#wing corrections

Iceman 2017 Issue #7 page 16. Art by Robert Gill

So this one was a doozy, I wasn’t even sure how I was going to approach this for a bit. I decided that the main point of this panel was to show off just how BIG Warren’s wings were. So when doing the redlines here I wanted to keep that idea in mind.

The first major correction here is the most important, I fixed the anatomy on poor Warren’s wings. His joints were all messed up. Feather layers were non-existent  and the guy suffers from that same weird skeletal bone thing that Sky had in the previous correction.

Bird wings are homologous to human arms. They have a shoulder, elbow and wrist, same as our arm. They also have digits but they’re fused at the end of the wing. In a lot of ways the first five or six primaries can act like “fingers” if you really need to emote a wing with a hand like gesture.

Keeping in mind that wings and arms are the same structure wise note that anything you can’t do with your arm, you also wouldn’t be able to do with a wing. (Wings have some restrictions arms don’t, mostly in how the wrist is allowed to bend but that’s not for this discussion)

Warren’s “elbow” here is bent in the completely wrong direction on both wings. He wouldn’t be able to use this wing, or properly fold it, ever. And that’s a pretty big problem. There also looks like there’s a strange joint in the middle of his primaries, or what I’m guessing are supposed to be his primaries... Lets just, remove that shall we?

Like most of the pictures I have saved here, feather layers are ignored completely. Most wings from the front will have three main layers of feathers, lessor coverts, greater coverts and then the flights. Flight feathers are the primaries and the secondaries, the primaries are the “finger” like flights and the secondaries are the rest. The usual point of differentiation for them is the wrist. Everything below the wrist will be secondaries. The back of the wings have more layers, including the alula, median coverts and then primary and secondary coverts. Many birds have four or five distinct feather layers on the back depending on the wing type.

I gave Warren the correct number of feather layers. Already that makes a huge improvement for how they look. Next up was the posing. Because the original had such terrible anatomy it was hard to keep it exactly the same. I opted to extend Warren’s right wing all the way out to showcase how big it was in this small room. For the left wing I did two poses, the first was trying to keep with how the original had the feathers bending on the floor. I had the wing come forward at the wrist and let the primaries drag. Feathers can indeed bend like this, they’re more flexible than one might think. The second pose I decided to just have him partially fold the left wing up. One could also draw a tighter closed wing, if he was moved slightly more to the left of the room, or if there was a more clear indication of where the other wall was, to really give the idea of a small, cramped, dorm type room.

Fantastic Four #17 Legacy #662 Cover by Nick Bradshaw and John Rauch

First off, I want to mention that this is one of my favorite covers for the Fantastic Four, I love the composition here between Sky and Johnny, it’s such a good pose. I just wish the wings weren’t an anatomical mess. There are three main corrections I made here in my redline.

1. There should not be such a sharp bend where the “elbow” is. This whole frame is too skeletal. You should not be able to see the arm structure of a wing under the feathers, and I’m not sure what that long bone over the primaries is supposed to be. If it’s a “finger” it is much too long and would never be the leading edge of a wing. This skeletal structure is not suited to a character with bird wings. The photo below shows that even when a wing is bent or outstretched there won’t be such a sharp point where the elbow is. There is muscle and connective tissue running from the shoulder to elbow and elbow to wrist. 

2. Feather layers. This will be a reoccurring point on this blog as many comic book wings do not have the correct number of feather layers or the correct size of the feather layers. Lets use that photo above, as it has a nice spread of both the back and the front of a wing. The front side (faces you) should have three main layers of feathers. The minor/lesser coverts, then greater coverts, finally the flight feathers which are typically broken into the secondaries and primaries. In the picture above we can see that the bird’s lesser and greater coverts are in tan/brown and the flights are in white tipped with black. Lesser coverts tend to follow the “outline” of the arm structure underneath. When in doubt, look at a ref for the wing type you’re trying to draw. It looks like Sky has a “passive soaring” wing shape, so that was what I used as my reference. The back side of a wing has a different number of feather layers than the front. Most wings have four to five distinct layers. These layers can be harder to spot if the bird is all one solid color. There is still a lesser covert layer, followed by a median covert layer, then the two bigger covert areas, the secondary coverts and primary coverts which cover the secondary and primary feathers. Wing backs are also where you see the alula feathers.On the picture above the alula feathers are the grey feathers just coming off of the lesser coverts near the top. They’re like little “fingers.”

The cover artist draws Sky with three feather layers, however they are not the correct shape or size. The “coverts” are far too large and the flight feathers are far too short. The feathers aren’t layered correctly either. When viewed from the front the leading edge of a feather is covered by the trailing edge. One the back it’s flipped and the leading edge covers the trailing edge.  

3. This point again has to do with how the feathers are positioned. Here he’s treating the secondaries and their respective coverts as being completely separated from the primaries. While there is a distinction between where the primaries and secondaries fall, it is not that dramatic and this area should not stick out above the primaries and their coverts when the wing is outstretched.

This photo of a harris hawk is in a similar pose. You can see that the secondaries lead into the primaries, and the coverts follow the same pattern. You can also see the alula feathers poking out near the “wrist”. Neither covers the other while the wing is outstretched. In a folded wing the primaries do tuck under the secondaries, but it still would not look like the cover photo.