The Gwen Frostic School of Art is displaying the original draft of an entire comic book in its exhibit called ?Pencil to Print: Process and Production in the Silver Age of American Comics? in the Richmond Center?s Rose N. & James W. Kerr Permanent Art Collection Gallery.
University Art Collection Curator Mindi K. Bagnall discovered 22 pages of original artwork from the February 1971 ?Amazing Spider-man: The Prowler,? issue No. 93 earlier this year. The comic had been in WMU?s art collection storage since being donated to WMU from Marvel Comics' then-editor-in-chief Stan Lee in 1972.
?I didn?t realize we had the entire issue and when I found out I was excited,? Bagnall said. ?From an artist?s standpoint it?s amazing, and this is the first time this specific issue has been displayed.?
Each original sketch is on display next to a comic book one would buy from the stand.
?People used to give comics the low brow and now they are some of the highest grossing films. They were trash literature and now they are pop culture,? said Frostic School of Art's Design Center Director Paul Sizer, who is also a graphic novelist.
?It?s the way comic art has evolved over the years. Graphic artists were never held in high regard and I?m blown away by the talent.?
In an essay Sizer helped write for the exhibit, he explains how comic artists were often freelancers who did not own the rights to their work, which is partly how the university was able to receive the collection in the 1970s. He says they were often paid on salary and that companies experienced a lot of turnaround with artists.
Romita, whose art is on display, succeeded the first Spider-man artist, Steve Ditko. He had previously completed an eight-issue run of "Daredevil" and also completed work on "The Incredible Hulk" and "Captain America," according to Sizer.
Sizer said Romita was often criticized for making the Peter Parker character in Spider-man too good-looking and glamorous.
While officials declined to disclose how much the collection is worth, due to security precautions, a more popular John Romita Sr. ?The Amazing Spider-man? cover from 1966 was sold for more than $100,000 last month.
Bagnall said the WMU exhibit is ?eye-opening? for art students to see and learn about the struggle of the artists who came before them.
?Romita Sr. is truly a legend, and to see his pieces is a gift,? said Dimitri Theodoropoulos, a WMU graphic design senior who Sizer asked to help with the exhibit. ?So many originals were disposed of because these are not people who were treated as artists or paid for each piece. They were illustrators who were paid a salary just to draw and there work wasn?t valued.?
Sizer explained how the blue pencil scratches originate from non-repro blue pencil, which artists used because it appears invisible when captured by the stat cameras needed to produce comic books. By using the non-repro blue pencil, Sizer said, the artist could avoid using an eraser.
But when it comes to looking at the originals, any sign of an eraser makes it better, says Theodoropoulos.
?The best part of the original is you can see the eraser markers. You can see how they drew the characters. You can see the under-sketches underneath the ink finals. You can see how much thought and effort when into these pictures,? Theodoropoulos, 26, said.
WMU's issue is groundbreaking because the 'The Prowler' is an African American superhero, which before the Civil Right era was a rare occurrence, Sizer said.
?The Prowler was a black superhero, and back in the day, most black characters were relegated to gross racial stereotypes. When this came out in the early 1970s, people were pushing boundaries,? he said.
The exhibit will be on display until June 29.
Contact Ursula Zerilli at uzerilli@mlive.com or 269-254-5295. Follow her on twitter.
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