Christian Ward On Meeting and Being Gifted Art From Frank Quitely - Creator Owned Art

Christian Ward is an Eisner Award-winning writer and artist best known for his work on Batman: City of Madness for DC Comics and Aquaman: Andromeda with Ram V, Black Bolt with Saladin Ahmed for Marvel Comics, Blood Stained Teeth with Patric Reynolds and Invisible Kingdom with G. Willow Wilson at Image Comics, and Spectregraph with James Tynion IV for DSTLRY. Ward will write DC's Two-Face ongoing series with artist Fabio Veras next!

I asked Christian about his favorite piece of art from his collection as part of my Creator Owned Art series. Here’s what he said:

This is an original, Frank Quitely.

Quitely is my favorite comic book artist, without a shadow of a doubt. I had just started in comics, and I'd just done a book called Olympus, which I never talked about because I fell out with the writer REDACTED. It was my first Image book.

And I went to Forbidden Planet in London, and Frank Quietly was doing a signing. He never did signings, like ever; he just didn't do them. So I was like, I'll go and introduce myself. So I went down and was so nervous because he was like God to me. And you probably think I'm quite confident and pretty self-assured or whatever. But ten years ago, I wasn't; this is something I've become. And I was timid and really nervous. I introduced myself. And I brought my little portfolio of my work with me.

So I showed him my work. And he was so impressed. And he sat next to Jamie Grant, the colorist on All-Star Superman. And they were all looking at my work and just like digging it. And right there and then, they invited me to go and stay with them in Glasgow. They didn't know me. And I was just like, “Yeah, yeah. Absolutely.”

A couple of months later, I was on the train going to Glasgow. Jamie used to live in Grant Morrison's Glasgow flat. There are two bedrooms, one of which is Jamie's and one of which is Grant's and Kristans, their wife. And they’re just like, “Oh, yeah, James, yeah, yeah, you can come up and stay, and you can stay in. It's all fine.”

So keep in mind Arkham Asylum means everything to me. I go into his room into the bedroom he shares with their wife. And I'm in their bed, surrounded by photographs of them. I'm not in the industry yet. I'm on the verge of being in it, but I'm not in it yet. And I'm lying there like this. “What's happening? How am I here? This is insane.”

So that happened. And then I went, and Jamie took me to Hope Street Studios, where Frank’s artist collective studios he has in Glasgow, or at least did. I sat there drawing while he was working on Batman and Robin, but it hadn't even been announced at this point. And he was showing me pages, and I was like, I was losing my mind.

One thing that happened between when I met him at Forbidden Planet and when I went to visit him, as I reached out to him, I said, I've got this Image Comics book coming. We need variant covers. Could I get a variant cover for issue one? Now, I didn't know at the time, this was how clueless I was, that Image Comics don't pay you. It's all creator-owned. So it's up to the creators to, you know, if you want to make what you make work, but Image does not pay you money. It's all based on royalties. So they make their money when the book sells, they take some of that, and then you have the rest.

They don't pay anything, which is why if a book does really well at Image, you're minted because it's not the publisher making the money; you are, but equally, you take the risk. So I didn't really know, even though I was working with Image.

So, I asked for this cover from Frank Quitely. He says, “Absolutely, I'll do your cover for issue one. No problem.” And then I'm emailing Image, saying, “Oh, who pays him?” And Image are like, “You pay him.” And I'm like, “I can't pay him. I don't have any money,

I told Frank I was just like, ”I don't have money. I look like such an idiot. I didn't realize I couldn't pay you. So, you know, thank you, but you know, for the offer, but like, I can't give you anything for it.” And he still did it. He still agreed to the cover. He liked my work. He liked the book and the art I was doing in the book. So he did the cover. And then, as I was leaving Hope Street, having spent two or three days with them, drawing next to Frank Quitely, he reached down the side of his thing, pulled out the original, and gave it to me.

So not only did I get a cover from him completely free, like he didn't charge me, just out of the goodness of his heart, because he saw something in me that he thought, “Oh, this, this guy's decent.” And he gave me the original, and I'm not joking; I was on the train going home, and my legs were shaking. You know that thing where your legs shake when you meet someone exciting for the first time? It was like that over a piece of paper, like just shake, shake, shake. Oh, my God. And like, my mind was just like, someone's going to mug me for this. Not that anyone bloody would, because why would they? Because for them it's nothing. But I was like, this is the most precious thing in the world. So, this is it.

He did an amazing drawing. He's a decent man. The fact that he's drawn a character you designed and created is just amazing. Amazing. So that's it.

BONUS:

This one's quite special to me, but it's not the most special. It's an original James Jean. This is the cover of Umbrella Academy's number three.

I've had so many creators reach out to me who want this. I'm like, “No, it's mine.” James and I used to talk on AOL. AOL chat was like the start of the internet. And I don't even know how, but we connected on AOL chat.

And we were friendly for years. I mean, that must have cost me $400. Yeah. I Don’t even want to guess how much it’s worth now. It's got to be up there, though, right? It was a steal, not that I ever thought of it as something I could sell. It was because I was mates with him and I loved his work. And it was hilarious.

I remember when I was really poor; this was before I started getting into comics. And I loved his paintings, and I was going to commission him to do a painting. He was just going to do a commission just for me. And I was a big fan of Akira. He agreed. He was going to charge me; it was like $600 for a painting. Unfortunately, I couldn’t justify spending $600 on the painting, so it didn’t work out.