Zander Cannon on Top 10 and Mo(o)re

Page from Top 10, written by Alan Moore, art by Gene Ha and Zander Cannon.

Excerpts from an interview with the great Zander Cannon (Top 10, Smax) published on The Comics Journal few days ago. You can read the complete piece HERE. 

[...] how do you go from working on independent titles in your early 20s and just starting out and then working with Alan Moore?
I mean, it was crazy. Chiefly, I was working with Gene Ha because he and I were sharing a studio. He was in town with me, and so I was taking these pretty, legendarily-dense scripts and parsing them out as artwork. At the time, I thought, "I'm just here to speed things up." I came to realize that that's not really true. What I brought to Top 10 was more that it made the storytelling very matter of fact. I wouldn't say workmanlike, but documentarian style. Because Gene, I think, as much as he's a realist in his rendering, is a 90s cartoonist. He wants to have that punch, and he wants to have that wild, fisheye lens shot. I was the one being the buzzkill and saying, "No, we've got to have this pretty neutral shot because something extremely weird is happening." Or all these characters are meant to be perceived one by one.

So, how'd you meet Gene?
He and I did a signing at a store near Purdue University. It was the first time that anybody had really asked me to do a signing, so I was pretty young, probably 25 or so. And Gene is just a couple years older than I am, and I knew his work, so it was fun to chit-chat with him; the signing wasn't exactly mobbed or anything. He had some people coming up and talking to him, but nobody really knew who I was, and so we had a lot of time to just talk, so we were friendly. Then coincidentally he was moving up to the Twin Cities for a different reason. I think he was just looking for a change and he was going to collaborate on Top 10 with somebody else, and that fell through for whatever reason. Then I was top of mind, I guess.

Originally, this guy was going to do backgrounds, and so Gene asked me if I wanted to do that, and I'm like, I don't know if I've got the chops to do Gene Ha's backgrounds, you know what I mean? But I feel like I'm a strong – or at that point, getting to be a stronger–storyteller, so I could do layouts and design. I could design these pages and give him a running start because all of his stuff is so time-intensive and "high-budget," as it were. That's a lot of rendering on someone's hair if they're one inch too far to the left. That was a learning thing, too. I draw backgrounds of buildings just as boxes. He draws them as fully rendered things, so do not put them in if they're not absolutely necessary.

You were trying to save him time as you're doing it, too.
Yeah, and I think that was really fruitful once we got it down. Because there were a couple tries at a couple different approaches. You can see in the earlier issues where it's like, Oh, I drew that whole section. But like, it doesn't match, or it was easier just for me to do the first part, him to do the second part.

I really look back at Top 10 as being a game changer in terms of one of the checkboxes you have to have in a career, which is: why does anybody know your name? I can do all the indie books I want, and maybe people will have heard about that, but it's like, Oh, if you work with Alan Moore, you're vetted. In a way, it's nice that that's kind of all it is. People don't really ask me about Top 10 anymore. I'm happy that I have other stuff that people want to ask me about. And it's obviously more relevant to me as a person.

How did Alan Moore's writing affect yours? I saw some Kaijumax scripts, but they don't look like Batman: The Killing Joke scripts.
[Laughs] Well, when I wrote the Kaijumax script, it was not originally for me. It was for Ryan Browne. But even then, I was probably trying to hold back. I do like to write detailed scripts. And I think that Alan Moore was instrumental in that, in that his scripts typically described a limited number of layouts, because you only need a limited number of layouts, especially to tell a story that's that type of genre story. That really helped when I was interpreting these excellent scripts into layouts. I started seeing the rhythm of these pages that I'm creating out of his sheet music, so to speak. And that really helped me sort of figure that out. He was such a good writer and when he's working within a really narrow framework, this sort of cop drama, it's nice to perceive those tropes of the cop drama and lean into them, play them up rather than have to fight against them at every turn.

So you do the layouts for Top 10, then you're the artist on Smax, which Moore writes. And then you're the writer and artist of Top 10: Season Two with Gene Ha. It's like a fast track mentorship program to professional comics publishing. [Cannon laughs] What would you tell yourself now if you could go back to that person who's just about to start doing layouts on the first issue of Top 10?
Yeah, I would say enjoy it. Enjoy it a little bit more and realize you don't have to over deliver. You can just do what's asked of you.

Were you trying to impress Alan and Gene?
I mean, sure, but I think I was trying to encroach on Gene's part of the art. He and I have a different aesthetic and I was probably trying to make the art more grounded. He was trying to make it more like the way he makes it. I think that there was a little bit of push-pull there. And I could have backed off an inch and I think I would have been happier. He would have been happier. I did, I just would have done it earlier. [...]

The complete interview is available HERE. 

King Peacock by Zander Cannon

Art by Zander Cannon

Above, a great commission sketch of King Peacock by the amazing Zander Cannon.

King Peacock is one of the many fantastic characters featured in the fantastic Top 10 miniseries. 

Grazie mille, Zander!

For news about the artist, visit his Instagram page: HERE.

The story behind Top 10

Excerpts from an interview conducted by David Harper with Top 10's artists Gene Ha and Zander Cannon. You can read it HERE. 

[...] I sat down with both Ha and Cannon to discuss the story behind Top 10 from their perspective, and how the two worked with Moore to craft this remarkable series.

[...] “By the end of the first issue and a little after the beginning of the second, it became totally clear to us that Zander’s insanely good and fast at layouts, storytelling, reading the script, interpreting it, and figuring out nuances I wouldn’t see,” Ha shared. “And for consistency of style, anatomy, perspective, backgrounds, and stuff like that, I can do things that Zander can’t do.”

[...] “Zander was able to figure out the storytelling build of Alan Moore, and then figure out a Zander Cannon way of telling the story more efficiently sometimes.”
“The nice thing about (Top 10) was it wasn’t this spare, tense drama. It was just a fire hose of junk out on the page,” Cannon added. “If you had to course correct a little bit to fix a problem or whatever, it was no big deal.
“It was part of the vibe.”

[...] “His scripts are very detailed. He obviously has that vision in his head of the camera as a character moving in and out of conversations,” Cannon said. “And he was attempting something that was so complex. In this case it was…I wouldn’t say new to comics, but the idea was that we were specifically trying to emulate something that is done in film and doing it in comics.”

[...] “I’d say that two thirds of the background characters in the first issue were in Alan’s script, and by the end, one third were,” Ha said. “The trick is that he would sometimes just give a theme for characters in the story or in a scene, but then he wouldn’t list any examples.”

[...] If there’s one issue that Top 10 is famous for, it’s #8. [...] The incredible thing about this issue is it at least in part only happened because Alan Moore got sick shortly before pages were due to the artists. [...]

“What happened is, Alan had gotten the flu or something like it, and he was too sick to write the whole script or to figure out the plot of that issue,” Ha noted. “So, he wrote two pages to slow us down long enough so he could recover from the flu and then figure out what the story was.”

“(The second page) is just a one point perspective down shot of this entire city that took Gene an absolute age to draw. And that was on purpose because Alan had the flu and he was like, ‘I have to give Gene and Zander something to get them off my back,’” Cannon shared. “So, he wrote these two pages that were intentionally a huge pain in the ass to draw. That was why the story ended up focusing on (Peregrine).”

“I think the reason the story is so tight is that it starts and ends on her and her crisis of faith. That’s a great example of just playing the cards you’re dealt, being able to pivot, and then making a meaningful story out of it. Which I thought was remarkable.”

“He left himself little bits and pieces that he could play with later, but he didn’t know what he was going to do with it,” Ha added.

“And then, it turned out to be the greatest issue of Top 10 ever.”[...]

Moore 69: a gift from Zander Cannon

Art by Zander Cannon

Today is Moore's 69th birthday! So, above a phenomenal portrait of The Bearded Man from Northampton by the great comic book artist and creator Zander Cannon. 

 

Grazie, Zander for such a great homage! And... Happy birthday, Alan!

For news about the artist, visit his Instagram page: HERE.

Top 10 by Zander Cannon

Art by Zander Cannon

Above, a majestic Top 10 commission by series co-creator Zander Cannon. See details below.

From left to right, you can recognize officers Smax, Toybox, Dust Devil, Girl One, Jack Phantom and King Peacock.

For news about the artist, visit his Instagram page: HERE.

We all love Top 10!

Art by Zander Cannon

Zander Cannon on Moore

In the past days, I found this text on my archive. I guess it's dated 2002. 

By comic book artist ZANDER CANNON.

From www.zandercannon.com (the site in not online anymore, sm)

What's it like working with Alan Moore?
Zander Cannon: The thing about Alan Moore's work that people usually notice is that it's easy to read. Alan has mentioned to me that he likes his scripts to be "artist-proof", a survival technique from his days at 2000 AD, when he would have no idea who would be drawing the next story that he wrote. For that reason, the scripts oftentimes seem as if Alan is hedging his bets (mentioning characters by name more often, describing an object that everyone is already looking at, commenting on the current plot development an extra couple times, etc). There are also unbelievably long descriptions for every panel on every page. He will almost always say where in the panel everything is located, including placing the characters in the same order as their word balloons. The bottom line is: Alan Moore has covered his bottom line. The story is readable almost no matter what. The real advantage to that is that as an artist getting this script, you are free (insofar as Alan Moore cares) to do whatever you want. As long as you get the basic gist of what's described in the panel, the word balloons will pick up the slack. I try very hard in my comics to make them as readable as possible and not rely on these devices, but sometimes when five things need to be happening at once, I'm awfully glad they're there. As far as what Alan is like as a person, he's awfully friendly to talk with (on the phone; I've never met him face to face), and he's enthusiastic as heck about telling stories (sometimes a smidge irritated about comics in general). He's told me some terrific anecdotes; I highly recommend working with him if you ever get the chance.

DAILY MOORE [15]

Art by Gene Ha & Zander Cannon.
From: Top 10 n. 1.
First edition: 1999, America's Best Comics.

Zander Cannon and Moore's cartooning Tetris

Zander Cannon's cover art for Smax tp.

In the following, you can read an intense post published by artist Zander Cannon on his Facebook page the 18th of November 2014.

Today is Alan Moore's 61st birthday.

I worked with Alan on Top Ten and Smax the Barbarian in the late '90s and early '00s for America's Best Comics, an imprint of Wildstorm, which was then itself an imprint of DC Comics. I've never met the man in person (and it has been postulated that he no longer has human form, but rather exists as a blue smoke which gives a vague sense of unease), but spoke with him frequently on the phone. Sometimes it was for a legitimate storytelling reason, but as often as not it was because I knew that all things must eventually pass, and there would come a day when I had no reason to speak to one of my greatest heroes on the phone.

I learned more from my time working from Alan Moore's scripts than at virtually any point in my career. Gene Ha and I had adjacent studios while working on Top Ten and we passed our pages back and forth, talking about the background characters, ideas for design, and taking guesses where the story was going (we had no idea). The scripts, beyond being legendarily dense, long, specific, and chatty, were an education in comics storytelling right there on the page. His style of comics does not work for every artist, but it absolutely hits the bullseye on HIS style. It creates intricate, layered, humorous, on-point comics that are both dense and dynamic, treating every panel like a well-constructed sentence and every page like a well-constructed paragraph. Consequently, drawing from his scripts was as much an exercise in efficiently cramming elements into a panel as it was a process of storytelling. I used to tell people it was like 'cartooning Tetris'.

It's come into vogue lately to criticize the once-uncriticizable Moore for being a crank, or for protesting the unsanctioned or unethical use of his or others' work to make a billion dollars for massive corporations, or for simply being unwilling to 'go along to get along'. Now, I don't like to have my parade rained on any more than anyone else, but for Moore to harsh our collective buzz about the Watchmen or V for Vendetta movies by speaking out against the way he's been treated, and the similar ways that others have been or are being treated, is completely fair, and completely warranted. And frankly, reducing it down to "well, that's just the deal he made", shows a crucial lack of awareness of how comics companies ran in (in this case) the late '70s to mid-'80s. Furthermore, for a prominent person who has financially thrived in that system to nevertheless make the case for fair treatment is very important for those of us who have yet to knock one out of the park.

Alan is a gentleman, a remarkable artist, and in my experience, a kind and generous soul. I thank him for providing me a boost in my career, the Platonic ideal of a great comic book script, and hundreds of thousands of pages of wonderful comics. Not to mention some really enjoyable phone calls. [Zander Cannon]