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John Byrne
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Grumpy Old Guy

Joined: 11 May 2005
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Posted: 15 January 2026 at 8:01pm | IP Logged | 1 post reply

Not the first time I have touched on this topic, but I was just now clicking at random thru examples of “Golden Age” comic art and was stuck once again by how many artists back then just couldn’t draw hats—a peculiar failing at a time when hats for men and women were standard issue.

And this is not something that has changed over the years. So many current artists stumble on hats, be they stetsons or bowlers or anything in between.

Early on in my career I devoted some effort to developing my own shorthand for chapeaus, even though I knew there was little likelihood that I would ever be called upon to draw them much.

I beseech my fellow artists to do the same—learn the basic structure of hats—starting with the fact that aside from beanies and yalmukas, they are not likely to have a circumference smaller than the heads they are covering!

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Dave Kopperman
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Posted: 15 January 2026 at 9:01pm | IP Logged | 2 post reply

A character I had as a teen was a noir detective parody (at a time when I had no actual working knowledge of either genre), so I got very familiar with how goddamn difficult it was to draw a decent looking fedora. Absurdly complex shapes - like someone tried to make a Klein Bottle out of felt. So it wasn't even like you could cheat a shorthand version - it had to look right from every single goddamn angle AND look like there was an actual head inside of it. I hesitate to look back at those strips and see if I got anywhere close.
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Michael Penn
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Posted: 15 January 2026 at 9:19pm | IP Logged | 3 post reply

What do you think of Chester Gould's hats, JB?

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John Byrne
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Grumpy Old Guy

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Posted: 15 January 2026 at 11:39pm | IP Logged | 4 post reply

That strip is not a good example. He got better.
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Brian Miller
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Posted: 16 January 2026 at 1:43am | IP Logged | 5 post reply

I wish men still wore hats like that all the time.
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Eric Jansen
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Posted: 16 January 2026 at 9:43am | IP Logged | 6 post reply

One year at Comic-Con, I mustered the courage to show Neal Adams my portfolio.  He looked disappointed as we had had friendly encounters the previous few years and I got the impression that he regretted having to now destroy me.  I guess I was good enough that once he opened my portfolio he looked relieved!  (Whew!)  However, one of my characters in some story pages wore a hat that rubbed Mr. Adams the wrong way.  He took the next fifteen minutes (as potential customers stood by patiently--and the curious too) instructing me on the correct way to draw a hat!

He took out his sketchbook and copied my wrong hat perfectly then proceeded to correct it, drawing some nice hats of his own as well.  (He also educated me on drawing functional windows, but that's a topic for another time.)  At the end, I hoped he would hand me the sketch page of hats...but he didn't!  Argh!  Oh well.  (A few years later, I bought a beautiful 3/4 view Batman head from him for a relatively low price!  It hangs framed on my wall.)

I know how to draw a proper hat now.  (And windows too!)
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Evan S. Kurtz
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Joined: 04 July 2022
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Posted: 16 January 2026 at 1:54pm | IP Logged | 7 post reply

Be the change you want to see in the world, Brian! 
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Dave Kopperman
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Posted: 16 January 2026 at 2:40pm | IP Logged | 8 post reply

I was racking (racking! get it?) my brain last night to think of any cartoonist who really excelled in hats or sartorial rendering in general, and most of the artists who came to mind were European.
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