Posts Tagged ‘Frank Frazetta’

Here is ADVENTURE


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Friday, July 30, 2010


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Dark Horse has recently published two fine and nicely obscure reprint volumes. The first I’ve been neglecting for a while, but not for lack of love. It’s the complete John Carter of Mars by Jesse Marsh. Yep, 114 pages of Mars action by the Dell master himself. The three 1952-3 comic books reprinted within are among my favorite Marsh works, since the material so readily lent itself to Marsh’s obsessions with modernist forms and contemporary art. (more…)

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Geoff Pevere on Loving Frazetta


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Tuesday, May 11, 2010


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 Earlier this year, Geoff Pevere wrote a fine article on his Frazetta fetish for the Toronto Star. (Pevere is a Canadian cultural journalist. He was recruited for the Doug Wright Awards jury this year, and at the awards ceremony spoke very eloquently about Seth’s work). When I told Geoff how much I liked his Frazetta article, he informed me he had a slightly longer version. This was shortly before the sad news came of Frazetta’s death. So in honour of the great barbarian artist, here is Geoff Pevere’s full tribute:

If love makes us do things common sense says we shouldn’t, I have loved the art of Frank Frazetta. Briefly, it made me a criminal.

I can’t remember when I first laid eyes on a Frazetta, but it was probably on the cover of Creepy or Eerie in the late 1960s. These were comic magazines for people verging on growing too old for comics, black and white horror anthology collections that happened to have some of the best art and writing in the field.

Not at all coincidentally, much of this art and writing was perpetrated by the same generation that had been instrumental in the rise and censorious crash of the industry during the 1950s. On these pages, these EC Comic-vets were free to let their imaginations run to places Comics Code-approved kids comics could not.

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THIS WEEK IN COMICS! (5/12/10 – Series of Varied States)


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Tuesday, May 11, 2010


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Always a favorite, due to the hand:

From Baby, you’re really something!, a 1990 Fantagraphics-published collection of adult paperback illustrations by Frank Frazetta (1928-2010).

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Dave Stevens and Nostalgia


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Sunday, April 26, 2009


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For weeks now I’ve been trying to wrap my head around Brush with Passion: The Life & Art of Dave Stevens. Because this is a blog, and because I think this is now part of a larger project, I’m going to indulge myself by rambling on for a little while. I picked up the book out of idle curiosity while staying at Sammy Harkham’s house in L.A. (fitting, since the book is mired in the kind of illusions and disappointments so well entrenched in that city) and have been fascinated with it ever since. It’s a deeply sad autobiography, left unfinished upon Stevens’ death and wrapped in the cloak of a “celebration” of his artwork. Stevens was the ultimate professional fan artist—pulled into comics and popular entertainment because of his love for both, and a rock star in a hermetically sealed world where San Diego Comic-Con is the nexus of the universe, Frazetta is considered one of the great artists of the 20th century, and everything is about “fun”, criticism and progress be damned. It’s the kind of universe that can be wonderfully supportive, very fun, and also severely limiting. For Stevens it was all three. All he wanted to be was some awesome amalgamation of his heroes Jim Steranko, Frazetta, Jack Kirby, Russ Manning, and Alberto Vargas. But by the time he was of age, there was no room left for that kind of work: too labor-intensive for comics, no longer fashionable in fantasy art, no pulps left to publish it… He was a nostalgist with nowhere to channel his fannish obsessions and no interest in transcending them.

I suppose I was drawn to the Stevens book as a lens through which to look at many of the same artists he admired. Guys like Manning, Wally Wood, Gil Kane, Alex Toth, and others are deeply intriguing both for the lives they lived and the idiosyncratic visual worlds they created. Somehow, studying Stevens in the context of this book is helping me think about the work of his predecessors and mentors.

So let’s back up for a moment. There was this thing that happened in the 1960s: Incredibly skilled, visually ambitious artists like Wood, Manning Toth, et al—men who were raised on pulp imagery and the classic American illustrators like Wyeth and Pyle—decided they wanted to do something “sophisticated.” They realized that despite the still-somewhat plentiful outlets (fewer than in the ‘20s and ‘30s, but still a few) for their work, they were never going to be free of the “juvenile” implications of their subject matter. These were guys who wanted to draw comics, but, given the circumstances (generational, financial, etc.), had nowhere else to go. They were, in essence, the last true work-a-day fantasy artists of the 20th century—still basically working for the pulps, at a high level for low pay. And it was a job—they were visionaries in a journeyman’s business. The work they tried to make on their own, like Wood’s Witzend material or Kane’s Savage, met with varying degrees of aesthetic or commercial failure. In any case, they certainly pointed the way so that the fantasy/adventure artists following them, aware of some notion of independence and certainly cognizant of the example of Crumb, et al, had some kind of choice in the matter.

Sort of. Ironically, the guys that came after Wood and Kane and Toth, like Bernie Wrightson, Mike Kaluta, Barry Smith, and Jeff Jones, followed them right down the manhole, dabbling in independent publishing but basically choosing to be pulp artists at a time when the pulps no longer existed. They chose to be willfully anachronistic. That helped make their work popular to a generation of guys who’d been children (if that) when the ECs came out and were now 20-something fanboys eager for more of the same, but, with the exception of Smith, who really brought a new kind of ferocity to his mark-making, it also severely limited the work. There was nowhere for it to go except for further wallowing in nostalgia – it would never transcend its nostalgic origins. The idea was to just make the best version of Arthur Rackham or Joseph Clement Coll as possible. There’s nothing wrong with that, really—it’s just rather limited.

Anyhow, back to Dave Stevens. Here was a guy who didn’t just come after Wood and Toth, but after Wrightson and Kaluta. So, we’re dealing with someone who grew up aspiring to the success of the second-generation stuff as well. But Wrightson and those guys at least had Creepy, Eerie, and other faux-EC mags; by the time Stevens hit his stride there was nothing but lower rung gigs doing storyboards and movie poster comps. And while he was a wonderful nostalgist and decent technician, Stevens was not a visionary. And he knew it. He broke no new ground or created anything very notable, really. His career seems divided between storyboarding, drawing pin-ups, and creating a readable throwback comic The Rocketeer, which became a fun but unsuccessful movie. His career never moved beyond the comfortable boundaries of mainstream fantasy fandom. And throughout his book he constantly seems trapped or burdened by his chosen professions. When his Hollywood dreams turn sour with The Rocketeer, he writes, “No good deed goes unpunished, especially in Hollywood.” And of the constant stream of “sexy girl” drawings he produced to earn a living: “While I do enjoy it and will probably always create pin-ups in some form, I don’t want to be defined by it.” But of course he was defined by it—by his revival of Bettie Page in the pages of The Rocketeer and by the oddly un-sexy women he drew throughout his career—all sinewy, inelegant line and no character. There is no mystery in his drawings—they look forced and labored over, with none of the grace of his contemporary, Jaime Hernandez, for example. And Stevens, so adored by his community, never had a chance to move past it. After all, he was giving a certain group of people exactly what they wanted: instant, safe nostalgia, “innocent pin-up girls”, an independent comic that felt exactly like a 1950s adventure comic. Something contemporary that Jim Steranko and Harlan Ellison (both contributors to the book and both brilliant as young men and then, like Stevens, trapped in their own “cool guy/king of the nerds” self-image and lionized by a lazy fanbase) could get behind; and, for nerd-dom, the all-important illusion of technical proficiency (here defined as a late 19th century notion that conveniently ignores 20th century art history).

And, by all accounts, he was a very nice guy. I mention this because it comes up again and again in the book. There are numerous testimonials from other professionals, and the editors themselves seem completely enamored of their subject. Stevens was loved in the way only this kind of fandom can love someone. What the book puts across is a world in which success if partly based on just getting close to the outside world–film, TV, “famous” actors or models. Success is getting do some throwaway storyboards for Raiders of the Lost Ark. This is a book that lovingly reproduces storyboards from Godzilla: King of the Monsters in 3-D and contains non-ironic jokes about the sexuality of characters from Jonny Quest, and, of course, prints numerous images with which Stevens himself seems dissatisfied. It’s all so insular.

Stevens struggled with depression throughout his last two decades, and, he writes, “By the late 90s I’d become wholly dissatisfied with the caliber of work that I was producing. My technical skills were limited and my ‘style’ seemed nothing more than a vague pastiche of others whose works I admired and had tried to emulate throughout my developing years.” He goes on later in the book to regret lost time and abandoned projects and to describe his own talents as limited: “My progress as an artist has indeed been slow and ponderous. My growth and potential has largely been limited only by my own lack of foresight and commitment.” I suppose these passages could be read as simple modesty, but I found them tremendously moving. Here’s a guy, ill with Leukemia, regretting parts of his life. That’s not unusual in literature, but extraordinary in fan culture, which is all celebration and good will. In the halls of San Diego and in your local comic shop you’re supposed to pretend that these guys are giants of culture, impervious to criticism as they march forward toward development deals and oil paintings for the latest Shadow revival. It’s all very earnest, but completely dishonest. But where else could he ruminate except in the pages of his very own fan-produced book? It’s as though at the end he needed to break out of the mystique, out of character, and just be human.

Now, it would be easy for someone reading this to make a good case that I’m ignoring all the fun Stevens obviously had and the fact that he entertained tons of people, and was clearly loved. All of that is true and all of that is valuable. And I’m not saying that Stevens should have regretted anything. To each his own and all that. But what a thing – to create a book of his own work and then, in his way, publicly disavow or regret so much of it. In that sense, Stevens really did become one of his idols–just like reading an embittered interview with Alex Toth, Gil Kane, or Wally Wood, all of whom were burdened by the knowledge that there was more to do, just out reach. Except that Stevens had a choice–unlike those guys, who loved comics but had nowhere outside of the mainstream to make them, Stevens made a conscious choice to marginalize himself, to live within the bubble of fandom. He was a willful anachronism, frustrated by his chosen intellectual and artistic world but unable or unwilling to see beyond it. Brush with Passion illustrates that conflict in vivid, sad detail.

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notebook reviews #1


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Tuesday, February 5, 2008


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I wrote these notes while traveling this weekend. They’re sort of reviews, but really just riffing on color and composition. I’m obsessed with HOW color comics used to be made and want to write about it here for fun.
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“The Inheritors”, by Bruce Jones and Scott Hampton
Alien Worlds no. 3
Pacific Comics, 1983
full color

Looks like Kaluta, Wrightson. Reads like an old Unknown Worlds ACG comic but is beautifully painted. Each panel like a small Frazetta fantasy world. And that’s sort of the problem. I like the story, but it’s so serious and heavy and important. No Twilight Zone economy, no pacing, just a slow, laborious plodding. “We were aliens; creatures from another world come to the salvation, not of humankind, but of the planet itself.” A story of immigration, essentially, hacked out by Jones. Tolerable stuff, not great. The art saves it but really it’s just a fairly authentic blend of Frazetta, Wrightson, Kaluta, Vess. Nothing special really but beautiful.

I love the way these old Pacific Comics look. The colors on all the stories are great. All the Pacific Comics back then were done with that crazy process that was called “Greyline”. Steve Oliff actually colored a story in the back, but the Hampton story in the front is colored by Hampton I believe. Anyways, it looks fantastic like some comic straight out of “The Studio.” Plus, I bought it for a quarter. Whatever.

Oh, yes, back to the story. Well, I never finished reading it. I do love this passage (above, bottom panel) however, where a landscape panel has no black-line “overlay.” The landscape is not delineated by black marks, lines that are colored, filled in with paint. The landscape is just pastel colors that recede and allow the inserted black ink’d shadowed image — and the panel itself — to “float” above the color plane. That’s why I bought this one.
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Special Forces no.2, by Kyle Baker
DC, 2007
full color

I don’t really want to review this comic, I just want to write about the color and how fresh it looks. Plus, I’m such a Baker fan it’s hard for me to review anything of his fairly. I mean, I could give a shit about a war comic but Baker’s approach, his humor and his vantage point (read: not white) on the subject makes it, um, enjoyable. Remember this is the comic whose opening volley was a (black) guy getting his head blown off.

Baker has been creating his comics on computer for over ten years now. They “worked” for me back in the ’90s; I always thought he struck a balance between the generic Photoshop look of all computer “constructed” comics (meaning: no inked panel borders, floating computer fonts and text all arranged in Photoshop). It’s an interesting mix of approaches that Baker has developed. He seems to be using all the same filters and settings that everyone else is in Photoshop, but since he can draw better than just about anyone (uses no photo references for the figures as far as I can tell, has mastered a sort of Aragones-inspired comical realism, plus he has a real eye for movement, no staged “realistic” photo ref’d scenes that jar the narrative flow to a halt, no spending days playing photo-shoot director, dressing up as the characters for “believability.” Nah … none of these games for Baker, who’s got the time? He’s got kids, man. Plus he can draw. Did I mention that?), and since his use of color is so inventive and comic-booky and fresh — it all simply overrides the sensors in my brain that normally dismiss such “computerized” comics. In fact I actually like the economy of the easy-to-read simplistic layouts. I think they allow his drawings & sequences to breathe. There’s a real organic feel to his customized approach that carries the narrative along quite beautifully.

I really just want to write about the color tho’, so here goes: in many sequences, Baker will switch from the “realistic” color of the Iraqi landscape and replace it with “knockout” color in the action sequences. Meaning Baker will reduce entire backgrounds to a single color like blue while figures in said background are, say, red. This was very common in the four-color era of comics, but it’s rather uncommon these days to switch from “realism” to “symbolism” on the same page.

Baker’s “realistic” color is, I think, a perfect example of using the contemporary approach to color (Hyper-realism: everything molded and highlighted, shiny and video game-like), but using it with restraint so that the drawings are not overpowered by the colors. His “realism” is also served by alternating back to knockouts and the use of pure flat color. This approach develops a rhythm that allows Baker to use the symbolic and “the real” within the same sequence to great effect.
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Archie no.170, by Harry Lucey
1967
four-color

This is an all Harry Lucey issue. You don’t know who Harry Lucey is? He was the best Archie artist. That’s all you need to know. The whole issue is an amazing display of composition, pure drawing, and gag humor cartooning. It’s a fucking clinic, actually. I’ve been doing these warm-up exercises everyday where I just draw from Lucey. I just look and learn.

Anyway, check out the color in this splash page. Stare at it and break it down. Remember this is four-color process, so its simplicity may fool you. For me, it’s the super simple use of the black and green of the girl’s dress in the foreground, which is a darker green and blue, playing off the wall behind her which is a lighter, 50% green and blue behind her. Big deal, you say? Well, look how the shapes unite and allow the central figures to remain on the left of the composition. The lines of the the wall AND the united color shapes create a plane and piece the wall and the foreground girl together in a really pleasing way. It’s a minor thing, really, but these masterful touches throughout each of the 4 stories in this comic all add up to one remarkable reading experience. (For 3 bux.)

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