SWIPING OR NOT: When Famous People Land In Comics

Folks like Rich Johnson over at CBR’s Lying in the Gutters take delight in pointing out when comics artists swipe (or ape) another artists or a photograph’s image. Sometimes it’s pretty funny, as in the constant ribbing of Greg Land. However, sometimes it’s fairly scarry, (and this is not Rich’s fault) as when it looks like David Mack’s entire style is nothing but swipes. (Sometimes augmented with collage)

What’s funny is that at some point we crossed a line. We went from familiar faces showing up in Neal Adams’ or Paul Gulacy’s art to swipes as an art style. I see the reason and the differences here. One is the proliferation of the Internet and digital technology. Adams and Gulacy didn’t have it. They truly drew a character into their stories. By that I mean that they did sketches and finished portraits. They memorized the physical aspects of a face and body in their minds and through their hands.

Adams got his start doing a Ben Casey newspaper strip. He was used to dealing with actors as characters in his art from the beginning. From there he moved into advertising art along with his comic work. He could portray anyone in order to lampoon them or to further along a straight story. He wasn’t held back by the lack of a specific facial expression or pose. He had mastered them by the time he put their image on a page. He made them do whatever he wanted and it was so fluid you bought right into it. (I don’t care if it was fellow comics professionals for a Batman story, Spiro Agnew for Green Lantern,  or the many that came up in Superman vs. Muhammad Ali, to name a few.)

Gulacy didn’t have Adams’ background, but you could tell how he gravitated towards certain actors. You knew he had done his work off of the page before he started a story. Again, it was pure drawing and he integrated the images into characters that served a story. (Whether it was Lee, Connery, Brando, Niven and Marx for MOKF, or the porn actresses that showed up as female leads in solo stories, or Coburn for some of his Warren work.)

Now images show up and they are barely changed from the source material. They have a tendency to take you right out of a story because they are not integrated into it. Instead it’s a little technical showcase. A game of “guess where this is from”? The story comes to a standstill, and if it’s an ongoing character in the story, he suddenly looks very different. (Or are you to infer that the rest of the panels should look like Brad Pitt just because one close up does?)

I know it’s not everybody’s cup of tea, but I enjoyed the old stories when these things happened. It was the cherry on the top of my favorite artist sundae. Now, I miss the consistency. I realize it’s an easy thing to do with Google image search and freeze frame DVD along with Photoshop. But, what’s the point? Did you really service the story with that?

I know that it’s tough to produce the books and that any short cut or advantage is being embraced, but it was just as tough back then. They made it work because they did the work. Now, I don’t think the effort is worth it to trick out a couple of panels.