SEEING THE COMIC BOOK PANEL
AS IF IT WERE A MOVIE SCREEN

A TRIBUTE TO LEGENDARY ARTIST GENE COLAN
(1926 - 2011)

"I wanted to have something to do with film making when I was very young, but I didn't think I'd really make it in that. (...) Being a very sensitive person, I wouldn't be able to handle what Hollywood dishes out. I knew that then, but I couldn't define it. I chose going into comic books because it's storytelling, and not just drawing, but telling good stories. I grew up in the years when 98% of the films were black and white. Those are the years that I wanted to do artwork for comic books. (...) Milton Caniff was my biggest influence, and the artist who inspired me the most. There may have been better artists than he, but he had a way with shadows and blacks when he did "Terry and the Pirates" that I loved so much." (Irving, 2010)

Back in the US, Gene Colan's official career in comics began in 1944 at Fiction House, where he saw his first work - a one-page filler illustration of a P-51B Mustang - published in Wings Comics #52 (December 1944), whilst his first work on an actual comics story - a seven-page "Clipper Kirk" feature - was published in the following month's issue (genecolan.com / Best, 2003).

"When I first started with Timely (...) we were working in the Empire State Building and that’s where I really got the experience that I needed.  I was hired to do the work and I was paid for it and I didn’t know a heck of a lot about anything and of course there was an art director there, his name was Syd Shores and he showed me everything.(...) he was just great.  Captain America, Two Gun Kid, Kid Colt, westerns, and horses - he could do anything, and he helped me a lot.  He brushed up all the bad stuff that I was doing." (Best, 2003)

In 1948, Colan also became a freelance artist for National (DC).

"I must have been in there for three to four years before the bottom dropped out and we had to take what we could get. (...) It happened at a time [in 1948] when everybody in the art department was let go. (...) People would have to fend for themselves, getting freelance or whatever. (...) I decided to take the day off and decided to see what I could get. I came back with some good accounts: Quality Comics was one, and I worked for Ziff-Davis, and maybe one or two others." (Irving, 2010)

Always striving for complete accuracy, Gene Colan meticulously researched his countless war stories for DC such as All-American Men at War and Our Army at War, as well as Atlas Comics' Battle, Battlefront, G.I. Tales, Marines in Battle and Navy Tales (to name only a few). His earliest confirmed credit during this time is penciling and inking the six-page crime fiction story "Dream Of Doom" in Lawbreakers Always Lose #6 (Atlas, February 1949).

Battlefield #5
(November, 1952)

In 1965 Colan did his first superhero work on Sub-Mariner and Iron Man under the pseudonym of Alan Austin (as he was still primarily working for DC), a modus operandi which was quickly dropped as his style was so unique that the authorship of the artwork was too evident to be hidden behind an alter ego.

And again, Gene Colan was looking to provide his artwork with authenticity and accuracy.

"Authenticity, for me, was important, because it made the reader feel This is real This is not just a comic book. (...) I would show many landmarks, so that people reading the books would recognize them. (...) Dracula was set in Boston once, so I went to Boston and took photographs of the streets, and introduced it into the plot. It gave the reader the sense that he belonged in the story and wasn't just reading something. I romanced it in my head: I was into it and wanted the reader to be into it." (Irving, 2010)

"I would take stuff out of magazines, newspapers, anything that I thought would be useful.  If there was a fire, a gigantic fire in New York City, there’d be so many photos in the Daily News and I’d clip them all out for authenticity.  I had trucks, firemen and how they dressed, all that kind of stuff.  And a collection of everything that you could think of. (...) Through the years I’ve compiled such a collection of pictures dealing with every conceivable subject that I very seldom ever have to go anywhere to get outside information because being in the business fifty some odd years you get quite a collection. (...) I have a lot of pictures at home all filed away under different categories.  I [also] have faces, I have men and women faces, I have children’s faces. (...) Most of my stuff is very dated, but a face is a face and they never go out of style.  " (Best, 2003)

By 1966 he was firmly established as the artist of several ongoing Marvel series and characters, and took on Daredevil which would become his signatory title for many. Other Marvel titles which Gene Colan had lengthy runs on and was applauded for included Iron Man, Captain America and Doctor Strange before he took on all 70 issues of Tomb of Dracula as of 1972 - the series is one of the seminal monuments to his artistic expertise and craftmanship. He also made waves with his pencils on Marvel's satiric Howard the Duck, which kicked off in 1976.

Gene Colan won the Shazam Award for Best Penciller (Dramatic Division) in 1974, received the 1977 and 1979 Eagle Award, and was nominated for five Eagle Awards in 1978.

"There was a sort of camaraderie between editor, artist and writer at one time back in those years. I knew Stan Lee was in one of the offices next door and he’d come out and give me some points of view about how he would like to see it and I would just follow it." (Best, 2003)

Doctor Strange #172
(September 1968)

Gene Colan in 1977

Gene Colan's Picadilly Circus sets the scene in Tomb of Dracula #25
(October 1974)

"Gene Colan, God bless him, a great artist. (...) When he worked for me, there were some problems (...) I said "You've gotta do better stuff. I'm gonna make you redraw when you don't." (...) That's when Wolfman had gone over to DC, thinking fondly of the Dracula days, got him to come over there. And that was better for everybody I think. (...) He ended up at DC. Just one of those things that didn't work out." (M. Thomas, 2000)

After splitting from Marvel for creative and professional reasons, Gene Colan thus found himself back at DC Comics in 1982, where he reunited with Marv Wolfman whom he had worked with so long and so successfully at Marvel on Tomb of Dracula. DC was eager to promote this dream team in their own ranks, but their reunion project Night Force (featuring Baron Winters, a sorcerer who would assemble a team of chosen individuals to fight supernatural threats) only lasted for 14 issues before cancellation, in spite of obvious attempts by the creative team to somehow continue the legacy of Tomb of Dracula - one of the main characters was Vanessa van Helsing, granddaughter of Abraham van Helsing, which would thus make her a sister of Rachel van Helsing from Tomb of Dracula.

Gene was far more successful in bringing his shadowy and moody visuals to Batman, whose primary artist he became from 1982 to 1986, providing the artwork for most issues of Detective Comics and Batman during that time, even though his overall pencilling did become somewhat lighter due to DC's art policy.

"DC was a tough outfit. They wanted an in-house look for all of the artwork, and they wanted the artists to draw somewhat the same. They were difficult, always were. (...) but I didn't want to turn anything down, either. Being a freelance artist, you grab what you can get." (Irving, 2010)

At DC Gene Colan also pencilled Wonder Woman from 1982 to 1983, worked with Greg Potter on Jemm, Son of Saturn (1984-85, 12 issues), with Cary Bates on Silverblade (1987-88, 12 issues), and he pencilled the first six issues of Doug Moench's 1987 revival of The Spectre.

Detective Comics #517
(August 1982)

Detective Comics #567
(October 1986)

In 2005, Gene Colan was inducted into the comics industry's Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame. In 2007, he pencilled the final pages of Blade (vol. 3) #12 depicting a flashback in which Blade dresses in his original outfit from the original 1970s series. That same year, he drew 3 pages (18-20) for the anniversary issue Daredevil (vol. 2), #100 (October 2007).

Gene Colan continued to draw occasional comics and covers throughout his retirement, and his last work was for Captain America #601 (September 2009), written by Ed Brubaker and featuring a World War II adventure of Cap and his sidekick Bucky which ptted them against - of course - vampires.

"I didn't have a deadline. (...) It took me close to two years." (Irving, 2010)

For this work he won an Eisner Award for Best Single Issue (together with writer Ed Brubaker), which - together with the Comic Art Professional Society's Sergio Award which he recived in October 2009 - no doubt marks a fitting end for a unique career of an artist whose professionalism and dedication made him a legend of the comic book industry and 20th century popular culture in his own lifetime

"Artists are so grateful to hear that someone thinks enough of them to talk about them, to see how they got started, what their take on the art world was, and how did they get to where they are, it makes them feel so good.  You know you can draw a fine picture, but unless somebody sees it and appreciates it, it means nothing. You’ve got to get somebody to say to you “Gee that was a good picture you drew” or that was a good story you did, and you don’t get that very much in this business, you don’t get those kind of compliments all that much." (Best, 2003)

Daredevil #363
(April 1997)
[Colour Guide, scanned from the original in my personal collection]

Gene Colan in 2004

Gene Colan receiving Eisner Award in 2005

"[Stan Lee] would just give me - and any of the other artists that could do it - a brief thumbnail idea of what the plot was - this is the beginning, this is the middle, and that's the end - and I wouldn't come into the city with that, I would tape record him telling me the story over the phone. That way I could follow the message that he left for me, on the recorder, and space it out the way he tells it. And I would say 'well this will take just so many pages and this should take so many' and I would equal it out until I felt that it would - in my mind, I didn't make notes or anything - that it should eat up about 18 pages, and tell the story. And sometimes I would run into trouble and other times I would be right on the nailhead. I just couldn't stand doing thumbnail sketches of these things, I just wanted to get right to it." (Siuntres, 2005)

"I would start with panel one." (Siuntres, 2005)

"You know comic book artists never sit down at a convention table to discuss how they're gonna do this and how they're gonna do that - it was always over the phone, very quickly, or in passing each other you'd spend a few minutes talking about it, maybe fifteen or so, and that would be it. It's all that was required." (Siuntres, 2005)

"An artist, as a rule, is not aware of a style; he just does it.  You know when you write your name you don’t think about how you’re writing it but yet it can be spotted by everyone and they’ll know that that’s you.  When you’ve written your name out it has a style to it, it’s very hard to copy and artwork is the same thing – it has a style to it and you just don't sit down and try to develop a style it just happens.  An unconscious experience." (Best, 2003)

"There are no two artists that look at things the same way. Everybody has their method of creating a mood.  I have mine, they have theirs.  Every time I did a job I was basically entertaining myself, having a good time with it, and I enjoyed that.  And even though I would put lines down that I knew the inker wouldn’t even begin to bother with, I’d put them in anyway, because it made the final picture I’d be doing finished. I gave it all I could. Whether they inked it or not, that was something else again. Once it left my hands I didn’t even care who inked it. There was no point in arguing with trying to get a specific inker to work on your stuff because they didn’t listen to you.  If they needed to a particular job done in a hurry and all the best inkers were working on other things they would give it to somebody else." (Best, 2003)

"I worked real hard on my art, why should somebody come over and wreck it up? So, I never really had a good inker, not until Tom [Palmer] came along. (...) I liked Tom's work very much. It was weighty, and he put in all the stuff that I liked - kind of like a Caniff. My work is not easy to follow, and he must've had a helluva time with it. Tom is an illustrator himself; he's done a lot of advertising art. So, he was very well-suited to it." (Field, 2001)

"Fortunately for me the last ten years or so I’ve had a lot of my work printed only in pencil.  It’s very hard to get a good inker to go over.  If you were a penciler and you did fabulous pencil work, or what you thought was pretty darn good and then you give it to an inker, well then you’ve got your style to begin with and then you’ve got the inkers style on top of your style.  And you’ve got two styles representing one piece of art.  And I’ve always had a problem getting a good inker." (Best, 2003)

"I don’t enjoy [inking] as much; I get very nervous doing it.  I get uptight and take much too long doing it.  I’m just not comfortable with it so I’d much rather have somebody else doing it." (Best, 2003)

"The only strip I really begged for was Dracula. [Stan Lee] promised it to me, but then he changed his mind, he was going to give it to Bill Everett (...) But I didn't take that for an answer. I worked up a page of Dracula, long before Bill did anything (...) and I sent it in. I got an immediate call back. Stan said, "The strip is yours"." (Thomas, 2000)

"I don’t remember when it started but I guess it started in the ‘60’s when they began to give back to the artists, after the stories were printed, the original artwork. But if an artist, if a penciler had to share the story with an inker then the inker would get a small percentage of it and the penciler got most of it.  Out of an 18-page story an inker might get five or six pages and then the penciler would get all the rest.  So unless I inked it myself I never got the full amount of pages back at anytime, I would get most of them back, but not all of them." (Best, 2003)

"I think comic books have gotten out of hand these days because they show everything that films portray and they don’t spare anything.  They don’t leave anything to the imagination of the reader." (Best, 2003)

"I never thought my career would take on the proportions that it has (...) I was just proud of the fact that I could actually draw something and do a story. (...) So it took off and the proportion that it reached just boggles the mind. I'm very fortunate in that respect." (Best, 2010)

Strange Tales #97
(January 1962)

Creepy #8
(April, 1966)

Doctor Strange #173
(November 1968)

Tomb of Dracula #25
(October 1974)