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During the Mavelmania days in the late '60's I got a phone call one evening and I answered it and this voice said, Mike Royer? This is Jack Kirby. Word is you're a pretty good inker. That's how it started.

Mike Royer

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Mike Royer
Age: 83
Born: 1941
Born: June 28
Layout Artist
Penciller
Lebanon
Oregon
Started
Kirby
Pretty
Mike
Days
Answered
Call
Jack
Word
Phone
Voice
Phones
Good
Evening
Late

More quotes by Mike Royer

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I love pre-code movies. Some of my favorites are movies with Warren William and there is an MGM film called Skyscraper Souls which is the best Warner Brothers movie that MGM ever made.
Mike Royer
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I live in the past when it comes to movies, but my own career is a matter of remembering the nuts and bolts and things like eating chocolate cake and drinking milk with Jack [Kirby] in his kitchen, but that's all I remember.
Mike Royer
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If you ever go to talk to an editor you don't want to be able to turn down a job because you can't do what is necessary.
Mike Royer
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When I was at Disney and was a character art manager and handing out artwork that had to be inked we had a thing where if there was any lettering on it I'd hear, I don't letter, and I said, Look at it. It's drawing. Ink the drawing. I just learned from Mike Aarons how each letter was just part of the drawing.
Mike Royer
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I learned that, Mike, you get your first job on your ability and every job after that on your dependability.
Mike Royer
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I like to think that I gave Jack Warner Brothers inking and Joe Sinnott gave him MGM inking. If you're not as in love with old movies as I am you might not make that connection, but I can see that connection.
Mike Royer
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I still have a lot my Disney store art left and if I ever run out I'll just redraw it, because it will still be my original art and as a freelancer I own it.
Mike Royer
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I moonlighted during a two-week vacation, doing a month's worth of work in two weeks it almost killed me, but I wanted to stretch my muscles and the letter from the producer says, Your storyboarding is Eisensteinian, referring to the famous Russian filmmaker.
Mike Royer
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When you're paid $29 for something and 30 or 40 years later you're seeing it on eBay with pages going for $199 or more, it's like, Dammit!
Mike Royer
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It was just too hard from my standpoint to apply myself properly for the lessons from art school and also work 6 hours a day at the Ben Paris restaurant in downtown Seattle. There was just no time to have a life.
Mike Royer
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I will say that I'm proud of my connection to DC comics because they are absolutely fabulous in sending reprint royalty checks.
Mike Royer
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People ask me who my favorite inker is and I tell them my favorite inker was Joe Sinnott...but I was the best. Now I don't mean that as any kind of egotistical thing. It's just that I did what Jack wanted.
Mike Royer
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When you talk about state of the art, that doesn't mean a damn thing. Think about it. State of the art. This is the state of the art brush from Winsor-Newton. Yeah, but the state of the art sucks rubber donkey lungs.
Mike Royer
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Every morning I'd have coffee with my wife and we would discuss ideas. Sixty percent of what I did for the stores was concepts. The other forty percent was correcting and cleaning up other concepts in house, or doing final art on my concepts. Most of my concepts were so finished they could turn them over to somebody else.
Mike Royer
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I did a dozen superhero pinups. I signed them Kirby/Royer because it was Kirby's drawing. I didn't think I was committing some sort of sin.
Mike Royer
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I know some stories about liberation and stuff that's been liberated by people who turn around and get on their soapbox about how it's unfair that the artists didn't benefit while they're sitting on stuff that they liberated, but that's another story for another time.
Mike Royer
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I started out wanting to be a straight adventure cartoonist, but in 1979 realized what my real bag was.
Mike Royer
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Why are other people profiting off that? I can see that if I have the page and sold it for $50 and 20 years later somebody's got it for $200, okay. That's business. But I had no say in that art being out there. It just really burns me.
Mike Royer
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It was months later when I was sitting at the board in my studio and my wife would stick her head in and say, What if you did Pooh and...oh, we don't do that anymore. I do have my soapbox and will go to my grave being a Disney company man.
Mike Royer
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I have my heroes. Some of whom are still alive, and unfortunately many that aren't.
Mike Royer