Kaare Andrews Spider Manga page 20

Here's page 20 from Spider-Manga. What's sweet about this piece in person is that Kaare inked the characters so they stand-out more from the pencil-only background pieces such as the falling bricks and the crumbling building. The contrast makes for some art that almost appears 3-dimensional, as the gray-toned pencil shading really appears as if it is behind the action. The super-tight inks on the characters are clearly from the hands of a skilled artist. If I were trying to trace the pencil lines, I already know my ink strokes would be shaky, not consistent, not clean and mostly crooked. Terrible.

I'm going to go off on a tangent for a sec. Let's talk about inkers. It takes some serious talent to ink artwork. Inkers aren't tracers. You need to really know how to draw and finish the artwork, and it requires some serious consistent pen strokes. The inker is the last line of defense and is in charge of making the original pencil art stand-out, injecting life into the characters faces, to setting the mood and telling the story in really only 2 colors. Many top artists started as inkers and it really seems to be an old-school talent to ink penciled artwork.

Finally, last but not least, I really like the layout. Simple but different. The diagonal long panes make for the feeling that Spidey is literally flying off the build, then falling, and on his way to a climatic [crunch] on the next page. Or is it waiting for him? Stay tuned...