Daniel Warren Johnson's Portfolio Review

Back in July, DC Comics and Image Comics creator Daniel Warren Johnson put out a video calling for 5-page portfolio submissions to review. I had just discovered Murder Falcon, created by DWJ, in January and was blown away by the story I was reading and the amazing artwork that was on display. Not only was the story super fun, a little absurd and had a strong theme, it was a truly touching story and the ending almost had me shedding a tear. I had never experienced something like that from a comic book before despite the many different books that I have read. I instantly became a fan and searched every single past published work that he had. I had been working on 4-6 page script samples at the time, and I felt so inspired that I wanted to write my own script and my own full issue comic book. However, I was not a writer nor did I wish to be. Furthermore, I could not think of any compelling story ideas.

Fortunately, I was heavily watching old school martial arts movies at the time, and was struck by how extensive the fight scenes were. Drunken Master 1, with Jackie Chan had 2 or 3 fight scenes just in the first half an hour alone. I thought it would be cool to have a full comic book with just fighting from start to end and felt I could handle that as a writer. Too many comics featured matchups between 2 characters and just ended the fight in 2 or 3 pages and was very unsatisfying. I felt I could improve on that by focusing on the action. I just needed 2 characters, a location and some momentum swings back and forth before the big finishing move at the end. Throw in some cheesy dialogue and I had something going on. I thought it was cool to have an entire fight scene on the roofs of trains and have the fight end at the same time the train reaches the station, where the winner could dismount and walk away looking cool. And that resulted in Snake Claws in The 13 Carriages of Death.

Fast forward to July, I had just finished all the inked pages and colored 3. When the video came out I quickly finished page 5, prepared a PDF and sent the email, not expecting a sliver of chance. Crazily enough he replied. What was even more crazy was that I did not see the email till 8 hours later. I thought I had blown it and that was it, even if I replied now, it was the middle of the night in Chicago. I'm from Singapore and the timezone is almost completely opposite.

Thankfully, morning for him was night time for me. And I waited anxiously at around 11pm till he replied. We subsequently set up a Skype call and proceeded with the review like you can see in the video link.

I was just trying to keep myself together and not trying to burst with excitement the whole time.

Overall, it was a crazy experience, and I learnt so much just from that short video alone. Composition decisions, importance of silhouettes, tangents. placement of characters, how zoomed in the camera should be, etc. That was exactly the feedback I needed to hear. and it was really motivating and inspiring. I was so thankful he enjoyed it and took the time to actually look at it.

If you are looking for some good comics, go check out Murder Falcon, Extremity and most recently, Wonder Woman: Dead Earth, all written and drawn by DWJ himself. Follow him on instagram here: https://www.instagram.com/danielwarrenart/