Comic artists, looking in the mirror

Growing up so very far away from the places that created my favourite comics meant I had very little idea of what the writers and artists I followed actually looked like, other than brief glimpses in spotty photos in a Sci-Fi Special or on a Bullpen page.

But once the internet came alone, one thing I was truly delighted to discover was that many artists actually physically looked a lot like a character in their stories. It's baked into the medium, and you can see it everywhere - so many of Jack Kirby's characters have the king's deadly gaze and stout demeanor.

Some of my favourite examples are Curt Swan, the exemplary silver age Superman artist, whose head looked more solid than anything in one of his Jimmy Olsen stories -

- and Frank Quitely, who in his secret identity of Vincent Deighan, has a terrifically strong jawline that is a constant in his work -

- or the mighty Coleen Doran, who could be anybody in A Distant Soil with her fantastic eyes and beaming face.

Some artists don't do this - thank goodness Bill Sienkiewicz doesn't look like one of his abstract delights, (although you can see where many of his long, thin faces come from), and while John Byrne's characters all share his round face, none of Frank Miller's characters look like the man himself, (which is funny, because Miller was always all about the projection). 

It's probably a good thing that I was always completely rubbish at drawing, there's enough me in the world already.