Art Spiegelman's "Two-Fisted Painters"

Art Spiegelman is not only the creator of the  Pulitzer Prize winning graphic Novel Maus, he, along with his partner Françoise Mouly, were the creators of Raw Magazine where Maus first appeared. I was a huge fan of Raw Magazine back in the 80's. Reading it had a way of altering your view of what comics were. I would read something like Art Spiegelman's Two-Fisted Painters and I would start to see color breakdowns in all comics that I read afterward. I remember studying all the nuances of the book. I would look at the color break-downs and compare them to the finished pages, and study the pages with the 'wrong' color separation on them.

click on the pictures to get larger versions -

Jack Kirby's use of 4 panel grid

I find comics fascinating, not only in their content but also in the way that content is communicated. With this and subsequent posts I'd like to look at some of the more popular forms of panel arrangements in comics.
Besides the splash page (which is technically not a comic page in the true definition of comics being a medium of sequential panels) the most basic of the common page divisions is the 4 panel grid.
When I think of the 4 panel grid I think of Kirby's Silver and Copper age work on titles like the Fantastic Four and the New Gods, in fact I have a hard time thinking of any other artist that does use this form of page layout.

The 4 panel grid can be good when you have a very wordy page. The sameness of the panels creates a rhythm that is easier to follow. A 9 panel grid might work as well or better depending on the page.

Alan Moore's Green Lantern annual #3

Ever since reading my first Moore story back in 1985 (Swamp Thing #40) I've been a Moore fanatic picking up everything with his name on it. When he left DC it was a hit or miss thing but in the early days everything he wrote was head over heals above any other comic, it was MAGIC! One of my favorite of his (and I had many) was his Green Lantern annual #3 that he did with Fables and the Elementals, Bill Willingham.

 

The differences between Alex Toth and David Mazzucchelli's Batman

Miller and Mazzucchelli 

nail it out of the park with their

Batman: Year One

They have created one of the most realistic depictions of what a superheroes first outings might be like, mistakes and all.

Tony Salmons does the Hulk

Tony Salmon's Hulk is electric. 

Seeing it is like getting a shot of adrenalin.

Hey! A Jim Steranko effect! The hallucinatory effect on comics!

"Hey! A Jim Steranko effect!" Neal Adams formed the words using the mist lines radiating from the pit in his Deadman series.

I'm not sure what Adams was referring to because I don't remember Steranko ever spelling things out using visual effects, but he did do some pretty crazy/cool stuff in his day!

Kevin Nowlan in Tales of the Green Lantern corps #3

Kevin Nowlan's 

A Sense of Obligation 

a true classic of the comic medium!

The time was 1987. Alan Moore and Dave Gibbon's Watchmen was coming out. I tried to get everything by Alan Moore because almost everything that he wrote was amazing. I'm sure I got The Tales of the Green Lantern Annual #3 because of his 6 page "In Blackest Night" short in it. But this issue also contained another amazing story in it, "A Sense of Obligation" written by Richard Bruning and illustrated by Kevin Nowlan. I know I've seen work by Kevin Nowlan before on various covers of Defenders or in such titles as Dr. Strange #57, in a back up piece to Dalgoda called "Grimwood's Daughter" and the amazing the Outsiders annual #1 but this piece was special. In this piece he outdid himself. Not only did he do an amazing job penciling this issue, he did a near perfect job of inking as well as doing one of the most remarkable coloring jobs I have ever seen!