• When you click on links to various merchants on this site and make a purchase, this can result in this site earning a commission. Affiliate programs and affiliations include, but are not limited to, the eBay Partner Network.

New podcast/video from Felix Comic Art (UPDATED 1/3/17!)
6 6

1,647 posts in this topic

28 minutes ago, Mr. Machismo said:

Thanks, Scott. The further ahead we go, the more we’ll see “classics” change, I think. And to define my usage of classic, I mean memorable stories which are considered mandatory reads as X fan. The stories that continually hit top 10 lists and are referred by active-reader friends.

Yes, DKR is absolutely a classic to most of us, but to many younger readers it’s not. I don’t share this sentiment, but it can be viewed as just another Batman story which leans too heavy on copy, has terrible art (DKR Gallery edition sits on my coffee table and routinely gets scolded for “poor” artwork by guests), and is a little too goofy and dated. 

Long [long-] term, I see a story like HUSH surpassing DKR, and I’m not saying that because Scott is here. It reaches a far greater audience, showcases a wide gallery of villains, has tight and dynamic art that isn’t seen as “scribbly” or bad — but rather generally appealing and familiar — and reads just as well today as it did in its release because it doesn’t rely on issues of the day to drive it. It’s much farther reaching in terms of its appeal, despite having a weaker story than DKR. I believe the same for Court. 

I'm afraid I have to differ on a number of these points.  As I mentioned, I quite enjoyed Court of Owls (at least the first two trades - I still have more to read), but, it came out at a point in time where comics have evolved so much as a medium, the relationship with the audience has changed so much in the wake of the past 25 years of change in tech & media (chiefly, there's a much smaller audience that was even exposed to it), and Batman is about as richly developed a character as you can get, that stories like these are just the comic equivalent of Chinese food.  Tastes good going down, but, are not only not the game-changers that stories like DKR and Watchmen were back in the day, but, might not even meet your lower bar of "classic/must-reads" over time.  Felix can probably tell you how many copies of DKR are sold each year in trade; how many people will be buying Court of Owls trades in 30 years by comparison?  

I don't think it's fair to say that the younger generation has written off DKR.  Even if they appreciate the modern format of storytelling more, most people retain an appreciation of the classics, especially those that moved the needle in the medium and are deemed to be "historically important".  I much prefer Bronze/Copper/Modern books to, say, Golden Age and Silver Age, but, that doesn't mean that I don't appreciate Action #1 or AF #15 or Jack Kirby art, or am not cognizant of the fact that major books and pieces of art from those eras are more valuable (by and large) vs. newer books/art.   We see this in other hobbies as well.  Even if you're a younger person who prefers Jeff Koons and Damien Hirst to Rembrandt, you're always going to recognize the latter's value, even if it isn't your bag.  Even if you'd rather own a new Ferrari 488 to drive around town, it's not like you're not going to recognize that an F40 from 30 years ago is always going to be more valuable and in-demand.  Even if you grew up with Derek Jeter or Aaron Judge, it's not like a '52 Topps Mickey Mantle is not going to be what you aspire to own as a card collector. 

I see no chance of Hush ever surpassing DKR.  It is, to me, the pinnacle of the Lee/Williams artistic partnership, but, IMO, it's not one of Loeb's better stories, sad to say.  It will never get the critical acclaim that DKR got (and nor should it), it will never be one of those graphic novels like DKR, Watchmen, Maus, etc. that people use as a gateway to get non-comic fans into reading comics, etc.  It's beautiful art, it's a decent story (to some), but, in the cosmic scheme of things...it's simply not important to the entire medium like DKR was and still is.  

Incidentally, I finally read DK III over the past couple of days.  Some interesting concepts, yes, but, overall...terrible.  

Edited by delekkerste
Link to comment
Share on other sites

21 minutes ago, J.Sid said:

I think people forget what the world was like back before Watchmen and Dark Knight. Comics readers generally did so in the closet.

You didn't talk to the kids at high school about the X-Men or Batman. Just the people you'd seen on Wednesday (was it always Wednesday?) at your local comic shop. If god forbid you ever did broach the topic to a non-comics fan, you likely had to explain to them who Wolverine was and what those sticks on his hands were.

Dark Knight and Watchmen changed everything. For the first time, national magazines and newspapers were giving media attention to (gulp) comic books. Shortly after, the GNs started showing up in book stores alongside the section that sold Tolkien books. Before you knew it, people who didn't even know where their city's LCS was located might sometimes be overheard having conversations about Batman.

We now live in a world where it's a given that the next Marvel Movie will make $500 mil globally, where Target sells Spider-Man Tshirts in the Men's section, and where a hundred million Americans can tell you who Deadpool is. The younger generation sometimes assumes it's just always been that way. It wasn't.

I think the success of the Batman movie moved the needle more thanWatchmen or TDKR. Yes, the latter got some notoriety, but not like the mania that 1989 film created 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

10 minutes ago, comix4fun said:

That's an interesting take, for sure. 

Miller's DKR style (evolved from DD and prior to it's re-evolution for Sin City) was certainly a shock to the system at the time. The story overrode all of those concerns though, to the point that seeing those pages, in that style, brings one back and enhances what a great story it was. 

The Hush artwork is lush and gorgeous and far more what's expected from a major character storyline. I love it. I love looking at it. The story, however, starts great and draws you in but tends to leave one less than satisfied. I felt the same about Old Man Logan. That's most likely because it was intended to be a shorter series but, due to overwhelming popularity and sales, was stretch and diluted to the point of being unrecognizable from where it started (plot wise) in the end. 

So you bring up a good point. What makes a story last? Being "well" drawn (for those that don't appreciate Miller's-then-style) or being well written?

If a story is going to be missing something, it can be in the pictures and not in the plot. 

Lots of people draw well. Lots of people draw Batman well. Without a superior story that remains so through beginning, middle, and end. You may run into a situation where the pictures cannot sustain where the words fail. Whereas we've seen the words of DKR sustain where there's less than total agreement that the pictures succeed. 

Ideally, you'd like to have BOTH. For the majority of comic fans DKR has both.  Hush is certainly the best of the last couple decades of Batman story arcs, but does it really transcend and hit on all cylinders? Not always. The pictures never fail but the plot does stumble. 

I guess time will tell. 

The art from Hush is great.  Lee/Williams at their best.  But, it's not like it took comic art in another direction; it's just really well-drawn and fun to look at.  The story as you said...meh when you look at it as a whole.  Many at the time, including myself, thought it was a disappointment - more style (great art) than substance (ho-hum story - apologies to Loeb, who I otherwise quite like as a writer and person).  For fans of Image era-to-the-present artwork, Hush is always going to be a go-to run.  But, it will never be, as Jeff alluded to, the kind of story that will be written about in Time Magazine and appear on best books (graphic novels or otherwise) lists.  You really need a groundbreaking story for that to happen.  DKR was one.  Killing Joke was one.  Year One was one.  There have been many excellent and/or memorable Batman arcs since then, but, I don't think any of them gets to that kind of standard.  

As for Hush, I don't think it'll go down as the best of the Batman story arcs from the past 20 years.  I'm enjoying the Snyder/Capullo run a lot more, for starters (eagerly awaiting the next TPB at my library).  I hear the Tom King (who's other work in Sheriff of Babylon and Vision I enjoyed a lot) run is very good too (I have 5 of the trades downloaded to my Kindle but haven't read them yet).  I recently read the Brubaker Batman run in trade...not quite up to the usual Brubaker standard, but, I'm not sure if it was any worse than Hush; I did feel that Scott McDaniel's art (he was totally the wrong artist for that run) didn't help matters any, though.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

26 minutes ago, J.Sid said:

I think people forget what the world was like back before Watchmen and Dark Knight. Comics readers generally did so in the closet.

You didn't talk to the kids at high school about the X-Men or Batman. Just the people you'd seen on Wednesday (was it always Wednesday?) at your local comic shop. If god forbid you ever did broach the topic to a non-comics fan, you likely had to explain to them who Wolverine was and what those sticks on his hands were.

Dark Knight and Watchmen changed everything. For the first time, national magazines and newspapers were giving media attention to (gulp) comic books. Shortly after, the GNs started showing up in book stores alongside the section that sold Tolkien books. Before you knew it, people who didn't even know where their city's LCS was located might sometimes be overheard having conversations about Batman.

We now live in a world where it's a given that the next Marvel Movie will make $500 mil globally, where Target sells Spider-Man Tshirts in the Men's section, and where a hundred million Americans can tell you who Deadpool is. The younger generation sometimes assumes it's just always been that way. It wasn't.

For sure!    

Link to comment
Share on other sites

If DKR was released today, how would it hold up? That’s my point. As generations die off, so will appreciation for the [original] classics. Current VS past readership is somewhat irrelevant in this discussion as previous generations pass away. We’re talking far ahead here.

I don’t believe the generations to come are going to appreciate something for its cultural significance as it’s been stated. Being much younger, what I see is rapidly increasing apathy in that regard, on all fronts.

20 years from now, a teenager sees HUSH* and DKR trades side-by-side on Amazon, they’re going to think DKR looks dated and is poorly drawn. They are not going to force their smartphone-attention spans to digest 100-200 pages because their grandfather told them how important DKR was.

*I’m using HUSH as a general example here of a comic DC/Top 10 lists will continually push for the foreseeable future, and acknowledge DKR is the superior comic, though not in terms of my personal tastes. And yes, HUSH may very will hit the curb side for not firing as well on story as it could have, but I believe DKR will become irrelevant first strictly on apathy towards classics. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

39 minutes ago, delekkerste said:

...Batman is about as richly developed a character as you can get, that stories like these are just the comic equivalent of Chinese food. 

WTF Gene! Chinese food is the BEST! If anything, DKR/WM is Chinese food!!

Maybe you mean cheap/bad/fake Chinese food (a la Panda Express). I don't eat that garbage, anyway. I need to take you to better restaurants.

 

Edited by Nexus
Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, Mr. Machismo said:

I’ve had a number of emails come through on CAF regarding the podcast. Interesting trend: they also were not impacted by DKR, and in some cases downright hated it. I’m surprised to hear this from some collectors, and it’s my belief there’s a reservation among younger collectors to express this as it will somehow discredit them in a hobby which is dominated by mature individuals.

When I first read DKR in my teens, I really did not like it. I felt it was far too copy-heavy and the news segments were incredibly boring and broke up the action. I view it very differently now having gone back to it, but it’s still not in my personal top 5. I have no nostalgia towards it, despite reading it early on.

Very interesting. I've mentioned my own opinion of DKR off-and-on since 2005 here...I've never read it even thought I was the perfect age, 14, when originally published. As in, I've owned it (in limited HC) for nearly 30 years) but have never been able to get through it, maybe the first ten or so pages and I'm just...bored. So it goes back on the shelf in lieu of all the other more interesting things I have stacking up to read and I tell myself I'll get to it another time, when I'm ready (because surely it's me that's got it wrong not everybody else, right?) This ritual happens about every five years, pull it down, give it another try, just cannot make it happen, and back up it goes. It's time to give it another try. (After I finish both Criminal deluxes and then the Sleeper deluxe...love that format for Brubaker/Phillips!)

And despite having written all of the above...I still wish I'd done what it would take to outbid $400k (pre-juice) for the #2 cover when it was on HA. Wonder how deeply committed the winner and other bidders over $300k were? I was certain that would be the first $700k America OA, not Crumb's Fritz #1...which I turned out to be wrong on but wow Fritz certainly deserved the honor too!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 minutes ago, vodou said:

And despite having written all of the above...I still wish I'd done what it would take to outbid $400k (pre-juice) for the #2 cover when it was on HA. Wonder how deeply committed the winner and other bidders over $300k were?

IIRC, one bidder hit the reserve of the DKR #2 cover.

I don't think it underperformed at all. To that point, there weren't really any comps at that level. Just individual outliers.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

33 minutes ago, PhilipB2k17 said:

I think the success of the Batman movie moved the needle more thanWatchmen or TDKR. Yes, the latter got some notoriety, but not like the mania that 1989 film created 

Too funny. The movie indeed came out in 1989. What year did they start development? 1986? Has to be a coincidence. Has to.

 

Edited by J.Sid
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'm a lifelong Batman fan (going back 40 years plus) and I still think TDKR is the greatest story in the entire catalogue. And I love the art....perfect to capture the grittiness of the story, the effort to relaunch himself, the darkness of the time in Gotham.  I was totally blown away when it came out and still am every time I re-read it. So much so that I've picked up some of the proof pages as they've come up on HA over the years.  I'm a bit surprised by the criticism but I guess beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

10 minutes ago, Nexus said:

IIRC, one bidder hit the reserve of the DKR #2 cover.

I don't think it underperformed at all. To that point, there weren't really any comps at that level. Just individual outliers.

Sort of my memory too but it's been years now, which is decades in auction seasons (!) and anyway it would have taken me a full year to properly dispose of that quantity of other material w/o giving it away. I only found out about the piece coming up two months or so before the sale and there just wasn't the time. Unlike some of the oligarchs running amok in our little hobby, I do not keep ex-Binion's $10,000 bills stuffed in my front jeans pocket lol

Link to comment
Share on other sites

14 minutes ago, Nexus said:

IIRC, one bidder hit the reserve of the DKR #2 cover.

I don't think it underperformed at all. To that point, there weren't really any comps at that level. Just individual outliers.

What about the DKR splash that sold for almost the same amount?

To refresh memories... the DKR 3 (?) splash sold for about $450k and then not too long after the cover to #2 sold for about $480k.

So... when the cover sold, there was a good comp.    Earlier, when the splash sold, there wasn't.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, eewwnuk said:

i think it all boils down to different strokes for different folks.  similar to how for a certain generation nsync > beatles. 

My point is that, even if you prefer 'NSYNC, once you're no longer a teenager, you at least know where they stand in the musical hierarchy vis-a-vis the Beatles, no matter how much time passes.  

53 minutes ago, Mr. Machismo said:

If DKR was released today, how would it hold up? That’s my point. As generations die off, so will appreciation for the [original] classics. Current VS past readership is somewhat irrelevant in this discussion as previous generations pass away. We’re talking far ahead here.

20 years from now, a teenager sees HUSH* and DKR trades side-by-side on Amazon, they’re going to think DKR looks dated and is poorly drawn. They are not going to force their smartphone-attention spans to digest 100-200 pages because their grandfather told them how important DKR was.

Why would a teenager think that DKR is poorly drawn?  If you look past the VERY FEW modern artists that skew toward what passes for realistic over the past 25 years (a disproportionate amount of whom seem to have worked on Batman - Lee, Finch, Daniel, Mahnke, Capullo, etc.) - most of the other modern comic artists draw in a very stylized/not realistic manner.  For which, BTW, we can thank Miller, Sienkiewicz and a few others who pioneered the move away from the traditional/house styles at the Big Two starting in the early-to-mid '80s.  Why would a modern audience viewing this art think it's any worse in quality than all the other highly stylized art out there?  If they think DKR art is "poorly drawn", I'd hate to think of what they would think about all the other modern artists working today... :eek:   

Edited by delekkerste
Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 minute ago, Bronty said:

What about the DKR splash that sold for almost the same amount?

To refresh memories... the DKR 3 (?) splash sold for about $450k and then not too long after the cover to #2 sold for about $480k.

So... when the cover sold, there was a good comp.    Earlier, when the splash sold, there wasn't.

I didn't consider it a comp. Neither did most other DKR collectors. If the splash sale was a comp, then ASM #328 that sold for $657K was a comp for other McSpidey covers. It wasn't.

Outliers, both!!

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

43 minutes ago, Nexus said:

WTF Gene! Chinese food is the BEST! If anything, DKR/WM is Chinese food!!

Maybe you mean cheap/bad/fake Chinese food (a la Panda Express). I don't eat that garbage, anyway. I need to take you to better restaurants.

I love Chinese food!  My analogy was more a reference to Chinese food's reputation of tasting great, but, you're left feeling hungry again soon after.  That's what I think of most superhero comics from the Big Two in the modern era - a lot of these stories are fun to read, but, like (Panda Express) Chinese food, they don't stay with you for very long.  They're disposable entertainment.  The most important & enduring stories featuring these decades-old characters have almost all already been told.  It really takes something super special (like what Brubaker did on Cap) to produce something that has not only the entertainment qualities, but the relevance and importance on a par with the older classics.  2c   

Edited by delekkerste
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Just now, Nexus said:

I didn't consider it a comp. Neither did most other DKR collectors. If the splash sale was a comp, then ASM #328 that sold for $657K was a comp for other McSpidey covers. It wasn't.

Outliers, both!!

 

Ehhhhhhhhhhhh ...........      I get your point...   the splash was an outlier...    but it did set some expectations rightly or wrongly for the #2 cover which IMO were met.       

You know the DKR market better than I ever will but I thought that 400-500k range was right on point based on past history (including the splash sale!).

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Just now, Bronty said:

Ehhhhhhhhhhhh ...........      I get your point...   the splash was an outlier...    but it did set some expectations rightly or wrongly for the #2 cover which IMO were met.       

You know the DKR market better than I ever will but I thought that 400-500k range was right on point based on past history (including the splash sale!).

Well, there was a reason they put a reserve on the cover. Without the reserve, it doesn't hit that number.

Point being, I think everyone understood that the splash was an outlier. If they (consignor, HA) were that confident the market was up there, they wouldn't have used a reserve. The right decision for them, as it turned out.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
6 6