Fri, 6 November 2009  Chugging along with another microcast. Today features a rambling discussion of odd books including Choose Your Own Adventure style, sitcom adaptations, photonovels, the Pryde of the X-Men graphic novel adaptation of the cartoon pilot, fumetti, and Sadistik (Satanik/Killing) pulps.  
Direct download: Branded_in_the_80s_Microcast_Episode_16.mp3 Category: podcasts -- posted at: 5:00 AM Comments[4] |
I've never heard of the photonovel approach where photographs of people from shows got used as panels in a comic style way. I've never paid attention to comics where animation is used as the basis for the drawings-I knew they existed but they just seemed lazy to me because a still frame or cel from animation will never be as good as a panel crafted to tell the story. That photonovel stuff sounds really strange, though. Although it's pretty much the same technique as using animation stills for some reason doing it with live action gives it a new dimension of weirdness to me.
Your show now has me questioning my understanding of visual storytelling. Is the aim of the comics artist to depict in drawings the actions of people in situations or environments that would be nearly impossible to take real photographs of? Do people draw because taking pictures to fit a comics story cannot be done as cheaply? Are the Marvel and DC comics of today better because their art is more sophisticated than Marvel or DC comics from the 60s? Or are they better looking because they look more real than what could be achieved by artists in the 60s? As technology progresses to the point where digital imagery reaches photorealism, will comics art as we know it cease to exist? Is realism the goal? I get the feeling this has already been discussed in comic book forums but I never thought about it before your show.
Your show now has me questioning my understanding of visual storytelling. Is the aim of the comics artist to depict in drawings the actions of people in situations or environments that would be nearly impossible to take real photographs of? Do people draw because taking pictures to fit a comics story cannot be done as cheaply? Are the Marvel and DC comics of today better because their art is more sophisticated than Marvel or DC comics from the 60s? Or are they better looking because they look more real than what could be achieved by artists in the 60s? As technology progresses to the point where digital imagery reaches photorealism, will comics art as we know it cease to exist? Is realism the goal? I get the feeling this has already been discussed in comic book forums but I never thought about it before your show.
posted by: Esteban on Wed, 11/11 03:33 PM EST
Esteban - Yeah, It's a really weird thing. I think a lot of the European photonovels and picture fumetti are a way to capitalize on a property where the work has already been done. I think a good portion of these books and pulps are taken from existing TV and film properties and thus is a whole heck of a lot easier to pay some guy to mock up a book of stills than it would to pay an artist and writer to do it from scratch. Also, in the case of stuff like Diabolik, I think it's taping into the soft core porn market in that a lot of the imagery involves the main character and women in bondage, so the more real the better in terms of titillation (not that there aren't a metric ton of foreign hand-drawn sex comics.)
As far as the American equivalents go (like the Mork & Mindy book), I have no idea what the editors were thinking. Personally, as far as today's comic art goes, I think the push towards realism is breaking the format a bit by ignoring a lot of the aspects that make cartooning effective. You tend to not see all that many sound effects anymore and the dynamism of action layouts are being traded in for mass amounts of detail that most readers don't dwell on long enough to really appreciate. It's also taking a little bit of the fill-in-the-blanks-with-your-imagination aspect out of reading comics as artists are "casting" actor's likenesses in the roles of these characters effectively informing the reader on how that character looks, sounds, and acts (based on how that actor typically acts in their films and TV roles.) I think in a weird way comics are working towards a photo-realism that borders on the technique of rotoscoping in animation (so like the stuff that Richard Linklater is doing with movies like A Scanner Darkly.) At that point, why animate and not augment with CG? Is it still animation when the animators are basically tracing over film footage? I think about the comics work of Timothy Bradstreet and how he uses models and photos (that he draws on top of on a layer of vellum paper.) He's hugely popular for doing the covers to the recentish Punisher comics, but they're all stiff and lifeless. I don't get it. I mean, I like his detail, but it's just not good comic work...
As far as the American equivalents go (like the Mork & Mindy book), I have no idea what the editors were thinking. Personally, as far as today's comic art goes, I think the push towards realism is breaking the format a bit by ignoring a lot of the aspects that make cartooning effective. You tend to not see all that many sound effects anymore and the dynamism of action layouts are being traded in for mass amounts of detail that most readers don't dwell on long enough to really appreciate. It's also taking a little bit of the fill-in-the-blanks-with-your-imagination aspect out of reading comics as artists are "casting" actor's likenesses in the roles of these characters effectively informing the reader on how that character looks, sounds, and acts (based on how that actor typically acts in their films and TV roles.) I think in a weird way comics are working towards a photo-realism that borders on the technique of rotoscoping in animation (so like the stuff that Richard Linklater is doing with movies like A Scanner Darkly.) At that point, why animate and not augment with CG? Is it still animation when the animators are basically tracing over film footage? I think about the comics work of Timothy Bradstreet and how he uses models and photos (that he draws on top of on a layer of vellum paper.) He's hugely popular for doing the covers to the recentish Punisher comics, but they're all stiff and lifeless. I don't get it. I mean, I like his detail, but it's just not good comic work...
posted by: Shawn Robare on Thu, 11/12 07:04 AM EST
I am not surprised that in this age of reality television and the endless Hollywood rehashing of old ideas that one of the most popular comic artists is essentially a guy who traces. Back when I was buying comics in the 80s I remember loving Walt Simonson's runs on Thor and the Fantastic Four, Art Adams on X-Men or Todd McFarlane on Hulk and Spider-Man. Those guys were artists who could really draw and they had style.
I was thinking how great it is that those women on the covers of the Sadistik magazines are probably somebody's grandmas or great grandmas by now. I never got to see color pictures of my grandmas when they were young. All I think we had were tiny sepia toned photos of our grandmas that looked overexposed and ancient.
I was thinking how great it is that those women on the covers of the Sadistik magazines are probably somebody's grandmas or great grandmas by now. I never got to see color pictures of my grandmas when they were young. All I think we had were tiny sepia toned photos of our grandmas that looked overexposed and ancient.
posted by: Esteban on Thu, 11/12 08:44 AM EST
I'm just starting to get into Simonson's Thor and FF runs, but I was wonky for his New Mutants stuff as a kid. I even lament the shift in tone of Marc Silvestri from more cartoonish art (back in his Uncanny X-Men days) to his more realistically rendered style of today. I think that's why I still really dig Erik Larsen and Mike Mignola because they've stuck with very dynamic and cartoon-y styles.
You know, I wonder that all the time, about the grandma thing. I don't have any photos of my grandparents, and to think that there will be a whole generation whose parents and grand parents were in porn is just weird. Puts things in an odd perspective. "You know, you're grandma's Diabolik cover shoots kept food on our table and shoes on our feet! There are kids in the world who don't have hand-me-down skeleton suits and tons of excess rope like you do!"
You know, I wonder that all the time, about the grandma thing. I don't have any photos of my grandparents, and to think that there will be a whole generation whose parents and grand parents were in porn is just weird. Puts things in an odd perspective. "You know, you're grandma's Diabolik cover shoots kept food on our table and shoes on our feet! There are kids in the world who don't have hand-me-down skeleton suits and tons of excess rope like you do!"
posted by: Shawn Robare on Thu, 11/12 09:03 AM EST
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