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Post by badwolf on Dec 21, 2021 21:09:37 GMT -5
One person's 'jumping the shark' might be another person's 'jumping on' point...
For me it would be the early 90s...I could not stand anything with Rob Liefeld artwork in it. I hated it then and despise it even more now.
I'm also not a fan of McFarlane's Spidey...so there's a large gap in my Spidey run....I just don't like it.
I never liked Liefeld's art but there was a time when I liked McFarlane's. I bought the first story arc of his Spider-Man series and some early Spawn issues. Now I look at his art and I don't know what I was thinking.
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Post by tarkintino on Dec 21, 2021 22:41:01 GMT -5
One person's 'jumping the shark' might be another person's 'jumping on' point...
For me it would be the early 90s...I could not stand anything with Rob Liefeld artwork in it. I hated it then and despise it even more now.
I'm also not a fan of McFarlane's Spidey...so there's a large gap in my Spidey run....I just don't like it.
McFarlane was simply horrible, and made continuing with TASM difficult.
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Post by kirby101 on Dec 21, 2021 22:55:04 GMT -5
I liked McFarlane on ASM.
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Post by DubipR on Dec 22, 2021 9:21:00 GMT -5
One person's 'jumping the shark' might be another person's 'jumping on' point...
For me it would be the early 90s...I could not stand anything with Rob Liefeld artwork in it. I hated it then and despise it even more now.
I'm also not a fan of McFarlane's Spidey...so there's a large gap in my Spidey run....I just don't like it.
I'm not a fan of McFarlane's Spider-Man either but I had to stop at 300, because it's a milestone issue. He's the reason why I left the title; I still the art isn't good all these years later.
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Post by mikelmidnight on Dec 22, 2021 12:22:47 GMT -5
Invaders when they finished the storyline where they were captured and paraded in Berlin, then rescued by Brian Falsworth, as the new Union Jack. It pretty much loses all steam at that point and never really recovers.
I was never a Frank Robbins fan (and think he destroyed Captain America when given the book, mid-storyline) but he was perfect for The Invaders, and the series seemed to lose a lot of energy when he left.
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Post by profh0011 on Dec 23, 2021 11:43:05 GMT -5
I think we can actually blame editor Len Wein for Frank Robbins. I noticed some years ago that for the entire time Roy Thomas was listed as editor, every issue of CAP was done by Sal Buscema, except for that one very unusual Alan Weiss fill-in (which made me dearly wish Weiss had done a lot more). The same month Len took over, Frank Robbins turned up out of nowhere. I suppose Wein wanted to "shake things up". That was the same time that Marvel went from like 99% Gil Kane covers (most of which I didn't care for) to just about ANYONE ELSE doing covers.. including, the interior artists. (That was when Gene Colan started drawing TOMB OF DRACULA covers.) When, years later, I finally got around to seeing Frank Robbins' work on JOHNNY HAZARD (1944-1977), it was a pleasant shock. I'm afraid that Robbins was an extreme example of an artist who did FAR-better work when he wasn't working for Marvel. On the other hand, his WRITING on BATMAN was classic stuff. (He's the one, for example, who wrote the story where Dick Grayson first went off to college... Bruce shut down Wayne Manor... moved to the Wayne Enterprises building penthouse... and set up the new Batcave in the sub-basement. Kinda like The Green Hornet-- HEH.)
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Post by tarkintino on Dec 23, 2021 13:42:32 GMT -5
I was never a Frank Robbins fan (and think he destroyed Captain America when given the book, mid-storyline) Same here. If not for my deep interest in stories set during WW2, I would have never continued with The Invaders with Robbins as the artist.
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Post by adamwarlock2099 on Dec 23, 2021 13:54:49 GMT -5
I liked McFarlane on ASM. I don't have much of his ASM, but I have all the issues he did in Spider-man and quite enjoy them. Artistically I think he's a better fit for the character (and villains) than he was as the writer. But even at that I didn't think they were all that bad.
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Post by codystarbuck on Dec 24, 2021 1:32:43 GMT -5
I liked Mcfarlane on Infinity, Inc and Batman: Year two, and even Invasion. Never cared for him at Marvel or for Spawn.
I think McFarlane is actually a pretty good graphic designer; just not a great storyteller. He was far more interested in doing an image on a page, whether it advanced or served the story or not. It worked for him, both in the resale value of his original art, but drawing attention to himself from fans. They make great posters.....they just don't always tell great stories.
Liefeld, on the other hand, struggled with layout and anatomy. I think the one thing he had going for him was enthusiasm, which I think connected with a certain set of fans and his fans seemed younger than his critics. He was "big" and "loud" and threw everything at the reader, which spoke to a certain audience; but, I don't think that audience stuck with him long.
Valentino I liked better away from straight superheroes (non-comical, not heterosexual). Loved Normalman, enjoyed what I saw of Touch of Silver.
Larson I never warmed to, but, his work in Savage Dragon wasn't "awful" in my eyes, though that was my reaction to his work in Doom Patrol, when he was a rookie. He polished off some of the rougher edges. just not my cup of tea.
Silvestri neither wowed nor annoyed me. His stuff was fine, neither spectacular or awful; just.....fine.
Lee, I felt, was a better rounded artist than many of his colleagues; but, I felt his stuff was over-rendered and he had no really interesting story to tell. He just seemed to churn out generic superhero stories. I still don't get why some gush about Hush and stuff like that. Looks the same to me as WildCATS. To each their own.
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Post by badwolf on Dec 24, 2021 9:55:04 GMT -5
Silvestri was better than most of the others. I liked him better than JRJR on X-Men, but I still dropped the book during his tenure.
Jim Lee is sometimes very good. I think Hush is the best I've seen from him, but he'd never be on the top of my list.
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Post by profh0011 on Dec 24, 2021 12:07:20 GMT -5
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Post by mikelmidnight on Dec 24, 2021 12:24:34 GMT -5
There were many Silver Age artists who did fantastic work when NOT working on superheroes, but who got stuck with superhero assignments because that's what was selling at the time, thus convincing many fans they were mediocre artists.
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Post by MDG on Dec 24, 2021 14:06:21 GMT -5
There were many Silver Age artists who did fantastic work when NOT working on superheroes, but who got stuck with superhero assignments because that's what was selling at the time, thus convincing many fans they were mediocre artists.
There are plenty of interviews with artists who entered the business in the 40s and 50s who said they'd rather work on other types of stories, but superheroes was where the jobs were. We were talking somewhere on the board about Al Williamson becoming a utility inker in the 80s. Part may have been that he didn't want to (or didn't feel he could) lay out and pencil superhero stories. The one "Superman" story he drew (#400) was essentially a science fiction story.
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Post by kirby101 on Dec 24, 2021 14:23:18 GMT -5
It's not that he couldn't do superhero stories, I am sure Marvel would have found stories that fit him. It's that his technique was too slow for it to be viable.
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Post by Batflunkie on Dec 24, 2021 14:25:25 GMT -5
I was never a Frank Robbins fan (and think he destroyed Captain America when given the book, mid-storyline) but he was perfect for The Invaders, and the series seemed to lose a lot of energy when he left. I liked Robbins in the sense that he gave otherwise grim melodramas targeted at a young audience a very "saturday morning cartoon" feel. The only thing that I didn't like about his work was how he rendered Red Skull
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