Steranko is great but......

[*paull*]

The greatest storytelling example would be Carl Barks. I would take a story written

and drawn by Barks over Steranko any day. The key word here is story and not cover. Steranko can draw a cover with the best of them. It`s the insides of a comicbook were he falls below the Carl Barks,Frank Millers and Jack Kirbys of the world.

Same can be said with Neal Adams. Great covers but when you actually go and open up the comics you find that nostalgia can only take you so far.

btw Please don`t take this personal. I do like his covers and I find them amazing. My point of contention was his Nick Fury interiors were lacking, and were not the acclaimed masterpieces I had been led to believe.

 

Steranko was the next major step in the evolution of visual storytelling in comics after Eisner and Toth (with Frazetta and Krigstein involved as well). Look at these pages from Tower of Shadows #1 (At The Stroke of Midnight). Steranko packed in a variety of storytelling techniques in only 5 pages, intended for the active, perceptive reader.

 

http://goodcomics.comicbookresources.com/2011/09/10/silver-age-september-jim-sterankos-at-the-stroke-of-midnight/

 

 

This was the proposed cover to the book that Stan Lee rejected. Just imagine THIS on your spinner rack...

 

 

 

[Ted Knight]

Wow... I've never seen that rejected cover before. Super cool!

 

I love the Tower of Shadows story, also. But I think it is more graphic than active. Panel compositions are beautiful across the page and his conventions for time passing are very cool. But I'm not sure how involved a narrative it is.

 

That being said, I don't think it's necessary that all comics are focused on narrative like Toth and Eisner were. I love Steranko because of his approach to light, color and dramatic POVs. And his work stands on it's own for those reasons. Innovative page layouts, Covers, Splash pages- these are the things in which Steranko was glorious.

[Ken Aldred]

They were gods to us kids back in the 60`s and 70`s, but go reread that stuff now. I find that old re-runs of Gilligan's Island to be more enjoyable then sitting thru a read of Steranko`s run on Nick Fury. At least Gilligan's Island makes me laugh, and doesn`t bore me like that highly acclaimed run by Steranko just did.

 

Now if you like Steranko`s work on SHIELD that is just fine, but I didn`t. Did I hate it? No.

But it wasn`t the highly acclaimed masterpiece that people have told me it was.

 

+1

 

As a teenager, Steranko's art made quite an impression on me, when it was reprinted in UK Marvels back in the 70s, but I didn't really recall much about the stories.

 

I purchased the Strange Tales Masterworks and looked forward enthusiastically to re-reading the Nick Fury run, a bit more attentively this time around. I found the Lee / Kirby stories very fast-paced and involving, but I thought that once Steranko had progressively greater input the run would just keep getting better and better. Surprisingly, that didn't happen at all. I found the later issues, especially those with Steranko scripts, quite dull and uninvolving, very poorly paced compared to the Lee / Kirby material. I felt I was just skimming quite blankly through loads of very, very well-executed and impressive poster images - inventive covers, splash pages, widescreen panels - but for me, as storytelling, a lot of this material just didn't work.

[Comicopolis]

The greatest storytelling example would be Carl Barks. I would take a story written

and drawn by Barks over Steranko any day. The key word here is story and not cover. Steranko can draw a cover with the best of them. It`s the insides of a comicbook were he falls below the Carl Barks,Frank Millers and Jack Kirbys of the world.

Same can be said with Neal Adams. Great covers but when you actually go and open up the comics you find that nostalgia can only take you so far.

btw Please don`t take this personal. I do like his covers and I find them amazing. My point of contention was his Nick Fury interiors were lacking, and were not the acclaimed masterpieces I had been led to believe.

 

Steranko was the next major step in the evolution of visual storytelling in comics after Eisner and Toth (with Frazetta and Krigstein involved as well). Look at these pages from Tower of Shadows #1 (At The Stroke of Midnight). Steranko packed in a variety of storytelling techniques in only 5 pages, intended for the active, perceptive reader.

 

http://goodcomics.comicbookresources.com/2011/09/10/silver-age-september-jim-sterankos-at-the-stroke-of-midnight/

 

 

This was the proposed cover to the book that Stan Lee rejected. Just imagine THIS on your spinner rack...

 

 

 

[lilurl-migration]

Excerpts from Steranko's Wikipedia article

Steranko earned lasting acclaim for his innovations in sequential art during the Silver Age of comic books, particularly his infusion of surrealism, op art, and graphic design into the medium.

 

>

 

Steranko in 1978 described some influences and their impact on his creative philosophy:

 

"Early influences were Chester Gould's [comic strip] Tracy (not particularly in my drawing style but in subject matter and an approach to drama), Hal Foster, and Frank Robbins' [comic strip] Johnny Hazard. I still think Robbins is one of the greatest storytellers of all time. Fan seems to have a lot less opinion of Robbins for some reason, just because they're more enamored of lines. Fans seem to think that the more lines that go into a drawing the better it is. Actually, the opposite is generally true. The fewer lines you can put into a drawing the quicker it reads, and the simpler it is. [Alex] Toth is one of the few guys who can simplify an illustration to a minimum of lines with a maximum of impact."

 

>

 

Future Marvel editor-in-chief Roy Thomas, then a staff writer, recalled Steranko at Marvel:

 

" ... I think Jim's legacy to Marvel was demonstrating that there were ways in which the Kirby style could be mutated, and many artists went off increasingly in their own directions after that."

 

>

 

Steranko "combined the figurative dynamism of Jack Kirby with modern design concepts", wrote Larry Hama.

 

>

 

The graphic influences of Peter Max, Op Art and Andy Warhol were embedded into the design of the pages — and the pages were designed as a whole, not just as a series of panels.

 

>

 

Steranko introduced or popularized in comics such art movements of the day as psychedelia and op art, drawing specifically on the "aesthetic of Dali," with inspiration from Richard Powers, ultimately synthesizing a style he termed "Zap Art."

 

>

 

He absorbed, adapted and built upon the groundbreaking work of Jack Kirby, both in the use of photomontage (particularly for cityscapes), and in the use of full- and double-page-spreads. Indeed, in Strange Tales #167 (Jan. 1968), Steranko created comics' first four-page spread, upon which panorama he or editor Lee bombastically noted, "to get the full effect, of course, requires a second ish [copy of the issue] placed side-by-side, but we think you'll find it to be well worth the price to have the wildest action scene ever in the history of comics!" All the while, Steranko spun outlandishly action-filled plots of intrigue, barely sublimated sensuality, and a cool-jazz hi-fi hipness.

 

>

 

Fury's adventures continued in his own series, for which Steranko contributed four much-reprinted 20-page stories: "Who is Scorpio?" (issue #1); "So Shall Ye Reap...Death" (#2), inspired by Shakespeare's The Tempest; "Dark Moon Rise, Hell Hound Kill" (#3), a Hound of the Baskervilles homage, replete with a Peter Cushing manqué.

 

>

 

Since 2007, he has worked with Radical Comics, doing covers, character and logo designs for its Hercules title and Ryder on the Storm.

 

>

 

Steranko took three 1968 Alley Awards, for Best Pencil Artist, Best Feature Story ("Today Earth Died", Strange Tales #168; first page depicted above), and Best Cover (Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. #6).

The following year, he won 1969 Alley Awards for Best Feature Story ("At the Stroke of Midnight", Tower of Shadows #1) and Best Cover (Captain America #113).

 

[RickL]

POW! Take that Steranko haters.

 

I notice no small influence on Frank Miller's work in that Shadows cover and the previous black and white panel.

[Ken Aldred]

I've read the Wikipedia article before- interesting stuff. (thumbs u

 

As I said last time, I've never doubted Steranko's graphic design ability, but there's just something about the pacing in his stories which doesn't work for me.

[*paull*]

Steranko did a whole graphic novel (Chandler: Red Tide) with a similar style to what you see in the above black and white image:

 

 

 

 

 

[lilurl-migration]

. . . in Strange Tales #167 (Jan. 1968), Steranko created comics' first four-page spread, upon which panorama he or editor Lee bombastically noted, "to get the full effect, of course, requires a second ish [copy of the issue] placed side-by-side, but we think you'll find it to be well worth the price to have the wildest action scene ever in the history of comics!"

http://timebulleteer.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/steranko-tidal-wave.jpg

 

(It's much too big to post, without busting out the frame.)

[Ken Aldred]

Steranko did a whole graphic novel (Chandler: Red Tide) with a similar style to what you see in the above black and white image:

 

 

 

 

 

I find this style quite harsh and uncomfortable to look at in just black and white. The colour images work much, much better for me.

[Fallsview]

 

Is his Red Tide reprinted anywhere ... recently ? I know this work was from yours ago but is there any way of getting one's hands on it, maybe in trade paperback form ?

[*paull*]

Red Tide was actually part of the Fiction Illustrated series (issue #3) published by Byron Preiss in 1976 in two forms: a digest newsprint version, and a full-size softcover with better paper. I personally prefer the look of the digest version because the newsprint mutes the colors a bit. Steranko and Dark Horse have gone back and forth for ten years about re-releasing Red Tide, and I think it's finally supposed to happen in 2012, however the coloring will be updated.

 

 

 

[Aman619]

Steranko is awesome. huge egotist, but amazing artist and designer. He sojourned in comics (like Neal Adams) and also had greater ambitions than knocking out 20 pages of panels a month for Marvel!

[*paull*]

Steranko is awesome. huge egotist, but amazing artist and designer. He sojourned in comics (like Neal Adams) and also had greater ambitions than knocking out 20 pages of panels a month for Marvel!

 

He was way ahead of his time... he wanted to do auteur graphic novels at a time when there just wasn't a market for it. He pitched a bunch of stuff to publishers (a Shadow project for DC, a project called Talon, etc.), but these concepts belonged in a large self-contained book, but that business model just didn't exist.

[adamstrange]

Steranko is awesome. huge egotist, but amazing artist and designer. He sojourned in comics (like Neal Adams) and also had greater ambitions than knocking out 20 pages of panels a month for Marvel!

 

He was way ahead of his time... he wanted to do auteur graphic novels at a time when there just wasn't a market for it. He pitched a bunch of stuff to publishers (a Shadow project for DC, a project called Talon, etc.), but these concepts belonged in a large self-contained book, but that business model just didn't exist.

 

Nor was he limited to just working in comics as he was in demand in Hollywood for movie posters and conceptual work as well as in various consulting gigs for magazine design etc.

 

Anyone who has extensively read SA comics will have a hard time not seeing his work as a breath of fresh air, as he was trying to reinvigorate storytelling by injecting old & new techniques. Not everything worked, or worked as well as he had hoped but it was definitely influential on the guys that came after as many of them have acknowledged.

 

The title of the thread should be "Steranko is great. No buts."

[Ted Knight]

Steranko is awesome. huge egotist, but amazing artist and designer. He sojourned in comics (like Neal Adams) and also had greater ambitions than knocking out 20 pages of panels a month for Marvel!

 

He was way ahead of his time... he wanted to do auteur graphic novels at a time when there just wasn't a market for it. He pitched a bunch of stuff to publishers (a Shadow project for DC, a project called Talon, etc.), but these concepts belonged in a large self-contained book, but that business model just didn't exist.

 

Nor was he limited to just working in comics as he was in demand in Hollywood for movie posters and conceptual work as well as in various consulting gigs for magazine design etc.

 

Anyone who has extensively read SA comics will have a hard time not seeing his work as a breath of fresh air, as he was trying to reinvigorate storytelling by injecting old & new techniques. Not everything worked, or worked as well as he had hoped but it was definitely influential on the guys that came after as many of them have acknowledged.

 

The title of the thread should be "Steranko is great. No buts."

(thumbs u Well said, as always, adamstrange. And also, I haven't heard anyone mention of a now little known magazine called... Prevue

[The Brain]

Steranko is awesome. huge egotist, but amazing artist and designer. He sojourned in comics (like Neal Adams) and also had greater ambitions than knocking out 20 pages of panels a month for Marvel!

 

 

I found him to be quit the opposite of being an egotist. Having meet him in

 

San Diego, then some 10 years latter at WonderCon being surprised that

 

he remembered our talk and my name, most impressive.

[Aman619]

Ok. How about quite full of himself. ?

[Comicopolis]

Steranko is awesome. huge egotist, but amazing artist and designer. He sojourned in comics (like Neal Adams) and also had greater ambitions than knocking out 20 pages of panels a month for Marvel!

 

He was way ahead of his time... he wanted to do auteur graphic novels at a time when there just wasn't a market for it. He pitched a bunch of stuff to publishers (a Shadow project for DC, a project called Talon, etc.), but these concepts belonged in a large self-contained book, but that business model just didn't exist.

 

Nor was he limited to just working in comics as he was in demand in Hollywood for movie posters and conceptual work as well as in various consulting gigs for magazine design etc.

 

Anyone who has extensively read SA comics will have a hard time not seeing his work as a breath of fresh air, as he was trying to reinvigorate storytelling by injecting old & new techniques. Not everything worked, or worked as well as he had hoped but it was definitely influential on the guys that came after as many of them have acknowledged.

 

The title of the thread should be "Steranko is great. No buts."

 

Yeah but .....that cover is just weird, don't you think?

 

Weird in a good way of course.

[VintageComics]

Ok. How about quite full of himself. ?

 

Sometimes people mistake confidence for ego. Possible, or did you have an interaction with him that led you to believe otherwise?