We talked with Russell two years ago when Dark Horse published the first issue of Rhinegold (the first chapter of The Ring), and we spoke with him again recently to see how much has changed in that two-year span, and what it feels like for an artist to attain his career-long goal. Also, read through to the very end to see what future collaboration Russell is planning with Sandman great Neil Gaiman!
Shawna Ervin-Gore: Considering the finished length of The Ring series, I'm wondering if you kept track of how long it took you to finish all of the work for the series?
P. Craig Russell: Yes (laughs). There are two ways of looking at it. Working in terms of my Dark Horse contract, it was about a five-year project, but part of the contract involved me inking about 300 pages of Star Wars projects, and I laid-out and inked another 26-page Star Wars book, so that was all included. So, it was about five months for me to do the layouts on the 424-page version, and then almost exactly three years for me to draw it.
SE-G: Wow -- that's a great amount of time for one story. How early did you start working on it before Dark Horse began actually publishing the issues?
PCR: I tried to get as much of it done as I could before it was even scheduled. I had done the first act of Valkyrie, two acts of Siegfried, and then I began Rhinegold.
SE-G: So you didn't do the series in order, then?
PCR: No, I hopped all over, really. I started on the fifth issue, then I did issues eight and nine, and then I went back and started on the beginning. I wanted to have a nice chunk of it done before the first issue was published.
SE-G: Before your editors started hounding you to keep up with your deadlines, you mean?
PCR: (laughs) Yeah, I wanted to have a lot of it in the bank and other parts of it at least started. Knowing that some of the later parts were done made the whole thing seem less daunting.
SE-G: I've seen a few scenes from The Ring that were done many years before this -- there's a very popular scene of Siegfried and the dragon that comes to mind. How many scenes from the story did you toy with over the years as you mentally prepared yourself to finally tackle it?
PCR: Well, I did that finished eight-page sequence you mention of Siegfried and the dragon in the late 70s for Marvel's Epic Magazine. Then I began laying out Rhinegold, and I laid out about forty pages of basically the first two scenes, and then I put that away. When I looked at it when I began working on it again, there was really nothing I could use -- my storytelling style had changed so much. But I did actually make an attempt to begin this whole thing back in 1979. And I've also done some portfolio work, which we excerpted in the back pages of the Rhinegold issues.
SE-G: Having seen a lot of that portfolio work, one thing I wondered was how much modern fashions have influenced your art -- and I bring this up because your original model for the first version of Siegfried you drew had sort-of a '70s, curly, full hairstyle, whereas the Siegfried in the comics series wears a more modernly-classic short cut. How do you decide what styles are most appropriate for such a classic story?
PCR: It is easy to be influenced by your model's hair, I guess. The first model I used for Siegfried had this mop of naturally curly hair. Whereas the model I used this time just had shorter hair, and I liked that. Certainly with, say, Brunhildé, that hair is very much a designed hairstyle that I came up with, so it's a little bit of each. It's the same way with Woton. The beard and the hair on him is something I designed, and it certainly wasn't on my model.
SE-G: Your work on this series earned you two Eisner Awards, for best series and best artist, as well as a Harvey nomination or two --
PCR: And don't forget Lovern (Kindzierski) and Galen (Showman) were also nominated for Eisners for colorist and letterer, respectively...
SE-G: Oh, right. So you were recognized in a very formal way by the comics industry. Did you hear much from your industry peers on what they thought of the book outside of the awards? Did anyone think you were crazy for attempting such a complete version of the project?
PCR: I had really positive feedback from lots of people, actually. Most of my friends and the people I've known well knew that I was planning this for a very long time. So I got more feedback than usual on this. You sort of work in isolation as a comics artist, and unless you live in New York or the Portland/Seattle area, you don't always see your peers until you go to the conventions. So it was nice to hear from people like Frank Miller, who wrote to tell me that he liked it. It was very encouraging.
SE-G: You mentioned that you had worked on a number of the scenes -- or at least thought extensively about them -- quite a while before you actually began work on this series. When you finally sat down to do the series, was there anything that had changed dramatically from the first time you thought of it to the time when you actually sat down to draw it on the page?
PCR: Oh, yes. When I did my first set of layouts -- the 424-page version -- the ending of Gotterdamerung was, I don't want to say "loose," but I put everything in there, and it took a lot of space. I had this idea in my head that it was a little flabby. And I knew that when I got around to doing it several years later, that I'd want to tighten it up. Which I did. I knocked about 20 pages out, which makes it a lot leaner. And still we have a 20-page, virtually silent sequence that ends the book. Before that it had been about 40 or 50 pages.
SE-G: When you finish such a massive project, do you experience anything like withdrawls after being so deeply involved in one project for so long?
PCR: Yes, but technically I'm still dealing with it, since we're working on the book collections now. But it was a very strange feeling when I finished the art. You have the inertia of moving forward constantly when you're creating something like this, so it's hard to simply stop. On the last work jag I had, I started January 2 (of 2001) and worked until, I think, April 28. I believe I took two days off that whole time, and I was working breakfast to bedtime. That's one of the nicest things about working like this is that every morning when I come downstairs, there's all this work on the board that I did the day before. So every morning on the way to the kitchen, I'd pass through the studio and look at what I did the day before, and it's always nice to see that progress being made. The first week after I finished this, I'd come down every day and stop in front of the drawing board and there was nothing there. It was like the engine was idling and there was nowhere to go (laughs).
SE-G: And where to start after ending a project like that!
PCR: Yes. First I had this idea that I would start this Buffy story, which is also part of my Dark Horse contract (the short story "Presumptions" from the collection Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Tales of the Slayers -- ed.), and I thought I'd get to it right away. Then I decided to clean the studio first and take a couple of days off. Then it was two weeks, then four weeks (laughs). It took me about three months to finish an eight-page story after that. So once you get knocked off that horse and you lose that momentum, it's really difficult to get back on track again.
SE-G: Do you think it was especially difficult since you didn't write the Buffy story, or because it wasn't your idea originally?
PCR: No, it was pretty much the same, actually. It was quite like working from the libretto I had for the Wagner material. It was a Jane Espensen script, and she had pretty much worked it out, panel by panel, as a forty-panel story. But once I started working with the story -- I'm always fiddling around with these things -- it ended up being a 78-panel story. But my approach was basically the same -- tying to extract all of the marrow out of the bones, finding ways to take the words and give them a little more visual heft. That Buffy story was fun, though. I drove to Virginia Beach to see my family and while I was there I did the layouts for the Buffy story. And I really liked Jane's story. It was really good, and I was very happy with how it turned out.
After that I wanted to get started on Murder Mysteries, but I did take a couple of weeks to draw another Oscar Wilde story.
SE-G: Do you have plans to publish that with someone?
PCR: Eventually. NBM has published three volumes already, but first I'd have to finish the other 15-page story to fill out the album. So I think after Murder Mysteries, I may be able to squeeze in some time to finish that. So now I'm on yet another work jag...I'm supposed to be done with Murder Mysteries by the end of February, and I'm racing against the clock.
SE-G: How is it working with Neil Gaiman again?
PCR: It's terriffic. This is our fourth project together. Three out of the four have been adaptations of his stories.
But between all of that and trying to wrap up work on the Ring collections, I've got quite a bit of work ahead of me.
SE-G: It really won't be over `til the fat lady sings, will it?
PCR: (laughs) Yes. I'll believe my work is done when I have both of those books in my hands.
The Ring of the Nibelung, Volume 1 collects more than 200-pages of story into a full-color, soft-cover book, available from your local comic shop and select booksellers starting April 3, 2002. Look for the second volume of The Ring of the Nibelung to follow in July.