Behind the Poster: 'The Bad and the Better' When the playwright Derek Ahonen needed a poster for his latest work, the dark detective comedy "The Bad and the Better," he asked Danica Novgorodoff, a graphic novelist and illustrator, for the kitchen sink. "There are so many crazy, chaotic characters in the play," Ms. Novgorodoff said. He wanted the poster to be complicated and political and dangerous and violent and sexy. "The Bad and the Better," which starts performances next month, is being produced by the raucous downtown theater troupe the Amoralists, a company that's not shy about sex, violence or an onstage erection. For past Amoralists productions of "Ghosts in the Cottonwoods" and "Hotel/Motel," Ms. Novgorodoff created posters that displayed restraint, drama and style. For "The Bad and the Better" she was able to talk Mr. Ahonen down from his original plans. A little. "I prefer generally to make it simpler and graphic and striking rather than too chaotic and cluttered," she said. The result is an image that's a poster, graphic novel and advertisement in one. Ms. Novgorodoff, who is based in Brooklyn, recently spoke with ArtsBeat about "Dog Day Afternoon," the Occupy movement and other inspirations for her poster. Following are edited excerpts from the conversation. There's a lot going on in this poster. It's like the play was turned into mini graphic novel. Was that the plan? Derek originally asked for a busy poster with car bombs and a face-off with cops and sex and drugs and war and money. He wanted it to be complicated, and have all the characters in it. I proposed a few ways to do that. One of them was to do a more graphic novel approach to it, and have different panels. Compared to your poster for "Ghost in the Cottonwoods" this one is a little more complex. I was trying to fit all these things in it. But you can understand it in one glimpse. You don't want to stand there for 10 minutes reading it. You can absorb the sensibility of the play without having to spend too much time in front of it. What other kinds of work did you find inspirational? I actually looked at a poster for "All the President's Men." It had a very similar design to the poster I ended up making. It has a large image at the bottom, text in the middle and a long horizontal panel at top. I was going for a shadowy, noir image. There was a "Chicago 10″ poster that had this American flag motif worked into it. There's also a "Chinatown" poster that I used, not really for the style so much but the noir feeling, with the figure in the foreground. There's a "Dog Day Afternoon" poster that has an image of a crowd of people in it. The scene at the top of the poster, with the image of the protesters and the police, is pretty dramatic. Tell me more about how that came about. There was one image from Occupy Portland. It's of a standoff between protesters who have their arms locked and the cops in their riot gear. They are standing about two feet away from each other. All the protesters have their bandanas and jeans and leather jackets and long hair. And the cops have their batons and their face masks down. Tell me a little bit about how you work. All the line work is hand drawn with a tiny paintbrush. It's inked by hand. Most of the color is done digitally in Photoshop. What other designers inspire your work in general? I was somewhat inspired by Mike Mignola, a graphic novelist and comic book artist. His work is very shadow-heavy and very contrasty, with black and whites and a simple palette that pops and gives a dramatic effect. Is that a crease in the lower image? At first I wasn't sure if that was supposed to be there. For that textured, misty, smoky background I have a black and white photograph that a friend folded up and sent to me in the mail. It's got those creases and staple marks. It's very atmospheric. I scanned that and enlarged it and put that texture in the background to give it that feel of a smoke bomb or some sort of foggy night, to make it more mysterious and ominous. I like all of my work to look very handmade. "The Bad and the Better" begins performances on June 14 at the Peter J. Sharp Theater, 416 West 42nd Street. More information is at the Amoralists Web site.