The Painter's Brush Consumes His Dreams

[bcholmes]

One of the things I find I'm thinking about a lot in my cartooning course is different art styles. My prof has told us a number of stories about how many commercial artists are expected to emulate the same style. If you want to draw Bugs Bunny, you don't get to invent a whole new Bugs look. You have to reproduce bugs exactly as he has appeared for the last 50 years. In one story, my prof talked about interviewing at DC Comics. He said that the art director he met told him that, yes, he clearly did have talent but added, "I don't think you'd be happy working here. You wouldn't get to be as creative as you'd want to be. I think you'd get frustrated sticking to the house style." And that's the part that kinda surprised me. I didn't really think about DC as having a house style. Growing up with DC Comics, I could usually tell an artist by style. George Pérez was extremely distinctive. As was Byrne. Similarly, I could spot Paul Smith, Dave Cockburn, Jim Starlin, Dave Gibbons, Pat Broderick and Mike Grell on sight. And, heck, remember that really blocky Keith Giffen phase? (Keith, you've already used your quota of the colour black). But looking back, I guess the stuff is all pretty similar. This panel from an old, 1970 issue of Justice League (reprinted in a JLA/JSA team-up anthology) is a pretty typical example of the style I'm talking about But there really isn't all that much difference between that and, say, this frame from an issue of Southern Squadron that I bought in Australia in 1990. (And, for the record, I think that the Uncanny A-Men were a hoot). One of the things we've been learning about is how different types of art have certain conventions. Character size, measured in terms of "heads", for example. Apparently superhero comics tend to have the same head to body ratio. Characters are usually 7 or 8 heads tall. Funny animal comics, closer to 4, My own character in my cartooning class is tending toward five heads. Interestingly, even some of the non-supers books seem fairly similar in terms of style. Terry Moore's work on Strangers in Paradise. His bodies seem somewhere around 6 or 7 heads tall. And although I can often recognize his work instantly, I don't think that it's really too terribly different than most DC Comics. Both have a tendency toward some type of verisimilitude. Smooth lines. Same emphasis on line weights. I have the impression -- and I'm not sure if this is a true impression or not -- that there's more experimentation going on with style at the moment. Maybe that's not true. I mean, I did mention Keith Giffen's stuff from the mid-eighties. And Bill Sienkiewicz had this style that he developed in a big way on The New Mutants. And Frank Miller and Matt Wagner. (I remember a stand-alone issue of Grendel in which all the characters' word balloons contained icons instead of dialog, except for this one guy who said, "Yes yes yes. Problems? Yes yes yes. Solutions?" Every once in a while, when I'm in a big meeting at work, I think "Yes yes yes. Problems? Yes yes yes. Solutions?") At the time, I really disliked a lot of the stuff that Wagner was doing on Grendel, because I loved Devil by the Deed so much and I just wanted more of that. One artist that I've noticed recently is Jim Mahfood, artist on Scout Grrls and Noble Causes. I find something very interesting about his blocky, angular style. And he draws some of the most stylized faces that I've seen in comics. Some other books that are very striking: Aria with that almost painted quality. And all those Alex Ross books -- like Marvels and the Astro City covers -- that are actually painted. Sam Kieth. (God, I loved Four Women). And The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. All very different styles. And Powers. Mike Oeming's art on Powers is very loose and sketchy. I think I passed it over in the racks originally because I thought the art looked weak, but it's really grown on me. So I'm still debating with myself about whether or not there really is more variety now than there was twenty years ago. But it's interesting.

Comments

[abostick59.livejournal.com]

When I read that story of your instructor, I don't think about the strictness of style at DC so much as I think of the fine Italian hand of Julie Schwartz.

I think it's Chip Delany who told the story of a friend of his who wanted to write for Batman. The friend went into the DC offices with a script for a Batman comic that was innovative and exciting. Julie Schwartz (so goes the story) read the script, and said, "Looks good, but you need to make such and such changes." The writer went home, rewrote the script, and returned. The same thing happened: Schwartz asked for more changes.

After two or three iterations of this, the script was pretty much indistinguishable from everthing else that had been appearing lately about Batman, with all its innovation rewritten out. The writer gave up on the story, and didn't bring it back in.

Delany says he later asked Schwartz about this. "This guy's a talented writer," Chip said. "Why did you do this to him?"

"I could see that he was talented," Schwartz answered, "but I don't know if he had what it takes. If he could take everything that mattered to him about his script and throw it away and still want to work for DC, then we'd use him. Otherwise, his ego would only get in the way."

Julie Schwartz was a good, kind man, on the whole ... but I think that this art director, by being direct and to the point, was more kind to your instructor.