GENE COLAN free webinar 12/22

With the obvious exception of Jack Kirby, no other Marvel Comics artist defined the look of as many major characters as GENE COLAN (1926-2011) did during The Silver Age of Comics (1956-70)!

Upon his arrival at Marvel comics in 1965, Colan first drew the underwater hero Sub-Mariner; Colan’s figures, graceful yet powerful, were perfect for an athletic swimming hero, and gave the character a regal aura that suited his title, Prince Namor. When Marvel gave Iron Man to Colan in 1966, he commented after, ”I wanted the reader to feel his emotion at times, not just be a metal figure always looking the same. So I took some poetic license. I tried to be very subtle with it, add a little humanity to the face.”

This quality of bringing to superheroes a realistic, human side made Colan perfect for the nascent Marvel style of heroic—yet somewhat tragic—protagonists. The blind hero Daredevil blossomed under Colan’s stewardship, because he convincingly depicted the swashbuckling side of the character as well as his civilian alter ego of lawyer Matt Murdock. And Colan’s Dr. Strange stories, drawn in cinematic, chiaroscuro shadings, with panel layouts and compositions that wended and warped their way through the page, befitted the ectoplasmic, otherworldly dimensions they were set in, and are a testament to Colan’s atmospheric style, one of the most unique in the history of comic book art.