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Post by owene on May 22, 2011 4:20:03 GMT -5
Don Heck seems to be becoming a lot more appreciated these days and i've always been able to see his positive points but I'm still taken aback by how much i've been enjoying his work lately.
I think he suffered a lot in later years when Marvel developed more of a house style and he would be inked by someone who tried to make him look as close as he could to everyone else. He doesn't work in any kind of Kirby or Buscema style. There also was presumably a period where he was known to be able a reliablepro able to get a book out on schedule and was given a lot of jobs that nobody else really wanted. At DC especially. It's ironic that an artist who people say wasn't suited to large scale super hero battles ended up with big runs of Avengers, X-Men and JLA
His style was definitely based on the real world and as things became more stylised, and once fashions changed drastically from that late 50s early 60s suave cool thing he had going he definitely looked dated.
But while that 60s cool thing was current he looked great, his female characters sparkle with personality, he can set his stories in locations that actually seem like early 60s america, his people look like a range of regular people and his villain designs actually seem practical. Not especially cool or sleek but quite practical. Like he's actually thought about the weight and physicality of what the character does and designed something feasible. This is art rooted in reality.
which is of course totally different from the Kirby approach of designing something with impact and allowing the reader to get carried away with the new world he is creating. But it's still great to see.
and the truth is that in 62 and 63, the comics i'm reading right now. Kirby wasn't that primal Kirby either, he's still stuck in really tight grids of tiny panels, not letting his imagination fly yet and generally looking like a slightly more dynamic version of (primary inker) Dick ayers.
I think i actually prefer a lot of Heck's stuff to Kirby's from the same period. It certainly livens up some quite dodgy stories.
I'd still take Ditko from the same period over Heck, so he's not that best artist there but he really does some great stuff.
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Post by humanbelly on May 25, 2011 7:28:16 GMT -5
The one knock on Don is one that doesn't seem uncommon for some comic artists as they get into middle-age: their powers/talents seem to go into an inexplicable decline. Sadly (and somewhat unfairly, I have no doubt), one of Don Heck's more lasting impressions may be the truly, truly sub-standard work he did on Giant-Size Avengers #4-- which was the HUGE climax of the whole Mantis/Celestial Madonna arc as well as the wedding of Vision & Wanda (and Mantis & a tree, of course). Probably one of the most anticipated issues of my life, personally-- no kidding-- and the level of disappointment upon opening the cover is something I can still distinctly recall.
But even allowing for the fact that it was obviously a rushed job from a company that was about to hit a wall from unrealistic production expectations, it was clear that Don's artistic edge was not what it once was. He seemed to have lost touch with his muse, as it were. Like Herb Trimpe, or Don Perlin, or the very later Jack Kirby-- the artistic thing that made him "good" didn't seem to be in evidence any more. But in this case, that deficiency was amplified by how important that particular issue was.
HB
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Post by dlw66 on May 25, 2011 8:38:05 GMT -5
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Post by owene on May 25, 2011 10:55:09 GMT -5
The one knock on Don is one that doesn't seem uncommon for some comic artists as they get into middle-age: their powers/talents seem to go into an inexplicable decline. Sadly (and somewhat unfairly, I have no doubt), one of Don Heck's more lasting impressions may be the truly, truly sub-standard work he did on Giant-Size Avengers #4-- which was the HUGE climax of the whole Mantis/Celestial Madonna arc as well as the wedding of Vision & Wanda (and Mantis & a tree, of course). Probably one of the most anticipated issues of my life, personally-- no kidding-- and the level of disappointment upon opening the cover is something I can still distinctly recall. But even allowing for the fact that it was obviously a rushed job from a company that was about to hit a wall from unrealistic production expectations, it was clear that Don's artistic edge was not what it once was. He seemed to have lost touch with his muse, as it were. Like Herb Trimpe, or Don Perlin, or the very later Jack Kirby-- the artistic thing that made him "good" didn't seem to be in evidence any more. But in this case, that deficiency was amplified by how important that particular issue was. HB Yeah he really declined, he wasn't even that old in the 70s. In his mid 40s at the latest so i dont see why it would all go to pieces but it clearly does. Admittedly he tended to be inked by other people and generally not by some hotshot but he really does get quite muddy and ugly
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Post by sharkar on May 25, 2011 21:51:11 GMT -5
Yeah he really declined, he wasn't even that old in the 70s. In his mid 40s at the latest so i dont see why it would all go to pieces but it clearly does. From what I have read he had some health issues. Admittedly he tended to be inked by other people and generally not by some hotshot but he really does get quite muddy and ugly HB mentioned GS Avengers #4; an issue like #109 is similarly shocking to me, and sad. It's disgraceful that they didn't put some good inkers on his work at this time. I realize that with Marvel's growth there was dilution of talent (esp. inkers) at the time but geez, this man was one of Marvel's most stalwart pencilers. I know Kirby and Ditko are spoken about as the architects (with Lee) of Marvel, but Heck (and Ayers) were also there at the beginning and made huge contributions too. As I've mentioned in some other threads recently I am a huge Heck fan. His work in the oldest Marvel/Atlas back issue I have, Tales of Suspense #10, is simply outstanding--it is far more detailed and interesting than Kirby's or Ditko's in the same issue. And back when I started reading Marvel, Heck was the first Avengers artist I came across (#45) and also, coincidentally, my first X-Men artist (X-Men #40, a few months later). I also saw a lot of his work in Marvel Collectors' Item Classics, in the Iron Man reprints. When I started to collect back issues of the Avengers, I began to appreciate his storytelling skills even more. IMO, his characters were extremely attractive and individualized, even when using a "template", as with Tony and the panel of the unmasked Swordsman I posted recently. Heck had the misfortune of getting shoved aside for John Buscema as the regular Avengers artist (Roy Thomas admits as much in Alter Ego #42, which has a tribute article on Heck). Now I love and admire Buscema's art as much as anyone--it is extremely virtuostic, breathtaking, and often amazing--but I frequently get the impression that I am looking at friezes, whereas I get a feeling of film noir from Heck's best work. As a reader I am drawn into the world of Heck's characters very easily and for me, that's an important component of an artist's work. Also, in his Avengers work Heck managed something that is unusual for Silver Age artists--his womens' faces were different. This is evident with his handling of Jan, Wanda and Natasha in the string of Avengers issues in which all three appeared. I don't know how he did it, or how to explain it exactly, but in my view Jan always appeared to be glamorous and sophisticated; Natasha glamorous, sophisticated but also cerebral and a bit cold; and Wanda, beautiful of course but not glamorous and not as sharp as the other two. Now I realize in comics womens' hairstyles have a lot to do with it but it was more than that--just the way he drew their mouths, cheekbones, chins, jaws, eyebrows--I really got a sense of entirely different personalities. Whereas with Buscema, it was the same face--wide (I always think of the first panel on the last page of #44, Jan and Wanda's virtually indistinguishable expressions). Heck also did this to a lesser extent with the men (who were usually masked); but even when masked, Hawkeye had a slightly different set of his chin than, say, Cap. After the Avengers Heck was the utility infielder, moving from book to book, sometimes drawing layouts (for Werner Roth in the X-Men for example) or finishing others' pencils (Romita's on Spider-Man). He suffered from not having a book to settle in on, as Trimpe or some others did. He did some nice 1970s work on the Black Widow and Batgirl (at DC) features but for the most part I agree with those who say his later work never looked as good as it did in the 1960s. It's a real shame Marvel didn't provide him with a steady book or good inkers, because he was one of the most singular talents of the 1960s and I think with some assistance he could have remained on or near that level.
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Post by tomspasic on Jun 5, 2011 9:08:56 GMT -5
One of the things I always say about Heck is, if any artist has Kirby, Ditko, the Buscema's, Romita, Kane etc. as their peers, it is going to be hard to be appreciated. Everyone else suffered by comparison with them. Constrained to working in a genre (superheroes) that did not bring out the best in his art, and a "house style" that favoured bold, exaggerated, dramatic images and kinetic fight scenes, Heck's detailed, character driven style could look stilted by comparison with the artists above. As a child and teen, Heck's fight scenes aggravated me as they looked static compared to Kirby's cinematic panel-to-panel flows or the muscular power of the Buscema's, or angular grace of Ditko or Kane. But re-reading those Avengers stories now, the distinct look of each character, the detail, the clear storytelling and the fact that his own style never got completely submerged outweighs any misgivings about the power of his action sequences. And those action sequences seem to work better for me now than they used to. and work better than a lot of fight scenes in modern comics, too. Back in the day I always wanted the comic artists to push away from the realistic, pedestrian style of british comics. More muscle, more movement, more power, were what appealed to me. Now I think I appreciate the direction and cinematography, (if I might appropriate cinematic terms) and am less concerned that every pose be 'heroic'. Where I think Heck looks best is on some of the early Iron Man stories, self-inked, or on the non-superhero work of just before the marvel superhero boom. His work on mystery and sci-fi ten page shorts equals Ditko or Kirby a lot of the time. There the ability to tell a tale in a limited space allows his storytelling to shine.
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Post by owene on Jun 5, 2011 14:50:27 GMT -5
nice to see some people appreciate him. I think Sharkar is right about him needing somewhere to settle down and do a run of issues. He clearly didn't like handling team books even if paradoxically he was very good at telling characters apart in a way a lot of artists weren't . He was well suited to female superheroes, particularly if they had a fair bit of secret identity subplotting, but those titles tended to be short lived unfortunately.
tom those early iron man issues look great, particularly on good paper (I'd only really read them in beaten up giant size reprints which i used to buy in the cheapest grades possible). the tony stark sections at the begining of each story really bring you into the glamour of his world in a way kirbys issues dont
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