fumanstan

I'm not as knowledgeable as all of you, so as a casual comic book fan this is randomly what looks good to me and what doesn't Not sure if anyone cares, but I wanted to chime in.

Looks pretty bad to me.

Both of these look terrible.


This one looks fine. Fairly standard.

This looks terrible to me. Worst one out of everything yet.

This looks fine to me. Pretty simple, but nothing particularly good or bad.

I like the Spider-Man one better. Something about the faces look really bad to me.

fujishig

You do know that in the Excalibur pic, everyone but Captain Britain is supposed to be a static chess piece which is why they're emotionless?

fumanstan

It's not the emotions, its the fact that all 3 women look exactly the same. That and Nightcrawler looks terrible.

slop101

Not that this will sway you, but here's the same artist with the same characters:



and a different take:

PhantomStranger

It's funny someone would criticize Alan Davis' Excalibur work, when he is widely regarded as the definitive Excalibur artist.

fumanstan

Everyone else looks better, but I'm still not a fan of the way Nightcrawler looks.

Those two points seem unrelated

Timber

His Nightcrawler was taller, thinner and probably more human looking then he was drawn before. Just comes down to style on that one.

Like I said though, I wasn't trying to pick out a particular cover, just a random Davis cover from the 90's to match up with the Buscema cover from the 90's. If I felt like searching I could find far better Davis covers but the same could be done for Buscema so it really just comes down to preference on that one.

mrhan

Is it maybe his version isn't as dark as Cockrum's or Byrne? He doesn't look as creepy without the shadowy face and enlarged ears even though Davis does draw the shadow in the interior art. ...just a guess.

superfro

What about baby Nightcrawler?

Meglos

Nothing to add to the conversation other than I LOVED Sal Buscema's work on The Incredible Hulk and Rom back in the 70s and early 80s. To each their own.

brayzie

I can see how Buscema's Spider-man art might look ugly to some people. I felt the same way when I was growing up. I considered it the depressing Spider-man title because of the art, and the stories, like Robbie in prison, his friend get bludgeoned to death by Tombstone, Harry's mental deteroration, etc. I look back on it like the film noir version of spider-man comics.

But I also thought Frank Miller's art on The Dark Knight was ugly.

@JasonF
I was gonna post some covers but you already did. Good choices.

fumanstan

Scary baby!

Lastdaysofrain

There are people who don't like Alan Davis art? I always thought it was great, really clean and sort of "cartoony" in a good way.

I really loved Bill Sienkiewicz art on New Mutants, it was the thing that drew me to that book in the first place. It's really weird and stylized, but it worked and kind of took that book to a different level to me when I was a kid. That being said I also really enjoyed Brett Blevins art after that, which was very cartoonish, but worked really well.

Sal Buscema though, he always bugged me as a kid. His art always seemed flat, like paper cut outs or something, really really one dimensional. I realize now that it was sort of on purpose and an artistic choice, but it always seemed amateurish to me as a kid. Especially when I would compare it to Erik Larson's stuff in Amazing at the time. Spectacular did seem to have more of the "horror" sort of stories out of the spidey line too, which I always wanted spookier art for.

Adam Tyner

He's a lifelong favorite of mine too, dating all the way back to Batman and the Outsiders.

Exactly. When I picked up my first issue of New Mutants and had that "what is that?!?" reaction...I mean, I've never had an emotional response to a comic that immediate and that intense, Bill Sienkiewicz was one of the (if not the) first artists I knew by name and definitely the first I knew by style, and that very first viewing of his art has stuck with me for decades. Cannot say that about anyone else. That's kind of rambly. Sorry.

I was okay with his style growing up. (The first Spider-Man comic I remember getting was Spectacular #150. Spectacular was "my" Spidey book for a while, and it was months before I branched out into Amazing and Web.) I remember never liking the way he drew women, for some reason, but I'd say I generally didn't mind the way he worked. Didn't love it, didn't hate it, was such a sucker for McFarlane's style a bit later on that I was even more indifferent towards Buscema, if such a thing were possible. I looked at comic art in a very different way back then than I would even a couple of years later.

I was re-reading all the Mutant Massacre books a few days ago, including a couple issues of Thor that Buscema drew, and I really liked his work there.

Nick Danger

I'm going to chime in to agree with you. Those lines converge in the middle of the page instead of the point of interest. That should be either the point of impact or She Hulk's face. From the other comments, I wonder if the inker put them in to fill out an otherwise blank background.

Also, Spidey's pose is that of a baseball slugger, but his anatomy doesn't quite hang together. The foreshortening of She Hulk is off. And none of the characters are properly attached to the floor, except Cappy.

ytrez

I'm not seeing the issue with the lines on the Spider-Man cover but maybe I'm dense. They aren't speed lines, they're just there for emphasis.

How are the lines on this cover any better?

stingermck

Thats the best way I could describe it. My first Spidey comic was #1 with McFarlane, so then i started getting all 4 titles. To me at the time, Sal looked terrible compared to McFarlane

whotony

If you can't tell a difference then what can anyone tell you?

In this one at least there is an attempt at some backround artwork.

Timber

It's clear what's going on in the Corkrum cover. The lines are indicating where they are coming from, they're breaking out of whatever they were in and are moving forward towards the reader.

On the Spidey cover She-Hulk should be coming from an origination point at the end of Spidey's punch. The action lines indicate that she's just flying somewhere from the middle of the page. And for some reason Quasar still bugs the hell out of me. Why is he floating so close to the ground? His hand placement makes it look like he should be flying forward but the cape and the rest of his body makes it look like he's floating.

ytrez

Oh, I can tell differences. I just wanted to see what you art experts could tell me. Which isn't much. And there is not background in the Cockrum cover. That wall they're bursting through is in front of them. That makes it foreground.

Those lines, on both covers, are not necessarily indicative of motion. They're more indicative of the concussive force of the X-Men's charge and Spider-Man's punch. These aren't speed lines. They're action lines or focus lines. The lines behind Wolverine's claws and Spider-Man's fist, those are speed lines. Speed lines indicate motion and direction. Action lines don't. Look at the other 2 panels presented in the Buscema example. Both have action lines. They don't indicate that characters are moving in those panels but are there to give a sense of energy and power to panels.

Cockrum is one of the best cover artists in Marvel's history, in my opinion but I don't think his use of action lines on X-Men 126 is any better than Sal's. Timber, you note that the X-Men are moving forward towards the reader and the lines indicate this. You're right about the characters but wrong about the lines. Even forgetting what I said about these lines not necessarily indicating movement, all of the lines around the characters originate from the edges of the hole and move towards the characters, except for 6 or 7 lines under Colossus' left arm. Those are ultimately just out of place. Then there are the lines above & behind the logo. Those lines originate from the front of the wall. Then there are the harsh angle changes, for example above Storm's left hand as compared to below it. Also the lines on the left of Nightcrawler's head don't line up with those on his right. X-Men 126 is still one of my favorite Marvel covers ever and I bring up these points only because Sal is being unfairly maligned for weaknesses that don't exist in what is admittedly one of his poorer covers.

mrhan

How can weaknesses NOT exist in a poor cover? You admit it is a poor cover so it has to have weaknesses.

ultimaton

He didn't say that the cover, or Buscema, were without weaknesses. His point, I think, was that be cherry picking one of his lesser works, Buscema was being unfairly labeled as lazy and sloppy. Regardless of what your feelings are on his art, I don't think either criticism is a valid one regarding Buscema, especially when you look at his pretty prolific body of work.

fujishig

That's fine, but I thought that a poster asked specifically what criticisms there were about that particular cover...

mrhan

It's a lazy cover that was greenlit by an even lazier editor on a deadline.

Timber

It's funny that we're picking apart that Buscema cover when the 2 panels that were posted are even worse then the cover.