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Post by Prince Hal on Feb 13, 2024 12:20:51 GMT -5
Speaking of Don Heck (which we were on one of these threads) here are a few pages from his Torpedo Taylor in Navy Combat 1955-58. This was when he worked in his own way before someone told him he had to do everything like Kirby. As I said, I think he was ill-served do superheroes in the 60s. There were many artists ill-served by the pivot to superheroes. Most notably for me is Sekowsky, who made the JLA look stodgy (especially in comparison to Marvel's product) but was amazing on spy/adventure and humor comics. I think that also applied to Dick Dillin, whom I always liked on the Blackhawks, where his pencils were well served by Cuidera's inks. Never cared for Giella's or McLaughlin's scratchy styles on Dillin's pencils on JLA. |
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Post by codystarbuck on Feb 13, 2024 23:03:24 GMT -5
I grew up with Dillin on JLA, with McLaughlin inks; so, I never saw a problem with it.
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Post by Prince Hal on Feb 13, 2024 23:48:33 GMT -5
I grew up with Dillin on JLA, with McLaughlin inks; so, I never saw a problem with it. Well, vive la difference and all that, but in JLA, Dillin had a propensity for drawing stiffly posed figures, all with the same rectangular heads, and even after all those scores of issues, he never seemed to be able to solve the problem of putting a group of figures together in a panel without making them look jammed together. Admittedly not an easy task, but his last issue of JLA looked no different from his first. Cuidera was able to give his figures a greater depth and suppleness in Blackhawk. |
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Post by tonebone on Feb 14, 2024 15:01:42 GMT -5
I grew up with Dillin on JLA, with McLaughlin inks; so, I never saw a problem with it. Same here... for me, he was up there with Adams, as far as DC artists were concerned. Looking back now, yeah, I see he wasn't really in that class, but he was a lot "fresher" than most of the DC artists at the time. |
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Confessor
CCF Mod Squad
Not Bucky O'Hare!
Posts: 10,203 
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Post by Confessor on Feb 15, 2024 21:18:17 GMT -5
So, today I learned that the fictional Yancy Street from Fantastic Four and other Marvel comics -- home of the infamous Yancy Street Gang -- is based on Delancey Street on the Lower East Side of New York City. This was the same neighbourhood where Jack Kirby grew up and it was, back in the '50s and '60s, home to a large Jewish community. I sought out some images of Delancey Street from the 60s and you can see that it looks very much like the kind of street that Yancy Street has been depicted as in FF and other Marvel comics of the '60s, '70s and '80s.   |
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Post by Icctrombone on Feb 15, 2024 21:28:58 GMT -5
I grew up near Delancey street in the 70’s. In fact, my grandma bought me my first comic , FF102 , on Delancey and Essex street.
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Post by kirby101 on Feb 15, 2024 21:52:25 GMT -5
Obviously reflecting Stan's childhood on the Upper West Side.
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Post by Prince Hal on Feb 15, 2024 23:02:08 GMT -5
I grew up near Delancey street in the 70’s. In fact, my grandma bought me my first comic , FF102 , on Delancey and Essex street. I love the movie "Crossing Delancey." I'm guessing that store where your grandma started you on your road to perdition is long gone, right? (This is from maybe the 1940's.)  |
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Post by berkley on Feb 16, 2024 1:19:17 GMT -5
I grew up near Delancey street in the 70’s. In fact, my grandma bought me my first comic , FF102 , on Delancey and Essex street.
And had to avoid the famous Delancey Street Gang - I bet they really hated how they were portrayed in those FF comics.
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Post by james on Feb 16, 2024 3:56:13 GMT -5
I couldn’t decide where to put this since it didn’t seem to fit an existing thread and it felt like it sould be in the Classics section instead of something like Meanwhile. So how about a thread for comics tidbits that may not merit an entire thread of their own. To start... I’ve just read where artists in the Harry A Chesler studio were working “Marvel Style” in the early 40s. Plastino, Moreira, Raboy, Biro. I had no idea. Please remind me . What is the “Marvel” style , the “DC” style ? Did Image ever have a style? I’ve read and collected comics for 40 years, WOW time flies l, and I’ve never really knew that info. |
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Post by Icctrombone on Feb 16, 2024 5:53:22 GMT -5
I found 2 pictures showing where the newstand was  Right on the corner next to the subway I bought comics. If you walk along Delancey you will approach the Williamsburg Bridge. It's one of the 3 bridges that connect Manhattan to Brooklyn.  |
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Post by MRPs_Missives on Feb 16, 2024 12:09:27 GMT -5
I couldn’t decide where to put this since it didn’t seem to fit an existing thread and it felt like it sould be in the Classics section instead of something like Meanwhile. So how about a thread for comics tidbits that may not merit an entire thread of their own. To start... I’ve just read where artists in the Harry A Chesler studio were working “Marvel Style” in the early 40s. Plastino, Moreira, Raboy, Biro. I had no idea. Please remind me . What is the “Marvel” style , the “DC” style ? Did Image ever have a style? I’ve read and collected comics for 40 years, WOW time flies l, and I’ve never really knew that info. Marvel style is a shorthand for the type of creative process that is "plot first" i.e. a plot not a full script is given to the artist. It's called Marvel style because that was the method that was supposedly used by Stan Lee with Kirby and Ditko and then later by Roy Thomas and others at Marvel. This lets the artist break down the panels and pages as they see fit to tell and pace the story, selecting the best shots, etc. Captions and dialogue are added after the comic has been drawn. An other method is full script, where the writer details panel and page breakdowns, calls for specific shots (wide shot, close up, bird's eye, worm's eye, etc.) and provides captions and dialogues before the art is done. Both assume a production line style where the writer and penciller are different people (in certain cases the plotter and scripter can be different people as well in the Marvel Method). If there is a single cartoonist doing the book, there are many possible ways the process could go depending on how the cartoonist prefers to work. Some do plots, some full script, some do thumbnails instead of a plot (I've heard this was how Giffen worked on the JL books, giving Maguire and DeMatteis thumbnails of the issue to show the story flow and pace, and then Maguire would take that and do the layouts and pencils as he saw fit before DeMatteis would script it), some may just draw the pages as they go along until they ran out of pages for the issue or the story was done. There's no particular DC style or Image style per se. DC traditionally used full script, but often it was the writer meeting with an editor (like Schwartz or Weisinger) for a story conference where the story for an issue was hammered out (or assigned by editor in some cases) and then the writer would produce the script then given to the artist. And "Marvel style" really is a misnomer. It existed before Marvel and is used by non-Marvel creators as well. It really is plot first vs. full script as the dividing line, not any particular company. -M |
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Post by codystarbuck on Feb 16, 2024 20:11:00 GMT -5
To further expand upon the above, much of the material in 1940s comics were done by production houses and sold to the publishers. Some had in-house staffs; but, more often, they hired an existing studio tp produce the finished comics. Some of these were Lloyd Jacquet's Funnies, Inc, who provided material to Centaur and the early Timely Comics, including Bill Everett's Sub-Marine and Carl Burgos' Human Torch; the Eisner/Iger Shop, run by Will Eisner & Jerry Iger, providing material for several publishers, including Fiction House, Quality, and Fox; and, the Harry A Chesler shop.
At these studios, you had a whole assembly line of people producing comic book stories, with writers, artists, letterers, colorists, etc. Some artists did their own work and some did main figures and others did background characters and details. Different studios used different organization, with some having the writers produce full scripts, then the artists illustrating them, while others produced basic plots and then added dialogue afterwards, which was the method that became synonymous at Marvel. The plot method was favored by those who were churning out the stuff, as a writer could whip off quick plots faster than typing full scripts.
It was similar to how early animation was organized, with story people, animation directors creating key scenes, animators working on others, and in-betweeners creating the motions from Point A to Point B. Then, it was photographed onto cels and the cels were painted and then shot against background illustrations and synched with the audio tracts.
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Post by MWGallaher on Feb 16, 2024 21:27:41 GMT -5
And "plot first" is insufficient to summarize the "Marvel Method," when in many cases, particularly in Jack Kirby's stories, the plot was worked out during the drawing process: Kirby reportedly did not always know what was going to happen at a particular stage of the story until he got around to penciling that page. I don't believe we know as much about the process followed by other Silver Age Marvel artists (such as Don Heck and Dick Ayers, who Stan specifically noted in the Bullpen Bulletins were "great story men" who handled the bulk of the plotting on their comics), but I think it can be inferred from many examples that Ayers often came to unplanned-for conclusions, so I suspect he may have, like Jack, often worked out the plot while he was drawing.
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Post by MDG on Feb 17, 2024 10:34:19 GMT -5
... At these studios, you had a whole assembly line of people producing comic book stories, with writers, artists, letterers, colorists, etc. Some artists did their own work and some did main figures and others did background characters and details. Different studios used different organization, with some having the writers produce full scripts, then the artists illustrating them, while others produced basic plots and then added dialogue afterwards, which was the method that became synonymous at Marvel. The plot method was favored by those who were churning out the stuff, as a writer could whip off quick plots faster than typing full scripts. ... I read an interview with Jack Binder where he talked about a studio having a rubber stamp on the back with eight tasks: script, layout, pencil main figures, pencil background figures, pencil backgrounds, ink figures, ink backgrounds, letters. Pages were passed around the room, and artists would put their initials next to what they did on the page. Each item earned them $1, and the studio essentially paid $8 / page.
Another way of developing stories was Harvey Kurtzman's where he started by laying them out visually before "writing" them. I'm pretty sure this example shows his first pass and Elder (or Severin/Elder) worked from a tighter version, probably with the dialog on it.
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