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Wonder Woman ©2007 DC Comics

The Secret of

Comic-Con special guest Adam Hughes talks about his 20-year career in comics

Adam Hughes is one of the leading comic book artists working today. He started his professional career during the independent comics boom of the 1980s, and worked his way from small black and white titles onto more mainstream books. When a gig at Comico eventually being hired by DC hired to work on Justice League. Hughes quickly became known for creating covers that sold issues, and his ability to depict female characters with incredible strength alongside gorgeous femininity landed him memorable runs as the cover artist for Wonder Woman, Catwoman, and Tomb Raider; more recently, Hughes illustrated the Star Wars-themed cover for Comic-Con's 2007 Souvenir Book.

On his 20-year career in comics, Hughes said, "I've rounded a strange career corner where I've now got this weird, and I think rather undeserved, respect. I'm reminded of a John Huston line in Chinatown: 'Politicians, ugly buildings, and whores all get respectable if they last long enough.' I guess I've made tenure. People are required to like me now."

During a special "Spotlight" panel on Hughes, Comic-Con awarded him an Inkpot Award for outstanding achievement in the comic arts. Here are some highlights from that event. Scott Klauder of Sideshow Collectibles, for which Adam has designed a series of statues, interviewed Adam.

When did your artistic career begin?

I opened up one of my diapers and said, "Oh, look, the MTV logo." (The audience laughs.) No, my mom had some artwork from when I was five-years-old, drawings of Spider-Man, Batman and Robin, and shows nobody remembers, like Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons and Ultraman.

Everybody in our family was so dumb we would barely get out of high school in one piece. We only had one other artistic person in my family-my uncle-and he was one of the first people that showed me art. He taught photography at the Smithsonian, and that's only because he went to Da Nang, in Vietnam, for 20-months and got to come back and go to college. My uncle would visit with cigarettes, a Manhattan, and Percocet, and actually sit there and say (in a gravelly voice), "Hey, yeah, you ever heard of perspective?" I was six. "Here, I'm going to draw you a barn in perspective. Now go get me another Manhattan." So ever since I was a little kid I learned to draw and mix cocktails.

Do you use Photoshop?

Not when I was six, no.

No, I mean…

I haven't touched real paint in, I don't know how long. In 1996 I was doing a book for Jim Lee called, Gen 13: Ordinary Heroes. [They] put me up in a furnished apartment in La Jolla, California, and an office overlooking the ocean. I didn't have a car, so I used to lurk at WildStorm Effects where they do the coloring, and they showed me the basics.

Do you have plans to put out a bound book of your work?

The illusive Adam Hughes coffee table book. It's slightly more reliably seen than Mr. Snuffleupagus ... I would dearly love to. My problem is that most of the work I do is work-for-hire and getting the rights is quite difficult. We're ready to go, we're just trying to find a legal way to do it.

Do you have any preliminary sketches for your All Star Wonder Woman work?

Absolutely not. I can't keep a secret. When I finish something, I want to show it to my friends, and I felt that this would be the one time I should shroud myself in complete Pentagon secrecy. I'm not going to show anybody anything until it's ready to come out.

I want my All Star book to ship every thirty days, [so] I want all six issues in the can, done, and then we start putting the first issue out. That way, you guys get your comics each month. (applause) Now I can't control the people at DC Comics. I could finish the first issue and they could say, "Great! Solicit!" But my girlfriend came up with the most fantastic thing I've ever heard. My contract says that I have to deliver six issues, written, penciled and inked, of All Star Wonder Woman. It doesn't say in what order. My girlfriend said I should do issues 2 through 6 and then give them the first issue when I'm done. That's magnificent! I went over the contract with a lawyer friend of mine and he said, "You can actually hand them in in any order you want." (He offers a big, evil grin, and the audience laughs.)

Star Wars ©2007 Lucasfilm; Wonder Woman, Catwoman ©2007 DC Comics

Are you changing Wonder Woman's costume?

I don't think there's a need when you're doing something new to just be different. My approach to Wonder Woman on this project is kind of the way Bruce Timm [and] Paul Dini did Batman The Animated Series in the 90s: they took the best of everything that was fun about Batman.

That's what I'm doing with Wonder Woman. I get to tell her origin again, which I think is one of the most enjoyable aspects of her character. I'm going through every version of her sixty-year history and taking the best bits for myself.

[Her costume] is going to look a lot like my covers. I think the guys at DC Direct will like my All Star Wonder Woman because there's going to be enough costume changes to warrant a line of action figures.

Talk about your redesign of Wonder Woman's hair in the regular Wonder Woman series.

I was doing the covers of Wonder Woman for 4 1/2, 5 years. Walt Simonson came on the book for 6-months and one of Walt's story was that Wonder Woman went undercover, so she cut her hair and put on glasses. And I have never talked to more reporters in my life than the month Wonder Woman's haircut premiered. One of them was all very Rona Barrett, gossipy. "So Wonder Woman's haircut! What gave you the idea?" This was March 2003, and I actually said, "Didn't we just invade another country? Isn't there something slightly more newsworthy than the haircut of a 60-year-old cartoon character?" And she was like, "So, short hair?"

What inspired you to draw her lasso like you did on those covers?

The art nouveau lasso that seems to be running with 50-amps through it? The bad thing about Wonder Woman is she doesn't have a cool cape as part of her regular outfit. I know she has her dress cape for proms and mixers and things like that, but basically it's her, her hair, her lack of pants and a top as her costume.

When I was working on the first few Wonder Woman covers, I realized [she] runs around with a quart of over-cooked pasta hanging on her hip. That was really putting me to sleep, so I thought, I like art nouveau, and I studied art nouveau when I was doing Ghost for Dark Horse. So what if I did a cover where the wind was catching the lasso and it was creating an art nouveau shape behind her? And when I was doing it I thought, "Oh yeah!" So I've never drawn the noodles on her hip ever again.

Will other DC heroes appear in All Star Wonder Woman?

Absolutely not. One of my main problems with Wonder Woman is that she only seems to be defined by her relationship to Superman and Batman. I want to show that she can float her own book and only needs her supporting cast: Steve Trevor, Etta Candy and her mother. (applause) Oh yeah, they're all in it.

Will her mom be blond or brunette?

A brunette.

Will this be a World War II story?

There will be lots of war in it, and there may be some Nazis, but I'm not going to commit to anything because I don't want to let the cat out of the bag.

What about the invisible jet versus flying on her own?

I like Wonder Woman as a character who can fly. She looks great soaring through the clouds with the birds; it's a beautiful image. I personally don't like the invisible jet, but I want to put [it] in the story. My job for the fans of Wonder Woman is not to sit there and say I don't like red so Wonder Woman won't have that in her costume. Even the things I'm not particularly a big fan of in her mythology, I feel I should put it in here. So I'm working on a cool way to do the invisible jet, that isn't a woman in a seated position going bzzzzz.

What about Steve Trevor?

My theory on any story is that the villains and sidekicks should be neat enough that they could float their own books. Steve should be a cross between young Steve McQueen, Race Bannon and Sam Shepard's portrayal of Chuck Yeager from The Right Stuff. I think the idea of a princess from a mystical island in the Mediterranean coming to the United States, and her guide to the world of men being this laconic cowboy poet right off a Marlboro ad, going through America is interesting. And unless I screw up completely, there will be more romantic tension then any cruddy Shakespeare story. If I'm lucky.

Are you using the gods in All Star Wonder Woman?

I don't want to speak on who the antagonist of All Star Wonder Woman is because nobody would believe me if I told them. It's one of those things you won't understand until you've read it and then [it] makes perfect sense.

As far as the gods go, I love George Perez's take on Wonder Woman. I love the whole aspect that her origins are tied to the Greco-Roman Gods and I want to incorporate a lot of that-not all of it, but a lot of it-into mine.

Are you creating variant covers for All Star Wonder Woman?

I don't want to. I'm a fan, too. I want to do 7 covers: the 6 for the book and then 1 for the trade paperback.

We know what your covers look like. What can we expect from interior work?

I'm going to be writing, penciling and inking All Star Wonder Woman but Laura Martin, the award-winning colorist of Ultimates and Authority, and Joss Whedon's Astonishing X-Men, is coloring the book. Laura is one of the people from WildStorm Effects that taught me how to color on the computer, so it's like Luke Skywalker asking Yoda for help on a project. I know I can't make every panel look like one of my covers. It can't be that lush, otherwise it would take ten years. So we've come up with a unique compromise where it will have my cover color style but the rest is more graphic, a little more abstract comic colors.

How much information did you have on the Catwoman issues before drawing the covers?

Sometimes I'll get one of Will Pfeiffer's scripts, and sometimes I'll get a synopsis because Will is still writing the script. And then sometimes I'll say, "Can I draw Selina in a pool?" And they'll say, okay.

I did a cover for Legion last year with Supergirl riding a meteor. That was a cover where they said, "Just make sure [Supergirl] is wearing her Legion flight ring." So I did this 1950s Gil Elvgren shot. It looks like a girl sitting on a beach at night. But if you take a second you [realize] the rock is on fire. That's not the ocean, that's the earth under her. She must be Supergirl. (sarcastic) Wow, that's witty! But now they're turning it into a litho, a poster, there's talk of DC Direct making it into a statue, and if you like you can buy the T-shirt (from) Graphitti Designs.