'DOODLE OF THE DAY' - PART TWO...

Characters copyright MARVEL COMICS

Here's one I really shouldn't show you.  Why?  'Cause there's just so much wrong with it on so many different levels.  By the way, ignore the credits - the page was never inked.  What you see before you is a scan of an A4 photocopy of the A3 original art, with the contrast increased to make the pencil lines look like ink lines. Yeah, I know, it doesn't quite work.  The lettering and border lines are in ink though. (And you're right - it really doesn't qualify as a 'doodle' - but it is unfinished art and I like the title.)

So what's wrong with it?  For a start, the lettering is too big, the gutters are too large, the figures in the first panel are all standing on different levels, Reed Richards tilts at an odd angle, Sue Storm is a bit stiff and unnatural, while the folds in her lower arm's sleeve are overworked.  In its original, softer, pencilled version, some of these faults were slightly less glaring, but with the contrast turned up they hit the reader smack dab in the kipper. 

This was drawn for my own amusement back around the end of April, start of May 1983.  It was intended to be the first page of a 5 page origin tale, but, as usual, I soon lost interest and didn't proceed any further with it.  Don Gordon and Percy H. (for Hinkle) Pinkerbottom are both names I've used on occasion, the latter being adopted as my legal name for a number of years back in 1982.  (Remind me to tell you that story sometime.)

However, despite its faults, I'm proud of the pencil work on Ben Grimm.  His left arm in the first pic is a bit stiff, but I think I mostly did a decent job with the creases in his jacket in all 3 panels.  I also believe there's a definite suggestion of 'solidity' in the 2nd pic of Ben, as opposed to the rather flat one of Sue in the first.

Am I going to utter those immortal words?  Yep, you betcha!  "One day I'm going to sit down and redraw the thing properly."  Of course, it would've been smarter to have drawn it properly to begin with, but that's often easier said than done.