Over at the VINCE COLLETTA THE ARTIST thread, Mark Evanier made the following
comment about Frank Robbins:
First of all, my question has nothing to do with Vince Colletta. Whew!
But I was curious why it is that, by everything I've ever read, it is said that newspaper strips can take just as much if not more time than drawing pages for a comic book. Why would holding down a strip job that, when all the strips from a typical month are lined up side by side, it adds up to only about a quarter of the artistic output necessary to do a comic book. Is it because newspaper strip art is so much more detailed than comic book art? I don't think that's it. Is it because the daily deadline nature of newspaper strips is different from the monthly deadline of comics? I suspect the answer lies in there somewhere, but I can't fathom how.
So enlighten me! Why would a newspaper strip be treated by an artist as if it was a full-time job - with assistants - that would keep him from seeking and accommodating other work?
Robbins was a very fast penciller who walked in to Marvel at a time when they were desperate for pencillers. The bosses wanted a certain number of books per month and Marvel was short-handed so they grabbed Robbins and gave him a contract to draw two books a month. (To give you an idea how fast Robbins was: During this period, he was still writing, pencilling and inking his daily newspaper strip, Johnny Hazard. There are many artists for whom doing a daily strip like that would be a full-time job, plus they'd need two or three assistants to get it done. Robbins did it all by himself and drew two comics a month.)
First of all, my question has nothing to do with Vince Colletta. Whew!
But I was curious why it is that, by everything I've ever read, it is said that newspaper strips can take just as much if not more time than drawing pages for a comic book. Why would holding down a strip job that, when all the strips from a typical month are lined up side by side, it adds up to only about a quarter of the artistic output necessary to do a comic book. Is it because newspaper strip art is so much more detailed than comic book art? I don't think that's it. Is it because the daily deadline nature of newspaper strips is different from the monthly deadline of comics? I suspect the answer lies in there somewhere, but I can't fathom how.
So enlighten me! Why would a newspaper strip be treated by an artist as if it was a full-time job - with assistants - that would keep him from seeking and accommodating other work?
