Comics on Comics Radio Ghost Whisperer Special: Gabriel Hardman & Joy Blake

Earlier this week, Comics on Comics Radio recorded a special installment dedicated to an upcoming comic book-themed episode of The Ghost Whisperer, which stars Jennifer Love Hewiit. The episode in question is called “On Thin Ice” and features a comic artist whose pages seem to predict a series of supernatural incidents. Our hosts, Sax Carr and Blair Marnell were joined by the artist behind the episode, Gabriel Hardman (Agents of Atlas) along with one of the writers, Joy Blake (Heroes).

You can listen to the entire episode by clicking on the player embedded below.

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For the benefit of our fans without headphones, we’ve also transcribed part of the episode, which you can read after the jump!

SAX CARR: What we’re doing today is a special edition of the radio show to celebrate an episode of the show Ghost Whisperer, which is going to deal specifically with a comic book artist or graphic novelist — so to speak. And with us today, we have Gabriel Hardman, who did all the art for that graphic novel you see inside the episode. Gabriel, nice to hear from you.

GABRIEL HARDMAN: Thanks for having me on!

CARR: Gabriel is also the primary artist on Agents of Atlas and you also did some Skaar: Son of Hulk and… anything else that you should toss in here?

HARDMAN: I also did a creator owned book from Image called Heathentown that was like an original horror graphic novel.

BLAIR MARNELL: Gabriel, how did you get involved with this episode of The Ghost Whisperer?

HARDMAN: With most things, you just get a call from somebody. But I think that the way I got involved was that I’ve been working a storyboard artist for the last decade or so. I’m also drawing comics for Marvel, so I think that when people need someone to do some onscreen comic book artwork I’m kind of an easy guy to go, because I can bridge both of those worlds. So, I got a call from Bruce (Buehner) the art director, came in and met (with him). Everything goes so fast in TV that I was drawing the stuff pretty quick.

CARR: Now, the episode is called On Thin Ice and [it] airs Friday, The description of the episode is “When comic book artist Damon Weaver begins drawing his own run-ins with ghosts before they happen, it is up to Melinda and Avery to discover the secrets behind his art. Avery being current guest star Margaret Cho. Did you get a chance to meet all the relevant people that you would be drawing?

HARDMAN: No, no… I’m sure they were off shooting the previous episode while we were prepping this one. It was about me going in and sitting in on the production meeting and knowing all of the practical elements that were going to go into this and what I would need to draw for the particular pages that you would see of the graphic novel. Which were all very intricately woven into the plot of the episode. There was a lot of coordination involved with that.

CARR: I guess you walk in a lot of worlds. Is receiving the information that you need to portray in these graphic novel panels different from when somebody talks to you about a storyboard or a writer of comic suggests to you what he wants to see. Does it come in a different way?

HARDMAN: Yeah. Well, a lot of it is coming from the script on all of those fronts. Quite a bit of what I ended up drawing into the Ghost Whisperer graphic novel was stuff that was written into the script. But the script is never going to say quite enough to get exactly everything across. It’s all down to casting the supporting characters that are going to be portrayed and the clothing they’re going to wear so that ties into the live action aspect of the show – coordinating all of that sort of stuff. A lot of that [comes from] meeting with Ian, the director of this episode and going to that the production meeting is all about everybody from all of the different departments talking to the director about what he’s going to need and me just taking notes and getting information about how I can incorporate that stuff into the drawings.

MARNELL: Did the show lend itself to being put on a graphic novel page?

HARDMAN: Yeah. I certainly tried to incorporate the feel of the show, while at the same time what they wanted was a more dynamic, exaggerated style. They’re still images on TV, so you want a certain amount of dynamism in it to keep it interesting.

CARR: We would hope that most fans of “Ghost Whisperer” and most fans of comic books sort of crossover. But there’s a chance that you’re portraying the work of a graphic novelist in front of people who aren’t aware [of what that means]. Did you find that was particularly interesting? Did you try to draw it in a way that was approachable for people who don’t pick up “Hulk” every Wednesday?

HARDMAN: I try to do work that’s going to be assessable to people no matter what medium it is. If I’m doing storyboards I’m trying to draw stuff that’s going to be very clear to everyone who’s working on the movie so they know what the director wants and can prepare. If I’m doing comics, my intention is to never pander to people who are just a narrow comic book crowd. I want the stuff to be successful to other people and I want other people to be brought into the comic world as well. The same sort of thing applies to this. I think that I’m doing assessable work for it but I’m also not trying to dumb it down or anything.

MARNELL: Can you give us some insight into the pages that you produced for this show and how they tie into the events of the episode?

HARDMAN: They’re all things that are either drawn by that character or they’re things that are drawn by supernatural means on a screen by a Wacom tablet – a sort of automatic drawing one of the characters does. So there was an elaborate process for me to give the many, many layers of a drawing so that the visual effects could make it as if my drawing was just being drawn on screen as you watched it.

CARR: That sounds really cool.

HARDMAN: Yeah, basically each thing was a separate challenge — God, I’m saying the word coordination over and over again! [laughs] — but [there is] obviously a lot with the help of the art department, visual effects and everybody else. It was about all of these different ways of presenting the drawings being made on screen worked out.

CARR: It’s interesting that Damon Weaver — the character you’re drawing — is not dissimilar from Jimmy Woo in a weird way. He’s a little bit younger, but it must have felt like home. Especially considering that in “Agents of Atlas” I’ve always noticed that Jimmy Woo’s job is essentially to be the guy who can’t take a punch but gets punched anyway. It’s fantastic art — I’m looking at some panels that were shown to us here — and it’s really fantastic.

HARDMAN: Thank you. It’s totally a coincidence that they’re both guys of Chinese decent, but I thought about keeping some of the reference photos I had of the actor to use for some future Agents of Atlas.

CARR: That would be cool! Just knowing that makes me happier… At some point, you were asked to do an artist interpretation of Jennifer Love Hewitt, the show’s star. Is that hard to do as an artist? Because you know that you wouldn’t want to portray her one way or the other. Do you have to just stay very photo realistic? Because she’s the most important person involved in that entire project and they’ve asked you to depict her as you see her. Do you ever become concerned? Because of all of the people to draw, the person who is essentially your boss has got to be the hardest.

HARDMAN: Well, I suppose so [laughs]. But it’s not a problem though. Absolutely she’s the boss and I’m trying to do as nice a job as possible on the drawing of her. If anything, the only real thing about it that’s fraught is making sure you get a likeness of somebody, which is always kind of difficult. It’s something I do reasonable well so I was fairly confident it would work out.

CARR: It certainly does [come out well] and considering she’s been called one of the most beautiful women in the world according to countless magazines for several years in a row, I think you’ve done her good justice.

MARNELL: Of the images that you drew for that episode, which were your favorites?

HARDMAN: I think my favorite stuff to draw was an illustration that was a multi-panel page of black and white work that you see on his drafting table. It’s always fun for me to do black and white stuff and I always feel I’m most confidant doing that and I felt like that piece came out particularly well.

CARR: In the course of this project, did you pick up the IDW comic about the show itself?

HARDMAN: You know, I’ve seen the comic but I haven’t actually gotten the chance to pick it up, so I couldn’t really speak to it. But it looks great!

CARR: I actually haven’t read a full issue myself, but the art is great, which I enjoy. Did you have a distinct style of drawing that you were trying to do? Did you decide that Damon had a particular style of drawing that you wanted to put in?

HARDMAN: I had to keep things fairly naturalistic, because I had to portray the likenesses of the actors in the show. If you’re not getting that [the artwork is meant] to be the actor, then the show isn’t working. That said, I tried to push the dynamism of it. The director had given me some Manga themed reference that I think was just meant to say “don’t be too conservative and make sure that it’s action-packed looking and doesn’t get too stale. But I didn’t have a really specific that I was going for, I was just coming up with something that made sense for the episode.

For the extended interview with Hardman, including a look ahead at his new Atlas series, along with our full interview with Joy Blake, check out the full Comics on Comics Radio episode!

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