Brandon Graham and James Stokoe are buds irl, it’s kinda fitting that you mention them together
Speaking of Stokoe, did anyone read the 6 issue Godzilla In Hell thing that came out sometime in the last year? Each issue was by a different artist, but they were all just incredible. Lots and lots of full page spreads and crazy panel work. Being entirely art-focused really let the artists really show off and it ended up being totally gorgeous overall
Thinking about an artist that really stands out with a distinctive look, Andrew MacLean comes to mind. Right now he’s doing this big quarterly comic called Head Lopper about this gigantic warrior forced to carry around an immortal witch’s decapitated head:
His first book was a graphic novel put out by Dark Horse called Apocalyptigirl about a girl and her cat searching through a ruined city full of abandoned mecha
CG coloring, especially lazy CG coloring, is indeed a bane on comic book art. Especially awful is when old stuff is reprinted in a collection and they slap that lame shading on all the colors.
Why CG though specifically? CG jumped coloring forward by leaps and bounds especially when printing was more limited. I mean Oliff’s work on the Akira coloring was no less than phenomenal and that was the proof the color separation using computers could do more than by hand.
Not for nothing but manga is hardly spared from bad coloring, when they bother to do it as well.
I know the whole DK3 posting with recoloring along with other recoloring of Franks work has been a hot topic (or as hot as comic book coloring gets) Yes, that guy did do some cool stuff with covers, no question. But to say the stupid DK3 covers are indicative of anything beyond why Miller should stop charging for his cover work? I think on some level even DC knows that coloring is crap, the hardcover issues only have B&W covers.
Rather than “especially”, I should have said “specifically”, because of the lazy part is the main thing, the kind of CG coloring where shading done with gradients and such are just slapped on with no real thought put into it. Which doesn’t seem to happen quite as much anymore, I will admit. The worst of the mid-late 90s stuff just kind of sticks with me.
And to be fair, where reprints are concerned even faithful flat coloring can have problems too, since without the imperfections of the old print quality breaking the colors up some, they can be too bright sometimes.
But the 90’s had an army of people using shitty desktops to turn out colors in record time.
I’ve heard similar complaints for digital lettering. It doesn’t have the nuance, the human touch. Truly GREAT lettering is usually hand done, but most and perfectly fine lettering is just digital. If they’re just trying to get it done I’d take digital over hand, because average hand lettering and be near illegible like just ok hand coloring can be muddy and overly by the numbers. At least average CG color has gradients.
If you’re looking only for greatness this is all irrelevant. But the bi weekly american comics or what comes from the painful turn of the manga-zines is not greatness. But I wub it all in some way. Except Marineman. Fuck Marineman.
It’s a crazy trip with so far basically nothing to do with Gilgamesh. It’s a crazy trip were the world went to shit in the 90’s so baby alien Gilgamesh takes over in the name of the corporations, but corporations work like governments anyways so it’s not a ‘branded’ thing. Super weird.
So, the Humble Bundle people are doing a big Garth Ennis bundle over the next couple of weeks (no Preacher included). Preacher is all I ever read of his, is any of this other stuff worth reading or did he sort of fall off by this time?
Hah! I’m not so much representative of the dad vote as I am representative of the guy who don’t have time for this shit vote, but I guess there’s significant overlap.
I should specify that I recommend Garth Ennis’ run on Punisher MAX, i.e. the first six arcs or whatever it was. Plus two or three one-shots that really round out the character, including giving him his most fitting end (willfully annihilating the human race because it is too evil to live).
I’m not real big into comics but I never liked Garth Ennis. I’ve tried reading his punisher stuff but any time a woman or black guy shows up it’s terrible and embarrassing. I liked the greg rucka punisher where he partners with and mentors a woman whose wedding gets kill billed and he gets hurt early on so the rest of the series he’s all bandaged up and looks like a bearded manga moe punisher. and I liked the one after that was written by a guy clearly into the military and tactical gear nerd shit (“brought you your favorite brands punisher, crye precion pants and caspian 1911s machines to your specs!” “where’s the white paint!?”), except the story was kind of all over the place and his punisher would sometimes sit in diners and chat up off duty cops and have doubts about his mission. no, none of that. keep him a terminator.
I’ve been going back a bit with the Superhero stuff.
00’s Superman
80’s Wonder Woman
early 00’s Spider-Man
comics were just better awhile back, and the breaking point was pretty clear. Disney buying Marvel just started a downward trend. Not saying all the books are bad, but it’s notable. In response DC got more soaked up by the WB and all the inter-media interest. It’s crazy to think the amount of characters that these publishers own that we’ll likely never see again. It’s crazy to think of the material they have the copy wright to they will never publish again.
I know I’m not being nostalgic because I’m reading this stuff for the first time. You can’t read Perez’s run of Wonder Woman and tell me the Earth One book measures up. You can’t tell me any modern era Superman measures up to the pre-Flashpoint stuff. Spider-Man was better before he was a billionaire.
I just spent the better part of 3 and a half hours running through Mage: The Hero Discovered. It’s a hell of a book, and shows the artistic growth of Matt Wagner.
It’s a fun book, and after tonight I have to say it’s deeper than I originally gave it credit for.
In some ways, I like Hero Defined’s change in scope more. Mostly, I’m glad Wagner broke away from just straight up recapitulating the Hero’s Journey for something much changed.
Try and read the comic with the original colors, the digital re-coloring that happened in one of the re-releases is really bad and Wagner’s strange airbrushed coloring actually works really well for the most part.
