Editor’s note: From the 1950s through the early 1970s, Macon was an unexpected hub of world renowned music thanks to names like Little Richard, Otis Redding, James Brown and the Allman Brothers. These days, Macon’s creative spark has manifest as an unexpected hub of world class comic book creators thanks to Tony Harris, Craig Hamilton and Ray Snyder. This week, the focus is on Tony Harris, the award-winning co-creator of books like “Starman” and “Ex Machina.”
At first glance, Tony Harris is a man surrounded by death, both eloquent and otherwise. Blood and guts and guns and people’s chopped off heads. The rooms of his office are filled with military uniforms and memorabilia from World War II. In the kitchen, he keeps a wall of automatic weapons. Posters and books about the undead abound.
Appropriately, no one comes through the front door without the ominous warning of a stained glass skull and crossbones window, the dreaded Jolly Roger. Usually a sign you’ll soon be dead — or boarded and pillaged at the least.
This could be the headquarters of an anti-establishment militia. Or a pirate. (Or a pirate militia.)
But the weapons are props and the uniforms are costumes, and collecting both a little bit of a pastime for Harris. The horror stuff — from Nosferatu to The Mummy — is likewise as much his job as his hobby.
They are an inspiration and his work.
Harris is among the most respected illustrators in comics, and the office of his Jolly Roger Studio is a living museum for a 21-year career that has fostered numerous awards and recently spawned a 300-plus page retrospective book, “Art & Skulduggery.”
Enter at your own risk
Harris has cultivated gruffness, and for plenty of folks, it seems that’s as far as they get with him. But his friends and colleagues repeatedly note his devotion to his family, often giving it equal footing with his accomplishments in art.
Regardless, sitting across from him can be daunting. Harris has a set of diamond-sharp eyes that can bore holes through you or welcome you with the warmth of a whiskey drink. His manicured beard rides crisply off his jawline, accentuating the hangdog seriousness in his face. He could walk unsuspected into any biker bar.
If he hadn’t been an artist, he says, he may have ended up as a U.S. Marine. That makes sense. Born in Charleston, S.C., Harris moved around a lot with his military family, settling in Warner Robins, where he finished high school. It was then he started getting into comics, which is late in life compared to most of his contemporaries.
He told his dad he wanted to be a comic book artist and his dad gave him a year to give it a shot.
Commuting from Warner Robins, Harris studied under Craig Hamilton, a Macon native whose work on the Aquaman series had turned him into a young celebrity.
“When I came up, you sort of interned with a working professional,” Harris said. “That’s sort of the age-old way of apprenticing with someone who is already a master.”
Hamilton said though he is “a pushover for anyone with talent and drive,” he wanted to help because the life Harris wanted is a hard one.
“It’s a tough life,” Hamilton said of the struggles artists face. “I think one of the most horrifying things a parent can hear is: ‘I want to be an artist.’ They don’t want to see their children suffer.”
In those days, like now, Hamilton attracted a community of artists, and the resulting parties became an interruption to the work he and Harris were supposed to be doing.
Fed up, Harris drew a rough skull and crossbones, warning: “Artists at work! Enter at your own risk!”
That was how Jolly Roger Studio started, a simple line in the sand to create a space where he could get down to business.
Cutting his teeth
In search of a writer, Harris found Seaborn Mercer and created his first comic: “B.L.A.D.E.” The comic is not to be confused with the Marvel Comics vampire killer. In fact, Marvel didn’t want the confusion either and issued the young men a “cease and desist” letter. Though the comic lasted only two issues — that sold a whopping 5,000 copies — Harris was on his way.
He met some folks in Atlanta and started Gaijin Studios with them, using those connections to get his foot in the door with some indie outfits.
“You get in the trenches and you do what you have to do and you draw what people tell you to draw.”
His first big break was on the “Nightmare on Elm Street” comic books. It was a start, but it wasn’t the launching pad to where he is now. It was almost a false start.
Though he hesitates to describe the event that derailed his young career — vaguely calling it “a personal tragedy” — it was obviously serious. It almost wrecked him.
He returned to Macon, and slept at Craig Hamilton’s to avoid the humiliation of moving back home. In the process, he lost all his contacts in the industry. And that was on top of having built a reputation for missing deadlines.
If Tony Harris was going to be a comic book artist, he’d have to start over.
‘It’s a story of redemption’
The Green Lantern saved Tony Harris. Kind of.
Before disappearing from the industry, Harris met writer James Robinson at a convention in San Diego. The two talked about reinventing an old DC property called “Starman.” Months passed and Harris crashed, working to get back on his feet. He got the jolt he needed when he heard Robinson was considering another artist, thinking Harris had passed on the project.
Harris called on everyone he knew to send the word out that he was still interested. Unbeknownst to him, Robinson and DC series editor Archie Goodwin, who would become a mentor to Harris, still wanted to test him before turning over the keys to the car.
They put him to work on a Green Lantern story. With writer Ron Marz, Harris hatched out and illustrated a story about a farmer on a planet infested with vampires who becomes one of the Lanterns, a beholder of that powerful, signature ring.
It was enough to prove himself worthy and he stayed on “Starman” for 45 issues.
As he rebuilt his career, Harris was also stockpiling ideas he wanted to work on that were more left of center than the mainstream work he was doing.
“So, you do mainstream work initially, and I took that and went back the other way,” he said.
One of those forays away from the mainstream was “Obergeist: Ragnarok Highway,” a story about a Nazi scientist who struggles for atonement after he’s given psychic abilities by one of the Jewish men he experimented on and forced to see the full scope of the horrible things he’s done.
Originally the story was going to be published by DC, but an executive killed the project after reading the first installment. He only saw the horror, the Nazi icons and torturous death. Harris, crushed by the decision, saw something completely different in “Obergeist.”
“It’s a story of redemption.”
Apparently, several others saw beauty in it too. “Obergeist” was picked up by Top Cow and collected as a “Director’s Cut Edition,” then recently re-released as an autographed limited edition hardback.
The Great Machine
Rhett Thomas, a Macon-based editor of special projects for Marvel Comics, said Harris is among the industry’s rock stars now.
“Tony is very highly regarded, not only with fans but with creators. He’s got a huge profile,” Thomas said. “He can say he wants to do cover art, and Marvel and DC will say, ‘OK.’ ’’
Ever the pirate, Harris has also stirred some controversy with his loyalty to “photo reference,” the practice of using photos to draw, which dates back to the “Golden Age” of comics.
“Some people think it’s like tracing,” Thomas said, adding that some “guys doing it are just ripping off pictures from the Internet.”
However, Harris is different.
“Tony is almost like a film director,” Thomas said, because Harris arranges shots, costumes and poses his models. “Tony is a great storyteller.”
This is perhaps most obvious in “Ex Machina,” the series he co-created with Brian K. Vaughan, a writer and producer for the TV show “Lost.” It tells the story of Mitchell Hundred who is “the Great Machine.” the world’s only real superhero, he becomes the mayor of New York City, having kept one of the planes from hitting the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001.
Most of the characters in the Eisner Award-winning “Ex Machina” are real people, dressed up and photographed. Pointing to a large, photo-filled box, Harris said his wife, Stacie, suggested a follow-up to “Art & Skulduggery” exclusively of his photo reference work, photographs side-by-side with the artwork.
If it happens, many of the photos would be of Maconites, which is just another way he’s put the city on the map.
“I’m sure a lot of people in the industry know Macon exists just because of Tony,” Thomas said.
In development hell
Harris has drawn every major character you can name: Superman, Batman, Spiderman, Iron Man, Conan, The Hulk and Wolverine to name a few.
He’s created his own stories and even had some — “Ex Machina” and “War Heroes,” which he co-created with Mark Millar, the writer of “Wanted” and “Kick-Ass” — optioned for movies. He’s worked directly for Hollywood studios, too.
For a year, he even illustrated “This Happened to Me,” reader-submitted stories about hunting accidents, for Outdoor Life Magazine.
What else is there to do? Plenty, Harris says.
“I’ve got a list of projects that either are or have been in development for 10 years, and I haven’t done half of them yet.”
He just finished “The Further Adventures of Whistling Skull,” a new Steampunk-flavored creation of his, written by B. Clay Moore.
But tauntingly on the horizon for the past 12 years is Roundeye, the character that adorns the front of “Art & Skulduggery.” Despite the braided beard, the full-on Samurai assault and the hat-wearing raccoon looking over Roundeye’s shoulder, there’s definitely something familiar about his face.
It’s Tony Harris, and not just the likeness. The intensity is there, furrowed brow and gruff, fierce expression. Maybe this is what his soul looks like — this raging warrior, slashing first and, well, slashing some more, with his friends so close they literally have his back.
No matter. He and his work are inseparable. He lives in his art. To end one would mean the end of the other.
“I’ll never retire,” Harris said. “Not as long as people buy my work and I can still hold a pencil.”
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