COMIC BOOK STAGING

I'm reading Mike Barrier's new book about the Golden Age of Dell comics. It's pretty impressive. I could happily blog for a month on subjects I've already read about and I'm less than a third of the way through. 

By way of a sample I thought I'd expand on Mike's discussion of rhythm in the Carl Barks duck stories. The opinions and the examples (badly scanned; sorry about that) are mostly mine but it's all informed by things that Mike wrote. Read it and see what you think.

   

Barks was expert at compressing a story into just the right number of panels. Read the page above where Donald's fishing boat sinks to the bottom of the sea then is yanked out by a whale and deposited on land. In the hands of a lesser storyteller that might have taken two pages at least. Barks does it in one. 

Here's (above) a detail showing the first two panels. Donald is pulled into the upside-down boat, then the cables go slack, then the boat is lowered into the water...and none of that is shown! All the information I just mentioned is implied in just one drawing that shows him already in the boat and shows the boat already submerged. 

Barks gets on with the plot and doesn't burden us with inessentials.

Above, another detail showing the second two panels. The ship settles on the bottom, the cabin floods, the ducks stress out, and the snagged whale doubles back. Amazingly, all this information is contained in only two panels!!!

One more detail: the whale doubles back pulling one of the cables with it. This could have been a large upshot panel showing the massive whale passing overhead. Instead it's handled in one simple side-shot. Imagine how flamboyantly Sterenko or Buscema or manga would have handled this. Not so with Barks. He tenaciously regards the whale's turn-around as just one more plot point.

Don't get me wrong. I don't mean to understate Barks' achievement here. He's established a powerful rhythm in the page and he rightly doesn't allow himself to digress with a  beauty shot of the whale.

Good page rhythm didn't exactly come natural to Barks, he had to figure it out. Here's (above) an earlier Barks story where the rhythm didn't work at all. So how did Barks make the change? The book hints that he got some help from Floyd Gottfredson. Mike quotes Barks account of a meeting they had:

Sorry for the crude scan. I didn't want to hurt the book's binding by pressing it on the scanner so I allowed the edge to blur. Anyway, Mike's interpretation of Gottfredson's advice was that Barks should give greater emphasis to the psychological aspects of his stories. Barks presumably did and the tighter focus might be what improved his staging.

Talking about Gottfredson, what do you think about his staging? I'm a huge fan of the man but I'm slightly put off by the Tin-Tin type regularity of the layouts. Even so, an artist who had difficulty with backgrounds could find few better influences .

THERAPY FOR POETS (A THEORY CORNER COMIC)

I'm not scheduled for a new post today but I just stumbled on this comic I made a while back and I couldn't resist putting it up again...right now.  Be warned: it's a little hard to follow, and there's some misspelled words (but the word "Commics" is deliberately misspelled). It's about what happens when a hard-core realist like Joan Crawford joins a group therapy session for poets. 

CLICK TO ENLARGE:







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WHAT KILLED ROMANCE COMICS?

What killed romance comics? I wish all questions were as easy to answer. It's pretty obvious that what killed love comics was...good artists.  People who draw well, like Neal Adams, simply couldn't master the surreal, grotesque world of twisted love.  Good artists took over the romance comics and drove the readers away.

I know what you're thinking...Jack Kirby (above) was a good artist and he was one of the inventors of romance comics. True enough, and he did a good job. But Kirby was the rare exception that proves the rule.  Cheerful, wholesome, family men like the artists at D.C. simply couldn't get down and dirty enough.

BTW: How do you like the Kirby drawing above? I like the way the man with blocky fingers wraps his arm around the girl with the webbed claws.  Amazingly, their faces seem to occupy the same space.

Here (above) a lesser artist tackles the same subject. In real life the girl's neck would be broken by this pose, but it works. The pose on the man's hand is a bit off, but it appears to have been scratched by bears so we forgive the mistake. 

Is this guy (above) kissing a cardboard cutout? What are those ginger root thingies on her arms? And why is she posed like that? I don't know, but it works for me. This is the kind of artist who belongs in the romance biz. 

The girl (above) puts her tiny little arms around her giant behemoth of a boyfriend, who appears to be sucking on her forehead. The artist is on to something here. The real life size difference between men and women is shocking. You can't imagine how people so different could even procreate. It's an interesting observation,  but only the lesser artists take the trouble to comment on it.  

Here (above) the girl has the usual tiny arms, awkward perspective cheats, and fish fingers.  That's okay, I'm used to it. 

What I'm not used to is the way their faces fit on their skulls, The girl's face is extremely wide, and wraps around the whole front of her head. The boy's face is just the opposite...it's pinched and crammed into a thin, vertical strip. You see incongruities like that in real life but only the lesser artist is brave enough to comment on it. 

Like I said, good artists killed romance comics. Good artists are too predictable, too wedded to stereotypes to portray the kind of quirky love that romance media demands.

WHAT KILLED ROMANCE COMICS (EXPANDED)?

What killed romance comics? I wish all questions were as easy to answer. It's pretty obvious that what killed love comics were.....good realistic artists.  Expert draughtsmen like Neal Adams, simply couldn't master the surreal, grotesque world of twisted love.  Good draughtsmen took over the romance comics and drove the readers away.

I know what you're thinking...Jack Kirby (above) was a good draughtsman and he did a great job on the romance comics, so where does he fit in? The answer is that Kirby was the rare exception who had the imagination of a bad draughtsman combined with the technical skill of a good one.  Less imaginative,  realistic draughtsmen like the artists at D.C. simply couldn't get down and dirty enough to imagine the bizarre poses that romance requires.

BTW: How do you like the Kirby drawing above? I like the way the man with blocky fingers wraps his arm around the girl with the webbed claws.  Amazingly, their faces seem to occupy the same space.

Above, a story about a girl who has to choose between a handsome normal guy and a loathsome hippie. With a subject like that it should have been a great cover, but the editor handed it over to a technical artist who had no soul. You see the result.

Here (above) a less skilled but more imaginative artist does a better job. The giant wicked city woman looms over her tiny boyfriend and lays it on him that she's slept with every man in town. The man should have been red-faced, but that was impossible given the position of his hands. Undaunted, the resourceful colorist instead made the man's hands red...and it works. Technical artists never do fun things like that.

  How do you like the "Man Starved" cover above? The figures are pretty stiff but the tryst is solemnized by the unnatural, stylized neck poses, the poker chip moon,  and the devil car watching on the bottom right. Only a lesser artist would have thought of cool stuff like this!

Boy, artists were fond of those wonky neck poses (above)! In real life the girl's neck might be broken by a pose like this this, but it works. The man's hand is goofy too, but it fits with the weird heads and horror comics color. You accept it as a stylistic flourish. 

Is this guy (above) kissing a cardboard cutout? What are those ginger root thingies on her arms? And why is she posed like that? I don't know, but it works for me. This is the kind of artist who belongs in the romance biz. 

The girl (above) puts her tiny little arms around her giant behemoth of a boyfriend, who appears to be sucking on her forehead. The artist is on to something here. The real life size difference between men and women is often shocking. You can't imagine how people so different could even procreate. Only an imaginative lesser draughtsman would be bold enough to take the trouble to comment on this.  

Here (above) the girl has the usual tiny arms, awkward perspective cheats, and fish fingers.  That's okay, I'm used to it. 

What I'm not used to is the way their faces fit on their skulls, The girl's face is extremely wide, and wraps around the whole front of her head. The boy's features are just the opposite...they're pinched and cramped on a thin, vertical strip on the front of his face. You see incongruities like this all the time in real life, but only the lesser draughtsman is brave enough to comment on it. 

I wonder if sci-fi artist Fletcher Hanks (above) ever tried his hand at romance comics?

Imagine a story where a big, angry boyfriend discovers another guy trying to muscle in on his girl. Fletcher Hanks would have aced it, and created a comic classic.

Many thanks to Romans for the comment that identified this artist.  

NEXT POST ON MONDAY MORNING,  MAY 30TH!

MORE STRIPS THAT DIDN'T MAKE THE CUT

All from that magnificent blog..."Stripper's Guide," whose address can be found in my list of links. I'm dying to comment on these but I'm so sleepy that I can hardly sit upright.

It goes without saying: be sure to click to enlarge. These won't look like much at thumbnail size.

YOU WOULDN'T WANT TO BE SUPERMAN!

Being Superman means you can't trust your own friends! Here's Jimmy wearing his "Helmet of Hate" again.

Everybody's envious! You can't even trust your own parents!


Superman once had an affair with a fish woman and they had kids together. Knowing that society would frown on such things he moved his fish family to an asteroid. That should have been the end of it but his pesky girlfriend, Lois Lane, found out about it.



There's always some other super hero trying to muscle in.



Boy, that Lois is a real player!


When you fly people are always trying to shoot you down with fruit juice weapons.



Fortunately Superman's friend Jimmy, who gets coffee for people during the day, performs brain surgery at night.


Superman doesn't always share the tastes of his friends...

...particularly Robin.

No, Superman's a normal guy. It's amazing that even Superman doesn't score every time.


All these pictures were stolen from a terrific site: http://www.superdickery.com/