Old-School Marvel Comic Art Lessons Teach What Art Is All About
I think the art in comic books are a mixed bag. Some is very good, displaying an immense amount of drama within the panels. Other drawings are clearly rushed. But art that is technically bad doesn’t necessarily make the actual art terrible.
But what can make a drawings or a sketch or a painting more impactful and stand its own against technically good art?
Marvel comics put out a book and a video instructing what makes the art in Marvel comics stand out. It is called How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way. Both the book and the video are basically the same, but I like how the video guest stars both Stan Lee and John Buscema. You get to actually see Buscema sketch out some parts of the lessons being explained. On the other hand, the book allows you to flip through each lesson very easily and focus on the sketches.
ACTION. It’s the most important. Dramatic poses and “camera” angles set Marvel apart from other comics. Marvel characters are a lot larger than other comic characters in both muscle mass and height. The camera is never looking at them straight on. Instead, the characters are seen from high, low, and whatever other angles give the most impact to the action. The poses are very important. Characters need a lot of swing to their body, giving them bigger punches and heavier knockouts. This is the most important part of the instructions in my opinion. If you can’t draw better than the other guy, you better make your stuff seem bigger and more dramatic. You need an eye for striking visuals. Don’t ever make your stuff boring.
The part that really struck me happens at the 52 minutes and 16 seconds mark. Buscema says, “Open your mind. That's what art is all about."
That’s great. You can’t restrict yourself no matter how much your sense of shame or ego or consciousness is screaming at you not to express yourself in the way you want. It might seem like other people are stopping you, telling you to quit or nobody cares about what you’re making, but unless they are actually physically destroying you, you can make whatever you want. To make things, you shouldn’t just hold yourself in a box and do what you have always been doing. Try new things and methods of working and techniques. You might not end up liking some of them, but you’ll find things you do like and your art will be more rich.
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The book was the first real instructional art book I ever got, almost 30 years ago, and I love it to this day. I just got the video a couple years back and while it's great seeing Stan and John, I was disappointed that John doesn't really draw! He just sits there tracing over the exact images from the book and pointing at them with a pencil...
Oh well, it's still a wonderful gem for all artists and comics enthusiasts!
I really liked the book and video as well, especially how they emphasize the need for great camera angles and dramatic character posing.