Alfred Alcala
by Mark Evanier
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED 5/5/00
Comics Buyer's Guide
A true master of comic art, Alfredo P. Alcala, died on Saturday, April 8. This followed several years of ill health that had included several strokes and battles with the cancer that ultimately took his life.
Many who are reading this know him as the guy who inked Swamp Thing for DC and Conan the Barbarian for Marvel. He did those jobs and many others, but they represented only a fraction of his achievements — and not even a very large fraction. In his time (and native country), Alfredo was one of the giants…a huge celebrity to comic readers of the Philippines, and an inspiration for artists everywhere.
Alfredo Alcala was born in the Philippines on August 23, 1925. At an early age, he discovered American comics and began obsessively copying them from such reprints as could be obtained in his land. His three favorites were Hal Foster's Prince Valiant, Alex Raymond's Flash Gordon and the comic book work of Lou Fine, and he filled thousands of pieces of paper with his studies, often working on wrapping paper or whatever drawing surfaces were available.
Clearly, he was born with an artist's eye for detail, and a sense-memory that retained for future reference, every single thing he saw. In his pre-teen years, during the Japanese occupation of the Philippines, these skills afforded young Alfredo the opportunity to act as a spy.
He would ride his bicycle past Japanese camps — facilities where you'd be shot if they caught you with a camera. Once out of range, he would sit down under a tree, haul out a pad and draw what he'd seen, from memory. Then he would bicycle over to the Allies' installation and turn in his sketches.
At the same time, he began drawing daily cartoons in school, which he proudly pinned up in the hallways for all to see. After classes, he sought out odd art jobs. "I did everything you could do in the Philippines to earn money drawing," he once said. He suffered from no lack of bravado: When he heard of an opening for an experienced chandelier-designer, he walked in, got the job, and then attempted — successfully — to figure out just how one designs a chandelier.
From comic strips and books as his inspiration, he soon graduated to renowned illustrators such as J.C. Leyendecker, Frank Brangwyn, Howard Pyle and Norman Rockwell. He began to deluge publishers with submissions of anything of an illustrative nature they might buy — paintings, illustrations, even comics. They were done in a multiplicity of styles, many of them signed with pseudonyms, so that the editors wouldn't realize that they all came from the same drawing board.
Finally, shortly after his 23rd birthday, he placed a small illustration with Bituin Komiks. Before the year was out, Alfredo Alcala was in the pages of Ace Publications, the largest publisher in the Philippines, and well on his way to becoming a mainstay of their line of comics — for reasons of quantity as well as quality.
His output was the stuff of which comic book legends are made, and even Alfredo was at a genuine loss to confirm or deny some of the more outrageous tales of his speed and 'round-the-clock work habits. Even applying the most stringent standards of skepticism, however, it's clear he produced work at superhuman rates.
Such feats would have been impressive, even had the work been sparse and filled with cut-corners. But if anything, Alfredo's work suffered from too much drawing. He had a love of detail; of modelling everything with finely-feathered brushwork. At times, it seemed cluttered — especially when maladroitly colored, or when he inked the work of another artist who had not designed with such rendering in mind. But when applied correctly, it made for utterly-compelling illustration, drawn single-mindedly and deliberately to ensnare the reader in its spell.
There were many secrets to his productivity, chief among them a willingness to work for days straight, sans sleep, and an unabashed love of drawing. And it wasn't only his own drawing. Alfredo might well have committed himself to producing a Herculean amount of work in the next 72 hours…but if a budding artist happened by in need of art tips, the deadline could always wait.
Still, the primary secrets were his confidence and inventiveness. Over the years, he fashioned a series of fountain brushes — like fountain pens, only brushes — that enabled him to draw without pausing to dip.
Then, in the seventies, he happened upon a mass-produced plastic fountain brush that the Pentel company put out, containing colored dyes. He bought one, drained the dye and refilled with India Ink…to amazing success. (At least in his hands. Other artists who tried it, even using Alfredo's own brush, could not make it do what they wanted it to do.)
When he heard Pentel was discontinuing the item, Alfredo attempted to stock up, raiding art supply shops and even phoning the manufacturer. Wherever he called, he told them what he was doing with them…and they told him it was scientifically impossible. "India Ink," they said, "will harden quickly and clog the barrel permanently."
That would have been true, had it been almost any other artist…but Alfredo was something of a mad scientist of art supplies. He calculated ways to thin the ink and how to clean his implements and prevent calamities…and, anyway, his fountain brush never stopped moving long enough for its contents to coagulate.
They were in perpetual action throughout the sixties as Alfredo wrote, drew and lettered hundreds of comic pages per month. He was ubiquitous on Filipino newsstands and, when one publisher became hopelessly backstocked on Alcala art, it bowed to the inevitable. A comic book was started wholly to showcase his work, its title being roughly the Tagalog equivalent of Alfredo Alcala's Comics and Stories.
Many of the stories he wrote and drew were tales of Voltar, a heroic barbarian. The character attained great fame among local comic buyers, and his stories garnered several awards from the Filipino comic art community.
When he would later revive his creation in America, fans would assume he was imitating Marvel's Conan the Barbarian comic, with which he was then associated as inker-embellisher. In truth, though Voltar was inspired by Robert E. Howard's Conan novels, Alfredo's barbarian hero had first appeared in 1963. This was a full seven years before Roy Thomas and Barry Windsor-Smith adapted Conan for American comics.
Alcala's transition to drawing for the American market began in the early seventies when an intermediary arranged for a group of artists in the Philippines to sell work to DC Comics. Alfredo often told the tale of going to a hotel in Manila to show his samples to Joe Orlando, one of DC's senior editors.
Orlando was naturally impressed with the quality of the work he was shown. He told Alfredo that DC would hire him and asked how many pages per week he could produce.
"Forty," said Alfredo.
The editor was startled. The least exhaustible DC artist would be hard-pressed to pencil and ink ten pages in a week. Then he realized that Alfredo probably assumed he would only pencil or only ink. "No, no," Orlando said. "We want you to do all the art…pencil, ink, even lettering."
"I see," Alfredo muttered. "I pencil, I ink, I letter?"
"Yes," Orlando nodded. "Now, how many pages per week do you think you can do?"
"Forty," said Alfredo.
Again, the editor was startled. Obviously, there was some sort of misunderstanding here. He figured that the artist before him was thinking in terms of very simple pages with only two or three panels on each and no detail. Fortunately, Orlando had brought along with him, several dozen pages of original art from past DC books. He showed Alfredo pages by Neal Adams, Joe Kubert, Curt Swan and others.
"We want work like this…these many panels per page, and this detailed," Orlando explained.
"Oh," Alfredo nodded. "You want me to pencil, ink and letter pages like this?"
"Yes."
"Well," Alfredo explained. "That changes things."
"I would think so," Orlando sniffed. "Now then…how many pages a week do you think you can do?"
"Eighty," said Alfredo.
Skeptical and disbelieving, Orlando put Alfredo down for 40 pages per week. Soon after, when Alcala pages began arriving at DC at that rate, it was assumed by some that "Alfredo P. Alcala" was the joint moniker of perhaps a half-dozen hands. Not so — as anyone who later saw Alfredo sketching at a convention can attest.
Most of his work was for DC's ghost books, such as House of Mystery, and he did western and war stories, as well. Though some quibbled with the excess of detail and textures, the art was generally well-received by both editors and readers, some of whom were baffled that Alcala's work seemed to vary so much in approach from one job to the next. This contributed to the belief of some that a whole crew was producing the pages but, in fact, Alfredo was just a man of many styles.
Alas, DC editors felt that none of these styles went with super-heroes — a judgment shared at Marvel when Alfredo and several of his countrymen changed American employers. A member of Marvel's editorial staff once told me, "Management's dream-come-true would be that we could ship Fantastic Four off to the Philippines and have it drawn as quickly and cheaply as those guys over there can do it…but they can't deliver the look we want."
This view — which angered Alfredo — forever limited employment prospects for most of the Filipino artists. For Marvel, which was then publishing a line of black-and-white magazines, there were more monster stories…but, as Alfredo once put it, "They decided we couldn't draw." He was mainly utilized to finish rough pencil breakdowns, usually by John Buscema, on Conan the Barbarian in both its comic book and magazine incarnations.
In 1976, Alfredo moved to the United States, settling in Los Angeles. Initially, he was to work full-time on PS Magazine, a government-issue comic book on army maintenance, once produced by Will Eisner. When the project fell apart, Alfredo scrambled for work from DC, Marvel and other publishers as could be located.
Though he was intermittently busy — especially before Marvel abandoned its magazine line — it would not be an exaggeration to say that, for the rest of his life, Alfredo Alcala never found enough work in comics to keep him busy. Worse, most of what he was able to procure involved inking or finishing other artists' work — a frustrating comedown (in his view) for a man who had once been among the great comic storytellers of his homeland.
In many cases, this involved embellishing some of the field's best illustrators — in particular, a long stint inking Batman and another on Swamp Thing — but he sometimes found himself typed as an inker who could submerge (and therefore "save") a particularly poor pencil job. Once when we went to lunch, he brought the pages he was inking — to work on while we awaited our orders, but also to show me all the redrawing and correction he was doing. "They know I can fix it," he said. "But they will not let me draw it from the beginning."
He had more success away from comic books. He worked for animation studios, advertising agencies and did production design for film and television. He also did stints drawing three newspaper strips — Conan the Barbarian, Star Wars and Rick O'Shay — and he illustrated several books.
Throughout, he was a mainstay of California comic conventions, and a mentor to many local artists. One of them, Tom Luth, sent the following for inclusion in this piece…
Having worked as an assistant to Alfredo for a number of years, I had the opportunity to know him well, and see many sides of his complex personality. He was opinionated and eccentric, witty yet serious. One seeing his initial quiet manner would not likely guess the sophistication and depth of knowledge this self-educated artist possessed.
The depth of observation he constantly displayed in his art was nothing short of remarkable. He would fill placemats at dinner with sketches of specific cars, planes, battleships, and celebrities, all from memory. I will miss his tales of UFOs, WWII in the Philippines, and countless other topics, as well as his great art, and of course, the man himself.
On a personal note: I greatly admired his dedication to his craft. It would not have been humanly possible for a person to give more of himself to his work than did Alfredo. And yet, though he may have lived at his drawing table, he remained fully aware of the world around him. We had some wonderful conversations about politics and social matters and, though I rarely agreed with his worldview, I always found it penetrating and earnestly-held.
He lived about two miles from me and, for a time, our mutual Federal Express man would automatically deposit every package with a Marvel or DC mailing label on my doorstep. This was in spite of the fact that the address in the "to:" space was sometimes Alfredo's.
Since Alfredo didn't drive, I'd take those parcels over to him. He'd buzz me into the building and when I reached his door, it was ajar.
I'd enter and there — in a small, cluttered apartment overflowing with art supplies, paintings and very little that did not relate to the production of illustration — would be Alfredo. He would be hunched over a drawing board, intensely laying down lines, with his perpetual cigarette befouling the air: Alfredo in his natural habitat.
I did not mind at all that he had not gotten up to let me in. In the time he'd have spent playing host, he probably finished a whole panel of something.
He'd start in on some topic — usually not comics; more often, politics or a new grievance about someone discriminating against him because he was a Filipino and/or a smoker. I did not always concur with his specific examples, though I do believe he was sporadically penalized because employers could not or would not wade through his imperfect — though perfectly adequate — English.
I'd stay until the conversation lapsed and/or the tobacco aroma drove me away. But no matter how long I was there, Alfredo never stopped drawing.
Not then, not ever. A few years ago, he suffered a stroke which slowed his pace and hampered his control. Still, he did not stop drawing. He never stopped drawing…until last Saturday.
And — who knows? — maybe not even then.