Tuesday, May 5, 2009

Doom Patrol sketch issue 13 page 10




This final is also so much like the final that there is not very much to say about it, except to marvel at how well Seth pictured the scene in his mind. He always thought of himself as a movie director, setting up scenes for maximum impact.




But I would also like to look at some other artists' work on Doom Patrol, to see how Seth's vision of the team was his own.




Let's look at Larry Trainor, AKA Negative Man. Seth has him wrapped entirely in white tape, for which there are precedents, though most artists make his facial tape part of his face rather than something stuck on the outside. I like the fact that Seth's Negative Man--who is NOT Larry Trainor--is skinny, with a definite non-superhero body. Here are a couple of examples of other artists' work on him:

In an early drawing he is dressed in a tight-fitting superhero suit, as ElastiGirl also wears. His bout with radiation seems to have not hurt his physique at all.

John Byrne gives him gloves and a costume, and real tape, though in this drawing his wavy hair is left showing, for at least a little sex appeal.

2 comments:

j_ay said...

Incredible that Seth did _such_ detail on the backgrounds of sketches…it’s possible he then blew that image up and then lightboxed (traced) that onto the art board...

And yes, while I don’t know too much about the Doom Patrol characters, Seth *certainly* left his imprint on them after only 2 issues.

Vicki said...

Jay,
I am almost sure that he did not use a light table to do these.
As far as I know, that just is not the way he worked. He had a light table, but I don't think he used it that way.

Yeah, I didn't know these characters either. It's pretty fun to look up other drawings of them and see how Seth reimagined them. It's nice he was given leeway to do that. That is probably because these two issues are not part of a longer storyline; they are a side story, if you will, with other actors playing these roles (except Robotman, who is the same as he was; but of course, he can get a new body if he needs one).