Jonathan Fetter-Vorm's Blog

As of today, Moonbound is out in the world! You can find it wherever (maybe) books are sold. It’s a huge relief to have it all wrapped up, though now a new kind of anxiety creeps in, one that I have to train myself to ignore: that little voice in my head needling me about whether anyone is going to care. I’ve found that the only practical thing to do at this point is get back to drawing and try not to think about the things that are beyond my control.

In anticipation of the release of my book, Field Guide Designs shot this beautiful taxonomy of all the stuff I use to make comics (and a couple tools from my bookbinding days). Now if only my studio was actually this organized…

Somewhere on the Sea of Tranquility

Three years later, here’s the book, all 230-some pages of it. From this distance, it doesn’t look like much. Now comes the waiting. In a few months I’ll get a box with bound copies. Until then, this all seems like a dream.

A sneak peak at my absurdly convoluted coloring setup. I’m basically trying to replicate the process of Golden Age comics — CMYK breakdowns at 100%, 50%, 25% — but with my own colors instead of process colors and flat tone instead of screens. I like the faded colors of old comics, but I don’t want to go down the path of pure imitation.

Man, I hate doing covers. Way too much pressure. After too many drafts to count, I’ve finally got an image I’m happy with. Here’s a detail.

One of my go-to framing devices when I’m composing a page is to think of it like a pile of documents on a table. I tend to approach comics, at least nonfiction ones, from the perspective of collage: my job is to paste together and arrange a narrative out of all of these documents and fragments. Most of the time the collage is implied, but every once in a while I try to actually show it on the page.

Using the light table to compose this splash panel showing the devastation of Hitler’s V2 rockets on the city of Antwerp. I tend to do this kind of layering/tracing for more complex scenes, as it helps me avoid feeling overwhelmed by all the details. I can draw a building, throw it on the light table, then superimpose some figures. And then for the final inks, I’ll either trace out the whole panel in non-photo blue pencil and ink, or else if I’m feeling spry I’ll just ink at the light table.

I ended up not using this panel of LBJ stoically leaning against an oak tree (from a reference photo). I like how it feels like a still from a John Wayne movie, but in the end, it didn’t really make sense with the narrative. Oh well. I’ll file it away in the “strange shots of former presidents” folder.

Close up of a panel about how the Soviet R7 rocket was designed to be able to hold a nuclear warhead, a satellite, or a cosmonaut.