Adi Granov is a relative newcomer to comics. Coming in from video games, he did Necrowar at Dreamwave, before moving to Marvel. He’s currently finishing off a 6 issue run on Iron Man which has attracted huge praise for the work, but criticism for the time taken. He sat down to talk to Fractal Matter about his work.
What kind of kid were you at school?
I had a couple of phases I guess. I was very very shy at first and then in fourth grade I got beaten up and started doing karate. Two years later I beat the crap out of the kid who broke my teeth and then didn’t stop beating people up for the next 3 years. That was the second phase and then when I got into my teenage years I discovered music and let my hair grow long, playing bass and stuff like that. I guess kind of ordinary really.
When did you start getting into art?
I got into it really early. I liked the Italian comics when I was a kid – the Westerns, the Bonelli (??) comics – but then in the period when I was a karate jock I didn’t really do it that much. During my karate phase I was failing art and stuff. I was skipping school and I was much more interested in being generally a nuisance to society so I was failing art as it was too much work. So I had my mom paint paintings for me to get graded on so that’s how I passed. I remember a painting that she did that had an ambulance on it and two emergency workers and she painted it super nice. She painted the buttons on their shirts and I got a good grade.
When I got into high school when I was 15 or so I started taking it a lot more seriously and started drawing all the time.
So when did you start looking at comics and doing artwork for them?
Oh I didn’t. I never really considered doing interiors for comics until I moved to the States and I thought it’d be a good thing to try out. I was 19 at the time. I did a sample and took it to Dark Horse and an editor there killed it for me for the next few years. I pretty much gave up on doing comic books and concentrated on design work and illustration. Throughout college and school that was what I was going to do. After that I did concept design for video games and then sort of fell into comics. People saw my work and said you should do a thing for us, doing covers for us. Eventually that led to me doing a story for Humanoids for Metal Hurlant about 5-6 years ago. That led into Dreamwave, then Marvel and then Iron Man. It sort of happened. I didn’t really think about it too much.
Can you explain what Necrowar was?
Pat Lee had an idea – it was a universe that he was creating that he was going to draw. Then he got bored and hired Simon Furman, the Transformers writer, to write the story and because at the time I was cheap enough they hired me to illustrate it.
What Necrowar was… Simon Furman is a really good writer in my opinion and he took a really basic concept where it’s a group of soldiers who are dead and kept alive by their biotech suits. The group are set up and sent on a suicide mission in order to fight this alien force they cannot be alive as the aliens will suck the life out of them. It turns out that the alien force that was attacking is actually a guy who was experimented on with one of the suits and the suit turned him into this evil force. It hints that the suits would eventually take over, kind of like Venom does. We never finished the book. We did three issues and the sales were really low and Dreamwave wanted me to do something else. We never finished so I never got to know how the story would end.
From Dreamwave you went to Marvel and you did a District X…
I did covers for a long time and then I asked them to do a sequential story and that was the first thing they had. It was a sort of trial for them to see how I could do. Even though I really hate how I did it as I had twelve days to do the whole thing which is 11 pages. 11 painted pages and it was a nightmare, but I guess it was good enough for them.
It’s interesting now to look at it as I like it more than right after I did it. Because then all I could see is if I only had more time it would have looked so much better, but now it looks so much better than I remember it.
From there you went to Iron Man…
Yeah for the last year and a half.
Obviously you know you’ve taken a lot of criticism for the time taken. Talk us through what goes into a page.
Well from the script I do the layouts in batches of 3-5, usually 4 and they get approved. I don’t do any revisions even if the editor wants some changes I just take that into account. I then blow those up. I do the layouts on the computer as it’s so much easier to lay it all out and just move them around. I blow it up to the size of the comic page and then print it out. The layouts are really rough. I go over the layouts with the lightbox loosely tracing them out onto the paper and then pencil everything and shade it. That’s where most of the work goes into bringing out the detail. Then I ink it to bring out the dark areas to give it more contrast. So it’s a fully done drawing/painting with ink and ink wash on paper. Then I scan that. In photoshop I flatly colour it so it’s like when they do flats for the book. I then paint on top of that to give it more volume, to do the special effects and to bring out the lighting.
Each one of those steps takes about a day, not including the layouts which usually takes me 3-4 hours to lay out 4 pages. Then it takes about day to do the pencils, a day to rendering and then about 4 hours to colour a page. So all in all about 3 days. So it’s pretty much about 2 and a half pages each week without any breaks. On a really good week when I’m really pushing for it I can get about 4 pages done and that’s when I’m really gunning it.
There were discussions about maybe bringing someone else into help. Has it always been that you wanted to do it all?
No, that was really Marvel’s thing. I asked them after issue 2. We knew right away that it was going to be late and get later and later. I asked them to just pencil the book as I can do easily 5 pages a week just pencilling. But they didn’t want to hear about it as they wanted the book to be the way it is. They wanted it to be a book for the bookshelves and it was going to be a pivotal point in the Iron Man story and they wanted it to be the way I did it.
In the beginning, and this is what started the whole slippery slope, the first three pages I did I went all out on and I sent them over to my editor, Tom [Breevort]. He said if you can get the whole thing to look like that it’s going to be a monster. That’s the level I set for myself and I had to keep up. Then as I grow as an artist it just keeps getting better in my opinion and issue 5 is at least 5 times as good as issue 1 artistically. Issue 6 is the best ever. I don’t think I’ve gotten slow, but the art has gotten better.
In Issue 5 the original Iron Man suit has never looked better.
Yeah the response I’ve gotten on issue 5 has just been amazing. I was really surprised. I mean the book has been so late and people have been complaining about it so much that no one is even going to notice and it just exploded. Even Newsarama who really hated me, I know they hate everyone, but they hated me for a long time. Most of the response that I’ve gotten to issue 5 that I’ve read has just been really really good. That’s really nice to hear.
The reason we had the classic Iron Man is that I was at the convention at Toronto last year with Warren Ellis and I told him I really liked that bulky, clunky Iron Man suit and the next script I get has that whole scene. He was like “This is for you” and then I realised what I had gotten myself into. It’s really hard to get right as it’s just a tin can. I wanted it to look like the original and get it all menacing, but it’s really hard. I had to use extreme angles and lighting to get it to look as powerful as possible. It’s good to hear that people like it.
How much influence do you have into a script?
I don’t. I mean nobody does. The first issue is 32 pages long and nobody knows why except for Warren Ellis. They asked him to write 6 issues and the first issue was 32 pages long. Tom was like that’s what it is and that’s what we go with. The book has been pretty much on its own from the get go. It was supposed to be grouped with the whole New Avengers thing, but you’d think with the delays and the lateness it would not sell at all, but it has kept up pretty decently.
You’re staying on the covers.
Yeah I’m doing covers for the foreseeable future. I’m really happy because I designed the new Iron Man suit and I only got to use it in one issue. I designed a new character for the next arc. It’s on the cover so people will probably be able to guess who it is, but I don’t think I’m allowed to say who it is.
What are you looking at doing next?
Well, along with Iron Man I will do covers for something else as well. We’re still trying to figure out what that else will be. But all that is alongside doing interiors for a special project with a writer I’ve really been wanting to work with for a long time. It’s a much shorter project playing to my strengths as an illustrator so I can really go wild on it. I can’t talk about it much more at this time but it’s a very exciting opportunity and I cannot wait to get working on it.
Are there any creators you want to work with?
I want to work with Bendis. Paul Jenkins. There are a lot of people. I’d love to do something with Millar at some point. Something really over the top. Grant Morrison probably. There are a lot of good comics being done at the moment. I don’t know whether I just didn’t really like them as much before or whether there weren’t as many. Andy Diggle as well as the last mini I really liked was Silent Dragon.
Are there any characters you want to work on?
I never really thought I’d like to work on Iron Man until I read the script. I’m kind of the opinion that any character can be good if written well. Just based on what I have liked I would really like to do something on the Inhumans as I’m big fan of what Paul Jenkins and Jae Lee did with the characters. I actually really like what Jae did with Mark [Millar].
I’d really like to do something with the Thing and Dr Doom. The other Fantastic Four don’t interest me as much. Sue Storm would be great to draw, but in my style Reed Richards would be too disturbing to draw. I think Ben Grimm would be great. I really like drawing Captain America and he really lends himself to battles and stuff that I would enjoy doing.
I can’t see myself doing someone like Daredevil or Spider-man, because too many buildings and cars. I’m not really suitable.
Are there any characters or things that don’t suit your artwork?
Well just because of my style I don’t like repetitious scenery. If it’s buildings and talking heads it takes just as long for me to draw as it does huge battle scenes. With me it takes just as long for me to render as it does cars smashing, buildings fall etc. I prefer something with more of an epic feel. I love Daredevil as it’s one of my favourite books of all time, but I couldn’t see myself doing that title. The talking heads stuff in Iron Man drove me nuts.
Given it takes so long for you to do pages have you considered just doing more pencilling to get more variety?
Yeah I’ve been considering it ever since I offered it to Marvel. Again I always come down to what some one like Gene Ha does, where he stops at the greyscale and lets someone else colour it. It doesn’t save him much more time though, but that would save me only a few hours a page.
Pencilling alone isn’t something I have that much interest in. I’d rather do covers if the industry can’t support a painted book.
Do you have any interest in writing your own stuff?
I don’t think I’d be very good at developing. I could plot stuff, but I couldn’t do the dialogue. It’d be like what Alex Ross does where he plots stuff, but lets someone else take care of the writer stuff. I could see being more involved in the actual story.
How do you deal with the comics community and the internet?
It bothered me more when I was doing Necrowar as I was in a much more vulnerable position mentally. It was my first book, but now I look at the most popular artists and writers. For every good review they get something like ten negative ones. The only thing I don’t understand is… well I don’t really like a tv show, but I don’t go onto that show’s forum and complain. I don’t understand if they don’t like something why they constantly keep talking about it. Why don’t you just move on? It makes more sense to talk with your money.
Obviously I’d love if everyone loved me, but that’s not how the world works.
Do you understand the notion that they have such a connection to a specific character?
I’ve come to understand it during Iron Man. When I agreed to do Iron Man I didn’t really consider that we were taking over 30 years of history. I understood the history, but I didn’t understand that our schedule would upset so many people. Now I understand why, but I feel that it’s better to get a good story late, than really mediocre story every month.
I grew up on European Graphic novels and Enki Bilal does one graphic novel every 5 years. It comes out and it’s like the second coming. You know that it’s going to be a while, but when it comes out it’s going to be great. That’s why now… not that anyone would want me to do a regular series, but even if they did I wouldn’t want that burden on my shoulders and I didn’t understand that before and now I do. If we had taken over Iron Man at issue 136 or whatever it would have connected with me more. Because we started with a new number 1 – a whole new Iron Man, a revamping and everything - I think it didn’t really click with me that it was supposed to be monthly. Well I understood it was supposed to be monthly, but I didn’t understand that other side of things.
Do you have a typical working day?
It’s more like a typical working week. I usually don’t get up before 2pm and then I usually work straight through until 6am. Then I’m in a dazed state and go to bed around 7am. Every week starts trying to get back to a normal schedule and then I’m like “Just one more panel” and next thing I know it’s light outside and birds are chirping.
As you’ve just moved over from the States to England is that working schedule a reaction?
I was exactly the same.
So now your hours fit your editors better.
Well yeah, but I just really like working when the world is away. When it’s dark and I have no sound but my music. I have the tv on so I have a flickering in the background and I have the headphones on and I just work away.
If it’s completely dark then it feels really final, but I have the tv on even if there’s nothing on and it’s muted.
Is the music determined by the artwork?
Different music gets me in a different mood. I like high energy stuff, particularly on Iron Man as there’s a lot of action, so I like stuff that builds up. A lot of big drums, a lot of electronic and brake beat stuff.
What comics do you read?
Daredevil I read religiously. Runaways. I really liked Ultimate Extinction. Walking Dead- I read the trades of that. I really liked Brubaker’s Authority Revolutions. Catwoman as I love the art on that. I’ve read some of the Seven Soldiers, but I’m really confused with it. I loved the art on Klarion but the ending went off. Zatanna I loved until the end when it really confused the hell out of me. All Star Superman - I’m a big Frank Quitely fan. I don’t know what to think of it yet. I really like how he draws Lois Lane. Shaolin Cowboy.
If you could be anything else anywhere else what would it be?
A mechanic. A Classic car mechanic.
What’s the geekiest thing that you own?
I’m not sure what I consider geeky. I have a whole load of toys. My Scaletrix set. I had a helicopter hanging from the ceiling with Stitch sitting in it. I have Flick and Hopper from A Bugs Life in giant form. They talk to one another and they are motion sensitive.
Any Dark secrets you want to tell the world about?
My Pokemon name is Adichu.
Mark Peyton – has a MA in History and Research from the University of Hull specialising in the Hundred Years War. In a complete departure from that he now runs communications and membership for a UK based Trade Union as well as being a part time writer/journalist.
He is a founding member of Millarworld acting as a moderator and as an editor for Fractal Matter.