Date: Thu, 2 Nov 1995 15:13:18 -0500 From: [comix digest approval] at [world.std.com] To: [comix digest] at [world.std.com] Subject: comix-digest V1 #345 comix-digest Thursday, 2 November 1995 Volume 01 : Number 345 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: [m--er--n] at [sidefx.sidefx.com] (Mark Mayerson) Date: Thu, 2 Nov 1995 10:34:41 -0500 Subject: re: Gil Kane Since we're talking about Kane, I want to point out certain things. First, he's a very astute observer of the art and business of mainstream comics. Reading interviews with him or hearing him speak, you'll learn a lot about the artistic growth of mainstream comics and the peculiarities of the business. The Comics Journal once ran a transcript of a discussion between Kane and Crumb which was fantastic for what it revealed about their artistic approaches and how they viewed other people's work. Second, Kane has an entrepreneurial streak. He self published His Name is Savage, which died due to poor distribution in the days before the direct market. Kane also had plans to do Conan at that point, before Marvel ever had the rights to the character. Kane did Blackmark, a sword and sorcery original paperback for Bantam. There were supposed to be three of them, but only one was published. Some of the material was later printed by Marvel. Kane and Ron Goulart did the comic strip Star Hawks. When it started, it had a very innovative two tier format, which allowed Kane to break up the space much more like a comic book page and less like a conventional adventure strip. Unfortunately, the format was later cut back to the standard one tier and the strip died. For me, Kane is a paradox. On the one hand, he's extremely intelligent and his art comes from a studied analysis. He's far from an intuitive artist. On the other hand, the content he's involved in is pure genre and mostly crap. Even the things that Kane has had a hand in writing are not much better than the rest of his work. It's clear that Kane sees the gap between his brain and his work, and I think it leaves him with discomfort. Kane's god is Lou Fine, the early superhero artist of The Ray and other Quality comics titles. Kane has described his own approach as "operatic" which I think is a good description. Kane is interested in sweeping movements and over the top emotions. If you can get off on these things, Kane is a very interesting artist. If these things don't do anything for you, then Kane is just another superhero artist, though technically better than most. ___________________________________________________________________ Mark Mayerson Catapult Productions Internet: [m--er--n] at [sidefx.com] Toronto, Ontario, Canada In Production: Monster By Mistake (416) 504-9876 _________________________________________________________________ ------------------------------ From: [j r d] at [frame.com] (James Drew) Date: Thu, 2 Nov 95 10:11:02 PST Subject: re: Gil Kane >From: [m--er--n] at [sidefx.sidefx.com] (Mark Mayerson) >Kane has described his own approach as "operatic" >which I think is a good description. Mmm, that's right. He also teamed with Roy Thomas to do DC version of the Ring Cycle. Jim ------------------------------ From: "Nevins Mark" <[nevins mark] at [bah.com]> Date: 2 Nov 1995 13:09:09 U Subject: RE: Send Info: Gil Kane Mike Fragassi asks: >"Photoreceptor" would do it. Gil Kane is one of those old far-uh, >masters, whose names often pop up in discussions but about whom I know >next to nothing. (I'm free-associating "Tarzan" to the name, but that >doesn't seem right.) Since I sense that I really ought to know him, I'll >take this opportunity to finally unmask my ignorance and ask: "Uh, who?" Off the top of my head, from Leesburg . . . Given that most of Kane's output is superhero-focussed, we shouldn't go into *too* much detail here--though he is historically important as the producer of what many call the "first graphic novel": _His Name is Savage_. He also tried to do what he considered ground-breaking "alternative" work, including _Blackmark_ (self-published sword-and sorcery), and _Star Hawks_ (a _Star Wars_-inspired space strip). I always look at Kane (whose output is prolific) as one of the key artists spanning from Golden into Silver Age. I think his best work is as a cover artist--he was one of the great ones for getting you to buy the book. His best work on covers, IMO, was on '60's _Atom_ and _Green Lantern_. Probably his best and most important comics story work was the long run he put in on _Green Lantern_. Oh yeah, he's also notable as the guy who drew all those _Conan_ covers where the girl in the iron bikini being menaced on the cover by some unspeakable horror never actually appeared inside the comic, much to my adolescent dismay . . . . :-) Mark Nevins. ------------------------------ From: "Nevins Mark" <[nevins mark] at [bah.com]> Date: 2 Nov 1995 13:09:09 U Subject: RE: Send Info: Gil Kane Mike Fragassi asks: >"Photoreceptor" would do it. Gil Kane is one of those old far-uh, >masters, whose names often pop up in discussions but about whom I know >next to nothing. (I'm free-associating "Tarzan" to the name, but that >doesn't seem right.) Since I sense that I really ought to know him, I'll >take this opportunity to finally unmask my ignorance and ask: "Uh, who?" Off the top of my head, from Leesburg . . . Given that most of Kane's output is superhero-focussed, we shouldn't go into *too* much detail here--though he is historically important as the producer of what many call the "first graphic novel": _His Name is Savage_. He also tried to do what he considered ground-breaking "alternative" work, including _Blackmark_ (self-published sword-and sorcery), and _Star Hawks_ (a _Star Wars_-inspired space strip). I always look at Kane (whose output is prolific) as one of the key artists spanning from Golden into Silver Age. I think his best work is as a cover artist--he was one of the great ones for getting you to buy the book. His best work on covers, IMO, was on '60's _Atom_ and _Green Lantern_. Probably his best and most important comics story work was the long run he put in on _Green Lantern_. Oh yeah, he's also notable as the guy who drew all those _Conan_ covers where the girl in the iron bikini being menaced on the cover by some unspeakable horror never actually appeared inside the comic, much to my adolescent dismay . . . . :-) Mark Nevins. ------------------------------ From: Love Roller Glenner <[lf 7 z] at [midway.uchicago.edu]> Date: Thu, 2 Nov 95 14:12:43 CST Subject: RE: the unimportable bearness of being arthur OK what the Hell, comics, even if it lacks an 'x'. >B^) Gil Kane goes back to Golden Age stuff, and did various things for the National anthologies when he was very young (a teenager), these would be like Adventure, More Fun, Leading and Sensation and such, where he tended to get the adventure strips like Congo Bill and the like. Then he did a lot of sci-fi stuff in the middle period when there wasn't much superhero stuff, and I think he worked on some of the Marvel Monster things, but I'm not sure. But he's probably best known for Silver Age Atom and Green Lantern, Captain Marvel, Hulk, etc. Lots of things for Showcase and lesser knowns, (including some of the Creeper covers... ;-) ;-) He got a creator credit on Captain Action, which was unusual at the time, he wrote that and took over on the art when Wally Wood left. It was pretty strange book for the time, so naturally I loved it. >B^) And he did work for Charlton, Red Circle and Atlas, probably other things I'm forgetting. No Tarzan that I know of, the more famous guys there are Hogarth (strip), Heath (Gold Key etc.) and Kubert (mostly DC) -- unless it was the Marvel stuff, which I've never looked at 'cuz it falls into the period when I wasn't reading comics. I've listened to him on a couple of Golden Age panels where's he's been brilliant, but *really* rags on the Golden Age artists as being mostly untrained amateurs, failed ad guys and kids (he fell in the latter category ;-). In both the golden and silver ages, he was always much more dynamic and more playful with perspective than almost all his peers, who were generally much "stiffer" in style and early on mostly aped the more famous strip artists while they learned to draw, save a few famous exceptions such as Simon and Kirby, Moldoff (later, he started out aping Raymond, he was just good at it... :-) and Frazetta (whose work Kane's closely resembled), and then later of course, Kirby and Ditko. Still, that didn't really change very much until around 1970 when people like Adams and Aparo at DC, and a whole raft of people at Marvel shortly thereafter, came on the scene and grew popular. A lot of people credit Kane's "His Name Is Savage" as being both the first graphic novel and the first self-published operation (but don't seek it out -- it's not very good :-), paving the way for people like Sim and Adams. More recently, he's returned to the Atom in the late eighties (where, no surprise, he took it in a Fantasy direction ;-) and in the nineties he did what I thought was a fantastic take on Batman in Legends of the Dark Knight called "Flyer", and until just recently, he was doing a creator-owned series called "Edge" for Malibu's Bravura with Stephen Grant. His style in more recent years is a lot darker and more heavily rendered, and in general has a heavier pulp feel to it than it used to. But he's quite elderly these days and doesn't work very much. Pax ex machina, Glenn ...................................................................... "Well, they say, time loves a hero" --- Little Feat "Back in Metropolis, circuses and elephants, red and orange and blue" --- the Church [g carnagey] at [uchicago.edu] http://www.redweb.com/wraithspace ...................................................................... ------------------------------ End of comix-digest V1 #345 ***************************