Follow
your passion. I was always into
classical music. I studied piano all through high school and just loved
opera. I'm not sure where that came from. I wasn't particularly surrounded
by that sort of thing growing up; I sought it out.
Draw what
you like. After several years of working at Marvel Comics,
I started doing opera comics because I wanted to do books that were more
in line with the things I was interested in. Typical superhero books didn’t
interest me. So, I started working for some independent companies. And
while there wasn’t as much money, I had the freedom to do what I
wanted.
Adapt a good story. The operas I do are the ones where the
libretto has some literary meat. A lot of great operas would make terrible
comic books because the stories aren't very good; it's just a lot of really
great music. My adaptation of Strauss' "Salome" has a script
by Oscar Wilde, and that reads well on its own. It's almost as much an
adaptation of a play as it is an opera.
Recognize
the similarities. The sort of operas I adapt -- "Parsifal,"
"The Magic Flute," Wagner's "Ring" -- have a lot of
the same elements as traditional comics including larger-than-life heroes
and villains. I had grounding through regular mainstream comics. It wasn't
a real radical leap.
Let the music
inspire you. With "Salome" and "The Ring,"
I listened very closely to the music while I was working to get the signature
themes. In certain places, the music and leitmotifs influence the telling
of the story. And that was the biggest challenge: finding pictures for
what was purely a musical moment, but such a dramatically important moment
that, if you didn't dramatize it with pictures, it would feel flat. Wagner
had this idea of continuous music, and comics are a continuous web of
pictures. Certain ones -- half page pictures that really bring home the
goods -- are sort of like big arias.
Find an audience.
I get good feedback from musicians and people in classical music, but
they are not likely to wander into a comic book store. Traditional comic
book audiences react well once they look at it. My opera adaptations surprise
them because they say they don't like opera, they don't like the human
voice in that register. But they are not singing here. This is paper;
it's just a story.
Russell began drawing for Marvel Comics while
still attending UC. ("I would work on stories, get graded, then mail
them to Marvel and get paid. It was a terrific way to do my senior year.")
He inked more than 300 pages of "Star Wars" comics for Dark
Horse while adapting Wagner's "Ring." The 14-book "Ring"
series will be collected in two trade paperbacks later this year. He has
won several Eisners, the Oscars of the comic world, and received the Harvey
Award for Best Artist in 1997.
LINK: Video of P.Craig Russell
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