Brian Dreger wrote me to ask…
I was born in 1960 and I read comic books during the 60s, 70s, 80s and into the 90s (and also read reprint collections of stuff before that). So, I'm just a fan. But…I can't figure out how you — who started out as just a fan — can look at a comic book and tell that the person who allegedly drew it is not that person but someone else trying to draw like that person!
Also, I am amazed that you can look at someone's artwork and tell who inked it! In various posts, you've talked about this, and you always seem very, very confident that you know that you're right. How? Did you take art classes and picked up a lot of insight from that? I realize this is a very long (and probably stupid) question, but if you could edit this down and figure out how to answer me, that would be great.
Yes, I took art classes but no, they had nothing to do with recognizing art styles…a skill which a lot of people have. It just comes from reading a lot of comics and paying attention to credits. To be honest with you, I was always more interested in how comic books were made and in the people who made them than I was in the characters in those comic books. I am not one of those guys who can name all the members of the Legion of Super-Heroes and which planet they came from…but I could tell you everyone who inked Jack Kirby's work or which Batman stories allegedly drawn by Bob Kane were drawn by Sheldon Moldoff, which ones were drawn by Jim Mooney, which ones were inked by Charles Paris, etc.
An awful lot of folks can do this and occasionally we get into little debates about certain work where it isn't so obvious. It can sometimes be tricky, especially on pre-1980 work where it was more common to have someone in the office retouch work done by outside artists. Stan Lee very routinely would look at a cover that was about to go to press and almost on a whim — just because he wanted to do something to maybe make it better — he'd have John Romita or Marie Severin or someone on staff redraw portions of it.
Of course, not everyone can do this. It kinda stunned me when I got into the business that there were editors who couldn't recognize styles…or at least, some styles. But then a lot of people in comics never spent much time looking at comics they weren't working on.
