Welcome to Konstaninopolis. No Turk is getting in here.
No one. Comparing the art in these comics to that of the comics I grew up with - sorry, Jack Kirby - or even a quarter century ago I'm just astonished at a lot of it. Reading a current comic like Supergirl #1 or Justice League #1 which somewhat younger or more sophisticated readers here have evaluated as short on story or artistically unimpressive is a qualitatively different experience for me than reading one in the 1970s - the newer are generally better all around. The detail and dimensionality of the imagery in a comic like Superman #1 - and I pick that example because I thought the art was the most crowded and old-fashioned of any I've read in the re-launch - is really amazing compared to old comics.
Agreed. I'm a huge fan of the older retro stuff, but what comic artists are doing now is just SO much more sophisticated. The grasp of anatomy, the dynamic compositions, and just the sheer amount of detail is impressive as hell.
When you look at all that goes into any one panel nowadays, it seems kind of amazing that they get these comics out as often as they DO.
I dunno. I don't. On one hand, the level of photorealistic representation is often waaaay more advanced and technically adept than Silver and Golden Age books. We can thank Neal Adams for that, for good or ill.
On the other hand, this is a stylistic choice. It's working harder, not necessarily working smarter. Ed Benes uses more graphite than Curt Swan did, I guess. But so what?
And additionally, take someone like John Cassaday, capable of amazing work but who will go off-model as fuck in the panel-to-panel, in part because of the level of detail he strives for. And 25% of Planetary probably didn't have a background. Or Jim Lee, who draws little lines all over compositions that are not particularly superior to the average Silver Age book. Does it take a lot of time to draw little lines? Eh, maybe.
One of these days, I'd like to see a mainstream book use manga principles but a Western animation aesthetic. What I mean is I'd like to see Darwyn Cooke draw more comic books, and more people draw like Darwyn Cooke. I would, but I don't, because it's
harder than it looks.
Love him or hate him. John Byrne
LOVE.
I welcome the Giffenverse.
Although one might bear in mind the last time Keith Giffen wrote as many comics in a single continuity, it was when he was closing out Valiant.
Did a good job, tho. It was a mercy killing.
Giffen, I do like. But my one worry with him writing so many titles is that the quality's going to start to go down. And frankly he's an older writer from a different time. Perez, Jurgens, Lobdell, Nicieza, Levitz, Lefield, and Giffen and many of them like Jurgens, Lobdell, Nicieza and Giffen are being treated like old work horses.
See, but one of these things is not like the other. Er, well, two, actually, but Liefeld is different in a different way.
I'd place Giffen in the pantheon of comics masters. Pretty much everything he's ever done has either succeeded or been a beautiful, ambitious failure. The rest of those guys just aren't in his league. He's an innovator, and an experimentalist, when Lobdell or Nicieza are not. Even JLI, usually considered Giffen being silly, was experimental at the time. Hell, actually
being funny would probably be considered experimental now. (And the mastery of brutal tonal shifts is rivaled by none, to the extent I'm not even sure how he and deMatteis
did it; Simone is probably the only latterday creator to come close.)
I'd say the only DC writer who is of the same mold as Giffen is Morrison. (And I like Morrison a bit better, but that may only because I've been alive and literate during most of Morrison's career, and Morrison's career has been better publicized and better collected, bar Zenith.)
The only downside to Giffen is that he is likelier to physically die before a newer creator would.
In my ideal world Paul Cornell would have been given "Superman". I'm surprised DC didn't offer him the book in the first place after his acclaimed run on Action.
I'm surprised they didn't use Black Ring to end the old DC universe. Tell they totally
couldn't have. It would've been great. Their greatest villain, becoming their greatest hero, and ending conflict and hatred for all time.
Also, it would've been surprising, which the actual ending to Black Ring was not. Oh, Lex Luthor hates Superman more than he loves absolute power and DC would prefer to continue making comics? Really? Holy cow, what a twist!
