SKETCH DUMP: NOVEMBER 7, 2013

This series of sketches was done ramping up to this October and in the early days of October--most of which were done for Outcast Studios' Daily Sketch Challenge.

(It's always good exercise to sketch a little something each day to keep up your skills and further develop them.  Or, at least that's what they say.)

Here we have Marvel Comics version of Bram Stoker's eternal enemy Dracula from the longest running comic book series starring a villain, TOMB OF DRACULA.  Nearly completely done by Marv Wolfman and Gene Colan, it was full of gothic atmosphere which I tried to covey a little bit of here.

(Click these for Enlargement)

Swamp Thing contemplating knowledge and how it can be both a good thing and a bad thing.  Just me having some free time at work with ballpoint pen and cardboard.

The Atom punching a guy in the face and Panthro of the Thundercats on a jaunt. 

Crusher Creel, AKA The Absorbing Man between absorbing something--

I really like this sketch and I'm not sure why.

Etrigan, The Demon, Jack Kirby's horror based fantasy hero--a demon from hell damned to do good by Merlin the Magician.  I don't really like this one.

The daughter of Dracula: Lilith. 

This is from Marvel as well--their attempt to tap the Vampirella market, apparently.

Profile shot of Mephisto, Marvel Comics' version of  the devil.

THE COUNTDOWN TO HALLOWEEN: DAY 29

(Dracula gets inked)

Compared to the bombastic pencils and mind-blowing anatomy of Jack Kirby and the structured layouts and weirdo designs of Steve Ditko, Gene Colan always seemed to take the bronze medal in the Marvel Bullpen in the Mid-‘60s.  But think about that for a minute... the guy was the third banana in a club that features not only the greatest comics artist of all time, but one of the other top artists to ever draw a tights wearing true-believer!

Gene had chops and could drive an inker mad with all of the shades he could lay down with those pencils.  His work wasn’t perfect for the super-hero, but the fluidity of his panel layout and the sense of movement he gave his figures gave his work both a sense of action and flow that worked quite well.

Gene’s real talent was in drama and lighting.  Not even King Kirby could use shadows to such effect.  Gene would add mood to scenes that would suffer without it under the pencil of another artist.  Emotive faces filled his panels and played on his stage like great Shakespearean actors.

All of this he put to perfect use when he took on TOMB OF DRACULA, a book he had to lobby heavily to Stan Lee to get.  Stan had tapped Bill Everett for the book after having told Gene he could do it and Gene quickly whipped up a sample page to convince Stan to choose differently.

Gene based his Dracula not on Bela Lugosi, nor Christopher Lee, but Jack Palance, who had never played the role (but soon would, a year after TOD started publication)!  One look at the sample and Stan gave Colan the book--did his Dracula mesmerize the Editor into doing Gene’s bidding?

Certainly it did.

Soon the shadows and mist crept in, the atmosphere of suspense and horror, the thrill of drama and fear lurked in every corner...soon,

Count Dracula stalked the night!

And it wasn’t long before a young writer would join this veteran artist on the series--Marv Wolfman won the job after a few different writers either passed on the job or were kicked off of it.  In his intent to write the series, Wolfman went back and reread the original novel by Stoker and that is the sole influence on his version of the character.  He had never seen a vampire or Dracula film and wasn’t a fan of them.

It’s a good thing for comics and horror in particular that Wolfman took the work of Stoker to heart and wrote the book with that in mind.  The series went on to be the longest-running comic book with the villain as the title character.  Seventy issues plus the odd special and what-not--unheard of in it’s time and impossible in the current comic market.

But then, that's Dracula for you... he'll grab ya!

Sources (besides my own opinion and experience reading these fine comics) cited:

http://www.comicsbulletin.com/columns/676/the-burning-cross-tomb-of-dracula/ 

http://talkingcomicbooks.com/2012/11/marvels-tomb-of-dracula-and-the-artistry-of-marv-wolfman-gene-colan/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tomb_of_Dracula

http://www.panelology.info/TombOfDracula.html

http://www.panelology.info/IntoTheTombOfDracula.html

THE COUNTDOWN TO HALLOWEEN: DAY 25

(Dracula & Vampires in the Comics)

I know I mentioned my favorite portrayal of Dracula outside of the novel, and perhaps Christopher Lee's near silent performance in a couple of the Hammer films, was Marv Wolfman and Gene Colan's Count from THE TOMB OF DRACULA.  It's probably more Gene than Marv that guides my opinion in this, the fact that Colan's shadowy, foggy, dreamy lines and shades add such a gothic feel to the whole book.  That he is able to portray emotion more realistically than nearly any artist of any era is probably another good reason.

That's still to come.

Tonight we focus on other portrayals of the Prince of Darkness and his ilk within the panels on a comic book page.  There are legion, but we'll see how many pics blogger will allow me to throw up here to show you the diversity...

 

From this sampling alone, the face of the vampire is as hard to pin down as the tail of a squirrel on nut patrol!

And now, the music for tonight's episode is from the album She Hangs Brightly, it's Mazzy Star's "Taste of Blood"...