Overrated art? 1 1

[Twanj]

59 minutes ago, Fred Chamberlain said:

As a kid, I found Kirby's stuff to be awful..... didn't appreciate his stuff until years later.

I was in the same boat. love Kirby now.

[stinkininkin]

20 hours ago, Bird said:

Yeah, like I said I understand the reverence. If you, or Frank Miller (loved that Eisner/Miller book), says Will is the man I will take your word for it. But I myself have not experienced it while reading what I have of the work. It may be a "in its' time" thing as I can never experience The Spirit, or Krazy Kat for that matter, as it happened and hence maybe never really get it. Maybe I am hung up more on the lack of connection I have to the material, I see his artistry and technique but never feel like I connect to the heart of the story, which often reads as contrived or formulaic to me (the GNs at least). 

I read the Eisner book, and Understanding Comics as well, a few decades ago. I'll give it another look-see as I love reading comic-related books. Just finished KRAZY, loved it for the information even if I thought the book had some issues.

You have a very informed opinion and it's all good.  I'm probably more hung up on the word "overrated".  There are lot's of guys who I don't connect with but based on their impact, influence and even popularity (rarely a defining criteria alone), I hesitate to call overrated solely because I'm not personally moved.  The Krazy Kat example you mentioned is a good one.  I've sampled KK from what's regarded as one of the best periods and I just don't really get it.  But I can't call it overrated just because I don't get it, as I need more exposure and context, and truth be told, maybe I'll never get it or like it.  That to me is the micro view.  But to me that's different than it being "overrated" which is more macro.  

Again, just my 2 cents.

And yeah, that Eisner/Miller book is a great read!!!  

Scott

[zhamlau]

 J. Scott Campbell....Its been 20 Years of the same pair of breasts and overly spaced eyes. I dont get the appeal or the value his art has.

 

[delekkerste]

On 2/20/2017 at 8:42 PM, zhamlau said:

 J. Scott Campbell....Its been 20 Years of the same pair of breasts and overly spaced eyes. I dont get the appeal or the value his art has.

 

Not going to name names, so as not to offend, but a LOT of artists known for their GGA work would fill up my personal list of overrated comic artists.  

Edited February 22, 2017 by delekkerste

[SquareChaos]

47 minutes ago, delekkerste said:

Not going to name names, so as not to offend, but a LOT of artists known for their GGA work would fill up my personal list of overrated comic artists.  

From the current batch of them, I think Hughes can turn out some good work, but I think it is in large part because (when he chooses to) he can portray human emotion. JSC seems to draw mannequins in poses, typically with slight smiles on their faces. Hughes can use the entire body and stance to display emotion... as an artist should. 

[Bronty]

On 2/17/2017 at 7:52 AM, Silver Surfer said:

But am I wrong? Maybe it's just his style on Spider-Man that I couldn't stomach because for me it just was too noisy and the anatomy was goofy. 

When you say Spider-man, do you mean ASM or the later title?

I didn't mind the anatomy on ASM at all.   The guys generally look fit and not like steroid monkeys except the guys that are supposed to look like steroid monkeys (Eddie Brock).    

The busyness of the line didn't bother me on ASM but by the time it got to the "non-amazing" adjectiveless Spider-man title, I didn't like it either.    I really only liked his art for 3 or so years, but what a huge impact in those three years.    I could care less for anything that came after Spidey 328, I must admit.   

I think he just got too busy, too successful, too many demands on his time.   Trying to write his own books , then head up Image, then toy company... there are only so many hours in a day and something had to give.   Now... he did all that to himself (for the betterment of his career, and it was successful, but to the detriment of his art).   I think he was a businessman even before he was an artist, anyways.

Edited February 22, 2017 by Bronty

[Bronty]

3 hours ago, delekkerste said:

Not going to name names, so as not to offend, but a LOT of artists known for their GGA work would fill up my personal list of overrated comic artists.  

I can respect that, but we'd better not have a bad word said about breasts at any point in this conversation by anyone!  

https://img.memecdn.com/boob-checking-urge_o_4269405.webp

Edited February 22, 2017 by Bronty

[stinkininkin]

On 2/20/2017 at 5:42 PM, zhamlau said:

 J. Scott Campbell....Its been 20 Years of the same pair of breasts and overly spaced eyes. I dont get the appeal or the value his art has.

 

I admit I am a J. Scott Campbell fan (and a friend) and while I think he has a wider art range than you give him credit for, I totally see what you are saying.  Campbell, perhaps more than a lot of other artists has made a point out of what he calls "branding" his style.  He wants all his work to be instantly recognizable, even from across a room.  If you don't like the look that he has cultivated, it's going to annoyingly look even more homogenous and repetitive than subject/style choices that other artists make.  It's an approach that has worked well for him, particularly commercially, but will not to be to everyones liking.

Scott

[zhamlau]

6 hours ago, stinkininkin said:

I admit I am a J. Scott Campbell fan (and a friend) and while I think he has a wider art range than you give him credit for, I totally see what you are saying.  Campbell, perhaps more than a lot of other artists has made a point out of what he calls "branding" his style.  He wants all his work to be instantly recognizable, even from across a room.  If you don't like the look that he has cultivated, it's going to annoyingly look even more homogenous and repetitive than subject/style choices that other artists make.  It's an approach that has worked well for him, particularly commercially, but will not to be to everyones liking.

Scott

That's a very nice way to put it :-)  Hell Campbell I'm sure doesn't care what some fans like me think, its just ive thought that a while versus the value of his artwork. He does the same thing over and over without changing, and it sells so why bother adjusting? But on a personal level, Ive seen it and it just doesn't do anything for me anymore. Different strokes i guess.

[Bird]

6 minutes ago, zhamlau said:

That's a very nice way to put it :-)  Hell Campbell I'm sure doesn't care what some fans like me think, its just ive thought that a while versus the value of his artwork. He does the same thing over and over without changing, and it sells so why bother adjusting? But on a personal level, Ive seen it and it just doesn't do anything for me anymore. Different strokes i guess.

It is an interesting decision when they become successful...change or stay? I wish some artists would go back to previous styles (I mean my main man still brings it but I prefer the old approach to shadows on the face, sorry T!) and yet I love some artists who many dismiss due to style that never changes. I don't mean to suggest that Howard Chaykin or Walt Simonson or Darwyn Cooke were stagnant in their approaches because they clearly were not but many see the same Chaykin face as a weakness and not a strength. (I love that face, thinking about it now in my head. The men are masculine as hell and the women are broads of the first degree!) Herb Trimpe was roasted for going Image and Sean Chen Jim Lee'd his beautiful line for a while there as well. It is an interesting thing that drives an artist. Frank Miller is currently lambasted regularly for drawing ugly; the image on the page is exactly what the guy wants it to be in my opinion but he gets destroyed for changing. What should he be? Ronin Frank, Sin City Frank, Daredevil Frank? (maybe he could be Elektra Lives Again Frank every so often please?)

okay, enough stream of consciousness. 

But yeah, JSC is a bore to me as well. I myself will take Dell'Otto as my flavor of the month, but if I write a comic I want Dave Johnson to do the cover.

[delekkerste]

Overrated art:  NYX 3 cover, BA 12 cover. 

 

[npasto]

Todd McFarlane has a unique style and was an important creator in the early 90s, but I don't understand how his Marvel stuff can fetch 5-6 figures.

[Flambit]

2 hours ago, npasto said:

Todd McFarlane has a unique style and was an important creator in the early 90s, but I don't understand how his Marvel stuff can fetch 5-6 figures.

Yeah.  He and Liefield were mainly the reason I stopped reading comics (when I kind of "aged out" the first time, in my late teens/early 20s).  I have no love for either - although I've come to appreciate McFarlane a little more now, in the Kirby-esque way he took liberties with anatomy to tell his stories.   

[SquareChaos]

20 minutes ago, Flambit said:

Yeah.  He and Liefield were mainly the reason I stopped reading comics (when I kind of "aged out" the first time, in my late teens/early 20s).  I have no love for either - although I've come to appreciate McFarlane a little more now, in the Kirby-esque way he took liberties with anatomy to tell his stories.   

That is a first for me personally. I have never heard anyone put McFarlane and Liefeld's work in the same category like that, that is interesting.

[Flambit]

23 minutes ago, SquareChaos said:

That is a first for me personally. I have never heard anyone put McFarlane and Liefeld's work in the same category like that, that is interesting.

I'm just a product of a very specific time.     I was such a late 70s to mid 80s Kirby/Byrne/Miller fanboy, so when those late 80s/90s guys came out, it seemed like there was a whole paradigm shift in comics which left me totally cold.   And it was really spearheaded by those two particular artists (along with Jim Lee, whom I much preferred and still enjoy).  With their success, of course, comics seemed to get populated with their clones, and I realized none of that was going away. 

I get that McFarlane is beloved while Liefield's art is sometimes questioned aesthetically.  At the time, I personally could not stand Liefield - I hated the characters with the pouches and giant guns, and I particularly hated Cable and Deadpool (shows what I know!)  but I did think McFarlane was interesting.  I did read his ASM and SM at the time. 

 

[MyNameIsLegion]

McFarlane wrote about as well as Leifeld could draw.  I believe his first SM story arc was aptly named "Torment"

Jim Lee was by far the best of the bunch, both at Marvel and afterward.  His Wildcats at least looked and read like a polished comic. 

Nevertheless, collectively their influence of style over story and substance hollowed out Marvel and to a lesser extend D.C. ( they still had Vertigo) and killed the serial charm of monthly  comics.  I quit buying monthly tiitles 20 years ago, and since then the number of comics I've bought off the stands would fit in a short box (and most of them have Alex Ross material)

[JadeGiant]

14 hours ago, Flambit said:

I'm just a product of a very specific time.     I was such a late 70s to mid 80s Kirby/Byrne/Miller fanboy, so when those late 80s/90s guys came out, it seemed like there was a whole paradigm shift in comics which left me totally cold.   And it was really spearheaded by those two particular artists (along with Jim Lee, whom I much preferred and still enjoy).  With their success, of course, comics seemed to get populated with their clones, and I realized none of that was going away. 

I get that McFarlane is beloved while Liefield's art is sometimes questioned aesthetically.  At the time, I personally could not stand Liefield - I hated the characters with the pouches and giant guns, and I particularly hated Cable and Deadpool (shows what I know!)  but I did think McFarlane was interesting.  I did read his ASM and SM at the time. 

 

Interesting. Our timeline is probably very similar as I discovered comics in the latter half of the 70’s and into the early 80s. This is where most of my nostalgia resides. I had stopped buying comics (would read a friend’s copies to stay in the loop a little) in high school and was absolutely mesmerized when I found McFarlan’s run on Hulk. It totally blew me away and really caused me to jump back into the hobby with both feet after high school. This period is another huge nostalgia bump for me and I love McFarlane and Keown’s stuff for this reason.

 

I was never a big fan of Liefeld’s stuff, at all. I didn’t hate it at the time as I was fully engulfed in the comic mania when his stuff (and others) was popular. His art never appealed to me aesthetically like McFarlane and others. I never got why his star rose so fast.

 

I always appreciated Jim Lee’s art but never went gaga for it like a lot of others. I was always more of a casual Xmen fan as I didn’t follow a lot of team titles extremely closely. For my taste it is easily TM #1, JL #2, and RL somewhere way down the line thereafter with these 3 artists.

Edited May 23, 2017 by JadeGiant

[jjonahjameson11]

5 hours ago, MYNAMEISLEGION said:

McFarlane wrote about as well as Leifeld could draw.  I believe his first SM story arc was aptly named "Torment"

Jim Lee was by far the best of the bunch, both at Marvel and afterward.  His Wildcats at least looked and read like a polished comic. 

Nevertheless, collectively their influence of style over story and substance hollowed out Marvel and to a lesser extend D.C. ( they still had Vertigo) and killed the serial charm of monthly  comics.  I quit buying monthly tiitles 20 years ago, and since then the number of comics I've bought off the stands would fit in a short box (and most of them have Alex Ross material)

Wow, I think we're at opposite ends of the spectrum here, but as thee saying goes, Art is objective.

to me, McFarlane was the best of the bunch, followed by Keown, then Portacio, Jae Lee, Jim Lee, Silvestri, and at the very armpit of the heap is Erik Larsen.

alex Ross?  Nice portrait painter.  I own one, but seems that's all he does.

[MyNameIsLegion]

29 minutes ago, jjonahjameson11 said:

Wow, I think we're at opposite ends of the spectrum here, but as thee saying goes, Art is objective.

to me, McFarlane was the best of the bunch, followed by Keown, then Portacio, Jae Lee, Jim Lee, Silvestri, and at the very armpit of the heap is Erik Larsen.

alex Ross?  Nice portrait painter.  I own one, but seems that's all he does.

Yeah but how much did some of those guys actually produce on a consistent basis once they went to Image? Keown was a non-entity, with what 3 issues of Pitt in two years? Portacio and Jae Lee didn't do much. McFarlane stopped penciling and did some inking, spending more time on Toys and Baseballs. Jim Lee even faltered output-wise, but his clones on Stormwatch were fairly consistent. Silvestri cranked out stuff semi regularly,  Savage Dragon was fairly regular. Liefeld and his clones flooded the market with a ton of wretched looking product. So the greatest volume of material came from those with the least appeal for me.   Wildstorm was by far the steadiest pillar of the bunch, and that's why D.C. Saw fit to buy them.

[jjonahjameson11]

37 minutes ago, MYNAMEISLEGION said:

Yeah but how much did some of those guys actually produce on a consistent basis once they went to Image? Keown was a non-entity, with what 3 issues of Pitt in two years? Portacio and Jae Lee didn't do much. McFarlane stopped penciling and did some inking, spending more time on Toys and Baseballs. Jim Lee even faltered output-wise, but his clones on Stormwatch were fairly consistent. Silvestri cranked out stuff semi regularly,  Savage Dragon was fairly regular. Liefeld and his clones flooded the market with a ton of wretched looking product. So the greatest volume of material came from those with the least appeal for me.   Wildstorm was by far the steadiest pillar of the bunch, and that's why D.C. Saw fit to buy them.

I wasn't concerned with their productivity nor volume of material they produced during their Image careers.  That wasn't the content of your previous email.