RINGGENBERG: Gil I remember seeing some of your John Carter comics from Marvel in the early seventies and your style was just buried under the inkers.
KANE: Yeah, right. Now I happen to like Nebres's inking but I felt, and I thought he did a sensational job, I was a little unhappy only because I couldn't find my own stuff. All I saw were my layouts and my pencilling was not there, you know, my fold patterns, my approaches to work were different, his whole feeling for light and shadow was different, so as I say, he did an excellent job and the stuff looked good, but again, it didn't satisfy me unless I inked it myself. And now, however, it takes so long, the requirements of turning out comics today, it used to be that we used do an average of two to three pages a day of pencilling in the old days. I think most guys do an average now, if they're lucky, they do a pencil page a day. If they're not lucky they do a pencil page once in two or three days and so it's almost impossible for someone to pencil and ink a whole story every month as a regular situation.
Now, in order to compete with the kind of heavy detailing and effects that are necessary in order to properly utilize the new production values that are in the field, why you, in effect, what you are doing is you're creating pictures for the reproduction possibilities that are evident in the field now that never used to be. And as a matter of fact, that's one of the reasons I feel that, to a great extent, writing has suffered because, for a while, everything was taking a back seat to these big pin-up shots. It was almost impossible to get anything except a little framing continuity and that's it. But I think you know ultimately, the field has definitely moved totally away from what it was, and it just seems to me, and it's hard keeping up with the changes in terms of production and also of possibilities, and also the way it's being sold and the way it's being sold and the way it's being distributed.
But anyway I just wanted to say that I think that the thing now, the chaos and confusion that everybody's enduring because I don't think anybody knows where the field is going or what's going to happen to comics now, I think we're finally passed the whole century of doing pulp narrative and so on and everything else. A lot of that started in the mid-nineteenth century and pulp is essentially the ingredient you see in films, you see it in any sort of popular work and somehow or other, while I don't think pulp is going to die, I think the means for utilizing pulp is changing to such an extent.
The whole idea of comics, comes out of the illustrations that were made possible by the new technology in the mid-nineteenth century that allowed black and white drawings to be used and engravings to be used along with a text. Ultimately, that created a whole school of painters and illustrators who came out of the romantic tradition that developed the same romantic novels, and, what I'm saying is that, we've reached a point now where I'm not sure that those romantic stories are necessary, and by romance I mean pulp, and I mean I think essentially, I think games are as absorbing, apparently, to the new audience as narrative used to be.
I don't see that narrative, it seems to me that titillation, as long as you get the audience and absorb them, by some kind of situation that's a surprise and a visual surprise, why the visual surprises at this point are subordinated to continuity in the narrative. So I mean I don't know where it's going. I used to think I knew, but at this point I wouldn't even hazard a guess, it's happening so fast that it's almost impossible as to who's going to be suited to do it and, you know, what it'll take, and all of that. I think those are questions that are still to be answered.
I think the whole business of communication all of a sudden everybody's gotten the idea that it's all one idea, the whole business, whether it's recording or movies or paperbacks or comics or newspapers that essentially it's all one idea and that's communication and maybe with one machine to do it or one way of projecting a million different possibilities, so what I'm saying is that I think we've reached finally the end of a classic era and about to begin on a whole new way of communicating ideas.
RINGGENBERG: Do you find that exciting?
KANE: Well, yes and no. I mean I really like drawing and I like the old style and I like magazine illustration and what it represented and you don't see that anymore. You don't see magazine illustration anywhere. In fact, all the editors, all the magazines that used to do magazine illustration all went under years ago because the whole information just took over, and magazines which were called general interest magazines like The Saturday Evening Post, Colliers and Liberty and all of those things, all of those things went under, and the magazines that managed to stay are specialty magazines, magazines that give you specific information about a single subject, whether it's hairdressing, whether it's clothes, whether it's fashion, people want information and information has destroyed Argosy, Blue Book, all of the pulp magazines, all of the things that used to come out that people used to read. They don't have to read anymore, they can watch, and watching is as absorbing, or more absorbing to them than reading, so I don't know what's going to happen to narrative. I think if the explosions are big enough, if the pictures are provocative enough, you know, it just may take a turn there and just never come back the way it was before.
RINGGENBERG: Interesting. Okay, Gil, in closing, what would you say are your major contributions to comics? What would you like to be remembered for?
KANE: Oh well, I'd like to be remembered for the fact that I worked all through its major periods, you know, and I feel that we're just, we're closing a major period now and already have started on a new period that I can't even begin to hazard a guess on where it's going.
check out the Gil Kane biography here
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