How To Create A Comic Book Page From A Script

Ever wonder how an artist draws a comic page? My process now is organic since I'm writing and drawing ( more on this later). However it wasn't always like this. Before I started working on Visitations I drew from scripts written by other people. Here's the process I used.

This is page one of the first Stormy Tempest story that Len Strazewski and I worked on together for AC Comics Femforce title. Stormy is a police officer from the future who was sent back in the past to assassinate a political candidate. She was captured, and Len thought she should be put in a Gitmo-type facility.

When I read the script, I thought about James Cagney's walk down the last mile in the 1938 film Angels With Dirty Faces. I wanted to capture the mood of that scene, so I kept it in mind when I worked out the layout of the page.

After I do thumbnails, if I have time, I take photos of a model. I almost always use some type of photo reference, primarily for proportions. In this case my friend Natanya Rubin was the model for Stormy.

After loading the photo reference into the layout, I start drawing. I do a rough pencil for editorial approval and to work out any kinks. If there are any problems with the layout or the drawing, they are solved here.

Once I get approval, I do my final drawing, cleaning up the line work and adding shadows and blacks. I use a 3H pencil for the line work and an ordinary #2 pencil for the blacks.

At that point, the pages leave my hands and go to the inker. In this case, the inker is Jeff Austin.

And that's it. I usually work on more than one page at a time - I'll do 5 pages of roughs and then start the line work on all 5 pages before adding the blacks. It's a good process and works really well for me.

Order a free PDF of Visitations 1 by emailing us here: visitationscomicbook@gmail.com

Rosehill Cemetery: Chicago's Largest Graveyard

Visitations creator Scott Larson visiting Rosehill Cemetery

The  cemetery in Visitations where the characters of the story reside is called Gracehill. Billed as Chicago's oldest, Gracehill Cemetery is fictional. It's based on a combination of several burial grounds in the city. One of the inspirations for the graveyard is Rosehill Cemetery on Chicago's North Side.

Rosehill Cemetery has a Civil War section that made it into the first issue of Visitations

Rosehill was founded in1859. The largest cemetery in Chicago, it encompasses the  neighborhoods of Lincoln Square, Andersonville and Edgewater. The area had been known as Roe's Hill after farmer Hiram Roe, who had owned the land. Far from the city limits of the time ( Chicago ended at Fullerton Avenue, several miles south of where it does now), and being the highest elevation of the area ( and of current Chicago) the cemetery was intended to be the burial ground of the diseased bodies of the victims of typhoid and cholera epidemics.

Rosehill was designed to be a state of the art, landscaped memorial park. It became a popular spot for picnics and parties in the late 19th Century. So much so that an issue arose for the administrators of the graveyard: too many people were showing up on the weekends. Visitors to Rosehill (and it's sister burial ground, Graceland Cemetery) were required to prove they had someone interned there before being let in.

Rosehill has a number of famous Chicagoans buried within it's gates. The cemetery is the final resting place for a number of notable figures such as Chicago Mayors John Charles Haines,  George Bell Swift, Harvey Doolittle Colvin, Levi Boone, Buckner Stith Morris and Roswell B. Mason. Business magnates are residents,  including  Oscar Mayer, Darius Miller, George Joseph Schmitt, Richard Warren Sears, and John G. Shedd. Numerous architects, sports figures, inventors, gangsters and Congressmen are also within it's walls. There is even a survivor of the Titanic Disaster.

My first encounter with Rosehill was when I was 12 years old. Every year on Memorial Day the cemetery hosts a military parade. My dad and I attended it. Afterwards we stopped by his grandfather's grave which is located near the gates at Western Ave.  When we moved into our house a couple of years later, Rosehill was practically in our front yard  - a half a block away on Belmorial Avenue. To me, it's the neighborhood graveyard.

Scenes from Rosehill's annual Memorial Day celebration

Rosehill Cemetery is also rumored to be one of the most haunted places in the city. Legends of Richard Warren Sears stalking the graveyard, the boy from the infamous Leopold and Loeb murder being seen, memorial statues disappearing in fog and the sounds of screams and chains rattling through the night are but a few tales attached to it. The Mausoleum is a ghost hunter's paradise because of the EVP recordings there.

Rosehill's very haunted Mausoleum

Frances Pierce and daughter who died on the same day. They disappear from
this glass case when it fogs up on the anniversary of their deaths.

Lulu Fellows who people have heard crying as well as experiencing the smell of
roses during the winter at her gravesite. The bottom of the monument is filled
with money which visitors have slipped into the glass case.

The stories I find most interesting are not what happens inside Rosehill, but what occurs beyond it's walls. Multiple houses surrounding the graveyard are rumored to be  haunted as is the Fireside Restaurant on Ravenswood Avenue. Apparitions on Western Avenue - including in the new forest preserve the city of Chicago built in an area that used to be part of the cemetery-  and on Peterson Avenue. In addition to this Rosehill was part of the infamous "Clown Hauntings" from a few years ago.

 Clown sighting at Rosehill Cemetery in 2015. He climbed the main gate on
Ravenswood Avenue in front of witnesses and disappeared into the graveyard.

The abandoned caretaker house for Rosehill Cemetery.

The house place a part in Visitations as the home of Bradley Walker.

Belief as to whether or not Rosehill Cemetery is haunted is up to the individual. However, it's an interesting place to visit and is an important part of Chicago history. Visiting this graveyard is highly recommended. Just beware of who you may meet while there...

Order a free PDF of Visitations 1 by emailing us here: visitationscomicbook@gmail.com

Visitations Origins 2

The road to creating Visitations went in many different directions.

In late 2014 I felt I had hit a wall with my comic book art.  I had gone as far as I could with AC Comics Femforce series and it was time to move on. I had also worked on a number of projects that took years to be published, which was frustrating. I was inspired by people like Heather Antos, who I knew from Twitter. Heather wanted to be a professional comic book editor and she gathered a number of different artists ( myself included) and writers to create an anthology called Unlawful Good. Soon after UG was published, Heather was hired by Marvel Comics and worked on many titles including Star Wars. I wondered if I should work on something that was my own, but had no ideas. I was, after all an artist, not a writer. So I wasn't real sure what direction to go in.

Pencil art for Heather Antos' anthology Unlawful Good (2015)

In an earlier post I mentioned learning about my ancestors from Sweden and visiting their graves Graceland Cemetery. When I had found where they were buried I discovered that they had no tombstones. After speaking to the staff in Graceland's administration office I was told that I could order markers for them but the only tombstone maker they use is a place called Gast Monuments.

Gast Monuments is Chicago's oldest monument company and has been run by the same family for six generations. Established in 1880, it has provided memorials for all the major cemeteries in the city, as well as supplying ornamental cut stone and statues to other places such as classic Chicago brownstones and churches throughout the area. I stopped by their office and we worked out details for my ancestor's gravestones. While there I had a long conversation with the youngest Gast family member and was given a tour of their workshop. She and I became Facebook friends.

Watching the Facebook feed of the Gast family member was instrumental to the development of Visitations. She posted a number of interesting cemetery memorial articles. One of which was titled 10 Unbelievably Creepy Tombstones and Memorials. Scrolling through this article I saw memorials of a man breaking out of a tomb, a face being held by a man lying down, a winged skeleton embracing a man, Inez Clarke in  Graceland Cemetery, a tombstone of woman "killed by the Beast 666" and a rotting skull encased in glass.

These photos must have made an impression on me because a few weeks later I woke up after dreaming of someone running through a cemetery encountering a winged horse, a man holding another's head, and a man breaking out of a tomb. I realized immediately that this was the project I needed to work on. I did thumbnails and worked out what would be the first issue of Visitations.  I decided that the story would be a multi-generational tale that folded in real history and events. It would span about 100 years. The characters would rotate in and out and would all be based on different cemetery memorial statues.

Thumbnails for Visitations 1

Once I had figured everything out I called up my friend Len Strazewski. Len had written for DC Comics and Malibu back in the 1990's and we had collaborated on a number of different projects, including a great Stormy Tempest story for AC Comics. When we got together I took him through the story. He asked a number of difficult questions like "What's this guys backstory?" My answer was always the same " I don't know, it came to me in a dream" Len then proceeded, on the spot, to create  back stories for all the characters. 

I then started working. The first image that I came up with, and advertised a couple of months later at C2E2 2015, showcased the character of Nellie McCullough.

Cosplayer Spotlight

One of my favorite things about tabling at comic book conventions is seeing all of the wonderful cosplayers. I'm always so impressed by the care and the workmanship that goes into the costumes that people make. There are some that really stand out.

Last August I attended Wizard World Chicago. I went home via the Jefferson Park bus depot. When I got there I saw just how safe my ride home was going to be. Unless, of course there was a super villain attack...

Batman '89 actually stopped by my table earlier that day and the day before in which he played one of the characters from Stranger Things.

These two outfits are but the tip-off the iceberg for this local Chicago Cosplayer. Check out his instagram page HERE

Order a free PDF of Visitations 1 by emailing us here: visitationscomicbook@gmail.com