I decided some weeks ago that I needed to erect a small-yet-tasteful shrine to Salvador Larroca in the corner of my room, and give thanks before it every time a new issue of X-men came out (“Thank you, oh Mister Larroca, for once again contriving to draw Gambit shirtless. Thank you for Rogue, for Polaris’s hair, for Mystique, and for Emma Frost’s costume or, rather, near-total lack there-of. Thank you for randomly making Gambit look like a drow, and for suddenly giving him anime-bishounen hair down to his butt for no logical reason. Verily, you continue to bring the mutant crack to the yard.”).

It has now become evident that I must add to my list of thanksgivings the most important reason of all: “Thank you for not being Frank Quitely.”

Dear God, why did DC and/or Wildstorm let the man draw so many issues of The Authority? Or anything else? He flat-out can’t draw the human form. Backgrounds, yeah, mechanical stuff, sure, but all his people are badly proportioned and distorted-looking. I literally find looking at things he’s drawn painful, to the point that I find my eyes skipping over the people and focusing only on the speech bubbles. And I’ve got years of comic book reading under my belt, as well as vivid memories of the early nineties, when Rob Liefeld drew for Marvel and made every character a freakishly muscle-bound body-builder with extraneous belt pouches. I never thought I’d be nostalgic for his art style, but at least he gave everybody distinctive facial features. Too bad Jim Lee left Wildstorm instead of sticking around to draw those issues instead. We could have had bright, bright colors and out-of-control hair that blew in the wind in a dynamic way. And swoopy speed-lines every time people flew.

The metaphorical ‘corner of my room’ is going to get damned crowded, as I’m going to have to add small-yet-tasteful shrines to Warren Ellis and to the writers of the Justice League cartoon beside my miniature alters to Neill Gaimon and Barbara Hambly. Perhaps I can just hang some icons.

Starting with one of Jenny Sparks.
Tags:

From: [identity profile] azarias.livejournal.com


The number of fans Quietly has amazes me. Granted, the man can lay out a page like a page-laying-out-thing, and has some really spectacular spatial skills. None of that can make up for being visually unappealing, however. The inker and colourist didn't help there, either. I've seen some of his work where a good inker and a colorist worked together to correct some of the fugliest of the fugly: W3E actually plays to his strengths, relying on design and soft, dreamy colors which cushing the fact that his figures are ugly ugly ugly.

(This makes me particularly sad because he did the canon genderswap Authority AU pages, and, dude. Genderswap. Femmeslash! Why does it have to be hideous?)

... though, personally, I think his art was appropriate for Mark Millar's writing style. One eyesore deserves another.

From: [identity profile] elspethdixon.livejournal.com


Granted, the man can lay out a page like a page-laying-out-thing, and has some really spectacular spatial skills. None of that can make up for being visually unappealing, however.

There's a place for people who are really good at lay-out but bad at figure-drawing. It's called "storyboarding" or "being the guy who does layout." Though I find it weird that he has such good spatial skills but such a bad sense of proportion when it comes to human anatomy. You'd think one would transfer over into the other.

He keeps making the Doctor's head too long, and turning Shen into a squat female-body-builder-type, which just... no. Ow.

The fact that DC has both a Mark Millar and a Frank Miller writing for them inevitably results in my mixing the two up, especially since I have issues with both writers' stuff for similar reasons.

From: [identity profile] azarias.livejournal.com


Mark Millar's problem is that he's really very clever and knows it. He generates very clever ideas and runs full-bore with them, without stopping to consider things like making sense, respecting the story or the fans, or polishing his writing away from I'm-so-edgy. Also, he thinks rape's funny. I pretty much started mentally setting his head on fire after I read that quote.

Frank Miller's problem is that the 80s are over.

From: [identity profile] elspethdixon.livejournal.com


Frank Miller's problem is that the 80s are over.

*grins* True. He also doesn't follow-through enough on the emotional consequences of things, and neither does Millar. I want resolution, and character arcs that make logical sense, damnit! (This is probably both why I'm a fanfic person, and why I'll never write for DC).

From: [identity profile] azarias.livejournal.com


In the 80s, Frank Miller wrote Daredevil: Born Again, which is one of the most quietly beautiful things I've seen in comics. Now ...
.

Profile

elspethdixon: (Default)
elspethdixon

Most Popular Tags

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags