DAVE SIMONS INKWELL MEMORIAL SCHOLARSHIP! GHOST RIDER! Friday’s Blog

April 16th, 2010

Welcome to Friday’s Mega Comics Group Updates!

Remembering Dave! It has been almost a year since the passing of comics’ great artist and inker, Dave Simons. In the months since we lost him Bob Almond and the guys over at the Inkwell Awards came up with the idea of the Dave Simons Inkwell Memorial Scholarship which will be honored at the Joe Kubert Art School. The scholarship will accomplish what Dave often did during his life which was to help young artists get the training and encouragement they need to break into the comics field. Follow the link over to the page and see how you can get these two high quality prints, Atomic Robo by Blake Wilkie and Tribute to Dave Simons by Mark Poe which are available for anyone who donates $25 (cash only donation) or more to the Dave Simons Inkwell Memorial Scholarship.

Mark’s Remarks. I had the privilege of meeting Dave Simons on Facebook in early 2009. He and I were part of the Facebook Comic Con. I joined one of the Fan Pages for Dave. Dave had a re-occurrence of cancer in late 2008 which he had beaten a few years prior to this event. When I got to meet him was right after he came back from the hospital after an extended stay. Dave didn’t talk about the cancer much, he really didn’t want anyone to feel sorry for him or obligated to help him. He was more interested in talking about what he loved to do which was to draw.

As anyone can see from examples of his work, he was a very skilled artist. But even though he loved to draw, most of his art career had been spent embellishing over other artists pencils with ink. He was very good at that! Inking over another artist is a talent not all pencilers possess. Some pencilers can’t even ink their own art much less that of anyone else! Inking is not just going over the artist’s pencil lines with ink. If that is the inkers approach he will only ruin a great penciling job. An inker can make or break the pencil artist. The inker has to emphasize what the pencil artist did in graphite with india ink. It’s a lot easier said than done! Yet it has not always gotten equal billing with penciling but rather thought of as an after thought of the drawing.

Dave understood all this and it showed his true character. See, Dave loved to draw and ink but, even more so, he loved to talk to people and loved to help them. This trait was evident in the man throughout his career at Marvel, and everywhere he worked and even through the very painful days he endured the last couple years he lived. Dave wasn’t out to get the best deal for himself and let everyone else fend for themselves. He wanted to help others have the chance to make it just as he had.

Dave was very prolific in his career which spanned almost 40 years. He churned out a lot of work in that time. He was dependable and could make deadlines two qualities which alone will earn the respect and a lot of work in the business.

Dave learned his craft from two of the best Marvel had in the early days. John and Sal Buscema. Looking at Dave’s pencils and John’s, it is easy to see who was Dave’s main influence in the beginning. Dave was inspired by John’s work on such titles as Silver Surfer and the Avengers in the ’60′s. Dave began his inking career over Sal’s pencils. Working to impress the Buscema’s, particularly John, lead Dave to the next level: inking over Gene Colan’s work! Just as not every comic artist can ink another artist’s pencils, not every inker, even the most skilled could interpret Mr. Colan’s detailed, moody drawings. Having learned at the feet of the Buscema brothers, Dave was ready to tackle the challenge of inking Gene’s art. He did not shy away from it in the least and went on to ink a lot of Gene’s work. Gene, years later, said Dave was one of the few who actually knew how to ink his pencils. Praise doesn’t get much better than that! The approval of one of the first Marvel Bullpen artists who was instrumental in laying the foundation for Marvel Comics along with Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko, John Romita and John Buscema is not an easy thing to come by.

I can relate somewhat to Dave’s experience starting out working with one of his chief inspirations. I’ve penciled and inked a few independent comics. Dave was one of my chief inspirations for inking when I was a kid. During the ’70′s, specifically, when I really began to understand how to do art for comics. I studied the books I collected just as Dave did. I had my favorite pencilers, Jack Kirby, John Romita, John Buscema, Wally Wood, Gil Kane, Neal Adams and others. But I also had my favorite inkers: Joe Sinnott, Wally Wood, Dick Giordano, Dave Simons, Terry Austin and others. These are not listed in preference but more in order of when I discovered them. When I joined up with the FBCC I did an early tribute to Dave. It was an inked drawing of Daredevil and Dave. The first one didn’t impress Dave much. He gave me a few tips and I corrected it. The revised one won Dave’s approval. That was a proud moment for me! It would have been enough just to get to meet one of my childhood hero artists, but to actually get to work on some art for him and gain his approval was awesome! I did another tribute with several of the characters Dave had done over the years which he also liked. Of course I’m the least of some of the artists Dave helped out. The list is larger than I can show here but among them are great names like: Mike Mignola , Armando Gil, Gerry Acerno and many more.

When I first learned Dave passed away, last June it was a very sad day to say the least. I had been thinking of ordering a commission from Dave. I had almost narrowed down my list to the one character I would ask him to draw when Stacey Aragon contacted me with the news. The emotion I felt was very similar to when I heard of Jack Kirby’s passing back in ’94, but this one hurt just a little more. As much as I admired him, I never got to meet and become friends with Kirby. Stacey and Daniel Best both let me know how much it meant to Dave that he had so many fans. Daniel said at one point Dave had questioned whether his career really had any meaning. After the great show of affection he received from fans, largely at the FBCC, he was reassured he had.

A few days later Stacey Argon asked me to do another tribute to Dave. I jumped at the chance! I spent several days trying to think of what would honor my friend’s life and work. I finally arrived at the idea inspired by Dave’s cover for What If # 53. It was not an easy piece of art to do. I was trying to do the actual art as much like I thought Dave would do it as I could. Such an undertaking was hard enough with my hectic schedule at the time. Then factor in the emotions of Dave’s passing and the difficulty level is increased three fold! The effort was worth it in the end and though I had refused payment for the job from Stacey, I was rewarded a few days later with a surprise gift from Stacey and Bob Shaw. The great drawing of Power Girl Dave had done now hangs in a place of honor in my office. This to me was far better than any monetary payment I could have ever received!

But it did not end there, the last tribute I did honoring Dave is now one of two posters which are given to for anyone who donates $25 or more cash to the Dave Simons Inkwell Memorial Scholarship. The other piece of art is the awesome Atomic Robo by Blake Wilkie!

Each year the Joe Kubert Art School will select a promising student who will be granted $1,000 to assist in their tuition, in Dave’s name. The first series of funds have already been handed to the Kubert School and the current round of auctions will see funds handed over after this years Inkwell Awards for the 2011 intake.

All of the money for the Dave Simons Inkwell Memorial Scholarship is supplied by the sale of donated art. Donations come from all sources and from all kinds of people. You can checkout all the details over on the Inkwell Awards site: Dave Simons Inkwell Memorial Scholarship.

We have a couple of YouTube videos of the character which Dave was most associated with and for some of us the first work we remember being credited to him: Ghost Rider!

Archive's Spotlight

Archives Spotlight

We continue our look back at our previously posted web comics. We’ll be looking at all that’s come before with this feature and adding new comments as well. This month we are reviewing Project: New Man! Stay tuned to this section Monday, Wednesday and Fridays for more news on our archived titles.

Project: New Man #1 -- Page 8 - Okay, here’s the action everyone asked for, just 8 pages into the story! Hold onto your socks, it won’t be slowing down any for a few pages!

Looks like New Man was right on the money with his hunch! The perp uncovers some very heavy duty fire power in the back of his truck. New Man doesn’t hesitate to act on his training thanks to Dr. Johnathan “Chief Thunder” Thunderstorm and his team which we will soon meet: The Thunder Hawks! However, the results are not exactly what Dave had envisioned.

Mark’s Remarks: I caught a lot of flak for the design of the automatic weapon the Mall Killer used. The consensus was it was not very realistic and that I should have used reference. This was in the days before the internet so getting reference was not so easy as it is now. However, I did use reference. I had an old G.I. Joe which carried a weapon like the one I drew up. I was somewhat vindicated a year or two later when Rob Liefield and company drew up some of the biggest, most unrealistic weapons which could be imagined! But if I had it to do over I think I would have given him an M-16.