(no subject)

[kradeelav]

read american vampire: survival of the fittest recently because i got reminded of my old crush on sean murphy's art for it back when he used to be active on deviantart - and then white knight: harley quinn on a whim because matteo scalera's art is really good. (i've been poking at various coloring methods out of boredom and both of them have a strong black/shape language but delicate coloring. they're also both excellent at drawing people of all ages which i'm rapidly noticing separates the "good" from "great".) 

it's weird how different american comic art trends is from euro/manga. of artists who draw for cape comics i almost exclusively prefer euro-born artists (pepe larraz is another); murphy is probably my sole exception and you can see a lot of manga influence with him. given he drew nazi vampires for amvamp, i almost guarantee you he's a hellsing fan, lol.

between that and my brief dip into rogue/magneto, the ... presentation? of comics is so different. US personal sites are all about pushing newsletters, original prints, comic con if they have one; usually it's just a facebook page, and a spammy medley various comic distributors on google. it's almost impossible to see wip panels where (imo) the interesting stuff happens; if they post a lot on twitter it's usually very boring pin-up poses cranked out to sell at cons. mangaka, personally, have much tidier sites where you see a little more of the personality shine and a little more of the behind-the-scenes. where they get their influences from via their linked list, gallery images, a blog... the spammiest they typically get is promo for an upcoming release (reasonable) or drawing for gacha games. maybe i'm just more tolerant to those cultural quirks because i grew up more in manga/doujinshi circles.

anyway thinking a lot as i pocket this art.

Comments

[caged_dragon]

+1

I do like the art in American Vampire quite a bit, but I'm a huge fan of the character designs in White Knight: Harley Quinn.

[kradeelav]

aren't the character designs so good? i'm not even a DC fan but the artists nailed it (especially the lady characters imo) - from harley's hyenas to the kickass knife throwing grandma to ivy.

[vsitante]

(does the gendo ikari pose) This is making me want to say so much about the differences of generations of American comic books (because there are, and some of them would look Euro nowadays) but--I will say there's also a...baked-in culture of presentation. A lot of it going back to how the first gen of American comic book creators (and tbf might be the same for Euro/JP with exceptions) didn't look at comics as a calling but as a job. A low-brow job that wasn't one to exactly be proud of, initially. So they presented it as such, being shy about it. Once that changed, especially when a lot of fanzine folks became pros like Roy Thomas and Paul Levitz I think it became another beast. What kind entails an essay imo lol. But places like TwoMorrows bridge that gap a little. They're the only American publisher that imo understands the need for artbooks or peeks at behind the scenes, and so they have a ton of those through their "historical analysis" style of magazine Alter Ego and Back Issues, and the section where they basically just do their own version of artbooks or how-to, or "this is both an artbook and interview deep dive" books.

https://twomorrows.com/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=95&zenid=ahkae9ppq7dgekn280n5vdhf90

(Also, Roy Thomas helps with them--never forgetting his roots!)

That said, you are very on point. IMO, I can also tell if an American comic book creator has been influenced by anime/manga--or if they're from the underground/indie section, because the "sharing" aspect changes or the site outlook. Before she slightly adjusted her website, Colleen Doran would share a lot of WIPs, old art, etc on her site. Some of her blogs are now paywalled behind Patreon, unfortunately, but she's also made a Substack where she's basically giving out useful info for free: https://colleendoran.substack.com/

[kradeelav]

wowww... you really could teach a college level course on comics history, all of this is absurdly fascinating. :o I've never heard of Roy Thomas and Paul Levitz which is such a shame considering their traditions of zines-to-comics (which feels like such a cycle with a lot of early 2010's webcomics folks going pro nowadays, thinking of Der Shing).

vaguely do remember how pulp book illustrations were also in that vein of 'it's just a job/lowbrow' and i wonder if there was a lot of crossover with pulp book illustrators and comickers - i know frazetta did both. good point with how their presentation would differ in that case.

colleen's substack is a treasure, going through it now and plopping it on the rss feed list. thank YOU so much again!

[vsitante]

D'awww, well, most of what I know is simply repeating/remembering what other folks long before me have done or written--sharing is simply caring, in that case! That said, there's certainly a good thesis to be had with comparing corpus of early webcomics vs zines-to-comics, and how "apprenticeships" in comics also worked (there's fun stories that are generally very similar to the manga assistants pipeline.) Only happy to help in that regard!