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Post by Deleted on Apr 24, 2023 17:57:21 GMT -5
I figure most people who broke into the industry from the 70s onward love the medium, but a special shutout to the indie creators and the self-publishers. Those guys must truly love the medium to strive to get their stories published. As far as mainstream comics go, Alex Busiek strikes me as a guy who loves the medium. Astro City is the finest love letter to comics that's ever been penned. I really love the way Matt Wagner handles retro stories, and of course Darwyn Cooke was brilliant. I love all the names you mentioned, but special shout out to Busiek who I got to meet at a convention back in 1999. You could tell he loved chatting about all things comics, super nice guy and made you feel like just one fan talking with another. Astro City is my favorite 90's title, plus I love Untold Tales of Spider-Man and Avengers Forever among other great stuff he did. Btw, I am a huge tennis fan, fyi. Have been ever since I was a kid and used to watch the Australian Open every summer vacation. That's awesome! My family used to live really close to the US Open and similar here. I have always wanted to attend the Australian Open.
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Post by Cei-U! on Apr 24, 2023 18:09:36 GMT -5
It's Kurt Busiek, not Alex, which is convenient or his having nicknamed me "Other Kurt" wouldn't make any sense.
Cei-U! Just sayin'!
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Post by Deleted on Apr 24, 2023 18:11:37 GMT -5
Actually I'll add a comment about Darwyn Cooke as well. Totally agreed he was brilliant, and one of my favorite things about his art in particular was the fact that he channeled this whole Silver Age vibe without the art really looking like other Silver Age artists if that makes any sense. His retro stylings fit the period so well, but it was original at the same time. I guess that gets a little back to some of my original thoughts, he had a reference point and clear love of the history, but also his own creative vision.
I really miss him.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 24, 2023 18:37:18 GMT -5
It's Kurt Busiek, not Alex, which is convenient or his having nicknamed me "Other Kurt" wouldn't make any sense. Cei-U! Just sayin'! I think they might have been conflating Kurt Busiek and Alex Ross, both major contributors to Astro City. -M
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Post by badwolf on Apr 24, 2023 18:44:45 GMT -5
I figure most people who broke into the industry from the 70s onward love the medium The fact that we can find letters from so many future pros in comics from the 60s supports this.
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Post by codystarbuck on Apr 24, 2023 21:47:44 GMT -5
Chaykin loves crime stories and that is really where he excels and his best work is a variation on that. However, he is also a fan of the medium, but isn't afraid to call a spade a spade, when it comes to the mediocrity (including his own) that has permeated it.
Pretty much anyone who entered comics young was a fan of the medium, in some form, though not necessarily the publishers and the low pay. Guys like Eisner, Siegel & Shuster, Kirby, Joe Kubert, Carmine Infantino...teh second generation guys like Roy, Gerry Conway, Marv Wolfman, Steve Englehart, Byrne, Perez, Joe Staton...guys like Steranko (among other influences in his work)....Adams.
The self-publishing crowd that followed Dave sim, like Colleen Doran (who started as a teenager), Martin Wagner, the Pinis, Jeff Smith, Eddie Campbell, etc. The British crowd, like Alan Moore, Dave Gibbons, John Wagner and Alan Grant, Grant Morrison, Neil Gaiman, Alan Davis, Warren Ellis, James Robinson....
Gene Day literally worked himself to death because he loved producing comics (and didn't take care of his health while he was producing them).
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Post by Deleted on Apr 24, 2023 22:11:52 GMT -5
I forget sometimes how much Alan Moore fits in this category (I typed this before I saw your response codystarbuck mentioning Moore as well), despite his issues over the years with the business side. As he said when retiring from comics, "I will always love and adore the comics medium but the comics industry and all of the stuff attached to it just became unbearable". His Watchmen was not only a groundbreaking milestone in terms of "mature storytelling" helping usher in the modern age of comics, but it obviously draws extensively from classic comic book history as a reference. While far more dystopian/subversive than say the later Astro City, it shines regardless as an early pioneer in the "superhero deconstruction". And perhaps why it stands the test of time for me more than say it's peer milestone The Dark Knight Returns which I feel is more stuck in the 80's in terms of relevance (my purely subjective take). But then you also take something years later like a Tom Strong, less in the gritty/subversive mode but still "mature" in terms of an intelligent and well executed homage to classic comics. Moore's self professed love of the medium has always shone through in terms of both ways my question has been interpreted I think...he has great affinity for the history and drawn from it creatively in many of his works, but nobody would confuse him as an overall "retro writer" creating love letters to the past. Moore still stands as one of the most cutting edge (if not THE most cutting edge) writers of his time in terms of innovation and creativity.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 24, 2023 22:19:53 GMT -5
Matt Wagner has been mentioned a couple of times as well, I was just thinking of Sandman Mystery Theatre. That series really mesmerized me back in the day. It flipped something so familiar to me in terms of the early Wesley Dodds character into something so brilliantly modern yet hauntingly classic at the same time.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 25, 2023 5:19:17 GMT -5
I realize now this may just turn into a blog for me. Others are more than welcome to continue to post and I appreciate all the folks who have contributed thus far. I think I just have a lot of passion for the topic. So the aforementioned Alex Ross. Almost "too obvious" a choice for such a thread? Most certainly. And that will not prevent me from posting one of my all-time favorite paintings he did. It's probably not a secret how much I love the Golden Age and DC's classic Earth-2, and I first saw this I think in a WB store back in the day (oh what glorious times when they had stuff like his and others' signed art hanging up for sale). It gave me goosebumps then, and it still does now, I think I've used it as desktop wallpaper on multiple occasions over the years.
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Post by Cei-U! on Apr 25, 2023 5:26:13 GMT -5
I realize now this may just turn into a blog for me. Others are more than welcome to continue to post and I appreciate all the folks who have contributed thus far. I think I just have a lot of passion for the topic. So the aforementioned Alex Ross. Almost "too obvious" a choice for such a thread? Most certainly. And that will not prevent me from posting one of my all-time favorite paintings he did. It's probably not a secret how much I love the Golden Age and DC's classic Earth-2, and I first saw this I think in a WB store back in the day (oh what glorious times when they had stuff like his and others' signed art hanging up for sale). It gave me goosebumps then, and it still does now, I think I've used it as desktop wallpaper on multiple occasions over the years.
Cei-U! I summon the shameless self-promotion!
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Post by Deleted on Apr 25, 2023 5:32:09 GMT -5
I realize now this may just turn into a blog for me. Others are more than welcome to continue to post and I appreciate all the folks who have contributed thus far. I think I just have a lot of passion for the topic. So the aforementioned Alex Ross. Almost "too obvious" a choice for such a thread? Most certainly. And that will not prevent me from posting one of my all-time favorite paintings he did. It's probably not a secret how much I love the Golden Age and DC's classic Earth-2, and I first saw this I think in a WB store back in the day (oh what glorious times when they had stuff like his and others' signed art hanging up for sale). It gave me goosebumps then, and it still does now, I think I've used it as desktop wallpaper on multiple occasions over the years.
Cei-U! I summon the shameless self-promotion!
Looks like I've got 19 pages of reading to do today Self-promote away sir, and thanks!
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Post by Deleted on Apr 25, 2023 6:39:58 GMT -5
Cei-U! - I think I'm going to pace each page so I can fully absorb, just finished the first one and it's already generated some additional reading I need to seek out. Besides being an excellent overall overview and spotlight on the various characters, I've made the following notes from the info you provided: -I want to seek out the Alex Toth JSA and Dr. Mid-Nite issues. I have the first 8 volumes of the All Star Comics Archives (which has a couple of them), but now need to get #9 since he drew a couple more collected in that one (I had wanted to continue the run anyways, this is a good excuse to get going again). Also saw the Dr. Mid-Nite story from All-American #88 was reprinted in DC 100 Page Super Spectacular #20 so I'm going to grab that one as well (actually lots of good reprints it looks like in that issue!). -"The 'what if' portion of the “Batman and Robin” story in Detective Comics #347, which first acknowledges the existence of an Earth-Two version of Batman" - I have never read that issue, I definitely need to read this as well. -Superman's Christmas Adventure #1, another one that's fortunately been reprinted a couple of times, I haven't read this one either and would like to. I'm going to get through these and then continue my journey through your most excellent guide...I plan to savor the journey!
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Post by Deleted on Apr 25, 2023 8:23:51 GMT -5
Another artist I'd like to highlight is Steve Rude. I still remember seeing his work for the first time on Nexus back in the day. Now I can comment on how I appreciate his Toth inspired aesthetic, but at the time I didn't have that reference point (I'm not sure if I even knew Toth's name from his Hanna-Barbera association yet much less comic book work). So perhaps this is another aspect of creators who wear their historical love of the medium on their sleeves, it can not only reinspire the past in ways that are somehow fresh and modern, but also create indirect gateways to future exploration of the earlier creators themselves. And I most certainly did make my way back to Toth over time. I love that Steve could/can not only do the smooth economy of line interior illustration so beautifully, but also render gorgeous painted works as seen on numerous covers. While I adored Nexus throughout the 80's for both the writing and of course Steve's art, it was also wonderful seeing post-80's his opportunities to flex his wings with the Big 2 on projects that were generally very well suited to his style (like the World's Finest mini per the cover below, which was quite the salve for me in a post-Crisis DC world), X-Men Children of the Atom, etc., plus retro inspired projects like his work with The Moth.
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Post by commond on Apr 25, 2023 8:51:45 GMT -5
It's sad what's going on these days with Rude and his mental health issues.
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Post by commond on Apr 25, 2023 9:07:25 GMT -5
It's difficult for me to imagine that any of the creators i admire dislike the medium, so I'm trying to focus on creators who I felt made the most positive contributions to the comic book medium, and the names that come to mind are the Hernandez Brothers, Jeff Smith, Terry Moore and Stan Sakai.
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