Farewell to The Dean

It couldn’t have been easy, being Gene Colan. The artist himself spoke at length about the sacrifices involved in his craft, the time spent in lonely solitude long into the early hours, meeting deadlines in the days when deadlines meant something. At great personal loss to his family, and to the deep regret of the man himself in later life, the time that could have been spent with loved ones would often instead find him slumped over his drawing board. Hours ticked by, deep into weekends, deep into night. The burning glow of the table lamp pierced the dimness and cast long shadows on the wall as his pencils gave texture to his own imaginary shapes with their own imaginary shadows. Here a unique world was conjured within the itself unique world of mainstream American comic books. A fine wine of the rarest vintage, here was a rare cinematic elegance in an industry which then as now looked at the bottom line, where copy was everything, and successful formulas were understandably copied and churned out. Although such a mindset is prevalent within most other artistic forms, many within and around comic books suffer an inferiority complex and see it most of the time as silly, escapist, fun for kids. But Gene Colan was serious about his work, and he wanted us to be serious about it too.At Marvel, as the Sixties turned into the Seventies, the dynamic style and vision bestowed to the form by Jack Kirby had started to be copied and regurgitated. Many of the new artists emerging where producing, in retrospect, just a watered down version of Kirby’s genius. But it could never be equalled. Many like Brit Barry Smith would go on to evolve their own distinctive style, others such as Neal Adams where often held up as superior to ‘The King‘, but much of his work and others at this point still use the language and syntax of Kirby. Stan Lee was at pains to get Kirby to show the likes of John Romita and John Buscema just how it should be done. But Lee was astute enough to know that in Colan he had an artist who was just, well, different. By the mid 1960’s Colan had managed to evolve a style and storytelling technique all his own.  A man, when let loose by Lee using the famous ‘Marvel Method’, who had left the scribe exasperated when pencils came back on an early Daredevil with a whole page devoted to someone turning a doorknob and walking through a door. Left of field, a loose canon perhaps, but it seemed somehow beneficial to keep Colan around the by-then imaginary Bullpen, a gentle breeze wafting through the open curtains; an understated complement perhaps to the Kirbyesque tornado pulverising all in its path.On first sight, to these then young eyes, Colans gentle breeze actually felt like a tornado and was something of a shock. It certainly wasn’t easy to discern the feelings I felt when viewing his artwork for the very first time. In retrospect I was lucky, I’ve always preferred the Colan experience to be in glorious black and white, and I was doubly lucky in that his work graced the pages of my then, as now, favourite Marvel character, Daredevil. It was the ‘week ending’ 26th January 1974, and the character had just returned by popular demand to the weekly anthology flagship title ‘The Mighty World of Marvel‘. The strip had earlier ran through reprinting DD Volume 1, issue 1 through to 6, but before carrying on where they left off quite rightly decided to reintroducing the character with an origin story, a reprint of the Roy Thomas / Gene Colan DD #53 from the late 1960’s. Despite Thomas using the same linier progression and even much of the very same dialogue as originally used by Lee, the artwork inhabited a different dimension from the original Bill Everett depiction. Colans pencils ooze mood and menace. The atmosphere created is one of high tension; there are things at stake here, beyond the usual superhero ballyhoo. As a young reader, the safety net somehow seemed to be missing, the panel layout itself was disorientating, the unusual shapes swirl around the page avoiding the guidelines I’d been used to. The angles each panel were ‘shot’ were unusual, body proportions looked odd, looking as we were from obscure angles. Colan ‘shoots’ a good Samaritan asking a newly blinded Murdock if he needs help crossing the road from the bottom up, giving a visual that seems seeped in intrigue and drama so strong it could warrant a cliff hanger ending. I sensed that here was an artist who didn’t play by any rules I’d come across as yet. The whole thing almost made me dizzy, Gene had made me work harder than I ever had thus far, trying to decipher his visual cues, even in this retelling of a story I already knew and had read less than a year earlier. It was almost a relief when the strip soon carried on where it had left off; a week or two later we had exquisite Wally Wood artwork back and this strange two week aberration was almost forgotten.But not quite. Because once you’ve seen Gene Colans stuff, you can’t really forget it. The title eventually started reprinting Colan’s DD work from the beginning. Using what I later discovered to be the ‘correct’ American numbering of the original book, he had started at #20, getting into his stride in my eyes by #25, and in his long run never looked back. Gene was the artist on Daredevil and that wonderful long run of issues mean for many today he still is the Daredevil artist. My lucky break in finding so much of this stuff in the reprint pages of British Marvel meant that the mood and atmosphere created by many Gene Colan pages were witnessed in the first instance in glorious black and white, many of which for me (later purchasing the American originals), had their power and impact diluted with the gaudy addition of colour. I remember one issue being mesmerised by Mr Fear, a Marvel ‘B List’ ham villain. As realised by Colan, a full page reveal night shot looking up at the character through the rain on a rooftop remains the closest a comic book page has ever come to terrifying me. In retrospect, it’s the precise moment that Gene Colan became one of my favourite artists.It was during the 1970’s when much of Marvels output began to be rendered in a poor dilution of the wonderfully epic Kirby formula. With the King gone however, and Lee himself taking on a less hands on role in the day to day running of the books, Gene was one of a small handful of artists who actually blossomed. Even if he had always been one of the artists who ‘did his own thing’, his vision became even more focused at the very point when it became more versatile. Marvel seemed to use him to wide effect, and having already had much success with the likes of Daredevil, Iron Man, Doctor Strange, Captain America, he seemed to thrive even in realms outside of the usual super heroics. The somewhat odd, left of field style of Colan became the cornerstone of one of Marvels best loved 1970’s titles, Tomb of Dracula, and he took to it as if here at last was the title he was born to draw. As good as Wolfman’s imaginative scripting is, the macabre shadows so central to the world of the Lord of Vampires could not have been rendered than anyone apart from Colan, for much of the time aided by his best inker, Tom Palmer. The art was such an integral part of the book, that when Gene begged off the title due to burn out after a staggering 70 issue run, scribe Marv Wolfman decided that continuing was rather pointless, and the title was cancelled. At the other end of the scale, Gene relished the comedic aspects of Steve Gerbers scripts for Howard the Duck, a cult title that, if dated now, is only down to the fact of Gerbers then relevant social observations, rather than the wonderfully loose and flowing pencils that gave shape to the crazy world of Howard. Gene had a blast having the rare opportunity that he could ‘do’ comedy and satire too. If regime change at Marvel suddenly saw Colan’s style as somewhat out of date as we entered the harsh 1980‘s, with new young blood entering the fray, rivals DC eagerly employed him to great effect, where work on Batman, Wonder Woman and Night Force among others showed readers what Marvel was missing. Marvel themselves could quite rightly with retrospect look back on their decision to oust Gene as perhaps being correct ( the new young blood on Daredevil went by the name of Frank Miller who went on to revolutionise first the book and eventually, along with the likes of Alan Moore, the industry), but while this particular reader loves what came after as well, he remembers entering the harsh 1980’s reliving and enjoying more than ever some wonderful black and white reprints of Colan’s work in the UK Marvel Super Adventure weekly.He left us with a lot we can relive and enjoy. Rest In Peace Gene, and thanks for everything.

Pete Gouldson