|
Post by Deleted on Mar 29, 2020 3:49:01 GMT -5
The difference an inker makes-same pencils, four different classic inkers.... -M
|
|
|
Post by Deleted on Apr 4, 2020 0:47:34 GMT -5
Apparently the Kubert School does a weekly livestream interview show on Facebook, where two members of the faculty/staff (Anthony Marques & Fernando Ruiz) bring in an industry guest and talk comics. This week's guest was Dan Dido, and they talked about a lot of topics form comics past,the 80s indy scene, th future of comics in the wake of the pandemic, pricing and formatting, what makes a good editor, etc. Lots of behind the scenes glimpses into the nature of the business of comics and a lot of stuff geared towards Kubert School students looking to break in as well. Since proboards doesn't support facebook videos, I cannot post the video here, but here is a link to the inteview. It runs about an hour. Some of the highlights for me -the advice Didio got form Julius Schwartz on overseeing a super-hero universe-Schwartz told him every ten years or so you have to give the shared universe an enema, wash out all the accumulated junk, keep what works and essentially start over building it up again-which I find amusing/interesting/ironic since it is Schwartz and the creation of Earth-2 that a lot of fans point to as to how to keep everything in continuity and try to preserve everything. -Didio saying that Marvel had the best method of preserving continuity/consistency in that they used the core of the character from the origin on one hand, and the most recent appearance on the other as bookends for the character and let everything in between get fuzzy, but as long as you stayed true to the bookends (i.e. the core and the most recent take) you could keep everything in line. -that the current customer base for comics has proven to be price insensitive-they will buy product they want at any price, and lowering the price won't increase sales appreciably if it is not something they want, so essentially price has little impact on sales levels among the current customer base. -the idea that the format and manner of distribution (direct vs. mass market) are simply method of delivering product to customers but neither defines (or should define) what comics are and that comics will endure no matter what the market is in terms of format and distribution because there is always a demand for storytelling whatever the format/marketplace and lots more. Whether you liked or despised what he did within his roles in the industry, he has a lot of interesting insights into the medium and the market, and the interview is worth checking out as food for thought, even if you disagree with him. -M
|
|
|
Post by rberman on Apr 4, 2020 7:41:25 GMT -5
"Every ten years" does seem to be DC's pattern. When I came back to comics, I was amazed how many reboots they'd done in the interim.
|
|
|
Post by Deleted on Apr 4, 2020 8:03:16 GMT -5
The difference an inker makes-same pencils, four different classic inkers.... -M Hulk looks so different in each of those pics. I'm thinking Klaus Janson's inking is the best...but then as I look at them all closer it is really is hard to tell. Is there a penciled version of this before the inks?
|
|
|
Post by Prince Hal on Apr 4, 2020 10:20:47 GMT -5
@mrp, as someone who didn't really follow comics faithfully from the late 80s on, I wonder if the 10-year part of the advice was as applicable as it was during Schwartz's tenure, given that fans hung around a lot longer than they did back in the old days when they aged out of comics.
Ten years was an eon back then and even in the late Silver Age, it was rare to encounter 16- or 17-year-olds who were still reading comics.
|
|
|
Post by Deleted on Apr 4, 2020 11:03:37 GMT -5
DC Comics 1987 press release on the 50th anniversary of Superman... -M
|
|
|
Post by Batflunkie on Apr 4, 2020 12:28:36 GMT -5
"Every ten years" does seem to be DC's pattern. When I came back to comics, I was amazed how many reboots they'd done in the interim. I think people tend to grossly overstate how many reboots DC has gone through. All we've had is Crisis On Infinite Earths and New 52. I'd hesitate to call DCYou and Rebirth "reboots" though
|
|
|
Post by rberman on Apr 4, 2020 12:53:01 GMT -5
"Every ten years" does seem to be DC's pattern. When I came back to comics, I was amazed how many reboots they'd done in the interim. I think people tend to grossly overstate how many reboots DC has gone through. All we've had is Crisis On Infinite Earths and New 52. I'd hesitate to call DCYou and Rebirth "reboots" though What were Flashpoint and Infinite Crisis and whatever this 1985 this they're doing now?
|
|
|
Post by beccabear67 on Apr 4, 2020 13:18:44 GMT -5
Inkers: I'm thinking Joe Rubinstein's Hulk is the most faithful to the pencilled Hulk. I guess he's one of my favorite all-arounders, good on everyone, though i don't remember him inking a Colan or Sekowsky like Dick Giordano, another all-arounder, did. Al Milgrom is at least close to an all-arounder. Other inkers are great on certain pencillers but not so great on others, and then there are the over-inkers... Bob Budiansky, Rudy Nebres or Akin & Garvey for example... they have their place too though, they overpower so putting them on a sparse penciller ala Sal Buscema, Romita Jr., or Howard Chaykin in layouts mode works well enough.
I guess Dick Giordano is my ideal all-arounder inker. He could go from Alex Toth to Neal Adams, Michael Golden to Jose Garcia-Lopez, Marshall Rogers to John Byrne, and produce classic covers all on his own to boot that fit in with whatever the contents were.
Price-insensitity: It's true, if it's got 'the stuff' you value you will pay any price for it. As for it effecting the kids and their newspaper route, bottle collecting pocket change allowances... that's gone a long time ago I suspect. Video games of $35-50 are mostly bought by people under 21 I would think, and I also remember young people buying what seemed very expensive role-playing games books, figures, and cards compared to what I would drop on most comics I was reading. I have no idea what the funko figures and stuff retails for but maybe a similar thing. Most any kind of retailers, if they are smart that is, want indefinite shelf-life higher value items as their stock, and lower profit per unit time sensitive stock only if necessary to bring people in. Of course there are only so many Rolex or Rolls dealerships possible, but for a model we have now with dedicated businesses focused primarily on comics and related items you will see the pressure on price per item to go higher, whereas the newsstand spinner rack model was just a small subsection of a larger periodical or general goods business and sought to tempt non-dedicated occasional buying.
Superman's 50th: I think I remember watching some kind of major network program on it. I thought of it when I watched the more recent tribute to Stan Lee show. It seemed to be a lot about the movies as the Stan Lee one was.
Re-boots; the only one I have feelings for would be the DC late '50s-early '60s one. It's interesting all on it's own and they haven't been able to come anywhere near that first one that came about organically from necessity by non-fans in charge. New characters, old names, new costumes, new groups... I guess now the fan market is overly resistant to change, or else the former fans in charge want to consolidate or rewrite too much? Did the late '50s or early '60s reset change anything from the 'golden age'? It was all still there, except at Marvel in so far as Captain America was in an iceberg, and the '50s Cap (& Bucky) had to be somebody else. All the rest was there unaltered for Roy Thomas to make use of. I suppose Marvel's mid-late '80s new Universe was Jim Shooter's attempt to start again with new characters for new readers, a noble attempt perhaps but fairly unsuccessful commercially. The Impact titles at DC in the early '90s (and basic lowest price format) also failed to quite take hold, folding in a little under two years. Then there are things like 2099, 10,000,000 (or whatever that number was for DC), and M2. They also proved very finite. Meanwhile Donald Duck, Archie and Alfred E. Newman just kept going and going.
|
|
|
Post by Batflunkie on Apr 4, 2020 13:57:05 GMT -5
I think people tend to grossly overstate how many reboots DC has gone through. All we've had is Crisis On Infinite Earths and New 52. I'd hesitate to call DCYou and Rebirth "reboots" though What were Flashpoint and Infinite Crisis and whatever this 1985 this they're doing now? Flashpoint was the setup/lead in for New 52 and I know next to nothing about Infinite Crisis or 1985, so I can't comment
|
|
|
Post by Deleted on Apr 4, 2020 15:47:38 GMT -5
What were Flashpoint and Infinite Crisis and whatever this 1985 this they're doing now? Flashpoint was the setup/lead in for New 52 and I know next to nothing about Infinite Crisis or 1985, so I can't comment Zero Hour was a soft reboot in '94 roughly 10 years after Crisis. Infinite Crisis was an even softer reboot but did change the nature of the DCU bringing back a multiverse and it was in '05, roughly 10 years after Zero Hour. Flashpoint/new52 was only 6 years after that though, Rebirth 5 years after that... However, it reminds me of the pattern/paradigm that some put forward in the tabletop rpg industry, i.e, approximately every 5-10 years, you need to put a new edition of a game out to refresh it, bring in new audiences, get more money form existing players, etc. and we hod OD&D in '74, AD&D in '79, AD&D 2nd edition in '89, 3rd edition in '98-99, 3.5 is 2003, 4th edition in 2009, 5th edition in 2012 is (I can't recall exactly as I was part of the playtest for a year before its release). But the further you go, the more diminishing your returns are, so the more often you have to hit the refresh button to get the same results. The pattern was pretty clear in rpgs, and I see the same pattern with DC's reboot/refresh pattern, though I am not sure there was such a refresh after the changes of the Silver Age in the 50s/60s, unless it was in micro-installments (a refresh of Batman with the post-'66 changes by O'Neil, Adams and company to go to a darker Batman, the infusion of the Kirby concepts into the DCU int he early 70s, etc. though I wouldn't call any of those a reboot, but they were a refresh. -M
|
|
|
Post by Deleted on Apr 4, 2020 23:29:42 GMT -5
From Will Meugniot, veteran comic and animation artist... ahh the ubiquitous Gil Kane up the nostril shot... -M
|
|
|
Post by Deleted on Apr 4, 2020 23:34:33 GMT -5
Steranko cover to the Comic Crusader Fanzine #17, circa 1973... -M
|
|
|
Post by dbutler69 on Apr 5, 2020 8:59:09 GMT -5
The difference an inker makes-same pencils, four different classic inkers.... -M Hmmm, after much thought, I like the Joe Rubenstein one the most and the Klaus Jansen one the least. What I find interesting is that the thumb position of Hulk's left hand is different in each drawing.
|
|
|
Post by kirby101 on Apr 5, 2020 9:33:08 GMT -5
A little bigger
|
|