posted January 17, 2003 05:17 AM               

I know Mr Swan is the more fan favorite, but Boring's Superman is kinda my all time Superman fav...

...boy, someone earlier used the description of Boring's Superman as indeed in constant "jog" through space was right on the mark! My "signature" Boring moments are his barrel-chested entraces thru open windows! Oh, and hey - didn't LOTS of Boring character have ...well, "elf-like" pointed ears!?# Ha, man his stuff was fun!

posted January 18, 2003 11:05 PM               

Alex Nino's extremely curved lower leg, making it look like a character was kicking their own knee.

Tony DeZunga's wandering eye on his characters. He was also quite the overpowering inker, making most artists work look like his own. He was much bettter solo, and he really left his mark all over Jonah Hex.

Horror book artist E. R. Cruz's "zombie stare" and dutch tilt splash pages; every Cruz horror story had an opening splash page with a person in the forground, angled at a "dutch tilt" and shambling with a zombie stare towards the title.

Bernie Wrightston only having one "average" man and woman face, whereas each monster was unique.

Neal Adams' prediliction for character pointing out of a panel/page and directly at the reader...even in ads!

Jack Davis' habit of having characters with arms and legs akimbo and yet serene, unconcerned looks on their faces.

Pat Boyette drawing all of his men, women and children as having the same face with immobile mouths.

posted January 19, 2003 07:40 AM               

and thanks for all the other "recognizables"

posted January 19, 2003 08:48 AM               

quote:

---

Originally posted by Carlo:
hey, amentep...could you explain that "dutch tilt" thing? ...I don't quite know what "that" looks like...

and thanks for all the other "recognizables"

best...
Carlo

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Sorry, dutch tilt is a movie term, meaning that a composition is made with the camera viewing the scene at a diagonal.

posted January 19, 2003 10:47 PM               

quote:

---

Originally posted by Amentep:
Sorry, dutch tilt is a movie term, meaning that a composition is made with the camera viewing the scene at a diagonal.

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think of all the villian scenes from the old batman tv show. they were shot at a dutch angle.

posted January 20, 2003 05:23 PM               

quote:

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Originally posted by Old Dude:
Never knew there was a name for the "dutch tilt," but seeing it in a comic alwaays bothered me. It always drew attention towards itself and away from the story.

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posted January 20, 2003 08:39 PM               

------------------
Rock a little,

posted February 02, 2003 02:16 PM               

quote:

---

Originally posted by Old Dude:

The machine defies my powers of description, but I'll try: It's a glass o metal cylinder with a large glass ball on the end. From the ball there is a glass stem that sticks out for a few inches before it narrows down with another very small ball on the end. There is usually a thin metal bracing that arcs from the cylinder to just behind the small glass ball.

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Ah, I can also see the Wayne Boring Ray, and, more than anything else on this thread bar the Kane nostril shot, the Jim Mooney standing female pose (see Supergirl, Lena Thorul, Ms Marvel, Night Girl . . .)

Also, I bet there's no one here who has ever seen a Perez story who would fail to recognise his rubble.

Have we mentioned the John Forte Forelorn shot, exhibited whenever someone, especially Substitute Legionnaires/Star Boy, were rejected/expelled? Face down, about to cry.

And while not actually drawn by an artist, a lot of Marvel types in the late Seventies used to use some kind of stick on-transfer for wallpaper. The Iron Man of John Romita Jr and Bob Layton was awash with the stuff.

posted February 02, 2003 02:35 PM               

quote:

---

Originally posted by The Anti-Life Equation:
For the lettering on his sound effects alone, I can tell Walt Simonsons work from a mile away.

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posted February 02, 2003 03:50 PM               

I'm guessing the "thinking" is that a static shot is dull, lifeless & boring, so let's keep things "moving". If 2 people are standing in a room having a discussion, I can see the point of slowly moving the camera around, but when you're having a fight scene and the characters are moving around like crazy, to ALSO have the camera moving around like crazy, especially in tight close-ups, makes it almost impossible to follow the fight!! I believe I first noticed this in BATMAN FOREVER; but the worst instance of it was in a film I otherwise really admired, THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING. Absolutely incredibly magnificent film-- but I wanted to strangle the cameraman!!! (Compare the fights in ENTER THE DRAGON; where often the camera stands completely still as the actors go through their motions. In particular, during the "big fight" at the climax, where it looks like about 100 men are fighting all at once, there's a shot where the camera stands completely still-- and in the middle of the shot, Han & Bruce Lee ALSO stand completely still amidst the maddenning battle & carnage. It's mesmerizing!)

posted February 03, 2003 11:28 PM               

Neal Adams's thumbs had a kind of "s" shape.

Similar to Adams, yet unique on it's own way: John Byrne!

posted February 03, 2003 11:36 PM               

Simonson's grim mouth, with the deep line under the lower lip, and both the mouth's corners making a little downward curve.

Kirby Dots in space!

Vinnie Colleta's eyes, (only female's?) that never seem to really look in the same direction.

Ross Andru's chins!

Wally Wood's spaceship machinery and spacesuit!

posted February 04, 2003 02:11 AM               

The way Alfredo Alcala made his pages look like woodcuts.

posted February 04, 2003 06:29 PM               

Chuck Cuidera's inking always made people's faces look dirty.

posted February 05, 2003 02:32 AM               

I'm rereading my JLA Archives and am getting to the Sid Greene era, and...

I find it amazing how sometimes a inker can "overpower" the pencils - and I don't mean that in the negative sense - and give "that" artist (in this case Sekowsky) a totally different look!

posted February 05, 2003 05:30 AM            

Some of the clues: The Gil Kane Nostril Shot. Later in his career, Gil just seemed to have some sort of fascintation about nostrils that showed up in every other panel. Beautifully rendered, by the way.

Kirby's blocky hands. Everyone from the Hulk to Sue Richards seemed to have squared-off fingers. Why? Can't say! And those hands got worser and blockier to the day he died!

I could identify a Carl Barks duck comic, long before credits were used in Disney comics, simply by his genius-level use of black space.

I could always tell a Ditko drawing by the posing of the hands and thumbs. I think I long ago realized why Ditko characters all looked like marionettes: He must have used one of those stupid wooden artists' models that you pose and put on your drawing board. You think I'm kidding? I swear to you, any Spidey panel can be almost exactly replicated by one of those models. There it is! The secret of his so-called "genius." And I say so-called because I have never been a fan of the man, have never understood the big deal about his art, and have never heard it explained to me by someone who does. Yeah, yeah, he's the Sacred Cow of Marvel, so inventive and popular blah blah blah, but whyyy??? And every time I complain about Ditko's art people tell me to shut up, instead of giving me their reasons why he's so damn great. The lack of serious analysis about his artwork makes me think that no one else understands it, either.

Herb Trimpe I could tell by the clenched teeth shots he reveled in. (However by the 90s his artwork had disintegrated into some strrrrannnnge kind of Liefeld rip-off. Awful! Don't EVER read Fantastic Four Unlimited, believe me!)

Now, Carmine Infantino's art...I always knew it was him because his figures by the late 70s, (this would have mostly been his Star Wars and Dial H For Hero work), had become verrrrrry loose and angular. Luke Skywalker would hold his lightsaber, (too loosely), his elbows would be all over the place and his legs would be so far apart he'd almost be doing the splits. Absolutely inhuman! Princess Leia would hold a pistol in one hand, but her elbow would be pulled so far back that the gun barrel would actually wind up behind her ribcage. Odd, very odd. But I loved the way he drew droids, spaceships, and clothing. (Then "V" came along, and he'd lost his knack for drawing spaceships...*sigh*).

posted February 05, 2003 05:32 PM               

As for SPIDER-MAN... I got spoiled. After those incredible Mike Royer cartoons (I only just found out after 3 decades Royer did the storyboards for the Grantray-Lawrence episodes on '67) my first glimpse of Spidey in the comics was that self-same Kirby-Colletta F.F. ANNUAL. But my first SPIDER-MAN comic was ASM #55 by John Romita & Mike Esposito. WOW!!!!! No question-- absolutely the "standard" by which all other Spidey artists stand or fall. (Mostly the latter.)

It was a few years before I saw Steve Ditko on the series-- a reprint of "If This Be My Destiny", the story where Peter started college and met Gwen & Harry. It was interesting... but because I'd seen Romita earlier (and this was a fuzzy REPRINT of a Ditko, not a sharp original) it seemed "primitive". For years after that, reading occasional reprints at random, I enjoyed the stories, but felt I was "putting up" with the art.

UNTIL they decided to reprint ALL the Ditko stories in sequence in MARVEL TALES in the mid-80's. There's just something about being able to enjoy an entire series, story-by-story, in sequence, that's so much better than just having an odd episode here and there. And I really got into the Ditko run for the first time. Not only that, I noticed how, like Kirby, Ditko's storytelling evolved over the course of his 3 years+ on the book. Before my eyes, Spider-Man went from a scrawny kid to a more muscular costumed hero. The visuals got more exciting as they went. And by the time Romita arrived-- I could see just how "jarring" the abrupt change in style was. After all those years, I'd developed a real appreciation for Ditko's work on his most famous character. And sadly, I've almost never seen ANYTHING he's done since that seemed quite as good!