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JB, I Guess the question I have is in reference to proportion: How do you draw 'tall' without making them look enormous or gangly and how do you avoid making small characters from looking 'stout'?

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These points depend very much on the characters. Sometimes, I WANT them to be gangly!

But, unfortunately, this isn't something I can easily quantify for you. When I do a commission piece with Wolverine against a white background, with nothing to give him "scale", posters will often comment on how I have nevertheless managed to make him look short. How do I do it?

Tourist in New York: How do I get to Carnegie Hall?

Cop on the Beat: Practice!

James Howell wrote: ...Amping up a character's physical attributes for maximum effect on a comic page...the essence of cartooning. Sometimes that is lost on today's "realistic" comic art...

It seems to me that some of today's comics artists exaggerate still, but they do it WAYYYY too much. Colossus, Juggernaut, and others are not only drawn big and tall by a lot of artists these days, they are drawn huge to the point that they are literally giants.

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This is not recent, unfortunately. Over the years we've seen characters like the Thing and the Hulk -- who used to be able to "disguise" themselves with a trench coat, in good ol' pulp tradition -- enlarge to gigantic proportions.

In many ways, it reflects a kind of artistic laziness. Jack Kirby's version of the Thing might have had trouble fitting thru a normal door, but Kirby did not depend on drawing Ben as a, ahem, colossus in order to show us how strong he was. He SHOWED us how strong he was!!

Rachel Welch was the female inspiration for a few superheroines back in the day!  If I recall correctly, didn't JB used her as a model for Phoenix as well?