Drawn! The Illustration and Cartooning Blog

That's funny, because I just found this today during my own surfing and was thinking about posting it!

You're not the only one, Ward!

I think the panels are familiar, does anyone see parallels to noir or pulp in the use of these devices? It is something interesting to expand on as well as an avenue for further research.

Read a few issues of Hellboy and check out how many of these come into play in masterful fashion.
On a related note, here are 23 hoboes that always stink by dogwelder of the 700 hoboes project.
What is it with me, must everything go back to hoboes?

What a find! Thank you!

Awesome. Anyone know of any other similar yet really useful references like this (besides the hobo's ;))? I plan to print it out and laminate it, but I need something to go on the back.

Great point about Hellboy, in fact there seems to only 10 or 12 recurring ones in those comics.

I really believe this was meant to be tongue-in-cheek. Now the first time I saw this I thought it was for real, and thought, "gee, these are some good ideas", but now I think I was being enormously nieve. Ivan Brunetti did a parody of it, and discussed it in an interview--he seemed to think it was Wood's very cynical way of describing a bunch of rote devices that he probably used when he was racing a deadline. But, you know, some of this stuff is pretty basic, like "sillouettes" so it doesn't mean you're a hack if you use them, but it's all in the context: "22 panels that always work" meaning: when you're short of imagination, here's some stuff that'll get you out of a jam. Again: It wasn't me that first put forth the idea that this was Wood's idea of a joke, and I'm not the only one who's convinced of it.

Now I did also read about the rumor that this thing was posted up at Marvel as some kind of bible--that they actually took it seriously like I originally had. Now this was very much in line with Marvel's editorial policy during the period when this was probably in effect---when Buscema was doing these little in-house seminars that eventually were distilled into How To Draw Comics The Marvel Way when serious hackery was encouraged. Buscema was encouraging artists to knock out as many pages as they could as fast as they could, and to use as many short cuts as possible. Buscema himself, an excellent draftsman, frequently cut corners, and often got away with it still smelling like a rose, but 22 Panels That Always Work, sorry to say, don't always work. In general I think it's better to let this kind of stuff happen organically, and referring to a "guide" like this tends to lend itself to contrivance. Instead of actually solving a problem that emerges from the process of telling the story, you're liable instead to say, "well THESE always work..."

Ok. Didn't know about the Larry Hama story. So I think it looks like a combination of Wood's earnest work-a-day cynicism, and Hama's mercenary get-the-job-done cynicism. But cynicism still seems to be the ultimate product.

This sums it up for me:

"Never draw anything you can copy, never copy anything you can trace, never trace anything you can cut out and paste up."

So is this the guy whose example you want to follow?

I took the maxim "Never draw anything..." as a lesson in using references. In the days before Google Images, comics had some bizarre looking industrial design any time the artist wasn't bothered to find references.

One of the pillars of Jack Kirby's enormous legacy was "bizarre looking industrial design".

Now, I get it.

http://www.infoplease.com/ce6/people/A0814830.html

We could all learn a lot from "hacks" like Buscema and Wood. I'm not advocating skipping the process of learning to draw in favour of shortcuts, but too many contemporary commercial (comic) artists think they are 'artistes'. If your not working on a self-published, creator owned property, you are doing your employer a diservice taking money while experimenting with what might or might not work instead of applying the accumulated knowledge of the masters. Sound mercenary? Well, surprise - if you're drawing corporate comics you are a mercenary. Just like professional sports players. Just like professional studio musicians. Just like professional whatever.

Cynical joke or sincere art lesson, Wood did untold numbers of young sequential artists a huge favour by distilling a lifetime of learning into 22 panels. I for one am eternally grateful - and thanks to those who have thoughtfully kept this Rosetta Stone in circulation!

But from reading Hama's letter in this same article, it seems like Wood didn't even INTEND this to be an instructional aid. It was Hama who glued these onto a reference card and invented the concept that these were universal solutions in the first place. Have you ever heard of Hama? I've heard of Hama. and I've seen his work. And there's a reason why you haven't heard of him.

As for Wood: he went from doing really beautiful stuff for EC to really no longer giving a damn, and drinking himself to death. This was what he'd been reduced to by an industry that didn't value the best of what he had to offer it. Again: is this REALLY someone you want to emulate?

Buscema was a fantastic artist who, at his best, had a beautful mastery of the figure, but in the end, it was a contest with himself, of whether he could do five pages or six pages in a day (still never beat Kirby in this regard). But there was no love in it. It was just a job, and to give work-day-artists their due----yep, it's just a job, but if you have no love for it, it shows in your work, and in the end, it showed in Wood's, and it showed in Buscema's. Kirby loved every minute of it and that enthusiasm shows up in even his worst efforts.

As for this representing a "lifetime of learning": anybody who's read American comics long enough has been well exposed to all of it before. I'm not suggesting "experimenting on the job" at least not in any great measure----though a certain ammount of invention on the job is also something you owe yourself and your work----I'm just saying: it may not be a good idea to rely too much on a crutch like this. It does a diservice to your craft and to your employer. Part of what your employer pays you to do is to problem solve, and this just isn't the answer key.

Wally Wood's stint on Justice Society in the 70's is out on trade this week. Check it out. It has the debut of Power Girl.
http://superman.ws/tales4/pg/?page=2

As for the “Never draw anything you can copy..." maxim---read that article carefully---this was his instruction to himself and his assistants to knock it out. I've heard the same from other assistants of his who were instructed to literally trace images for him to render up in the trademark Wood style.

But don't confuse this Wood with the Wood who did all those gorgeous EC comics storys---the Wood that was even once considered as a possible replacement for Hal Foster on Prince Valiant. The Wood who wrote this maxim was a shadow of this Earlier very talented artist.

Jed; Your points are well made and I sincerely agree with the spirit of them. Even when I'd drawing a happy family eating a bowl of cereal for a frame in a tv storyboard ( for the twelve-hundreth time) I try to invest something new and creative, no matter how small, for the purpose of personal growth and professional problem-solving.

My point is this: even on his worst day the dispirited Wood or Buscema still has much to offer both the green and the seasoned veteran illustrator. It sounds awfully dismissive to cast aside '22 panels' as a joke or a crutch for hacks when it came from the creator of those gorgeous ECs and countless other masterpieces. Though we have indeed been well exposed to years and years of American comics, entire generations of comic artists have wilfully ignored the lessons of sequential storytelling taught by those comics in favour of page after page of pin-up shots, confusing panel arrangements and masturbatory attention to frivolous detail masquerading as "a certain amount of invention". 22 panels and Buscema's chalk talks would be a good place for young artists to learn to walk before they try to run - and are a worthy reminder to working pros of the bedrock of their craft. Just my opinion ;-)

Buscema's How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way helped teach me how to draw. The big drawback to that book, and why I believe it gets a lot of flack is that there's a lot of "always do this" and "never do this" rules that, when taken to heart by an impressionable kid, can be a little detrimental to your growth as an artist. But the essence of what's in there I found useful, and what's great is you can pick and choose what you decide to use and what you don't. It's a good book for the under 12 set, as long as you don't take it too much to heart.

Now remember: these 22 panels were never diseminated to Wood's assistants or anyone else as either a bible or reference. He made these for HIMSELF. Hama cobbled them together and wrote the whole "22 panels that always work" business on the top---his addition, not Wood's. I just think people are taking this entirely too seriously since it comes from "the master", when really, this was never the purpose of the thing. It's no "Rosetta Stone" (a metaphor which I find very hard to fathom), it's, at best, a novel look into Wood's process, and framing it as the Clift notes to success as a cartoonist is really a bad idea.

I agree with you about a lot of what passes for comics these days by even some of the most lauded artists (Jim Lee comes to mind). They often lack basic storytelling fundamentals, and to them I'd reccomend a real reference, like Eisner's Comics and Sequential Art. Eisner's book, unfortunately, can't be sumarized in 22 panels---it requires a little more investment---but that's because there is no such thing as a magic 22 panels that will solve all your storytelling problems.

And Leif: I'm impressed with anybody who can make a go of it storyboarding---I tried it once and I found it really really hard. I haven't got whatever facility it takes to pull that off with the speed necessary to make a living at it, and as you're well aware, it requires a good deal more than 22 panels worth of knowledge to pull off.

Jed,

Time to start your own blog...

BH

Jed, you sound perturbed by the fact that the "22 Panels" have helped many.

It is all about learning and adding to what you have learned.

If you are ready apply your statements to the "22 Panels", you might as well apply them to the golden ratio, golden mean, golden rectangle et al.

This about a device that should be used like a tool, nothing more nothing less. Like a tool, it can only create what its master intends. If the master intends on being a hack and cheat, the tool will follow the masters command.

And may I quote a friend and late professor: "If your art looks good, who the hell cares how it got there."

i notice that some of the panels refer to what looks like "ben day". what is that?

"Ben Day" is sort of like zip-a-tone. These were halftone dot patterns that came in sheets, that have since become more or less obsolete because the same process can be recreated on the computer.

And my problem with 22 panels is that people are treating this like Wood's "golden mean" of comics, when he didn't intend it as such. If it's "helped many", that's great.

You want to know what bothers me? THIS is what bothers me:

"Once shrouded in secrecy, Wally Wood would selectively give assistants and those close to him three 8×10 photocopies of comic panels that bore the absolute essence of drawing comic book panels. 22 images in total, they held the secret to a comic book illustrator’s success, and those who learned from them benefited from the master’s wisdom. The panels were gold, but were not packaged in such a way that was easily disseminated."

If you read the rest of the article you will realize that none of the above is true, that this was just copy for an auction where they were selling the thing, but instead people are taking this for face value. It was never "shrouded in secrecy", he never disseminated this thing to his special assistants (Hama pasted this together, wrote the 40 panels business on there, xeroxed it, and gave it to new recruits at Marvel AFTER Wood was dead).

So my problem with this is, not so much the thing itself, but lauding it as more than it is.

And as blasphemous as this may sound: Wood wasn't exactly the greatest storyteller of that era. He was one hell of a draftsman when he wanted to be---the stuff he did with Kurtzman for Mad was amazing, and those sci-fi covers defined a whole generation of pulp imagery---but compared to a Toth, a Kurtzman, a Krigstein, an Eisner, a Kirby---not so much.

Jed,

1st. Thanks for asking me to read the article.

2nd. I read the article BEFORE my FIRST post.

Making an assumption of another commentator is ruinious and embarrassing. Or ought to be.

3rd. Let's not forget that this is a "Comics" "How to" category. Anything related as such shouldn't be dismissed as a complete farce and unuseable because of who created it or did not create it, or even where it came from.

4th. My post was to offer rebuttal to your tone about the use of a tool and expanding skill. As you seemed to disregard all of what Lief had to say.

~The hammer is a lovely tool. This does not mean the inventor was a good carpenter.

Sorry. Didn't mean to make false assumptions. That was more directed, anyway, at people who were making hyperbolic claims about the thing, calling it "the Rosetta Stone" and such.

I'm not sure how you gather that I ignored what Leif had to say. I suppose you mean the spirit in which it was meant (arguable), rather than the content, which I addressed at length. Probably too much length.

So this was my point, again, in a nutshell: "my problem with this is, not so much the thing itself, but lauding it as more than it is."

As for carpenters and hammers: I think this is a false analogy. You can't really extricate the imagined signficance that this thing has from the idea that it came from Wood. If this was "Joe Blow's 22 Panels that Always work" would we even be talking about it? Or Larry Hama's? Perhaps it's more a case of the Babe Ruth baseball bat, or the George Forman Grill---Wally Wood's name on it doesn't make it magic. That doesn't mean it's a bad baseball bat. It's just not the Rosetta Stone.

Jed,

I will restate the analogy again becuase it is not false: The hammer is a lovely tool, but it does not mean that the inventor was a good carpenter.

1st. Where in that sentence did I allude that Wood , or Hama, or Joe Blow, or George Forman was the creator of the 22 panels. I simply mentioned that the 22 panels of questioned origin was a tool & it is the master who wields it who has skill. What makes that analogy false? This is a COMICS HOW TO CATEGORY.

2nd. For all I care Grandma Grunt (tm) could've drawn the 22 panels. What does it matter if it is a TOOL to use and LEARN from? Which is what I thought the COMIC HOW TO CATEGORY was for.

Please enlighten me if I was mistaken.

3rd. And yes if the 22 panels were found in a joe blow book of cartooning it would be relevant to post and discuss it here. WHY? Because IT IS A THE COMIC HOW TO CATEGORY.

Just because you might not find the 22 panels interesting does not mean others might.

I am sure you are getting the point. THIS IS A COMICS HOW TO CATEGORY.

“my problem with this is, not so much the thing itself, but lauding it as more than it is."

ie: because it's Wood. Now maybe YOU'RE not lauding it as such (this is very important here--I am not accusing YOU of this), but both here and elsewhere it's been given overblown signifigance. This seems to be implicated both by the hyperbolic quote associated with the 22 panels up top, and a few choice sentiments in subsequent posts.

And yes, as far as tools and their inventors are concerned, a very valid analogy, but you're calling the context one thing: "how to" while it's clearly being interpretted as much more: lessons from beyond the grave from a master class cartoonist. As a how-to tool it very well may be useful, and I have yet to dispute this. Nor did I say they weren't interesting. If they weren't interesting I wouldn't be wasting so much time talking about them. (well, actually, maybe they're not THIS interesting). So again, I need to make this clear: YOU'RE not the one making more of this than it is. To you it may be a hammer. So for you: valid analogy. For the guy who called it a "Rosetta Stone", this aint just any hammer. But really, I'm with you. It's just a hammer.

And perhaps its true, for all you care they could've been by Grandma Grunt, or whatever, but I'm addressing more the general sentiments of many, reflected very much in that hyperbolic quote above, than your own personal feeling about the value of 22 Panels.

All I'm saying is: interesting, but not the Rosetta Stone, or the Golden Fleece, or even Wood's secret legacy to his assistants and acolytes. These are some shorthand notes that Wood used when he was pressed for an idea, Hama cobbled them together and passed them on, and whoola, an intriguing oddity that some may find useful.

All my references to hackery also need a little context: and that context is Marvel in the late 70s and 80s, The Shooter years when Hama was an editor, and Marvel was pumping out some of the worst garbage of its history. That's when Hama drafted this up. That doesn't make it worthless, it just illustrates the fact that their was a certain attitude at Marvel at the time reflected in those words: "ways to get variety into those boring panels when some dumb writer has a bunch of lame characters sitting around talking for page after page!"

Where's the tongue-in-cheek cynicism here? Remember, Hama was an editor at Marvel responsible at the time for making sure that dumb writers kept things interesting, page after page. Those were HIS dumb writers! The message seems to be: you know, sometimes your job is going to be a drag, (certainly true) but you got to keep knocking it out. Hope this helps! The attitude isn't the most inspiring I can think of. How about: "22 panels to help jumpstart your imagination" or some such? Hey, I'm trying to be possitive here!

Also I wan't to address being accused of making "ruinous and embarassing assumptions". It sounds like I conceded to this and I didn't. Nor do I concede that I made any kind of direct suggestion that you didn't read the article. I didn't say, "Aqua, if you read the article" I said, rhetorically, "If you read the rest of the article you will realize that none of the above is true". It's a rhetorical statement and "you" in this context, aint you. Obviously you made no such suggestion, and, in rhetoric, you're entitled to the odd third person "you" every once in a while.

Really, I don't think you're disagreeing with me so much as misunderstanding me. You either think I'm saying something I don't intend, or that I'm insulting your intelligence, and I am soooo not doing these things.

Jed shouldn’t feel the need to apologize for anything. At least he isn’t typing in all-caps! In fact, I think he’s being way too easy on this. Everyone seems to just fawn over everything that gets posted here on Drawn! no matter where it came from or how true it is. This is a prime example of why a site of this magnitude needs an editor.

As for the “how-to” category: How-to what? Be a hack? The tool analogy is a bit off. I’d say a crutch is a better comparison. There isn’t much good to learn here. This post is better suited for a category under “history.”

So Mr. Blank your saying that Matt should have posted this article under history. You should take that up with Matt.

Your being negative, Jed on the otherhand was being informative.

As for Jed. Jed is a wonderful artist who knows what he is doing. I doubt very much he needs your help defending his position as his position actually makes sense where he approaching the subject from.

He is also very bright and intuitive and I doubt very much he needs your consolation or consultation to make his position clear.

Oh and Mr. Blank,

Jed never offered an apology. I don't expect one as there was nothing to apologize for.

I'm going to try to answer this cautiously.

MrBlank, I appreciated the attempted support, though I think the site serves the purpose it needs to for the audience it's made for. This isn't a magazine, just a blog set up by volunteers who want to share with us sites that they find interesting, and I don't think it really needs anything beyond a moderator. "A site of this magnitude" seems a little strong.

There's nothing precise or absolute or even necessarily accurate about the index; it's just meant to be helpful, and it's nice that they've include it at all. There's no committee to judge what appropriate category something belongs in. It's not the Encycleopedia Brittanica. I imagine its up to the poster to decide what to call it, and they probably don't spend a lot of time thinking about it. I wouldn't.

As for 22 panels: I think I've said enough (and probably way too much) about 22 panels. I get a little compulsive about this stuff, and I kind of wish I wasn't so conspicuous in doing so. Somebody suggested I get my own blog---I have a blog dedicated to my drawing only, because, believe it or not, I don't want to pontificate for page after boring page at my anonymous audience. Eehem, Whoops.

And Aqua: I appreciate the compliments. If you have a website I can visit, I'd be glad to have an opportunity to return them. You've also made some insightful points. As for whether or not I "know what I'm doing" Sometimes I feel like I do but I'm also still learning, like most of us, still trying to find out how to do this, still trying to figure out how to make a living at it.

And I think I did apologize up there somewhere for something, but I guess that's sort of immaterial at this point. Lets put this one to bed.

#1: Do people even read?

“Sorry. Didn’t mean to make false assumptions.”

So, yes, he was apologizing for something he shouldn’t have to.

#2: I wasn’t trying to clarify anything Jed said, see #1, I was simply adding my 2¢, which is why comments are turned on.

1¢: Drawn needs an editor.
2¢: This item is not a “how-to” but a “history” story. (I guess you were half listening.)

#3: As for the negativity B.S., here is my reply. Are you reading, Aqua? Unlike my last post, I’m actually addressing you this time. There is such a thing as criticism that isn’t negative, but constructive. Hard to believe, I know.

Also, leaving two comments just to put someone in their place isn’t exactly positive either.

Woah! What happened to my prev. comment?? Here goes again ...


#1: Do people even read?

“Sorry. Didn’t mean to make false assumptions.”

So, yes, he was apologizing for something he shouldn’t have to.

#2: I wasn’t trying to clarify anything Jed said, see #1, I was simply adding my 2¢, which is why comments are turned on.

1¢: Drawn needs an editor.
2¢: This item is not a “how-to” but a “history” story. (I guess you were half listening.)

#3: As for the negativity B.S., here is my reply. Are you reading, Aqua? Unlike my last post, I’m actually addressing you this time. There is such a thing as criticism that isn’t negative, but constructive. Hard to believe, I know.

Also, leaving two comments just to put someone in their place isn’t exactly positive either.

WTF? I give up.

It's funny that boingboing managed to scoop themselves on this story by a good two and a half years!! Try a quick google for "Bitter comic illustrator humor" (quotes or not). You'll see they posted the same story back in January 2004, although unsurprisingly the onward link to the scan has long since gone fauroforial.

Are you sure about that? Sounds wrong to me.