does anyone know what Size golden-age comic ...

(hoping this isn't too far off topic in this forum) Does anyone here happen to know what original art size the comic book artists used during the "golden age" of comic books (say, circa 1940-ish - around the days of the All Star Comics of DC's Justice Society) ???

I'm curious if they worked at the same size as current artists do (11" by 17" - safe area of 10" by 15")

I'm not sure what means they had for reducing original art to print size (I suppose photographic and printmaking technology could well have been up to the task in those days - I just don't know). Somehow the artwork just, I dunno, looks "small" in some strange sense to me. (don't get me wrong - I admire and respect those "golden Age" artists & their work -- this is just a curiosity that occurred to me)

Anybody know?

AFAIK there's never been an "Industry Standard" size, 11X17 is the most common, but some have worked larger and some have worked smaller.

Part of the reason GA comics looks so "Small" comes from a few other sources as well.

One being the rate that these books were produced. There was a huge volume of these books being produced, and most of them on a tight deadline. Couple that with the fact that most artists were freelance and also working on multiple other projects (newspaper ads, etc) you couldn't spend a lot of time to languish over details.

The other factor is that during the Golden Age, artists were limited to a strict 6 or 8 panel grid and rarely allowed to deviate from it. Even at 11x17, trying to pack that much art in to a panel that small is daunting to say the least.

Thank Jeebus for Will Eisner.

Ah, thanks, Pillbug! I hadn't thought of those points! That makes quite a bit of sense. (I had an old airbrush instructor who did a demonstration of how he used to do 15-minute illustrations for the cover of pulp science fiction magazines from way back in the day - he said he'd turn out two of em during his lunch break & sell em for whatever the going rate for covers was)

I can certainly see the idea of the comic art being just one part of a golden age artist's work load, and probably not their main focus.

A friend (out here, off-line) told me a couple of other places to look, one of which led me to this thread on the ComicArtFans forum:

http://www.comicartfans.com/forums/t...p?TOPIC_ID=864

Its starts off talking about some old cover art that was done "same size" as it was printed, but there's also some talk of interior work sizes and how it wasn't always "twice-up".

Very interesting.