I'm curious. By which I mean that I am interested to find out what people think, not that I myself am a curio of some description. Anyway, I was wondering...Stan or Jack? By which I mean, who’s the most important – the wordsmith or the pretty-picture person? This was kicked off by me not even reading the extract in the last Wizard from a Kirby biography which, I’m presuming, will at some stage say that Stan the Man is a massive scumbag and Kirby was, well, the king, etc, etc, because that is what always happens. Now, clearly, as any aficionado can tell you, ideally you need both a writer and an artist working in concert to make great comics, but of the two, which matters most? Can pretty, sequential art cover a terrible story? Can a great story cover Rob Liefeld?
Kirby & Lee - KIrby was the most important and not because Stan was a "scumbag" but because: 1) Kirby would provide plots, Lee would have some input, Kirby would come back with some pages with the dialogue pencilled in, Lee would smoothly polish the dialogue and add interim captions. Sometimes there's a lotta Lee in there sometimes only a little. It's hard to tell. But there's always Kirby in there. (That's how I understand the process, anywhoo) 2) Stan Lee (with Jack Kirby & Steve Ditko) created the Marvel Universe. Stan Lee without Jack & Steve created a comic about a stripper. No, really Stan produced something essential without which the stories would have been diminished, Jack 'n' Steve were never really writers to the level Lee was. Uh, so Lee needed Kirby & Ditko more than they needed him, but all of them were necessary to provide the awesomeness they did provide. Synergy or summat.
Advantage: Artist!
Liefeld - Alan Moore's Supreme run has an all-out action slam-bang fest climax in which Supreme and an array of heroes face off against the might of Optilux in his floating cathedral of light. Liefeld presents us with a couple of badly drawn figures standing non-plusssedley about an empty box with a circle firing lines at them. Moore still (just) achieves his affect due to the power of Moore!
Interesting to read that Wizard included an excerpt from the Kirby biography. I assume that this is the new Mark Evanier tome, which even given his relationship with Jack I think will be a pretty even handed affair.
As to Stan and Jack ~ for me there seems to be three distinct periods to their 60s relationship. The early days when ideas were thrown into the melting pot for new characters. The mid period when Marvel needed a frontman/salesman. And the end and all the bitterness that came with it. For all intents and purposes it was a symbiotic partnership. Admittedly Jack was able to create and plot, but without Stan's influence the quality of his work and ideas became strained. To this day I still think that the DC Fourth World series would have benefited from the use of a writer. Stan was the polish on Jack's work. Stan on the otherhand proved throughout the 60s that he could work successfully without Jack.
The unfortunate thing is that for me, the best of either man's work was that done in partnership with the other.
The DC Fourth World series rocked (in a messy way, granted, but rocking is still rocking)! Soon those Omnibooks will be mine!
Scientifically, we can express this question as: would you rather buy: A comic by Stan Lee and Rob Liefeld(*) OR A comic by Jeph Loeb(*) and Jack Kirby
Having mulled this over, I agree with the findings of the panel. Ultimately, rubbish art will spoil your enjoyment of a great story, but great art will see you through the work of Jeph Loeb. But all my favourite creators are writers, so there we go - contrary fool.
Wel, i did stack the deck a bit. Really it should have been: A comic by Alan Moore and Rob Liefeld OR A comic by Jeph Loeb and Jack Kirby.
God, Tim sale got me through most of Loeb's work but by Catwoman: When In who Cares even I'd given in. My mind was broken.
How about writer/artists in one body? Do they create better work (on the whole) than when the tasks are seperated. Howard Chaykin gave us American Flagg!/Time2/Black Kiss/The Shadow/etc. Walter Simonson gaves us awesome work on Thor/Orion/Fantastic Four/Manhunter/Captain Fear. But when they met it was...Hawkgirl.
SIMONSON RULES!!!!!!!!!!!! But why draw the line there ~ Carl Barks, Walt Kelly anyone? (Sorry LC I've got a soft spot for classic anthropomorphics. And does The Shadow know if Kent is still at the shindig on Thursday?).
Based purely on the fact that he has a great name, Wade von Grawbadger is the best creator in comics.
I've been slowly loading all my longboxes on Comic Collector Live, and today was the day I've been looking forward to - the Image boxes! Obviously everyone recalls without fondness the awfulness of Rob Liefeld, but what about the house-style copycats - Chap Yaep and Dan Fraga? Why was every other issue of everything a foil-embossed monstrosity? Why do I have 17 issues of New Men? What the hell were they thinking with the flip-book covers? Has the comics fraternity been unduly harsh to Todd MacFarlane? All key questions...
The fact is you probably loved them at the time. I used to love Liefeld. I was in the XTREME Fan Club and I even wrote a 'comment' to for Comics International in his defense.
You used to like Liefield!!!!!! Never in a month of Sundays. I admit to having got caught up in the hype machine that was known as Image, but out of the first 18 months of titles the only one worth reading was Spawn.
Hey Nimbus! What about The Maxx - that easily put all of Image's combined output in the shade! Spawn was okay - but Todd Mcfarlane seemed to lose interest pretty quickly once he found out he could make more money selling (admittedly awesome) toys. As for the whole writer/ artist synergy...hmmm. When its good, it seems to inspire both parties to do their best work as they seem to riff off of each other. I dunno, its a tricky one. Sometimes a writer's vision of the story he wants to tell will (just about) steer a title through a rocky patch of having a er, lesser, artist. However, (and here's another reference from my limited pool of reading over the years...) Howard Mackie who at one point was simultaneously writing Ghost Rider and its spin off Spirits Of Vengeance went through a phase of writing belting tales when teamed with the Kuberts on Spirits, but struggled on the parent title with the slightly ugly Golden Age work of Brett Blevins. And as Image will atest, you can get by on the artwork alone. For a time, at least until people realise they're reading comics that are as empty as fresh air. Another key point can be the degree of editorial control thats asserted over a title, which can be another hindrance to creativity.
If you dragged Todd McFarlane behind a car for fifteen miles you still wouldn't be "unduly harsh". And that's just for blocking the Miracle/Marvelman reprints for so long. &sshat. Nice toys, though, you're right.
I'm learning a lot about the '90s here, this is interesting (I didn't have much money so I missed most of the '90s "excitement".) Chap Yaep and Dan Frag are names to conjure with (whoever they were/are). Chap Frag is even better.
Didn't Marvel pretty much sub contract all their comics out to some awful Image-a-like studio at one point?
If you like an artist/writer enough you'll put up with a lot. I bought an issue of N** Avengers because CHAYKIN! drew it. I'm not proud of that but I think it shows how much fans will put up with to keep the "faith".
I compare the comics of the 90's to a B*G M*c. Lots of frill but no substance. Unlike the 80's when the Indies boom created a wealth of new talent and a lot of decent comics, the 90's was about the art style and selling power of a handful of egocentric artists. And gimmick covers.
Yes. The Marvel sub contracting was to Malibu Comics. A very successful union that ultimately ended with Marvel getting better coloured comics. And er, that was it. I think Malibu did do one right good comic which had dinosaurs in it that walked and talked like us peoples. Can't remember what is called, though.
The '90s was a strange time. Lots of hyberbole and loads of small companies really overstretched themselves (Marvel UK) churning out awful watered-down versions of popular superheroes (C'mon Image! All your characters are like cheap foreign knock offs of X-Men, Superman etc). loads of artists started to emulate the 'Image Style', which meant you got poor copies of the worst excesses of Liefeld's work - all these uber-nimrods with long legs and huge jutting breasts and men that had clearly had major steriod abuse.
It was like panning for gold there was that much dreadful tat around. Thank crikey there was some sanity in the form of Bone, Maxx, Preacher...and Lethargic Lad!!!
And Nimbus, I gotta admit i never read Pitt. I do recall that Dale Keown struggled to do more than one issue a year, and found that off-putting. Erik Larsen did well with Savage Dragon too, mind.
Oh, and don't get me started on all those dreadful crossovers, deaths, broken backs, spider-clones, maximum carnage, midnight sons, zero hour cobblers...bloody 50 part crossovers!!! Grrr!!
And, also from long box land, remember when all 93 monthly X-Men titles came in either standard or deluxe(essentially allowing you to pay a little more for shiny paper)? Also, what happened to Mike Baron and Mike Zeck?
Lee, New Men was actually pretty good. But you've missed those other Image stalwarts, Todd Nuak, Marat Mychaels (check out his website - what a cracking history in the world of comics), Brett Booth, Jeff Matsuda and worse - yes! Worse!
Captain Si - the 90's were a glorious period for comics, there were some great runs and some great new titles published that enhanced the medium no end. And when I can think of some I'll post them here.
Hey Lee, that crazy 'shiny paper' experiment was a way of making the comics world more insular than ever by phasing out US newsstand distribution. Unlike in the UK, you could pick up comics on spinner racks in all sorts of places - not just specialist outlets. The newsstand editions were printed on standard paper, whilst the whizzy 'Direct Editions' (i.e. direct to specialist outlets) came on shiny paper. Once newsstand distribution came to an end, many companies reverted to printing on regular paper as the costs of printing on the special stuff started to rise. Although I noticed this didn't bring the cover price down! Christ, I should get out more.
Mike! Bone was '90s! Other fantastic Nineties titles...hmmm...
Preacher, Transmetropolitan, Maxx, Scud, Tales From The Bog (not about toilets, by the way), Minx, Egypt, Hellstrom (only for Warren Ellis' run on the last nine issues, though), Druid, Sandman Mystery Theatre, Shade The Changing Man, Toxic! (well ahead of its time, but very short lived)...there were some diamonds in the rough, but you really had to search for them! Oh and Mark Waid's run on Valor (just prior to Flash) was good.
And we got Marvels, which has clearly been used as a guideline for how the House Of Ideas now tells its tales...(ooh controversial - a sweeping genrealisation!)
Cap'n Si - you don't have to search for Diamonds; just buy Vertigo books.
For the sake of a (mostly) neutral opinion, I asked my girlfriend the original question (pics vs words) and she says that the writer is by far the most important, citing the often ropily illustrated Sandman as her evidence. Then we laughed at the 40 Rob Liefeld drawings website.
Isn't that great?! I think my favourite Liefeld drawing was the blind news guy talking into a sausage! I think you are probably right on the writer just nudging it over the art. As most of the 1990s will atest.
Captain Si! You remembered Egypt and Minx! Milligan was soooooo crazily good in the '90s - don't forget Enigma - overlooked genius Miligan comic, oh yes! Probably still available in TPB!
I still think you are all making these '90s artists names up with a random word generator:Todd Nuak?! Really?
Thats cos Egypt and Minx are ace! But when will we see TPBs of these? I found Enigma quite hard going and a bit of a rare mis-fire from Vertigo, but thats just my humble opinion!
I also think that is how all americans get their crazy names. they are arranged via a countdown style letter selection. "I'll have a vowel, four consonents and six more vowels, please carol". Like that fast show sketch - the unpronouncables (which was probably funnier on paper).
I forgot Skreemer, Girl, Face and The Eaters (were they the'90s?) in my attempt to claim the '90s as The Milligan Decade. TPBs of Minx and Egypt are as likely as them finishing off the Shade TPBs I fear. Still, we can always glue our seperate issues together. Careful with those staples. Maybe Enigma is "overlooked" for a reason then, me I still groove on it. On the Liefeld site I enjoy the recurring motifs of "pouches" and "attacking a secret base". Comics need more pouches. And secret bases.
