Meet Stefano Simeone

The artist of The Last Days of Black Hammer speaks!

Hi everybody, I’m Stefano Simeone, the artist of The Last Days of Black Hammer, and today I’m a guest of Jeff’s Substack to show you some of the process of the pages you read here over the weeks.

I’ll skip on how much I’m proud and lucky to work with Jeff, just let me say one thing. That was the header of the fist book I wrote and drawn 10 years ago:

Then I discovered Essex County and Jeff’s work, and over the years I kept feeling a sort of affinity with the way he builds stories, I kept looking at how he’s able to dig into the depth of each character with a line or two of dialogue. That’s magic.

That was so evident in The Last Days of Black Hammer script.

I already had the opportunity to read some scripts of Black Hammer Reborn when I had to do a variant cover, but reading this actual one, with the consciousness I had to draw the character who started everything made me crazy.

It’s like reading a book, everything was there, I was able to “see” the pages, to feel the characters I had read about for so many years.

Jeff’s scripts leave to the artist a lot of room to jump in, he gave me the freedom to move in any direction, also told me I could add some pages if needed, but for me the rhythm was perfect, so I tried (and I’m trying right now) to enhance was is already there.

In page 19, for example, Joe comes back home after months, so I thought, when he embraces Lucy, that he’d never let her go for any reason so he keeps her in his arms for the whole page. This kind of things, until the very end. I also merge some panels every time I can because I love the flow, and that’s funny because you have to keep the same balloon order so it’s a challenge every single time.

That’s why I think comics make you grow up and get better, if you want to do it right you have to study every single panel, no excuses.

I was luck enough to know the characters so their expressions and poses change a lot, witch is a thing I like a lot. Barbalien in his Mark Markz should mimic human movements, right? So he must have some “unnatural” poses.

Abraham is old and tired, Gale is old inside so makes gestures like an old woman (hey I know about the memes about Italians moving hands while talking and I can say they’re totally true but useful if you’re a comic artist!)

You should think I had to be very anxious about drawing this book. Great writer, great book, great opportunity, plus historically I NEVER felt ready for any project I’ve worked on.

I always thought there was someone better that me to draw Mega Man or Star Wars, and a small part of me always felt lucky they didn’t find the other artists. That’s because as I said I move a lot my hands when I talk so they must have noticed me in the crowd!

Weirdly, this anxiety totally disappeared with Black Hammer, and I really don’t know why. For the first time in my working life, I just felt READY to start the book. I told me “ok, you’ve drawn hundreds of pages, learned techniques, you can do i!”, and I’m getting older so right now I know exactly which are the difficulties of any new project, so maybe I know where I must aim my energies.

So the pages you’re seeing are the result of all these years, I must say thanks to hundreds Disney pages where I learn how to make environments and backgrounds, to hundreds anatomy sketches, materials and brushes and books and movies and people I talked to about comics.

But my color palettes are only mine, I learned them by myself and my instinct. After all I’m an artist and I must be a little vain about something. And hey, I move my hands a lot!

I hope you’ll keep enjoying what Jeff , Nate and me are doing.

This will be an epic journey!

A new chapter of THE LAST DAYS OF BLACK HAMMER drops yeah Thursday for paid subscribers!

And now a look at some of Stefano’s process…