Sunday, May 10, 2009

Elongated Man origin: Page one






No big surprises here, but I held onto scans of the layouts, pencils and inks so I thought this would be worth posting to show the way things developed from rough idea to final colors. This was published in DC's "52", number 13, 2006. It's the first of two pages.

I've liked this character since I first saw him in Detective Comics in the 60's.  I don't remember which issue it was but the story had some beautiful Carmine Infantino art.  For a change, he was doing his own inks and even though they were a little "scratchy" compared to Anderson and Giella, they looked great to my young eyes.  Lots of energy and imaginative design work.

Those early stories were always fun, with bits of good natured humor. 

3 comments:

  1. Still like on this page the last image on the page (lower right) how you shaded the hand. You didn't skimp on shading the various folds on the skin where the bones move to the knuckles and how the veins run over the bones. Just adds a little more depth to a cool page.

    When you did these pages, were you asked to really "tell a story" or basically just link images together based on the origin points? I could see that being tough to try to do any sort of storytelling in one or two pages.

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  2. When I draw a hand like that it's usually a left hand because I'm drawing with my right and using my own left hand as a "model".

    You're right, there's not much continuity in a quick origin like this.

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  3. Finding this post is amazing for me, Kevin. Ralph and Sue are my favorite DC characters. It doesn't get more silver age than The Elongated Man, it feels like a 60s sitcom within the comics.

    The Dibnys don't have a huge amount of stories, but they were almost always done by really talented guys, and those two pages are some of my favorite.

    I hope one day we get to see you do them again. It has been a while since the last time they solved a mystery in the spirit of Nick and Nora movies.


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