Saturday, November 03, 2007
Comic Art
Here endeth the series on the "Omnipotents," with the character that gave me my first totally visceral reaction to a comic book image. The character - ETERNITY, who first appeared in a Doctor Strange comic, I think the one you see here on the right. The character is fundamental to the universe and is an anthropomorphism of the timelessness. Yeah, go ahead and try and wrap your head around that.But that is not what blew me away about the character - it was the visualization. Far and away the best thing to ever come from the pen of Steve Ditko, the character is a person shaped hole through which one gazes at, well, everything - hence the name - Eternity.
Like most omnipotent characters, Eternity was a plot device early on, and much has been done over the years to expand the story, he has been paired with Infinity, for example, but the story is almost irrelevant to me. The first time I saw this character I sat and stared at the page for many, many minutes.To understand the amazement you need to remember that back then comic books were printed on newsprint with four color web presses. The ink rubbed off on your fingers. There were tons of fun, but not the seeming masterworks of art you see today. But look at Eternity with Dormannu above or the black and white image just above, also from the early era, and Ditko's pen. The three dimensionality to this art is amazing. Somehow the simplicity of the design given the medium of the time made him better than the modern renderings. One was almost tempted to look at the back of the page to see it there was a hole there.
Never a big fan of the mystic characters, the image of Eternity had me buying Doctor Strange comics for months, hoping for another glimpse. For me that is the essence of the comic experience. Stories come and go, comics eat material and story lines like no other medium. It is the image that keeps you coming back and this is one of the greatest.
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