I have been reading the last two “Marvel Essentials, Amazing Spider-Man” volumes, and I was struck by something I once heard referred to as a BFO: A Blinding Flash of the Obvious.
That BFO was the late Ross Andru was a really great artist.
Here's a place to find some samples: http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&q=ross+andru&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wiI always thought of him as a solid artist who produced good work every month for many years. Since I grew up seeing his art all the time, and reading the very same 1970s comics reprinted in those “Essentials” volumes, I think I was oblivious to his tremendous skill until I looked at it with new eyes.
The volumes I have been reading, seven and eight, reprint almost all the issues of “Amazing” that Andru drew, from about issue 125-184. Volume six has a few of the issues at the start of his run, too.
What strikes me as so, ahem, amazing about Andru is how solidly he grounds his characters in the real world. I never noticed it when I was a kid, but the characters all move in environments that are real.
The Daily Bugle looks like a newspaper office. Peter Parker’s apartment was decorated by his friends with unwanted furniture and other items, like an old, wooden cigar store Indian. When Peter sits in a chair, Peter, the chair, the furniture around him and the dimensions of his apartment all have weight, volume and perspective. They all look real.
When the characters are in a part of
If Spider-Man goes to
Moving forward from the backgrounds, Andru has a very distinctive style. You can always spot something he draws easily, but I think he grew into a great background artist.
Recently, I also read Andru’s “Metal Men,” reprinted by DC Comics. These were from about a decade earlier than his run on “Spider-Man.”
Andru’s style is still there, especially the unique was his characters pose in action shots. Once you see it, it’s hard to miss. His was one of the styles I first could recognize as a kid. But, he wasn’t doing too much careful work on the architecture and the backgrounds then as he did later.
The strength of the later work, as he grew as an artist, is in the subtle correctness of the detail.
It’s really hard to get the characters foreshortened at the same angle as the backgrounds. (Trust me, I have tried. Sometimes that table top just doesn’t line up with the figures no matter how many times you re-draw it. Sometimes the floor tiling is going up or down when you want the people standing on a flat surface.) By the time he was drawing “Spider-Man,” Andru could do this effortlessly.
Effortlessly also describes how easy it is to read and follow the stories he drew. While his style is distinctive, it doesn’t get in the way of telling the story, of moving the narrative along. You can follow it easily and read clear through, or you can stop and marvel, no pun intended, at the skill in which he was able to draw realistic environments and action-packed characters.
Let us note that Andru was working with other artists – Frank Giacoia, Dave Hunt, Mike Esposito and Jim Mooney, primarily – who were inking the work and helping with the backgrounds.
But, Andru deserves credit as the penciller for the skill he delivered to the pages as the penciller who designed and drew the pages.
He drew with something missing from a lot of today’s artists: a grounding in realism. He did not draw in a photo realistic style, but neither was he a stylistic show-off with little regard to what things really look like. Some of today’s artists like to draw characters with fists (or worse yet forearms or calves) which are bigger than their heads, for example.
Andru was able to show us super heroes who look super without resorting to confusing page designs, making the art look like it should be on a poster or cluttering pages up with needless lines that simulate detail.
Clean, simple, solid, distinctive art work. Andru’s professionalism shines through every page he drew.
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