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What are your thoughts & opinions on the realism movement going on with comic covers?books today?
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112 posts in this topic

13 hours ago, letsgrumble said:

It's the nature of the beast today. The disconnect between the story and the cover art derives from the need to have the cover art completed for the Previews catalog 3-4 months prior to the release of the comic book. The cover art (and brand-name writers and artists) is all retailers have to go by when pre-ordering so far in advance.

Also, I know this theory has been floated around here many times before, but it feels like the CGC Effect, i.e. slabbing of moderns, has nurtured a cover-driven market. A pretty pin-up looks pretty nice in a plastic case. I get it, I just don't care for the books personally.

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42 minutes ago, F For Fake said:
14 hours ago, letsgrumble said:

It's the nature of the beast today. The disconnect between the story and the cover art derives from the need to have the cover art completed for the Previews catalog 3-4 months prior to the release of the comic book. The cover art (and brand-name writers and artists) is all retailers have to go by when pre-ordering so far in advance.

Also, I know this theory has been floated around here many times before, but it feels like the CGC Effect, i.e. slabbing of moderns, has nurtured a cover-driven market. A pretty pin-up looks pretty nice in a plastic case. I get it, I just don't care for the books personally.

Not sure which came first, the chicken or the egg but it's all a product of all markets speeding up due to reliance on digital transfer of information.

Retailers want to sell as much as possible as quickly as possible, so they want to preorder as accurately as possible.

The bottleneck is how quickly artists can put their work out.

There certainly has been a shift towards covers over the last 20 years as well due to Certification.

Books like Detective #33 (origin issues) used to be huge keys but they have been overtaken by books with 'better' covers.

The end product is a cover driven market.

Our lives have become a string of dopamine hits.

People want their dopamine hit and they want it now. The faster the better.

Edited by VintageComics
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19 minutes ago, Copman said:

Here it is, this prize could be yours if the cover is right!

 

 

 

image.png.14c0929d103c4cb242a3f41ea0dd3c6c.pngmy OCD - I had to look - 144 is about as close as you get with only the top "tommy tomorrow"  note .....
 

 

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1 hour ago, VintageComics said:

There certainly has been a shift towards covers over the last 20 years as well due to Certification.

Books like Detective #33 (origin issues) used to be huge keys but they have been overtaken by books with 'better' covers.

The end product is a cover driven market.

I track the market for pulps, and even without a grading service for them, the same thing is happening there.  There has been a major decline in interest in pulps because of the authors within (Raymond Chandler?  Dashiell Hammett?  Robert Bloch? Philip K. ?  Never heard of 'em) and a substantial increase in the last few years in the prices for "significant" covers.

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2 hours ago, Bookery said:

I track the market for pulps, and even without a grading service for them, the same thing is happening there.  There has been a major decline in interest in pulps because of the authors within (Raymond Chandler?  Dashiell Hammett?  Robert Bloch? Philip K. ?  Never heard of 'em) and a substantial increase in the last few years in the prices for "significant" covers.

Hey, at least there is an increase in demand somewhere for pulps. Every couple of years I buy some pulps, sci fi or western (because they're cheap), and while I will bid based on author (I am familiar with some of the sci fi names, although, frankly...have you read some of them? They're terrible by today's standards)., age and great cover get a little bit more $ out of me as I have no idea what I am bidding on. I did pick up Frank Herbert's first published work last year, which was cool. Boring cover though.

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11 hours ago, F For Fake said:

Also, I know this theory has been floated around here many times before, but it feels like the CGC Effect, i.e. slabbing of moderns, has nurtured a cover-driven market. A pretty pin-up looks pretty nice in a plastic case. I get it, I just don't care for the books personally.

I hadn't consider that but I somewhat peruse a fair amount of that material and what you say makes good sense.

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13 hours ago, the blob said:

Hey, at least there is an increase in demand somewhere for pulps. Every couple of years I buy some pulps, sci fi or western (because they're cheap), and while I will bid based on author (I am familiar with some of the sci fi names, although, frankly...have you read some of them? They're terrible by today's standards)., age and great cover get a little bit more $ out of me as I have no idea what I am bidding on. I did pick up Frank Herbert's first published work last year, which was cool. Boring cover though.

PKD is the bomb!

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15 hours ago, the blob said:

Hey, at least there is an increase in demand somewhere for pulps. Every couple of years I buy some pulps, sci fi or western (because they're cheap), and while I will bid based on author (I am familiar with some of the sci fi names, although, frankly...have you read some of them? They're terrible by today's standards)., age and great cover get a little bit more $ out of me as I have no idea what I am bidding on. I did pick up Frank Herbert's first published work last year, which was cool. Boring cover though.

And to be fair... at least with major authors their works can be found in numerous reprints, so I'm not criticizing the shift... just observing.  As you say, people's taste in literature changes every couple of generations.  And though that is true of art to some extent... pop art in particular seems to hold up better over time (and when it comes to exploitation, even current comic covers are tame by 1930s pulp standards).  A lot of golden-age comic stories are hard to abide today other than for nostalgia and a sense of history... but the art can still be memorable and fascinating.

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On 4/21/2019 at 11:08 PM, VintageComics said:

I think the bigger problem is that covers don't tie into the stories. They're poster pieces to themselves.

I think I'd like captions back on comic book covers.

But not huge ones like you’d see on Silver Age Marvels.

There should be some degree of subtlety.

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22 hours ago, VintageComics said:

 

Our lives have become a string of dopamine hits.

People want their dopamine hit and they want it now. The faster the better.

people just roll their eyes when I talk like this.

I'm pretty close to just drinking the Kool-Aid like nearly everyone else. 

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You know, thinking about this a little more, I think the elimination of words on the covers of comics has a lot to do with the push to move comics in a more mature market.

You don't see captions on novels, do you?

Ironically, what made comic books unique to readers may also be considered too immature nowadays.

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1 minute ago, NoMan said:
21 hours ago, VintageComics said:

Our lives have become a string of dopamine hits.

People want their dopamine hit and they want it now. The faster the better.

people just roll their eyes when I talk like this.

I'm pretty close to just drinking the Kool-Aid like nearly everyone else. 

Only the ones that don't realize that they are living from one dopamine hit to another and not actually making decisions based on factors outside of that rush.

I'm convinced that the majority doesn't realize it.

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I appreciate the talent many of these cover artists possess, but it's just cover art. They're not really comic book artists, in the sense that they do not engage in any sequential storytelling (or rarely do). And as someone pointed out, the cover often has nothing to do with the content of the comic itself. But, that's just a sign of the times I guess, as most people collect/flip/etc modern comics based upon the cover, and not the content (1st appearances being the exception). As discussed in other threads, the desirability of a modern comic is now more about the cover, as compared to back in the day when it was a combination of the cover--which often depicted an element of the story--and the content of the book.

Which has made me think about the following lately: why even buy a comic, yet alone pay premiums for certain covers, when you can just buy a print for a fraction of the cost when the cover is all you truly care about? hm

 

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12 minutes ago, KEY ISSUES Comics said:

in the sense that they do not engage in any sequential storytelling (or rarely do)

Yup.  That's the real test of a great comic book artist, not an ability just to draw a very appealing, single, isolated static image.

At least, as an actual reader, that's crucially important to me.

Edited by Ken Aldred
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Just now, Ken Aldred said:

Yup.  That's the real test of a great comic book artist, not an ability just to draw a very appealing, single, isolated static image.

At least, as an actual reader, that's crucially important to me.

Same here. 

I'll even use Jim Lee and Frank Miller as examples of older generation artists where the above comes into play.

The former draws "nicer" images than the latter, as most would likely agree with, myself included, but Miller's ability to tell a story is world's beyond Lee's. 

Of course, many would disagree, but that's how I see those two, hence using them as an example.

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Variety in all things is great. I’d hate everyone to still be a Jim Lee clone. There will be hits and misses in all art styles depending on the particular artist, and sometimes a single artist can be hit or miss. But I’ve never liked a house style, and even though I loved Jim Lee and his countless imitators as a kid, I was also very happy to see a Sam Keith or Bill Sienkiewicz or Jae Lee just to see something look different once in a while. The more variety in style the better, as long as the art is good 

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4 minutes ago, dupont2005 said:

Variety in all things is great. I’d hate everyone to still be a Jim Lee clone. There will be hits and misses in all art styles depending on the particular artist, and sometimes a single artist can be hit or miss. But I’ve never liked a house style, and even though I loved Jim Lee and his countless imitators as a kid, I was also very happy to see a Sam Keith or Bill Sienkiewicz or Jae Lee just to see something look different once in a while. The more variety in style the better, as long as the art is good 

Didn't see this before I posted, haha... talk about telepathy !

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