Krigstein Romberger

Krigstein at Atlas

Analysis by James Romberger

Bernard Krigstein’s relatively unknown later Atlas work is of considerable interest as it shows his development as an artist/storytelling after his famous E.C. masterworks. After the crackdown on comics caused the demise of E.C.’s comic titles, Krigstein worked for Stan Lee at Atlas on a last run of stories that were much more freely rendered. The stories were usually Lee’s clichéd plots (see footnote 1) but Krigstein spent proportionately more time on the breakdowns than the finishes, concentrating on time and expression. Lee allowed Krigstein the freedom to break down the story in his own style, if only, as has been alleged, because Lee figured that he was getting more drawings for the money. Of these twenty-nine stories Krigstein said, “I was really writing messages and sending them to sea in a bottle, there. Those stories were my attempt…to show the limitless ways that a comic story could be unfolded” (Krigstein 25).

The House That Lived

This four-page story was published by Atlas Comics in Mystery Tales #39 in March, 1956. The writer is not attributed. One might guess that it was written by the prolific writer/editor, Stan Lee, however, some of Krigstein’s Atlas stories were written by one of his best E.C. writers, Carl Wessler. Drawn and inked by Krigstein, the story’s colorist and letterer are not attributed.

Page 1: Krigstein has apparently turned a four panel page (possibly panels 1, 2, 3 and 4, 5-7) into one with seven. He begins with a vertical splash panel, a simple landscape made up of strong diagonals in an S shape; in an up-angled shot, a fence leads the eye to steps going up to the rural house of the title. The bushes in the foreground are rendered as strokes without outlines, and create a painterly depth effect when colored. The diagonals from panel 1 are continued into panels 2 and 3. In all pages, indeed in much of his work Krigstein creates rhythms by subdividing panels into thin vertical rectangles, representing beats of time. This effect is complimented by the connection of compositional diagonals and curves between adjacent panels. In panel 2 Krigstein humanizes the clichéd “nagging wife” Elvira, with the delicacy of his rendering of her heart-shaped face as she turns disapprovingly to her husband, who puffs on his pipe, the smoke echoing the curved forms of the foliage in panel 1. In panels 3 and 4 Elvira is looking down out of a window on the ineffectual Jonathan, seen first from above, then below. The dialogue reveals that they are victims of “empty-nest syndrome;” their children have grown and left the family house. Creating panels 5-7 from what may have been intended as panel 4 gave Krigstein room for an interior establishing shot, a close-up of Jonathan acquiescing, and a gentle reaction panel of Elvira. On this page, captions and balloons are relegated to the top portions of all panels.

The hard pen lines and modernist angularity of Krigstein’s E.C. work is replaced at Atlas by more organic, curvilinear compositions and brush inking. In this particular Atlas story Krigstein’s brushwork is at a peak, appearing fresh and loose, while delineating the forms and spaces with utmost clarity and expression.

Page 2: Here, the colors make Krigstein’s graceful page rhythms very clear. The slow zoom of his successive character combination drawings create a descending curve in the first tier, which ascends in the second. In the third tier the curves undulate as his interior “camera” pulls up from the departing couple, then back from the porch to a shot like the splash panel, then back close to a window; rain lines slashing through panels 12-15. The fourth tier again descends.

At E.C. doing 6 page stories, Krigstein begged for more space to do what he envisioned. He was granted only one exception, getting 8 pages for his marterpiece, “Master Race.” Later, at Atlas doing 4 page stories, he subdivides furiously. He said that his efforts there were primarily dedicated to the breakdown, or layout; this page is a good example why. The 21 panels on this page are what Krigstein felt he needed to tell the story. Besides the pictorial rhythms noted above, the expanded presentation of time allows Krigstein space for character development and adds to the believability of the character’s interactions and movements through space. He needs to be able to show Wilcox patronizingly patting Elvira’s back in panel 6, then his preening attitude with thumbs in his lapels in panel 7. Krigstein likened his created space to that of a proscenium stage; in the bottom tier the relationship is undeniable. In an innovative sequence, the opportunistic, ungrounded dreamer Wilcox dances across six panels, performing a choreographed ode to capitalism. His words split by Krigstein into poetic lines, he approaches the house like Romeo wooing his lover, turning in the last panel to wink at the reader. Krigstein’s previous sequencings were advances over those of Will Eisner and Harvey Kurtzman; this one represents a further leap, into widescreen territory later explored by Jim Steranko and subsequently abused by hordes of superhero artists.

One tends to think that if a caption encompasses multiple panels that it is meant to umbrella them as a group. This may indicate a scripted panel that Krigstein has expanded, but also forces the reader to read across the space of multiple panels before looking at the images. Perhaps this page was scripted to be eight panels, but it’s hard to say because there are so many variations here: captions over panels 1-5,11-13, 14, 15, and 16-20, the caption abbreviated at 20 in order that the angle of the shutter in panel 15 continue unimpeded to the curve of the roof in panels 20 and 21. The balloons in panels 20 and 21 are placed lower in into their panels to facilitate this effect. Krigstein must have indicated placement for the letterer.

Page 3: Krigstein drew with color in mind, and his page structures benefit from empathetic coloring. At E.C. he had a sensitive colorist in Marie Severin, but otherwise rarely if ever had any interaction with colorists. Like his more canny contemporaries, Krigstein learned to “idiot-proof” his drawings so they could not be ruined by substandard hues. Here the colorist employs a simple palette, leaving the clear white for the water-related elements, around the roiling cloud in panel 8, and in panels 14 and 15 to indicate snow.

The twisting diagonals and kinetic “camera” movements in the top tier reflect the bustle of construction. In the second tier the spheres of Wilcox’s heads in panels relate to the forming clouds in panel 3, and the two lightning strikes to the peak of the house in panels 9-11: first one strike, then the same view but light and rainy, then the second strike, dark again but slightly closer. In the bottom tier Krigstein weights his compositions. In panel 12, Wilcox is superimposed on the house that is thwarting him, and in this and the next panel Krigstein uses motion lines to show his shaky state. In panel 13 Wilcox’s head is flattened, his shoulders bent from his defeat; his foot falls heavily into the puddle before him, the eye pulled down to the caption about his “crushed dream” which only here has been placed at the bottom of the panel. The right side of the page reinforces the linear push down with the angles of the lumber in panel 5 and the rain and lightning in panels 9-11. In panels 14 and 15 the house is covered under the snow in a sort of hibernation, the panels continuing the tier’s compositional flow. This page is the only one in which no caption encompasses multiple panels.

Atlas’ comics were carefully scrutinized by the newly formed Comics Code of America. Horror comics were no longer allowed to be titled as such and every panel had to be approved. So it’s not surprising that in this story the supernatural element is tame, limited to a house which apparently damages itself by drawing the fury of the elements upon it. The entire scenario is handled in a lyrical, gentle style, though this may be in good part due to Krigstein’s input. Though not technically a villain, Wilcox fills that role in the story because the house “doesn’t like” him. He is drawn as an impersonal, mincing “city-slicker,” representing the relentless advance of urbanization on rural areas, his only motivation that of monetary gain.

Page 4: The relative sweetness of this story and the non-dramatic, joyful ending are unusual fare for Atlas at this time. Reflecting the era of the baby boom, the young Mr. and Mrs. Curtiss begin a new cycle from the desolation left with the departure of the Gibbons’. Wilcox is visually overpowered by the couple in panels 2, 4, and 5. In panel 3 he is lying, because we know he paid the Gibbons’ $5,000.00 for their house, he says he paid 3 times what he is offering it to them for, which must be more than what they are offering, $2,000.00. By the rules set by the Comics Code, for this lie, Wilcox must pay. Societal mores are satisfied; Wilcox does not profit and takes a loss but looks at the bright side in true Stan Lee style. A second dance sequence in panels 6-8 expresses Wilcox’s relentless optimism, moving along to more and better future investments. The final panels are an apotheosis of the idealized wholesome nuclear family. The space in the panels opens up with the door in panel 12, clearing further with the happy father in panel 13, then panels 14 and 15 themselves widening, the line of the bed with the sleeping boys pulled by the strokes to the slope of the hill besides the moonlit house, now a home.

Krigstein’s panel decisions can only be speculated about in the case of his Atlas work, with no access to the scripts. At Atlas he did have the freedom to layout his boards before lettering, unlike E.C. where he got the pages bordered and lettered and had to cut them up. If nothing else, Lee had an eye for artists and so it is possible that he wrote this with Krigstein’s strengths in mind. It was not intended as literature; what high status it achieves is due to Krigstein’s handling. Still, Krigstein approached the material without condescension, using it as a springboard to explore the deeper resonance he knew even a tepid plot could gain with the thoughtful and inventive application of dramatic principles to visual continuity.

Footnotes

1. Told by interviewer John Benson that Lee was the “spearhead of the rehabilitation of comics” at Marvel, Krigstein commented, “Twenty years of unrelenting editorial effort to encourage miserable taste and to flood the field with degraded imitations and non-stories have certainly qualified him for that respected position” (Krigstein 27). If there is a mitigating factor in Krigstein’s work, it is that some of his work appears to be hacked. In the time of his earlier tenure at Atlas in the late 1940,s Stan Lee preferred to see his Atlas artists emulate the densely packed compositions and coarse inking of Joe Maneely, and thereafter, throughout his career for unknown reasons, Krigstein would occasionally ink stories in this manner. Some of the stories with this appearance seem almost to be the work of another artist.

Bibliography

Krigstein, Bernard. “Interview with Bernard Krigstein.” Squa Tront 6 (1975): 3-30.

Sadowski, Greg. B. Krigstein, Vol. I. Seattle: Fantagraphics Books, 2002.

Spiegelman, Art. Ballbuster. Bernard Krigstein’s Life Between the Panels. The New Yorker, 7/22/2002.

Acknowledgements are due to Doc V and Stan Taylor of Kirby-L for sending me the 1998 circulating xeroxed collection of Krigstein’s Atlas stories, which enlightened me to the virtues of this body of work; and to Krigstein expert Greg Sadowski for his email assistance with Krigstein’s work, the Squa Tront checklist, and the color scans of “The House That Lived,” from his website: www.bkrigstein.com