 1993, so it is interesting to return.

We drive back to Scott's house to stay for Monday night. Tuesday we (Sue and me, that is) will be staying in town and Scott will take the bus back home.

After a Monday night dinner, Scott and I get the sample page packets together for the assault on DC.

Tuesday arrives and I'll give you details about that in my next post. In the mean time, here's another photo from our trip:

NEW YEAR - Same Tom!!

More on my trip to New York City later, but for now I just want you guys to see Sue and me by the big Christmas tree in Rockefeller Center.
Some nice tourist asked us to take their picture and they took ours.
But not our camera!!!
Later folks.

Tom

ON THE ROAD AGAIN!!

Well, the trip to New York City was delayed by one week, so I'm in Virginia today and on my way to Scott Hanna's house. Monday we'll be meeting with a bunch of edtors at Marvel and Tuesday is our DC Comics day. I haven't been to New York for this kind of thing since 2003, but it seems fine. I'm not nervous. I know I can do this stuff.
So, we'll see what happens and I'll try to post some pictures from my trip as well when I get back next week.

Later.
Tom

Wow! Hello! New Art from Tom

Hi all. It was a hectic fall quarter (my fourth at SCAD), but it's over and I'm working on some new sample pages to be inked by Scott Hanna. We are going to make another push to get some mainstream work from Marvel or DC. I did the first five pages of issue 170 of ROBIN using a script that Chuck Dixon had sent me.
It's the first time I've had a chance to draw Batman or Robin in quite a long time and I must say I had a great time.
If all goes as planned, I'll be going into New York City with Scott sometime during the week of December 8 to 12.
Here's the first 5 pages - pages 2 and 3 are a double page spread:

Some Old Pencil Art

MUTANT X












Back in 2000 I became the penciler for MUTANT X and got to work again with Howard Mackie, my co-conspirator on SPIDER-MAN. I was generally enjoying the book and definitely enjoying the work, but two things were causing problems at the time. One: my mom had suffered a stroke in June of 2000. She was in the hospital for some time, but when she didn't die some people wondered why I was affected by it. Not my editor, Jason Liebig, but some others. Two: the atmosphere in comics at the time was highly charged because Marvel had fallen on hard financial times and everyone was seeing books get cancelled and artists losing their jobs. I had started drawing with a "got to please the editor" attitude first and foremost in my mind when I had always drawn with a "got to please myself" attitude first for all of my career before that.
In the end, my art suffered because of an atmosphere of fear.
No one can do well with that going on.
That said, here are four pages from issue 23 of MUTANT X. My figure work is good, but I'm skimping on backgrounds BIG TIME in an effort to save time. Not good.
I like the look of these overall. If you want, you can fill in the "X" areas with black as that was what the inker was supposed to do and you'll see that the pages would have worked fine as they are, but they should have and could have been so much better.
What do you guys think?

SEPTEMBER IS HERE!!!
Where did the year go?????

Yet another Memoriam! Too many. Too soon.

IN MEMORIAM - ROBBIE GREENBERGER

BOB GREENBERGER gave me my first work for a major comics company. In late 1987 Bob gave me the new title STARMAN to work on as it's penciler. I designed the character sheets and started to work on the pencils for the actual monthly comic in early 1988 around the time that his son, Robbie, was born.

I never had the pleasure of meeting Robbie and now I never will. Robbie Greenberger was taken from this world, in what I say was, way too early. God had different plans for him.

Leukemia took him from us. Let these types of things remind us all to live our lives to the fullest ... and to fully appreciate friends, family and loved ones while they're here.

I hope that Bob, his wife Deb and their daughter, Katie, can find some peace over this some day. They say time heals. I hope so.

I owe Bob so much and I think that his son and family deserve some kind thoughts, love and energy from us all. I know that I am trying to send that.

Please go to Bob's site and read his touching blog detailing the entire arc of his son's heroic and valiant struggle against leukemia. Bob's website can be found at www.bobgreenberger.com.

I would also encourage any of you that can to register with the bone marrow registry at the address that Bob mentions on his website. bone marrow registry

Please help others.

Here's a note from the family: "In lieu of flowers, contributions in Robbie’s memory may be made to The Tommy Fund for Childhood Cancer, Yale-New Haven Children’s Hospital, 20 York Street, New Haven, CT 06511-3202 (www.tommyfund.org). For information or to offer an online condolence please visit www.spearmillerfuneralhome.com"

God bless you all. God bless you, Robbie.

New ART Pages

Here's four more pages of layouts from CHICKASAW ADVENTURES #5 that I did back in 2006. I did a very tight job on these. The layouts were done at a 6" x 9" size and I blow them up, print them out on bristol board in blue and then ink directly over the layouts instead of doing finished pencils. I try to add more black placement on the finished art than I do here, but I do try to make sure I place a good bit of the black areas even on my layouts.

I even try to work out my perspective (when I have a background that needs more than a horizon line) at this size so that the vanishing points aren't too far out for the page.

Take care.

Tom