Tin Tin & EC Comics

What interesting to me from reading through some of these older EC books and Tin Tin is the mindset behind the writing compared to what I've been accustomed to in recent comic history.  In a way seems that comic writer's thought if there's not writing in each panel explaining then the reader would just not get it. In one of the Action Comics I've read there were 2 pages of Superman going through an epidemic where he's the last man on earth and the red sun has zapped his superpowers.  The majority of the narrative is told instead of shown as we only get a few shots of the wrecked landscape.  The other issue is I barely even took note of the villains that got Superman into this predicament, their ship was featured but  we only saw the Kanor in a few spare panels.  

What has me in disarray with the older Action Comics and certain EC adventure comics of the day I believe is the fact that there's not much of a variety in their layouts or action scenes.  In this era of superhero you can definitely tell the artists were pressed on deadlines as there's such a simple design that they all seem to follow for every scene; quick landscape shot that doesn't really show much of the background, portrait views of any talking character unless they're performing a movement, then they'll take up that whole panel.  I guess that's my issue, there's just some terrible design choices in panel compositions and page layouts that were being repeated instead of corrected.

Not saying that all comics that follow this are bad as that simply is not true at all. Jack Kirby's Black Panther comic was a pretty fun read because his design sense of the compositions in his panels were much more well done, along with making the text more subservient to his art instead of vice versa.

Reading through Tin Tin's adventure in Nepal was very enjoyable, in spite of the peculiar type choice and format.  I must be way too used to american comic bubbles and type, because whenever there were longer passages of type in Tin Tin I had to concentrate a little bit more otherwise I would glaze over it immediately.  One thing that's for sure is a lot of comics really suffer when they have to be formatted to online reading.

Little Nemo & Flash Gordon

As I unravel through the numerous pages of Little Nemo and uncover all of his wondrous adventures in his dreams I begin to realize the effect this comic has had on its successors, and also how much more experimental McKay was in comparison to other and even later comic artists.  When I read over his old tales I feel the whimsicalness of Nemo’s dreams sink into my head and I’m much more sucked into the comic, something that’s been hard to find in comics for me recently.  McKay’s sense of animation is something definitely felt in his comics, not only in his movement of the characters but in his comic but the way action is shown as well.  In a decent portion of his comics, most of it is usually scene-to-scene or action-to-action, but he keeps the fluidity between the panels going, as he doesn’t use as much type as older comic writers did.  My issue recently going back has been the longer paragraphs that seem to accompany a lot of the older comics, but as McKay uses more of the visuals to portray Nemo’s dream world I’m less caught up in reading and am more pulled in. Certain locations – like the mirror room the 3 cops are at- are simply brilliant.  Looking through his comics again is very much like discovering a gold mine for interesting concepts in movement and panel ideas.

I also read through Flash Gordon and a bit of the Conan strips, which were fun reads that definitely explained certain influences on other comics I’ve read.  Many situations Flash Gordon found his ship’s engine dying on him in I recall thinking to myself “there’s a parody of this”.  It’s just kind of funny when your first indirect exposure to a comic is through a Calvin & Hobbes bit, when Spaceman Spiff would show up. A definite homage to the sci-fi capers from the old days.