Obviously these people were not German comedians. Seeing them on TV back in England I recall a slight surprise becvause they weren't speaking German. But how can you not love Laurel and Hardy? In fact a duo looking mildly like them appeared in cameos in Black Tower stories before they became Reality Check Controllers.
Watching monochrome TV where shows or plays were full of solid black shadows and grey tones was fun -then colour TV ruined it all! 😂
The mid 1960s was a fun time in many ways and reading my first issue of Pow! (I wish I still had that) introduced me to a few new pals from something called "Marvel Comics". Then came Odhams b&w Marvel reprints in parts (weekly). One strip hooked me more than any other: The Sub-Mariner and his quest to win back Atlantis. The strip quite literally made my brain go squishy and the theme of the character trying to maintain honour and win everything back stuck with me: Namor was literally the underdog but never gave up. And the artwork by Adam Austin was breath-taking. In case you did not know "Adam Austin" was in fact Gene Colan and the Sub-Mariner work also got me into loving Colan's work.
http://hoopercomicart.blogspot.com/2018/01/the-sub-mariner-mega-post.html
When I saw a copy of Marvels Fantasy Masterpieces featuring the Sub-Mariner in a newsagents did I buy it or a pack of Plasticine? D'uh! And I have all of those issues including the major 1940s battle between Subby and the original Human Torch. Oh, some other fella called Captain America featured in the title as well as many old Timely "B-listers" and they were a big influence, too.
My biggest shock was discovering that a lot of the German Bastei comics I read were not German. I loved Mykros (and posted about him on CBO) and Fotonik...then I learnt that they were French creations http://hoopercomicart.blogspot.com/2016/09/jean-yves-mitton-photonik-meand-not.html Later I found out a lot of British weekly comic strips were drawn by non British artists,...what kind of crazy world was I in???
But then I discovered all sorts of foreign comics and in the early 1980s I found Manhua.
So black and white TV made me realise that you could do a lot with negatives on a page and not necessarily involve lots of stipling or cross-hatching, though I have used both. I think the Orson Welles movies -particularly The Third Man- showed how light and shadows work for atmosphere. If you look at a lot of original b&w art from American comics (All Star Squadron for one) it looks great and in many cases the colouring spoils the work. The Colan Sub-Mariner work sticks in my mind over the colour version but the colour version worked because they had an excellent colourist(s).
I have done colour work and it's even gotten praise but I tend to look at a page of b&w art and think "finished" because colouring, to publish, is far more expensive than b&w and takes up many, many more hours of work.
Black Tower Super Heroes, I was told by a now long retired Fleetway manager, is a lot like the old Lion or Thunder comics they published but with twice the number of pages. I checked my collection and Lion used to have 40pp which I never realised. It also had a mix of genres. So something obviously stuck!
But the influences you have to adapt to what you are doing and want -as a creators agent in the 1980s/1990s I saw so many strips that were obviously heavily influenced by Blade Runner or Evil Dead...one week I got 6 sets of submissions all featuring what were obviously Blade Runner.
You need to make sure that your influences do not border on rip-off or become so obvious that someone is going to say out loud "This is Blade-Runner! What a rip-off!"
We are always influenced every day and I think to say that in the 50+ years I have been reading I probably have been influenced!
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