Someone who signs himself "Johnny Enzyme" — and who I'm guessing is not really named "Johnny Enzyme" — came across some political cartoons by Jack Kirby, whose name at the time he did them was not "Jack Kirby," nor was it "Jack Curtiss," which is how he signed such work then. Mr. Enzyme asks…
I just saw these five images and was rather shocked by how talented the man was when his (evidently) full cartoonist sensibilities were unleashed.
I went on to comment: "I would guess then that Jack decided to work in an efficient, reductionist style for comic books, not so much trying to interject his full art sensibilities in to comics the way that someone like Bill Sienkiewicz or Walt Simonson did."
I'm interested to hear your thoughts on that, and perhaps just in general, hear about noteworthy examples of comic book artists who greatly streamlined their full fine arts talents in order to meet comic book deadlines and all that.
I don't think too many comic book artists streamlined their full talents to meet deadlines so much as their styles evolved into what (a) felt comfortable to them and (b) got them work. Meeting deadlines is always important but I think with most, it wasn't the kind on conscious decision you postulate except in this sense: You couldn't make a living in comics drawing one page a week…and the companies paid the same for a page that took you two hours. If you couldn't find a style and approach that yielded a living wage in that arena and also pleased you, you got out of comics and into something else.
Jack Kirby's #1 goal was always to make the kind of money necessary to provide well for himself and his family. That didn't mean he didn't care about the quality of the work. Quite the contrary, he believed that doing better comics would lead to better sales and better sales would lead to better compensation and financial security. Sadly, it didn't always work out that way but he still believed that until right around the time he got out of comics and into animation.
I think your suggestion — that he "decided to work in an efficient, reductionist style for comic books" — is wrong. I think he always did what he felt would make for good comics that would tell good stories well. The style you saw in the comics, especially when he had a faithful inker, was what resulted from that attitude.
There are and always have been comic book artists who skewed their drawing in the direction of what got them work. Almost all of them are or were more versatile than the pages you saw them produce for DC or Marvel or Whoever. Most of them did that work but also made time to sketch or paint what they wanted to sketch or paint. An awful lot of them, I think, could have been very successful in other fields.
The first one who comes to mind for me is Mike Sekowsky. I knew Mike, I worked with Mike…and I think he was an example of a guy who had enormous talents that were never tapped by conventional comic books. Left to his own devices, I could see his wicked sense o' humor taking his career more where Jack Davis or even Charles Addams worked. I loved his work on super-hero comics but that was him drawing the way he had to draw to get work. I could certainly imagine John Buscema with a career that more resembled Frank Frazetta's…or vice-versa.
Generally speaking, artists — and this applies to writers, too — gravitate towards the kind of work that seems available to them and they produce what seems appropriate to that marketplace. This was especially true of the ones who grew up during The Great Depression but it's also true of most creative people of any era looking for an outlet for what they do. Commercial art usually requires at least a little consideration of what might be commercial.
