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[NYCC PREVIEW] THE WIZARD Q&A: GLENN FABRY | | The English sensation talks about his latest illustration gig: the young readers' book 'Anna Smudge: Professional Shrink' which debuts at New York Comic-Con this weekend | | | By Andy Serwin | | Posted April 17, 2008 | |  | | ![[NYCC PREVIEW] THE WIZARD Q&A: GLENN FABRY](http://ep.yimg.com/ip/I/wizarduniverse_2059_1290342579) After his well-known stints on mature series such as Preacher and The Authority: Kev, artist Glenn Fabry could probably use a little time on the therapist’s couch. Luckily, his latest illustration gig is allowing him to do just that.
Debuting at the New York Comic-Con this week, Anna Smudge: Professional Shrink is a brand new young readers’ book series about the aforementioned Anna, an 11-year-old therapist who happens to be the top shrink in New York City, running her “practice” out of a storage closet in her Manhattan high rise. However, is this budding shrink ready to match wits with the criminal mastermind known as Mr. Who? Readers will find out in what will hopefully be the first in a series of books starring Smudge. Anna Smudge: Professional Shrink is also the first installment in a series of “Professional” novels already in the works.
The book’s publishers, Toasted Coconut Media, tapped comic book artists Greg Horn and Glenn Fabry to do the cover and interior illustrations, respectively, for the book, which is written by MAC (an acronym for Melissa A. Calderone).
To get you ready for the novel’s debut this weekend at the New York Comic-Con (it goes on sale in May), WizardUniverse.com spoke with interior artist Glenn Fabry to learn the origins of this assignment, get his take on doing children’s books and find out what’s next on his comics schedule.
| |  WIZARDUNIVERSE.COM: Tell us a little bit about how you kind of got involved with Anna Smudge: Professional Shrink.
FABRY: Well, they got in contact with me through my Website and gave me the pitch. It’s a children’s book illustration thing, so it’s a little bit different from my bread and butter comic strip work. And I could afford to play around with my style and with the approach and stuff like that a bit more, and I thought it looked like it was gonna be a class project, so I thought it’d be fun to be involved with that.
Was having kids of your own a determining factor in taking on this project?
They’re about the right age, I think, except my daughter might be a little bit young. My daughter’s 8 and my son’s 11. So I think Tom, my boy, he’s right about the right age. You know, all through the nuts and bolts of my career, I’ve been trying to do as much different stuff in the world of illustration as I possibly can, and this is really my first foray into commercial children’s book illustration. This year I had my first billboards which, you know, was pretty cool, so any time something like this comes along, I think about it. My wife said, “Oh, it looks like it’ll be really good fun!” I’m looking forward to getting the books. When I put the kids to bed at night, I was reading the story for about a quarter of an hour or so before they go to sleep, so as soon as this is out, this will be on the agenda!
| |  How did you find the experience of doing the illustrations that you’ve done? The characters certainly have a bit of a fantastic nature to them, so…
What? Naked Seaweed Man?
[LAUGHS] I can't imagine it was too far out of left field for you from some of your comic book and comic strip work before?
Well, yeah, no, not really. I mean, not to appear at all dismissive, but I’d actually call some pretty kind of freaky things in my career, you know, good training. It was really enjoyable and the other things I really liked about it was that [author] Melissa [A. Calderone] was always on the phone saying, like, “Oh my God, you’re like a mind reader!” and stuff like that. Everybody was really happy with the work that I did there so that was a bit of an ego boost, really.
How many illustrations did you end up doing in total for the book?
I ended up doing 13. I was originally only supposed to be doing 12, like, sort of character sketches, but there was one particularly tricky piece in terms of approach which is, it’s supposed to be the shadow of the bad guy, where we had to find a way to present the bad guy in such a way that you look at the illustration and not tell which of the other 12 characters it could possibly be. And because the other 12 characters are so disparate, it was a difficult sort of thing to find the correct approach to make the shadowy picture look like it could be any of them. So there was a couple of attempts at doing that one, but apart from that one it was all pretty straightforward and pretty easy going.
In the process of putting these illustrations together, was there any one that really popped out to you as memorable? Or do any of them stand out as favorites? Like Naked Seaweed Man, for instance?
Well, Naked Seaweed Man is probably the most obviously peculiar out of the bunch. And I like the big massive mobster who attacks you with a sink plunger. Sometimes it’s just little nuances, like the way the characters are behaving, you know, like their posture and their expressions and things like that. I quite like the one of the little girl who, she’s got the expression on her face, kind of like, “What do you mean—me?” which is like a, you know, a complete fabrication. She’s a little cut out, basically, but I was very pleased with that expression.
| |  How long were you working on the assignment for Anna Smudge?
I suppose a month or so, but the actual process of doing the drawings, I think I was doing about one drawing a day. A lot of it was like discussion, which kind of direction are we going to choose? They’d set me up. I did a few tentative sketches, lots of fundamental stuff and then they’d go, “No, no, don’t like that one. You know, it was that kind of thing.
During the process of putting these together, did you play around with your style at all?
A little bit. I was going for more of a kind of a cartoony approach. I mean, most of the stuff that I do in comics is kind of called realistic and it’s not photo-realistic ’cause I’m not using a lot of photo reference or anything like that. But with the comic strip work, I’m trying to make it look more conceivable that it could be, you know, real people running around doing these things. But with this I had a little bit of freedom to try and go for more cartoony, maybe grotesque approach, I suppose.
Are you lined up to do any more of illustrations for the other books in the series that they have planned?
I’m working under the assumption that if the book is successful and it does continue then I will be, you know, supplying interior illustrations for any kind of subsequent issues.
It sounds like you’re certainly open to continuing this or even doing something similar like this down the road at some point?
Well, it really depends what’s offered for me. I mean, at the moment, I’m coming up to the end of working on a limited series for Vertigo called Greatest Hits, and after that I’m going to be working on a Steve Niles project for WildStorm which is about a haunted house type of thing.
For more on Glenn Fabry and Anna Smudge: Professional Shrink, go to WhoIsMrWho.com!
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