Comic book star David Finch finally gets to Manila

David Finch, the current illustrator for DC's Dark Knight series, nearly did not make it to Manila this month. He was almost ready to board the plane when they discovered his passport was less than six months old, a minimum requirement for traveling. The Canadian consular services acted quickly enough to ensure that Finch came to Manila less than a week later than earlier planned. And those who met him were in for a treat. A bit of research was in order. I learned that Finch is held in such esteem that he has done work for both major comic book companies, DC and Marvel. One of my comic book fan friends tells me that he still has Finch's work from his early days at Top Cow Productions, an Image imprint, where he worked with Image's creator Marc Silvestri, who was connected with Marvel and who, like Finch later on, worked on The X-Men comic books. “He was my favorite artist,” Finch recalls of his days at Top Cow. “He gave me my start and I actually started by drawing backgrounds for his pages. He taught me on the job.” At his sketching session at Fully Booked on Bonifacio High Street last Saturday, Finch talked about how he started in his career. “I didn't really have any formal background [in art] at all,” he says, “but I'm a bit of an obsessive learner. I think I've had some trouble working with a structured schooling system, so I really learn better on my own.” Finch grew up and left high school in Windsor, in the Canadian province of Ontario, just south of Detroit. He first honed his craft in his mother's basement, which he admits is a bit of a cliché for a comic book artist. While at Top Cow, Finch had a part in creating a comic book series called Ascension which ran from 1997 to 2000. The series was canceled, but Finch has thought about revisiting it at some point. “I talk to Marc every once in a while about going back,” he says, noting that he wanted to develop a particular character at this point in his life. He also worked on Silvestri's Cyberforce series while at the firm. In 2003, Finch went over to Marvel and worked on parts of the Ultimate X-Men series with writer Brian Michael Bendis and joined him later in working on the New Avengers storyline in 2005. Asked about the differences in the cultures of Marvel and a smaller firm like Image, he says, “Top Cow was probably the most different of the three because it was an artists' studio, and we worked in-house together.” Marvel, on the other hand was a very difficult place to work for at first, he points out. “I started working with a full script, and when I was starting out we had very, very loose plot lines and it gave me a lot of control to do whatever I wanted to do.” Those initial difficulties though did not diminish his appreciation of his time at Marvel Comics. “Some of my best friends in the business are at Marvel,” he says. “They were very great to be [with]. It was a very difficult decision for me to leave.” His departure for DC Comics took place in 2010. It was not much of an adjustment for Finch, because the corporate cultures were very similar. And he notes one thing that seems to be what all his work places have in common: “I really rarely meet comic book people who don't love their jobs.” What intrigued me and some others, though, was his interest in music, and we wondered what kind of music he listens to while working. “For the most part, I don't listen to music while I work,” he admits. “While I'm working, I actually watch tutorial videos.” He is learning to use animation software with those videos, and while he has thought of doing something along those lines, he finds little use for them at the moment. “[The videos] clutter my brain, but it makes me happy.” His major musical endeavor though was working on a cover for the heavy metal band Disturbed. “[The producer] emailed [me],” he recalls, “and they wanted me to send some of my work.” That was after a competition that involved Finch drawing his take on a character associated with the band. “I really fought for that job,” he says, and to date, that is his only musical project. His musical tastes include Motley Crue, an 80s band he grew up on. “As I am growing older, I'm reverting back to that,” he says. He's working on a hobby project, making music videos for an unnamed local trance/electronica artist's album. “I've been listening to the album over and over again, and in fact, I have been listening to that while I work.” At present, apart from working on the Dark Knight story arc, he is doing a cover for Justice League International, and another one for the Hellblazer. He is also doing some work for a revived DC series called Dial H for Heroes. “It's about this guy, who, when he gets into trouble, runs to a phone booth and changes into whatever character channels through him," Finch says, wondering if the Cartoon Network series Ben 10 was influenced by it, because of a similar premise. Oddly enough, as he has a young child, his cartoon viewing includes such classics as the BBC series Thomas the Tank Engine, based on the series of books involving anthropomorphic trains. As he turned his attention to an audience of about a hundred people who came to watch him do a live sketching session that afternoon, Finch was all smiles. His enthusiasm for his craft and that of his fans confirmed what he said: that he really did not encounter comic book people who were unhappy with their work. — KG/TJD, GMA News Photos courtesy of Fully Booked