There’s something about John that’s like a beacon to kids and dogs.
Dogs will see him from across the street and stop, tail wagging, until their owner walks across so John can squat down and say hi. Kids will look at him with happy faces and shout, “Hi!” Babies reach out toward him from their parents, strollers, or grocery carts with big smiles and giggle when he says, “Hi.”
We live next to a daycare and the kids there love John. He’ll go outside and within minutes, they’re all at the door of the day care yelling, “Hi, Neighbor!” When they’re waiting for their parents at the end of the day, the kids love to talk to him.
A few weeks ago, one of the kids astutely noticed that John is home a lot and asked if he had a job.
“I do,” he said, squatting down.“My job is to color pictures.”
Their eyes got so huge in their little faces and they all took in a sharp gasp. You know that gasp. It was that gasp we all got when we first learned Darth Vader was Luke’s father (err, spoilers?) and our world changed.
The daycare consensus was that their neighbor has the best job in the world.
That job is doing the color work on Eric Shanower’s Eisner Award winning Age of Bronze, an historical* story of the Trojan War. The first color issue was released in the iTunes store the week of New York Comicon, but this was quite a while in the making.
It started, really, at NYCC 2010, when John was auditioning for the colorist job and fighting his equipment. He’d been working on this monster of a tablet, ten years old with dead spots and held together by duct tape, a tool that couldn’t handle the audition pages. It was a chicken/egg situation: John needed the job to get a new tablet, but needed a new tablet to complete the audition pages. Fingers crossed, we bought a new Wacom tablet at the con (I love you, convention sale specials) in the hopes that it would be the tool that allowed him to color the audition pages and get the gig.
When that Wacom tablet goes into retirement, I’m incorporating it into a good luck totem. Something with feathers and glitter, that can stand in the living room. You know, something classy.
Because he got the colorist job.
And he’s doing work like this:
(Page from Age of Bronze #2. Click to enlarge)
Age of Bronze ™ and © copyright 1999 Eric Shanower. All rights reserved.
For the past few months, I’ve walked past John’s office hundreds of times and seen him staring intently at Paris and the gang as he worked and went back and forth with Eric determining color palettes (there are a lot of variations in purple). I’ve watched Helen of Troy (the beards in that defy gravity) and Troy (Why the accent, Brad Pitt? Why?) with him, to get in the Trojan War mental space (he was watching for the mental space; I was mostly watching for Brad Pitt and costumes). Many times, I’ve woken him up in the morning after he’s fallen asleep sitting up at his desk.
John can be a stereotypical artist sometimes (not in a douchey way) and doesn’t always see how good his work is. I get it, though. It’s hard when you’ve got it zoomed in so far and are working on it day after day. But, his work on Age of Bronze is good. It deserves to be seen (Hey! That’s the actual name of the app: Age of Bronze “Seen”).
The day care kids next door have asked to see what he does several times, but it’s pretty far above their grade level right now. John is still their hero, though.
The first issue of Age of Bronze “Seen” is available for 99 cents in the iTunes store. The app features full color (by my sweet baby, John Dallaire), maps, a character guide, and a hyperlinked Reader’s Guide written by Yale classics scholar, Thomas Beasley. You can get it here for 99 cents.
*I don’t care what the grammar checker says. “An” is the correct article to use before “historical”. MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell says it, too. I love it when he uses the correct article before words that start with H. It makes his blue eyes sparkle. Like the sky in Age of Bronze “Seen”.
Related Stuff:
Lisa Fary's earliest influences are Princess Leia, Rainbow Bright, Astronaut Barbie, and her 6th grade teacher, Ms. Palmer. She's angry that it's 2011 and she still doesn't have a hovercraft, but will accept a jetpack as consolation. That jetpack had better be pink with a rhinestone monogram. 
Do I have permission now to plaster the site with Age of Bronze ads?
Being the spouse of an artist. I know all about it. They are in their own little world. The cool thing is they can draw it, and show it to you! The green monster makes it’s appearance on occasion, but I would say I am more often in awe of, and proud of, my wife’s accomplishments. She is so amazing because she is so talented. She pencils, inks, letters, and colors her work, and other peoples. Currently, she is the inker and letterer (is that a word?) for Dick Tracy, now celebrating it’s 80th anniversary. THAT, is cool.
DICK TRACY ON GOCOMICS
If you want to see her coloring ability, this is one of my favorites, as well as this one.
I suppose you could also check out her Deviant Art site.
Looking at John’s work, I can see he spends a lot of time on it. The details in the patterning of the skirts and jerkins in the last panel, the way the shading was handled in the first panel, shows A LOT of attention to details. That took a lot of time to do. I hope he is appreciated for all of his effort.
Thanks for your comment, Wuntvor. If you’re interested in seeing just how much detail work goes into this comic, take a gander at the first 40 pages of color work that I just dumped into my Grotto of Manliness