R.I.P. Bob Oksner (1916-2007)
Growing up as a superhero fan, I was not aware of Bob Oksner’s work. The humor and romance books that he had done for so many years had faded from popularity. I had seen his work in a Mary Marvel story from an issue of Shazam! in the 1970’s, but the work was so well done, it did not make an impression on me.
Does that make any sense? It was not loaded with anatomical detail and revolutionary layouts like Neal Adams. It did not have the cartoonish simplicity of CC Beck or Kurt Schaffenberger. It did not have the distinctive, blocky style of Jack Kirby, or the angular lines of Carmine Infantino. It was just good. The characters looked like real people. The clothes draped like clothes do, the figures were posed like people actually stand and move. That issue of Shazam! was the first Captain Marvel comic book I ever had, and among the earliest comic books I remember owning, so I looked at that story a lot, yet I never felt the urge to find out the artist’s name.
This sort of benign ignorance or neglect seems to be a defining characteristic of Oksner’s career. Almost all the obituaries and tributes out there mention how overlooked his drawing skill was. Mainstream humor comics of the silver and bronze age are frequently seen as being targeted to younger audiences, and the simple, cartoony style of drawing in them is frequently misperceived as being unsophisticated or easy to do. Upon reflection it is found that this aret is actually quite tricky, ad requires great skill. Whereas in a superhero adventure comic, audiences have all too frequently been satisfied with flashy details, cross hatching, gritting teeth, speed lines, and explosions which can cover up a wealth of sins of anatomy and storytelling, a good humor artist must make the figures and backgrounds believable as real people in a real world, yet know which details, shadows, wrinkles, etc to leave out to make the image and story clear. Knowledge of anatomy and skill at capturing the essence of a character are necessary to know when and how to exaggerate certain features and postures for comedic effect. Oksner was a master of that, and more. His work on such titles as The Adventures of Jerry Lewis, The Adventures of Bob Hope and Leave it to Binky stand out as exemplars of a time when humor was a strong part of the comic book industry.
Yet even more common than comments on his skill at drawing humor comics are comments on how pretty and sexy the women he drew were. He drew the popular newspaper strip Cairo Jones and DC comics’ Angel and the Ape and Superman’s Girl Friend Lois Lane. Fans of the World’s Mightest girl were blessed when his pencils and inks brought her to life for those few stories in the 1970’s/ Something about the way his ink brush varied the weight of the line, and the way Mary’s lips curled up at the corners, just made her so pretty, so irisitably cute, and perfect for the period.
When given the job of picking up where CC Beck left off when he quit DC Comics, he was unfamiliar with the character. He viewed the job as a challenge to recapture the magic that made the character so popular in the 1940’s and ‘50’s, but has said in an interview with PC Hamerlinck in an issue of Fawcett Collectors of America that he felt he would be “impinging on Beck’s Creation.” He was happier to take the Mary Marvel job because he said it would be a “greater opportunity to be myself artistically.”
We are glad he was.
Postscript: This pretty much finishes off almost all the pencillers who worked on the original stories in the '70's Shazam! series. Beck, Oksner, Schaffenberger, and Newton, who all drew the Big Red Cheese, Cockrum, who drew one Jr. Story, and Oksner, who drew CM and Mary. That leaves only Alan Weiss, Tenny Henson, (who both drew CM late in the title's run) and Dick Giordano (who did the Isis story and on Jr. story) still kicking.
Captain Zorikh
www.bigapplecon.com
www.captainmarvelculture.com
Growing up as a superhero fan, I was not aware of Bob Oksner’s work. The humor and romance books that he had done for so many years had faded from popularity. I had seen his work in a Mary Marvel story from an issue of Shazam! in the 1970’s, but the work was so well done, it did not make an impression on me.
Does that make any sense? It was not loaded with anatomical detail and revolutionary layouts like Neal Adams. It did not have the cartoonish simplicity of CC Beck or Kurt Schaffenberger. It did not have the distinctive, blocky style of Jack Kirby, or the angular lines of Carmine Infantino. It was just good. The characters looked like real people. The clothes draped like clothes do, the figures were posed like people actually stand and move. That issue of Shazam! was the first Captain Marvel comic book I ever had, and among the earliest comic books I remember owning, so I looked at that story a lot, yet I never felt the urge to find out the artist’s name.
This sort of benign ignorance or neglect seems to be a defining characteristic of Oksner’s career. Almost all the obituaries and tributes out there mention how overlooked his drawing skill was. Mainstream humor comics of the silver and bronze age are frequently seen as being targeted to younger audiences, and the simple, cartoony style of drawing in them is frequently misperceived as being unsophisticated or easy to do. Upon reflection it is found that this aret is actually quite tricky, ad requires great skill. Whereas in a superhero adventure comic, audiences have all too frequently been satisfied with flashy details, cross hatching, gritting teeth, speed lines, and explosions which can cover up a wealth of sins of anatomy and storytelling, a good humor artist must make the figures and backgrounds believable as real people in a real world, yet know which details, shadows, wrinkles, etc to leave out to make the image and story clear. Knowledge of anatomy and skill at capturing the essence of a character are necessary to know when and how to exaggerate certain features and postures for comedic effect. Oksner was a master of that, and more. His work on such titles as The Adventures of Jerry Lewis, The Adventures of Bob Hope and Leave it to Binky stand out as exemplars of a time when humor was a strong part of the comic book industry.
Yet even more common than comments on his skill at drawing humor comics are comments on how pretty and sexy the women he drew were. He drew the popular newspaper strip Cairo Jones and DC comics’ Angel and the Ape and Superman’s Girl Friend Lois Lane. Fans of the World’s Mightest girl were blessed when his pencils and inks brought her to life for those few stories in the 1970’s/ Something about the way his ink brush varied the weight of the line, and the way Mary’s lips curled up at the corners, just made her so pretty, so irisitably cute, and perfect for the period.
When given the job of picking up where CC Beck left off when he quit DC Comics, he was unfamiliar with the character. He viewed the job as a challenge to recapture the magic that made the character so popular in the 1940’s and ‘50’s, but has said in an interview with PC Hamerlinck in an issue of Fawcett Collectors of America that he felt he would be “impinging on Beck’s Creation.” He was happier to take the Mary Marvel job because he said it would be a “greater opportunity to be myself artistically.”
We are glad he was.
Postscript: This pretty much finishes off almost all the pencillers who worked on the original stories in the '70's Shazam! series. Beck, Oksner, Schaffenberger, and Newton, who all drew the Big Red Cheese, Cockrum, who drew one Jr. Story, and Oksner, who drew CM and Mary. That leaves only Alan Weiss, Tenny Henson, (who both drew CM late in the title's run) and Dick Giordano (who did the Isis story and on Jr. story) still kicking.
Captain Zorikh
www.bigapplecon.com
www.captainmarvelculture.com
posted by:
|
New York City
|
