Graffiti was an undeniable part of the backdrop of city life in 1980s New York. Issue no. 1 of DMC drives that point home on its story’s opening page, which has a reporter named Charlie Cooper riding in a subway car laden with colorful tags.
To make it real, Edgardo Miranda-Rodriguez, the editor in chief of Darryl Makes Comics, which publishes DMC, turned to Carlos Rodriguez, the artist known as Mare 139, who began his career working in graffiti, to choose the tags on the subway car and throughout the comic, including its cover.
“Contextualizing comics with graffiti was easy; we were all very influenced by comics in color and design,” Mr. Rodriguez said in a telephone interview. “I brought some good friends to it, people that I thought would add some credibility.” The most remote contribution came from the Danish artist Bates, whose work is just above the window on the subway door. All told, this particular panel has tags by more than 10 graffiti artists, including Darryl McDaniels, whose “DMC” can be seen just to the right of the napping passenger.
Mr. Rodriguez also worked with Mr. Miranda-Rodriquez to put together an exhibition, “DMC Released,” which runs through Nov. 7 at the Hi-Arts Studio Gallery in Harlem. The show takes visitors behind the scenes of the comic book, which arrives in stores on Wednesday, highlighting character designs, rough sketches and displaying several side-by-side prints of the black-and-white artwork and the final color versions.
The subway panel, illustrated by Chase Conley, is a good example of many of the production steps involved in making a comic. Mr. Conley, who normally works in animation (“Black Dynamite,” “Axe Cop”) and makes his comic debut with DMC, rendered the subway car and its passengers in tight pencil lines. His next step was to digitally add shadows and colors. The graffiti was added as a third step, along with the T-shirt of Helios, a costumed champion who is not necessarily an ally of DMC.