Wednesday, April 22, 2009

Crewsing



John Byrne's current STAR TREK: CREW series has gotten off to a very well-received start. But the reason I'm showing a page from the fifth and final issue here isn't to mention that fact, it's to show the amount of care Byrne puts into his pages. On this series, starting with issue 3, he's been greyscaling the b&w lineart, which brings added depth to the finished, colored art (Lovern Kindzierski is the colorist on the final three issues of this series and complements the greyscale work perfectly). In addition to that extra step, Byrne also places the balloon guides on each page, directing the letterer where to best place dialogue, sound effects and captions. In fact, his balloon guides for each issue offer a nice clinic to anyone who wants to see how best to make the balloons work in tandem with the art and not cause bad tangents with the lineart. This all on top of writing, penciling and inking each issue...

7 comments:

Matt said...

That looks awesome! Thanks as always for the previews Chris. Question for you. Is there anything we the fans can do to make these stories canonical? Or maybe you can talk to the Star Trek people about making it happen?

While it doesn't take away from my love of the stories, it does bother me these issues end up being called glorifed fan fiction.

Anonymous said...

That's great! Now give us more NEXT MEN!

opcode said...

Chris, wasn't ST: Crew supposed to be a six issue mini-series? Byrne said in his website that Crew was going to be 6 issues. What happened? I was (am) enjoying it so much... :(

Jeff said...

John Byrne + Star Trek = me happy

I hope there's plenty more Trek work coming from Mr. Byrne. I'd love to see him tackle a mini-series featuring Kirk, Spock et al.

Oh, and throw a GI Joe project his way too!!

BobbyNash said...

Nice! Cool looking page.

Bobby

Anonymous said...

Byrne places the balloons because he is a CONTROL FREAK and that is why Marvel and DC do not want the tired old hack working on their books anymore.

It is only a matter of time before he pisses off Trek fans and the crew at IDW and gets the boot there too.

Plus this glorified fan fic does not sell. His old stuff was better. Byrne should just shut up and retire already,

Chris Ryall said...

"I hope there's plenty more Trek work coming from Mr. Byrne. I'd love to see him tackle a mini-series featuring Kirk, Spock et al."

Spock is actually in CREW... I was just going over some pages with he and Pike in issue 5.

"Byrne places the balloons because he is a CONTROL FREAK and that is why Marvel and DC do not want the tired old hack working on their books anymore."

Actually, Byrne places the balloons because he wants the lettering to work with the art and not detract from it or cover it. And his placements always do that, something many letterers can learn from. Some of you detractors seem to look for things to slam, and are usually totally offbase about the way you interpret past events, too.

He has a long way to go to pissing off us or fans of his Trek or Angel work. I've had nothing but good experiences working with him. So, you know, nice try.