Comics Techniques and Tricks: Jim Steranko

Welcome to another edition of Comics Techniques and Tricks, in which we showcase techniques that only comics can do! Click here for the archive!

I bought a copy of MARVEL VISIONARIES: JIM STERANKO over a month ago, and I could have very easily picked just about any page from this book for this feature because Jim Steranko is a master of comics tricks. (See here for more examples.)

However, the comic I'll be focusing on is TOWER OF SHADOWS #1, which has the short story "At the Stroke of Midnight."

All scans here are from this site.

In this story, Lou and Marie, a married couple who do not love each other, go into Shadow House, Lou's ancestral home, to find something belonging to his grandfather. Steranko uses variations of a grid, laying out each page in three tiers of panels, all of the same height, but changing the widths to suit the mood necessary for the story. Here's the first tier of page 3.

Note how the first five panels are very cramped together, causing a feeling of claustrophobia for both Lou and the reader. You know it's Lou feeling hemmed in, even without reading the dialogue, because Marie has a black background behind her. And also because of their body language. The panels get slightly wider when Marie gets angry, giving her the sole red panel in that otherwise very steady palette of blacks and oranges, showing that she's not feeling afraid.

Finally, note how the last two panels are a polyptych — two panels that really form one big panel, with the gutter in between showing the passage of a small moment in time. Additionally, it shows a symbolic separation between the two characters.

Here's the next tier.

Steranko pulls back for the first panel and widens it to give us a semi-establishing shot. The light held by Lou causes more shadows (and frankly, just look at how well-drawn that panel is), heightening the atmosphere.

But the real kicker is the second to fourth panels, which is another polyptych, this time of Lou's face. It slows down time and once again hems him (and us) in. It's a sharp contrast with the fifth panel, which is about as wide as those three panels put together, really underscoring the differences between the two characters.

Jim Steranko was a master of mood and atmosphere, taking these Eisnerian effects to the next level.

"At the Stroke of Midnight" won the 1969 Alley Award for Best Feature Story. Grantbridge Street &other misadventures has the entire story scanned and uploaded here. If you want to own a copy for yourself, you can find it in MARVEL VISIONARIES: JIM STERANKO.

Reclaiming History: Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez

Welcome to a new installment of Reclaiming History, an ongoing series where the Comics Cube! tries to balance out what the history books say and what actually happened! Click here for the archive!

Today, we reclaim history in honor of Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez, the most important comic book artist that everyone hasn't heard of!

Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez, to more than just one whole generation of comic book readers, is DC Comics. He is the standard and the model by which everything is based.

But Duy, you ask, what works has he done that would give him that classification?

Well, you can see his stellar storytelling work on THE MANY WORLDS OF TESLA STRONG:

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DEADMAN:

KAL, an Elseworlds story he did with Dave Gibbons, where Superman lands in medieval times:

THE METAL MEN segment of WEDNESDAY COMICS:

The SUPERMAN VERSUS WONDER WOMAN story he did back in the 70s:

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But the work he is probably best known for is the original BATMAN VS. HULK crossover, which came out in 1981 and is available in CROSSOVER CLASSICS:

This one piece of work is an incredible showcase of layout, design, and figure work. For example, to this day, I believe that Batman can beat the Hulk by using sleeping gas and then kicking his stomach in. I know a lot of hardcore comics fans have problems with that notion, but Garcia-Lopez drew it so well and so convincingly.

This is from two separate pages, put together. I found it on Google.

Later on, the Joker gets ultimate power, and we get pages like this.

So Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez is a very dynamic storyteller. But it doesn't really say why he's so important, does it? Well, we're getting to that. And the most amazing thing is, I don't even have to say a whole lot. This entire story can be told in pictures.

You might also be thinking that Garcia-Lopez's figures look very default. Like maybe they're the versions that you see on lunchboxes and everything. Well, that's because they are.

Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez is the artist behind the model sheets for DC Comics. For much of the 80s into the early 90s, his drawings were the bases for the works of every. single. artist. working at DC Comics. He drew the style guide:

And he made sure that everyone knew how everyone was drawn. Check out these model sheets:

He also did a lot of promotional material. I know I've seen these images on lunchboxes, bags, and T-shirts before, and I'm sure you have too:

Plus, just look at the design work on those babies. Isn't that great?

In MODERN MASTERS #5, an issue devoted to Garcia-Lopez, Andrew Helfer makes it clear that Jose Luis was held for a long time as DC's secret weapon. Every editor in the business knew him, but few knew his name and much less his phone number. DC kept it abreast for so long because they were afraid that Marvel would snap him up with a better offer. They had every reason to fear that (if I were Marvel, I would have). And so, Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez became the man who kept DC Comics consistent across all their books. The artists of DC Comics had it so much easier, because they had Garcia-Lopez to work off of.


Unfortunately, it's this "secret-keeping" that makes him a prime subject for Reclaiming History. In fact, in DC Comics' retrospective book, DC COMICS: SIXTY YEARS OF THE WORLD'S FAVORITE COMIC BOOK HEROES, he has all of three blurbs in captions accompanying photos, and only one mention in the body of an actual article. If you weren't familiar with him, you'd never have known he did the cover.

Garcia-Lopez's craftsmanship is unparalleled, and it's best illustrated by an anecdote told in MODERN MASTERS #5. Legendary European artist, Jean Giraud, also known as Moebius, was looking at Garcia-Lopez's work. He asked Helfer, "This Garcia-Lopez, he uses models, no?" When Helfer said, "No," with a smile, Moebius' only answer?

"SON OF A BITCH!"

This may be the highest compliment another artist can give to another artist, but as a fan, I can give this guy the highest compliment I can give anyone. When I think about pretty much any character from DC Comics, the versions that I see in my head — even with Neal Adams' Batman, George Perez's Wonder Woman, and Gary Frank's Superman — are those of Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez.

In my mind, he is DC Comics.

Some Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez works right here: