The reason why Dane still had the original covers to The Eradicators #3 and #4 is because he tricked publisher Kris Silver, plain and simple.
Dane told me how it was standard practice at Silverwolf for the artists to make their own arrangements to have their cover art colored. What Dane did was to make a photocopy of the piece and have that colored instead of the original. When he turned in his pages, Silver just looked through the stack and saw that the cover was colored, and that was that.
“Dyes on a photocopy basically, which is what I gave to Silver. I had the art…he didn’t know any better, most of the covers from (Silverwolf) you won’t find in the condition they should be in, which is black and white, because he had the artists paint over their originals because Silver did not know any different. So he got mine and thought he had gotten the originals. But these are the originals.”
“The cover was the first thing I did because he needed it to advertise on the back of issue 2. I had finished the penciling it and had left it on my drawing board at the studio. When I came back a couple of days later, and it was inked with a note saying ‘Dane, this was fun we should work together again’. That was my initial meeting with Tim Vigil.”
I asked about Tim Vigil, “He was fast, precise…Vigil had reached the level, but all of us we were just kind of breaking in…Vigil was accomplished, he was the reason why Silver, I believe, if he had any credibility…he gave Silver some credibility.”
Which led to another great story…
“I was fired in the middle of issue number 3“
“Vigil had to do with the firing for me,” Dane told me, starting to laugh a bit while recalling the tale. “I had made no bones about it in the studio.” He had told Vigil “It’s so hard to draw these guys, they’re horrible.”
“The whole book, it was just so poorly written, and I don’t know how Vigil got into the conversation with Silver, talking about my work being late or something, but Vigil said ‘Well, he hates the characters.” At this point, Kris loses it just a bit… apparently having trouble believing what he just heard.
It’s worth noting that Dane is not throwing Tim Vigil under the bus here, he is getting a good laugh recalling the tale. “That’s just the way he is…he didn’t do it to sabotage anything, he just just lays it out there and if I’m gonna say it, as far as he’s concerned I would say it to anybody, like he would.”
Apparently Silver did not take the criticism well. “So, I did not know (about this). Vigil did not tell me that he said, so I went in blind to my next meeting and we did what business we had to do. I turned in my pages, and then Silver gets there. He pokes me in the chest with his finger and says ‘So, you hate the characters.”
“Well, I’m young and full of testosterone, plus I just got blindsided and I got no excuse…so I said ‘Yeah I do, and if you don’t take your finger off my chest I am gonna kick your ass…” At this point, according to Dane, Kris loses it once again.
“So, long story short, the firing went down right there. Subsequently, I get back home and I go, ‘Aw fuck, I got half the issue done, why did I do that? You gotta be smarter than that Dane. Now you’ve got 15 pages of work you’ve done, and your not going to get paid for them’. So I’m thinking just milk this cow; Silver needs the issue, he has already advertised for it.”
“Vigil feels bad about all this, and he goes down and brokers a deal with Silver where we did not have to see each other, and Tim would act as a go between. Tim would take the pages in and take ultimate responsibility for them being in on time..which was good because those last 9 pages or so still had to get done in 4 days or so, and Vigil ended up helping out on the inking.”
It turned out that Vigil made more acting as a go-between than McCart was paid for the art itself.
Be sure to check out these related post for more great interview insights and artwork from Dane McCart:
These stories are fascinating. I remember meeting Kris Silver at a local Denny’s for meetings and he always offered to buy me lunch, he sure was easily offended though. I used to be that way with my art, until I realized I didn’t know shit about it and decided to listen.
A few years back (well, about 5 years ago I think) I still needed several items that Silver had published, including the four ‘Premier Edition’ Silverwolf books (Dungeoneers, Fat Ninja, Eradicators and Grips), as well as the Roman Morales III Edge portfolio and a few other things. Kris had just started up an online site to sell the stock of stuff he had left that was published and being held in a warehouse (I later learned) and I knew he had most of what I needed.
Problem was that I had been calling him the ‘Ed Wood of Comics’ for a while at that point and I was afraid he would recognize me and refuse to sell me anything. So I went to the trouble of erasing or making sure my e-mail was not posted at the Keith Paquette forums and then sent emails to Kris, pretending to be a fan of his writing as much as I could stand to do so and buying up several comics (which I already had copies of but my real goal were items he had NOT listed on his site. More on this below…) and a few of his paperback ‘novels’.
As we became friendly I would on occasion say something like “Man is it true that your published an entire portfolio by Roman Morales before he worked for Chaos!? I would love to buy that if I could find it…” and he would tell me ‘Yes I have those. I can sell you copies for (a small amount) !”. This song and dance kept going until I had everything he was willing to sell (which unfortunately did not include the Eradicators Portfolio (by Lim), the DragonQuest portfolio (by Vigil) or the Nightmaster portfolio (by Vigil).
I had spoken with other former artists who had dealt with Silver and from them I gathered he was not good at taking criticism which is why I went the route I did.
I’m curious as to which “novels” you were able to purchase. I have Grips: Future Tense #1-3 but not sure if there were more issues produced.