This is a question that has always kind of nagged at me, and I may have asked this question before somewhere else but I still don't know the answer. Maybe someone here will know.
How did Jack's pretty standard page layouts, you know, his standard evenly gridded layouts, come about. They seem to have started, as far as I can tell, in the 50's when he started working at Atlas. He continued using these same grids all the way through the Marvel stuff and the DC stuff until The Hunger Dogs where he seemed to reach back to his 40's layouts using circular and odd shaped panels again.
I guess what I want to know is was this page layout he started using at Alas a house style he just incorporated into his evolving style, or was it his decision? I know that when I think of the Marvel look of the 60's and early 70's this page layout was pretty standard for most of the artists doing work there.
Anybody know?
Speaking of layouts I noticed something interesting the other day looking at the Wally Wood Daredevil issues.
I got out the Daredevil Essentials book. Just a quick flip through and I noticed something right away. Wood likes to use tall panels on the left hand edge of pages. He does this quite often leading up to issue #9.
In issue #9 Wood is credited with layouts. with Bob Powell doing the finished pencils. As in the prior issues where he's doing full pencils Wood continues to use many tall panels along the left hand edge of pages. In other issues of Daredevil from the same era, Bill Everett never uses a layout with a tall panel on the left hand edge of a page. Orlando doesn't in the first two issues he penciled. There are a couple of examples in the third issue penciled by Orlando, but I wonder if possibly Wood didn't assist on that issue, because he came in as penciler on the next. Tall panels on the left edge of a page are clearly a Woodism, he uses them very often.
Daredevil issue #10 is the one issue where Wood is credited with the script. Strangely Powell is credited with layouts, but there are again many tall panels on the left hand edge of pages. Pages: 3,9,10.11,14,17,19 all have a tall panel along the left hand edge. Obviously Wood did the layouts on that issue.
What about issue #11? Stan Lee tells the reader that after Wood wrote the previous issue, he left Lee the problem of finishing the story. Wood's only credit on the story is as an inker, and Wood is gone by issue #12. Yet when you look at issue #11 it's obvious the story has Wood layouts. Pages: 2,7,11,13,17, all have tall panels on the left hand edge of the page.
I also have the Human Torch Essentials book. Issues 130, 131, 132, 133, 134, were all drawn by Powell. Not one instance of Powell using a tall panel on the left hand edge of a page.
i don't know the answer, but that's a good question!
i was actually wondering the same thing recently...even during the GA, his "non-standard" layouts were pretty standard -- sometimes just replacing a straight line border with a curvaceous line:
http://whatifkirby.com/gallery/comic-art-listings/stuntman-comics-issue-...
his layouts, except for a few things here and there, were pretty standard: splash, dps, half-splash (with 2 bottom panels), 4-panels, then split three rows panels, etc...
There were also some non-standard layouts he used in the SS graphic novel...
Seems like it was really steranko and neal adams, and then later, frank miller, mcFarlane (and i'm sure someone will let me know who i egregiously omitted in-between) that really pushed the envelope on the page layouts.
Curious that he didn't play with the layouts a bit more, but might be that he was pretty entrenched in his own "visual shorthand" that he couldn't spend the time to work some new layouts into his repetoire?
