Approach Shots

by Dave Stevens, William Stout, and Barry Windsor-Smith

[There’s more than one way to skin a cat, as the saying goes. But doing so likely wouldn’t elicit as much outrage as a discussion of favorite Kirby inkers and their respective techniques in doing so. To wit: here are three artists who are masterful in their own work, discussing their own approaches to inking Kirby. Agree or not, we’ll bet the following will generate some vehement responses from fans reading this.]

Dave Stevens

“Jack really hasn’t changed his penciling since the 1950s, or as far back as you want to take it. His penciling’s still as good as it was then. He is one of these guys that has to have someone who under- stands drawing. People assume all it takes is a technician to ink him. That anybody that can use a ruler can ink Jack, and that’s not true, I don’t think. They can ink him, but it’s not gonna look like anything. It’s gonna look like someone taking layouts and inking them straightaway, without any polish. Jack really deserves to have much better inking than he’s getting, to where people will round out his fingers, and will add a little to the hair and features and things like that, and get rid of all these [makes swishing sound] lines in the muscles, and things Jack doesn’t intend to have inked. Some of it, on metal and things like that, you add the sheen, naturally, but there’s all these jagged construction lines that people end up inking, and I’m sure Jack never intended to have that stuff inked. But it gets there; it’s all the way into the final stage.” [This was quoted from Dave’s 1980s video appearance at https://www.youtube. com/watch?v=tWqO83Zt3MM.]

William Stout

“I was asked to be one of the inkers for what is colloquially known as The Book of Roz. The Book of Roz (actual title Heroes and Villains) was a book of pencil drawings by Jack that he did for his beloved wife Roz. Jack drew just about every major character he ever touched in that volume—DC, Marvel, and all of the other comic book companies for which he worked.

“Most of the artists inked just one piece. I was asked to ink Devil Dinosaur (if you know my history, you know why I was picked for this character).

“Because of my previous work on The Demon (as a favor to my pal Mike Royer who wanted some much-needed family vacation time, I ghost-inked much of issue #15 of The Demon), I had previously inked Jack’s piece from Heroes and Villains illustrating The Demon just for fun and for myself.