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Post by Deleted on Apr 25, 2023 9:20:14 GMT -5
It's sad what's going on these days with Rude and his mental health issues. Sadly agreed 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. I think that's an important point to perhaps refine the spirit of the question, I was thinking more of creators who "in particular" are notable for their love of the medium (versus say generally liking working in the comics field). Those we can point to and/or their specific works and you see that love really shine through, whether it's the historical passion/knowledge of a Roy Thomas or creators who have had great innovative/creative passion for moving the medium forward. I think the names you mentioned fit this well.
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Post by Calidore on Apr 25, 2023 9:50:47 GMT -5
I think Understanding Comics certainly earns Scott McCloud a mention here.
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Post by MDG on Apr 25, 2023 10:11:07 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. Yeah--there are people who love established comic characters, people write and/or draw comics well, and there are people who are compelled to tell stories and to do it in comics. That is, if they were offered a chance to write a book/movie or do commercial illustration, they'd still try to do comics.
It's just a damned shame it's always been so hard to make a living at it.
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Post by adamwarlock2099 on Apr 25, 2023 10:54:31 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. Yeah--there are people who love established comic characters, people write and/or draw comics well, and there are people who are compelled to tell stories and to do it in comics. That is, if they were offered a chance to write a book/movie or do commercial illustration, they'd still try to do comics. It's just a damned shame it's always been so hard to make a living at it.
I've been reading along with the thread since it started. And I have come to realize, to me, the more interesting aspect is writers/artists/editors that took the business angle of it. We tend to romanticize that because comic books are a creative job that they all do it with a passion for the medium. Now as MDG said, which I have no knowledge of, apparently it's a job that is difficult to make a living at. But in the regards of creators with a passion for comics themselves and telling stories and refining their own style in art, that it took business minded individuals to make comics a viable industry that can make profit. To me, those people are the intriguing ones. The people pulling all the switches and pushing all the buttons to make things work, in the back ground, with possibly little to no acknowledgment for their work. At least from the fans of comic books. As an aside, what is happening with Steve Rude's mental health? I had no idea that he was struggling with that.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 25, 2023 11:42:10 GMT -5
Yeah--there are people who love established comic characters, people write and/or draw comics well, and there are people who are compelled to tell stories and to do it in comics. That is, if they were offered a chance to write a book/movie or do commercial illustration, they'd still try to do comics. It's just a damned shame it's always been so hard to make a living at it.
I've been reading along with the thread since it started. And I have come to realize, to me, the more interesting aspect is writers/artists/editors that took the business angle of it. We tend to romanticize that because comic books are a creative job that they all do it with a passion for the medium. Now as MDG said, which I have no knowledge of, apparently it's a job that is difficult to make a living at. But in the regards of creators with a passion for comics themselves and telling stories and refining their own style in art, that it took business minded individuals to make comics a viable industry that can make profit. To me, those people are the intriguing ones. The people pulling all the switches and pushing all the buttons to make things work, in the back ground, with possibly little to no acknowledgment for their work. At least from the fans of comic books. This is movies related, but it popped into my head as I read this and I think relates somewhat. I can't find the exact interview so I'm quoting as best I can recall, but I remember George Clooney one time making the comment that you have to make the commercially successful movies like Ocean's Eleven so projects like O Brother, Where Art Thou? can get made. I think speaking very much to, you can have love of the medium (which George definitely has), but it IS a business and there are realities to how hard those "passion projects" are to bring to life.
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Post by tarkintino on Apr 25, 2023 13:07:58 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. Steve Rude certainly qualifies as a creator who loves the medium; his Incredible Hulk vs . Superman TPB (1999) was such a visual feast from cover to interiors, and while he was channeling Kirby and others, his work was not a slavish copy, but a sharp progression of early Silver Age art. The entire TPB was great, but Rude delivered many a comic fans' dream with this cover:
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Post by tarkintino on Apr 25, 2023 13:13:20 GMT -5
John Romita Sr. always seemed to have a lot of love for the medium and the creators who influenced him. He mentions having been inspired by the death of Raven Sherman in Terry and the Pirates and the effect it had on him as a reader to come up with the idea to kill Gwen Stacy off, hoping that it would affect audiences in the same way. He also spoke about how getting to work on the Captain America character was a big deal for him, because he was such a fan of Kirby's original work on the character, and being starstruck the first time he met George Tuska. Romita's love for the medium cannot be questioned; from your recollection, the way he excelled in so many genres was due not only to his immeasurable talent (or getting the bills paid), his care for everything he touched in that business was apparent, which extended to becoming Marvel's Art Director and guiding so many artists (or touching up their work).
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Post by commond on Apr 25, 2023 17:40:43 GMT -5
Yeah--there are people who love established comic characters, people write and/or draw comics well, and there are people who are compelled to tell stories and to do it in comics. That is, if they were offered a chance to write a book/movie or do commercial illustration, they'd still try to do comics. It's just a damned shame it's always been so hard to make a living at it.
I've been reading along with the thread since it started. And I have come to realize, to me, the more interesting aspect is writers/artists/editors that took the business angle of it. We tend to romanticize that because comic books are a creative job that they all do it with a passion for the medium. Now as MDG said, which I have no knowledge of, apparently it's a job that is difficult to make a living at. But in the regards of creators with a passion for comics themselves and telling stories and refining their own style in art, that it took business minded individuals to make comics a viable industry that can make profit. To me, those people are the intriguing ones. The people pulling all the switches and pushing all the buttons to make things work, in the back ground, with possibly little to no acknowledgment for their work. At least from the fans of comic books. As an aside, what is happening with Steve Rude's mental health? I had no idea that he was struggling with that. He suffers from bi-polar disorder. There was a documentary called Rude Dude: The Steve Rude Story, which detailed his struggles.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 25, 2023 18:26:25 GMT -5
Steve Rude certainly qualifies as a creator who loves the medium; his Incredible Hulk vs . Superman TPB (1999) was such a visual feast from cover to interiors, and while he was channeling Kirby and others, his work was not a slavish copy, but a sharp progression of early Silver Age art. Yes, I particularly love examples like this for that exact reason, very well said! And HOW do I not have this particular book? I shall rectify that shortly, that is gorgeous looking.
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Post by berkley on Apr 25, 2023 22:14:59 GMT -5
Gene Day has been mentioned earlier in the thread and I think he is a prime example: I remember that his enthusiasm for comics was described in some of the tributes that appeared shortly after he died, it made him stand out amongst his peers in the eyes of those who worked with him.
As has also been stated earlier int he thread, I'm sure almost everyone who works in comics has some love for them or they wouldn't do it; but I do find that there's a certain ambivalence that seems to come across with many of the modern writers, including some of my favourites: more than once I've been wreading a comic that feels to me as if it had been written as an audition to get work in the television industry. Warren Ellis's Gobal Frequency struck me that way, for example. It doesn't necessarily spoil a book for me - I think GF is a good comic - but in some cases it makes it can result in something that feels very lightweight and/or something that seems not to want to be a comic at all, just the launching board for a movie or a tv show. So that's one case where I think a love of comics is severely lacking
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Post by codystarbuck on Apr 25, 2023 23:11:19 GMT -5
Gene Day has been mentioned earlier in the thread and I think he is a prime example: I remember that his enthusiasm for comics was described in some of the tributes that appeared shortly after he died, it made him stand out amongst his peers in the eyes of those who worked with him. As has also been stated earlier int he thread, I'm sure almost everyone who works in comics has some love for them or they wouldn't do it; but I do find that there's a certain ambivalence that seems to come across with many of the modern writers, including some of my favourites: more than once I've been wreading a comic that feels to me as if it had been written as an audition to get work in the television industry. Warren Ellis's Gobal Frequency struck me that way, for example. It doesn't necessarily spoil a book for me - I think GF is a good comic - but in some cases it makes it can result in something that feels very lightweight and/or something that seems not to want to be a comic at all, just the launching board for a movie or a tv show. So that's one case where I think a love of comics is severely lacking Day used to make comics for himself, writing and drawing stuff, in conjunction with his brothers, which were never published (though I think some of it ended up in Gene Day's Black Zeppelin, at Renegade. On a similar, though slightly more bizarre level, you have Robert Crumb and his brothers. Terry Zwigoff's documentary shows some examples of stuff they did as kids.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 26, 2023 11:43:51 GMT -5
I'd like to talk about Paul Dini and Bruce Timm a little. Obviously they particularly made history in the field of animation, and this discussion is about comic book creators and that medium. You could still make a related argument that both translated that love of comic book history into the amazing animated world they created, a huge step forward in "serious" adaptation of comic book related content into that medium. So impactful it even came full circle and influenced the comic book medium itself, with not only the look and style of the Batman series captured in a monthly title and related comics, but also obviously the breakout popularity of Harley Quinn becoming comic book canon. We all know that history of course. What further interests me about Timm is that he early on had a goal to be a comic book creator. He grew up with a love for the medium, but his early career landed him more in animation working on various Filmation projects and elsewhere. During that time, he did try to find work at both DC and Marvel but was not able to do so. He did work on some of the MOTU mini-comics though that came with the toys! Long story short, as stated above, they made that history and that further opened the door to working in comics themselves, the pair uniting on for instance Batman Adventures: Mad Love and ongoing work in the medium complementing their other creative fields. My thoughts on Bruce's visual style echo a bit what I said about Darwyn Cooke, a retro inspired feel that doesn't really look like the actual artists from earlier eras. Timm's stylization has a somewhat exaggerated quality to the characters' looks, teetering on (or even crossing into) cartoonish, yet not in a way that does not make them suited for adventure based storytelling. I'd like to highlight a favorite project of mine he did, this is definitely squarely in the "vintage love letter" category but it was a really fun read. 1999's Avengers "1 1/2", supposedly set between the first and second issue of the classic Avengers run, Roger Stern as the writer. While I love projects that pay homage but also move the medium forward, sometimes a light-hearted full on retro piece can be very enjoyable as well.
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Post by codystarbuck on Apr 26, 2023 20:10:05 GMT -5
I'd like to talk about Paul Dini and Bruce Timm a little. Obviously they particularly made history in the field of animation, and this discussion is about comic book creators and that medium. You could still make a related argument that both translated that love of comic book history into the amazing animated world they created, a huge step forward in "serious" adaptation of comic book related content into that medium. So impactful it even came full circle and influenced the comic book medium itself, with not only the look and style of the Batman series captured in a monthly title and related comics, but also obviously the breakout popularity of Harley Quinn becoming comic book canon. We all know that history of course. What further interests me about Timm is that he early on had a goal to be a comic book creator. He grew up with a love for the medium, but his early career landed him more in animation working on various Filmation projects and elsewhere. During that time, he did try to find work at both DC and Marvel but was not able to do so. He did work on some of the MOTU mini-comics though that came with the toys! Long story short, as stated above, they made that history and that further opened the door to working in comics themselves, the pair uniting on for instance Batman Adventures: Mad Love and ongoing work in the medium complementing their other creative fields. My thoughts on Bruce's visual style echo a bit what I said about Darwyn Cooke, a retro inspired feel that doesn't really look like the actual artists from earlier eras. Timm's stylization has a somewhat exaggerated quality to the characters' looks, teetering on (or even crossing into) cartoonish, yet not in a way that does not make them suited for adventure based storytelling. I'd like to highlight a favorite project of mine he did, this is definitely squarely in the "vintage love letter" category but it was a really fun read. 1999's Avengers "1 1/2", supposedly set between the first and second issue of the classic Avengers run, Roger Stern as the writer. While I love projects that pay homage but also move the medium forward, sometimes a light-hearted full on retro piece can be very enjoyable as well. Cooke worked with Timm, in animation and designed the opening titles of Batman beyond.... ...though credit should go to Katsuhiro Otomo, for the look of Gotham, since they heavily ape the look of Akira.
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Post by MDG on Apr 27, 2023 12:40:25 GMT -5
I'm surprised Ditko's name hasn't come up yet. He seemed to love the form and used it more effectively than most in multiple genres. And as much as I dislike the objectivist ideas in The Avenging World, it's a masterful use of comics and imagery to convey (though often oversimplify) complex ideas.
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Post by berkley on Apr 27, 2023 16:16:14 GMT -5
I'm surprised Ditko's name hasn't come up yet. He seemed to love the form and used it more effectively than most in multiple genres. And as much as I dislike the objectivist ideas in The Avenging World, it's a masterful use of comics and imagery to convey (though often oversimplify) complex ideas.
Yeah, I like his artwork in those later comics much more than I do anything he did for Marvel or DC apart from the 1960s classic - Spider-Man, Dr. Strange, the Creeper. But as you say, too bad about the ideas he used it to promote.
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