General Category > Artist Spotting

Art Spotting in general

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John C:

--- Quote from: JVJ on December 05, 2011, 01:06:44 PM ---In fact, some of them were saying that if a strip wasn't signed there was no way it COULD be identified for sure.

--- End quote ---

Ha!  If one was going to go that far, why trust the signature...?  Or can they not wait for the latest Alan Smithee flick?

srca1941:
Thanks for moving this to its own thread Yoc! It's certainly a deserving topic.

As for the "if it wasn't signed it can't be identified" quote, I agree, it's absurd. I can understand it from a legalistic standpoint of there always being room for doubt and debate, but that can still exist even when something IS signed! [EDIT: John beat me to it!]

-Eric

Yoc:
What seems to work is having the spotters all look at a questionable page or two and saying 'ok, who did this'  And letting people express their opinions.  It certainly seems to be knowledge that is very hard to hand down without a LOT of work as Jim pointed out.  But he and Hames have been working together for years and their system seems to work.  If it could be brought to a digital forum like here it might speed things up for them but that's just a suggestion.

I know I speak for the staff when I say Jim is an incredibly generous and valued member of DCM (and GAC) and he's ALWAYS welcome to share his thoughts on anything he'd like to.

-Yoc

srca1941:
There is a lot of time and visual memory involved in spotting, and I think someone has to be pretty detail oriented to pick up the skill, but it can be learned. When I'm trying to I.D. an issue, such as one I'm posting here, the first thing I do is look for a signature, or initials. (Assuming it's an artist I can't spot right off the bat.) Failing those, I search Who's Who and see who is known to have done that particular feature or series. From there I eliminate or confirm artists I am familiar with. If I eliminate all the artists I know, then I look up the bodies of work of the artists I'm unfamiliar with, find something that I know they did (either in my collection or here) and start comparing the work.

If the known work is similar to what I'm trying to I.D., then I fall back to what Jerry Bails told me to do, and look at the ears. Even though artists change their styles over the course of their careers, or will use house styles and stock poses when drawing main/recurring characters, they almost always seem to draw their ears the same. If the artist in the unknown sample draws ears the same way as in the known sample I am comparing to, then I know I may be on to something, and will look for other similarities. If the ears are not the same, then I look closer anyway, as inkers can often cause discrepancies like that. If the two samples are close enough (and that is where it gets really subjective), then I will usually attribute the work to the artist, but put a question mark behind the credit to indicate that the attribution is only a best guess. If the works are sort of similar, but I still have significant doubts (again, subjective), then I leave the credit as “unknown.” It’s hardly an exact science, and relies a lot on gut instinct, but it is a place to start.

-Eric

JVJ (RIP):
It's difficult to explain, Eric,
and I don't want to in any way disparage your techniques and approach, but what I "see" is the WAY the artist draws (not elbows or ears or girls or any one thing). You're absolutely right that inkers hide an awful lot (often quite awfully), but the one thing that is the hardest to hide is the story-telling and what I call the "body positions". Looking at that one Pierce Rice Destroyer panel, the way the bodies are flung around the panel, with elbows flying and (well-said) rubbery limbs, it simply screams Pierce Rice.

In addition to your other "tells", the Who's Who is the most relevant in that one needs to understand the career paths of each artist and to get a feel for whether or not there is an historic possibility that he or she could be working for this company at this time. I was just looking at some Timely work from late 1942 and early 1943 that has yet to be identified and I am nearly convinced that it is early Gil Kane. I went to Gary Groth's TCJ interview with Kane to learn what I could of his early career and it's possible (despite Groth not pinning him down on dates) that he was at Timely freelancing at that time. The WW has him there in 1943 and not on the features I was reviewing.

Which brings up another point: the Who's Who is NOT the last word on the subject. It's a beginning and an incredibly grand and useful one, but it's incomplete and occasionally in error. Which mean YOU might be right and Bails might be wrong. A month or so before his death, Hames and I had finally convinced Jerry that L. Bing was NOT Munson Paddock. Proof positive, not argument on Jerry's part, well done, etc. Jerry died before removing the entry and it remains "permanently" ensconced in the WW to this day. "m just sayin'.

I like your approach of "eliminating artists you're familiar with". I think that's a wise approach. So many people spot a panel or a figure that reminds them of someone and say, well, it must be so and so. Just look at that panel - totally ignoring the rest of the strip that couldn't possibly have been drawn by said artist. And there's always what I call "the story." You have to be able to explain a credible scenario that allows the artist to be working at this company at this time. For instance, it would not be easy to come up with a story that would explain a Gil Kane story at Atlas in 1958.

Sadly, there are simply too many unknowns for Yoc's suggestion of a posted page with solicited opinions to work. Believe it or not, there are as many "unknowns" as there are "knowns" in comics from 1936-1960. Most people won't want to accept that fact, but it's true. I'd welcome someone starting such a site, but how do you organize it? It's hard to alphabetize an unknown...

Peace, Jim (|:{>

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