artist research

Harry Lampert

November 3, 1916 – November 13, 2004 was an American cartoonist, started cartooning at 16 he worked with Max Fleischer helping with the art of betty boop, popeye and koko the clown. However Lampert is best known for being the co-creator of DC comics The Flash in 1940, however only drew the for the comic for 5 stories, he still set the style that the comic carries today. At the time of drawing The Flash, the second World War had already broke out in Europe and propaganda would have started being used around America to get the citizens ready to work in factories to produce munitions for Britain and France to use in the war and the possibility of America joining the war effort in the years to come. This would have influenced the art in The Flash as people were getting used to seeing the bold colours in propaganda which had been partially inspired by comics of the early 1930s. Lampert was only 24 when he started The Flash and 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 art type used thin lines with lots of fine detail, coloured using bold and often contrasting colours using block areas of black as shading to show depth. This art style can clearly be seen in the original comics of The Flash and shows that Lampert was heavily influenced by earlier comic styles and artists such as his mentor Max Fleishcher.

Here is an example of Lamperts work:

https://www.mycomicshop.com/search?TID=335741

The flash was heavily influenced by the second world war, and was used to keep morale high and often contained stories where the Flash would rescue people from Axis forces, mainly German or Japanese. There was no hidden meaning in these stories and they were simply used to show that the Americans and their allies were better than the Axis. There was no controversy at the time however some people started to disagree with the use of propaganda in children’s comics. For example here is an image showing the Flash saving a woman from and Axis plane.

This kind of image would have been used to show that the Axis were evil but that the heroes of America would save the people.

Joe Simon

October 11, 1913 – December 14, 2011 was and American comic book artist, writer, editor, and publisher. He is credited for creating many characters in comics from the 1930s-1940s. his biggest noted achievement was the co-creation of Captain America. 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 gave him access to many of the different styles of art at the time and so would have been heavily influenced by many different sources, allowing him to created his own unique style. However being that he started making the Captain America comics in early 1940 I would say that again he would have been heavily influenced by propaganda at the time.

Here is an example of his work:

http://marvel.com/comics/issue/7849/captain_america_comics_1941_1

Clearly this comic was heavily propaganda orientated as on the front cover it shows Captain America punching Adolf Hitler, this would have put across a very strong message that America would beat the Nazis, the art style you see is also very similar to that of other comics around this time, however the colours are much brighter showing that Simon knew what was needed to grab the attention of the mass audience and this worked, as Captain America was the biggest selling and most widely distributed comic of the time with approximately 1.4 million sales per issue.

Bob Kane

October 24, 1915 – November 3, 1998 was an American comic artist who co-created the DC comics Batman. His early work is defined by his joining of the Max Fleischer as a trainee animator in 1934, this is significant because it may have influenced his work as there were many other artists working in the studio with varying art styles, 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. Kane came up with the idea of The Batman in 1939 after DC comics success with Superman prompted people to try and come up with ideas for new 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 actor Douglas Fairbanks' movie portrayal of the swashbuckler Zorro.

Here is an example of Kane’s work:

http://dc.wikia.com/wiki/Detective_Comics_Vol_1_33

This art style differs from others of the time, because the colours are not as bright, this is perhaps to show the mystery elements of the comic, this comic was one of the few that didn’t have clear wartime propaganda, although some of the Batman’s missons involved infiltrating Nazi camps, it 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.