Added 1 new A* page:A reader recently brought up illustrator Alex Raymond, and that got me thinking about the massive volume collecting the first few years of his Flash Gordon comic that another reader got me some time back (I blogged a show and tell with it here) and which I hadn't finished reading through because the hardcover is so big and heavy—like, 17" tall (just about the width of an original A* page, as it happens!)—that it's tough to read without hurting yourself! But now I've found a good way to prop it up so I'm gonna get through it at last. And I think it helped with whatever mojo made the unusually precise page 60; like, it occurs to me that I don't work in say a studio with other artists around to keep me on the ball, so maybe having (and reading!) books of art by really good artists is the next best thing.
I came across a page recently that I thought was particularly interesting from an illustration development point of view; this is the Flash Gordon strip from April 21st, 1935:
Notice how in the last panel there, where Azura is making her dramatic appearance to Flash and his group, Raymond filled the shadows and currents with tight arrays of swooping brush lines—and contrast that with the previous panels, where he mostly left the backgrounds blank, possibly with just an isolated foreground or background element or two: that's how the previous Flash strips had looked, but this last panel here seems to represent his discovery of this curved line technique for expressing volumes, and the following strips would use it more and more heavily, until the whole production was packed with richly volumetric, dramatic panels of shadows and currents—all starting from this one panel!
I also like the way these strips are colored (although I don't think the color was done by Raymond himself); kinda makes me wish I could watercolor the A* pages, but I've tried that before and it didn't really work out for technical reasons (the main one being that I can't watercolor over my corrective white ink; I suppose the other main reason is that my watercoloring was coming out all blotchy : P)...maybe I'll hafta try some non-A*-page drawings with it, though.
Anyway it occurred to me that dang I should have more Raymond stuff around to keep myself on the ball, art-wise. Time has passed and more of those great oversized Flash Gordon collections have come out, so I've added them to A*'s Amazon Wish List, which I'd left empty for a long time. I also put in the first "Archive" volume of the collected "Legion of Super-Heroes" comics; those started out in 1958, basically introducing super-powered kids (often alien kids) from a superhero club in the 30th century who initially came back in time to visit Superboy—but anyway they're from the 30th century and apparently spend their time bickering over club meeting times (their clubhouse is an old space ship, I think I read), and saving the universe.
1958's Adventure Comics #247, first appearance of the Legion (source)
Sounds like good clean fun, and also I like that lovely, polished pre-Kirby-explosion Silver Age DC illustration style.
So yeah, comics!
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