majorjoe23

Yeah, Paul Smith is a pretty solid artist.

Kurt D

I feel as though Smith helped start a trend where people accepted style over anatomical accuracy. In Smith's case, the tiny feet, ultra-long legs, and thin waists that saw their most horrible manifestation in Liefeld. Smith isn't nearly as bad, but his pencils more often than not 'took me out' of the story.

slop101

I honestly don't see what you're describing. If anything, he's very workman like, and his art focuses on character and clearly telling a story without clutter.

whotony

He must be confusing Smith with someone else.

fujishig

I hope so. I also thought Smith had a great use of shadows. But the only similarities with Liefeld I see above is that the grass partially covers their feet.

Josh-da-man

Smith's art always seemed a little too flat for me. It's very "80s," though, and sort of reminds me of Patrick Nagel.

Red Hood

As much as I love Bill Sienkiewicz, I blame him for the style over anatomical accuracy in comics. Frank Miller also had so influence in that too. Paul Smith has his up and downs. Some issues on his X-Men run were amazing while others fall flat. I believe so of the issues were a mix of Bob Wiacek's inks and the revolving door of colorists his run had.

whotony

I don’t have any complaints about those pencillers.
They were able to create art that at least looked like it knew what it was doing.
Liefeld could never come close to that.

I’ll add Art Thibert as a guy who I didn’t care for.
his pencilling and inking style had some weird effect to create shadow that I hated.
Tons of lines and odd little things that looked like ovals or circles.

whenever I saw that he was the inker or pencilled I knew I wouldn’t like it.

So many lines.

Kurt D

I may be mixing things up with another artist, and of course Smith is nowhere near as bad as liefeld, for sure, nonetheless I did not like his look. I disagree about Sienkiewicz and Miller, they clearly both knew the basics before branching out with their styles.

PhantomStranger

I've never heard anyone really slam Paul Smith's art. Maybe not as splashy as some but his art always worked for me on X-Men.

ytrez

I'm a big fan of Paul Smith and can't believe he's even being brought up in a thread bashing Rob Liefeld. I'm also a fan of Sal Buscema, who should never even be mentioned in the same breath as Liefeld. Getting back to the topic at hand, it looks like G.I. Joe fans are going to be subjected to Liefeld shortly:

Kurt D

Have been slowly working through the Claremont doc and Liefeld has finally showed up. I hated Paul Smith in the day, he was so different than Cockrum on X-men, and I still maintain he struggled drawing realistic women and really didn't like how he drew faces, and the inking style.

That said, he's no Liefeld. That dude is def the worst comic book artist ever, and seems like a douche too.

I apologize to all. I may also have been drinking when I posted earlier ...

Brian T

When I collected comics (very selectively from the late 70's to early 90's, then out for good), I never followed characters, only artists, with John Byrne being one of two who essentially taught me how to layout and draw. When he left X-men and Cockrum took over, I was out. Cockrum was just ok to these eyes, and his work was barely differentiated from so many other artists of his era; colorful, bold, but unrefined. I discovered Paul Smith had taken over a few issues into his short run, and picked up the ones that I'd missed and stayed with him until he got replaced, then I was out again. I liked Smith's character design overall, the naturalistic poses, and most of his faces, although sometimes the latter would seem like he was trying too hard for certain emotions. I do think the inking on his X-Men pages (not sure about his later work as I didn't follow him much past that run) was too thin, though. The covers always seemed to be inked with an appropriately heavier hand (like the one posted above) than whoever inked him inside.

PhantomStranger

Liefeld coming to G.I.Joe?

Timber

I thought Smith was absolutely awful back then. Now when I look back I actually appreciate his work. I think he suffered from what he followed and then what followed him.Now just getting to view his work and not comparing it to different styles it's actually pretty good.

ytrez

Looks like a Snake Eyes mini-series: https://www.cbr.com/gi-joe-snake-eye...nches-in-2020/

B5Erik

I'll tell you something, I really, really do not like the art by Jeff Purves or Denys Cowan. Ugh.

I just bought some trade paperbacks that include their art - not good.

ytrez

Purves wasn't the greatest but Terry Austin didn't do him any favors on the Incredible Hulk. I think his other inker on that title was Marie Severin. Maybe another inker too; I can't recall. He was a competent artist as far as layouts and storytelling go but I think he needed a better, slicker inker. This cover he inked himself looks good:



While I personally like Cowan, I can see where people wouldn't. He's grittier/scratchier than most comic artists but I think it works for him. I particularly like his Question series from back in the day.

Trevor

Absolutely loved his work on The Question

Josh-da-man

I've always found Cowan a mixed bag. I've seen some really good art from him, but I don't think his style is well-suited for superhero comics, and he tended to get saddled with bad inks. Some artists, for whatever reason, seem to be difficult to ink properly.

Speaking of bad artists, I've always been baffled by how the X-Men books, which were Marvel's best-selling line, would get saddled with terrible art in the late 80s/early 90s. Excalibur went from Alan Davis to Chris Wozniak. And John Bogdanove was the artist on X-Factor during "The X-Tinction Agenda."

Jesus Christ, look at this shit...





And, of course, the common denominator here is Al Milgrom on inks.

Kurt D

I loved Denys Cowan’s work on Power Man & Iron Fist back in the day.

Neitzl

I was going to mention Al Milgrom and then I read your post. Man, was he terrible! I hated reading spectacular Spider-Man because he was either the penciller or the inker. He was so bad!

Josh-da-man

Bronkster

Damn!

B5Erik

Ha! That's the era that I was referring to - I really, strongly dislike his art on that title (especially following Kerry Gammill).