Added 1 new A* page:I've talked about comic strip artist Alex Raymond before, and specifically about his invention and work on what would become one of the most successful strips of its day, Flash Gordon. Well, thanks to the amazing generosity of an A* reader who knocked the last item off A*'s Amazon Wish List, I can now show you something of Raymond's later strip, Rip Kirby.
Flash was a large format, weekly color strip, but Rip, which Raymond began after returning from service in WWII and finding Flash reassigned to another artist, was in the daily black and white, three-panel format you see in papers these days. Not having to leave space for someone to color over his illustrations, Raymond could make full use of deep black shadows, and the graceful cross-hatching he so enjoyed. He also determined to modernize his style: where Flash's graceful, curving pre-war look was replaced by incisive, angular lines contrasted against thick, quick brushed effects; in Rip he would often forgo the use of outlines, instead letting the surrounding shading define his forms for a much more impressionistic look than typically seen in comics. And if the sharp, "modern" look of the strip looks similar to other serial comics you may still see in the funny pages, that's because this style, invented by Raymond, became quite popular among other comic artists who saw his work—but Rip is the strip that invented it.
The book my wonderful reader had sent to me is Rip Kirby Volume 4, the last volume in IDW's recent collection that covers Raymond's work on the strip—from 1954 to 1956, when Raymond's obsession with sports cars—he'd bought six in six years!—tragically caught up with him in a friend's car on a slick, rainy road. The print quality is generally pretty good, although the ink isn't the absolute darkest (I suppose I only notice this because I obsess about ink these days), and some strips here and there are slightly rougher than others; I wonder if they just couldn't find high-quality surviving versions of those.
Here's a dark night sequence where Raymond really got to indulge his love of hatching; the headlight glare effect in the first panel, of which I thoughtlessly cut off half, is a particularly striking piece of design work:
Notice how the shading in this prison sequence gradually gets more and more sinister:
I particularly like the abstraction of the shading in this strip:
So this is pretty near to the ultimate in terms of black and white strip work as far as I'm concerned! I'm learning something from pretty much every panel I take the time to examine closely.
The writing—mostly by Raymond's collaborator, Fred Dickinson, I think—in the one story I've got through so far is not so impressive as the art—a pretty contrived love triangle type of thing. The dialogue is sometimes funny, maybe in an unintentional way. For instance, here's washed-up actor Byron Delight, aka "The Grand Passion" (hm!) trying to stay current:
Maybe he isn't so out of it, after all! Anyway it's a fantastic book to study for adventure comic strip art, and I'm extremely grateful that I have readers who help me acquire these lovely things. :) Thank you! And thanks, of course, for reading this little A* comic. :))
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