Luís

I can't believe I missed all that before. I was too consumed with "that dolphin idea went nowhere", "this is too much like Invisibles", "the living sperm is stupid", and "I don't care about these characters" to realize the point.

The living sperm is stupid indeed, and the dolphins really went nowhere. But I've also changed my mind about the series over time. The Max Thunderstorm issue was a brilliant way of bringing back thought balloons to comics! (Un)fortunately I've never read The Invisibles, so no comparisons here. But it ties nicely with Grant's comics meta-narrative found in Doom Patrol and Animal Man.

Grant has said he has more plans for Seaguy, but I wish he'd leave that annoying little comic in criogenic sleep and go back to the world of The Filth instead.

But did the doctors know Superman's powers come from the sun? How much do humans know about him?

I almost avoided this movie, until a friend assured me that it was really good. Some minor criticisms aside, it delivered a damn good superhero story; the Messiah subtext everyone was complaining about, I didn't even see it. And Brandon Routh wasn't as wooden as in the trailers: I was afraid he'd act too seriously, but nope, this was far from grim and gritty. And kudos to James Marsden for jumping from one successful franchise to another. He must have felt exhilarated that his character was for once useful and integral to the plot.

I'm eager for a Bryan-Singer-directed sequel, but please keep Lex out of it; I feel bad saying this because Kevin Spacey rocked and didn't make the character act like a clown, a la Gene Hackham; but just let the man stay on his island with his coconuts, Kitty and the little dog, and get some new villain for variety's sake!

Those two issues of F.F. were the only time Lee & Kirby ever worked with Warlock, isn't it?

Lee and Kirby brought Him back in a 1969 Thor story. Him tries to mess around with Sif, Thor goes berserk and beats the crap out of him, then launches him into space. That's how the High Evolutionary finds him years later and names him Adam Warlock.

Christian, is the AS you're talking about The Life and Times of Harvey Pekar?

The Half-Aryan is the 3rd volume in the series; are you collecting it, Josh? How's the inside art? The covers always looked beautiful.

The Galactus story really isn't as wonderful as it seems....

Oh yes it is :happy: just whisper it, Christian... The Ultimate Nullifier!

What's sad is that over-exposure and treating Galactus as a villain and not an amoral Force of Nature hasn't done him any good over the years. I always liked those Silver Surfer issues when the ex-herald would visit his former master for some good advice.

Adam Warlock, although Lee/Kirby created him, surely owes more to Jim Starlin's cosmic psychedelic madness of the '70's. And I don't know why, but I have some fondness for Roy Thomas and Gil Kane's Counter-Earth saga.

I'll go with my comic store's owner, who says, "I'm too busy reading comics to read about comics."

Ah Josh, it can be fun sometimes. Christian mentioned Gore Vidal a while ago; some of his book articles are more interesting than the books themselves. And speaking of Warren Ellis now, although I have zero patience for his comics output nowadays, I'm always ready to read his commentaries on the medium. 'Come In Alone' was a fun read. Ditto for Steven Grant.

There was a link to this in Steven Grant's column last week.

I hope this guy spends the rest of his life on this!

The guy looked like a silly bugger on drugs most of the time, but that was just for show. Acting like a clown on TV helped raise money fiance projects that'd help animals, and make people aware of endangered wild life. All in all, a very productive life.

I guess he had his heart in the right place... which proved to be lethal; a few inches to the right and the stingray would've missed :rolleyes:

Piss off, Mark, that happened 4 pages ago!

Alas, I admit my error and I hereby capitulate.

Luís :icon_twosgun:

Uh, Mark, I was actually answering to dogpoet's:

Yes, Jack Kirby. The single most influential artist ever to work in his chosen medium. (Not Captain America though: that was Joe Simon's character.)

I thought my last qip about CP being Simon and Kirby's baby had clarified who I was adressing.

Notice that he said 'chosen medium', and superheroes last I checked aren't a medium in themselves, much to the chagrin of John Byrne, I guess. So, yes, the matter of international influence plays a lot of importance here.

As a matter of fact, you didn't specificy anything about superheroes: your only comment about Kirby after my post, unless something was deleted while I slept, was this:

You don't get to play the "no, seriously, proper authority figures agree with me" card with one hand, and dismiss Kirby - one of the most highly-rated, universally-acclaimed creators in the history of Western comics (acclaimed by a whole shitload of people who "actually know a thing or two about art in general", too) - with the other. Sorry.

And the word 'superhero' is... where? Specified where? What, Western comics are now superhero comics? Europe and South America migrated to Asia? You should perhaps rephrase it as 'history of North American comics', you might speak the truth that way :wink:

I was being tongue-in-cheek about Mr. Barks, that shouldn't have been difficult to understand. But I won't deny my affection for this wonderful wonderful man: I've surely read more Uncle Scrooge stories than Spiderman's in my early childhood

And don't dodge the main point: what about art in other continents? What influence did Kirby have there?

As for the 'newspaper strips', you'd only wish modern comics had the size and the artistic quality of Mr McCay's newspaper strips. A newspaper strip is a three-panel gag running along the width of a newspaper page, and usually printed on the last page. The Little Nemo I read is an album-sized hardcover book with an ongoing narrative running over a 100 pages. If that's not a comic, my friend, then it's what comics should be! Incidently, it up until recently it wasn't uncommon for European comics to be published one page at the time in periodicals and collected afterwards, just like LN. So there's that precedent too.

James' post upthread led me to assume he considered Garth a genius, but he actually includes him in the 'above average' which is a categorisation I can live with. That takes care of one fan, James is critical; excellent, comics surely need more critical fans. Now I dare you to tell me you haven't read somewhere else on the net, on other message boards, countless fans considering the most mediocre comics writers geniuses, Garth included :huh:

And I disagree that Kirby is the most influential comics artist ever. I've said it twice, I'll say it again: without Winsor McCay, there probably wouldn't be Eisner and Kirby; if he's not a direct influence, he's at least important for being a pioneer and predating them for 30 years. You surely underestimate the importance of Little Nemo. Kirby's art influenced American comics, but art in South America and Europe evolved from different sources. Also, bringing up once more the greatest cartoonist in History, the one and only Carl Barks, what visible influence did The King have on him?

And yes, Captain America was created by Joe Simon and Mr. Kirby, dogpoet ;)

...who are not just considered good by me but by a body of people who actually know a thing or two about art in general.

In any case, trying to claim that your opinion is superior to everyone else's because a bunch of self-declared literary experts agree with you is rubbish. Your opinions stand alone. Everyone's opinions stand alone.

 

...fuck, I took him seriously.

Ah, you always do, poor poor James

But I actually meant that my opinion is meaningless, not superior; that's the thing: we're just a bunch of fanboys in a message board talking about who's a genius and who's not, but in the end we're just talking about favourites. Well, I got a lot of favourite writers who aren't considered literature, and I can't do anything about it because I'm not one of the people who gets to decide that; I'm not part of Academia.

My point about Marquéz and Roth is that they're not good because I say so; they're good because of the arbitrers of art in our society say so, independently of my insignifcant opinion, and because society respects those mysterious people. From what I can tell, Garth Ennis is only a genius because a couple of fans say so. Surely other comics creators think so too, but society in general couldn't give a fuck about what Peter Milligan thinks of Garth Ennis because society doesn't give a fuck about Peter Milligan's existence either. People these days talk a lot how comics are mainstream, but it's really just because they're sprinboards for occasionaly successful movies. Deep down, it's still a ghetto medium.

And for the record even if Alan Moore said that Garth Ennis is the greatest writer in the world, I'd still only see an immature one-trick pony with a knack for toilet humor and violence, which is great to to read, but no moe than that

Mediocre, average most of them. Exception due to Alan Moore, and I might agree on Neil Gaiman on a good, but I wouldn't put anyone else, no Peter Milligan, no Grant Morrison, no Warren Ellis, no John Wagner definitely no Jack Kirby on the same sentence as Gabriel García Márquez, Philip Roth, whatever literary figure you care to think about, who are not just considered good by me but by a body of people who actually know a thing or two about art in general.

I'll keep saying it: they're mediocre, higher than bad, but hardly close to good. They're like the writers of 'Lost' and 'The Shield' (my favourite TV show at the moment) and '24': good at plot twists, gripping suspense, cool dialogue and cliffhangers, but can't produce anything worth calling art.

Honestly, Jack Kirby? Fantastic Four? Captain America? Are you seriously? What, the New Gods?

I'll give Mr Spiegelman the benefit of the doubt, not having read Maus yet. But if he's a genius, he's the I'll-spend-a-decade-producing-another-masterpiece type of genius a la James Joyce or Thomas Pynchon. What else has he done since the rat story? As delightful as it is to browse his cartoon about the WTC in the bookstore, it's really just an album-sized cartoon, isn't it

The more I think about it, the more I see it like this: actual literary comics genius (writers), based on what I know of comics, only Alan Moore meets my standards, and he's not the type to rest on his laurels; he's been putting out good stuff regularly for 20+ years now.

Someone said upthread that we focused more on writers here than artists, but I can actually think of more art genius: Winsor McCay, Will Eisner, Moebius, Alberto Breccia. They've all pushed the envelope, art-wise, and they're all mediocre writers. McCay can't do characterisation, you've only got to (try to) read Little Nemo to see that; he can't do dialogue either. I gave up quickly and just paid attention to the pretty colors and layouts. But I don't doubt that he's historically important and an influence.

Will Eisner, perhaps he got better with age, but The Spirit is just worth it for the art, isn't it?

Good Artists are naturally attracted to comics, but we're stuck with pretty average writers.

Or perhaps there just aren't any geniuses in comics.

It ought to be a heartbreaking work of staggering genius, in which John is forced to confront his humanity, and we see his failings and failures dragged in agonizing detail before him, and he finally realizes that his fighting against heaven and Hell don't matter a tinker's damn in the universe. We finally see the real John Constantine, naked, vulnerable, without any of his clever schemes to save him. And he totally ruins it by flipping the audience off and walking away.

And I guess you love the character. I wonder if you hated him :D

the writer has ideas the artist interprets them on the page.

Read a few of the dozens of comic scripts lying around the internet (or, even better, check out a book on the subject - there've been some good ones) and you'll see quite how off-the-mark that assumption is. At best, it's a wildly misrepresentative over-simplification.

if you'd like to spend the rest of your life trying to craft a statement that adequately describes the relationship between two or more people when the endeavour to create something then your more then welcome, me I’d rather just read the books.

But perhaps more people should spend a lifetime reading comic scripts. Film scholars read screenplays, old drafts, shooting scripts, director notes; they don't just watch movies, they also watch the story boards; it's all fair game, because they take their job and their beloved medium seriously. Do you take comics seriously, Kej? Now here's a question that would provide fertile argument for comic scholars, if they only existed.

How does the artists-interpret-writers theory correlate with the annoying philosophy preached by most writers, that "one should write to the artists' strengths"?

Christian, are you familiar with Alfred Korzybski's General Semantics?

Spent the last two weeks reading furiously all the José Saramago novels I have at home: four great reads, the man is a master of sentence-building, characterisation; and sarcam, loads of sarcasm.

Christian, you should read Seeing; I think you'll like it: 80% of the population of an unamed country cast blank ballots during elections and political chaos ensues as the government tries to hold on to power. Seems like your kind of stuff :happy:

I'm now finishing The Language Instinct: Chomsky's linguistic X-bar, Universal Grammar, generative crap nonsense finally make sense to me! Now I wish I had read this wonderful book a few years ago when I was willing to sell my soul to Mephistopheles to pass my English Linguistics exams. Oh well, rather late than never.

The usual suspects are more than taken care of here, so let's add some unsual ones:

Winsor McCay: experimented with panel layouts and angles long before Eisner

Alberto Breccia: experimented a lot with black-and-white comics; great use of shadows and lighting; master of atmosphere

Hugo Pratt: nothing revolutionary about Mr Pratt, art-wise, but Corto Maltese is a damn great creation by a master storyteller who was well read and well travelled

Quino: his 'Mafalda' strips are the apex of political cartoons, I tell you

Carl Barks, a genius indeed... I dare anyone tell me Uncle Scrooge isn't the greatest comic book character in history!

X3 proved to me a pet theory I've had for a long time: Phoenix makes no fucking sense in the X-Men mythos.

I have never considered the X-Men movies remotely good, but at least till X3 they had a thematic self-consistency that the comics have always lacked: they actually dealt with the mutant/human conflict that supposedly is the core of the comics... supposedly because the X-guys spend more time in space with the Shi'iar than on Earth doing anything that might further their socio-political, whatever agenda.

X1 did something no X-comic had done before (and which Morrison was quick to copy): it actually dared to fill the fucking school with mutant students! Imagine that, a school full of students... not 1 Kitty Pride, not 1 Jubilee, not even a handful of kids called New Mutants (who also spent a reasonable amount of time in space and sometimes in a demonic dimension), but hundreds of students who were actually students, going to classes and shit, and not just junior X-Men. I saw that as a sign that perhaps the movies had potential.

And bad plots aside (X3 had the only one that made any sense to me: a mutant cure? Great! A lot better than turning everyone mutant in X1), the movies seemed to understand the point of the comics better than the creators and subsequent writers ever did.

And then Phoenix comes!

Even before the whole confusing Jean-is-dead-Jean-is-alive-Jean-is-Phoenix-Jean-is-not-Pheonix debate, Phoenix was a pretty pointless character in the X-Men comic. I'm sure it could have made a lot of sense in The Avengers - which actually recycled the idea with Mantis in a big cosmic nonsense saga that I love - or in Fantastic Four, but what does an omnipotent cosmic creature have to do with guys who should be making the world safer for mutants? It's a great saga, I don't deny that, but it just doesn't make sense in an X-men story. Claremont got away with it I guess because a) no x-writer ever seriously followed the core premise, b) by then readers were used to X-Men stories not having anything to do with the premise (unlike movie goers, I think), and c) in monthly comics you can't reject any idea unless you don't want to print next month's issue.

But until X3 the movies focused on the essential details: there are the X-Men, there's Magneto, there are evil humans, mutants are feared, mutants need protection, etc. You didn't get the Brood or Inferno demons, thank heavens! So why did they put Phoenix in there? Perhaps the filmmakers felt they owed the comic fans something, perhaps they thought it was too big a stapple in X-history to ignore (not that the millions of people who watched the movies and didn't know the comics would miss it), I don't know. But it didn't work. You can see two diverging forces here: on the one hand, they want Phoenix, on the other they want to keep the movie clear for those who don't read the comics. So bye-bye cosmic birdy evoking mythology, hello split personality (called Pheonix, of all names). In the comic she was attached to a storyline that didn't have anything to do with the X-men other than the fact that it had, you know, the X-Men in it, but fans wouldn't complain so long as they got their monthly fix. But when they put her in a story that actually has something to do with the premise, she falters. She walks zombie-like, poses menacingly, and dies.

Of all flaws, this is what bugs me the most, the complete pointlessness of the Phoenix character in the movie, and the suspicion that the movie franchise is losing its focus.

Writing B-grade porn has made Manara one of the richest comic book writers alive; I don't see him changing in a foreseeable future.

But don't lose hope: George Lucas, after six mega-productions that've consummed almost 30 years of his life and have made him a billionaire, said that after Episode III he wanted to start making more artsy and personal movies... who knows if Mr Manara won't have such a change of heart one day too

I must admit, though, I've enjoyed his collaborations with Hugo Pratt.

Story. Art is important, but a good story can make up for shitty art. The opposite is not the case.

A great writer can create something which shines even through poor artwork, and there are a good few artists who can, and frequently do, create quality art out of pretty mediocre stories, but a good, mutually-compatible writer/artist team who approach their work as the collaborative effort which it should be will usually produce something far greater than the sum of its parts.

Exactly.

Since I'm being asked, I'll go with story. But like Mark says, a real comic should be the sum of art and story. I think this questions only exists because everyone is aware that the average comic is an unbalanced object: either it has bad art and a (reasonably) good story, or (reasonably) good art and a (usually pretty) bad story. A true synthesis of both components at beir best is rare. Most comics are a mass production industry; concerns about aesthetics, layouts, angles, shapes, colour, etc. probably don't really matter to anyone just trying to deliver 22 pages of readable crap each month. It can't matter when the paycheck depends on it.

Watchmen, From Hell, V For Vendetta, bits of The Sandman, were accidents in the Industry. Somehow they happened. But I'm not holding my breath in antecipation of reading a comic like that again.