This cover is horrible, and anyone who says otherwise is a liar! 5 5

[Get Marwood & I]

On 6/29/2023 at 1:31 PM, Cat said:

I can't work the bed out. It's like an Escher drawing. Why are the pillows at the feet,not at the headboard? 

Because she sleeps upside down, so she can see if any massive thirty foot evil eyed claw monsters try to break in through the window. She won't escape though, as the bedspread - that one she's sitting on top of - has swallowed her left leg. That's a result for us really, seeing as how bad her right foot turned out. Maybe Ditko was asleep when he drew it threw it up onto the page. 

[Murphman13]

On 6/29/2023 at 7:13 AM, Get Marwood & I said:

Spider-Blobby 

 

[paqart]

On 1/15/2018 at 2:44 PM, Get Marwood & I said:

Yikes, that must hurt  

That would've been been a good addition to my old 'position impossible' thread which, alas, got pulled in its entirety by a mod with no sense of humour. Poor thread. 

But this thread is less about uncomfortable anatomy (no more Liefeld threads!) and more about horribly drawn covers. Dodgy leg aside,  the Batman cover is great!

Try again 

I prefer the ASM 13 to this Batman cover.

[paqart]

On 1/16/2018 at 1:28 PM, Get Marwood & I said:

@Ken Aldred

Here's a good comparison Paul. Spidey looks believable here - I can feel he's freezing. I can feel the desolation. He's really well drawn and looks 'right'. The artist is confident enough not to have a big distracting signature in play.

What do you think? Who has displayed the greater talent / artistic flair here? Who's picture tells the story most completely? If you take all the titles and barcodes away, which image would look best framed on your wall? If you tried to replicate them yourself, which do you think you would find easier to match?

   

This is a very interesting thread, particularly the first post and this one. First, I don't have any problems with the ASM #13 cover. As far as I'm concerned, it's a good cover. Not Byrne's best, but far from from the worst cover I've ever seen. Dissecting a cover based on drawing "mistakes" is not the best way to evaluate the artistic merit of a cover. If it was, there wouldn't be any "good" covers by Jack Kirby, Gil Kane, or Steve Ditko. 

The example here of the Alpha Flight vs. ASM covers is an easy call: Alpha Flight has the more interesting, and cleaner, cover. The "realism" of the ASM cover does not make it better. My opinion, it makes it worse because it is realism for realism's sake. A photo by a good photographer of the same scene would have a chance of being better than the Alpha Flight, but not this image.

So much for my opinion. There are plenty of popular artists whose work is incomprehensible to me. This is primarily because of the "realism" of their images. David Mack, for instance. I have never seen an image by Mack that I liked, or even that I thought was painted well. Regardless, he has fans. I'm glad he has an audience, but I'm not one. This doesn't make his work "bad" (from my point of view), it just means I don't like his style. The same goes for Bill Sienkeiwicz, Mike Mignola, Adam Hughes, Todd McFarland, Alex Ross, Josh Campbell, Dave McKean, David Mack, and many other artists well-known for their skill. 

Sienkeiwicz: Too many unnecessary strokes that do not define any component of the scene combined with murky ill-considered colors. 

Mignola: Any given cover looks fine, but he uses very similar compositions for every cover. If you've seen one, you've seen the rest. Combined with a flat inking style, these covers are boring to me, and I mean all of them.

Hughes: So dependent on photo reference for the main characters that he has a hard time integrating them with their environment. His rendering style and colors are usually fine but his compositions look forced to me. There are some exceptions that I like, but too often he squeezes thing together (characters and environment) in ways that make them look like a photo of a person shot with a long lens added to a background shot wide angle, then cropped in the most disturbing way possible.

McFarland: His appeal seems to be connected to the amount of detail he puts into his images. I can see the detail too, but every other part of his drawings are so weak that I wonder how he ever got published. His figures lack solidity, have hitherto-undiscovered muscles, and he uses cross-hatching where it doesn't belong but lacks it where it does.

Ross: I have seen some recent covers by Ross that I do genuinely admire. Much of the work he did for the first twenty years of his career, particularly the interior work, suffered from weak color and poor subject/background integration. 

Campbell: Like McFarland. His figures lack solidity or structure. He leans too heavily on the "pretty girl" types of drawings to carry his work, but it isn't enough. Some covers would never have been published if I had been art director, like the very popular Mary Jane covers from around ASM 601-607. 

McKean and Mack: These two suffer from the same problems, so I'm combining them. First, tentative watercolor skills. The color is weak and the brushstrokes lack confidence. Right away, I lose interest in looking further. Beyond this, these are renderings made from, it seems, whatever reference photos they happened to have near, whether they were right for the cover or not. Integration of characters with environment are very weak in every image I've ever seen by this pair. Storytelling isn't completely absent, but compared to a typical Johnny Romita cover, it is.
 

 

 

Edited June 30, 2023 by paqart

[paqart]

On 1/18/2018 at 10:15 AM, Turtle said:

Let me start off by saying that I'm a fan of Steranko.  I'm a fan of his art.  I'm a fan of the man himself.  He's terrific.

That said, Captain America 110 is the only cover of his I've seen that I haven't liked, mostly because of the Hulk.

Why is Hulk 25+ feet tall?  Why are each of his eyes looking in different directions?  Why is his right arm coming from his chest?  Is Hulk a hunchback?

This cover drives me nuts.  So many better examples of this artist's work. 

I've always liked this cover. Have been looking for a slabbed copy at a reasonable price for awhile now.

[paqart]

On 1/17/2018 at 12:47 PM, Get Marwood & I said:

It's probably shallow of me, but I've never been able to read a comic with bad art. Bad art kills great story for me. Great art elevates bad story. That's the way it has always been for me. Comics are a visual medium though, so maybe it makes some sense.

I have always detested McFarlane's art. I can see the skill and competence that others laud, but I just hate the end product. Ditto Byrne, although for different reasons. It's personal taste. My brain is hardwired to dislike it. My gut reaction is 'yuck'. I can't help it. It's similar with music, films etc.

So, Mr (ex) Spidey completist here, who has owned 8,000 Spidey books and pretty much had everything ever in his time, has never read a McFarlane run ASM book. Ditto Byrne. 

Being one of lifes 'lucky' types, which is why I probably gravitated to early Parker in the first place, if I entered a pub quiz on Spider-Man it would probably be full of McFarlane and Byrne run questions. So I'd score zero, and all my mates would laugh and say "Completist! You don't know jack sheet about Spider-Man". Except I don't go to pubs. And have no mates.

I'll get me coat. 

 

We agree on McFarland, not Byrne. My favorite Byrne, btw, was Next Men and OMAC.

[paqart]

Some of my least favorite covers.

[Cat]

On 6/30/2023 at 10:57 AM, paqart said:

We agree on McFarland, not Byrne. My favorite Byrne, btw, was Next Men and OMAC.

It's McFarlanE. Please at least do the courtesy of getting his name right. 

[paqart]

On 6/29/2023 at 9:16 PM, Cat said:

It's McFarlanE. Please at least do the courtesy of getting his name right. 

Or not. Time will tell.

[Cat]

On 6/30/2023 at 11:42 AM, paqart said:

Or not. Time will tell.

What. 

[Flanders82]

On 6/29/2023 at 6:42 PM, paqart said:

On 6/29/2023 at 6:16 PM, Cat said:

It's McFarlanE. Please at least do the courtesy of getting his name right. 

Or not. Time will tell.

Is it like Stanley Lieber? Was his name originally Toddington McFarland? 

[paqart]

On 6/29/2023 at 11:21 PM, Flanders82 said:

Is it like Stanley Lieber? Was his name originally Toddington McFarland? 

According to "Cat", it's "McFarlanE". We should all be courteous and spell it like this: "Todd McFarlanE". Speaking of whom, McFarlanE and Kevin EastmaN always puzzled me. They may have been the most successful comic book artists to have ever lived. As artists, they both lack the type of basic art skills that normally predict success, EastmaN moreso than McFarlanE. ByrnE, on the other hand, has those skills, even if he dashes out his drawings sometimes, as in the Snowblind Alpha Flight cover.

One thing I like about this thread is that it started with a veteran, experienced, and well-regarded artist. It would be too easy to complain about early work by artists, whether or not they eventually excelled at the craft. Bernie Wrightson's earliest work was particularly weak. Then we see Batman #251 by Neal Adams, an over-rated, but not horrible cover. These three covers, by McFarlane, Ross, and Mack, are, in my opinion, a great deal worse than the ASM 13 at the start of this thread. The only reason I have the DD 9 or any of the other Mack Daredevils, is that they are all newsstand editions (the images here aren't my copies) and I bought them for about a dollar apiece. Now that I'm thinking of it, I should sell the DD 9. It's gone up enough in value, and the art really bothers me. It should be in the hands of someone who likes that kind of art.

Edited June 30, 2023 by paqart

[Poutine]

Always wondered if he's sitting over a black hole.....

Can't.....lift.....arms.....

 

[Cat]

On 6/30/2023 at 2:38 PM, paqart said:

According to "Cat", it's "McFarlanE". We should all be courteous and spell it like this: "Todd McFarlanE". Speaking of whom, McFarlanE and Kevin EastmaN always puzzled me. They may have been the most successful comic book artists to have ever lived. As artists, they both lack the type of basic art skills that normally predict success, EastmaN moreso than McFarlanE. ByrnE, on the other hand, has those skills, even if he dashes out his drawings sometimes, as in the Snowblind Alpha Flight cover.

One thing I like about this thread is that it started with a veteran, experienced, and well-regarded artist. It would be too easy to complain about early work by artists, whether or not they eventually excelled at the craft. Bernie Wrightson's earliest work was particularly weak. Then we see Batman #251 by Neal Adams, an over-rated, but not horrible cover. These three covers, by McFarlane, Ross, and Mack, are, in my opinion, a great deal worse than the ASM 13 at the start of this thread. The only reason I have the DD 9 or any of the other Mack Daredevils, is that they are all newsstand editions (the images here aren't my copies) and I bought them for about a dollar apiece. Now that I'm thinking of it, I should sell the DD 9. It's gone up enough in value, and the art really bothers me. It should be in the hands of someone who likes that kind of art.

Google it for yourself, please don't take my word for it. You can even see on the sig, it says 'McFarlane'. 

[Ken Aldred]

On 6/30/2023 at 1:14 AM, paqart said:

McFarland: His appeal seems to be connected to the amount of detail he puts into his images. I can see the detail too, but every other part of his drawings are so weak that I wonder how he ever got published. His figures lack solidity, have hitherto-undiscovered muscles, and he uses cross-hatching where it doesn't belong but lacks it where it does.

That was used as a common selling point for comic art in the 90s…

”The detail in ( )’s art is incredible!”
 

… despite the figure work and composition and everything else about the image being flawed and a bit amateurish.

[Ken Aldred]

On 6/30/2023 at 2:16 AM, Cat said:

It's McFarlanE. Please at least do the courtesy of getting his name right. 

Good point. Forgot about the capitalised ‘E’. You always tend to.

Accuracy is important.

[paqart]

On 6/30/2023 at 1:45 AM, Cat said:

Google it for yourself, please don't take my word for it. You can even see on the sig, it says 'McFarlane'. 

LOL. I was teasing you. I know it's Mcfarlane. I just didn't like the insinuation of rudeness for what amounted to a typo.

[Cat]

On 6/30/2023 at 10:20 PM, paqart said:

LOL. I was teasing you. I know it's Mcfarlane. I just didn't like the insinuation of rudeness for what amounted to a typo.

Well I apologise. It wasn't meant to be rude. 

[Dr. Balls]

On 6/29/2023 at 6:14 PM, paqart said:

This is a very interesting thread, particularly the first post and this one. First, I don't have any problems with the ASM #13 cover. As far as I'm concerned, it's a good cover. Not Byrne's best, but far from from the worst cover I've ever seen. Dissecting a cover based on drawing "mistakes" is not the best way to evaluate the artistic merit of a cover. If it was, there wouldn't be any "good" covers by Jack Kirby, Gil Kane, or Steve Ditko. 

The example here of the Alpha Flight vs. ASM covers is an easy call: Alpha Flight has the more interesting, and cleaner, cover. The "realism" of the ASM cover does not make it better. My opinion, it makes it worse because it is realism for realism's sake. A photo by a good photographer of the same scene would have a chance of being better than the Alpha Flight, but not this image.

So much for my opinion. There are plenty of popular artists whose work is incomprehensible to me. This is primarily because of the "realism" of their images. David Mack, for instance. I have never seen an image by Mack that I liked, or even that I thought was painted well. Regardless, he has fans. I'm glad he has an audience, but I'm not one. This doesn't make his work "bad" (from my point of view), it just means I don't like his style. The same goes for Bill Sienkeiwicz, Mike Mignola, Adam Hughes, Todd McFarland, Alex Ross, Josh Campbell, Dave McKean, David Mack, and many other artists well-known for their skill. 

Sienkeiwicz: Too many unnecessary strokes that do not define any component of the scene combined with murky ill-considered colors. 

Mignola: Any given cover looks fine, but he uses very similar compositions for every cover. If you've seen one, you've seen the rest. Combined with a flat inking style, these covers are boring to me, and I mean all of them.

Hughes: So dependent on photo reference for the main characters that he has a hard time integrating them with their environment. His rendering style and colors are usually fine but his compositions look forced to me. There are some exceptions that I like, but too often he squeezes thing together (characters and environment) in ways that make them look like a photo of a person shot with a long lens added to a background shot wide angle, then cropped in the most disturbing way possible.

McFarland: His appeal seems to be connected to the amount of detail he puts into his images. I can see the detail too, but every other part of his drawings are so weak that I wonder how he ever got published. His figures lack solidity, have hitherto-undiscovered muscles, and he uses cross-hatching where it doesn't belong but lacks it where it does.

Ross: I have seen some recent covers by Ross that I do genuinely admire. Much of the work he did for the first twenty years of his career, particularly the interior work, suffered from weak color and poor subject/background integration. 

Campbell: Like McFarland. His figures lack solidity or structure. He leans too heavily on the "pretty girl" types of drawings to carry his work, but it isn't enough. Some covers would never have been published if I had been art director, like the very popular Mary Jane covers from around ASM 601-607. 

McKean and Mack: These two suffer from the same problems, so I'm combining them. First, tentative watercolor skills. The color is weak and the brushstrokes lack confidence. Right away, I lose interest in looking further. Beyond this, these are renderings made from, it seems, whatever reference photos they happened to have near, whether they were right for the cover or not. Integration of characters with environment are very weak in every image I've ever seen by this pair. Storytelling isn't completely absent, but compared to a typical Johnny Romita cover, it is.

I like this critique, mostly because you call out the integration of foreground to background and making it all meld together. I especially liked your observation on Adam Hughes - of which I am a Hughes fan - I really liked his work on Ghost, which is what initially hooked me, but I think I need to look at more of his art through your lens of observation, because I think you're right at first glance. It seems like many of the 90's artists you called out suffer from a lot of the same issues.

On the flipside, the 90's also represented a huge shift of artistic styles in a comic - going from realistic illustrative work to more of a personal style. Oddly enough, you have left out Liefled. Dave McKean's 'found object' style of covers were really cool at the time, because I'd never seen anything like that. It actually influenced my own style of artwork, as I began experimenting with Scanography (this was 1994, when I was finally able to afford a scanner) to emulate what he was doing with his work (he didn't use Scanography, he "built" his paintings and had them photographed). The 90's attempt at something really different on the cover to get someone to pick up a comic book, and I think it worked pretty well in combination with the strength of the story/title.

J Scott Campbell is another observation I agree with, despite him being one of my favorite 90's artists. His early stuff is waaay out of proportion, and even though his newer stuff shares similar traits, he managed to hone his style to the point that it works in a modern GGA look. He took the skewed proportion and blended it with dynamic action to create a fun style. I think he achieved this a lot quicker than other artists working a similar style - but again, the common thread of the 90's artists is a lot of focus on a dynamic figure with very little integration or detail in the background environs.

[Get Marwood & I]

On 6/30/2023 at 1:14 AM, paqart said:

This is a very interesting thread, particularly the first post and this one.

Ta. It's over five years old now Andrew, and it's clear to me now that I was 'mucking about' with it somewhat, as I used to do back then very unsuccessfully (if the resulting moderation was any indicator).

On 6/30/2023 at 1:14 AM, paqart said:

First, I don't have any problems with the ASM #13 cover. As far as I'm concerned, it's a good cover. Not Byrne's best, but far from from the worst cover I've ever seen. Dissecting a cover based on drawing "mistakes" is not the best way to evaluate the artistic merit of a cover. If it was, there wouldn't be any "good" covers by Jack Kirby, Gil Kane, or Steve Ditko. 

I take your point, but it's the amalgamation of 'mistakes' on that ASM v2 #13, and general laziness from someone who should know better - and do better - that influences my dislike of it. I just find it a rotten, lazy depiction of Spidey, in the style of an artist whose style I dislike, by that artist. 

On 6/30/2023 at 1:14 AM, paqart said:

The example here of the Alpha Flight vs. ASM covers is an easy call: Alpha Flight has the more interesting, and cleaner, cover. The "realism" of the ASM cover does not make it better. My opinion, it makes it worse because it is realism for realism's sake. A photo by a good photographer of the same scene would have a chance of being better than the Alpha Flight, but not this image.

Again, I disagree. The Spidey #556 scene is pleasing to me. It's not necessarily realistic, just a pleasing image and as I said at the time I feel chilly myself looking at it. And there's a confidence to it given how many ASM covers around the time contained uninspiring shots of him in various cover filling positions which betrayed nothing of the story inside. 

I can see why you would attach more favour to the Byrne Alpha Flight than I think it deserves. There is an attempt at art, at style. At minimalism. Like blue and red blocks of colour on a white page, which tell us something about the struggle of humanity. What irks me is how badly the small, central image is rendered. Giraffe neck. Dematerialising arm. Extraordinarily bad hair moving against the wind. The inexplicably clumsy, totally unnecessary additional line work in the lower left leg that, once observed, can't be unobserved. Is it shade, or defining a muscle that extends to the kneecap? It's unclean in an otherwise clean image. Apart from the equally unclean lines, crashing into each other, that presumably are there to represent the right shoulder.

I used to draw, reasonably well. I know what it means to produce a satisfying piece, and then ruin it with one ill judged additional, usually unnecessary stroke. He's done it four times in this small, sparse image. And the three lazy, hesitant lines on the cloak. Why?

I get why it is liked, and I get your point about criticising individual elements. But I still hate* it. For me, it belongs in the background of a larger picture as it has a throwaway feel to it. Cheaply rendered because it's just a background addition. But it's not the background. It's the central bloody cover image. And it looks half-arsed. And it's by Byrne. 

*I say hate - hate is a big word. But in context, the context of a comic cover with pretensions towards high art, I hate it and it's singular nose representing dot.