IN THE WINGS

Jennifer K Mahal

What Dan Kemp does for a living can be summed up rather quickly, if

cheekily. He puts the color in Spiderman’s tights. He also puts the

orange-yellow flames in Ghost Rider and will soon return to adding some

darker hues to Spawn.

Kemp, a Costa Mesa resident, is a comic book color master. For those

of you who think that means he just stays between the lines, you haven’t

been looking at his work. The way he uses color has the power to give

atmosphere, to suggest mood, to tell a story.

“Kemp is doing something with the color, though, that is really

bringing this stuff to life,” said Paul Weissburg, a critic at o7

https://comicbookgalaxy.comf7 , of Kemp’s work on The Amazing Spiderman

No. 34, “Big Bang.”

Creating a comic is a series of five processes -- writing, penciling,

inking, coloring and printing.

“The colorist is the guy who goes in there and gives it 3-D shape,”

Kemp said, over a tuna sandwich at the Gypsy Den Cafe.

The 24-year-old has been working in the comic industry since 1995. He

colored Daredevil’s return, written by Kevin Smith of “Clerks” fame. He’s

worked on Midnight Nation, a series written by J. Michael Straczynski,

who created “Babylon 5” for television.

This week, he’s been coloring Straczynski’s Spiderman script about the

World Trade Center.

“It’s hard-core,” Kemp said. “It’s exciting for me to be involved with

such an awesome creation.”

Kemp, a practicing Buddhist, has a lot of similes for his work.

Color is like chess -- which he started studying recently -- in that

he’s always thinking about the moves ahead.

“It’s like the Beatles,” he said. “They got to the point where they

had already done all of the obvious work and then it was the time to do

everything we shouldn’t be expecting.”

Kemp also writes music.

“For people who think that every song has been written, I would say

that they haven’t studied music,” Kemp said. “Only a few have been done.”

Kemp’s notes are hue and saturation, light and dark values.

“Think of how many combinations there are,” he said. “Then there are

all of the themes, emotional themes . . . where art forms start to cross

each other.”

It was a friend that inspired Kemp to go into the world of comics.

While going to high school at Lake Braddock Secondary School in Virginia,

he met John Bergerud, a 20-something-year-old who worked in the local

video arcade. Bergerud started a comic, “Godhead,” which sold 3,000

copies for his own label, Anubis Press.

“He made a buck per copy,” Kemp said. “That got me thinking.”

Though he wasn’t heavily into comics, Kemp became inspired to start

his own. He wrote it, found people to pencil and ink it, but couldn’t

find a colorist. So he took over the duties himself.

Kemp got interested and started to study the way color was being used.

He said he took advantage of the open field in the world of colorists in

order to get into comics.

“I didn’t go up against a barrier,” he said.

Kemp taught himself Photoshop, conning his high school teacher to let

him teach it, even though he was still learning it. After graduating, he

went to community college in Sacramento -- “I said, that’s where Bruce

Lee’s from” -- and decided to create a portfolio.

From the beginning he started to get job offers. Spawn’s Steve Oliff

invited him to come to his studio, in his garage. Kemp, then 18, started

hanging out with him, learning some of the tricks of the trade.

“The artists taught me that I was an artist,” Kemp said. “I didn’t

know this stuff. I was going into it as a schemer.”

He left Oliff and started working for Extreme Comics, which he

describes as a “sweatshop,” working 12 hour days as a norm.

“I went in there as the guy with no art experience,” Kemp said. “I

went in there as the guy with more ambition than the rest.”

After a disagreement with the bosses at Extreme, Kemp found himself

working for Brian Haberlin on Spawn.

“I’m one of the luckiest guys you’ll ever meet,” he said, describing

how Haberlin had asked a number of colorists to work on Spawn, only to be

turned down because they were all busy.

His partnership with Haberlin continues to this day.

Kemp has a number of non-coloring projects in the works, including

music and a film.

“I’ve gotten out of the art form of pleasing people and into the art

form of pleasing myself,” Kemp said.

* * *

Do you know a local artist, writer, painter, singer, filmmaker, etc.,

who deserves to get noticed? Send your nominee to In The Wings, Daily

Pilot, 330 W. Bay St., Costa Mesa, CA 92627, by fax to (949) 646-4170 or

by e-mail to o7 [email protected]

* JENNIFER MAHAL is features editor of the Daily Pilot.