ARMANDO GIL.COM

ABOUT ARMANDO

Armando Gil--or as I sometimes call him, Mr. Mc Gillicuddy or Big Brother. Big Brother not in an Orwellian sense, but for the fact that he's taller than me.

I first met Armando in 1976 when he and Ken Landgraf dropped in to audit John Buscema's workshop class at the Commodore Hotel. At first they were talking to Bob Downs, who always sat near the back. I always sat in front. Bob Downs--there's another story. "Kid Mumbles" as Vinnie Colletta pegged him. But I digress.

Ken was talking up his concept of how to make a living in the art biz and it caught my ear. I hovered nearby until I could get a chance to introduce myself. It was around that time or shortly afterward that Ken got his break at DC, drawing Nightwing and Flamebird for Superman Family. This is not the same Nightwing that readers know today. It was Superman and Jimmy Olsen as a Batman and Robin type duo fighting crime in the bottle city of Kandor.

Armando was 17 at the time and I was 21. I think Ken was about 25. Armando could draw better than any of us. I was going thru a phase of imitating Frank Robbins. Ken was an excellent constructionist along the lines of Gil Kane and a good storyteller. He also had something Armando and I lacked, business sense. Ken was living in Greenwich Village on Downing Street with a Greek guy named Alex (don't recall his last name). I was living on 11th Street just off 5th Ave. with a bunch of other people in a basement apartment, also in the Village, so I was nearby. Armando used to come down from the Bronx (long before it was called the Boogie Down) to hang out and work with Ken and I.

We would often go to a comics shop nearby on 6th Avenue run by Dave Miley. Then we would get a slice of pizza from Joe's and hang out in Father Demo Square (which was triangular, oddly enough), read comics and talk about art and show our recent work. I remember Armando had a killer piece he'd done in the style of Moebius. Not a swipe in it, but it almost looked like Jean Giraud himself drew it. He could also ink like Wrightson. All this at 17.

The three of us had many adventures together, especially when we all lived together in a little studio apartment on 21st Street and 2nd Ave. It was jammed to the ceiling with milk cartons full of comics, drawings, and cut-out drawings for Ken's morgue. All the same we had a fairly decent parade of young ladies at our door. Wonder whatever became of Candy..?

As I've said elsewhere, the bulk of the inking that first appeared under my name in 1980 in the black and white Howard the Duck numbers 1 and 2 was by Armando. He didn't seem all that career-oriented and was happy to make a few bucks drawing while I got the credit. I did feel bad about it, tho, and felt suppressed by Ken as well, so I split and continued inking Howard on my own. Shortly after that Armando got his own work at Marvel on Micronauts over Pat Broderick.

Flash forward a couple of years to 1982. Armando was now living with a girl in the East Village, Julie Ferriter, who later became a lackluster colorist at Marvel for a brief period. An apartment had become available in the building and he set it up for me to get it. I well recall the superintendent, Senor Cavallero, who lived on the ground floor. He was building a mini-sub in his apartment from plans he'd gotten out of Popular Mechanics or some damn thing. I don't know how he ever planned to get it out of the apartment, since you could barely fit a mattress thru those narrow 19th-century doors.

I moved in. We had a great time with Armando dropping down to visit me on the 4th floor or me going up to hang with him on the 6th. At this time Armando was working on Ka-Zar and I was inking Ghost Rider. We also had a great time going out to the bars and after hours clubs in the East Village. This was the heyday of punk and new wave and we were in the middle of the creative hotbed of it. I remember once Armando and I stayed at an after-hours club on Avenue A so late that by the time we left, the sun was shining and people were going to work!

Around this time I met Patty Redding who was an art student at the time but went on to become Savage Sword of Conan editor and later a brilliant character designer for Curious Pictures. We moved in together far downtown in an unrenovated commercial loft with Pete Friedrich of Look Mom Comics fame and photography student Ann Giordano. Ann was later replaced by Bob Camp, who went on to produce Ren & Stimpy. Armando would fall by often and hang out with all of us. It was another great creative community, with the loft on Warren Street as its hub. Mort Todd would also come by to work with Pete on the Look Mom projects, as well as a guy so withdrawn and nerdy the rest of us nerds used to make fun of him--Dan Clowes.

It didn't last. I went to California when Patty and I broke up and lost touch with Armando for a while.

I forget exactly how we got back in touch. Eventually, in the 90s, I was in a position to offer Armando some work. I was doing lots of storyboard work on shows such as Where on Earth is Carmen Sandiego, Skeleton Warriors, and so many more it makes my head spin to think of it even now. I was using lots of people to help me doing cleanup (equivalent to inking over breakdowns). I also got myself into a position where I was director, then producer of the first season of G.I. Joe Extreme. I needed really good storytelling and really good drawing on these storyboards, but one doesn't always find those two qualities in one artist. I had Armando do cleanup on some of the guys who were great storytellers but whose draftsmanship wasn't quite up to the level I required. Armando also did cleanup on most of my own boards for the show.

At some point Armando relocated to LA and got his own storyboard work for Epoch Ink on Space Monkeys, or as we used to call it, "El Monos del Espacio".

Reminds me of a story from back when Armando, Ken, and I were living on 21st St. We're sitting there drawing away and I think we were working on some science fiction thing. I asked Armando, "Hey, what's the Spanish word for planet?"

"Mundo." he replied.

"Oh. How about for earth?"

"Mundo."

"How about earth, like the dirt?"

"Mundo."

"How can that be?" I asked. "Why is it the same word for all of them?"

"Because," he said, "the Dominican Republic doesn't have a space program!"

I think I'll leave it at that, except to say that when it comes to incredible draftsmanship and unique abundance of talent, the guy who calls me his "little brother" is the cat's ass.

--Dave Simons