Bishop2Knight wrote:
My questions don't appear that far off the mark, do they? I did imply I was a novice at this, right? *shrug*

Your questions are fine but my answers obviously weren't clear enough.

ECs really aren't "early" comics. By the time EC's New Trend comics were published, comic book art had evolved dramatically. EC was the first company to really emphasize quality art and to publicize its artistic talent, feature artist bios in its comics, etc. There is a discipline and an emphasis on artistry in ECs that was new --but comic books were well over a decade old by then.

I was mostly talking about early comic book art -- pretty much 1936 to 1942. The style of art in many comics from that era is heavily derivative of newspaper comics and also, as noted by christy, to illustrated children's books. Some of the art of that period is beautiful while other examples are bizarre in ways that defy analysis. The first few years comic books were published, the field was wide open and some very creative and eccentric work was produced. Check out Fletcher Hanks. 

Just the concept of the "page" as a display surface took awhile to evolve. As others have said, the sheer volume of product also brought a lot of mediocre talent to the medium so it's sometimes difficult to separate the wheat from the chaff. You would probably do well to read a basic book on comic book history...Jim Steranko's 2 volumes, Feiffer's Great Comic Book Heroes, or the more recent Men of Tomorrow -- if you really want to understand the fundamental wheres, whens, and whos of the medium. 

As to when words and pictures were integrated artistically -- that happened in the 1910s in newspaper strips so it was also part of the the best comic books from the very beginning. It just wasn't common and, arguably, still isn't.    



Last Edited By: austex23 May 6 13 12:23 AM. Edited 1 times.