Last week we talked about food that we cannot choke down; today will be something entirely different. It is all up to you. We will take any topic suggested and throw it out to the masses for consideration and conversation. The challenge is to keep the conversation rolling and going, so keep in mind that sidebars, tangents, and non sequiturs are welcome!
Here are the general rules:
1) Whoever gets here first (or even second) post a topic starter in the comments that others can jump on and discuss for the day; supply as little or as much detail as necessary to get the ball rolling.
3) The range of possible subjects is broad - comics, movies, music, television, fiction, hobbies, queries, etc. Try to have the topic touch some aspect of Bronze Age nostalgia if possible.
4) Keep it clean and family friendly.
5) All others...follow the Leader! Your job is to keep the conversation rolling. (As I said - follow the topic wherever it takes you; a conversation started about comics may lead to comments on jazz for all we know)!
Note: There is one caveat... if Redartz or I notice that the suggested topic is something we already have in the pipeline, we will let you know and inform you of the projected date for that subject for discussion. That is just so we don't double up. Hey - great minds think alike, right?
So give us something to sink our teeth into and we will be back later with our own comments on the topic! Cheers!
25 comments:
HumanBelly - where are you? You wanted to post something regarding comic strips? I been up all night waiting! You are an hour ahead of us midwesterners, out there in Maryland, shake a leg already! Time's a wastin and my fingers itchin to start typing something! O/wses hope you didn't oversleep LOL. CHeers.
I don't know if Charlie Horse 47's comment counts. If it doesn't, please disregard this posting.
Topic:When did one of your favorite comic book creator "lose" you as a fan?
I was a huge fan of John Byrne (a "Byrne Victim" as they say) during his X-Men run with Claremont and Austin.
I became a fan of whatever title he penciled (and to a lesser degree, comics he wrote but didn't draw). When he moved to DC, this Marvel Zombie began subscribing to Superman and Action Comics. When I stumbled on a series called 'John Byrne's Next Men', I had to check it out, even though I'd never bought any Dark Horse Comics.
But Byrne lost me with the Dark Horse series 'Babe'. The art was a step down from his usual quality and the stories were dumb and forgettable.
When Byrne returned to Marvel, I found his 'Spider-Man:Chapter One' and 'X-Men:The Hidden Years' to be lackluster. I even picked up one issue of a 2000s DC series called 'Lab Rats'. Garbage.
I still love his work from the 70s into the mid-80s, but it's been more than 20 years since I actively sought out everything he touched. And that's okay, great artists like him don't "owe" us anything more after so many years of great work.
Does anyone else have a similar story of "falling out of love" with a creator?
J.A. Morris got us started...losing interest in your favorite creator...what happened?
There will be plenty more Tuesdays, so let's roll with J.A.'s suggestion.
Cheers!
Comic creators, unlike musicians, have new material published so regularly that it can be difficult to see a decline or artistic change when it's happening. It's only with distance and hindsight that this becomes clear.
With that in mind, JR JR stands out. When I returned to comics in 2002 I was so disappointed with his art. It had taken the charming, naive quality of his best work and stylised it beyond my ability to enjoy it. In this case I'm not sure it was a decline in quality so much as an artistic choice.
A twist on this is not really caring for an artist in the Bronze Age, but later discovering Silver Age output and really liking it better.
Gil Kane, Don Heck, and Carmine Infantino would all fall into this category for me. So along JA's line of thought, I sort of came to them in a "falling out" state, but later really increased my respect and enjoyment of their work. As an adult I can now appreciate the breadth of their careers and the various phases of output.
Jack Kirby falls into this category for me as well.
So as a child, Gil Kane was weird contortions and nose upshots, Don Heck was stiff as a board, Infantino had those odd profile shots and the skidding-to-a-stop running poses, and Kirby was just so blocky...
I am so much more refined now. Seriously -- I appreciate all of it.
Doug
Hello All. Great question! It's hard fume to critique a writer since I was (generally) maturing while reading comics. So if I outgrew the target audience it's not the writer's fault? Artists however... I felt Kirby, Romita, and Kubert had become less enjoyable. I wish I could recall the Kubert works I'm thinking of to get this groups mich-more-informed opinion to see if Kubert or the inlet was the source? Maybe it was "Faxes from Sarajevo?"
I agree with JA and Colin for Byrne and JR JR. Both we're great early on, (a credit to their inkers, call back to the other day). By the time Byrne was doing Namor his work was awful. JR JRs DC stuff was also almost unrecognizable to his Ironman run. I agree with Colin that both chose different artistic paths. I think Kirby's decline was really just a matter of age. George Perez, however, faded for a bit, but then had a fantastic Avengers run with Kurt Busiek. Gil Kane's stuff always seemed to pop regardless of the decade. I do think Doug's point rings true as well, that what seemed weird to us as kids, had a completely new look through older eyes. I haven't enjoyed Kirby as much as I do now after 40+ years of collecting. I once heard you should re-read Moby Dick every decade because how you've changed. perhaps comics are the same..
Mike Grell was probably my favorite comic creator as a kid. From 1975-87 he created, wrote and drew his own comics, all successful-- from Warlord to Starslayer to Jon Sable to Green Arrow (didn't create him, but revitalized him). Shaman's Tears in the '90s lost me-- the writing didn't grip me like before, and the art looked competent but not special.
I agree with Colin about JR JR-- liked his early Iron Man best. The later work has a really solid structure, but doesn't seem human enough. With Doug's comments-- I disliked Kirby as a kid, but now he's my favorite artist and creator for his power and overflowing creativity. I'm still not a big Don Heck fan-- I've always seen talent there, but don't like the nervous energy. For Infantino, I like his Silver age art for Flash the best, and I'd like to get into his '80s Flash but haven't quite got there yet! I recently picked up Green Lantern Omnibus #1 with Kane's first Green Lantern art. It's not as rigorously structured and defined as his later art, but it has a nice sleek simple look.
I like Kubert from his '60 Sgt Rock all the way to his last works. I think he kept up his passion for what he was doing, the stories he was telling, and it shows in the quality of his later art. I like Kirby from the '40s up to about 1975, and his last work that I like would be his Bicentennial Captain America.
Neal Adams looked great up till his Superman vs Muhammad Ali comic. After that I think he lost his innovative approach to his art. When his energy went into running his own comic company and advertising, the art, while still skilled, lost that special flavour. I can't think of a great Neal Adams comic after 1978.
I think artists tend toward detail and realism early on, and as they get older a kind of generic quality creeps in. They seems less inspired by real life, and a kind of competence without inspiration sets in. That's at their worst. If an artist stays inspired by life as he gets older, using his experience while still observing and trying new things, he can stay vital. I'd say that works for everyone, not just artists.
I liked (and still do) Sal Buscema's early work (Hulk, Defenders, Spidey, MTU, almost everything up to the late 80s), but his later stuff, especially his long run on Spectacular, just doesn't work for me. It's like he lost all the detail ... it's just outlines basically, and no backgrounds either. Maybe it's just an inking thing (I think he mostly inked himself on those later issues), but whatever it is, I don't care for it.
Garett- your final point is an excellent one. I'm currently reading "Will Eisner- A Spirited Life" and he seems a perfect illustration of your point. Active and experimenting up to his death, his entire output is staggering in its quality. His search for new avenues for "sequential art" kept his eye and his pen sharp.
No artist has really lost me as a fan, but I'd agree that JR Jr. and Byrne have declined. Kirby's earlier work was more appealing to me. But overall Doug nailed it- as an adult I see value in each artist's work...
The only creator who I once loved but would now say has lost me as a fan is probably Frank Miller. His Daredevil run is still one of my all-time favorite creator runs on any title ever. But he started to lose me almost immediately after he left that book. His artwork started to become really overly stylized and borderline weird. Even his work on projects such as "The Dark Knight Returns" was less than steller, IMO. And I didn't at all like his work on his original creation "Ronin".
With his more recent stuff his art and writing have even gone further off the rails. For example his writing on "All Star Batman" was nothing short of atrocious. And "Holy Terror" (another original creation of his) is pretty much unreadable. Even his short foray into film directing on "The Spirit" motion picture was disastrously unwatchable.
Hiya,
Hey Garett,
Thank you, thank you, thank you for bringing up Kubert, one of the greatest from the Golden Age who kept growing as an artist through out his career. There were times that I didn't purchase the books that he worked on, but that was usually due to my lack of interest in the subject material rather than his artwork.
To be honest, I can't think of too many artists that I didn't develop a sense of ennui regarding their product, at least in certain stages of their career. They have to produce so much work that experimentation becomes impossible and they get lost in their style.
I once did a particularly mean thing when I broke down the work of one of our favorite artists, who will go unmentioned, into a series of panel breakdowns/designs. Afterwards I bought several of his latest books and used a magic marker to designate which panel followed which form. This was a Number 8 or that was a Number 12.
But in regards to Kubert, I truly believe that one of the reasons he kept his vitality to the end was the fact that he was a teacher. With his School of Graphic Arts he came into regular contact with the young aspiring pencilers and inkers, helping them develop their talents. I really think he picked up on their energy and vitality and it was reflected in his work.
Seeya,
pfgavigan
I'll be back after I've given some thought to when I became disenchanted with certain writers.
When I was a kid/teenager I was impressed by the early 70s work of John Buscema or Neil Adams. I was impressed by their mastery of the human body. But when I now look at John Buscemas Fantastic Four run I can feel no inspiration. It feels like just a "job". A repetition of Buscema bodies to fill the story. It feels static an a bit stale.
What I like now 40 years later is art that is aiming at something, even if it is not perfect. Or stuff where you feel some passion for the work. I tend to dislike "too elaborate" art, where every muscle is drawn in detail and prefer art that feels more sketched. In this regard I like Frank Millers Daredevil because he was still a non-perfect artist, still trying and experimenting and sometimes failing. Kirby is the same. His art flows, it feels sketched and not elaborated. Not static but flowing out of his pencils sometimes great sometimes a bit odd.
Chim --
Ooh, you made my heart hurt there for a second. But after pulling myself from the floor, I think you're most likely right. I hold John Buscema in such high regard that I think my bias clouds my vision of the printed page at times. To see Buscema unleashed on Conan, particularly in Savage Sword, is much different from his superhero work. And particularly the closer one gets to the end of his career.
That being said, he's about as far from falling out of my favor as anyone. Still #1 in my book.
I agree for the most part on others' criticisms of Frank Miller (especially) and John Byrne (to a lesser extent).
Doug
I sadly have to agree with many of your comments and add Byrne...nowadays he can barely be bothered to draw a comic, putting out a Photoshopped Trek comic of recycled photos. I do see some of his most recent commissions on Tumblr and his art has slipped a bit, and his inking is just awful. I've always thought Byrne needed a good inker, like JRJR, to give his line some weight or life. Saying that, I haven't read a regular Byrne run in years, but did enjoy his Cold War GN which had some interesting creative choices I'm not sure he would've done in a superhero comic.
Hiya,
Well, I'm back.
To start with the elephant in the room, I began to read Marvel during the end of the Silver Age, the last two years before Kirby's departure for DC. I got into Stan Lee's writing style, but didn't really have anyone to compare him too until much later. But even then, due to the reprint issues that we discussed last week, I could tell that Lee seemed . . . tired. Maybe, like the artists, he had more room to work in those earlier books. When the printers demanded a reduction in the size of the original artwork to accommodate their presses this reduced the number of panels per page and, thus, Lees room to work within them. Maybe he was just reaching the end of the writing stage of his career. Maybe he just wasn't clicking with the younger artists. Maybe he couldn't get from them what he had from Colan, Kirby, and Ditko.
When he stopped writing the monthly books it was, in retrospect, a wise decision.
With other writers, well Roy Thomas's return to Marvel was something I was really excited about. But on Doctor Strange he seemed intent on reversing or removing anything that had occurred in the title that he hadn't approved of. Granted,I get that he needed to establish his identity on the book, but a lot of those changes I had enjoyed at what Thomas gave me in return was a return to the character before he was interesting to me. I picked up the book for several issues before setting it permanently aside.
Also, I think the Rascally One wrote too many adaptations and tried far too hard to wrap up what he perceived to be continuity questions. I really didn't have any problems with the age of the Black Canary in regards to Earth Prime. Heck, just change her code name to the Black Cougar and move on.
Steve Englehart's return to Marvel seemed a bit tainted to me at the time and still does. He didn't seem truly interested in the work he produced. It felt rote to me, an exercise in writing down to what he thought we wanted. Eventually I stopped reading his titles.
Seeya,
pfgavigan
OK like my namesake Mike Wilson I have to say I like Sal Buscema's early work in the Bronze Age more than his recent stuff. When coupled with another competent artist like older brother Big John or Joe Sinnott, his work was very good, bordering on great, but I dunno - seems to me his artwork took a downslide (age?) as the years went on. Mind you, he's still one of my very favourite Bronze Age artists, but I definitely prefer his earlier work.
- Mike 'macular degeneration who?' from Trinidad & Tobago.
Heya CH47 and Guys&(maybe?hopefully?)Gals--
Sorrysorrysorry--- so sorry!
I was up and off to the shop well before 7 this A.M., which is when the new post pops up this-here timezone. . . and the day never stopped til now! From my own self-oriented perspective, heck, it's probably for the best, 'cause I wouldn't have been able to join in on the very topic that I was suggesting.
GOOD one here, though, yeah? PFG, you snagged my writer suggestion-- although Stan's later Spider-Man still had almost a life of its own, his FF was in pretty tough shape by the time he left the book. His overwrought, over-worked, over-enthusiastic earlier style was, for all of its flaws, what had carried him along for several years with its clearly sincere energy and enjoyment of the medium. It's almost like the responsibility of Marvel's unexpected success took some of the joy of being the battlin' underdog right out of the job for him. Indeed, his writing started to sound "job-like" and lacked inspiration. It's most obvious when, every now and again, he would jump back onto something for a "special" issue here and there-- and the effect was just jarring. Like a once-brilliant musician who hasn't practiced in a couple of decades. "It's like riding a bike" isn't an analogy that works in every discipline. . .
I think as far as artists go, I'd say the one who I once liked a LOT that went farthest off a stylistic deep end that I truly hated was Bill Sienkiewicz. His run on New Mutants made me long for the comparative beauty of the Hostess ads. IIRC, Doug may have been more a fan of that phase, but man--- NOT me! Utter absence of visual storytelling in a comic book seems to be a it counter-productive to me ol' sensibilities.
My main man Herb Trimpe never got back to the shifting styles of his glory years, and he seemed to pick up worse and worse trendy habits the harder he tried. BUT-- never soured my admiration for the fella-!
HB
HB --
Not this guy. I've never warmed at all to Bill Sienkiewicz; Keith Giffen, too. As a Legion fan, I know I'm in the minority in that I really don't care for Giffen's work on that book. I never read his stint on Defenders.
Never was a New Mutants reader, unless the book crossed over with X-Men or X-Factor.
Doug
HB, I have to agree wholeheartedly with your assessment of Bill Sienkiewicz. I couldn't stand his art on New Mutants. That was my first exposure to his work, and when I looked back on some of the earlier stuff he did on titles like Moon Knight, I couldn't believe it was the same artist.
I have to assume his radical change of style was a conscious decision, but what a terrible decision it was. I can only assume he just got too lazy to try to draw well, and decided to go with an abstract style so he could just rush out pages and call it "art".
I remember a friend of mine was like "He's a genius." And I was like, "He's a genius because he draws badly? Well then, I must be a genius too."
HB, from what I understand Herb Trimpe was not a fan of latter Herb Trimpe artwork, but he was pretty much told by the Powers-That-Be that unless his work was more like the latest boy wonders (the Image crowd) that he wouldn't be getting any work from them.
I say this with immense care because I still admire the man I'm about to discuss.
But Roy Thomas increasing obsession with minor continuity glitches made me wince as he seemed to lose focus on the big dramatic sweep of characters and get tangled up in worrying about costume details and the oddball disappearance of this or that minor character. I'm not saying the stories produced were awful, but the focus was clearly backward as opposed to forward.
At Marvel in his early days Roy excelled at taking old characters and breathing new vigorous life into them (Vision, Black Knight, and such) but later on at DC it seemed to be about making the ragtag continuity of the Justice Society smooth and not really upsetting the apple cart to create new stuff. That rather ended when he was forced to deal with the Crisis but until then it was a shop dedicated to polishing up Golden Age continuity.
Roy is still one of my favorite writers, but I saw his flaws during this time and it hurt to see them. When he revived and developed Alter Ego his obsessions had a proper home and I've since seen him do great work of a different kind all over again.
Rip Off
Two artists who started out being exceptionally great but eventually became ... not so great .... are Mike Golden and Paul Gulacy. It's a crying shame to look at their more recent work.
Regards to Steve Englehart, I loved most of his '70s work for Marvel, even when drawn by artists I really didn't care for (mainly Frank Robbins on CA&TF) but most of his work upon his return in the 80s didn't quite gel with me, except for his run on the Silver Surfer, but then it also helped that he had Marshall Rogers collaborating during the first year. Allowing SS to actually fly off into space and not wallow in near constant misery were positive improvements over Stan's run. Also, IMO Englehart & Marshall managed to add a bit of fun to the mag, which was sorely missing from the Lee & Buscema run, excellent as the art was.
I also share the assessment of Sal Buscema -- I loved his art on Captain America and on the Defenders in the '70s but in the '80s (or maybe '90s), at a time when I'd stopped regularly collecting most Marvel titles, I picked up an anniversary issues of Spectacular Spider-Man, wherein Spidey and Harry Osborne as the Green Goblin fought it out and Harry dies. It had one of those fancy hologram covers but Sal's art on the interior was, in my estimation, horrid. Ok, certainly easy to figure out what was going on, but boring as hell to look at, uninspired, looking more like the sort of Brand Ecch art Lee & Big John Buscema presented as examples of how NOT to draw comics the Marvel Way.
Fred --
I know the issue to which you refer. It's my belief that Sal was trying to Image-up his look, and the result was not that great. As you said, the story was paced well enough, but the pictures were not as pretty as those Sal had drawn even a decade earlier.
Doug
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