This is a project that was a serious case of nepotism–it was drawn by Brandon Kruse who had been Ty’s artist on twelve issues of Batman and Robin Adventures, thus part of Ty’s Batman family. He asked Ty if he would ink it…Ty agreed to do a couple, but suggested our eldest son, Kellam Templeton-Smith, ink the others. Which left me to colour and letter.
This was done for a website, www.thecrimsonarrow.com. The idea was that The Crimson Arrow was a real superhero who had given up the heroics and was trying to make a go of it as an actor. The comic art and covers were part of the “proof” of his existence. Interestingly, and completely and utterly coincidentally, Ty was working on Hoverboy at the time. (Still is–but Hoverboy as a project has been around for more than a decade.)
The colouring and lettering were to be vaguely Silver Age-y. I spent a bit of time poring over some of Ty’s old comics, and went my own way. I used bigger display fonts than I might have otherwise. These are the original versions of the finished pages–I had to re-do them twice. The first time, it turned out that when they had the costume made for the live action videos, that a yellow stripe was added to each glove. So, in I went into all the files to carefully add a yellow stripe. Then, a month later, to no one’s surprise I was asked to perform some PhotoShop surgery to the ears of the Crimson Arrow. I may eventually put the altered ones up…or I may not!
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KEIREN SMITH 