Web of Jim McGrath @drylandisnotamyth - Tumblr Blog

Closing up shop here

Closing this up and just using my primary Tumblr account (poolhalljames.tumblr.com) to post the same stuff you know and love over there. Also check out my Marvel / NYC blog (marvelnyc.tumblr.com). Also still on Twitter at poolhalljames! also bye

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1-4: Art from Daredevil #1 (Volume 1; 1964) by Stan Lee (W), Bill Everett (A) and Sam Rosen (L).

5-9: Art from Daredevil #1 (Volume 2; 1998) by Kevin Smith (W), Joe Quesada (A), Jimmy Palmiotti (I), Dan Kemp / Brian Haberlin Studios ©, Liz Agraphiotis / RS & Comicraft (L)

We can see two very different images of crowded NYC streets and NYC background characters when comparing the Daredevil comics excerpted above. Quesada, Palmiotti and Co. give us a busy enough looking Manhattan, but they favor Times Square-esque street signs and traffic and background characters that are roughly sketched out. Dan Kemp’s coloring tends to favor blending these background figures together: the greenish crowd blurs together, and the individuals passing by closer to the reader’s point of view are flattened by the same blue palette. These are streets full of people, but they’re people clearly in the background of the story we’re expected to focus on. Later, when an extended car chase dominates the story, the streets seem much more deserted and depopulated, with Quesada choosing to focus more on the primary actors at the expense of maintaining the illusion of a busy Manhattan. Even the buildings disappear.

On the other hand, Bill Everett’s bystanders are all given distinguishing features that make his street scenes seem more like they’re populated by New Yorkers with lives independent of Matt Murdock and his friends: the newsboy walking with determination, the woman in the subway car watching Daredevil hitch a ride. Each background actor has his or her own distinct style, though Everett also sketches at times in lieu of more detailed figure work. The aesthetic helps give the sense that Murdock’s detection of The Fixer and his henchman is an impressive act, and that the crooks were right to try and get lost in the crowd in the first place. That being said, these are very white streets for NYC in 1964, and the fashion choices of these New Yorkers seem more dated than trendy.

How do a street scene’s background characters and buildings impact our engagement with a story? The 1998 Daredevil uses broad strokes to land readers in NYC: its first page is a fast tour through impersonations of major landmarks: a cathedral that may be St. Patrick’s, a neon street that might be part of Times Square, a cropped shot of what appears to be the Washington Square Arch in Greenwich Village. But it comes off a bit like New York via the Las Vegas strip. Everett’s city is free of identifiable Manhattan landmarks, but the people he populates it with do the heavy lifting when it comes to creating a vision of New York. But the illusion here also has its limitations.

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