Grrr...A slip of the finger and the browser decided to take a nap, when I was almost done replying. So, this is rushed and I apologize in advance if it's patchy and incomplete--there's a good chance I think I explained stuff that never got sent.
Also, I agree that the evolution is important and sometimes predictable, so didn't really comment, there.
Yeah, possibly, but I see it as more of an advertising or commercial art approach than even a pulp technique. This artist HAD to have some experience prior to the USM stories. Nobody "hit the ground running" this well on their first comic book story.
My guess of Pulp experience over, say, advertising is due to the assumption that a company isn't going to want the mascot or model to look haunted. I've certainly never seen the light coming from behind except in specific artsy (and decidedly modern photographic) layouts. On the other hand, I've seen the technique used frequently (with or without a story-related reason) in the magazine material scanned on Project Gutenberg.
They show up on the scene too late to be relevant to this discussion, but Frank Freas and Victor Napoli both kept this in their respective bags of tricks.
The "s" across all the lettering drew me to the theory initially. An alphabet where the letters are (almost) all precise except for the top-heavy S struck me as very uncommon and familiar. I realized that I first saw it in the reconstruction material for the "K-Metal from Krypton" story.
This is a factor that I seldom put much faith in simply because it is based on the assumption that the artist did the lettering - and I have no way of knowing that that's the case. I have to rely on artistic idiosyncrasies and always keep the surface (inking) ones in mind as possibly being separate from the underlying (pencil) structure.
In principle, I agree, and was only walking through my line of thought on the chance that it'd jog somebody else's memory. In retrospect, though, it's probably just a coincidence, because the W is also distinctive, but I've never seen it before.
I see what you mean and it's good to notice these things (and to have them pointed out to me). My focus is always on the overall art. I wouldn't characterize this artist as drawing "stocky" figures. A more precise observation would be that they are not "heroic" in stature - more natural and (considering most are of Japanese characters) more realistic.
I didn't mean any judgement beyond the literal description by "stocky." Even the children and elderly have squarish torsos and broad shoulders. In the era of political correctness, I guess it's become a euphemism for "fat," so I'm sorry for the confusion, there.
But there is also the cartoony aspect that comes through it all and, as you observe with the similarities to the Superman cover, the racial stereotypes of the day.
It looks to me, though, as if the stereotyping is being used to advantage, rather than for ignorance. I remember reading, years back, that people can more easily identify a mildly distorted (exaggerated) picture of a face than the original, and that looks like what the artist is doing, here. For example, if you can avoid focusing on any of the characters in the scene and take it all in at once, the faces look real.
I'm tempted to say that this suggests strong exposure to pre-photographic portrait work, either due to age (unlikely) or education.
Another very intriguing aspect of the art is the (apparently) incredible knowledge/depiction of Japanese costumes and history. The writer seems to have done a LOT of homework, too. This is NOT your typical Japan-bashing story.
It's strange, though. It's obvious that there's a lot of research, here, yes. Mitsuru Toyama's biography agrees with everything I can find. The architecture and other dressing look about right to me and even change with the date represented.
On the other hand, there are significant details that seem to have been overlooked. For example, in four instances of Japanese writing (the sign in panel 2.2, the handbill in 3.3, the banner in 4.4, and the scroll in 4.5), only the handbill resembles Japanese to my eye. The sign looks Arabic, the banner isn't meant to be readable, and the scroll looks like random scribbling. Also--and possibly more tellingly--even though the image of Tojo is extremely close, Toyama's image looks nothing like the real man; that's particularly confusing, since the story is his biography.
Does anybody know enough Japanese to check the relevant text or pseudo-text?
For instance, I found your "humorless" comment to be "odd," because I see this artist as primarily a cartoonist with ambitions of seriousness. You see it the other way round. Unless we can extend his/her career forward or backward, we'll probably never know which of us is more observant.
I'm mostly talking about the general composition, here. Everything has a purpose, and nothing is exaggerated beyond its usefulness. For example, check the Japanese man's arm in the middle panel of the last page you posted. It's not photographic, but a photographic-style image wouldn't convey the motion, so some license was taken. But--and this is important, in my eyes--the license taken is minimal, no more than is absolutely needed to show what's happening. And every single figure carries this same aesthetic in their body language, even the "violent youths."
It's entirely possible that the trick was learned working on a humor strip, since you can't have frantic action without it, but then we have the literal panel composition. We have extreme detail on the figures and anything of interest in the panel, and the rest is used for framing (including that oppressive non-sky). Even the parallax is messed with to change the impression of depth. Those don't seem like things you do for a humor strip. There, when you have detail, everything is detailed (Little Nemo, for example), but normally the rule is that one or two objects get detail, and the rest are abstract.
Something else strikes me that nothing seems out of place in any frame. I get the impression that the entire scene was drawn in one pass. There weren't any corrections or additions, and with visuals this complicated, I'm amazed.
But, it is ALWAYS fun to try and solve this type of mystery.
Absolutely. If it wasn't fun, I would've gladly left this to the people who are (clearly) better prepared than I am. Wherever the line of reasoning leads, thanks for finding this guy!
