{"id":226,"date":"2008-01-10T18:16:00","date_gmt":"2008-01-10T23:16:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/comicscomicsmag.com\/2008\/01\/marshall-rogers\/"},"modified":"2008-01-10T18:16:00","modified_gmt":"2008-01-10T23:16:00","slug":"marshall-rogers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/comicscomicsmag.com\/?p=226","title":{"rendered":"Marshall Rogers"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\" href=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/bp3.blogger.com\/_D8lGkTzFWrk\/R4a0fziUYII\/AAAAAAAAAE4\/1b9nkVGV5rw\/s1600-h\/MRogers100.jpg\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" style=\"float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/bp3.blogger.com\/_D8lGkTzFWrk\/R4a0fziUYII\/AAAAAAAAAE4\/1b9nkVGV5rw\/s320\/MRogers100.jpg\" border=\"0\" alt=\"\"id=\"BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5154005282075205762\" \/><\/a>I found this convention sketch in a box at my mom&#8217;s house the other day. I&#8217;d forgotten all about it. I paid 15 bucks for it back in &#8217;87, and I remember thinking that was a fortune. Too bad I barely remember anything about my interaction with Marshall Rogers himself. I only remember watching in amazement as he made these little marks on the paper when he started, little dashes that I quickly realized were for figuring out proportion. As soon as he had those marks down he was off to the races, and the drawing came to life literally in a matter of minutes. When he tore it out of the pad and handed it over to me, I do remember feeling a little gypped &#8212; but looking at it now, I think, good grief, it&#8217;s awesome, how did he knock it out that fast?  <\/p>\n<p>I showed this drawing to my friend <a href=\"http:\/\/jimrugg.livejournal.com\/\">Jim Rugg<\/a> and we started talking about the sort of stylized naturalism that Rogers was known for. And then Jim said, &#8220;Y&#8217;know, the hackiest hack who worked for Marvel in the early &#8217;60s had a better sense of basic figure drawing and naturalism than almost any contemporary cartoonist.&#8221; We both wracked our brains trying to come up with a modern equivalent to, say, Don Heck. And we couldn&#8217;t! Who draws in a non-photo-referenced, natural, realistic style? Okay, Jaime Hernandez. But who else? Everyone we came up with didn&#8217;t seem to fit. Michael Golden? No, too stylized. Beto? No, too cartoony. Jason Lutes? No, too stiff. There isn&#8217;t this sort of basic non-photo-ref&#8217;d style that&#8217;s in widespread use anymore. I&#8217;m sure if I really thought about it I could find an artist and point to their work and say, &#8220;Here, this guy.&#8221; But the fact is styles change, tastes change, and so do abilities and schools of thought. Photo-referencing rules the roost these days in &#8220;realistic-looking&#8221; comics, and I hate it. Gimme Don Heck instead. Or Rogers. He might&#8217;ve used some photo-referencing here and there, but he had it down and didn&#8217;t have to take photo after photo of his friends posing and then thinly disguise it as comics. I mean, have you read <a href=\"http:\/\/images.amazon.com\/images\/P\/1582405190.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg\">Coyote<\/a>? What?  You haven&#8217;t? What are you waiting for?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I found this convention sketch in a box at my mom&#8217;s house the other day. I&#8217;d forgotten all about it. I paid 15 bucks for it back in &#8217;87, and I remember thinking that was a fortune. Too bad I barely remember anything about my interaction with Marshall Rogers himself. I only remember watching in amazement as he made these little marks on the paper when he started, little dashes [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[363,376,612,626,661,855,894],"class_list":["post-226","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-heck","tag-drawing-styles","tag-jaime-hernandez","tag-lutes","tag-rugg","tag-marshall-rogers","tag-golden"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/comicscomicsmag.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/comicscomicsmag.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/comicscomicsmag.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comicscomicsmag.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comicscomicsmag.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=226"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/comicscomicsmag.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/comicscomicsmag.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=226"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comicscomicsmag.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=226"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comicscomicsmag.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=226"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}