Brigid Alverson, writing for the School Library Journal, has included MARATHON as one of it’s Spring Graphic Novel recommendations. Here’s the skinny:

YAKIN, Boaz. Marathon. Illustrated by Joe Infurnari. First Second. June 2012. pap. $16.99. ISBN 9781596436800.

Gr 7 Up—Yakin tells the story of the first marathon runner, a former slave who carried vital messages between the rulers of Athens and Sparta before and during the Battle of Marathon. Although recommended for ages 12 up, this book has some violence and a (tasteful) bedroom scene that might make it inappropriate for some readers.

Marathon hits stores June 19th, 2012.

Robot 6, one of the blogs over at Comic Book Resources, has a regular feature by Tim O’Shea called Talking Comics with Tim. In the latest installment, Tim talks to Glenn Eichler and myself about MUSH! Sled Dogs with Issues. More interview than review, it’s an interesting piece and I encourage you all to go read me wax rhapsodic or rap idiotic depending on your point of view. Here’s a little taste…

O’Shea: Question for the both of you, there appear to be metaphorical fences in this book (between people and between the dogs), in addition to the physical fences. Would you agree?

Infurnari: When I read the script, I was reminded of how in art and literature natural landscapes have often represented the depths of the human psyche. There’s something about the dark bottomless fathoms of the oceans, the mysteries of the forest or the wide open expanses of sand or snow that spark our imaginations. In Mush!, the barren isolation of the Alaskan landscape sets the scene for a story about the dogs’ psychological state and ultimately our own interior lives as readers. The fences in this story are boundaries preventing the dogs from being out in the open on a run where they are most happy. The trail is their bliss and the fences that keep them from it mark the breeding area of their issues.

Eichler: Well, definitely. No one can ever know or meld with another person (or dog) entirely, and the isolation in which they all live just throws those differences into brighter relief. But that same isolation also creates fences that enclose the people and the dogs, forcing them together because they really can’t get away from each other. I’m saying the book has a lot of fences. It’s best to read it with a pair of wire cutters.

O’Shea: Glenn, not to get bogged down in details, but naming one’s dog is often a challenge. You really did a good job of naming the team of dogs in this story, did that come to you quite easily as you developed the characters or was it challenging with certain characters?

Eichler: I hate naming characters as a general rule, but I tried for a mix of the silliness and anthropomorphism often found in the names that real people give their real dogs. I also wanted to touch on the way people will give their puppies names that turn out to be either perfectly descriptive of their adult personalities, or utterly wrong.

O’Shea: Glenn (from the book’s acknowledgements you thank the dogs “who talk to him when he sleeps”) how long have you heard the dogs talking to you?

Eichler: I didn’t write that. The dog dictated it.

To read interview in its entirety, click here.

Marathon tells the epic tale of the original long distance runner. In 490 BC, an Athenian messenger named Eucles ran twenty-seven miles from Sparta to Athens, and in so doing preserved ancient Greek civilization from subjugation to the Persian Empire.

That’s a very broad overview of the book but it’s representative of the first step for creating any cover. Know your book! When I sat down to do the cover, I understood that our protagonist needed to be featured prominently in a direct and compelling way that also illustrated the books high intensity and relentless, grueling action. The thumbnails (images 1-6 below) reflect the various solutions I came up with to try and deliver that message.

With thumbnails, you can nail it within your first few drawings but often times innovation comes from going beyond those immediate solutions and challenging your creativity. My initial tactic was to use some of the dramatic moments leading up to the war at Marathon where Eucles both physically and spiritually leads the Athenian army into battle. Writer Boaz Yakin was correct in pointing out that this only represented a small part of the story and asked to see some cover treatments where Eucles was not in armor. The third page of thumbnails and beyond reflect this change. I then tried showing Eucles dressed in just a loin cloth either running towards the vast Persian army or racing it’s fleet back to Athens (image 4). The pitfall with the latter idea was it could be misconstrued that the lone runner was running away from the Persian army. That wouldn’t be heroic and it wouldn’t be appropriate to the story. The last act of Marathon is spent following Eucles and a band of soldiers as they struggle to outrace a secondary invading fleet heading directly to Athens’ shores. My solution to this was to eliminate the Persian force and return to just Eucles and the Greek army. After a few variations with this, the team at First Second and Boaz all agreed that the best solution was the first thumbnail in image 6.

The next step is to pencil a full size version of the cover (image 7). Once I had approval on this, I was cleared to go ahead with the inks (image 8). Inking Marathon was done using a high contrast print of the pencils as my starting point. I then added ink washes and line work to finish the image (image 9). When I colored the cover, I tinted the inks with the same pantone as was used in the interior pages to ensure a consistent look between the full color cover and the monochromatic interior pages. After a few failed attempts (not shown), I settled on two color treatments; one with a full color background (image 9) and the other with an intense red background (image 10). At this stage there was no consensus on which. Colleen AF Venable, First Second’s designer, created two versions (images 11 and 12). I had an idea for what I would like to see for the logo for the red cover and Colleen intuited that perfectly! That is why I think the red cover with white logo was met with such unanimous praise and agreement.

The final cover (top) shows Colleen’s brilliant final type treatment for the logo. The whole thing comes together wonderfully and delivers the key epic story elements and emotional intensity that is the heart of Marathon.

Marathon by Boaz Yakin and Joe Infurnari hits bookstores and comic shops early June 2012.

This post was originally presented at Trip City.

]]> http://joeinfurnari.com/blog/2012/01/06/marathon-the-making-of-a-cover/feed/ 0 http://joeinfurnari.com/blog/2011/12/16/the-onions-av-club-gets-mushy-for-mush/ http://joeinfurnari.com/blog/2011/12/16/the-onions-av-club-gets-mushy-for-mush/#comments Fri, 16 Dec 2011 17:48:04 +0000 Joe Infurnari http://joeinfurnari.com/?p=1640

Okay, I’ve been meaning to use that subject line for a while now and I just couldn’t hold it any longer!! The Onion’s AV Club takes a look at December graphic novel releases and had this to say about MUSH! Sled Dogs with Issues:

It’s clear that writer Glenn Eichler and artist Joe Infurnari did their research before embarking on the graphic novel Mush! Sled Dogs With Issues (First Second). The book is full of information about how dog teams work together, both in cooperation and in competition. Eichler (creator of the MTV animated series Daria and current writer for The Colbert Report) extrapolates from animal psychology, creating characters with their own neuroses. Some of the dogs are jealous, some self-deprecating, some lustful. Then Eichler and Infurnari contrast the relationships of the pooches with that of their masters: a married couple who’ve begun to have some bitter disagreements about their decision to live out in the wild, far from society. Mush! feels like it ends too soon, but that’s mainly because the dogs and the humans alike are so well-defined that they could easily support a book twice as long. …

Thanks AV Club! You’ll just have to wait until the sequel, SLUSH! Sled Dogs 2; Crazy in the Heat! where our favorite dysfunctional team of dogs find themselves recalled by the CIA for a covert mission in Hawaii with global repercussions! It’s going to be a wonderful shark-jumping good time (yes, they will actually jump many sharks)!

Here’s a sliver of a sneak peek at MARATHON’s cover. I’ll have the whole thing up in the new year. In the meantime, happy holidays y’all!

Laura Hudson over at Comics Alliance has been generous enough to give MUSH! the deluxe treatment! In her preview (available here), you’ll find 27 pages from the book–that’s many more pages than are available anywhere else! You can only see them there! WHY AREN’T YOU AS EXCITED AS ME!!

Thanks so much, Laura, and thank you Comics Alliance!

On last night’s Colbert Report, Stephen had a brief segment about MUSH! Sled Dogs with Issues! This is one of the coolest things EVER! He actually pronounced my name correctly, too!

Here’s a link to the full episode. Mush is featured at around 20:00. Enjoy!

http://www.colbertnation.com/full-episodes/tue-december-6-2011-the-black-keys

Thanks, Stephen!

In his online series, PG Reviews, Paul Gravett looks ahead to some notable December releases including MUSH! Sled Dogs with Issues! He gives a lowdown on what the publisher, First Second, had to say about the book and then shifts to what he says about the book. Here’s a quote,

Lovely design devices for the chapter titles and the skilled layouts that go full bleed and manga-esque in high-drama scenes show a creative team that knows how comics can really work. This is an utterly beguiling and touching dog story and not in the least bit ‘shaggy’! It will whoosh you away and make you want [to] shout out loud, ‘YAPABRA! BLEE DRAY CALLA SCOW!’

I’d say that’s pretty good! Thanks for the review, Paul! The full review is available here.

In other words, MARATHON, the book I’ve been working on with writer Boaz Yakin for First Second, is now done! The experience of doing this book was difficult and exhilarating. When I first began work on it, I very much felt that my skills were not up to the task and it took a long time before I settled into it. It wasn’t long after that that I encountered health problems associated with stress and the ergonomics of my workstation. Months of physical therapy kept me in the race until I was able to get back into it at full speed. I can now look back on the project as a whole and say that it’s easily my best work to date and look forward to next year’s release with a great deal of optimism. Thanks for being there throughout the process. I’ll continue to post news and images from the book leading up to its release in June 2012.

Phew! With the end of coloring for MARATHON, the bulk of the heavy lifting is done and boy am I relieved! Now all that’s left to do is the sound effects and the cover. Stay tooned as I’ll be posting updates on those as well. Thanks for the bananas and gatorade, folks!