Disclaimer The opinions expressed herein are my own personal opinions and do not represent my employer's view in anyway.
I know what I’m about to say may stir up a hornets’ nest: I don’t like the movie of The Wizard of OZ. I can applaud Judy Garland’s performance, but nothing more. So when Tom Pomplun asked me to adapt Frank L. Baum’s The Glass Dog, I had my preconceptions, and this is not the best way to approach any job.
The main character of the story is a wizard annoyed by people constantly interrupting his work to ask him for his magical expertise. In order to get some peace, he asks a glass blower to make a glass dog, which he transforms into a real barking dog with his magical powers. This the wizard keeps as a guard dog to ward off unwelcome visitors.
I had two problems with this story. First, I didn’t want the wizard to look like the standard old man with a pointy hat and long white beard, not to mention the long robe decorated with stars and planets: in other words, I didn’t want an ordinary wizard. Secondly, how could I describe a glass dog? How could I give the artist an idea of the fragility and at the same time the consistency of an object made of glass?
I’ve had the opportunity to see glass blowers at work, and it’s a fascinating process. I could appreciate the skill with which the glass blower handled a molten lump of glass and, through a long, thin pipe, how he blew into it and transformed it into a fragile, iridescent object.
When I write or adapt a script for any strip, I try to approach the strip from the artist’s point of view. Living and working with an artist, I have often witnessed his frustration when he has to translate verbose, hyper-detailed scripts into drawings. But with this script, for the first time I decided that the question of how to deal with the rendering of a dog made of glass was someone else’s problem, namely the artist’s, and I would leave him to solve it. The first problem I resolved by describing the wizard as a sort of eccentric genius rather than a stereotypical wizard.
When Tom Pomplun, the editor/publisher of Graphic Classics©, where The Glass Dog was going to be published, told me the artist he had chosen to draw the strip was Brad Teare, I was surprised and thrilled. I’ve known Brad’s work since the ‘Eighties, when his strips appeared in Heavy Metal, and I deeply admired his art; but I was puzzled to see how he would render an object made of glass with his unusual scraperboard technique. When Tom emailed me Brad’s finished pages, I was thrilled. Brad had been able, I don’t know how, to render the shine, translucency and fragility of glass and the wizard looked more like the mad scientist I was after than the classic stereotype.
Unfortunately, although Brad did a great job with The Glass Dog, I haven’t made peace with Frank L. Baum, and I’m still not going to watch The Wizard of Oz!
As usual with these articles, I sent Brad a questionnaire to fill in. This is what he sent back. Enjoy!
Marvel or Disney?
Definitely Disney. I grew up reading the comics of Carl Barks.
What’s in your drawer?
Paints and brushes.
On the road with…
my gloucester easel. It is extremely light weight but I can paint outdoors on a canvas up to 36” x 48” (inches). It’s awesome.
What was the first book you ever read?
Tik-Tok of Oz by Frank L. Baum
What do you prefer to read in a waiting room?
I usually bring the book I am currently reading since I don’t enjoy reading most magazines (exception; Harper’s, but you will never find that magazine in a doctor’s office).
It’s a waste of time to…
indulge negative thoughts and behaviour.
What would you be happier without?
Indulging negative thoughts and behaviour. A lofty goal but hard to accomplish.
Never give up…
Hope. Hope is essential for the kind of persistence necessary to make it in the art world.
Instead of taking sleeping pills, you would read...The philosophy of Georg Hegel
Why do you do it? Because of the need to do my very best. Art is a field that requires one to be constantly improving.
Remember Me