The worst creators ever.

[Flemmings]

Lots of hate here for Loeb, and while I agree on many things he has written he has also done some incredibly good work like Batman: the long Halloween. Definitely worth reading if you haven't.

I also really liked Daredevil: Yellow

 

I actually enjoyed all of his Batman work, everything else (mostly Red Hulk) makes me want to

[VintageComics]

I agree about Ramos

 

Liefeld :sick:

 

Don Heck

 

Vinnie Colletta

Don Heck was preety good before he had to draw"the marvel way"

 

Agreed. Don Heck got worse as time went on unfortunately. His early work was great!

 

[That Ron Dude]

All of the artists mentioned are extremely talented men who draw in a way that the various posters don't enjoy. But they are talented. They were hired for various reasons by the largest comic companies in North America. Some, like Don Heck, were able to make their living drawing comics for their entire adult life. This is not because Heck, Liefield, or the others were political animals who hung around and drank beer with the right people. Nor did their Mafia connections strong arm them into drawing gigs. It is because they had something the companies felt could help to sell their comic books.

 

Let's remember that DC and Marvel are like the American League and the National League in Baseball-- they are the top. Every kid who picks up a pen and does a drawing of the Hulk during a boring history class wants to draw for them. Eventually a few artists get into the triple A equivalent like Dark Horse or Eclipse. A few of them will make the jump to the majors, after ironing out their little problems. Some will come up through the ranks as the assistants of more established creators. The odd one like Liefeld will come up oozing talent in his late teens, almost out of nowhere.

 

 

I once had the pleasure of driving Will Eisner through Toronto. We drove by the new Ontario College of Art. You'd have to see it but it looks like a regular building built as a college in the 1960's, with an even bigger building that resembles a checked shoebox, sitting above it, held up by gigantic coloured pencils. It looks weird. It shouldn't exist. It makes sense only as an art school. You know that it is not meant to be a bank or an insurance company.

 

Eisner's reaction was "sometimes weird trumps good".

 

Some people love Robbins and Liefield. Some people even love PAM, the guy who drew for Charlton. Weird trumps good. But it is far more complex than that. Liefeld drew giant guns, Japanese style speed lines, faded out feet, regular sized heads on giant figures and more. They worked. The giant chest on Captain America didn't work but we don't judge an artist by his worst work (though it can be fun to do so). We don't judge the Marx Brothers by Love Happy or Bob Dylan by Self Portrait. We judge them by Duck Soup and Highway 61. I don't think Liefeld was one of the all time greats but he deserved the recognition he got about 20 years ago.

 

You won't find your "worst creator" at Marvel or DC. The best you will find is "The worst creator at Marvel or DC". And you sure won't find one that had a thirty year career. You might not like Heck, but no one will deny that he could draw up a storm. What I would say is that his style didn't suit the kind of superhero stories Marvel was doing in the early to mid '60's, he didn't come close to Jack and Steve for story telling and as the field changed his work became unexciting. The story goes that his wife was dying in the '90's and he was doing some of his worst work, as would be expected, while caring for her. Look at his 1950's work though. At his best, he could go toe to toe with Alex Toth. Look at the X-Men comic he did during the middle of the Neal Adams run. It doesn't look out of place.

 

Does anyone remember Ronn Foss? He was a big name fan in the early '60's. He drew a little bit like Carmine Infantino. He was very talented but, I think, largely untrained. I think he eventually did one story for Not Brand Ecch. But he was acknowledged as the Best Fan Artist is Comics for years. He just didn't fit with the big companies. I think he is worth mentioning as a guy who did very little for a big company. But even he was an acknowledged talent.

 

You will find the very worst creators during the black and white boom. Anybody could make money in comics at the peak of it.

 

If we don't want to mention those people, how about some of the lesser artists at Eclipse when they couldn't afford to hire the high priced artists anymore. How about the illustrators at Warren after the E.C. artists left and before the Spanish and Philipino artists arrived? Then there was Tony Caputo at Now who hired some of the biggest no talents in the world. He knew it too. Some of them could never have worked for other companies. How about some of the guys who had big hits during the eighties though they couldn't find work before or since. How about some of the guys you run into at conventions who are my age or worse, have kissed all the right gluteus, knocked on the doors of the big companies since the Marvel expansion of the 1970's, and still haven't landed a better job than inking a back-up story in Marvel Fanfare. And they call themselves pros and some of them act like the story of modern comics is McFarlane, Miller and themselves.

 

I don't name names. Their egos couldn't take it. They would jump off a bridge.

 

I nominate myself for worst artist of all time. I have contributed to over 80 comic book stories as a writer/ artist/ editor/ and letterer. I know enough about art to look at guys like Don Heck and say, "If I had half his talent, I would have had a big career at a big company". Of course, I would have also had to worry about health insurance, work 12 hours a day, been at the mercy of an editor and I would probably have dropped dead of a heart attack while sitting at my drawing board by now. I think of guys like Heck as the backbone of an unfeeling industry. I wish he got more positive recognition when he was alive. Same for Colletta. Somewhat similar for Liefeld. At least Liefeld had a moment in the sun and a few big whacks of cash.

[VintageComics]

Ron, I know that building well. It's surreal to walk past it.

 

That was a very well written, well thought out post.

 

I've seen your work. It's great!

 

Thanks for adding some balance to the thread!

 

[goldust40]

 

Thread back open

 

That's not actually disgusting to look at the way his other two covers I've seen are, but it is almost unintelligible - seriously, it took me a minute or two to work out that it's referring to the death of Gwen Stacy. Show it to a person who didn't know that story/original cover and I don't think they'd know what the hell to make of it.

 

Maybe they could explain why Spidey's foot is bigger than the rest of his body.

[goldust40]

Ron, I know that building well. It's surreal to walk past it.

 

That was a very well written, well thought out post.

 

I've seen your work. It's great!

 

Thanks for adding some balance to the thread!

 

 

Gee, what a shock - Roy opts for the balanced, relativist opinion.

 

Killjoy. Again.

[VintageComics]

Ron, I know that building well. It's surreal to walk past it.

 

That was a very well written, well thought out post.

 

I've seen your work. It's great!

 

Thanks for adding some balance to the thread!

 

 

Gee, what a shock - Roy opts for the balanced, relativist opinion.

 

Killjoy. Again.

 

I know Ron personally and he's a great guy with 10 times the creative talent that I thought I had. I happen to agree that the appreciation of art has to be subjective. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. That's the only way we can make your red pants excusable.

 

[VintageComics]

Oh, and pretty much everything human or created by humans is relative.

 

[goldust40]

 

Some people love Robbins and Liefield. Some people even love PAM, the guy who drew for Charlton. Weird trumps good. But it is far more complex than that. Liefeld drew giant guns, Japanese style speed lines, faded out feet, regular sized heads on giant figures and more. They worked. The giant chest on Captain America didn't work but we don't judge an artist by his worst work (though it can be fun to do so). We don't judge the Marx Brothers by Love Happy or Bob Dylan by Self Portrait. We judge them by Duck Soup and Highway 61. I don't think Liefeld was one of the all time greats but he deserved the recognition he got about 20 years ago.

 

The thing is, that these threads are never, ever, about the countless also-rans and never-weres. There has always been a colossal surfeit of talentless hacks and journeymen out there (in every profession, natch) that "Worst Creator" threads such as this one can only refer to an artist or writer who has achieved some degree of fame or status within the industry.

 

And artists such as Bob Dylan and the Marx Brothers are judged by their entire careers, not just their high points. I'm a big Stones fan but it's patently obvious that a large proportion of their career (the last 25 years or so) has seen them work on auto-pilot.

 

Furthermore, comparing pre-eminent icons like Dylan who innovated and had immeasurable influence on pop culture with Liefeld and his ilk is apples and oranges. Liefeld never raised the bar or challenged as a creator on any level. He was more or less the luckiest man in the biz who could just about tell a story and happened to be in the right place at the right time with the right stylistic tics (that masqueraded as storytelling).

[selegue]

All of the artists mentioned are extremely talented men who draw in a way that the various posters don't enjoy. But they are talented. They were hired for various reasons by the largest comic companies in North America. Some, like Don Heck, were able to make their living drawing comics for their entire adult life. This is not because Heck, Liefield, or the others were political animals who hung around and drank beer with the right people. Nor did their Mafia connections strong arm them into drawing gigs. It is because they had something the companies felt could help to sell their comic books.

 

Presumably DC had Ernie Chan/Chua draw 9,372 uninspired covers for the same reason everyone loved Vince Colletta. He helped sell comic books by never missing a deadline.

 

Jack

[goldust40]

 

I know Ron personally and he's a great guy with 10 times the creative talent that I thought I had.

 

Ah, but you can't draw. Just kidding. I'm sure that Ron is a top bloke and is talented. Not an issue.

 

 

I happen to agree that the appreciation of art has to be subjective. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

 

I'd say that there has to be some form of concensus or standards regarding what constitutes good or bad art, or indeed art at all. If there wasn't people who claim that their unmade beds or pickled sheep installations were actually art would be universally accepted for their worthless, overhyped, elitist, pretentious bilge.

 

Anyway let's not do that dance again. You're completely and embarrasingly wrong, relatively speaking.

 

 

That's the only way we can make your red pants excusable.

 

Those pants are a STATEMENT, dammit.

[VintageComics]

Furthermore, comparing pre-eminent icons like Dylan who innovated and had immeasurable influence on pop culture with Liefeld and his ilk is apples and oranges. Liefeld never raised the bar or challenged as a creator on any level. He was more or less the luckiest man in the biz who could just about tell a story and happened to be in the right place at the right time with the right stylistic tics (that masqueraded as storytelling).

 

To me these people are no different than Colan. I was never a fan of Colan's work but the guy has a huge following. His art is anything but realistic.

 

I think we can thank people like McFarlane, Liefeld, Mignola and a slew of others from the same late 80's, early 90's time period for breaking open the doors and allowing in stylistic (not realistic) artists such as people like Bagley, Ramos etc.

 

The fact that this style of art has become a genre of it's own within comics shows that someone is buying and enjoying the stuff, even if the bunch of us that grew up on Adams, Buscema and Byrne don't like it.

[goldust40]

Furthermore, comparing pre-eminent icons like Dylan who innovated and had immeasurable influence on pop culture with Liefeld and his ilk is apples and oranges. Liefeld never raised the bar or challenged as a creator on any level. He was more or less the luckiest man in the biz who could just about tell a story and happened to be in the right place at the right time with the right stylistic tics (that masqueraded as storytelling).

 

To me these people are no different than Colan. I was never a fan of Colan's work but the guy has a huge following. His art is anything but realistic.

 

I think we can thank people like McFarlane, Liefeld, Mignola and a slew of others from the same late 80's, early 90's time period for breaking open the doors and allowing in stylistic (not realistic) artists such as people like Bagley, Ramos etc.

 

The fact that this style of art has become a genre of it's own within comics shows that someone is buying and enjoying the stuff, even if the bunch of us that grew up on Adams, Buscema and Byrne don't like it.

 

The form is not the issue here. This is not about taste deriving from what I read when I was a kid - I like some of McFarlane's work, and am a fan of Mignola's, not to mention other heavily stylized artists. My point was that it is all about what the artist brings to the table. With certain artists it's just cynicism and contempt for the medium. With others, there is inspiration and depth.

[VintageComics]

 

I know Ron personally and he's a great guy with 10 times the creative talent that I thought I had.

 

Ah, but you can't draw. Just kidding. I'm sure that Ron is a top bloke and is talented. Not an issue.

Oh, I can draw. I just can't story tell.

 

I happen to agree that the appreciation of art has to be subjective. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

 

I'd say that there has to be some form of concensus or standards regarding what constitutes good or bad art, or indeed art at all. If there wasn't people who claim that their unmade beds or pickled sheep installations was actually art would be universally accepted for their worthless, overhyped, elitist, pretentious bilge.

 

Anyway let's not do that dance again. You're completely and embarrasingly wrong, relatively speaking.

 

There is no wrong in art. It's simply meant to draw a reaction out of an observer.

 

This building was designed to represent an art school. Is the art school wrong?

 

What people assume, is that if a majority agrees it's bad or good then it must be so. Not true. Someone can see something in a drawing that another person can't. That makes it relative to the viewer. This thread is a perfect example. Some people enjoy Ramos' art, some people hate it. People assume that if it's not lifelike it's not good. No. If it's not lifelike it may not appeal to you, but there are 1000's of others that will enjoy it.

 

[goldust40]

 

I know Ron personally and he's a great guy with 10 times the creative talent that I thought I had.

 

Ah, but you can't draw. Just kidding. I'm sure that Ron is a top bloke and is talented. Not an issue.

Oh, I can draw. I just can't story tell.

 

I happen to agree that the appreciation of art has to be subjective. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

 

I'd say that there has to be some form of concensus or standards regarding what constitutes good or bad art, or indeed art at all. If there wasn't people who claim that their unmade beds or pickled sheep installations was actually art would be universally accepted for their worthless, overhyped, elitist, pretentious bilge.

 

Anyway let's not do that dance again. You're completely and embarrasingly wrong, relatively speaking.

 

There is no wrong in art. It's simply meant to draw a reaction out of an observer.

 

This building was designed to represent an art school. Is the art school wrong?

 

What people assume, is that if a majority agrees it's bad or good then it must be so. Not true. Someone can see something in a drawing that another person can't. That makes it relative to the viewer. This thread is a perfect example. Some people enjoy Ramos' art, some people hate it. People assume that if it's not lifelike it's not good. No. If it's not lifelike it may not appeal to you, but there are 1000's of others that will enjoy it.

 

 

I guess I'm old-school, in that I see art eliciting not just a shallow, knee-jerk reaction from the observer but the understanding that there is craft and intrinsic beauty as well as aesthetic quality to the piece in question.

 

The term "art" has been appropriated, adulterated and on by countless charlatans and hypemongers, not to mention people with too much money.

 

Which would explain that revolting eyesore of a building that the people of Ontario have to contend with on a daily basis.

 

Eisner, a classicist through and through regardless of his innovations, was just being polite.

[goldust40]

Some people enjoy Ramos' art, some people hate it. People assume that if it's not lifelike it's not good. No. If it's not lifelike it may not appeal to you, but there are 1000's of others that will enjoy it.

 

Ah, but do they consider it art? And if they do, how do they back up such an err, opinion?

[Ze-man]

This might not apply to the thread, but it sure is god awful.

 

 

 

Captain Loo?..seriously?

[VintageComics]

Some people enjoy Ramos' art, some people hate it. People assume that if it's not lifelike it's not good. No. If it's not lifelike it may not appeal to you, but there are 1000's of others that will enjoy it.

 

Ah, but do they consider it art? And if they do, how do they back up such an err, opinion?

 

It depends on who is viewing it. It's different to a 6 year old than it is to a 10 year old or a 40 year old.

 

What is art?

 

Seriously. What is art?

[goldust40]

Some people enjoy Ramos' art, some people hate it. People assume that if it's not lifelike it's not good. No. If it's not lifelike it may not appeal to you, but there are 1000's of others that will enjoy it.

 

Ah, but do they consider it art? And if they do, how do they back up such an err, opinion?

 

It depends on who is viewing it. It's different to a 6 year old than it is to a 10 year old or a 40 year old.

 

What is art?

 

Seriously. What is art?

 

Don't get all existential on me now. I already explained that a work of art has to be both intrinsically and extrinsically challenging and rewarding. Again I'm banging my head against a wall 'cause that too could be considered subjective.

 

Anyway, art as you damn well know does need moderate experience, perspective and maturity from the observer to be fully understood. Some art may be appreciated by a ten year old, others may not.

[VintageComics]

...and what does it take to appreciate it?

 

Does it take a degree from an institution?

 

Does it take a certain IQ?

 

Does it take a certain amount of time?

 

Does it take talent?

 

Does it have to be quantifiable?