Guns in Coimcs: You're Doing it Wrong!

Alright fellow comic book artists!  Let's talk guns!

*Also, a quick disclaimer.  Since I don't feel like rummaging through my house to find all the necessary items to take pictures of, most of these pictures are from google and are not mine.  (Except for the one below, Bad Company is mine.)

His and Hers.  Mine and my Husband's 1911s

I know how popular guns are in comic books and in movies.  They're everywhere.  You draw your crazy vigilante hanging out with his guns, you draw them being fired, you draw them being pointed at things, yadda, yadda, so on and so forth.  I'm not sure some people know just how wrong they're depicting it.

As some of you may, or may not know, I am not only a comic book colorist, but I work in a factory that manufactures handguns.  I know a thing or two about the real function of guns and how the comic books and movies get them wrong EVERY TIME.  For years Hollywood has been teaching people the weirdest crap about firearms and I'm going to debunk a few of them for you so that your comic book characters can handle a gun in a much more realistic sense and I can stop beating my head on the table when I see it.  

Some of these are just super nit picky and you can ignore them for style reasons (stuff like bullets sparking and all that.) I'm not going to go into tremendous detail, you have Google for that.

1. THE CUP AND SAUCER GRIP

Yer doin' it wrong Jack!

Yes you guys, Jack Bauer here is doing it wrong.  And you guys thought he knew how to handle a gun. Pfff.

This is probably the most common mistake I see, well, everywhere.  In comics, in movies, at the gun range with newbie shooters.  If they don't try to shoot like a thug, with the gun turned sideways, this "cup and saucer" grip is generally their first instinct.

While you should hold your pistol with both hands, this isn't the way to go about it.  If any of you have ever shot this way before, you know from experience that this is a very unstable way to hold a handgun.  I'm actually not even sure what possessed Hollywood to find this okay in the first place.

This guy does a pretty good job of showing you how to hold the gun correctly and why you should hold it that way.

 

2. BULLETS DON'T SPARK OR EXPLODE ON IMPACT

No, just no.  If you're in the process of drawing a comic frame right now, where there's a big bright poof of light where the bullet strikes, stop drawing.  Stop right now and back away.  Bullets just don't do that!  In reality they don't even spark.  

I would say it's okay to use sparks since comics are very visual, but it all depends on how realistic you want to be.  There IS a round that flares out, called Dragons Breath.  It's just a novelty item and I wouldn't even consider it for anything other than shits and giggles.  It does make a really cool picture but it's super impractical.  I think it's also only made for shotguns.

*Disclaimer: I don't own this picture.

There is also a such thing as incendiary rounds but, again, they're not going to make a super opaque explosion looking thing if it just hits a person.  Just something to think about.

3. RELOAD!

So I was watching The Walking Dead and I realized a number of things that they got wrong when it comes to guns.  There was the usual "cup and saucer" grip, there was also exaggerated recoil, and someone being told to take the safety off a Glock, which doesn't come with a manual safety unless you put one on it. I figure.  Alright, that's excusable.

Then this happened.

How many shots does that thing hold!?  If you want to do something at least half way accurate please do a little research on the gun you're planning for your characters to use and how many shots they hold.  Counting the number of bullets can even be used as a very effective way of building suspense.

One thing I don't think I've ever seen used in a comic is the quick and easy way to reload a revolver. 
For revolvers there's this thing called a speed loader.  You just pop the cylinder open, empty the old shells, put the new bullets in, twist and close the cylinder and you're ready to go for another round.  I personally have one of these myself for my little five shot revolver.  Just keep in mind that these things didn't exist back in the cowboy days.

There's also a such thing as a  moon clip which may, in fact, be even faster than a speed loader.  Not all revolvers are made to use these so I'd suggest looking up which revolvers do.  Some even require moon clips to function.

Moon clips with ammo

The Oh-So-Convenient speed-loader

Another thing I would like to touch on briefly, is the difference between a magazine, and a clip. (Speaking of moon clips and all)  People get them confused very often.  Since I was harping on The Walking Dead earlier, I'll get them on this one too.  I do believe it's the second episode of the series, maybe the first, Rick calls his magazine a clip.  

If you have a character that you really want to know guns, and who really should know guns, impress your gun-loving reader base with this little detail.

Notice something?

A lot of people that refer to a magazine as a clip have probably never actually seen a clip.  A clip is used to put bullets into a magazine.  Some guns have magazines that aren't removable and you can use a clip to load them.  Most modern guns have magazines like the ones shown above that can be attached and detached.  Not to mention the visual difference.  That's a super simplified explanation, but with a little visual aid, at least some people won't confuse the two now!

4. OTHER NITPICKS

Now we're just going to go through some of the smaller, lesser known gripes. 

The right way

*Gun safety!  That's actually a big one. When your character is handling a gun without intending on shooting someone, the gun-loving reader base will love to see your character practicing proper safety.  This means keeping their finger off the trigger until ready to fire, making sure that the gun does not point at someone that isn't an intended target, whether or not the gun is empty.  Maybe even scolding another character for the improper handling of a firearm. 

Unless your character truly is crazy, they should never be pointing a gun at their own head and smiling... like the character below.  We all know Revy is totally crazy but this is ... well... a little too much.

Revy from Black Lagoon.  One of my personal favorite Anime shows.

That picture makes me cringe every time I see it.  I'm pretty darn sure it's just fan art since the actual series does a pretty good job of accurately portraying guns.  With the exception of some dual wielding and all that.  In real life dual wielding isn't really practical as I'm sure some of you may have figured out.  It's just one of those things that looks cool, therefore, even most gun lovers will let that slide.

*Revolver Flubs. Another nitpick comes yet again from the series, The Walking Dead.  I forget which season, but it's the season finale episode.  I'm going to avoid spoilers here buy just saying that Rick's Colt Python was fired.  You never see the shot fired, but you hear it, and you also hear a clink of an empty casing hitting the floor.  Guys, revolvers don't have an extractor.  They do not spit out shells.  If you watch the show, some of you may know the scene I'm speaking of. 

*Firing.  Guns being drawn, firing while the hammer is back.  If the gun has gone off that means the hammer has hit the firing pin. This means that the hammer is down in the case of a revolver, or it means that the slide is flying back over the hammer and ejecting a shell in a semi-auto pistol.  In some cases I've even seen people draw the hammer following the slide backward.  If the gun has a slide on it and it is being fired, the slide pushes the hammer back as it flies backward, re-cocking the hammer for the next round.

 

*Silencers.  Contrary to popular belief, silencers aren't completely quiet.  They don't make that noise you hear on TV.  As someone who has fired a suppressed handgun before, I can tell you the movies really exaggerate this one.  While it does make it quiet enough that you may not have to wear hearing protection, it can still be pretty loud.  You would have to be a considerable distance away before having a suppressor would really keep your position hidden.  

Sometimes silencers can be filled with something to dampen the noise even further.  The one that I fired I'm pretty sure was filled with a little water.  It keeps the suppressor from getting hot as quickly,  and it also makes a mess.  It was still loud enough to hurt my ears just a little, granted the range I was in wasn't exactly spacious, just to give you an idea of what it's really like.  I also came out of the range with specks of grime all over from it.  Not something they show you in the movies, that's for sure.

Pillows also don't really help.  I've never shot through a pillow before, but if an actual suppressor can't make a gunshot completely silent, a pillow is certainly never going to do the trick.

 

THAT'S ALL FOLKS!

 Like I said, some of these are small nit picks that can be ignored in favor of style and this was only meant to be informational.  I hope you guys learned something and I really hope this helps in your action comic endeavors!

And now I leave you with multiple types of guns firing in slow motion.