I thought I would do a little comparison here. Back in 1978, Stan Lee and John Buscema produced How To Draw Comics the Marvel Way.

It was published by Simon & Shuster. This predated the late Will Eisner’s classic and excellent Comics and Sequential Art by about seven years. Of course, unlike Eisner’s book, the aim here is how to capture that dynamic Marvel House style. But it’s still a great early instructional book for learning about perspective and page/panel compositions. And wisely, they used John Buscema. Unlike, say, Kirby, Buscema’s style is more “real world”. And it’s quite effective for the learning process. But what I find interesting is the Marvel of the 1970’s approach to drawing women versus the modern Wizard Approach.

First up is the general body info:
Stan writes…

And, speaking of women-where would Reed Richards be without his stunning Sue?

• Notice that she too is eight-and-three- quarters heads tall, with her hips much wider in relation to her shoulders than they would be on a male.
• Obviously we do not emphasize muscles on a female. Though we assume she is not a weakling, a woman is drawn to look smooth and soft as opposed to the muscular, angular rendition of a man.
• We’ve found that it’s preferable to draw a female’s head slightly smaller than a males. In fact, she’s generally drawn somewhat smaller all over except the bosom.

Compare this to Jim Balent.

Seriously. What is up with these women of Balent’s?! He actually gets the face, more or less right. Here is Buscema’s take on drawing heads:

Note the 5th image. They actually suggest how to draw an older woman. The wizard books do not seem to be aware that an artist might need to be able to draw some above 22, let alone, say, 55.

Buscema also offers some suggestions for eyes, nose and lips:

Now, I think there are some worthy critical issues with the Marvel book, as, they seem to give you one generic standard of beauty to follow. And yet, it just doesn’t seem that problematic compared to this:

Dig those vacant Turner eyes!

What the hell has happened that Turner and Balent are allowed to give instruction on how to draw? I can handle instruction from guys like Adam Hughes and Kevin Maguire. They can draw. But this is just absurd. What’s sad is that the Wizard books have so good and useful educational stuff. Ironically, some of them telling you to avoid drawing the very way other artists tell you to draw…especially in the case of women.