the sound of comics creation

I'm always interested in what comics creators listen to as they work. I know a lot of artists listen to a game or podcast or even a film as they draw, although most seem to require silence while laying out a page. At least one writer I know has a different playlist for each series she works on, tailoring it to fit the mood the book requires.

I've never been able to listen to music with words while I'm writing, so I listen to a lot of jazz or classical or post-rock or ambient when I'm working on a script. Different things work at different times, so Collin Walcott's Cloud Dance might work for a solid week and then suddenly, despite the eternal brilliance of Jack DeJohnette and John Abercrombie, it's not doing it for me anymore. Maybe Explosions in the Sky or Tortoise will be the thing that gets the words flowing, or Shostakovich's 24 Preludes and Fugues or Joe Henderson's Page One.

This week I've been going over the dialogue to the third issue of Batman: Kings of Fear, tweaking it, now that Kelley Jones is done inking the issue. And this is what I've been listening to:

Something about the propulsive yet slightly disorienting nature of the tune, with its shifting moods by section and 11/8 time signature, drives me forward.

Meanwhile, Kelley posted this clip of himself pencilling the fourth issue, with Henri Dutilleux's Métaboles providing an appropriately creepy, dissonant backing to his rendering of the Dark Knight.