ART FROM ART: 13 Brilliant Comics Panel Recreations to Make Your Day

Posted By Dan Greenfield on Aug 22, 2020 | 2 comments

Cartoonist Karl Heitmueller Jr. brings you #POOC — Panels Out of Context…

After Charles M. Schulz

A favorite pastime of comics’ internet age is posting weird and wacky comics panels online without any context. This is the fertile ground from which enduring memes grow.

But cartoonist Karl Heitmueller Jr. has taken the concept a step further by re-creating a series of panels from comic books and comics strips. By combining the originals with his specific style, Karl has hit on that sweet spot of irony meeting irony.

Here’s Karl’s take — along with 13 BRILLIANT COMICS PANEL RECREATIONS TO MAKE YOUR DAY:

After Mike Sekowsky

By KARL HEITMUELLER JR.

During the coronavirus quarantine (four and a half months, as I type these words), I’ve spent a lot of time doing artwork (after getting over my own bout with COVID and pneumonia in March). But given the inherent stress of life in 2020, the bulk of the stuff I’ve been doing has not exactly been mentally taxing. I’ve primarily been doing recreations of existing work, things like vintage trading-card wrappers, comic book covers, and comic book and strip panels.

Ironically, like many comic book fans, I’m decidedly NOT a fan of Pop artist Roy Lichtenstein, who made a career in the 1960s painting recreations of comic book panels by artists who never earned anything near his wealth or fame (and were never acknowledged by Lichtenstein). Recontextualisation was one of the hallmarks of Pop art, and I certainly (obviously) appreciate taking something like a comic book panel out of its narrative context and looking at it from a purely artistic point of view. So why do I feel guilty? I’m certainly not expecting (nor trying) to overshadow ANY of the artists whose work I’ve redrawn below, but the sting that Roy Lichtenstein (whom I subjectively don’t think was all that great, honestly) inflicted on the comic book world is one that will probably never completely go away.

After John Romita and Don Heck

Any time an artist reinterprets another’s work, the goal should be to bring at least a bit of their own sensibility to the piece (unless of course, you’re an art forger, in which case, no!). I don’t know how successful I’ve been in that regard with these POOCs — Panels Out of Context. Most of them are fairly literal translations of the original panels, with added color on some, lettering changes, or a few tweaks here and there. Of all the things I’ve done, these are certainly not the works that I’d like to define me (I’m hoping my more original stuff does that). But I gotta say, they sure are an awful lot of fun to do.

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