Original Comic Book Art And The Collectors - TwoMorrows

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RIGHT: Gene Colan
BELOW: Tomb of
Dracula #21 (June
1974), pg. 26, pencils:
Gene Colan, inks: Tom
Palmer.
Characters TM & ©2009
Marvel Characters, Inc.
SPARTA
pg. # 30 Book GRAILPAGES: Original Comic Book Art and the Collectors
GRAILPAGES: INTERVIEW
THE MAN IN THE SHADOWS
Some of the most classic ex-
amples of flow in storytelling can
be assessed from viewing John
Buscema’s art. His images appear
as snapshots taken at key moments
during a story. Along that
line, but subtly different, Gene
Colan’s panel pages appear as
frames of film, some blurred with
motion, some just catching the back of a figure as he leaps out
of frame. Colan’s deep affection for acting, for film, has gifted
his art with a sense of cinema unmatched anywhere.
As John Buscema’s work was the human figure in motion,
Gene Colan’s was the human spirit, captured on the faces of
his subjects. Gene’s art was done up close, personal, almost
uncomfortably intimate. His incredible ability to draw faces and
to express emotion characterized and separated his work from
others. The emotion he captured wasn’t the cartoon stock reactions
of shock and anger, but the finer emotions running between
those extremes.
John Buscema was often called the Michelangelo of comic
books, because of his affection for the human form. But if he
was Michelangelo, then Colan was Caravaggio, with his intense
relationship with the absolutes of light and darkness.
Until November of 1967 the comic workload was produced
on paper measuring a breathtaking 14"x20.” But the costs of
production occasioned the reduction of the original size to a
more manageable 11"x17,” which gained the nickname of oneand-a-half-up,
referring to the pages now being only approximately
1.5 times larger than its published form, down from
twice the published dimension.
Most artists took the change in paper size in stride, some
even developing new styles as a result of the change. Others,
on the dark side of the equation, suffered from the more
cramped confines panels were restricted to. “The artists I think
adversely affected were Jack Kirby and Ross Andru,” Roy
Thomas offered.
Gene began doing some of his best work in the mid-’60s,
when the larger size paper was still in use. “John Severin asked me
to try the larger size out,” Gene recalled. “After a while I began to
realize I could show more and express more with big pages. I found
small size very restricting.” And in those restrictions he felt that
backgrounds suffered. “Everything had to be compressed.”
And with the compression, his figures were often narrowed
down just to the explosive close shot, where the flicker of emotion
was easily read. As time went on Gene reflected an even greater
emotional intensity despite the limitations of panel size. And it was
what gave books like Tomb of Dracula their strong emotional power.
Marv Wolfman had as good of a grasp on Bram Stoker’s character
as Roy Thomas had on Robert E. Howard’s. The Tomb of
Dracula stories were an amalgam of the horror and the adventure
that made the Dracula novel such compelling reading. And all the
subtexts of eroticism made it to the comic book as well. The recherché
art and storytelling actually made you feel pity for the character
who would qualify as singularly the most ruthless serial killer in
history. Gene’s emotive depiction of shadows, which seem to flow
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