The Business and the Beauty of Black and White

Liz Mogollón in living color. Black and white too! 

 Note: This post will end with me writing about the super-talented, super-nice Liz Mogollón, but I will mention her now because she gave me permission to use the above photo on this blog!

Last year my art partner Daniel asked me if he could work on a Pretty Vacant story based around a secondary character, Mindy Soong.  I was reluctant because Gigi Gutierrez is the main character in my Pretty Vacant comics.   Mindy may be Daniel's favorite character, but Gigi has the lead role.

However, I gave it some thought and decided to do it on three conditions: 1) that the story be only eight pages, 2) the story would have to be good enough to showcase at Comic-Con and 3) the cost of this story would be kept low.  That meant eliminating color, the most expensive printing cost of any comic.

Pretty Vacant comic books mostly have a black and white story with a color cover.  Mindy's story, Pretty Vacant: Good-to-Go, would be an entirely black and white comic.  Without color to catch the eye of the reader, we would need to innovate, so I opted for the cover to be a splash page that begins this adventure.  A worm's eye, full body shot of Mindy lowering herself into an unknown tunnel with the necessary dialogue around her pushes the story forward right away!

Pretty Vacant: Good-to-Go Cover/Page One

To increase the tension and the danger level for the reader, a laser beam barrier blocks Mindy's advance down the mysterious tunnel on the second page.  Mindy overcomes this obstacle in true Jackie Chan-like fashion!   

Pretty Vacant: Good-to-Go Page Two Panel Three

I created a scene like the above panel with my New G.A.R.D.E. comic for Blockbuster Video over a decade ago and told Daniel that we might have to use action lines to help the reader follow Mindy's movements. Daniel assured me that they would not be necessary, and he was right!  Using forced perspective, we see Mindy starting from the near the vanishing point to finish at the near right, with Mindy in various poses to mimic movement without the need for action lines.  It is a clever display of art in a comic panel!

Despite the one dollar US cover price, I make a larger percentage of revenue with the black and white Pretty Vacant: Good-to-Go than I do with my colored $3 Pretty Vacant issues because of a low printing expense.  Yet Good-to-Go is not a lesser story because of its reduced cost.  Mindy's adventure concludes with an elegant solution all her own to save Los Angeles from a chemical attack!

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All that finally brings us to my friend from Bogotá, Colombia.  Selling paintings, Liz does not need to consider black and white in any of her work, but by looking at the photo on top of this post, she does anyway.  For Liz, using black and white is an artistic choice!  She is not bound by business decisions as much as I am with my art.

Art is often considered the product of purposely arranging elements in a way that appeals to the senses and/or emotions.  Thinking as a storyteller, I use black and white art to hook the reader into finishing my story with full body splash pages and intricate visual effects.  Thinking as a painter, Liz pleasantly surprises her viewers by contrasting her normal vivid colors with the occasional black and white flourish.  Liz and I have different approaches to black and white, but we both have the same goal of wanting people to notice our art!  To do that, we have to be creative with what is available.
           
And in times of troubling earthquakes, hurricanes and political discourse, creativity can feed the soul, unleash the imagination and lead us on the path to a better tomorrow!

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