Jeff McComsey's Got It Covered: 'Smedley' Leads The Charge
Dec 28, 2019
by Troy-Jeffrey Allen
Upfront, I want to kick off this installment of "Got It Covered" by personally attesting to artist Jeff McComsey's skill as a storyteller. For the sake of transparency but also praise, I had the pleasure of working with Jeff on a 2012 graphic novel called District Comics: An Unconventional History of Washington, DC. Similar to Smedley - the actual subject of this article - District Comics was a nonfictional, historical journey. The key difference here is that Jeff is writing and drawing Smedley, further showcasing his abilities as a storyteller.
While nonfiction comics are nothing new for the writer-artist, telling the true-life story of Smedley Butler was no small feat. As a matter of fact, the title took a few years to find its final form. "Smedley was a book that I had wanted to do for a few years," McComsey told me. "I knew there was a book there and I knew I wanted to draw it. It took finding the right publisher in Dead Reckoning to make it a reality."
Operating out of Annapolis, MD, publisher Dead Reckoning focuses exclusively on wartime tales. The graphic novel company's banner has already produced titles by creators such as Wayne Vansant (All Quiet On The Western Front), William Woolfolk (Don Winslow of the Navy), Kevin Knodell (Machete Squad), and Garth Ennis (The Night Witches). With the October release of Smedley, Jeff McComsey now joins their ranks with his story of a highly-decorated USMC officer from history. As a matter of fact, it was Major Officer Smedley Butler's medals that inspired the book's cover. "My hope was to entice a reader to find out the story behind those medals and find out how a guy named Smedley earned them," McComsey explains about his cover piece. "With a book about a USMC general, I think you’re going to get people looking at this cover that are going to know if you’re faking it. Luckily, we were able to find some really great reference for Smedley’s rack of medals," Jeff points out.
What did Smedley do to get so many adornments? Well, "Old Gimlet Eye" Major General Smedley Darlington Butler saw military action during the Mexican Revolution, the Philippine-American War, the Boxer Rebellion, the Banana Wars, and World War I. Following World War I, he became a commanding general at Quantico, the Director of Publlic Safety in Philadelphia, and ran for Senate. His post-Senate campaign is where McComsey's book begins. The creator has Butler kick the graphic novel off by recounting his legendary exploits to a group of vets and, coincidentally, the reader.
"The authenticity of Smedley’s decorations - they have to be precise," McComsey says, continuing to describe the detail that went into his cover process. "All the line art was done traditionally - ink on paper. I do work on it in separate pieces and then composite them digitally. After that, it’s Photoshop for coloring. That’s done on my graphics tablet," Jeff concludes.
The level of detail on the cover is a solid representation of the detail and research that went into the book itself. And that doesn't just come out nowhere. Without much prodding, Jeff happily pinpointed where his clear passion for military stories came from? "My first real collecting [of a] comics title was Larry Hama’s G.I. Joe. I had dabbled with the occasional comic here and there, but that was the first title I anxiously awaited and bought back issues of. The TV show hooked me and the comics reeled me in."
More about Smedley:
Smedley (AUG191852) is available in comic shops now.
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Troy-Jeffrey Allen is the producer and co-host of PREVIEWSworld Weekly. His comics work includes BAMN, Fight of the Century, the Harvey Award-nominated District Comics, and the Ringo Awards-nominated Magic Bullet.
