OFF: Comics

[C Mumford]

At 13:02 06.01.98 -0600, BREVARD, Adrian wrote:


>I dunno, I thought the artwork was very poor, generally I think most of
>the artwork today is substandard.  They either smother you with detail
>or try and catch you with retro art.  Has to be a middle ground in there
>somewhere.

Ah, but there's that impressionist/expressionist post Vertigo thang.....
which is sorta what the new Creeper art is like, and I think it's cool to
see Sal Buscema doing the inks because he's actually always been pretty
experimental with his inkwork (that angular, spontaneous, simple aesthetic
linework, whatever... :)

> If I recall right Creeper was the original Psycho superhero.
> This guy never played with a full deck.  DC Comics should have really
>worked that back in the days.  Now he's just another in the same line as
>Wolverine, Lobo and the rest of the whackos.

Yeah, but he was first still! And no, Wolverine & Lobo are IMO in a
different class of "psycho" - the "badass psycho". Creeper is more like
"repressed weirdo creep" psycho >;^>

>You like Sal but didn't like John?  Rememeber that scene from the movie
>Crimson Tide.  Two sailors were fighting over who's version of the
>Silver Surfer was superior  Buscema's or Jack Kirby?  To me hands down
>John Buscema.  He streamlined the Surfer and gave him expressions.
>Kirby was too robotic.

On this I agree (I just hate him for all that generic stuff. All looks the
same... only a demnted genius like Alfredo Alcala could fix his dreary
Conan work...)

I worship Kirby and think of him every day as I look out to the cosmos...
wax my golfclubs.... ride my moose.... watch the olympic stadium explode...

> Buscema's Fantastic Four was also better than
>Kirby's too.

DISAGREE! OK - Pow! Kick! Haha! This is just like Crimson Tide by Kirby....
Seriously, Kirby did some super-tripppola mind melting stuff on the 60's
FF!! Insane gigantic clunky robotic machinery, krazy kirby krakkles (TM)
emanating all over the place, those massive double page collages.... if
anyone could convey pure COSMIC POWER! it was King Jack - his towering,
booming Galactus, the infinity of space... gimme Ego The Living Planet over
Red Sonja any day baby!

>>Hell, the guy, like Jim Aparo drew people made of cardboard but sure could
>tell a story and knew his solid draftsmanship inside out.
>
>I loved Aparo's Batman, no one has come close to his version of the Dark
>Knight.

Oh absolutely. He defined the character so much. His drawings were often
very stiff and funny, like he would use every classic hack trick in the
book, like tilting stock panels where stiff characters were standing around
at a straight on angle etc. Or every single street thug/gang member from
the 80's and onwards wore a cheesy mohawk! Indelibly imprinted on my mind.
And like Swan he always drew about the same 3 different faces on everyone
but with different hair! CLASSIC! I dropped the Batman books around the
whole grotesque Knightfall thingie (well and jumped back on when Kelley
Jones wised up), and at that time Aparo was really on the skids - some of
his work in the 90s is really wretched, though it's cool to see people like
Bill Sienkiewicz or Kelley Jones "fix" Aparo up with wild inks! But dig out
the issue of Batman with the huge CU of the mohawk punker with a gun and
flip through it - if I remember correctly the splash page has all these
bats flying at you and it looks like Aparo drew/inked that and the entire
book drunk, with a ballpoint on the train!!!


>Word!  They seem to support only what was popular and then hit us with
>the multi titles.  How many villians could Spidey fight simultaneously?
>X-man, X Factor, X-Force, Avengers, West Coast Avengers  yeeesh.  Go
>back to the old days when less was so much more.

Stupid stupid stupid. Everyone but Marvel saw it, kept saying it, but no,
Marvel kept doing it. Spread out their books so much that kids eventually
couldn't afford every single friggin "group" or crossover and just dropped
ALL of them overnight. Haha. Told you so... I was one, maybe 8-10 years
ago. Realized that what I was attempting/spending was crazy - I hated most
of those books anyway! I dropped about 30 titles off my subscription that
day, 99% were trash Marvels.... About 3 years ago I had my second "blow
out" - dropped the IMO (still probably pretty) decent superhero stuff like
Superman, most Batmans, Hulk etc. etc. Just got sick of it.... I've
pleasantly surprised by the new Silver Surfer stuff and the brand new FF
now that I finally dared to try Marvel again...

>  And by all means send
>Thor back to the Cosmos and Asgard for some old time reaving, pillaging
>and wenching.  Man I miss they way Thor and Asgard played hell in the
>Heavens.

YES!!! WALT SIMONSON! there's the man with the master plan!  BTW, Thor was
where I really started appreciated Sal Buscema's art - it really clicked
with Simonsen's vision when he went over to just writing. Then Tom DeFalco
fucked over every cool/awesome/righteous thing Simonsen did with Thor (RIP
#337-382). Then DeFalco went back for seconds and ERASED it ALL from
continuity. The only decent Thor I have seen since was Bruce Zick's version
- Zick is really underrated/obscure but I really recommend his cool/bizarre
sci-fi comics like Zone Continuum. Zick is *inspired* by Kirby rather than
a *sleazy "tribute" copy* like Ron Frenz...

>BTW Nobody could draw a comic book like Neal Adams.  Whatever happened
>to him?

Adams decided to clone himself and got lost :) He lost it in the early 80s
when he'd gone back into commercial advertising art and then tried coming
back into comics as a megalomaniac with a studio (Continuity) of people
drawing everything like him and cranking out substandard junk with his name
all over it. God knows how he survived the 80s, Continuity Comics died a
looooong, slooow death from its wretched inception to its last whimper a
few years ago. For a laugh check out his "Skateman" from PC comics... or
Toy Boy!

But in his GA/GL, Batman, X-Men etc. 60s/70s days, the man was absolutely
brilliant......

Rant quota for the day filled!
Christian