These drawings look pretty bad even to totally-ignorant me. #2 is the only one that looks vaguely right to me. I wouldn't have been able to articulate why, but #1 and #3 just looked wrong at first glance.
I had a semester of archery in college, back in 77. (I chose the archery elective because I was huge Hawkeye fan.) Bad archery has always bugged me in comics, but I always give them a pass on things like body position and the sideways bow. These guys shoot while they're leaping and diving, after all. And I think it would get visually repetitive if they always used correct form.
But there's no excuse for getting the details like arrow length and fletches and fingers wrong. In #3, he looks like he's got a pool cue between his knuckles. Ouch.
I'm really only strict about a few key things. From the ribcage down, I don't care what's going on, but the sideways bow is a definite no-no. It's a proclamation of ignorance.
Aside from the horizontal bow, the other biggies are failing to anchor (hand has to come into contact with the face), straight bow arm (#2 has a bend in the elbow, rendering the shot useless), having the fingers on the string instead of the arrow, and putting the arrow on the correct side of the bow (same side as the arm).
It's also nice if there's an arrow rest on the bow if it's shown to be a modern one.
In #3, he's also got the arrow between the second and third fingers instead of the first & second.
It also looks like Byrne originally planned to hook the index finger over the arrow but then thought better of it. I could be wrong on that, but that's what it looks like. Good that he didn't do it, since that's a really big no-no in my book, being a serious real-world safety issue.
Mutt, I tend to agree with you on things like body position, though I'm certainly not presumptuous enough to argue with MacQuarrie about it, having only dabbled a bit in archery. Also, I tend to assume a bit of artistic license, like perhaps the artist has captured the figure as he's about to stand up and straighten the bow. Yes, drawing the bow before doing that would be odd and darn difficult, but that brings up my next point: I also assume that superhero archers might take a few "shortcuts" in the interest of speed over accuracy and/or distance. If you're just lobbing a concussion arrow 20-30 feet, and neither distance nor accuracy is an issue, a sloppy draw might get the job done faster. 'Course, so might throwing the arrow ...
But I swear, the two things that bug me the most are the bowstring on the outside of the arm (picture #1) and the arrow on the wrong side of the bow (not pictured here, but I've seen it too many times to count).
Yup. The string over the arm negates any claim to "artistic license." It's just wrong, virtually impossible and danged uncomfortable to try, and it simply doesn't work.
Danged uncomfortable? You are a master of understatement, MacQuarrie. I would have said "excruciatingly agonizing as the skin is flayed from the back of your arm by the bowstring," but again, I don't have your depth of experience with these things. I can state from personal experience that having a bowstring scrape along the inside of my arm is pretty unpleasant and caused me to immediately reassess the need for an armguard.
It's uncomfortable even if you don't release. You're pulling against the arm's natural strength. I'd never for a second consider letting go. yowtch!
one thing that always bugs me when i talk to my fellow comics fans and authors is that they often try to defend whatever mistake they did whith phrases like "artistic license" or "it was done on purpose". why, for Christ's sake can't they just admit they know nothing about the matter in question? why do they defend a lost cause, like "no, in this comic revolvers eject spent cases after each shot!" or "the door CAN have a knob on the same side as hinges!" and other illogical nonsense?
Commenting by HaloScan
