If you enjoy Archery, particularly if you shoot, and you enjoy comic books (or other popular entertainment), it can be very frustrating to see some depictions of “archers.” When a comics fan who is an archer complains that the poses the artists give characters like Green Arrow (from DC Comics) or Hawkeye (from Marvel) are not only awkward but impossible, they are dismissed with comments like “Oh, it doesn’t matter!” or “Oh, but isn’t that a great pose?” or “It’s just comics!”
A friend of mine, Jim MacQuarrie, did a blog review of depictions of archery in this year’s films back in the spring, commenting on the quality of the archery skills demonstrated in publicity stills and clips. He gave high marks to The Hunger Games and to Brave for their presentation of archery. He gave some more pointed critiques of the style shown in by Hawkeye in the film The Avengers . And he got lambasted for being a nit-picky spoil-sport.
We sighed and went on.
And then a couple of weeks ago, a noted comics inker posted a picture he’d inked over another artist’s pencils of Hawkeye. And I was in pain. You have to understand: I like both these artists in the ordinary course of events. They are good artists. The inking on this piece was lovely work.
But the pose was terrible. It was impossible. And when I mentioned this in the discussion (on Facebook), my friend the inker said (a bit defensively) that artists have told him that “archery is hard to draw.”
Like no other sport is hard to draw?
It just nagged at me, until I had to sit down. The following cartoon is the result. If comic book artists treated other sports the way they treat archery…. But hey! Aren’t the poses good?
Related Images:
