Ken Aldred

I’m hoping that, in the end, the reviews are more Chanel than Sex Panther. I really like the comic book.

More like Brut 33 or Sex Panther.

Hopefully they don’t take it too far in the opposite direction and create a successor to the XBox 360.

The perfect allegory for alienated nerds. I’m a big fan myself.

It is difficult. Hickman’s a good choice for moderns. To do it properly I’d need to think about one title from each decade or comic Age.

Weird Science, Weird Fantasy, EC. Lifelong science-fiction fan, two simultaneously-published titles filled with great stories and superb art. Feldstein, Kurtzman, Wood, Frazetta, Williamson, Orlando, Kamen, Severin, Elder. It’s not bad at all. Golden / Atomic Age at its finest. First comics that entered my head when I read the thread title question. Selected for that reason.

Clearly nonsense as everyone knows that a tiny mask is always an effective disguise that no-one in a comic book can ever see through. Totally unrealistic.

Yup. Stylistically interesting, novel and exciting for a short time, but the lack of depth and hack writing behind the illustrations quickly wore out its welcome as a whole. The better artists from the 80s to early 90s group of newcomers, such as Arthur Adams and Jim Lee, emerged relatively unscathed. Unlike McFarlane and Liefeld, both of them continued to hone their artistic skills rather than rest on their laurels and not bother to address the foundational limitations.

Image Comics 2000s - often a combination of nice artwork with engaging storylines. Highly regarded. Very different to the reputation of Image Comics in the 1990s, now widely derided for its empty focus on artistic style alone.

Under Stan, ASM became typical Marvel super-hero soap opera. If Ditko had continued writing, my major concern would have been whether his Objectivist philosophical views could’ve been reined in to prevent the character from becoming more extreme, veering more towards his independently-created Mr A, that is, developing a colder and ruthless personality. Stan would surely have vetoed a change in tone like that. In his later mainstream work for DC you saw that kind of polarised, black-or-white thinking in Hawk and Dove. Conversely, there always seemed something a bit surreal and otherworldly about his work compared to Romita’s, especially his character designs, which we saw again at DC with The Creeper, and that would’ve been great to retain. For me, that’s the problem, would Ditko have allowed Lee to continue keeping him that grounded in various ways, creatively stifled?

Have any comics actually had that profound an effect? Relevance writing incorporated and highlighted social issues of the day, which is not the same as actually stimulating change in the world at large. Perhaps we’re flattering ourselves if we believe we’re that influential.

We’ve started getting to the point where we are losing more of the artists that I idolised as a kid in the 70s, such as Berni Wrightson and, more recently, Richard Corben. The losses make it seem a bit delusional that the actual 40 + years elapsed still feel like yesterday to me.

Strangely enough, I was about to recommend the Hourman series by Tom Peyer and Rags Morales, featuring the future, android version. The art’s a little patchy, but the stories in the 25 issue run have some entertaining ideas. Quite underrated.

Or, have a signal device, as with Jimmy Olsen?

Nothing wrong with that.

Congrats ! Excellent artwork.

A few of those signatures are sloppy and borderline illegible.

I think so. Just a weapon attachment rather than adamantium-covered bones. So, there’s plenty leeway for a point of emergence, as seen above.

Missed that, and you’re quite right. If you’re putting choices such as Herriman, Schulz, Watterson, (Jeff) Smith on there, how can you leave out Carl Barks ?

I agree. Still not perfect, still with the same long term limitations as the squid, but far more preferable, as the original ending would’ve seemed a bit too 1950s science fiction B-movie and ridiculous to the general public.

The Batman 1 reprint he signed was bad enough.

Theory of mind. You can't expect others to see the situation exactly the way you do, and, going to a convention, to a creator you have no real knowledge of, and expecting them to see the intense importance of all the factors you personally associate with the book and transaction, is open to possible misunderstanding, confusion and dissatisfaction, all vectored in your direction. For me, as an obsessive-compulsive, either accept the reality there, the risk of the handover, or, don't do it, don't play the table.

Seems like a misnomer to me. Historically significant, maybe. That covers a wider spectrum, from Outcault and McCay, to Siegel and Schuster, to Spiegelman, to Miller. Even that’s a flawed description, as there are quite a few listed with stories and art that had little overall pervasive or long term impact on the genre, great though they may be.

It seems a bit biased towards the fine art / gallery end of the field, as artists can be influential in broader terms, such as Arthur Adams’ figure work being a precursor for the dominant American art style of the 90s, just as Milton Caniff had a similar effect on many 40s and 50s creators. An attempt to remove some of the pretension out of the choices made there. I do like the multinational approach taken, though.

Definitely worth a read.