The Yellow Kong: Dating by Dotscreen!

Several original pages appear here in color, to show how some of the dotscreen has aged. For conoisseurs of old comic book and comic strip art, the concept of Benday screens is nothing new; a number of manufacturers made dot screens on advesive-back film (Zip-A-Tone, Mecanorma, Pantone, Formatt), and I probably used every variety on the original art for Kong.

Some of the effects I was able to accomplish, depending on whether the dots were printed on the front of the film, was scratching off the pattern to create mist or white glows, etc.

Some of it seems to have aged better than others, although I no longer have any record of which brand was used on which page. All of the art was stored in the same (not optimal) conditions, with heat in the summer and cold in the winter, and all of the art was scanned under the same parameters. The scans match the originals fairly accurately on my monitor. The only factor that is different is the manufacturer (although it all might have fared better in a more climate-controlled storage facility).

However, as illustrator Vince Dorse suggests, the yellowing kind of gives the art a patina of charm! Enjoy.

Close-up of Ann Darrow that has aged pretty well, although some slight shrinkage is evident to the right of the circle where two pieces of dot screen were laid next to one another.

Dots and line patterns are used on this page, which shows different degrees of yellowing. Clearly, it is the adhesive backing that is the culprit. So much for archival quality! Although it does make the flesh tones of the villagers rich and varied.

Some scratching on top of the film is evident in panel one, to create a modulating effect.

Spotlights are emphasized against the skyline by cutting away the dot screen. This page was one of the last I drew; it is so iconic, I don't know why I didn't plan it from the start.

Different dot screen values (probably 20% black to 40% black) were used in bands to give the water added depth in the second panel. Leaving the figure of Ann and the bubbles white make them pop out from the murky depths. Some shrinkage, however, can be seen at the top right corner and along the seams, particularly between Ann's neck and left arm. It appears in the photocopies of the time and probably the printed comic, so I probably did not do such a great job joining that spot in the first place.

Rough Riders: Kong Art from Concept to Finish

My working methods have changed and evolved throughout my career; more or less, I've tried everything. From penciling directly on the Bristol board and inking, to making tiny thumbnail sketches, and everything in between.

For the first 40-page issue, I began by doing rough sketches on 8½" x 11" bond paper with a roller pen. These layouts I then blew up on a photocopier to 11" x 17". At this point, if the rough is tight enough, I may elect to "light table" (literally, trace on a light table) onto Bristol board, but in the case of Kong, I took the further step of doing a "tissue" (thin paper) refinement, tightening up the layout and fleshing out the drawings in pencil. Then, I traced those onto Bristol board, further refined the pencils, and inked them (and in the case of Kong, applying a lot of dot screens). Page 1, below, shows all three separate states of this process.

After the first issue, I began doing my roughs for Kong full size, skipping the smaller rough stage. As seen in the case of page 40 (below), I composed the layout with light blue and graphite pencil on thin paper (called "tissue" in the world of cartooning and commercial art). This rough layout I then light-tabled onto Bristol in pencil, then lettered and inked. I finished the art with dot screens, scraping away highlights with an X-Acto blade.

Left: Rough pencil layout on "tissue" (thin paper); Right: finished artwork in ink and dot screen.

On a totally different note, while I was drawing King Kong for Fantagraphics' Monster Comics, I was also creating my explicitly pornographic comics for Fantagraphics under their Eros Comix imprint (and under my patently unconvincing pseudonym, Anton Drek). Kong seemed to influence my Anton Drek comics, insofar as when it came time to collect Wendy Whitebread, Undercover Slut and Forbidden Frankenstein into a single trade paperback (it would undergo two editions and was already being translated into Spanish, Italian, French, and Finnish), I employed a Kong compositional theme, putting our stalwart heroine into the monsters massive palm.

Original thumbnail sketch, 4" across; red and black rollerball ink pen.

Full size rough on tissue, 14" x 17", blue and graphite pencils.

Material content aside, my approach to drawing this image is identical to the approach I was employing on Kong, which is to say, I drew a full-size rough (in this case, 14" x 17") in blue and graphite pencil, then transferred to Bristol board in pencil, then inked with a brush and probably crowquill pen.

14" x 17" brush and ink on Bristol board; colored blueline with Cel-Vinyl colors and acetate overlay.

The final step in this case was to color the illustration, which involved a creation of a "blue line" (the linework from the cartoon drawing is photographically transferred to illustration board), and then colored with paints. One can use watercolor, acrylic, or even oil, but for this one I used mainly Cel-Vinyl paints, which were used to paint cels in animation.

Cover of Anton's Collected Drek (first edition, June 1992), Cel-Vinyl paint on blueline with acetate overlay.

Aside from subject matter, I made no attempt to alter my drawing style or working method between "Don Simpson" and "Anton Drek" in the early 90s. Allow the Drek comics came to an end by 1992, my cartooning workflow has continued to evolve into the digital era. Scanners, for example, allow more accuracy and precise enlargement (although in recent years I've used a variety of tracing papers rather than Bristol board). Numerous examples of my current method have been posted on my various blogs, but if you are interested, you can start here.