Great Comicbook Art Thread

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TristramEvans said:
I don't understand the tagline...Buscema's stuff doesn't look anything like Kirby's style
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I agree. Obviously Kirby had a huge influence on all the overal Marvel house style of the 60s adn 70s, but it's not hard to tell them apart. When I was younger I actually preferred Buscema. The was always such natural gracefulness in his work and his grasp of anatomy always struck me as exceptional; his panels as very easy on the eye. I grew to appreciate Kirby's compositional genius and inventiveness a bit later.
 
Yeah, I've never seen Buscema's work and thought, "Oh, he's just a Kirby knock-off."
 
The Claremont Run account on Twitter reminded me of the great Paul Smith run on X-Men. Great art and some of the best character-based issues for me. Note: he did 11 not 10 issued (corrected later in the thread).



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I need to check out more of Smith's work.
 
Voros said:
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That's from my first ever issue of X-Men. #173. It was in the middle of a multi-part story and several multi part subplots, and it was near unintelligible to 13 year old me.

The only character I could identify was Rogue. I had encountered her in an issue of Rom about a year earlier. Rom had been the only Marvel comic other than Star Wars and Star Trek I had picked up before this.

What stuck with me and sticks with me to this very day is the battle scene between Wolverine and Silver Samurai in this issue. To this day I think it's the best comic battle I have ever seen. It doesn't feel like sequential art. It feels like a full motion movie. I don't feel like I saw that battle in comic panels, but on a movie screen. Someone posted it earlier in this topic so I won't do so again.

Paul Smith would do X-Men again in X-Men Vs Alpha Flight. For me it's really the team of Smith and Wiacek that provided that look that is so striking. Smith was later paired with Milgrom in the X-Factor War of Judgement storyline (which I wish was in TBP) and it just doesn't have the same style at all. And despite those X-Factor issues closing in dangerously on the age where everyone started doing Liefeld parody work, I don't think that's the reason. It's probably Milgrom's inks overwhelming the look.
 
Gabriel said:
That's from my first ever issue of X-Men. #173. It was in the middle of a multi-part story and several multi part subplots, and it was near unintelligible to 13 year old me.

The only character I could identify was Rogue. I had encountered her in an issue of Rom about a year earlier. Rom had been the only Marvel comic other than Star Wars and Star Trek I had picked up before this.

What stuck with me and sticks with me to this very day is the battle scene between Wolverine and Silver Samurai in this issue. To this day I think it's the best comic battle I have ever seen. It doesn't feel like sequential art. It feels like a full motion movie. I don't feel like I saw that battle in comic panels, but on a movie screen. Someone posted it earlier in this topic so I won't do so again.

Paul Smith would do X-Men again in X-Men Vs Alpha Flight. For me it's really the team of Smith and Wiacek that provided that look that is so striking. Smith was later paired with Milgrom in the X-Factor War of Judgement storyline (which I wish was in TBP) and it just doesn't have the same style at all. And despite those X-Factor issues closing in dangerously on the age where everyone started doing Liefeld parody work, I don't think that's the reason. It's probably Milgrom's inks overwhelming the look.
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I read this arc in Classic X-Men and the art and writing stuck with me even as a kid. Those Classic X-Men reprints gave me a perspective on the direction of the X-Men comics in the late 80s/early 90s where I started to lose interest as the comics became 'darker' and the storylines more convoluted but less engaging for me. I started to find the storylines and Alan Davis artwork of the more lighthearted, colourful and psychedelic Excalibur more to my taste.

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Voros said:
Gene Colan's work on Dr. Strange deserves more love. I've been working through the 70s Dr. Strange and he is amazing even when the writing isn't (once Englehart comes on board things really take off).

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I loves me some Gene Colan. Tomb of Dracula, Night Force, Silverblade, Nathaniel Dusk, Detectives Inc... the man was just a phenomenal artist.
 
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I post this same image on a RPGnet thread about the MSH game, but it then it struck me it deserves a place in the Best Comic Panels of All Time. It may not be Kirby's most flashy set of panels, but it shows Lee and Kriby really working as one. The "Battle of Baxter Building" was pretty much where I got into comics. In my mind it marks a watershed, when the storytelling changed gear from self-contained one-shot adventures to full campaign mode.

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In the late 70's Roger Zelazny's classic novel Lord of Light was optioned to become a big budget sci-fi film - in hopes of becoming the next Star Wars - with plans to use the sets of the film as the basis of a theme park after filming was done. Jack 'The King' Kirby was commissioned to create concept artwork for the project...

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...obviously, the film never got made. However, the script and Kirby's artwork were used as cover by the CIA in an attempt to rescue US diplomatic staff during the Iranian hostage crisis, with the rescue team pretending to be scouting locations for the film.

If that last part sounds familiar, that's because it was (very loosely) the basis for the film Argo.

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Endless Flight said:
I really thought JR Jr’s art during this run was peak for him. Maybe the Stern run was as good, but he had developed his own style by this run.
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My two favourite runs by him are his work with JMS on Amazing, and the DD Man Without Fear mini-series.
 
It’s too bad Marvel destroyed Spider-Man in 2007. I would still be reading the comics on a regular basis. I remember the feels I used to get reading the JMS/Romita Jr stuff and then the fast descent into hell happened, literally and figuratively.
 
Endless Flight said:
It’s too bad Marvel destroyed Spider-Man in 2007. I would still be reading the comics on a regular basis. I remember the feels I used to get reading the JMS/Romita Jr stuff and then the fast descent into hell happened, literally and figuratively.
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I'd been moving away from Spidey for a while, since the mid 90s, going from picking up every Spidey book a month to occasionally a storyline or rc by a single creative team (during the Clone era there was a brief stint by Mike Weiringo on the book that had Spidey team up with KaZar in the Savage Lands that was pretty fun,, Kurt Busiek's Untold Tales was pretty good, I really enjoyed Tangled Web while it lasted, Stern's Hobgoblin Lives was pure delight - a love letter to one of my favourite eras, and there was an absolutely beautiful Steve Rude mini-series). The JMS/Romita Jr run seemed like a new start, breathing new life into the character for the first time in years, and I was excited for the comic for the first time in a long time, and then JMS left the book (after that really astounding 500th issue), and everything went to hell in short succession - JMS's godawful character assassination of Gwen Stacy, Marvel giving him organic webshooters to cater to the film, and then...Quesada and a Brand New Day. That was when I accepted the character I grew up with was well and truly gone forever.
 
I pretty much wrote off Spidey after they turned the symbiote evil. I loved that damn costume. I loved that it could turn into clothes, make shooters, jump to Peter when he needed it. The works. When all that went dark (ie Venom) I lost my mojo for Spider-Man.

His fight with Kraven the Hunter by Mike Zeck was damn amazing!

BUT since I am on Marvel Unlimited. I saw that they have a Symbiote Spiderman out, so I read that and am loving the whole alternate reality thingy.
 
I didn't mind Spidey eventually ditching the symbiote suit, I liked it, but I also love the original red and blue more, but I always hated Venom - he's such a DC villain ("Spider-man, but EEEEEVIL, like Reverse-Flash, Bizarro Superman, etc). Thematically, that place was already occupied by the shamefully under-used Scorpion. And then Carnage...eeeuugh
 
Endless Flight said:
It’s too bad Marvel destroyed Spider-Man in 2007. I would still be reading the comics on a regular basis. I remember the feels I used to get reading the JMS/Romita Jr stuff and then the fast descent into hell happened, literally and figuratively.
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I would like to lookup what happened, is there an issue that broke it for you?
 
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