Broken Frontier

It was probably sometime around 1978 or 1979 when I first became aware of Gene Colan, which was kind of late in the day when you think about it.

Gene had been working in comics for well over thirty years by then, having had his first work published in 1944, a seven-page strip for Fiction House. By 1946 he was working for Timely (later Marvel) Comics and by 1949 for National (DC). He would continue to freelance for both companies for decades, gradually developing the distinctive style which won him a legion of fans.

For most of those fans, Gene was probably best known for his Marvel Comics work.  He really came into his own in the Silver Age as one of Marvel’s ‘second generation’ of artists, working on strips as diverse as Sub-Mariner (in Tales to Astonish), Iron Man (first in Tales of Suspense and later in the armored Avenger’s own book), Doctor Strange and Captain America (in which he would, in the 70’s, co-create the Falcon, one of Marvel’s first black superheroes).  The character he was perhaps most strongly associated with, though, was Daredevil, his strong lines and deep shadows bringing a distinctive, moody feel to the blind vigilante’s world.

For myself, as a child of the seventies, I first became vaguely aware of Colan’s work on Daredevil and Iron Man, but I first began to really recognize and appreciate Colan the artist on two particular books: Marv Wolfman’s moody masterpiece Tomb of Dracula (which he drew all 70 issues of) and Steve Gerber’s bizarre, satirical Howard The Duck. It’s a testament to Colan’s genius that his unique yet versatile style so perfectly suited two books so totally different in tone.

Colan was, along with Jack Kirby, Frank Robbins and Val Mayerik, one of the first artists I  became able to instantly recognize and name, and one of the few employed by Marvel at that time who did not seem bound by the restrictions of their ‘house style’.  
Later, in the eighties after parting company with Marvel due to ‘creative differences’, he returned to DC for a truly amazing run on Batman (a strip his atmospheric art was eminently suited to, complimenting the dark, complex storytelling of Doug Moench in particular as few other artists could) and later such books as Wonder Woman (!), Night Force (with Marv Wolfman again) and Jemm, Son of Saturn. Gene Colan’s art was probably the factor that actually led to me buying Wonder Woman, a move that took some guts for a boy in the school lunch break!

Appearances of Gene’s distinctive style understandably became more sporadic in later years, but he was still drawing comics into his eighties, for example pencilling Captain America #601, which won the 2010 Eisner Award for Best Single Issue. His work has been a constant, and a very recognizable constant at that, for longer than most of us have been alive. He’ll be missed. And as long as that beautiful art exists, he’ll never be forgotten.