Tuesday, October 17, 2006
Dick Ayers: Most Interesting Writer In Comicdom?
Dick Ayers is by no means a lightweight in the world of comics. He's already garnered himself a place in history for his extensive artwork on almost the entire Marvel lineup of the Silver Age, notably including work on Strange Tales and Rawhide Kid. You name the Marvel character, and he's pencilled it or inked it. Sometimes both.
But what you may not be aware of Mr Ayers' gripping and elegant prose style. It must be said that when you speak of classics of American literature, the name of Dick Ayers springs instantly to mind. If Dick had been writing for Marvel in the sixties, instead of just drawing - well, it may be that comics would be held in higher regard today.
Don't just take my word for it! Sample the loquacious literary genius for yourself! Here's an excerpt from from Dick's introduction to the first Marvel Masterworks edition of Human Torch - the first paragraph, no less:
Refreshing my memory of the Human Torch series I worked on, the first story appearing in Strange Tales #101 and having the inventory number V-846, I received the penciled and lettered art April 10, 1962. Jack Kirby had pencilled it. My assignment: to ink it. I delivered the finished, inked art on April 14th - thirteen pages!
Kirby, when he'd assigned me the inking of his daily and Sunday newspaper adventure strip, Sky Masters, told me to adapt Wally Wood's style of inking as he had once been the strip's inker. That got me to add blacks, clothing patterns, cast shadows and weight to pencilled lines with my #6 Windsor Newton brush.
I didn't care for the depiction of The Thing with the chunky block look.
When I inked stories to conserve time I'd ink over every pencil line so that there would be very little pencil to erase. Erasing over the ink would cause graying in spots and it would have to be corrected, causing loss of valuable time. There are some Rawhide Kids with two handles of six-guns in the holsters because I didn't like the way Kirby drew six-guns. I didn't erase Kirby's penciled handles. I left the erasing for Stan to do. He didn't erase, so sometimes there are two gun handles in each holster!
Thankyou for making me laugh :-)
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