Have you had a chance to read the Serenity one-shot comic that came out last week? If not, you have no idea what you’re missing. And if so, then this should be a nice add-on to what you’ve read. City Weekly‘s bloggist extraordinaire Gavin Sheehan, sat down and chatted with Patric Reynolds, the artist for Dark Horse who has had a hand in the Abe Sapien one-shot, HellBoy, and drew the Patton Oswalt written issue. The two chat over his career plus thoughts on the industry.
Gavin’s Underground interview with Patric Reynolds
Gavin: How did you officially break into the business and land a job with Dark Horse?
Patric: That’s another good story. During the beginning of my last year in graduate school, I began sending my portfolio off to every publisher I could think of. But, I kept getting the same responses. It was mostly “Great stuff, we’ll show ’em around the office.” That went on for about nine months. I began to get nervous, since school was almost finished. Then people began telling me that I should start sending my stuff to artists and writers, since they already have established connections with publishers. So one day I sent my portfolio to Duncan Fegredo, who is a regular artist for Dark Horse’s HellBoy series. Duncan was incredibly supportive and seemed to really like what he saw and he said he’d pass the work along to Scott Allie, the Senior Managing Editor at Dark Horse. The next day, Scott Allie e-mailed me and said “Hey, good stuff… call me on my cell phone and we’ll talk possibilities.” I still can’t believe it. Scott got me started on a little 8-page story for Dark Horse MySpace Presents #23, and I think the rest is history.
Gavin: One of the more highlighted gigs you’ve gotten involved with recently is the Firefly comic that will be written by Patton Oswalt. How did you get involved with that project and how has that been coming along?
Patric: I had no idea that it was going to Joss Whedon himself. That’s probably a good thing, though. Had I known beforehand, I might have exploded in a mushroom cloud of nervousness. After a few weeks, Scott got back to me and told me that we were on for the Serenity one-shot. I was thrilled. It was definitely the sweetest gig Dark Horse had given me up until then. But then I remembered how long one page took me, and now I had to do 24 of them. The hardest part about anything is starting it, and once I got into a routine it was easy to ride the momentum. Twelve hour days were not uncommon, but Patton and Joss would directly e-mail more positive comments and support, so I looked forward to the challenge of the next page because I knew I must have been doing something right. When I sent in the last page, Patton replied “Home run.” Man, I hope so.
