While many writers and artists will tell you that having an understanding of photography, cinematography and related subjects will go a long way when working in comic books– this is most directly seen in the case of ‘photo-covers’, which Drew University has lots and lots of. If you check our main timeline, you will see that the Special Collections offers many variant covers of comic books (e.g. Buffy the Vampire Slayer and related spin-off series) you will see many covers ripped straight from a camera, typically with either the main character of the television series the comic book is based upon, or in some cases a cosplayer.
Roy T. Cook claims that these covers “highlight and comment on the quirks and limitations of the means of representation in traditionally hand-drawn comics, and forcefully underline the consequent epistemological limitations regarding our knowledge of the appearance of people and things contained within the fictional worlds described by comics.”
If you want to learn more, read “Judging a Comic Book by Its Cover. Marvel Comics, Photo-Covers, and the Objectivity of Photography”
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