Dark Knight art(Newbie Q)

Running Bing

Ive never read a comic book in my life but the other day through a totally freak occurence I came into possesion of Frank Millers "dark knight returns". Anyway after getting over my initial preconceptions of comic books I decided to give it a read(never would've happened tbh except I loved Sin City the movie). Ive just finished book two and I must say I think it is brilliant. I love the whole dark atmosphere and how troubled a character Bruce Wayne is but one thing is bugging me, The art. Now Ive seen comic books before and found them much more impressive than Millers drawings. They just seem too plain and boring. So my Q is this what makes good comic book art? and what is so good about the art in the dark knight? Thanks(and please be kind:o )

AngryBadger

Good art depends entirely on your perspective.

I think Frank Miller's art is very highly stylised, where some art will be anatomically perfect in all respects, some will warp, or emphasise different parts of a characters body. Personally I like Millers' style.

Really it depends on your own tastes, everyone has their own preferences artwise. Are you asking people to recommend other works for the art?

Fysh

Miller's art is very stylised, but I wouldn't suggest Dark Knight as his finest work. I think it's more a case of visual flair and layout that's highly regarded in Dark Knight than the linework itself. There are certainly some impressive images in the book (like the memory sequence where Bruce remembers first meeting the bat, or the initial reappearance of Batman on the streets of Gotham) but more than anything I personally found it impressive that Miller managed to use a lot of pages with 16 panels and dialogue (generally meaning you can draw little more than talking heads) without it getting boring or monotonous.

If you wanted an example of Miller's art really on display, then I'd suggest Sin City : The Hard Goodbye. Although as with all aesthetic concerns, it boils down to personal taste so there isn't really a right or wrong answer, just a general concensus depending on what you define as "good".

I'm liking the question though - great first post Babybing . Maybe if this discussion takes off we can have an ongoing thread discussing the "must-read" comics and their art style. What do people think.

DoctorEdgeWild

For me, comic book art at it's finest is to be found with Steve Ditko's first 20 issues of Spiderman and any Jack Kirby work especially his Silver Surfer.

Those two are very simple, the sort of thing anyone will recognise immediately as comic book art, bold ink outlines, simple colouring/shading if applicable and very few faces twisted in anguish;) .

On the other hand, if someone needs to be convinced that comics are a legitimate art form then I show them Kingdom Come - truly amazing work which must have taken a lifetime of effort.

So, what makes good comic book art? Something that brings the reader into the comic and connects him with the caharacters/scenes involved. Among a thosand other things that is!

Earthhorse

This is a bit of a coincidence. I picked up Dark Knight Returns last week and read it at the weekend. I too was puzzled by how this could've been considered a classic when the artwork seemed so poor in places.

I guess it's a question of taste. I do think Miller puts in some nice touches, such as when Batman is hanging a mutant from the top of a building. There are 11 or 12 panels of darkness and then, for the last two panels, we see Batman's hand come away and the city appears below. Nice idea.

Possibly being a comic book reader leaves one more open to different styles as well. If you're regularly seeing the "perfect", over stylised visuals many comic book artists employ Miller's style might make a refreshing change. If you're newbies like us you might not quite have tired of the novelty yet.

MorningStar

I think the importance is the Dark Knight is the story what batman has become and the how the story is told. A good portion of the story is told through the media reports. If you think about that you might see links to films like Natural Born Killers and the like. THe dirty cheap feel of the art I think makes you have a sense of Gotham being in a bad way and it is important to notice the difference between the classic clean lines of Batman to a more rough looking character.

But mostly it is taste. I like Sandman but I didn't like much of Endless Knights due to the art layout.

spooydermot

yeah, the artwork is Dark Knight isn't the best, but its a testement to the writing that the story shines.

As far as good artwork goes, my number 1 would have to be Alex Ross on Kingsom Come.

Also love Pat Lees work on transformers (but pretty much hate his work on anything else, like the recent Spiderman:The Other) speaking of Spiderman Mike Deodatos work on Spiderman:Sins Past is pretty cool.

Brother To God

As far as the art side goes i think The Sandman showed a full range of amazing art and a great story to back it up! But Dark Knight I feel just has the story,the art is secondary ,but some people love the style! I always liked Simon Bisley as well esp when he did Judge Dredd!Dave Mckean can never go wrong as well,his art has spawned from comics into main stream media like the new feature film Mirrormask as well as doing cd covers and holding exhibitions,this is a tribute to the talent the comic world holds!

Wacker

I know this is horribly off-topic, but I didn't really want to start another Dark Knight Returns thread while there is an active on, even if the nature of my question is totally different to the original post. So, apologies in advance!

Now, I have read the Dark Knight Returns about fifteen times, and there is just one thing in it I don't understand. I comes down to the back-story, which I'm still not 100 percent on. It is in the bit whre Clark is beating the tar out of the soviet troops and air-craft carriers. He says "You'd do it again, and like a murderer, you'd cover it up again," obviously referring to some dark secret of Bruce's. What on earth was he talking about, can anyone tell me?

Was it something to do with Jason Todd? I know Todd was alive at the time of the publication, but Miller makes it pretty clear that by the time of the Dark Knight Returns, Todd has gone the way of the dodo.

BrenC

how much would issue 1 of Dark Knight returns cost? I've heard good things so I might check it out.

spooydermot

issue 1 would probably cost quiet a few pennies, its something of a collectors item, what your possibly looking for is the Trade Paper Back of Dark Knight Returns, which collects all the issues.

The TPB would probably cost about 18 euro or so.

Fysh

Re : the Jason Todd thing. As far as I know, Jason Todd was originally a replacement for the original Robin who was killed (I think by the Joker, but I could be wrong). However, DRK was written around the same time as Crisis On Infinite Earths which re-wrote a lot of DC continuity and history, and by the time that had settled down Jason Todd's past had been re-written to make him a junkie or something along those lines. (Presumably Infinite Crisis will address this given the whole Red Hood/Jason Todd thing that's been rumbling around in the Batman series over the last couple of years...)

nohshow

I had my car broken into on the 30th March. I'd just come back from a work thing and felt like going to the pictures - I saw V. The two bags that were taken from my car contained some dirty clothes, my shaving kit, my conference notes from the previous two days and my original hard-backed, leatherbound copy of the Complete Frank Miller (Year One, DKR etc). I'm an artist. I'd taken this book along so I could study again Miller's design and story-telling skills before embarking on a new project.

I'm sick. I'm sick to the pit of my stomach. I'd just seen V. I have no daggers. I know the Bruce Wayne legend(s) inside out. I have no black cape, no martial skills, no utility belts. I don't know what it's like to watch my parents shot in front of my eyes, but I know what a pointless and futile loss I've suffered and I know what I would like to do to the bastards who ripped me off, the scum who probably chucked the whole lot in the next wheelie-bin when they saw how little of what they would consider 'value' they had escaped with. A valuable relic has probably been incinerated by now, it's in the atmosphere as soot and smoke and the rancid odour of a corporation dump, and the world has lost another fragment of the story's potential influence. But my loss is the loss of someone who was there at the beginning when Miller graduated from Daredevil and started something that I appreciated and valued highly enough that I had to have it in hard-back the moment I realised it was available; the only comic I have ever read and re-read repeatedly oever the years and that I have recommended even to non-comics people to read, with resoundingly favourable responses.

That's why Frank Miller is so highly revered. Penmanship is arguably not his strongest suit (he once famously drew Elektra, on the cover of a Daredevil issue, with two left feet!), but the story-telling in every crudely rough-hewn line, the gross subtlety of his mastery of the medium, and his insightful dialogue and psychology had never been seen in comics before him. Flick open a page and you won't fall in love with any one picture, but I guarantee you, I GUARANTEE you, that at least one image will stay with you for a week, a month, possibly forever. And if you're an artist, you will struggle incessantly with your conscience over homaging or lifting or plagiarising his designs. If you're lucky, your conscience will win. If you're unlucky, those who know no better will compliment you fulsomely on the one image in twenty pages that you've drawn that wasn't strictly, entirely of your own making.

I have replaced DKR, in paperback of course (Sub City off George's Street in Dublin), but I don't know when I will be able to bring myself to read it again. But I know that, one day, for me a fading memory just won't be enough anymore.

Abby D Cody

Have you shaved since?

Just curious . . .

Fysh

Back on topic please, folks.

Nohshow, I sympathise with you over what happened, but this thread isn't really the place to discuss it.

Everyone else - feel free to carry on discussing Miller's art and its perception, or indeed any other comics that are perceived (rightly or wrongly, depending on opinion) to be masterpieces of either art, storytelling or both.

nohshow

Fysh wrote:

Back on topic please, folks.

Nohshow, I sympathise with you over what happened, but this thread isn't really the place to discuss it.

Everyone else - feel free to carry on discussing Miller's art and its perception

To tell the truth, old friend, what I was attempting in my own verbose way was a description of the impact of Miller's Batman on one reader, how important the book was to him and why the loss was so acute. But not to worry, I skip-read a lot of these messages, too.

the Shades

Alex Ross? Great? With the light always coming from the same source? With even young characters looking like they're middle aged and have a bit of spread to their stomach? With only adequate storytelling skills and pretty bland layouts? Ok if you say so... but there's far better painter/comic artists out there.

Abby D Cody

I think you might just re-check the light-source thing, after all that's one of the things Ross is most competent at representing. Look at Marvels for confirmation.

Of course there are others and arguably better painter-illustrators out there, and Ross is lucky to have been involved in some of the most epochal stories (and formats) on both DC and Marvel, but it doesn't diminish his talent in the least. If he has a major flaw it's as a result of using models: their poses look like poses. However, showing people who look like people isn't a bad thing. At least he doesn't draw middle-aged characters without a middle-age spread. His story-telling abilities and blandness of layout are interesting suggestions. Perhaps you could cite a few examples so we could all have a chance to see what you see - or perhaps point out what you haven't noticed.

I don't say he's the best out there, but I don't think he's anywhere near as bad as you seem to think he is. I could be wrong, of course, but I'm probably not alone in that. (Unless we're the only two left here discussing this. In which case, did you bring the pretzels?)

the Shades

I'd have have to look up specific examples, but of the top of my head his handling of light is fine, as long as it's coming from the left. He's never in his life heard of ambient lighting.

Abby D Cody

Sorry, man, didn't mean to leave you hangin'.

You are of course entitled to your opinion and I wouldn't deny that every artist, from best to worst, has their detractors. In the end, we all make up our own minds about whom we admire and our reasons.

Nice to know you have a point of view that you're willing to stand up for, anyway.

(Doesn't matter that it's wrong, does it? naaaah... Tofu?)

the Shades

I'm not finished yet I'll find exmples, jsut a bit busy at the moment tutoring in art history before the exams, the things we do to inflate our ego... once I have that workload out of the way I'll be more fully prepared to knee cap the career of Mr Ross (speaking of over inflated egos...)

mwnger

For me it has to be Eddie Campbell's work on From Hell. Those stark, scratchy black-and-white images are absolutely astonishing - terrifying and beautiful in equal measure. Probably the best evocation of Victorian Britain I have ever seen - from any medium, including films. Unfortunately, I don't think he gets the credit he deserves cos the brilliance of Alan Moore's writing tends to get all the attention. But it's probably the only time where the art in a Moore book is as good as the writing.

Evil_Bilbo

for me its gotta be simon bizleys work on slaine the horned god. Just starting off painting (so he said) at the time - really bright colours, amazing detail, insane depictions of slaine's warp-spasms, evil dudes and just the landscapes and characters in general - amazing stuff - really set the pre-history scene well. The colours got more earthy and natural as he progressed with the story, but the book 1 of that story arc was just incredible.

also like alex ross - some of his pictures you could look at for hours

I love the art in DKR though - first time I read it I honestly thought it was rubbish and prefered batman with long pointy ears, and sleek and slim instead of a muscle-bound feral caveman type. as the years went on though I appreciated it more and more and now I must say it really rates among my favourite comic book art of all time - especially those full page panels - the pics of him on the horses, infact all pictures during the riots, even the silouettes, fire raging in the background (and supes in the desert) - really impressive stuff.

God I've got to read it again soon - I love it - (though its only been a couple of months!):)