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Post by impulse on Mar 15, 2023 9:33:41 GMT -5
Well that horror comic was as horribly depressing as it was well drawn.
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Post by tonebone on Mar 17, 2023 13:54:35 GMT -5
I was fine with his Star Wars stuff, though I preferred Chaykin or Walt Simonson. With Carmine it was more in the details of how he drew things like the blasters and some of the ships, as he either ignored them, or didn't quite capture the look (like the Star Destroyers). Also never cared for how he drew lightsabers. I also wanted to see them get Luke out of the space pajamas far earlier than they did. The comic strip did (at least, when Al Williamson took over) as did the movies. the pre-Empire Marvel stories stuck with the desert clothes, even on water worlds and other places. Leia never got out of her dress, until much later. That said, I thought he told Archie's stories quite well and the book was always dynamic. Speaking of Archie.... I love the different art style that Francisco Francavilla brought to Afterlife with Archie. It was dark and moody, but still hovered around his cartoony roots. Not real keen on the newer "non-classic" styles of the modern era runs. The old classic cartoony style art (and stories) will always be the TRUE Archie for me. I always think of Dan Decarlo's style as the definitive Archie style, but have enjoyed, in my grown-up years, getting to know the subtle differences of Harry Lucey, Sam Schwartz, Bob Montana, Bob Bolling, and the others that brought the gang to life.
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Post by badwolf on Mar 17, 2023 15:35:18 GMT -5
I know Dan DeCarlo wasn't the original but his style will always be the definitive Archie for me. To be honest I find the older style kind of creepy. When I was a kid I had a digest that had a mix of older and then-current style, and the older look really put me off.
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Post by codystarbuck on Mar 17, 2023 20:53:36 GMT -5
I was fine with his Star Wars stuff, though I preferred Chaykin or Walt Simonson. With Carmine it was more in the details of how he drew things like the blasters and some of the ships, as he either ignored them, or didn't quite capture the look (like the Star Destroyers). Also never cared for how he drew lightsabers. I also wanted to see them get Luke out of the space pajamas far earlier than they did. The comic strip did (at least, when Al Williamson took over) as did the movies. the pre-Empire Marvel stories stuck with the desert clothes, even on water worlds and other places. Leia never got out of her dress, until much later. That said, I thought he told Archie's stories quite well and the book was always dynamic. Speaking of Archie.... I love the different art style that Francisco Francavilla brought to Afterlife with Archie. It was dark and moody, but still hovered around his cartoony roots. Not real keen on the newer "non-classic" styles of the modern era runs. The old classic cartoony style art (and stories) will always be the TRUE Archie for me. I always think of Dan Decarlo's style as the definitive Archie style, but have enjoyed, in my grown-up years, getting to know the subtle differences of Harry Lucey, Sam Schwartz, Bob Montana, Bob Bolling, and the others that brought the gang to life. Well I was speaking of Goodwin; but, yeah, Archie Comics has really proven that they are willing to take chances and they have stayed relevant because of it. I agree on the DeCarlo style; but, I don't mind a bit of a change, for the right reasons. I haven't seen Afterlife with Archie; but did glance at some of the more recent era things. One of the things I always noticed, when I discovered comic shops and would go in them in various places, was the almost universal lack of Archie, other than a few things in back issue bins. No current stuff and not a lot of back issue material, compared to superhero. Too many comic shops, to me, felt like "No Children Allowed...and We'd Prefer No Girls, Unless they Are Models." Not the majority; but, too many for comfort. It always felt short-sighted, if nothing else. I just wish Archie would have really put some effort behind their superhero characters. The Red Circle revival sounded good on paper; but, it did not live up to things, beyond the reprints and a handful of individual issues of different titles. Impact had some fun stuff; but didn't begin to scratch the surface and it felt like the bloom went off the rose quickly. I have glanced at, but haven't sat down to read the more recent era Dark Circle attempt, though I heard good things about The Fox. The DC second attempt (The Red Circle) had moments; but didn't last long enough to really get going. I really, really wanted their proposed Spectrum Line to be published, because it sounded really interesting; but, the bosses, at the time, killed the project, because they felt it was too dark and too mature reader. I get that; but, it was also the first attempt to do something different with them and, the original MLJ stories did get kind of dark, at times. the Hangman is pretty gruesome stuff and the Black Hood was pretty pulpy. Getting back to the 80s red Circle, I think their problem started with hiring Rich Buckler to helm it. He didn't have a track record as an editor or an innovator, which made him an odd choice. As it was, he didn't last long. Still, it was better than his work at Solson.
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Post by EdoBosnar on Mar 18, 2023 4:33:17 GMT -5
(...) I always think of Dan Decarlo's style as the definitive Archie style, but have enjoyed, in my grown-up years, getting to know the subtle differences of Harry Lucey, Sam Schwartz, Bob Montana, Bob Bolling, and the others that brought the gang to life. I suppose that in my head the first association with Archie is the style set by DeCarlo (and, to a lesser extent, Stan Goldberg and Al Hartley) that prevailed in the 1970s when I first started reading comics. However, even as a kid I preferred the art of Lucey and Schwartz whenever I encountered it in reprinted stories in the ubiquitous Archie digests - and they're still my favorite Archie artists. (And naturally, back then, I did not know any of those names; as in the case of Carl Barks, I only learned about them deep into adulthood after the internet became a thing.)
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Post by chadwilliam on Mar 18, 2023 23:57:48 GMT -5
Shelly Moldoff had to change his style in 1964 when working on Batman because that's when The New Look kicked in. Only, Moldoff wasn't being credited as the artist working on Batman - Bob Kane was. Not a problem you might think since Moldoff had been Kane's ghost since about 1953, but despite this arrangement continuing up until 1967, Moldoff was now expected to conform to the Batman house style as typified by Carmine Infantino. Whatever one might think of Moldoff's rather stiff looking artwork on Batman both before and during The New Look, I get the impression that he was at least capable of aping Infantino's style far better than the results suggest. However, since he was trying to pass himself off as Bob Kane emulating Carmine Infantino and not Shelly Moldoff emulating Carmine Infantino things took a nosedive.
I don't know how much of it was due to Moldoff just not having the skills he had 25 years prior when he did a great job of copying Alex Raymond's style on Hawkman or if having to copy a terrible artist trying to draw like a great one dampened his enthusiasm but the results just weren't good. Actually, that's not quite true. Since Joe Giella was inking Infantino over at Detective Comics, he was assigned to ink "Bob Kane" so as to provide some uniformity between the two styles. I like his inks on Infantino very much, but he rarely did Moldoff any favours. However, when Sid Greene inked Moldoff/"Kane" the results were great.
It really felt like Moldoff had been doing a fine job ghosting Bob Kane for over ten years when someone at DC knocked on his door, asked him what hand he drew with, and then said, "Well, from now on, you're drawing with the opposite one!" Maybe not the worst decline cited here, but man, just to keep giving Bob Kane work that he had stopped doing over a decade earlier makes it feel so, so preventable.
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Post by Chris on Mar 19, 2023 1:40:06 GMT -5
Shelly Moldoff had to change his style in 1964 when working on Batman because that's when The New Look kicked in. Only, Moldoff wasn't being credited as the artist working on Batman - Bob Kane was. Not a problem you might think since Moldoff had been Kane's ghost since about 1953, but despite this arrangement continuing up until 1967, Moldoff was now expected to conform to the Batman house style as typified by Carmine Infantino. Whatever one might think of Moldoff's rather stiff looking artwork on Batman both before and during The New Look, I get the impression that he was at least capable of aping Infantino's style far better than the results suggest. However, since he was trying to pass himself off as Bob Kane emulating Carmine Infantino and not Shelly Moldoff emulating Carmine Infantino things took a nosedive. I don't know how much of it was due to Moldoff just not having the skills he had 25 years prior when he did a great job of copying Alex Raymond's style on Hawkman or if having to copy a terrible artist trying to draw like a great one dampened his enthusiasm but the results just weren't good. Someone, I think it was Carmine Infantino, said in an interview that he had told Moldoff to stop copying others, and said something about how "he ended up," as in he could no longer draw like he used to, I think. Wish I could remember more, but I am fairly sure the comments were in either the book about Infantino or in the Hawkman Companion.
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Post by impulse on Mar 19, 2023 19:06:15 GMT -5
Man, it would be so cool if the regulars on this forum could contact Netflix or something and get a Netflix documentary series on all these nuances and details of the early comics industry that would one day spawn the cultural juggernaut that Marvel and DC superheroes would become.
It's just fascinating, and all of these posts make me want to see examples. I would absolutely watch this.
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Post by tonebone on Mar 20, 2023 7:12:23 GMT -5
Man, it would be so cool if the regulars on this forum could contact Netflix or something and get a Netflix documentary series on all these nuances and details of the early comics industry that would one day spawn the cultural juggernaut that Marvel and DC superheroes would become. It's just fascinating, and all of these posts make me want to see examples. I would absolutely watch this. Gerard Jones' book Men of Tomorrow: Geeks, Gangsters, and the Birth of the Comic Book would have been a great basis for a documentary on the early comic book industry... But the likelihood of that happening... well... not likely. For good reasons...
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Post by impulse on Mar 20, 2023 8:12:44 GMT -5
I'd be happy for someone to just interview this lot and put up relevant images with credits. You all probably know as much as anyone on this stuff.
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Post by codystarbuck on Mar 20, 2023 11:02:03 GMT -5
Man, it would be so cool if the regulars on this forum could contact Netflix or something and get a Netflix documentary series on all these nuances and details of the early comics industry that would one day spawn the cultural juggernaut that Marvel and DC superheroes would become. It's just fascinating, and all of these posts make me want to see examples. I would absolutely watch this. Gerard Jones' book Men of Tomorrow: Geeks, Gangsters, and the Birth of the Comic Book would have been a great basis for a documentary on the early comic book industry... But the likelihood of that happening... well... not likely. For good reasons... His and Will Jacobs' The Comic Book Heroes is another good one (first edition, second edition reads like a tabloid newspaper), though Will would have to do the talking.
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Post by codystarbuck on Mar 20, 2023 11:25:51 GMT -5
My knowledge has been gleaned from obsessively reading any book about comic book and newspaper comic strip history that I could find (and that wasn't many, until after I got out of college). That, coupled with oral histories, via fanzines, provided the building blocks. I was in junior high, when a librarian got me several books, after I had been asking after the first volume of the Nostalgia Press reprint of Flash Gordon, to re-read. It seemed to have disappeared from the library system (probably stolen), but she got me a book about some of the newspaper strips and their merchandising (with a bunch of photos of Buck Rogers rocket skates and atomic rayguns) and Maurice Horn's The World Encyclopedia of Comics. I devoured that thing. It was filled with articles about everything from Abbie & Slats to something starting with Z (I think there was a Yugoslavian comic with a Z character, but I can't recall the name). It also had a timeline of comics, an article on the evolution of the form and industry and a reprint of the Comics Code. It also had a color center section, reprinting comic strips and panels, from all over. This book introduced me to the MLJ heroes, the THUNDER Agents, Druillet and Moebius, Lt Blueberry, Asterix, Corto Maltese, Astro Boy, Mafalda, Lone Wolf & Cub, Tangy et Laverdure, Les Stroumphs (the Smurfs, in their Belgian name), Tintin, Cuto, Cinco por Infinito, Valentina, Barbarella, Jodelle, and Little Nemo in Slumberland.
When I was in college, I not only rediscovered that Flash Gordon reprint (in the Univ Of Illinois library) but also volume 2 and two volumes of Prince Valiant reprints. The U of I library has the biggest university colelction in the country and I found Dick Lupoff and Don Thompsobn's All In Color For A Dime and The Comic Book-Book, Fred Schott's Manga, Manga, Manga!, the first English language survey of Japanese comics, Frederic Wertham's Seduction of the Innocent and a Superman quiz book, which I sucked at (really obscure Silver Age stuff, about Krypton, which I never read). At a nearby used bookstore, I found Jules Feiffer's he Great Comic Book Heroes. At the university's Allumni Center bookstore, I found Gerard Jones & Will Jacobs brand new The Comic Book Heroes, as well as First Comics' first few issues of Lone Wolf & Cub. The local B-Dalton was where I discovered Jeff Rovin's Encyclopedia of Super Heroes, then the Super Villain one, a couple of years later (and, while working for B&N, in the 90s, the volume on Monsters, Robots & Spaceships, and Adventure Heroes). While on vacation, back at home, I found Ron Goulart's history of comics, in a bookstore. I already owned a paperback copy of The World Encyclopedia of Comics, purchased withn a couple of years of reading the hardcover, from the library.
While in the Navy, I found another Goulart book, plus his encyclopedia of comic book and strip characters. Then, the first couple of Mike Benton's histories, then bought the rest, after I was a civilian. I had a reference book to comic book artists and then started getting The Comic Buyer's Guide, Comic Scene and The Comics Journal, plus the occasional Amazing Heroes (and bought back issues of the same and Comics Interview) Barnes & Noble brought me all kinds of stuff, as did Bud Plant's catalog. I even got a hardcover first edition of The World Encyclopedia, through his rare book catalog; then, got the late 90s updated edition (with modern comics, as the original only went up to the dawn of the Bronze Age), with entries for Calvin & Hobbes, Spawn, and Akira. I also started getting the Twomorrows magazines, when they came out, starting with the Comic Book Artist (I back tracked on the Kirby Collector).
Just obsessive detail about a subject I love. That, plus a love of books and discovery-through-reading, passed on from my school teacher father.
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Post by Icctrombone on Mar 20, 2023 11:28:38 GMT -5
Most artists that stick around are going to have their skills diminish. I have a problem with people that change their style for he worse.
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Post by tonebone on Mar 20, 2023 13:32:57 GMT -5
I'd be happy for someone to just interview this lot and put up relevant images with credits. You all probably know as much as anyone on this stuff. An excellent resource for this kind of stuff is the magazine Alter Ego from Twomorrows... They have done a great job of interviewing the founding fathers of comics history and documenting the working conditions, relationships, etc.
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Post by Icctrombone on Mar 21, 2023 15:19:48 GMT -5
I'd be happy for someone to just interview this lot and put up relevant images with credits. You all probably know as much as anyone on this stuff. An excellent resource for this kind of stuff is the magazine Alter Ego from Twomorrows... They have done a great job of interviewing the founding fathers of comics history and documenting the working conditions, relationships, etc. Visit our Zoom meetings, we have a comic historian , nasa scientist and plenty of wise guys with a little geek knowledge.
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