Artist essay
Harry Lampert
Harry Lampert was an American comic book artist born on November 3rd 1916 and died on November 13th 2004, Lampert started drawing cartoons at the age of 16 working with Max Fleischer to help make Betty Boop, Popeye and Koko the clown(4). However Lampert is best known for being the co-creator and artist for DC comics The Flash in 1940, even though he was only the artist for 5 stories he is responsible for setting the art style of the comic that it still has today. At the time of the first editions of The Flash, the second world war had already broken out in Europe and propaganda would have been spreading around America and being used more commonly in cities to try and get the American citizens ready for working in factories to produce munitions for Britain and France to use in the war, and to prepare the public for the possibility of America joining the war in the years to come. This may have influenced Lampert when making the art for The Flash as people were getting used to seeing the bold colours in propaganda which had been partially inspired by comics of the 1930s. Lampert was only 24 when he started making the Flash comics so would have been influenced by the newly evolving art styles of the late 1930s as this is the art he would have grown up with. This new art type used thin lines with lots of fine detail and block shading to show depth.
An example of Lamperts work is:
(1)
The Flash was heavily influenced by the Second World War, and war used to keep morale high and often contained stories where the Flash would rescue people from the Axis forces, mainly German or Japanese. There was no hidden meaning in these stories and they were simply used the show that the Americans were better that the Axis forces.
The art style is very complex with lots of detail and thin lines and bold colours, however you can see the ‘bad guys’ are much darker colours, this is to further establish that these people are dark and ‘shady’. Another feature of the comics cover is the typical body forms of the characters, like how the bad guys are slouched over, but the hero looks strong and muscular, another stylised element is that the girl is the typical American dream girl, who is often depicted as the damsel in distress.
Joe Simon
Joe Simon was an American cartoonist and comic artist born on October 11th 1913 and died on December 14th 2011; Simon also worked as a writer, editor and publisher. He is credited for creating many characters in comics from the 1930s-1940s. Simon’s biggest noted achievement was the co-creation of Captain America(5), being 28 at the time of the first Captain America issue which came out in 1941 he would have seen more of the evolution of the comic art style than most other artists at the time and, is often seen as one of the forefathers of the comic book art style as he was the first editor of Timely Comics which would later evolve into Marvel Comics. This position would have given him access to many of the different styles of comic art and the time so this could mean that many different styles influenced his work and helped him develop his own unique style, however as the Captain America comics were being produced in 1941 I would say that it is a large probability that he was influenced by propaganda and the war.
Here is an example of Simon’s work:
(2)
This comic was clearly heavily propaganda based and influenced as the front cover has a strikingly clear image of Captain America punching Adolf Hitler, this would have been done to put across a very clear and strong message that America would beat the Nazis. The art style in this comic is also much brighter than most of the others with stronger colours and bolder lines, yet the actual line art and style is very similar to other superhero comics of the time, being very detailed and using the same block black shading but this time in a combination with some line shading to show angles and direction. This bright appearance shows that Simon knew what was needed to grab the attention of a mass audience at the time, and this worked as Captain America was the biggest selling comic or the era with approximately 1.4 million sales per issue.
Bob Kane
Bob Kane was another American comic artist, born on October 24th 1915 and died on November 3rd 1998, he is most famous for being the artist who co-created the DC comics superhero Batman. Kane’s early work is defined by his joining or the Max Fleischer as a trainee animator in 1934(6), this is significant because it may have influenced his work as there were many other artists working in the studio with varying art style, although I don’t know if he was directly influenced by any one person. Kane started comic art in 1936 as a freelance artist working for Jerry Iger. He came up with the idea of The Batman in 1939 after the DC comics success with Superman prompted people to try and come up with new ideas for now comics and work under the DC comics name, Kane says that he had multiple sources of inspiration including Leonardo da Vinci’s diagram of the ornithopter and Douglas Fairbanks’ movie portrayal of the swashbuckler Zorro.
Here is an example of Kane’s work:
(3)
This art style is different from the others of the era, because the colours are not as bright, this is possibly to show the mystery elements of the comic, another difference of the art style is that the lines are a lot thinner and some of the detail is made with colour instead of lines. This comic was one of the few that didn’t have clear wartime propaganda links, although some of the Batman’s missions involved infiltrating Nazi camps. The comic was more to show that crime was bad and that people would find you and justice would be served, although Batman wasn’t directly seen as the American government.
https://www.mycomicshop.com/search?TID=335741
http://marvel.com/comics/issue/7849/captain_america_comics_1941_1
http://dc.wikia.com/wiki/Detective_Comics_Vol_1_33
https://www.lambiek.net/artists/l/lampert_harry.htm
http://marvel.wikia.com/Joe_Simon
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0004170/bio