Clearly and Dynamically: An Interview With Chris Burnham

Clearly and Dynamically: An Interview With Chris Burnham

When I first really took note of Chris Burnham's artwork, I wanted him to have thumbnailed the hell out of his layouts and arrangements for every panel, each page. It could be an innate genius for mise en scene and balance, but I didn't want it to be. There may be some beauty in it being effortless or accident, but I was immediately struck with this strong, probably irrational desire for it to be work.

After recognizing that it wasn't up to me how he worked, I settled into simply enjoying and analyzing his comics. I think I have a better sense of the space between lines since first encountering Chris Burnham's artwork. I know that, directly tethered to my enjoyment of his work, I have a renewed appreciation of “filmic” techniques in comics storytelling. Burnham paces scenes in a very storyboard fashion, but he seems considerably more aware of the shape of a page, what the panel arrangements themselves communicate to his audience.

And, in Batman Inc, Burnham drew the most recognizable reservation that I've seen in a comic in I don't know how long. Maybe, ever. It was a shitty-looking rez, in many ways, but well. It was shitty in the right ways, as opposed to, for example, the much-loved-by-others Jason Aaron and R. M. Guéra series, Scalped, or the wonderfully written (by Kurt Busiek) but full of disappointingly kitted Indians Strange Tales. Often, “attention to detail” in terms of comics means lots of shading, crosshatching, and drawing in every rivet and brick, but representing a place, or a kind of place, so that it can feel recognizable and right to those unfamilar and quite close, that's a different and substantial kind of attending.

Travis Hedge Coke: “How responsible do you feel about the contents of comics you work on? Responsible to your audience, to comics history, or to yourself.”

Chris Burnham: “I definitely feel a responsibility to make the absolute best comic I'm capable of. I'm still a huge comic fan and it pisses me off to no end when creators fuck up an otherwise good comic with distracting mistakes. I want to make comics that are good enough to withstand criticism by the nitpickiest asshole alive... me! (Whether I succeed is another story, but if your reach doesn't exceed your grasp, you're not trying hard enough, asshole!)”

Hedge Coke: “Have you ever been part of something in a comic that you couldn't have imagined would get anyone's dander up, only to be cautioned by someone above you at the publisher or find it enraged folks after publication?”

Burnham: “This certainly seems like something that would happen a lot to me, but the only examples I can think of are Elephantmen #16 and the Marvel Mystery 70th Anniversary Special. In Elephantmen, Rich wanted a sex scene that was somewhere between the classic Steranko Nick Fury and Contessa scene (the one with the gun in holster) and a scene from Howard Chaykin's American Flagg. I took it WAY too far. I did 9 or 12 panel page that, while not explicitly showing penetration (or even nipples), was basically soft porn. I remember lovingly drawing what I thought was a subtle rim job. Haha! What a moron. When the scene saw print, Rich took the 6 tamest panels and edited them together. It worked a lot better that way.

“On Marvel Mystery, I had the Angel bashing someone's face against the wall, and he was completely covered in blood & broken teeth. After it was colored, Tom Brevoort thought it went too far and had me redraw the face without all the blood, and Nathan Fairbairn recolored it... but for whatever reason the production guys never got the memo and the gory version is what saw print. Hahaha!”

Hedge Coke: “Have you ever seen someone's contribution to a comic you worked on and been, if not offended, concerned about some content of their contribution?”

Burnham: “Err... I wouldn't say offended in the sense that they were making racist rape jokes or anything, but I've certainly been involved in a few comics where I thought the other guys dropped the ball creatively. (And I'm sure there are guys who thought I did the same.)”

Hedge Coke: “What elements of a comic do you try to focus your attention on most?”

Burnham: “I'm most concerned with telling the story clearly and dynamically. I work really hard at making sure the characters are distinct from one another and their actions are clear, setting the right angle, picking the right composition, leaving enough room for word balloons... all that stuff is primary. Noodly details and perspective tricks etc, while fun to do and look at, are secondary to the storytelling. (This is, of course, in an ideal world... many times I'll get distracted by trying to nail some weird perspective or setting at the expense of putting the people in the right place. Oops!)”

Hedge Coke: “How much do you draft and tweak before the publishable versions of most of your comics work? Do you feel you get better if you revisit a page or a story several times or is first shot best?”

Burnham: “I spend a varying amount of time doing Photoshop tweaks on each page. Ideally I'd get it right on the page, but I don't see a problem with going in and monkeying with things to make them a little better. Once in a while (like, every few months) I'll redraw a panel from scratch after I've taken it to pencils or inks. Most of the time I catch those problems early with obsessive thumbnails. On particularly tricky pages I'll do multiple sets of thumbnails that tell the story in different ways and then pick the best option between them. The hard part is when I like parts of one page and parts of another, but their panel compositions are mutually exclusive. It can be like picking which one of your children gets eaten by wolves. Sorry, Billy! ;D”

Chris Burnham will being doing twelve issues of Batman Inc with Grant Morrison in the near future. If his progress so far is anything to go by, and his work ethic, he will continue to be an increasingly exceptional artist and comics-maker.

Special Bat-Friend

“Special Bat-Friend”
Excavating, reappraising, and cataloging Planetary early in the 21st Century


[The twelfth in what should be a comprehensive series, both these small essays and the related annotations are intended for someone who is already familiar with the series. Spoilers will be dropped as necessary, events and concepts discussed out of their order of first-appearance, and general summaries of stories will not be provided. The annotations are primarily speculation, with no hard evidence to back them up. All of these posts may be subject to severe and dramatic rewrites without notice, as new things occur to me, and of course, I welcome any further annotation suggestions or general feedback at . If I include an annotation derived from someone else, from this point on, I will gladly credit the provider. If I don’t credit an annotation, it means I derived the conclusion myself, or I simply cannot recall where I got the information first.

This project could not exist without the fine work of The Planetary Appreciation Page, the now defunct Warren Ellis Forum, the slowly-defuncting Barbelith messageboard, and the Planetary team of Warren Ellis, John Cassaday, Laura DePuy/Martin, John Layman, David Baron, Scott Dunbier, and the many letterers, designers, and other contributors.

This project is dedicated to mystery archeologists everywhere, of every walk and a myriad of tastes, habits, and ingenuities.]


The best Batman, to me, is the one Warren Ellis and John Cassaday leave us with here, the good parent. The best parent. Maybe that has to do with never knowing my father. Perhaps, it is a side effect of an innate conviction I am not good enough to be responsible for children. Could be I want to belong to a crimefighting family and see my mother kick muggers in the face. Let's leave that to the biographers and psychoanalysts, if any ever surface for the job.

It's an awesome take on Batman. The best parent version removes any concern with the contradictions of various versions by making the contradictions actually the definition. Batman is a cop and a vigilante, he is an anarchist company man, he can help you up out of the muck and he can hit you with his car to stop you. And, statistically and by all observances, he is less likely to kill you than just about anyone. He's the goddammed Batman, even failing he is kinda better than you or me but we can be as good as him, if not as efficient and accomplished as he is, if we put the effort in.

The sell of Batman is often that we, especially as kids, could be Batman if we tried. No, we can't. For one thing, reality wouldn't even allow Batman to be Batman. For another, we don't have the money, the R&D department, or the field surgeon gentleman's gentleman. We can be as good as Batman, though, as decent. We should.


***

[From PLANETARY/BATMAN: NIGHT ON EARTH


00 The Planetary field team are in the "shadow of the Bat."

01 Red skies because they are experiencing a Crisis event. Meaning, in the context of the DC Comics shared universe, that different realities are collapsing together.

01.01 This panel and the final of the comic mirror one another, with a "what is that against the moon" motif. May also be a reference to this mirroring technique being employed in famous Batman comic, The Killing Joke.

01.02 Enough grotesques for one building? That is Gotham-y.

02.01 As are the neo-Modernist architectural feats here. This, the WildStorm Universe version of Gotham City is very Anton Furst, designer of the 1989 Batman movie.

03.01 This is the WildStorm version of Richard Grayson and the Joker.

03.02 Their schlubby visual, unshaven, awkward posture, indicates the level of difference between these two and their DC universe versions, due to the absence of a Batman in their lives.

The Joker, here named Jasper (presumably in reference to Marvel Comics' Mad Jim Jaspers), is not only not visibly going around killing people or laughing his head off, he is holding down a real job.

03.03 When Dick opens his mouth, we see how bad it is. Without Batman, the orphaned boy grew into a stuttering, insecure mess, who can't dress himself properly. But, he is still trying to do good, participating in the functioning and for the curious Planetary Organization.

04.02 "It all looks like this" is more or less true. Little of Gotham's streets and layout is ever represented as less than seedy.

05.05 GCPD is Gotham City Police Department. (Pr'y don't need to point that out, do I?)

06.01 Crime Alley in the DC Universe's Gotham is actually Park Row, it's just called Crime Alley because that's very descriptive of it. Notable events on that Crime Alley (and not this one for obvious reasons) include the murder of Bruce Wayne's parents and a young boy, Jason Todd, trying to steal the hubcaps off a parked Batmobile years later.

07.01-04 1986 is the year Crisis on Infinite Earths was published, a comic about a multiversal collapse taking place across the whole DC Comics line and shared world.

08.02 The lamppost is visually similar to the one sometimes represented as being above a young Bruce Wayne and his just murdered parents. All the posts in the area would, hypothetically look the same, but this may be meant to be exactly that one.

08.03 Jasper's behavior here is an indicator that the homicidal and sadistic tendencies of the Joker are not entirely based on a presence of a Batman, only - apparently - his motivation to go do something about them more than touch himself looking at crime scene photographs.

09.02 Evert street in Gotham has porn or prostitutes or both.

Finger Street is a street in the DC Gotham as well, named for Bill Finger, co-creator and writer of Batman and many related characters.

09.03 The Conquerors of the Uncanny are a team from Alan Moore and Rob Liefeld's Judgement Day that takes place in the Awesome shared universe. The comic was a rebooting of various concepts to separate them from the Image shared universe they previously existed as part of, when Liefeld split with Image. This comic is a DC publication under the WildStorm imprint, WildStorm having previously been a part of the Image shared universe and since bought by DC Comics.

10.01 John Black, the WildStorm universe's Bruce Wayne. Bruce, without Batman, is a damaged, lip-biting, incidental murderer and wandering vagrant.

11 This bubble emanating from John Black is a variation on the multiversal snowflake seen elsewhere in Planetary. This pattern will reappear alongside elements from the other crossover oneshots, Terra Occulta and Ruling the World in the final chapter of Planetary during the rescue of Ambrose Chase.

12.01 The cityscape as changed, here, and is photorealist in nature.

12-13 The entire scene has become littered with carefully represented details including exaggerated weathering of walls, pipes, water damage, and litter on pavement. Early indicators that we are in the Alex Ross version of Gotham City.

14 The Batman, in the style and wearing a costume designed by Alex Ross, painter and comics writer.

15.04 Typically, we never see what a batrope is suspended by, but this being a "realistic" world, we do.

17.0305 Every street in Gotham has fetishwear and prostitutes. Jakita is simply seeing Batman in the context of his city as she knows it. And, also, implicating her own leathers.

18.01-03 I know Ross has painted these absurdly big bat-weapons before, but where?

27.01 A Batman in the style of the 1960's television show. The eyes have been darkened and the symbol on his chest relieved of its yellow oval by DC's legal department, as a matter of likeness rights.

The buildings are simpler than either version previously seen, in solid colors.

28.01 Bat-Female-Villain-Repellant is in line with the absurd fix-its that Batman of this television series could produce from his belt, most specifically, Bat-Shark-Repellant.

28.04 This costume shred easily, implying the previous was armored (hence standing up to Jakita's superhuman punch).

29.01 Frank Miller's Dark Knight Returns Batman. There are now minimalist backgrounds, mostly of the same muddy dark colors.

31.01 "Mr. Freeze" is a Batman villain, appearing in comics as well as film and television versions of the property.

35.03 A Neal Adams version of Batman.

36.01 And, a Neal Adams style Batmobile.

36.02 Normative handcuffs and not a stylized set of bat-cuffs fit with the semi-realist ambience of Neal Adams usual Batman work.

37.03 The downturned corners of Batman's mouth are very Adams.

38-39 The recurrent panel of Batman seen here resembles a similar arrangement in "There is No Hope in Crime Alley" by Denny O'Neil and Neal Adams.

40.01 This is the original-era Batman, complete with purple gloves and set in a city that is era-appropriate. And, he's wielding a gun, as earliest Batman is the only canon version to do so readily.

Batman is also framed, here, by the moon, although only his head and no a full-body framing as elsewhere.

41 This is the death of the Waynes in front of their son, Bruce.

42 Batman of the future. This is Cassaday's own design. Batman's head is again haloed by the full moon.

43.02-04 If you have not sussed that John Black is an alternate Bruce Wayne, this ought to make everything click.

44.04-05 "How do you cope?" By doing what he does here, in letting Black go into the custody of the Planetary team. By doing right.

45-46 And, by doing, as he explains here: You give safety and comfort to other people, show them they are not alone.

48.04 Similar to the first page, the shape on the moon that may or may not be a Batman.


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