Look at this:
It’s a panel from Carl Bark’s Donald Duck story, “Darkest Africa,” first published in March of Comics #20, in 1948.
It’s a simple panel, right? A duck with a butterfly net chasing a butterfly. A handful of lines, an unsubtle color scheme, a single action. But if you break it down— study the pure genius of the composition, how every aspect of the design focuses the reader/viewer’s attention on the net, the movement, the butterfly, how all the angles and curves guide us from upper left down through an anticipated swing past Donald’s feet in mid-flight, his chest forward, his gaze FIXED on the butterfly, and the butterfly itself almost exactly placed in the projected completion of the net’s swing: Focus on that and you’ll find yourself just gaping at the perfection of all the elements
This is a master class in comic book storytelling and composition.
As a kid I loved the Walt Disney comics of the era— but when I got older and “graduated” to the more “mature” hero comics of the Sixties, I became obsessed with the awe-inspiring cosmic grandeur of Kirby and his disciples like Neal Adams and Jim Steranko (who of course approached their art from very different directions, but still emphasized stunning visual complexity in echo of Kirby’s influence). There was just so much to see in Jack’s art, so many layers to peal back. It wasn’t just action storytelling, it was the scale of the storytelling, the depth of field, the sense that more and more lay just outside the panel’s frame. For my growing teenage brain it was the fulfillment of life’s promise that there was more to see if you just kept looking.
I’m still a huge Kirby (and Adams and Steranko) fan, but over the last several decades I’ve come more and more to appreciate the brilliance of the artists, like Carl Barks, who first introduced me to comics with their masterclass simplicity.
Young artists— first learn to compose images like Barks (or Bud Sagendorf, or Steve Ditko, or Ross Andru, or Amanda Conner) and only then fill your panels with complexity.
Because when it comes to visual storytelling, “less” isn’t just more—
It’s the guidepost to everything.
It was because of reasons cited that I became enamored early on to Ernie Bushmiller’s “Nancy” despite the surreal bent of his artwork