Drawing Style

While reading Volume 1 of the Superman Chronicles, something that really stuck out to me was the drawing technique. I'll say right now that I have no idea about anything that has to do with artistic techniques or anything; I'm not an artist or an art history major. However, I found it to be very glaring how much Siegel and Shuster used straight lines, whether vertical or horizontal, in their illustrations. I noticed that they use a lot of deliberate straight lines for shading and shadow purposes, I think mostly seen on clothing. More than once, theres an overlap of clothing shading lines, and motion lines that go in the same direction, making it kind of difficult to distinguish between the two. Being able to tell the difference between the two isn't really important but it's just something I noticed. Also another big thing in the illustration is the nondescript nature of all of the faces. Professor Serrano mentioned in class that sometimes it's hard to tell even which character is Clark Kent in any given panel but even more, none of the characters have any defining features. It's not even that they all look the same but little attention is given to facial details; it's almost like all of the facial drawings are quick sketches. I'm sure that develops as time goes on but it was quite contrary (well not hugely) to Tintin which had more defining facial features for each character. Obviously the illustrations in Superman took a great amount of time I'm sure, the facial thing is a stylistic choice but it's interesting. I almost think it speaks to the environment they live in. I'm not sure I can't explain how, but I feel as though it is reflective.