One of my biggest complaint about Superman and even Wonder Woman was their author's attention to detail when it came to drawing faces of their characters. In Superman, I sometimes went several panels before I realized that the character I had been staring at was Superman! However, I noticed a change in this style in X-Men. Kirby give much more detail to the faces of each character.
For example, the close up of Magneto's face when he is taking over the army base in our first reading. Kirby spends a lot of time on the facial features of his characters compared to some of the earlier comics we read. According to Scott McCloud, this means that we, as the readers, have a harder time identifying with these characters, but I don't think this is true. I think that Kirby meant to put human (or mutant) faces to X-Men's human characters. Since there characters seem much more like real people, realistic faces actually help the reader empathize with them.
I think that rather attempting to put human characteristics to the superheroes' faces, Kirby, by that time, is more experienced in drawing comics. He has been working in the industry for several years by then and is co-creating the series with the incredible Stan Lee. The artists would of course be influenced by each other, and making it a better work then each individual's.
ReplyDeleteThat's a really astute observation, Ben. I think what you said is definitely accurate. I'm wondering, though, if the reason the "iconography" that McCloud speaks of isn't as direct here as it was in earlier comics is related to the sheer variety of mutants in the world of X Men. Superman and Wonder Woman might need to be more of an empty template for readers to superimpose themselves onto the characters because if we don't relate to Superman or Wonder Woman, we're simply not going to keep reading the comics. In X Men, although the protagonists are rendered in higher artistic detail, the fact that there are multiple mutants increases our chances of relating to a character. In other words, the creators of X Men don't need all readers to relate to Cyclops; they can also relate to Professor X or Storm or any of the other characters for that matter. Maybe that explains the lack of iconography typical of earlier superhero comics.
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