Whether soaring with Superman or stalking beside Batman, Tim Sale loves his work.
On the placid shores of Seattle's Green Lake, long-haired Tim Sale looks more like a guitarist for one of the town's many alternative bands. But rather than shooting for the Top 40, he works in the roughest, toughest places on this or any other Earth: Gotham City and Metropolis.
A successful comic book artist, Sale's work has a huanted quality. His crowded, sprawling comic-book worlds are full of pale, emaciated people who look like they wandered out of an Edward Gorey painting to live in buildings from a Fritz Lang movie. This approach lends itself to dark characters such as Wolverine, Grendel, and Predator, all of whom he has drawn. While his take on comics' darkest knight, Batman, in a one-shot Halloween special proved so popular that Sale and writer Jeph Loeb were sent trick-or-treatig with the Caped Crusader annually, it was his work on Superman that showed his range. A charming look at Clark Kent growing up in the Midwest, Superman for All Seasons has a heartfelt "Frank Capra directs Our Town in Action Comics" feel to it.
Sale is back with Batman for the current year-long Dark Victory, a sequel to his Batman: The Long Halloween. What makes these Batman specials so refreshing is their emphasis on story and the way Batman is pitted against the B-list enemies of his rogues' gallery: second-stringers like the Scarecrow, Solomon Grundy, and the Mad Hatter. "I had Joker and Two-Face in Long Halloween, but we use secondary characters like Scarecrow because we have more of an open field with them. Nobody really thinks about those villains, so there is an opportunity to re-invent them. Our stories are set during Batman's first year," he says happily, "so we can basically do whatever we want. You can say, "That's what Scarecrow and Mad Hatter were like then, but they changed and became more like who they are now." For example, using the Mad Hatter gave us an opportunity to turn Alice in Wonderland into an emotional story for Bruce Wayne."
"There are some Batman characters that are a lot more work, but are a lot of fun and satisfying to draw. I have remade all the characters in such a way that I enjoy drawing them. Poison Ivy takes real work to draw the way I do her; she has a lot of leaves, but visually, I think she is more interesting."
Sale devised a new look for the Man of Steel when he took on Superman for All Seasons. Clark Kent was remodeled as a real farm boy, with slumped shoulders, bib overalls and baby-fat face. "He's a alien, and that's how he gets his strength," the illustrator explains. "He doesn't go to the gym and work out, so he isn't as cut and muscular as someone who needs to work out would be. I tried to convey a sense of power, as well as naivete and wonder; given that these are Superman's early years, you can show this in his body language and appearance, without necessarily showing him doing something. That's why he's as big as he is."
DC wasn't initially thrilled with altering Superman's visage, notes Sale, "because it's bound to make people nervous when you do something different to the most recognizable character in comics! When they saw it in color, it made all the difference in the world. It wasn't just that I was drawing Superman differently, but drawing everything differently. I wasn't using black, whichis one of the things I'm known for. They didn't know what to expect, so it was a little freaky to them. Still, they were extremely supportive of the book."
As was Sale. He enjoyed Smallville so much that he immortalized a dear friend of his on its pages. "My dog Shelby appears; Kent even saves Shelby from a flood," he laughs. "I'm not one of those artists who draws themselves into a story, because I find it distracting, but my dog is another story! It was my idea to do put Shelby in Superman."
Sale's frequent collaborator, screenwriter Jeph Loeb [Commando], is a writer with a real feel for characters and dialogue. "Jeph has a lot of visual ideas," Sale notes. "It's fun working with Jeph, because he lets me help him plot things out. I don't work from a full script with him. He basically says, "This is what happens," and if I have another idea, I'll modify it."
Besides Batman, another grim hero Sale worked on was the masked, body-snatching Grendel. "He was a fun character to do," the artist smiles, "but I still give Matt [Wagner] a lot of shit because my Grendel story didn't have a Grendel in it--there was nobody wearing the mask!"
"It was Orion Assante, the only character influenced by the spirit who wasn't taken over completely, which meant he never put the mask on! I didn't feel robbed at the time. I only feel robbed going to comic conventions where people identify me as a Grendel artist and want me to draw Grendel for them. Whose Grendel do they want me to draw? I don't have one of my own!"
While Sale was inspired to become a comic artist, "I don't think I ever had a seminal moment, except for one night when a bat flew through a window and told me, "Comic book artists are a cowardly, superstitious lot"," he jokes. "I know it was something I could do and had an ability for. More importantly, I could do it at home, so it wasn't like working."
"I remember the moment I truly decided to go into comics--I was working at Taco Time, looking outside at a nice summer day," he recalls. "I said to myself, "If you had an ounce of sense, you would work really hard on your comics so you could take your artboard out there and lie in the sun!" Ironically, it turns out that I can't draw outside," he smiles. "I do get to work alone at home during the day, though."
Sale studied his craft at the University of Washington ["mostly life drawing"] and alongside a comics legend. "I took John Buscema's workshop in New York City," he explains. "It was sort of a poor man's Joe Kubert School. I was a "Marvel guy" and wasn't going to go to a DC school!"
"The workshop was only three months long, and I don't think I learned much. Buscema was a huge influence on me, with is Silver Surfer and Avengers work, but when I took his class, he was very burned out. Really burned out on his work--but as a human being. Buscema was important to me. He actually got me looking at work by Michelangelo," Sale marvels. "Buscema's work with figures was very powerful--I think he's tremendously talented, but I came back really burned out on comics. Happily, I kept drawing for myself."
Through a chance meeting with ElfQuest's Richard and Wendy Pini, he got his first job in comics, drawing MythAdventures. Long before his daring new looks for Superman and Batman, Sale took a shot at a Challengers of the Unknown revamp, based on the '50s comic created by Jack Kirby. "The Challengers were four guys with different colored hair--that was how you told them apart--and they were always fighting monsters from outer space," Sale laughs. "I loved the look of those Kirby stories, but they were very dated."
"I was definitely a big Kirby fan, but I didn't know about Challengers," he admits. "Kirby only did the first five issues and for our Challengers, Jeph Loeb wrote very different stories. When Jeph and I met Kirby, we said, "Look we've been doing this; it's very different. We hope you enjoy it," and gave him some. He was the most gracious man--Jeph and I were dumbstruck. Kirby said, "I hope you had fun, did what you wanted to and didn't just try to ape me." It was great."
While he's happy to be the "hot new comic artist," Sale has a dream project far more ambitious than most artist-driven comics. "Being a popular artist is nice, but for whatever fame is worth, in addition to doing fun, mainstream stuff, I would like to be able to do non-mainstream stuff and get people to look at it. The per project that I really want to do is The Slave Narrative by Frederick Douglass. Most of my interest [in comics] is in non-mainstream and non-action, usually in black and white. I would love to be able to do The Slave Narrative in color."
Sale prefers storytelling to slugfests, and drew two critically acclaimed graphic novels years ago that drew praise, but little else. They were the female avenger saga Billi 99 and the ecological adventure story The Amazon. "Both The Amazon and Billi 99 were appealing because they were about social issues."
"My problem with comics doing social issues is when people in costumes take on social issues, it makes serious issues cartoony. I think they were both flawed in that way. It's very hard to get any interest going in comics if you don't have any fantasy or adventure. They lost money on Billi 99," Sale says wistfully. "Something like The Slave Narrative is not a project that will make anybody much money."
As for Sale's own unique style, "I like European art," he states. "I get a lot of my sense of space and perspective from European artists. Jeph once said about Matt Wagner and I that we "don't finish our faces." I thought that was hysterical. We will just have a mouth, a nose and two eyes. There's not much shading. I like it very evocative, with a lot of shadows."
Despite the applause he has received in the DC Universe, Sale almost landed one ambitious project which would have taken him to his beloved Marvel Comics. "It would have been a really cool book," Sale says with an excited grin. "Howard Chaykin called me after seeing my first Dark Knight story, and said he would like to do something with me at Marvel. I had never worked for Marvel at that point, so I thought it would be great. It would have been about how Marvel characters like Iron Man and Nick Fury deal with the end of the Cold War."
"Unfortunately, nothing happened with the Cold War project. I would like to do more work with Marvel," he laughs. "Myabe it's something I have to get out of my system."
However, Sale did draw Marvel's most popular mutants in a Wolverine/Gambit miniseries. "That was a chance to work with Jeph again in a format that I hadn't worked in, and there was a certain excitement to the story," Sale shrugs. "There wasn't an emotional involvement in a sense of a history of the characters to me, because Wolverine and Gambit did not exist when I was a kid."
Batman still appeals to him, however, despite being "tired of psychotic superheroes. Batman lends himself to that sort of look, a psychotic superhero on a rooftop at night," he concedes. "I find Batman's antithesis, Superman, a lot of fun to do, because he's an icon who is refreshingly not psychotic."
The young artist first encountered the masked manhunter when he was commissioned to do a full-page drawing for the Batman vs. Predator series. "They knew I had been signed up to do a Legends of the Dark Knight story arc, so they asked me to do it. It was pretty fun, the first time I had drawn Batman," jokes Sale, "and I swiped the Predator pose from a Chris Warner Predator story."
"The first way I drew Batman, Denny O'Neil said No to it, but it's how I prefer to do him: with a much longer face and nose. Denny wanted a standard-looking Bat guy. Dealing with the ears, cape and eyes got easier by the assignment's end."
"I enjoy doing Batman," he enthuses. "Batman is one of the few costume heroes for whom I have an affinity. I especially love his cape; everybody draws it differently, and I'm glad they let you go off with it. He's dark, and my background is in black-and-white comics, so I see things in black and white! With him, there's always an opportunity for storytelling in the shadows."
Sale realized that one of Batman's most important artistic assets is his pointy ears. "Those ears are interesting," he muses. "I find it funny how his ears have become such a big deal. "Long or short?" I think it stems from everybody hating the look of Adam West. Matt wants to get back to the square jaw, small ear Batman. I like the longer ears; it's part of his look. That makes it fun to do graphic things with him. I love his silhouette, with his eyes, ears and cape, so I like him with the longer ears."
"He also has a great supporting cast, like Catwoman. I love drawing her," Sale admits. "Catwoman is interesting and I don't see her as a villain. I especially enjoy the interplay between Batman and her; she's actually quite likable. With the costume I put her in, I was looking for something simpler to draw."
Commissioner Gordon "is a fun character too. When I draw him, he's [very much like the late Batman editor] Archie Goodwin. I got rid of Gordon's pipe and pretty much did away with smokingin the series. That was a conscious decision."
When he first started doing Batman, the artist found the first Batman movie's Oscar-winning production design, by the late Anton Furst, inspiring. "I really wanted to make Gotham a character, and using Furst's stuff allowed me to do it," he concedes. "I did a lot of buildings, because with Batman, the whole city is a character. DC wanted Gotham to look like [Furst's designs]. When I started, they gave me some of his pencil drawings."
Reportedly, DC would be pleased to see Sale tackle another classic hero like Wonder Woman, the Flash or Green Lantern. "It's way too early to say if I will or not," he muses. "I don't function well in the future, as involved with the present as I am. I grew up reading Marvel, so if I chose a project because of the characters instead of a story, that's more where it would be. DC has been good to me and I really like working with DC. They're very flexible amd they care about quality, and I'm concerned that not everybody at Marvel feels that way. When I say I grew up reading Marvel, that's what I did 30 years ago. I don't know how that translates to today. Given the ideal circumstances, I would love to draw Spider-Man and other Marvel characters."
One place the artist won't be found is on an ongoing monthly book. "I've never done a regular comic on a monthly basis and, as far as I'm concerned, I never will," he declares. "It's very, very hard. My hat's off to the guys who can do it; I respect them, but it is extremely hard and I think it shows in the people who do it and in their work. With Dark Victory, I am doing a monthly book that only lasts for a year or a year and a half. I am still drawing it and I'm working on issue 7 right now."
"I'm very happy with Batman," Tim Sale smiles. "Jeph is doing the work of his life and in some ways, I am too."
