7 DYNAMICS

If you go back to the beginning of this book, you may remember that I (thank you, Klaus Janson) mentioned that comics artists have two functions.

The first is communication. But the second, and no less important, is to entertain the reader.

Entertainment comes in many diff erent forms. Artists will always debate what is entertaining (readers won’t always be able to tell you, either). But when we talk about entertainment as a diff erent thing from communication, what we’re really talking about is dynamics.

The granddaddy of dynamics in comics is Jack “King” Kirby. He, with Stan Lee, formed the foundation that would become Marvel Comics. Stan plotted the stories that led to the Fantastic Four, The X-Men, Iron Man, Thor and The Incredible Hulk. Jack Kirby is the one who gave these characters life on the page. It was his dynamic artwork that propelled those characters off the page and into the eyes (and hands) of young readers of the 1960s. Kirby tended to stick to simple grid layouts, but within those square panels, he delivered characters who were always “doing.” Kirby never had a talking-heads scene—not because one wasn’t written but because he found things for his characters to do to expand on any conversation that might be taking place. His characters didn’t talk—they argued, pranked, loved, flirted, fought, kidded, joked, jabbed, boasted, declared, interrogated, taught and punched their way through scenes.

In the late 1970s, Neal Adams came along and changed the way comics artists would draw layouts and choose “camera angles” forever. Adams’s intense layout design would send the reader’s eye darting in different directions for massive impact and his camera angles were designed for highest possible contrast. The reader never got a chance to relax while reading a Neal Adams comic.

These two artists invented American comics style. No two other creators have changed the face of comics in America the way Kirby and Adams did. They brought dynamics to the drawing table and delivered it to the page.

Punching It Up

At its core, dynamics is about pushing the artist’s imagination. Not just illustrating what a script asks for, but imagining what that panel, scene, even story can really be—and then illustrating that.

The Gray Area #1, pages 30–31: ©2005 John Romita Jr. and Glen Brunswick. Used with permission.