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[NYCC PREVIEW] THE WIZARD Q&A: GREG HORN | | The cover artist extraordinaire talks about his latest gig: the forthcoming young reader's book, 'Anna Smudge: Professional Shrink' | | | By Andy Serwin | | Posted April 16, 2008 | |  | | ![[NYCC PREVIEW] THE WIZARD Q&A: GREG HORN](http://ep.yimg.com/ip/I/wizarduniverse_2058_2081962679) You’ve seen Greg Horn’s work adorning comic books, billboards and magazines, but for his latest illustration gig, the noted cover artist (Ms. Marvel) gets in touch with his inner youth.
Horn provides the cover to the upcoming young readers’ novel, Anna Smudge: Professional Shrink, the first in a series of new books by Toasted Coconut Media that’s scheduled to debut this weekend at the New York Comic-Con. The book features 11-year-old Anna, the best therapist in New York City, who, while helping the residents of her Manhattan building, runs afoul of the criminal mastermind called Mr. Who. Anna Smudge (on sale starting in May) was written by MAC (Melissa A. Calderone) and features illustrations by Glenn Fabry (Neverwhere) as well as the cover by Horn.
Horn will be hosting a panel on Friday, from 6-7 p.m. in Room 1E02 called “Evolution of the Cover,” where he’ll run down his process for creating eye-catching covers using his Anna Smudge examples. To give you a taste, we caught up with Horn, who also shared some of his sketches in putting together the cover.
So Greg, gimme a little background: Tell me how you got hooked up with smudge in the first place.
HORN: Well, the guys over at Toasted Coconut had seen my artwork. I believe they said it was [Marvel’s] Emma Frost. Remember on Emma Frost…I think I told you about this story. I didn’t know what the storyarc was going to be about, and neither did Marvel, so they told me to just do iconic pictures of Emma. And then I did—you’ve seen ’em, the super-sexy pics—and the stories turned out to be about her teenage years. Of course, I took massive heat on this. Well, anyway, by issue #8, we had finally figured out what was going on and I did the version where she’s holding her books and she’s an actual teenager. You know, there’s no super-sex in it at all and, essentially, I think that was the image they saw that convinced them to hire me to do that job.
| |  And when did they first approach you for this assignment?
They approached me earlier this year. Might have been a little bit, might have been late in 2007, but essentially they wanted to do this cover for the book and they wanted her to appeal to girls as well as boys. The cover is the introduction, essentially, and they wanted to make sure it was an image that would appeal to both male and female readers.
Obviously, it’s a “Greg Horn” cover, but were there any different inspirations involved in handling a character who hadn’t debuted yet, who was outside of comics?
I just know I wanted to make her sassy and cute and, you know, just have attitude, but at the same time, she’s gotta have a very serious sense about her ’cause she’s a professional. So I wanted to get that idea across, you know?
Talking to the folks from Toasted Coconut, it sounded as if there was a lot of back and forth on certain angles and certain elements. Was the feedback and interaction comparable to your comics work?
Yeah, I would say there was definitely a lot more back and forth on this than usual. We’re trying to get it perfect, of course; this is their one shot at it. I mean, they want the best image possible. So in that sense, the job was probably more like an advertising job than a comic job. But, I mean, none of the edits were crazy. I mean, some of the stuff I get in advertising is just stupid. It’s almost like somebody is just trying to justify their job, you know what I mean? “Oh, I have to edit this!”
| |  You’ve shown a wide range of talents, Greg, in the different things you’ve done with advertising and comic book illustration. Was there any particular drive to get involved with book publishing? Or was it just a fun idea, something you could sink your teeth into?
I would say that was exactly it, you know? I’ve done a few novels before. I’ve done covers for Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cells! I have a little bit of experience with it, so I know what’s involved. But, I mean, you know it wouldn’t hurt to get into novels. There’s a lot of great artistic things going on in novels, especially Del Ray, and you get all the fantasy novels that are produced by Random House. So it’s not a bad place to be.
Are you on board to do any subsequent Anna Smudge volumes or any of the other books in the series that they were proposing? Do you know anything about that at this point yet?
Yeah, we’ve talked about that. They definitely want to do some stuff with me in the future. It all depends how the first book goes. We’ve been getting a lot of press on it.
What kind of stuff will you be doing at New York Comic-Con to promote the book?
I’m definitely gonna be at New York Comic-Con. We have a panel planned where we’re gonna talk about the process of, you know, just going through the editing process, figuring out what you wanna do. And I think this is good because we had so much back and forth on that cover that there’s actually something to talk about there.
| |  Looking at one of the thumbnails that Toasted Coconut had sent over, there’s a funny note on here that I saw: You wrote “Superman red and Superman blue” while talking about the coloring of the cover, because initially you drew her with a red sweater and a blue scarf, but then did it with a blue sweater and a red scarf.
This is a young girl, 10 years old, so the fact that she is a professional shrink kind of makes her a superhero, you know what I mean? And what better to get that across than the reds and blues of Superman or Spider-Man? They’re like the iconic superheroes and those are the colors. They just work.
I guess it was probably no accident that Toasted Coconut tapped you for the cover and Glenn Fabry to provide interior illustrations.
[Glenn’s] drawings are awesome! You know what? Actually, most of the jobs that I’ve done outside of comics? They’re usually looking for a comic book artist. With Ringling Bros., I did that a long time ago, that was back in, 2001, but they told me specifically that they were looking for a comic book artist to do that. In fact, I think they had tried to get Alex Ross to do that at one point. And the same thing with the LeBron James billboard. Those guys? The image was him on a comic book cover. Most people have never even seen that. So there you go! I'm telling you. Comic book artists are in demand.
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For more on Anna Smudge head to WhoIsMrWho.com. | | | | |
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