Marc Silvestri to return to the X-Men

[blowout]

Biggest problem with Todd Mac's art on spidey was it was all style over substance.

[The_Man_Of_Steel]

Biggest problem with Todd Mac's art on spidey was it was all style over substance.

 

I just love vague comments, especially negative ones there is nothing like em'! What do you mean by substance? His current Spider-Man work lacks substance, that is it's invisible, non-existant.

[murph0]

He means he just drew a pretty looking Spiderman w/o really giving it any "guts", and didn't do much with emotional or physical aspects of the character (with the exception of fight scenes which I think he over-did not to mention went a bit beyond the realm of the character)

 

Brian

[blowout]

By style over substance, I am talking about the lack of characterisation/ emotion/ drama etc. in favour of highly stylised action poses.

MOS you have to stop taking posts so literally and try to read between the lines a little.

[The_Man_Of_Steel]

Thanks for reading Blowouts mind for me, my telepathic ability is failing me tonight.

 

He means he just drew a pretty looking Spiderman w/o really giving it any "guts"

 

Todd drew Spidey ( or "it") with plenty of "guts", he had the "guts" to draw Venom, and Spider-Man had the "guts" to face Venom for the first time.

 

and didn't do much with emotional or physical aspects of the character

 

More negative B.S., don't you have the McFarlane Spider-Man issues Brian? Oh, I'm sorry, I forgot, yours are all slabbed, and so you wouldn't have a clue what the inside pages look like. Well, crack the slab of that ASM # 300 and open to the first page. Ok, I'll spare your slab, it's Mary Jane sitting down and cowering with tears in her eyes. Is that not a good example of an emotional aspect? And to say he didn't do much with the physical aspects is a freaking joke. Look at Spider-Man's pose on the cover of ASM # 300, you don't even have to crack the slab to see that. I'm sorry but IMO the criticism of Todd's art here in this thread is flawed. I mean, if you don't like his style then just say it and leave it at that, I can understand if his style does not quench your taste for comic book art.

[The_Man_Of_Steel]

MOS you have to stop taking posts so literally and try to read between the lines a little.

 

Gee thanks for telling me what I can and cannot do, can I go to my room now dad? Blowout, please make greater efforts to clearify what you say. Words have more than 1 meaning. If you don't provide any context or make an effort to clarify what you say, then it can be interpreted in a number of ways, and that is how people come to the wrong conclusions and get the wrong ideas. All I did was ASK what you meant by substance, so that I wouldn't misunderstand you, look up the word in a dictionary. It literally has more than one meaning. I'll try and read your posts like I'm reading poetry from now on...that is figuratively.

[Darthdiesel]

Just to weigh in....as a Modernite and this having brought me back into Spider-Man after the lulls after 238 in between Hobby appearances...I think MacFarlane's taking over the artistic reins on Amazing Spider-Man and then proceeding to dominate the comic art world to the extent that the names Spider-Man and MacFarlane were practically synonymous, MacFarlane is the best Spider-Man artist EVER... Ditko's style was too plain and square jawed for me, regardless of whether his influence can be seen in Bagley's hyperflexible Spidey postures. Romita Sr. drew a nice Mary Jane as well, and burst on the seen with classic cover on ASM 39...but he is also IMO, classic...an old school look for the old school fans; Buscema makes an app, Gil Kane draws Bikini Gwen then kills her, Ross Andru had his little stint with the Punisher intro and some Green Goblin apps, one of the longest runs, a bit bland, then you get Pollard, blander still some Byrne even , then a long run of Johnny Jr... where I actually first started reading around 238 ...then comes FRenz with ASM 252 to continue on then a mish mosh of Saviuk, Zeck,Owlsley...indistinct run until you get into the exciting and radical art of MacFarlane on 298.

 

Do this: read Saviuks 297 then compare and contrast immediately with MacFarlan's 298...you will see a huge difference and understand why folks validly fell that the greatest ASM artist EVER was MacFarlane.

 

Todd was so good that Larsen, the mediocre untalented artist after Todd, was able to bask a bit in MacFarlane's glow once Todd left the Spider-man title and fool folks that he actually had his own style and not just a "MacFarlane clone" Todd's style was greatly mimicked by his contemporaries, either tweaking their own styles a bit to incorporate the Macfarlane flair and attention to detail/proportion, into their own lacking styles.

 

Just my opinion...

 

[murph0]

Hey slick, for your information 0 of my ASM run past 252 are slabbed. Oh mighty supreme lord of evaluating artistic ability.. You obviously must be right. So he drew Spiderman swinging on a cover, big deal. I've read and reread those books, hell I've read the entire series.. he just makes an aesthetically-pleasing Spiderman, without doing a very good job of purveying any awkwardness and he obviously decided to make him have absolutely no limit of manueverability...creating fight scenes that make Peter Parker look like he has no real backbone.

Are you related to McFarlane? You seem quite jumpy over any opinion that doesn't blindly praise him. I don't like his rendering of Spiderman, the more traditional and classic approach suits the persona of the character better..and also more sufficiently shows Spiderman has a human side too.

Btw, Venom is not very impressive..impressively drawn but in essence it's an evil Spiderman with blob like overwhelming powers.

And just an fyi, emotions I'm talking about his thoughts to himself as well as shown emotion..it's easy to draw an emotion, much harder to truly convey it within the character's looks and reactions..the way he conducted himself, etc..you would've thought him to be Superman in some of those panels.

Again, I think too many people get too negative about Ditko's works just b/c his Spiderman doesn't look like all the comic artwork we have now.

 

Brian

[murph0]

You do realize that everyone knows that Saviuks wasn't very good with Spiderman.. you are in essence comparing apples to oranges. I might as well compare umm..Jason Kidd with Jamaal Crawford..Kidd has much better skills and tools and was always considered a better player..not to say Crawford isn't good in his own right, he's just not good compared to higher tier players.

 

Brian

[murph0]

I'd also like to add that I don't think Todd is a bad artist.. I sometimes really like his drawings..I like a lot of the covers that he created..there are some I don't like..but there's some that I do. If you could combine McFarlane's drawing of Spiderman with Ditko's Spiderman "guts"..you'd have a superior character. Every different person brings something different to the table that the next person won't have.

There's really no best ever, b/c everyone has a different opinion and really no1's opinion supercedes anyone elses. I may like Ditko better then McFarlane, you may like McFarlane better then Ditko..doesn't mean either of us are wrong.

 

Brian

[blowout]

"Blowout, please make greater efforts to clearify what you say. Words have more than 1 meaning. "

 

So you are telling me that you have never heard the phrase 'style over substance' before and needed me to spell out it's meaning to you?

Of course the word 'substance' has more than one meaning depending on how it is used, but 'style over substance' is a commonly used phrase when refering to something that is superficially 'beautiful'.

Sorry for the confusion MOS, but I don't intent to start adding subtitles to my posts for the hard of understanding.

I apologise if you felt slighted by my comment about you 'reading between the lines' but I am not the first person that has had to break his post down for you.

[COI]

"Romita Sr. drew a nice Mary Jane as well, and burst on the seen with classic cover on ASM 39...but he is also IMO, classic...an old school look for the old school fans; "

 

I'm 24 and got into collecting Spiderman off the stands right at the TMC era. I liked it, and still like it, but the above statement is false. I'm very far from an "old school" fan age-wise, but IMHO, Romita SR is the greatest artist to ever grace Spidey, and not just because of his nice MJ and Gwen renditions.

 

I don't think any comic art shy of Alex Ross(godly talent) can be considered "perfect", but TMC's style could get very annoying. First off, he drew Spidey with a body-builder physique, more suited to someone like Thor which is really annoying because He's supposed to be in the 170-180LBS range, and that physique would put him way over. And while I realize that comics always exagerate muscle definition and size, as soon as he was back in his civilian's clothes as plain old Peter Parker, he seems to loose about 80lbs of muscle mass. Not to mention the fact that his faces were horrible. They all look like they're retaining water, and should get checked for an inactive thyroid. And all his female faces were especially horrible. The exaggerated features did nothing to promote the gentle female features that most men( ) are attracted to. Line up a pic of Romita's MJ and TMC's MJ, and tell me which one looks closer to an over-sexed stripper, and which one resembles the girl next door who'll grow up to be a super model.

 

I know this sounds like I hate TMC's art on Spidey, but I don't. Like I said, I do like it, but I think that might be more due to the wave of nostalgia that it brings me. It was different, which was a good thing at that time, but I would not consider him to be one of the "great" Spidey artists, and IMHO definetly does not come close to Romita SR.

 

But again, art is subjective and that's what is great about it.

[chrisco37]

I like Romita Sr. the best, but I don't think anyone can deny McFarlane's skill. Like Darth said, look at the issues before him. Not so great. Todd comes along, and BOOM, ASM is competing with Batman (movie came out at same time, so huge hype) for top sales. Then, Marvel gives him his own book, and it's the top seller, despite sorry stories and bad dialogue.

 

Alot of us on the boards are "purests" so, naturally, we like the older stuff better. But, face it people, McFarlane was THE artist of the 90's (well, at least the early 90's, along w/ Jim Lee). Just look at how the style of comics changed after McFarlane started Spidey.

 

Chris

[delekkerste]

Wow, talk about an issue that has enflamed some passions! To be specific, I am not a big fan of McFarlane's art because of its "cartoony" (for lack of a better word) aspect. I recognize that he has a lot of talent, but I am personally a much bigger fan of more realistic comic art (in the vein of Neal Adams, Frank Brunner, etc.) In fact, I read something very interesting recently which may seem counterintuitive - "open" societies and cultures seem to promote more "realistic" artwork styles while "closed" (e.g. totalitarian, religious-based, etc.) societies promote more symbolic/stylized artwork styles. Realistic is superior!! (IMHO)

 

Out of all the Spidey artists, I think Romita Sr. had a nice, clean style...not as detailed as an uber-realist like Adams, but still very visually appealing. His ASM work is tops in my book. After him, my penchant for realism probably would make me pick Ross Andru for second place (though his later issues were not as strong as his earlier ones) and Gil Kane for third. I recognize Ditko's tremendous creative talent and contribution to ASM, but I am personally not a big fan of his overall style, though I can appreciate his creative brilliance in the abstract as much as the next guy.

 

I actually have not been very impressed by any of the post-Andru artists on the title. Not saying they were all bad, but many of them just didn't do it for me. I really didn't like T. Mac's cartoony style, and Larsen's work was even worse from that perspective. I am not at all a fan of JR JR's current run on the title...the characters look very stiff and cartoony to me. The way he draws Mary Jane is particularly unattractive - plain, stiff and disproportioned. Not good.

 

Just my two cents.

 

Gene

[awe4one]

I think MacFarlane's art is much better suited towards "monster" titles. He drew a great Venom. He drew a great Hulk. Hell, his work on the forgotten DC Invasion mini-series was wonderful. When he got a comic that featured mostly normal looking people though, his art seemed out of place a'la Spider-Man. But what do I know...I'm partial to Kane's and Sal Buscema's Spidey rendition.

 

But to keep it on-topic....Silvestri back on the X-Men is great news.

 

 

Jim

[murph0]

I gotta agree with you on the MJ faces that he drew...she didn't look as hot

 

Brian

[Kevin Boyd]

Re: Spidey

 

My favourite Spidey artists are Ditko, followed by Romita Sr., then Romita Jr.

 

Ditko is the creator of Spidey and almost all of his villains are still actively in Spidey's rogues gallery. This is going to sound cliched, but Steve Ditko is one of the greatest comic book artists of all time, and Spider-Man is definitely the crown jewel in his biography. Even Romita goes out of his way to say that Spider-Man was always Ditko's strip, he was just the fill-in artist.

 

Romita Sr. is the definitive Spidey artist who set the style and tone of Spider-Man's image and comics for over 25 years (until McFarlane changed the statis quo), while JRJR is THE modern Spidey artist. I still think Roger Stern and JRJR's tenure on ASM (especially between 229-250) is the best modern Spidey run.

 

McFarlane was a good fit for Spidey at the time... the title needed a shakeup. He has obvious faults, definitely "style over substance". But Spidey had been lacking style AND substance since ASM 260. I'm not even going to get into how bad Spectacular/Team-Up/Web were during that time period.

 

Unlike most of you I even liked Larsen's Spidey... particularly his two Sinister Six storyarcs. Bagley however.... let's say that for him practice definitely has helped his style.

 

Both Todd and Erik infused a certain amount of goofy "dynamic energy" into the strip. After years of stagnation it was a breath of fresh air - too many years of lesser artists trying to copy Romita Sr. on the strip.

 

Re: Silvestri on X-Men.

 

Old news boys. This was brought up weeks ago. Morrison needs whatever help he can get as they can't get an artist for the book who can keep up with the monthly grind. I thought his stuff on UXM and Wolverine was ok at the time, so I'll be curious to see what happens.

 

PS. Dale Keown is currently the artist on Top Cow's relaunched Darkness title.

 

Kev

 

[chrisco37]

Sal Buscema's Spidey rendition.

 

Blasphemy! Have we had this discussion/arguement before? Are you talking about Buscema's first run on Spectacular (70's) or the 2nd (90's)?

 

Sal's artwork in the 90's was some of the biggest trash I've ever seen. I almost dropped my subscription because it sucked so bad! Only thing that kept me getting it was I was trying to build a complete run (long since broken up )

 

Chris

[awe4one]

Yeah I did like his 90s stint but I was referring to his classic style in the '70s Spectacular and Marvel Team-Ups.

 

And yeah I like Sal's art!

 

Unless of course he's inked by Sinowiskski(?). Then I'd agree dreadful stuff.

 

 

Jim

[FlyingDonut]

Be nice to Sal! He lives in Vienna!