I had the honor this week of being able to talk with twice Eisner Award nominated artist and currently ranked #2 on Wizard's Top 10 Hot Artists; J.H. Williams III. It was a very enjoyable time in which we talked about his background, his art style & process, and a whole lot more. We had so much fun talking, that the conversation needed to be split into a more digestable size. Part 2 will be posted next week. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I did doing it.

SMC!: At what point did you get bit by the art bug? Was it pretty early on or were you a late bloomer?

JH3: It was pretty early on. I remember drawing for pretty much forever. I don't remember a time when I wasn't drawing.

SMC!: Did you always want to get into comics or did you stumble into it?

JH3: Comics were a very informative thing for me when I was a little kid. I used to read them and draw the characters as a kid, but didn't think much beyond that. I didn't really pay attention to credits, who was drawing what or who was writing, until a certain point when I was a kid. I was also a toy nut, but what kid isn't? I was enamored by these Japanese toys called the ‘Micronauts’ and I was totally ape for them. I had probably everything on those toys that I could find. One day while I was going through a convenience store, a 7-Eleven style convenience store spinner rack that had comics, I came across a Micronauts comic from Marvel and of course I had to buy it right away. I took it home and read it right away; I think it was the very first issue, so I lucked out. I was blown away by the story and the art. Of course there is a bit of biasness in terms of you know, very a...

SMC!: You’re already stuck on the characters...

JH3: ...Yeah, the whole concept of the Micronauts. Here is a story, kind of fleshing out these really bizarre characters and interesting concepts that of course the toys didn't really convey a lot of. Other than just the basics. Here was this great science fiction story on par with Star Wars, really. The art was very unique. Reading it, everything had a sense of sophistication to it which immediately grabbed me and that was finally when I noticed the credits. <laughter>

Not just the bit where it was Stan Lee presents. I pored over every inch of those pages so I knew every little detail, and that's when I discovered, "Wow! Who are these people doing this stuff?" That was Bill Matlow and Michael Golden at the time doing inks. It was just really vivid stuff.

SMC!: Do you still have the issue?

JH3: Yeah. I had gotten rid of them much later in life. I lost a lot of my comic collection at one point, because I was almost homeless at one time so everything had to go. I've gone back and bought those issues.

SMC!: At least things have really turned around for you right now. So that's great.

JH3: Yeah. I was so blown away by that stuff; of course, I wanted to draw the characters based on the comic. I showed those comics to some friends of mine and they were both, “If you like that you should check out this other comic called the uncanny X-Men.” That was Byrne & Claremont and that was just as captivating to my young mind as the Micronauts, but for completely different reasons. At that point, I was completely bonkers thinking, that is what I was going to do, because I knew I can draw at that point. I’ve got to draw comics! I have to be a comic book artist! That was really early in my childhood; I'd have to say it was 8 or 10. To my parents of course, I was insane. I never ever deviated from that path. I didn't give myself a choice or really any other avenue. It was either a do or die kind of mentality.

SMC!: Where your parents are a supportive of you? Or were they, "Oh, you better have a backup!"

JH3: Yeah, they were, “You better have a backup”; they weren't overly keen on the whole thing. But, like I said, I didn't give myself a choice on the psychological level. In high school I considered myself a pretty smart kid. I was pretty bored in school, so I never gave it very much effort. My grades were never that great and I guess it was at a psychological level that I wanted to be a comic book artist. So I didn't apply myself 100% with my education, as I probably should have, in retrospect.

SMC!: Now who's been the greatest influence on you creatively or artistically growing up?

JH3: Oh, Geez... To be honest, it's not any known artists in comics or fine arts. There were lots of guys I was blown away by, like; Michael Golden, Byrne, Simonson, Steranko. They were all great guys. The biggest influence on me and what really triggered my brain…, like I said, I was really bored with school but I had the smarts to do school. I just didn't apply myself. I had this one teacher; I had entered into this program called ROP. It's called Regional Occupational Program, ROP for short. It was an advertising and art design class. It was off campus so me and my other art friends who can draw and stuff, decided to take this class. Well this teacher, his name was Mr. Eckhart; he was more about the thinking behind the drawings rather than the quality of the drawings themselves, which completely changed everything for me. I think that's where all of my heavy design influence comes from now. All the subtext and subliminal design cues and symbolisms in my work now all stems from what that teacher did. I took that class for two years. It really changed everything for me. It made it to where, when I think about drawing I really can't help think about the design of the drawing as well as the quality of the drawing.

SMC!: It definitely shows in your work today, with a very heavy design background. With either your standard layout or on your own time getting creative, what is your favorite medium to work?

JH3: I don't know. I really don't have a favorite medium because I kind of like to dabble in everything. I'm all about looking at tools that I would need to get the desired effect at the time. It’s more about that for me.

SMC!: Over the years you've had the opportunity to write, draw, ink, color, and pretty much everything but edit as far as I'm aware of. Out of all of those facets which is in the most difficult for you to tackle, and why?

JH3: I'd say probably inking has been the toughest for me. When I was a kid, I would try inking all of my own stuff. What kid wouldn't? After a while, I just wasn't happy with the results of inking my own stuff. I would clearly use all the wrong tools. So I just focused on being a penciller, and so for many, many, many years of my career, I disregarded honing those skills until the tail end of Promethia. When I started dabbling in it and doing covers for Marvel, I decided on inking 99% of those myself, because I knew that if I was going to grow creatively I needed to do it. I'd say over the years doing the inks would be the most challenging for me at this point, in terms of making it as polished and clean as I would like. I still don't think it is as clean as it did when I worked with Mick Gray. It just doesn't have the same qualities as that. Some of that is a dexterity control issue. I have a tremor that I have to struggle with. The plus side to inking my own work now is that I really don't pencil anymore. Most of my energy is just focused on doing the drawing with ink now. That's probably one of the reasons why I find it extremely challenging. It can be frustrating sometimes, because like I said, it was a skill I ignored for a very long time so I'm playing catch-up there.

SMC!: So after a rough layout, you go straight into pen work?

JH3: Yeah.

SMC!: Wow! That makes it even more impressive when I look at your pages.

JH3: It frees me up in some ways. But it's a bit daunting at the same time, because if I mess it up, I mess it up. If I make mistakes, I have to find ways to make it look like they're not mistakes. Kind of work with it in that way. I found that when I was penciling, Mick Gray can attest to that, that I penciled so tightly that I can make a photocopy of one of my drawings at high contrast and it would look like ink. Since it was so tight anyways, I just switched what I was using. I think if I fully penciled and then inked you would never see anything come out. I'm just too slow.

SMC!: You did ‘Hellboy: Weird Tales’ and ‘Chase’ as pretty much everybody; you wrote, you drew, etc. Did you find those two experiences more challenging then drawing off of someone else's words, or was it easier for you to put on all of the hats?

JH3: I would say that it was harder and that's primarily why when I did the writing chore on those projects I worked with a writing partner. That's another skill I need to focus and practice on honing. I do have plans to try to write something completely myself at some point. It just has to be the right project. I find that with creating stories I'm really, really good with coming up with the crazy concepts and coming up with bigger picture and knowing where I want to start & where I want to end. I find that the most difficult is the in between stuff and making sure it all fits together. I’d say that with creating stories, I'm really good with coming up with the big idea. When I was working on ‘Chase’, Dan Johnson had a very similar mindset to mine, as far as how weird you would like things to be. So he and I bounced off of each other, which I feel made the work very strong. Same with the ‘Hellboy: Weird Tales’ story, when I worked with Hayden Blackman who actually I plan on doing more work with. We've been working together all along since, on some create our own projects that are sitting on the side waiting for the time of day.

SMC!: Hopefully we'll see them soon.

JH3: It's very challenging. I think that if I sat down, I am pretty confident I can do it. I just don't think I can do it in a very realistically timely fashion, in terms of bringing a paycheck in the house. At some point, when the time is right, I definitely want to do it. I do have some weird concepts for a project I want to do completely myself, that is, I don't know how else to describe it other than sequential poetry.

SMC!: It sounds very interesting.

JH3: I've got a whole ton of writing that is the versed like that. I've got this idea in my head, that I think I can convert it to sequential form. It would be a cool project to do someday, because I don't think it's really been done before. I've seen it done a little bit in mini comics, here and there, but on the level I see it in my brain with the production values and everything. I don't think I've ever seen anything like this done. It's just a matter of convincing the publisher that they should publish this.

SMC!: Which has been the most memorable title that you've worked on? Is there one that has really stood out for you?

JH3: That's a tough question. Each one of them has really stood out for different reasons but the one that jumps out the most, I would have to say is Promethia and my Batwoman work. Promethia sits out so strongly for me because it was the work that I spent the most time on. I worked on that for six years, and that's a long time.

SMC!: And you got a nomination for Best Writer/Penciller with the Eisner awards.

JH3: Yeah, and with that being a large body of work, that's where the ripple started for me. Each one of the projects I've done has... There's something about them that tends to stand on their own.

I hope you enjoyed Part 1. I will be posting up Part 2 next week, where we will be talking about his run on Detective Comics, his future projects, the introduction of "The Ten!", and much more ... In the meantime, stop by his blog at www.jhwilliams3.com where you can see a lot of his work, some of his creative process, and even buy some of his stuff. See ya next week and feel free to comment.