|
Unmature posted:I'd like to know the ages of everyone who complains about Bendis's pacing, especially in USM. It always feels like older readers hate it and younger readers love it. The first comic I bought with my own money was USM #8 when I was 11 and I've loved his work ever since. I think USM is brilliantly paced and influenced comics in such a big way for a reason. This kind of attitude is why we olds will never pass laws that are good for you whippersnappers.  
|
#
?
Dec 17, 2014 17:51
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 11, 2024 17:04 |
|
|
I grew up reading Stan Lee comics and to me that's just how comics should be paced. I don't understand modern comics' need to have so many huge panels or to break up conversation among a bunch of pages. It tends to come across as the comic book equivalent of characters in a soap opera making a reaction face accompanied by a dramatic string for about 10 solid seconds before cutting to commercial. It's pointlessly stretching out your material to get more buck for your bang. I think just about every single modern 5-issue story arc could be told in 1 or 2 issues and lose nothing, and probably gain from not having issues where clearly nothing is loving happening because you can't put out a 3 issue trade. And as a reader, I'd be a lot more excited to get a conclusion to a story in 2 months instead of 5. I love USM, I really do, but it's torture to read it as it comes out. And when I trade-read it, I ended up skimming over so much of the admittedly awesome art because I could see that hey, nothing loving happens on this page.
|
|
|
#
?
Dec 17, 2014 17:54
|
|
|
I followed USM via the trades initially and I had no issue with the pacing. It was only when I started reading them via floppies that it became glaring how long it would take for a single storyline to finish.
|
|
#
?
Dec 17, 2014 18:00
|
|
|
Greg Land must be the master of hitting deadlines, it's the only explanation.
|
|
#
?
Dec 17, 2014 18:44
|
|
|
Unmature posted:I'd like to know the ages of everyone who complains about Bendis's pacing, especially in USM. It always feels like older readers hate it and younger readers love it. The first comic I bought with my own money was USM #8 when I was 11 and I've loved his work ever since. I think USM is brilliantly paced and influenced comics in such a big way for a reason. Ultimate Spider-Man started when I was a freshman in high school. By the time I graduated, he'd gone up against Osborn twice (once with a bridge involved because of the first movie), Kingpin twice, "just a guy", Geldoff, Venom, and was in the middle of his second Doc Ock encounter (because of the second movie). Pretty much every single one of them knew his "secret" identity, and the next three arcs after that dealt with Carnage (Venom), Hobgoblin (Osborn), and Kingpin again. In four years of Amazing Spider-Man, he'd fought Chameleon, Vulture, Doc Ock, Sandman, Dr. Doom, The Lizard, Electro, Mysterio, The Green Goblin, Kraven, The Scorpion, Crimemaster, Molten Man, The Rhino, and Shocker, most of them on multiple occasions, plus a bunch of other people, and it all led up to Spider-Man No More! at #50. Lurdiak posted:I love USM, I really do, but it's torture to read it as it comes out. And when I trade-read it, I ended up skimming over so much of the admittedly awesome art because I could see that hey, nothing loving happens on this page. 
|
|
#
?
Dec 17, 2014 19:39
|
|
|
zoux posted:Greg Land must be the master of hitting deadlines, it's the only explanation. Probably, I can't imagine it takes that long to trace the same picture of a porn star for the thirtieth time.
|
|
#
?
Dec 17, 2014 19:55
|
|
|
I've found if you're like me and tend to go through reading comics in binges where you wait six months or so and read everything in trades then you are a big fan of decompression. If you have a pull box at your LCS and read stuff week to week you're going to be less of a fan of decompression.
|
|
#
?
Dec 17, 2014 20:06
|
|
|
zoux posted:Greg Land must be the master of hitting deadlines, it's the only explanation. It is the explanation. When asked directly about why Land continues to get work David Gabriel told us "He has never, ever missed a deadline." So there's that.
|
|
#
?
Dec 17, 2014 21:45
|
|
|
zoux posted:Greg Land must be the master of hitting deadlines, it's the only explanation. Honestly, this may have a lot to do with it. The history of comics is littered with guys who are okay artists at best but get a lot of work on being reliable. Herb Trimpe and Don Heck are the first two guys I think of in terms of Marvel comics and this situation.
|
|
#
?
Dec 17, 2014 21:46
|
|
|
Rhyno posted:It is the explanation. When asked directly about why Land continues to get work David Gabriel told us "He has never, ever missed a deadline." So there's that. So they are aware that everyone hates him and thinks he sucks then?
|
|
#
?
Dec 17, 2014 23:56
|
|
zoux posted:So they are aware that everyone hates him and thinks he sucks then? Well, saying "everyone" is hyperbole. He does have his fans, and a lot of people don't care. But they are obviously aware of the criticisms, but have no reason to care. Unless his name on a book drove sales massively down, they have no reason to address the complaints.
|
|
|
#
?
Dec 18, 2014 00:06
|
|
|
Even when called out at cons Land just shrugs, even he doesn't care that he's hated. He's making great money and due to how he works he can churn out pages at a faster rate than pretty much anyone else in the industry.
|
|
#
?
Dec 18, 2014 00:12
|
|
|
Lurdiak posted:Well, saying "everyone" is hyperbole. He does have his fans, and a lot of people don't care. But they are obviously aware of the criticisms, but have no reason to care. Unless his name on a book drove sales massively down, they have no reason to address the complaints. Has an artist ever driven down sales on a book, outside of missing deadlines?
|
|
#
?
Dec 18, 2014 04:55
|
|
|
zoux posted:Has an artist ever driven down sales on a book, outside of missing deadlines? Absolutely. Besides the out and out "bad artists" that make people drop books, the high point of this was in the 90's. When a superstar artist would come on or leave it would have a huge effect on sales.
|
|
#
?
Dec 18, 2014 05:28
|
|
|
Ramos' lovely art, while tolerated by many, definitely drove fans of Runaways away. I'd assume if they put a really lovely artist on Ms. Marvel, a bunch of the new readers that aren't used to how comics rotate creative teams would immediately bail.
|
|
|
#
?
Dec 18, 2014 11:34
|
|
|
I've encountered a few people who defend Land as a good artist on the grounds that his work "looks realistic" or "is not cartoony". 
|
|
#
?
Dec 18, 2014 14:52
|
|
|
Lurdiak posted:Ramos' lovely art, while tolerated by many, definitely drove fans of Runaways away. I'd argue Terry Moore's writing certainly poisoned the book for me much more than Ramos ever could. He's not a bad writer, but he did not have the voice of those characters. Artist switches these days have become so common I think most comic readers have just become numb to them. Because there's a push to double-ship comic books, no artist is going to keep up, and we've just come to accept that, even though there's no need to double-ship the majority of books. Both publishers have been eating out of their creative supply to try and fuel sales and it's unfortunate that people have just accepted that. (This may be part of why DC pushes most of their non-superstar artists to stick to a house style, so it's less evident.) I think there are outliers - Liefeld on Hawk & Dove probably damaged sales, but it's hard to say, on account of Hawk & Dove already having all the popularity of a dry turd.
|
|
#
?
Dec 18, 2014 15:10
|
|
|
Well yeah, us dumb superhero comic readers are used to it, but for many readers of Runaways who aren't necessarily into superhero comcs, the art change was jarring and offputting. And make no mistake, that was a sizeable portion of the readers.
|
|
|
#
?
Dec 18, 2014 15:21
|
|
|
zoux posted:Has an artist ever driven down sales on a book, outside of missing deadlines? redbackground fucked around with this message at 17:17 on Dec 18, 2014 |
|
#
?
Dec 18, 2014 15:30
|
|
|
The only two artists whom will make me not read a book are Land and Olivetti. I definitely have artists I don't like, like Ramos and Bagley but I'll deal with it if it's a good writer.
|
|
#
?
Dec 18, 2014 17:14
|
|
|
Am I weird in that bad art in comics doesn't bother me or stop me from enjoying comics for the most part? I mean there's an old early 2000's All CGI Batman comic that my eyes slide right off of, and some of the Injustice Year One stuff was posted here under the funny panels. But beyond that, as long as I can recognize the characters and distinguish them from one another, I don't mind. I have seen the examples from Greg land, where if you were to line up his female characters faces side by side, I couldn't tell them apart, but I consider that an oddity rather than the rule.
|
|
#
?
Dec 18, 2014 20:54
|
|
|
CzarChasm posted:Am I weird in that bad art in comics doesn't bother me or stop me from enjoying comics for the most part? My LCS owner is exactly the same, it kind of threw me when he casually mentioned it in conversation, but I wager there's a lot of people who feel, or are inclined that way.
|
|
#
?
Dec 19, 2014 06:13
|
|
|
I am that way. Frankly it all comes down to writing for me. Not to say art doesn't matter, I do really dislike some artists (gently caress Humberto Ramos), but none so much that I'll actively avoid a book I'm interested in just because they're on it.
|
|
#
?
Dec 19, 2014 06:30
|
|
|
CzarChasm posted:Am I weird in that bad art in comics doesn't bother me or stop me from enjoying comics for the most part? I've never really been one to linger on the art, which is sort of silly since that's half the appeal of comics, but there it is. I have artists I dislike, but none so much they'll drive me away.
|
|
#
?
Dec 19, 2014 14:05
|
|
|
While not bad art I did drop that new Bucky series after the first issue because the art was so incomprehensible.
|
|
#
?
Dec 19, 2014 14:09
|
|
|
CzarChasm posted:Am I weird in that bad art in comics doesn't bother me or stop me from enjoying comics for the most part? Yes and you should feel bad, everybody should feel bad  It's a visual medium, if it looks like rear end I'd rather be reading a book.
|
|
#
?
Dec 19, 2014 14:25
|
|
|
I do tend to fall on the art > writing spectrum, primarily because I think really great writers are extremely few and far between in this medium compared to artists, but on that same token, I don't think amazing art can save a comic if the writing does nothing for me. Case in point: Pretty Deadly, Elektra, that Marvel Knights Spider-Man book from last year.
|
|
#
?
Dec 19, 2014 14:31
|
|
|
I like at least a story arc having a consistent look. Switching artists between arcs is one thing, but switching them in the same arc is problematic. There are ways around this (having different timelines with different artists is a clever way around it, or different POVs), but generally having three issues by one artist and a different one for the fourth in the same story always looks ugly to me. Clay Mann strikes me as one of the ugliest new artists I've seen, but even he didn't keep me from reading Carey's X-Men Legacy, because I was enjoying the writing so much, but I found it tough to stomach. Mann only uses one line weight for all of his art, has weird angular lips he uses on everybody, and he loves unnecessary hatching all over the goddamn pace. He'll be doing issues of Batman Eternal, which gives me a good excuse to ignore that book.
|
|
#
?
Dec 19, 2014 14:33
|
|
|
I'm mainly interested in the writer, but have started picking up books based on artists of late. I've picked up books just because JH Willaims III, Chris Bachelo, or Frank Quitely has worked on them. Hell, I've read a lot of Mark Millar just because of the artists (Loeb remains a deal-breaker). I've picked up Batgirl and planning on getting Spider-Gwen because of the costume design alone. There's absolutely artists I will not buy, however, including some other people like. Greg Land, Liefeld, Howard Chaykin. Certain styles really turn me off, like porny pin-up poses and brokeback and whatever you would call Zenoscope. I'd take interesting and having a sense of style and motion over clean and lifeless any day. Hell, I kinda like Ramos because of that and he is definitely not why I didn't enjoy that run of Runaways (his recent stuff on Spider-Man isn't that great, not that Dan Slott helps). My opinion of the book is generally set by the quality of the writing, then tweaked up or down because of the art. There's not many books that I love solely because the art is good, but there are plenty that I like despite the art being average.
|
|
#
?
Dec 19, 2014 15:23
|
|
|
The balance between art and writing when it comes to the quality of a book is pretty difficult for me to reason about. I'd say I'm also in the camp of being much more tolerable of bad art/good writing than good art/bad writing, but I can't think of any comics I really loved that didn't have some kick in' rad art. About the closest I can come up with are some poorly colored old comics but even the then pencils were pretty good. Morrison's X-Men springs to mind as something that was barely tolerable at times due to the art. So I guess I'd sum up my take as poor writing means I simply won't read more than an issue, and poor art severely limits the potential to be great.
|
|
#
?
Dec 19, 2014 16:06
|
|
|
muscles like this? posted:While not bad art I did drop that new Bucky series after the first issue because the art was so incomprehensible. I've been too lazy to click the cancel subscription button in Comixology, but... yeah, I'd possibly like the book a LOT more if I could tell what was going on (though the whole 'Winter Soldier IN SPACE' thing isn't really my bag anyway. ). I'm fairly sure the letterer can't even tell. At one point in the first issue, there's a conversation between Bucky and Daisy, and I'm pretty sure the speech bubbles are assigned randomly.
|
|
#
?
Dec 19, 2014 16:15
|
|
|
I really like Rat Queens and, despite the fact that he turned out to be an abusive shitlord, Roc Upchurch's art had a lot to do with that and I'm anxious about how the art's gonna look now.
|
|
#
?
Dec 19, 2014 16:27
|
|
|
Lurdiak posted:Well yeah, us dumb superhero comic readers are used to it, but for many readers of Runaways who aren't necessarily into superhero comcs, the art change was jarring and offputting. And make no mistake, that was a sizeable portion of the readers. Then Joss Whedon left and the book took off a couple of months (or I guess co-existed with a Secret Invasion mini-series that crossed over with Young Avengers) and then relaunched with a new #1 and Terry Moore and Humberto Ramos on the book. The #1 actually gave them a bit of a bump over Whedon/Ryan's last issue (33,000) but by the end of the five issue mini-series sales were down to 22,000, fully three thousand less orders than the last arc or two of Brian K Vaughn's original run. Sales got even worse after Ramos left, presumably because that significant chunk of readers were so turned off by Ramos's art that they never wanted to look back at the series ever again. Presumably these same readers who don't understand art changes somehow didn't get freaked out and flip out at the first five artist changes on the book. But again, I haven't done any large reader survey, it's entirely possible Runaways isn't a three-book franchise right now because of lovely ol' Humberto "The True Fan Killer" Ramos.
|
|
#
?
Dec 19, 2014 16:58
|
|
|
Phylodox posted:I really like Rat Queens and, despite the fact that he turned out to be an abusive shitlord, Roc Upchurch's art had a lot to do with that and I'm anxious about how the art's gonna look now. I'll have to see if I can find the posts again, but I don't think you have anything to worry about from the new artist. It's not the same, but it still looks good. If you do a search for "rat queens Stjepan Sejic" you can find some sketches he's done. Can't link from work, sorry.
|
|
#
?
Dec 19, 2014 17:40
|
|
|
Phylodox posted:I really like Rat Queens and, despite the fact that he turned out to be an abusive shitlord, Roc Upchurch's art had a lot to do with that and I'm anxious about how the art's gonna look now. There are examples in the Indy thread and their facebook page has samples, too.
|
|
#
?
Dec 19, 2014 18:01
|
|
|
I can forgive mediocre artwork if the story is good but bad artwork annoys the hell out of me. I have a bit of a wide taste for artwork so I don't mind the more experimental stuff (Kieth and Jones being favourites) but bad artwork just makes reading a comic feel like a mission in misery. One book I did pick up for the art alone was I, Vampire.
|
|
#
?
Dec 19, 2014 18:07
|
|
|
Another example that comes to mind, I love Alan Moore'd Supreme despite the awful 90's art present during a significant portion of his run. (The Rick Veitch stuff is amazing though and don't let this discourage anyone from reading Supreme, it's right up there with All Star Superman for Best Superman Stories in my mind)
|
|
#
?
Dec 19, 2014 18:31
|
|
|
fozzy fosbourne posted:Another example that comes to mind, I love Alan Moore'd Supreme despite the awful 90's art present during a significant portion of his run. (The Rick Veitch stuff is amazing though and don't let this discourage anyone from reading Supreme, it's right up there with All Star Superman for Best Superman Stories in my mind) I can honestly say its one of my favorite Alan Moore's work.
|
|
#
?
Dec 19, 2014 18:36
|
|
|
Love of Supreme depends on when you read it, because it's the same deconstruction Moore's written over and over again. It's cool but if you've read a lot of his 80s and 90s stuff it's not exactly groundbreaking
|
|
#
?
Dec 19, 2014 19:06
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 11, 2024 17:04 |
|
|
Opopanax posted:Love of Supreme depends on when you read it, because it's the same deconstruction Moore's written over and over again. It's cool but if you've read a lot of his 80s and 90s stuff it's not exactly groundbreaking I found it more to be a collection of the silver age, and showing how awesome it its. It is deconstruction in a way, but compared to most of his work it carries a less cynical tone.
|
|
#
?
Dec 19, 2014 19:25
|
|