majorjoe23

That was a cover from the Phoenix Endsong series.

fujishig

I don't mind Greg Land as an artist but he gets a lot of hate for photo swiping/recycling: (warning, may be nsfw because he sometimes uses porn stars for "inspiration"
http://jimsmashextended.blogspot.com...recycling.html

PhantomStranger

I find that amusing more than criminal malice.

Paul_SD

"Photo tracing" WTF? I'm not a big Land fan, but I assume that person who blogged that has never done commercial art or he would have known that for 100+ years any commercial artist worth his salt kept 'swipe files' and a reference morgue. In the past they would have to clip photos from magazine and organize all these clippings for quick reference which was hugely time consuming but invaluable if you suddenly needed to be able to draw, say, a clipper ship or a reel-to-reel tape player.
Only an amateur fakes stuff he should be using a reference for.

Swiping another artists work though is a different matter- and a slightly greyer area for me. Homages with attribution seem fine, but copying panels is starting to cross a line- especially if it's a line for line, value for value swipe.

Recycling the same poses is just weak- especially when your output isn't that prodigious. With all the reference at out disposal now with the internet, having such a small arsenal that you feel a need to use exactly the same reference over is ...kind of sad.

davidh777

Never thought I'd stir up such discussion with my Land pic. Discussion is always good.

I can see the point of some of the examples but some of them seem like reaches. As far as recycling goes, that's the thing that always got me about Gil Kane--so much recycling of the same poses.

And confirming majorjoe's mention of the Phoenix Endsong cover.

rocket1312

I think the biggest problem I have with Land is that his art looks like someone who just has a bunch of cutouts from a magazine and just cobbles them together in each frame, using the same poses over and over. Everything looks so staged. It isn't organic at all.

Nick Danger

What the blogger calls photo tracing isn't. There are obvious differences between the two images, which doesn't happen in tracing.

Mrs Danger uses reference photos for some of her art. Everyone does. OTOH, tracing is so obvious to her that she can recognize a tracing as she walks past a poster. A drawing has to handle light and lines differently than a photo does, and bad artists don't realize that. Based on that blog, Greg Land is not a bad artist.

kodave

Tracing or not or whatever degree you want to try and define it as, if you're going to use reference photos they have to be appropriate fits for the scene. Land uses a lot of porn so the women are making faces and are often in poses that are not appropriate for what the comic script is trying to convey.

The Valeyard

taffer

Silver Surfer got beat up by a group of Mexicans.

The Valeyard

Yeah! Take that, whitey!

John Pannozzi

slop101

davidh777

slop101

Barry Windsor-Smith, my favorite comic book artist, like, by far.






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Unfortunately, seems like he's disappeared for the past 10 years or so.

davidh777

That BWS shot reminded me of John Bolton's King Kull, which I read in one of those B&W anthology magazines a long time ago. I wasn't really a sword-and-sorcery fan at the time, but it knocked me out.



Research shows that it was "Demon in a Silvered Glass" in Bizarre Adventures #26.

The Valeyard

Trevor

That's bad ass! Where from?

The Valeyard

Which one? Mine? It's the cover to JLA/Avengers #4.

ddrknghtrtns

Surprised it's not Batman.

slop101

Batman's not worthy to lift Thor's hammer.

The Valeyard

Technically, Superman wasn't either but Odin gave him a pass because of the situation.




The only person in the DCU worthy enough to lift the hammer is Wonder Woman.

The Valeyard

The Valeyard

slop101