John Romita Jr.

I finaly found the courage to tackle my all time favorite comic book penciler, John Romita Jr. Up until now I just felt like I did not have the chops to even attempt to do his work justice. Not that I am a master inker now or anything, but I am confident enough to go for it.

First I have to overcome the incredible pressure of not thinking, "What would Mr. Klaus Janson do?" Then put away the fan boy membership card and just look at this as a page to be inked.  Ok, I have my objectivity. Now how the hell do I tackle it?

First let's decide on the tools and commit. For the explosion and gradient on the pants. I needed a brush. This gave a certain kind of accidental feel to the line quality that is necessary for an explosion to feel credible. I wanted a different feel for the shading on the Hulks skin. So I went with my trusty Micron Pigma markers. I just seem to have a little more control with these.

Now, how thick do I want to go with my holding/contour lines. I didn't want to have a coloring book feel but JR Jr. screams for some big bold lines. So again I use the brush for the holding lines on Hulks body and the two big Skrull heads. I figured Microns would naturaly push everything else into the background.

I tend to be very controlled with how I throw my lines so I made a concious effort to loosen up with this page. I feel like I had a moderate amount of success with adapting my inking style with the looseness of the pencils. All in all I am very happy with the way the page turned out. I am definately going to seek out more John Romita Jr. pencils to work on.