Yes, Jack Kirby is amazing. I love his comics, and I love the frenetic, idea-driven style of comic he created and eventually perfected. What I don't love is one specific outgrowth of his influence. Before Kirby, the Platonic ideals of action comics art were Hal Foster and Alex Raymond, both essentially realist figure artists. A massive part of Kirby's genius was his arrival at a way of cartooning the human figure in motion, using foreshortening, large areas of spotted black, and his own titanic style to create a convincing simulation of reality that owed precious little to realist anatomy. That's not to say Kirby didn't understand realist values -- his early comics testify to at least as good an eye for the figure as the average Golden Age artist, and he's on record about the lessons he learned from both Foster and Raymond.
But the artists who inherited Kirby's sphere of greatest influence -- that is, superhero comics -- had a new ideal to work from. Kirby's followers are almost uniformly victims of his success. No action artist since has assembled a cartooned style that presents dynamic figure drawings as successfully, and the Foster/Raymond fallback of inserting realism where dynamism falls short has warped into something that simply doesn't work. Rather than wedding realist, workable anatomy to Kirbyist gesture, composition, and dynamism, the common solution seems to be a combination of Kirby anatomical distortion (the over-muscled men and blow-up women stereotypical of superhero comics) to more realist, observation framing.
Example:
The tiny head, lack of neck, thick wrists, squat posture, and tree trunk legs work in Kirby's version because it's a sharply foreshortened action shot -- not only are some body parts hurtling toward the camera and some thrown back, the anatomy is less likely to be noticeable as non-realist (which it is) because we're paying attention to the pose. And the impact of the picture is actually enhanced by seeing the figure thrown out of proportion -- it's like hearing a musical dischord, it puts you right on the edge of your seat.
The modern version (example above by Olivier Coipel, who I actually think is better than most and don't intend to call out specifically) pulls from all Kirby's anatomical distortions and none of his dynamism. A completely static pose is only made more problematic by the obvious lack of attention to realist anatomy. Though Kirby's version is much more broadly cartooned, it's a far more convincing piece of artwork because it's fully aware of what it's doing. It has an internal logic that the work done in his shadow lacks, with its strange combination of observational framing and dynamic figure. Kirby's characters always moved, and as such they were designed for constant motion. Freeze them in place and they fall apart, as today's superhero art is showing on a weekly basis.
My advice to the modern action artist: go look at some Hal Foster comics before you get to Kirby. We can't all be visionaries, you know.
5 comments:
Great point. I hadn't thought about how Kirby might have been the breaking point, but it never ceases to amaze me how most silver age artists could draw many kinds of genres (superheroes, western, romance, etc.) without breaking a sweat and making it look convincing. That despite the fact that these books were disposable entertainment for kids.
Now you have all these mainstream books that aim to be mature and durable entertainment, but a lot of the artists in these books can't even draw regular people's clothes convincingly. The big difference is, of course, that the fifties artists had backgrounds as profesional illustrators, and therefore were visually educated, while a lot of contemporary mainstream artists only frame of reference are the comics they enjoyed as kids.
Matt, I completely agree. Artists should develop from the ground up.
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Kirby can't be imitated, and attempts to do so are invariably grotesque, and reflect poorly on Kirby's achievement as a stylist. Remember that Kirby, just like almost every artist of his generation said Caniff, Raymond, and Foster were his academe.
I've got supreme respect for Kirby, and see his late style as the height of sophistication and understanding, but I can't stand anything plods along in his wake.
Patrick Ford
I think there are some good cartoonists with their feet planted squarely in the Kirby style -- Tom Scioli and Shaky Kane come immediately to mind, and CF's got a ton of Kirby to him -- but basically, yeah. I think the problematic approach is basically "Kirby would be even more awesome if he was more realistic!"
Mainly, I don't see Kirby as a good foundation to build on, or an elevator you get on at the ground floor.
Artists should absorb from as many places as they can along their path, but just as a Picasso did, it's better to work up from a solid understanding. Abstraction is great, but it needs to be informed abstraction, otherwise stuff comes off as mannered; at least to me.
Patrick Ford
KIrby did way more than just dynamic poses, something only a few of his acolytes understand, Steve Rude being the most prominent. Even his baroque 70's-era work had quiet moments and subtle body language and facial expressions. Such was his skill that he was even able to give a character like the Thing recognizable expressions and postures that transmitted his emotions- something none of his followers have been able to do.
His training in animation gave him a good foundation in movement that is still unusual. He often showed figure in the moment just before or after a punch, when their bodies are off-balance. Most of Kirby's imitators aped his style but used flat-footed poses, showing the bodies straining at the action, leaving nothing to the imagination. Steranko and Rude did a better job than most at replicating Kirby's more off-kilter dynamics.
I would add that Coipel was a better artist when he first arrive on the American scene- his work on Legion Lost is really beautiful- impressionistic but dynamic. The style he developed later seems to be a reaction to editorial direction to work in a more commercial style. Check it out.
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