Did Frank Robbins ever pencil Superman?

[Jolly Mon]

legs emitting from one's buttocks

That is both the best and worst description ever. Ewww.

[MDG]

Also, note the near-total lack of backgrounds at any point in the page, the relatively static camera position. I do like it that the movement is generally left-to-right, except for the interrupted story elements, like the knife that never falls is portrayed right-to-left, slowing it down--that's a nice touch. But overall, I'm shocked that his work was ever published.

If you look at most comic art, you'll see a lot of panels with no backgrounds or minimal suggestions.

Thye one page shown ain't Robbins' best work, but, comics aren't meant to be lingered over either, and in the context of reading the story, his art has movement, excitement, emotion and character.

http://www.comicbookbrain.com/large-...ins-batman.php
http://diversionsofthegroovykind.blo...t-madness.html

Plus:
http://www.frankrobbinsartist.com/in...=003_paintings

The man knew exactly what he was doing.

[dan bailey]

The man knew exactly what he was doing.

With comic strips, evidently so.

With comic books ... nope. That, or he wanted to produce horrible work.

Why the discrepancy, I have no idea, but it's as plain as the nose on my face. (And while I'm no Jimmy Durante by any means, my nose is pretty evident.)

[Scott Harris]

Since Robbins pretty stopped working in comics before I started reading them, I don't have any childhood tales or trauma associated with his art. PLus, I haven't yet read Invaders, since I am waiting to finish my run first to read them all.

But from what little I have read of his work and what I have seen in this thread, he seems like someone whose work is heavily affected by the inker. The Invaders stuff does look pretty bad, but the examples where he inked himself I think are quite striking if not always necessarily... aesthetically pleasing. In that way they feel to me like they share DNA with some of Kirby's stuff. There's a real power in some of this work, energy. It's just not always very pretty.

I am curious to see more by Robbins.

[Red Oak Kid]

Robbin's art definitely had energy. And I like his work on Invaders because he had a Caniff style that fit the era that the Invader's were set in.

I just think his style caught Bronze age readers by surprise because they had been brought up on the slick superhero style of art from DC and Marvel in the 60s and Robbin's style is anything but slick.

It is very jarring to have been brought up on Infantino and Novick Batman art and then you buy an issue of Detective with a Neal Adams cover and the lead story is pencilled and inked by Robbins.

[destro]

If you look at most comic art, you'll see a lot of panels with no backgrounds or minimal suggestions.

Thye one page shown ain't Robbins' best work, but, comics aren't meant to be lingered over either, and in the context of reading the story, his art has movement, excitement, emotion and character.

http://www.comicbookbrain.com/large-...ins-batman.php
http://diversionsofthegroovykind.blo...t-madness.html

Plus:
http://www.frankrobbinsartist.com/in...=003_paintings

The man knew exactly what he was doing.

If any of his super hero work looked even close to that, I'd be an enthusiastic supporter. The fact is, it doesn't. It looks 10X worse than that quite nice looking page you posted. Whether that's because he had bad inkers, didn't put as much work into his super hero work or some other reason I don't know. Maye his work just comes off better in black and white.

[Erik Larsen]

Robbins had his moments. His quiet pages were pretty solid. His use of shapes and shadows and mood--were all terrific. The settings were rock solid. Cars, building, drapery. The guy could clearly draw. He did some Shadow issues and some Batman stories where he inked his own work and there was something of a Milton Caniff quality to it--but all readers seem to see are those flailing legs and ridiculous poses. And that's a shame.

[dan bailey]

In other news, William Hung's album featured some really solid arrangements & skillful instrumentation -- but all listeners seem to hear is that repellently incompetent singing. And that's a shame.

[berk]

Like I said before, I suspect that Robbins just didn't get the whole superhero aesthetic as practised by people like Kirby and thought you could just mess around with distorted anatomy and exaggerated poses because that's what it seemed to him was being done by other artists. Perhaps he didn't see that the best superhero artists were using those techniques in a controlled, deliberate way in order to achieve certain effects; so Robbins just distorted and exaggerated almost at random, not worrying about how weird it looked because that's how it all looked to him anyway.

Obviously all that is pure speculation on my part, since I have no idea what was actually going through his mind. But the discrepancy between his superhero stuff and his really very good work on things like Johnny Hazard does cry out for some kind of explanation, and that's the best I've been able to come up with.

[Red Oak Kid]

Like I said before, I suspect that Robbins just didn't get the whole superhero aesthetic as practised by people like Kirby and thought you could just mess around with distorted anatomy and exaggerated poses because that's what it seemed to him was being done by other artists. Perhaps he didn't see that the best superhero artists were using those techniques in a controlled, deliberate way in order to achieve certain effects; so Robbins just distorted and exaggerated almost at random, not worrying about how weird it looked because that's how it all looked to him anyway.

You could also be describing the work of Pete Costanza on Jimmy Olsen in the 60s. He had been a traditional straightforward artist at Fawcett but it looked to me that his editor on JO told him to spiff up his page layout and use more extreme figure positioning. He tried, but you could tell he wasn't really comfortable doing that type of art.