Tuesday, August 20, 2013

The nutty things you learn when you're a comic book fan: Gil Kane inked with markers

Lately Gil Kane has been on my mind.  I've always liked Kane's art.  Very distinctive anatomy, instantly recognizable unless deliberately inked not to be so.  Few things I love more in comics than a Kane self-inked cover.  Today I learned he inked a lot of his own late-period work with markers.  So a number of different blogs tell me, anyway.

It makes me respect Kane even more.  When you check out the lines-- the actual strokes-- on the printed covers there's little that indicates he worked with markers.  Maybe a little bit of same-width quality in the diagonal lines he used sometimes for tone.  Or maybe I just never really considered the tools Kane used for his finishes, which are crisp and altogether pleasing to the eye.  If I ink with a marker, it looks like a fool used a marker.  Lengthy moves, such as the curve along a character's thigh, for example, sometimes appear shaky or are too obviously made up of two arcs poorly joined.  With Gil Kane, the same areas just look...

Gil Kane-ish.

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