The Creation of Spider-man's Costume 0

[kav]

10 hours ago, Prince Namor said:

Dan Clowes, Charles Burns, and Love and Rockets (all heavily influenced by Ditko incidentally)

How were they influenced by Ditko?  Clowes has stated his influence was Jimmy Olsen comics in many respects. Several of the lloyd llewellyn stories were parodies of Jimmy Olsen and Lois Lane eg when LLoyyd gets a giant brain from the brain belt created by the prof potter character, professor Boring (as in wayne boring).  Charles burns style has no similarity whatsoever to ditko, its about the most exact opposite I can think of.  And L & R remember had 2 artists, neither of which I'm seeing any ditko.

   Burns                                                   Gilbert                                           Xaime

 

 

[Prince Namor]

From the 'Dan Clowes Reader':

"Around a year ago, Daniel Clowes submitted a rough draft of a comic about Steve Ditko to The New Yorker, who rejected it – it’s hard to fathom why they’d reject a strip by one of America greatest living cartoonists about another of America’s greatest (then) living cartoonists, especially given that Ditko is also a great New York cartoonist. Clowes’s strip offers a profound psychological/artistic analysis of Ditko and documents Clowes’s relationship to the work of the cartoonist who perhaps influenced his cartooning more than any other artist."

And Clowes responds himself:

I: Speaking of isolated comics work, you’ve said in the past that you’re a longtime megafan of recluse comics pioneer Steve Ditko, the guy who co-created Spider-Man and Doctor Strange. Why did he speak to you when you were young?
Clowes: It wasn’t at all about the way the individual drawings looked. It’s about how they worked as comics. I was coming of age in the mid-’70s, when a lot of things were just about stuff like Barry Smith and those guys who were all about drawing these detailed, Pre-Raphaelite images that didn’t really appeal to me as comics. The characters all felt like they were just drawings, rather than people. And Ditko, you felt like, These are living, breathing people who exist in this weird country that only Steve Ditko knows about. They all look like they were from the same gene pool, and they all felt like they were a projection of his own particular worldview. That’s what I’ve always strived for, because that’s where the real power of comics lies. That kind of expression of your own inner self through these characters.

From: https://www.vulture.com/2017/03/cartoonist-daniel-clowes-talks-wilson-and-the-alt-right.html

He talks about it a bit more in the interview as well as some other interesting stuff.

[Prince Namor]

And here's his rejected submission. I can't even imagine...

[Prince Namor]

And more from that interview... kinda funny...

I: Much like a lot of individuals in your work, his characters usually looked startlingly ugly. In an artistically fascinating way, but still.
Clowes: He probably didn’t necessarily see it that way. I’m sure [co-writer] Stan Leewas like, “Make [Spider-Man alter ego] Peter [Parker] have a cute girlfriend!” and then [odd-looking love interest] Betty Brant is what he came up with. My guess was that’s just his aesthetic. His women often look like men wearing wigs. Betty Brant often looks like Peter Parker wearing a wig. I just think of it as an incestuous gene pool that he’s drawing from. It’s like when you see portraits of royalty and they all look kind of alike, they all have the same nose or something.

[Prince Namor]

Having met Jaime and Gilbert probably 10-12 times over the years, I've had a chance to talk with them about this subject, and in particular about Ditko, but I realize there's no way to specifically verify that. But...

Exhibit #1 would be the BEM storyline, and almost unmissable direct influence of the Ditko and Kirby monster stories. Look over that and it's pretty easy to see.

And then:

I: You’ve mentioned Owen Fitzgerald’s Dennis The Menace and the Archie Comics as influences, but I also detect Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko’s influence in your work.

GH: Oh yes, and you know I loved a lot of the DC superhero comics as well, especially stuff like Lois Lane and Jimmy Olsen. But Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko, as well as Stan Lee – when they worked together they produced the foundation of what Marvel Comics is now. They were making good comics; it’s not a hoax!

From: https://thequietus.com/articles/12435-gilbert-hernandez-interview?fb_comment_id=392467584203155_2017370

And:

I: So, like, Steve Ditko, or Reed Crandall–who also did Blackhawk back in the day?

 

Jaime: Sure–Ditko! Yeah! You know, whatever we [Jaime and his brothers Mario and Gilbert] were looking at, I was influenced by. Some of them a bit closer than others, but it was just like all these different artists. You know, Bruno Premiani–who did Doom Patrol.

 

[Prince Namor]

I met Charles Burns a few years ago in Minnesota, at a small show, where he spoke and signed a bunch of stuff and I got to talk to him for over a half hour. As one of my favorite artists, it was really a treat, but the two things I remember the most are pointing out to him that I thought he got his exaggerated inking style from John Romita's brush work (he almost jumped for joy, "You are the first person to ever get that, I can't believe no one else has ever pointed that out".) and that he learned to draw his everyday people from Steve Ditko.

Now obviously I have no way of proving this conversation, but I did find this review of one of his talks from someone's blog from 2011:

"One of the aspects that I found most insightful as a fan and follower of his work was his explanation of what inspires him visually. The laundry list of sources that have influenced his work were so direct that I was guessing how they affected his illustrations before he even commented. Steve Ditko-era Spider-man illustrations reflected the way he drew humans, especially women. Collections of his father’s collages of women in comics, arranged by the percentage of their face shown on the panel, helped in painting the picture."

From: http://funnelpages.blogspot.com/2008/11/charles-burns-lecture-black-ink-white.html

And then there's this:

http://www.benzilla.com/?p=7080

[lordbyroncomics]

As soon as you said it Prince Namor (Romita's thick line brush strokes), I completely saw it. Great looking out!

[kav]

5 hours ago, Prince Namor said:

I met Charles Burns a few years ago in Minnesota, at a small show, where he spoke and signed a bunch of stuff and I got to talk to him for over a half hour. As one of my favorite artists, it was really a treat, but the two things I remember the most are pointing out to him that I thought he got his exaggerated inking style from John Romita's brush work (he almost jumped for joy, "You are the first person to ever get that, I can't believe no one else has ever pointed that out".) and that he learned to draw his everyday people from Steve Ditko.

Now obviously I have no way of proving this conversation, but I did find this review of one of his talks from someone's blog from 2011:

"One of the aspects that I found most insightful as a fan and follower of his work was his explanation of what inspires him visually. The laundry list of sources that have influenced his work were so direct that I was guessing how they affected his illustrations before he even commented. Steve Ditko-era Spider-man illustrations reflected the way he drew humans, especially women. Collections of his father’s collages of women in comics, arranged by the percentage of their face shown on the panel, helped in painting the picture."

From: http://funnelpages.blogspot.com/2008/11/charles-burns-lecture-black-ink-white.html

And then there's this:

http://www.benzilla.com/?p=7080

I stand corrected!  Thank you for that info on some of my favorite creators.  Amazing.