What makes the best comic book covers? It’s a great topic for debate. For us as individuals there is no wrong answer, of course. It’s purely subjective. But with a little thought it is frequently possible to explain what it is about a particular image that grabs you. The best ones are the ones that make you stop and check out something you weren’t previously going to purchase – and in some cases, you even end up picking up a title you’ve never even heard of before.
The cover to Flash #123 brought the past and the present onto one page. The artwork brought the Golden Age and the Silver Age onto one, single construction site. While the issue is one of the most beloved and important comic books in the genre, the cover is also a masterpiece of design by one of the greatest of all time, Carmine Infantino.
The ability to create a piece of art that looks effortless and yet is filled with electrical energy yet also binds generations together took over 20 years to learn. In time, thanks to his skill in not only a creative entity but as a businessman as well, a rare combination of skills at that level, Infantino rose to become publisher at DC. What made him great was that, for all of his accomplishments, the man never left his love of art and education behind.
Working with dozens of talented artists and writers including Infantino by their side, Stan Lee and Julius Schwartz created the essence of the Silver Age. They gave it structure, focus, built a relationship with fans and as a result, moved comic books into the future. They guided the larger picture, but for many it was Infantino who shaped the way that covers grew artistically and professionally during the of the Silver Age.
That is not to say that Jack Kirby didn’t do stunning and highly influential work. The King was the King for a reason. Many of the covers that he created during this time period easily stand the test of time. Take his work on Fantastic Four #48-51. Each one is a perfect piece of cosmic glory and then, with issue 52, “This Man… This Monster,” he breaks your heart with an image of The Thing.
As to his other work, there has to be at least one Silver Surfer cover that belongs in the Smithsonian. These were perfect covers that, in the mid-1960s, easily captured the attention of a 12-year-old, her stoned older brother away at college and that student’s English Professor.
But Infantino thought differently than Jack. In the world of comic books, he was half of a generation behind Kirby whose first work had been published in 1936. Within four years, and working with his partner Joe Simon, Jack had created one of the most iconic and important characters of all time, Captain America. And that was just for starters.
The man was so prolific that it is hard to imagine him actually ever leaving a drawing board. Jack was there at the start of comics. The work that Kirby did was part of what brought Infantino to the field.
A few years after Captain America knocked out Hitler on the cover of Captain America Comics #1 (March 1941), Infantino was in his freshman year of high school. Like millions of others in America at the time he had fallen in love with comic books. But unlike most of them, young Infantino lived in New York City. And he could draw. Barely out of grade school, he was already looking at comic books as a career.
Kirby had learned to draw by tracing editorial cartoons and newspaper strips. There had been brief forays into formal training but the need to work always seemed to drive Kirby more than anything else. What he learned about comics came from the street. Kirby moved forward with the energy of a tank and the skill of a gifted natural who felt that he still had to work twice as hard as anyone else.
When Kirby started, the idea of having a career in comic books wasn’t there. That was another template in which Kirby would play a serious and very large part in developing. Many of the folks who had gone into comic books when the field opened up in the mid-1930s were from advertising or looking to work in newspaper strips. Some had classical training, many had little if any. For these artists and writers, comic books hadn’t existed when they had started their careers, they were trying to earn money and would draw anything.
Infantino was part of a generation that had found comic books on a newsstand and fallen in love with them. By his first year of high school he was hanging around the shop of Harry “A” Chesler, watching the publisher's work force write, draw, and assemble comic books as the company packaged them for independent publishers.
It was Chesler who offered Infantino $5 a week during the summer to hang around the studio and learn. The student did odd jobs and worked on his inking skills. Some of the artists who worked there offered him notes and tips on his work. He was still in high school when he sold his first work in 1942.
Having been born and raised in Brooklyn, Infantino had convinced his parents to let him attend the School of Industrial Arts in Manhattan. This was the beginning of the one thing that Infantino did which separated him from so many other artists in the field, he continued with his education. He loved art and architecture and studied the forms seriously.
In the ’50s he was already a success in a crowded field, yet the future publisher went back to school again, this time studying at the Art Students’ League. This was after he had been working as a freelance artist for close to a decade. In fact, by this time he had already created the Black Canary! With the money that he was making almost any other artist in the world would have gone on with their careers.
But Infantino knew that he could be better. What he took from these lessons would open up his mind even more and consequently influence cover design far into the future. He studied the Impressionists, deconstructed why paintings by artists such as Maurice Degas worked aesthetically and began to develop a new viewpoint about what he was doing. He began to see the idea of deliberate design and structure in the art as something separate from the work or the concept behind the work itself.
Infantino did this in his off time while still working at DC. They loved his work and editors found him professional and driven. When Julius Schwartz had to fill pages of Showcase #4 (October 1956), he called on Carmine to draw not only the cover but the interior stories as well. With the first appearance of the Flash-Barry Allen, the Silver Age begins.
In the mid-1950s it took months for sales figures to come into the home office. When the numbers for Showcase #4 came into the office DC was very, very happy. But being the DC of the day, they were bit hesitant to commit to a new title.
Flash appeared again in Showcase #8 (May-June 1957), #13 (March-April 1958), and finally in issue 14 (May-June 1958). It was only then that the Flash received his own title. The company started the run as a continuation of his Golden Age predecessor's numbering with Flash #105 (February March 1959).
Now, Carmine's book is successful, his bosses like him and they are giving him so much work pencil that he can’t even ink his own work.So what does Infantino do?
He goes back to school again! This time he attends the School of Visual Arts and studies under a man named Jack Potter. As he writes in his 2000 autobiography: The Amazing World of Carmine Infantino by Carmine Infantino with J. David Spurlock (2000 Vanguard Productions) “After studying at the SVA, my work began to grow by leaps and bounds. I was achieving an individuality in my work that wasn’t there before. I threw all the basics of cartooning out the window and focused on pure design.”
This is where Infantino’s rise to eventually becoming publisher. Everyone knows that bosses love more education, but that wasn’t why Infantino went back to school. He was dissatisfied with himself as a creative entity. He saw that there was something in the art of comic books that wasn’t being used and he went in search of it.
The thing is that he was already close to what he was looking for. The early Flash issues each contain a world designed by Infantino. He loved architecture and his construction of the Flash’ s home town Central City, was sleek lines and felt as is if it was part of something built by NASA. His work reflected the architectural designs of the day that called for space and fast moving lines as part of not only a building’s design, but that of the city as well.
After another round at school in 1960, Infantino’s approach changed. He took what he had learned about balance, tone, angles, and placement from the world of classical art and applied this to comic book covers but in a fresh and more modern way. He took the thought that went into the creation of comic book covers to another level.
In some ways he literally erased a line between classical art and modern comic book art.
Jumping backwards in time to the start of the Middle Ages, a few churches were now displaying art behind the altar. While some thought that portraying saints and religious figures in art was blasphemous, others who worshiped just loved looking at the altar and seeing a painted vision of the Virgin Mary holding the Christ-child.
For various reasons the art behind the altar was often broken into three scenes that was painted across a board. There are, of course, variations on what was included in the theme or style of the art. Regardless, the canvas or wood used by the artist was often connected by hinges so that it could be folded up and carried. In the end you are left with three linked panels of art on a single piece of canvas or wood.
Now, take the idea of three linked images spread across a single form of presentation and add in what Infantino had learned just a few years earlier about Degas and the Masters. All that stuff about dimensions, design, construction, and placement… all that boring Art 301 stuff.
Take a look at Hieronymus Bosch’s Adoration of the Magi from 1510. The action is at the center and people are arriving in the far left and right panels. But everything in the image looks flat. Compare the way this image has been set up to what is happening on Flash #123. While the three figures are not separated by an artificial boundary such as used in a traditional triptych, the image is still built around three separate panels of action. On one side we have Barry Allen rushing towards the construction worker with Jay Garrick matching Barry step for step in symmetry on the other. The eye moves to the center and then it discovers the story that surrounds the center image.
Infantino’s skill with cover design, as well as the way that sales on any cover that he was part of jumped, brought him to the attention of DC’s then-current Executive Vice-President, Irwin Donenfeld. By 1967 Infantino was overseeing almost all comic covers at DC. In time Infantino would be named as publisher. Flash #123 is just one example of the knowledge and skill that Infantino brought to the industry and art form. Where others studied the masters as well as design second hand by copying Alex Raymond or Hal Foster, Infantino went for a more formal approach, schooling.
When Julie brought him into work on Batman, he may have saved the hero from cancelation. As soon as his cover art began to appear on issues of Detective and Batman, sales began to rise. This wasn’t the only reason Batman lived on, but his art work was a big part of keeping the Caped Crusader around for six more months.
Infantino took cover design to a place where almost every single inch of space has a reason. As to Flash #123 it isn’t really the hearos or the peril of that poor construction worker, it is the open space that he puts around the figures. Look past the brightness of the sun and you can find the city in the background. It doesn’t overwhelm the image in any way. In fact, you almost have to make an effort to find it! Any other artist with such a signature image as Central City may have tried to move it to the forefront. But the book isn’t called “Central City” and Infantino never seemed to be worried about showing off. He simply loved design and the city clearly has nothing to do with the idea of the cover.
By moving the two Flashes out to the sides he creates two quick images for a kid at the newsstand to see. And they are both the Flash. Only one of them hasn’t been seen in a long while. Think about how comics were stacked during the ’60s. If they weren’t on a spinner rack they were placed on shelves, often overlapping the next cover. By incorporating the heroes at the edges, a new customer now has two chances to see a Flash!
Infantino wanted to be the best possible and he never stopped working towards being as good as he could be. We are still talking about him and the art he created today because he was.
-Mark Squirek