Broken Frontier

Last weekend’s 11th Annual 2007 National Big Apple Comic Book, Art, Toy and Sci-Fi Convention, held a Mastering Narrative Technique Seminar with superstar artist and comic revolutionary Jim Steranko.

"This may be the last of my public seminars," said Steranko, in a press release.

For the 50 dollar price of admission you had the chance to spend the afternoon with Mr. Steranko, who regaled his audience with pearls of wisdom including how he broke into comics, what he learned from Jack Kirby, what makes "the ultimate comic book" and his experiences working with George Lucas on Raiders of the Lost Ark and Francis Ford Coppola on Bram Stoker’s Dracula.

"I walked in off the street," said Steranko, "and said to the [Marvel] receptionist I’m here to see Stan Lee, and handed her some of my art."

Roy Thomas, future Editor in Chief of Marvel, then a staff writer, recounts the story: "I was sent out by Sol [Brodsky] to look at his work and basically brush him off. Stan was busy and didn't want to be bothered that day. But when I saw Jim's work, which was even better than what I'd seen the previous year, on an impulse I took it in to Sol and said, ‘ I think Stan should see this’."

"Stan had a stack of books behind his desk and said, ‘pick one’," Steranko continued the story. "I had my pick of any of them: Spidey, FF…naturally, I wouldn’t dare follow Kirby on FF, because how can you follow that?"

So, he picked out a book that was selling badly, figuring that he couldn’t make the book worse and could only make it better. That book was Strange Tales, featuring Marvel’s version of James Bond, Nick Fury.

Steranko began his stint on the book by penciling and inking Kirby layouts on Strange Tales #151 (Dec. 1966), just as fellow Marvel artist John Buscema had done before him. However, with each passing issue Steranko would begin to make the book his own and by #155 had taken over writing. At the time it was a first for an artist to do double duty and handle writing.

During this experience, Steranko had learned something about himself and his mentor, Jack Kirby, whose work he had been following since he was a young boy. "He [Kirby] and I had completely different storytelling techniques," Steranko said. "He always took the panels to their most explosive point, where I leaned towards tension."

"I wanted to create the ultimate comic book," he said, "which is a comic that uses all the senses." Steranko continued to to discuss the innovations he had implemented in comics that had not been seen before such as cognitive science and how he had used it in pinups such as the one he did for Darwyn Cooke’s Selina’s Big Score.

"As a reader, you come in looking at the whole piece overall, not just sections of it, even on panel pages," Steranko continued. "Involve the reader in a process of discovery, making them go where you want to go."

Another tool he would employ was the use of directionals where he would use objects within the panel to give the reader hints as to which should be read next. "I hated those arrows that pointed which panel to read next."

He used visual metaphors in the original Death of Captain America, involving Thunderbird, Thor and the other Avengers carrying the coffin and structuring the page to be in a cathedral formation which that panel as the centerpiece.

Other influences he cited besides Jack Kirby included Pop Art of the period and the work of creators like Wally Wood, Peter Max and Andy Warhol. "Hitchcock was a big influence on me," he continued, "his use of light was something that I often experimented with in Red Tide."

When he refers to Red Tide he means his seminal work involving the detective, Chandler. His pinup of the Silk Stocking Killer would later become an influence on Frank Miller for his Sin City series. From 1969-1975, Steranko gradually moved out of comics and began work on other projects, such as Raiders of the Lost Ark, where he was consulted to design the look of Indiana Jones.

"The most important thing that I learned while in comics, was to take what had come before and make it my own," Steranko said as he concluded his seminar.