ComicLink Auction starts with a bang August 13 0

[zhamlau]

15 minutes ago, Timely said:

Good thing Sinnott was one of the best inkers ever. If Sinnott was a horrible inker, I’d say an overpowering Sinnott would be a bad thing.

Agreed

[stinkininkin]

3 hours ago, zhamlau said:

Sinnott always felt overpowering to me as an inker. When pen hit paper with him, it becomes “Sinnott with” art. 

I agree with this and I almost mentioned Sinnott as an overpowering inker. I love Sinnott so it was rarely a problem, although I was not a fan of the Byrne/Sinnott FF issues or the Sienkiewickz/Sinnott pairing. Inkers only seem overpowering in a very subjective way. I also have a very distinct inking style and I have no doubt that I am considered overpowering to certain fans.

[Unstoppablejayd]

14 hours ago, stinkininkin said:

Believe it or not, I don't disagree with you. I feel both Palmer and Janson were very heavy handed, and tended to dominate the final look or the art. I just happen to like their aesthetic so much that I'm ok with that dominant role. Same with guys like Kevin Nowlan. Even Neal Adams (when inking other pencillers). On the other hand, there were some heavy style guys who didn't work as well for me. Alfredo Alcala, Tony DeZuniga and Rudy Nebres used to do very elegant inks on John Buscema Conan for example and I hated that those inks totally buried Buscema's aesthetic. But then Janson and Palmer come along and power over Buscema pencils and it's all good with me! Their choices seemed more appropriate to my eye, but at the end of the day, we all just like the stuff we think looks good, and we're not going to always agree on the names.

As an aside, and only because you mentioned my inks as a counter point to Janson, but Janson is/was my biggest inking influence and the guy I tried to emulate as I was getting my career going. While my style did evolve over time, my early work in particular had a HEAVY Janson vibe. If you ever find old issues of Strikeforce Murituri in the 50 cent comic bins, check out my work over Brent Anderson there and you'll see lots of Janson riffs and outright style theft! 

 

[tth2]

19 hours ago, stinkininkin said:

22 hours ago, tth2 said:

It's so funny that you love Palmer and Janson so much, because your inking style is the antithesis of theirs.  I've always liked inkers such as yourself, Terry Austin, Joe Sinnott, etc., who I've always labeled as having a "light touch".  You guys did what I think an inker should do, which is to bring out the best in the pencils but without drowning out the penciller.

Especially with Janson, it always looked like he was trying to say "starring Klaus Janson and co-starring [fill in name of penciller]".  I don't know if he was a frustrated penciller or what, but I've always felt he was trying to be the star, which is not what an inker should be doing.  I know that whenever I picked up a book he had worked on, my first reaction would be "Oh, Janson's inking this one.  Let me see if I can figure whose pencils have been obliterated by his heavy handed inks, without looking at the credits."

Believe it or not, I don't disagree with you. I feel both Palmer and Janson were very heavy handed, and tended to dominate the final look or the art. I just happen to like their aesthetic so much that I'm ok with that dominant role. Same with guys like Kevin Nowlan. Even Neal Adams (when inking other pencillers). On the other hand, there were some heavy style guys who didn't work as well for me. Alfredo Alcala, Tony DeZuniga and Rudy Nebres used to do very elegant inks on John Buscema Conan for example and I hated that those inks totally buried Buscema's aesthetic. But then Janson and Palmer come along and power over Buscema pencils and it's all good with me! Their choices seemed more appropriate to my eye, but at the end of the day, we all just like the stuff we think looks good, and we're not going to always agree on the names.

As an aside, and only because you mentioned my inks as a counter point to Janson, but Janson is/was my biggest inking influence and the guy I tried to emulate as I was getting my career going. While my style did evolve over time, my early work in particular had a HEAVY Janson vibe. If you ever find old issues of Strikeforce Murituri in the 50 cent comic bins, check out my work over Brent Anderson there and you'll see lots of Janson riffs and outright style theft! 

Thanks Scott, good discussion. 

Good points in raising Alcala and Nebres, who I also never liked much because of the way they overpowered the pencils.  And of course there was Colletta in the Silver Age, whose work screamed "Colletta" no matter whose pencils he was inking.

Too bad I sold off a bunch of long boxes a couple of years ago, which included a number of Strikeforce Murituri's, so now I can't pull them up to check out your early inks.  All I can say is that I'm glad you refined your style over time! 

[glendgold]

Two of my favorite inkers tend to vanish into the work they're doing: Leialoha and (believe it or not) Royer.  I always think of Mike as being incredibly bold, but that's because I'm mostly familiar with his Kirby inking.  I was at a party with him when someone was paging through a Barry Smith Conan comic.  Mike pointed at a page in the issue and said "I inked that."  We all thought he had to be pulling our legs, because it looked like Barry Smith inking.  He explained that Barry was late and Marvel gave him the chance to finish it.  But that single page took him TWELVE HOURS so he gave the rest of the book back.  No, I don't remember the issue, but it was later in the run.  I hope someone else has heard that story because it almost feels like I dreamed it.

[grapeape]

Leialoha one of my all time favorites.

[RBerman]

1 hour ago, glendgold said:

Two of my favorite inkers tend to vanish into the work they're doing: Leialoha and (believe it or not) Royer.  I always think of Mike as being incredibly bold, but that's because I'm mostly familiar with his Kirby inking.  I was at a party with him when someone was paging through a Barry Smith Conan comic.  Mike pointed at a page in the issue and said "I inked that."  We all thought he had to be pulling our legs, because it looked like Barry Smith inking.  He explained that Barry was late and Marvel gave him the chance to finish it.  But that single page took him TWELVE HOURS so he gave the rest of the book back.  No, I don't remember the issue, but it was later in the run.  I hope someone else has heard that story because it almost feels like I dreamed it.

I know pencil time rates vary widely, from multiple pages per day (Kirby, Byrne, manga) to less than a page a day (a lot of modern work). What was the norm for inking in the Bronze and Silver Age? Two pages a day? Murphy Anderson seemed to be inking multiple books simultaneously.

[grapeape]

On 9/1/2020 at 9:14 PM, BuraddoRun said:

Todd McFarlane is considered by many to be a modern master. When he was drawing Spider-Man, he basically fought the editors and drew Spidey how he wanted, and bucked the tried and true trends of old. Even his webbing was stylized in a way that didn't make sense to a lot of the staff. His big, splashy pages had flair, and exuded "cool." He also is very appreciative of and good to his fans. He worked very hard to get to where he is today, and he has and does inspire a lot of aspiring artists. Here's a documentary that SyFy recently did on him.

 

This was an excellent show comes in under an hour. Good recommendation!   

[ESeffinga]

I found it entertaining.

I will always bristle at McFarlane's 300 issue "milestone". Dave Sim might have taken Cerebus to some odd places, and filled issues with diatraibes of increasingly strange nonsense, but he made THE WHOLE THING. Sure Spawn has now run longer (more issues) but so has Batman. There are swaths of Spawn with no McFarlane writing, pencilling, inking, etc. It's a false hype pile of doodeedoodeedoo. But Todd is a character, and it's almost always amusing to hear him speak.

-e.

 

p.s. Larson is at least up over 250 issues now, and (shocker) pretty sure he worked on the whole thing.

p.p.s. The whole McFarlane story arc of work for hire ... fight The Man ... make his own book/company ... become one of big 3 companies ... become The Man ... to bring in artists to Work for Hire  has always struck me as all kinds of ironic. Admirable, but ironic.

Edited September 7, 2020 by ESeffinga

[vodou]

42 minutes ago, ESeffinga said:

I will always bristle at McFarlane's 300 issue "milestone". Dave Sim might have taken Cerebus to some odd places, and filled issues with diatraibes of increasingly strange nonsense, but he made THE WHOLE THING.

Huge asterix on McFarlane claim. Sim did it all, but not quite...we have Gerhard in there for half or more, right?

43 minutes ago, ESeffinga said:

Larson is at least up over 250 issues now, and (shocker) pretty sure he worked on the whole thing.

I'm not a fan or even reader of Savage Dragon (past ish #1 which I probably speculated on a full case of back in the day! ugh!!) but my sense is this is correct. Or were there some Don Simpson fill-ins or something in there? I think I remember something like that (but don't care to verify...whatever!)

This subject came up in the comments of this (now going totally OT, and sorry to all if it's just a huge bore and SKIP POST ) great review by the Great Kayfabers:

 

Lapham is up there, with over 90 SB issues (and all are more than standard 22 pages too) all story/art by him. But Fred Perry's Gold Digger (huh?! not for me, but clearly enough others to keep it viable!) appears to be the real winner of "1 person did the most" award. I mean if we're looking to set The Guinness benchmark, that's how I see it: "1 person...".

[ESeffinga]

33 minutes ago, vodou said:

I'm not a fan or even reader of Savage Dragon

 

Me either, FWIW. Never read any. Didn’t need to. Am a big fan of Stray Bullets.

Now that we’ve totally derailed this thread.

 

[grapeape]

I feel like the guy that got a clean canvas to work with. I painted:

“ComicLink Auction Starts With a Bang” and then you punk kids came along with your spray cans a paint and tagged my work with your indecipherable scribble scrabble.... GET OFF OF MY LAWN !!!!!

[vodou]

1 hour ago, grapeape said:

GET OFF OF MY LAWN !!!!!

It's not your lawn, you're just the caretaker.

[ESeffinga]

[grapeape]

13 minutes ago, vodou said:

It's not your lawn, you're just the caretaker.

It’s my property!!!!

[vodou]

1 hour ago, grapeape said:

It’s my property!!!!

Until you stop paying your property tax

[jjonahjameson11]

9 hours ago, vodou said:

Huge asterix on McFarlane claim. Sim did it all, but not quite...we have Gerhard in there for half or more, right?

 

Gerhard was inker on Cerebus #67-300

[jjonahjameson11]

On 9/7/2020 at 8:30 AM, ESeffinga said:

p.s. Larson is at least up over 250 issues now, and (shocker) pretty sure he worked on the whole thing.

But nobody cares/purchases it. 

Analogy: If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?

[ESeffinga]

Doesn’t mean he didn’t do it.
 

As opposed to McFarlane. Who DIDNT do it. I don’t care a whit about Larson. I can still tip my hat to him for the effort.

And to be fair, somebody is still buying his books. Maybe not you, or me, our any of our friends, but clearly he isn’t doing it for nothing. Must be enough to be worthwhile to him, or he’d throw in the towel.

 

 

[jjonahjameson11]

6 minutes ago, ESeffinga said:

Doesn’t mean he didn’t do it.
 

As opposed to McFarlane. Who DIDNT do it. I don’t care a whit about Larson. I can still tip my hat to him for the effort.

And to be fair, somebody is still buying his books. Maybe not you, or me, our any of our friends, but clearly he isn’t doing it for nothing. Must be enough to be worthwhile to him, or he’d throw in the towel.

 

 

OK, I'll concede the second point to you.  LOL!