Today, comic-art legend Alex Nino (DC’s Black Orchid, Tarzan, and Thriller; Marvel’s Savage Sword of Conan the Barbarian; contributing designer on Mulan, Treasure Planet, and The Real Ghostbusters) turns 75!
Yesterday I was telling you about our collaboration on the 2003 teen-superhero graphic novel Sunn. To recap: In 2002, ibooks, inc. publisher Byron Preiss (my boss at the time) hired Alex and me to finish the graphic novel after the original writer and artist had bailed on the project—except Byron wanted Alex to ape the other artist’s style, a decision I thought would be disastrous since Alex’s work has a rather unique look. Still, Alex agreed to give it his best shot. And here’s the conclusion of that tale…
With no script for the majority of the graphic novel—no one could find a copy of the original writer’s work—and no conclusion plotted, I took the simple approach: stare at the existing artwork, starting at page 1, and wait for the words to come; then begin writing as the ideas came flowing in. That also meant coming up with character names and researching the manga genre on the fly (I’m not a fan). I had to figure out everything fast, though: after all, Alex was sitting around his West Coast studio, waiting on the script for his portion of the book.
What I came up with was pretty cut-and-dried superhero stuff: Since it was an origin story involving a teenager becoming a superhero, it easily fit the formula that Stan Lee had established back in 1962, when he co-created Peter Parker and his costumed alter ego, Spider-Man: Teen angst + great power + great responsibility = super adventures. Excelsior! (Not really the sort of cookie-cutter story I’m interested in telling, but I was just picking up where the first Sunn writer had left off.) Still, I got the script done and sent it, and copies of Kevin Lau’s art, to Alex. Now it was up to him.
Well, he did try to match Kevin’s style, but as I feared it just wasn’t a good fit. Even worse, the project hampered Alex’s creativity. Gone were the fever-dream layouts; now he was locked into doing standard superhero art, with traditional panel layouts. I tried to work into the script some chances for the real Alex Nino to shine through, but I have the feeling his heart just wasn’t in it. And yet, he never complained, never had second thoughts about taking on this thing. Every time we spoke on the phone, he remained enthusiastic about the book from his first page to the last.
Bottom line? The graphic novel was completed, Byron was happy with the results and published it…and it died a very quick sales death. Sunn looked okay, and the story was serviceable enough, but ibooks, inc. wasn’t big on promotion—no ads, one press release, and a handful of review-copy mailings. Superhero fans never knew the book was on sale, or that Alex Nino was back on the scene. (Today, you may know him as the artist of Bliss On Tap’s “cosmic” comic series God the Dyslexic Dog.) The one good thing that came out of the project was that a couple years later a production studio optioned Sunn for development as an animated series—and hired me to write the series bible. But that’s a tale for another time.
Still, working with Alex on Sunn was a joy for me. I just wish it could have been on a better project that would have allowed him to draw like Alex Nino. 😀 Actually, we did work on a better project that allowed him to draw like Alex Nino. A couple years after Sunn crashed and burned, I was the editor on a Kevin J. Anderson–scripted fantasy graphic novel, The Orc’s Treasure—a project where Alex really got to shine. And I couldn’t have been happier about how that turned out.
Want to check out more of Alex’s artistic goodness? Then visit the Alex Nino website to see more of his incredible work.
Happy birthday, Alex!
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