Words and Pictures with Gabriel Hardman

At last weekend's New York Comic Con, I did some reporting for Bleeding Cool. They were kind enough to let me mirror some of the interviews that I did for them here at THE LONG AND SHORTBOX OF IT! This is Gabriel Hardman, talking about his brand new Secret Avengers gig, why he loves drawing Beast and his work for the digital comics platform Double Feature. It was originally posted to Bleeding Cool on 10/16/11

JK: First, could you talk a little bit about how you ended up on Secret Avengers?

GH: I got a call from Lauren Sankovitch, who had been the associate editor on Agents of Atlas, which I drew a couple years ago, and she’s great, and I had worked with Rick Remender briefly on Doctor Voodoo, I did a little flashback sequence, so we had experience working together and I was interested in the group of characters and working with Rick again, and it was as simple as that.

JK: Could you talk about how you’re approaching the new series?

GH: I’m in the process of figuring that out right now. I mean, I’m drawing the first issue, and I’m always looking for a way to ground the characters in a real world, but then have room for it to go crazy and be big and science fiction.

JK: Is there a character you’re particularly excited to be drawing?

GH: I like doing Beast. There’s always something interesting about characters like that, that you have to make look real and work but not, you know, look mundane. It has to be exciting and fun. So, Beast and, to some degree, Hawkeye, as well. I read West Coast Avengers when I was a kid, and some of the other characters were in other Eighties books, the New Defenders and stuff like that that I enjoyed, so there’s a certain amount of familiarity and sentimental feelings about them.

JK: Can you talk a little bit about your work for Double Feature, the “The Liar” short story?

GH: Yeah. My wife and I wrote it, I drew it, and it's a kind of crazy espionage thing. It’s an eight-page story that you can get through the Double Feature iPad app, which has a lot of extras and extra functionality to it, you can see my process, the pencils and stuff like that, so you’re getting a lot for 99 cents. We want to do at least a couple more short stories and very likely there’ll be a creator owned graphic novel.

JK: Does the process feature of Double Feature make you feel exposed at all?

GH: Honestly, I don’t mind it. In general, I don’t like people seeing the process stuff, because I feel like it should all be sort of magic, you know? I think it's better if people don’t know how things are done. But the way that the Double Feature app works is so good and thorough that instead of being some half-assed sort of thumbnail printed somewhere that is out of context. This is everything in context, so you can really see the process of it. That made it feel like it was worthwhile.

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