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Worst Bronze Age Artist EVER

Started by joe_collector,

41 posts in this topic

joe_collector

joe_collector

Posted
Posted

Now there were some real humdingers in the Bronze Age, such as the horrid Kirby efforts, George Tuska and his chicklet teeth, and Arvell Jones' contortions and anatomy that would make Liefeld's Image stuff seem realistic....

 

But I've always detested Frank Robbin's work more than any other... that was until last night....

 

I had finally gotten around to reading my Hero for Hire run I bought from NeatStuff, and I witnessed some of the most God-awful art I've ever seen. The artist?

 

Billy Graham.

 

The art is extremely crude, unfinished, and worst of all, the guy has absolutely no story-telling ability whatsoever. Panels jump haphazardly, there is no flow and it looks like the work of a crack-baby.

 

And to add insult to injury, Mr Graham apparently took a long time to churn out this crapola, and one issue had a Sub-Mariner fill-in, and an admonition from the Editor that "we're taking steps to make sure this doesn't happen again".

 

So who did Marvel replace Billy Graham with?

 

George Tuska. 893frustrated.gif

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ninanina

ninanina

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Giffen in some legions,or his Lightning in the short-lived ThunderAgents revival? He seems to have emulated those old HFHs

 

I also remember reading about how Giffen apparently copied back-ground panel art from old comics in his work. This was right around the time he was doing art for Legion of Super Heroes. But, I can't remember much of the details. So a lot of his work, wasn't original.

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joe_collector

joe_collector

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Frank Robbins' 1950s daily strip artwork was decent. His 70s Invaders art was dare I say even worse than Rob Liefeld's GROSS anatomy. An all new low for comicdom? confused-smiley-013.gif

 

Although I hated all of his work, the biggest disappointment was Robbins taking over for Buscema in the middle of the Captain America Retires storyline. I loved that run, and then suddenly Robbins stepped in and everything went into the Twilight Zone of contortions and absolutely horrific fight scenes.

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joe_collector

joe_collector

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"Superstar" Billy Graham was brutal. I think Bob Brown must be up there. His Avengers art was very p.iss poor.

 

Oh yeah, Bob Brown is easily in the Top 10 Worst BA Artists list, but he can't approach the true Kings of Crapola.

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Bronty

Bronty

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Trimpe was generally pretty terrible.. it's kind of ironic that he did the cover for the biggest key of the entire decade. And to think it's also one of the best covers he ever did - lucky coincidence...

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Zonker

Zonker

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John Severin is one of those guys like Wally Wood that completely dominates the penciller-- and with John S. & Woody that was usually a very good thing!

 

Remember those great Kull stories pencilled/inked by Marie & John Severin? Just before Mike Ploog took over Kull there was an issue or two pencilled by Marie and inked by somebody like Frank Chiarmonte that really made it clear what John brought to the party.

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Fan4Fan

Fan4Fan

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Frank Robbins' 1950s daily strip artwork was decent. His 70s Invaders art was dare I say even worse than Rob Liefeld's GROSS anatomy. An all new low for comicdom? confused-smiley-013.gif

 

Although I hated all of his work, the biggest disappointment was Robbins taking over for Buscema in the middle of the Captain America Retires storyline. I loved that run, and then suddenly Robbins stepped in and everything went into the Twilight Zone of contortions and absolutely horrific fight scenes.

 

So true! That was a real disappointment!

 

Another unfininished arc was Perez leaving Shooter's Korvac saga...

 

Two great storylines that would have been almost perfect if the original artist had been able to stay on.

 

Thanks,

Fan4Fan

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Metarog

Metarog

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Carmine Infantino did some pretty horrible work on Nova in the late seventies. Characters were out of proportion and in ridiculously impossible poses; the backgrounds were also very rough or non-existant. However, I agree that Robbins' work in Human Fly and Invaders was the worst I have ever seen in a comic book. Almost all his characters looked like they had been beaten to a pulp-even before the fighting started! stooges.gifsumo.gif

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joe_collector

joe_collector

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Carmine Infantino did some pretty horrible work on Nova in the late seventies. Characters were out of proportion and in ridiculously impossible poses; the backgrounds were also very rough or non-existant.

 

Yep, the characters looked like they were out-of-focus and stretched, like seen through the heat waves on a hot summer day.

 

I am of the opinion that Nova was a fair-selling book, up until the point they slapped Carmine on it. After that, many readers dropped it, and the book fell off the charts.

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