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Post by Nowhere Man on Jun 5, 2015 1:17:42 GMT -5
I'm going to use John Byrne as my primary example here. Regardless of his attitude and persona, I'll always be a fan of his stellar work circa 1975-1990. Absolutely brilliant superhero artist. However, in recent years I've noticed a bizarre turn in his work and in his style, mainly on commissions. Take a look at his latest commission for a perfect example of what I'm talking about:  Now on his board (I still check out his commissions since I'm a fan.) there is nothing but gushing praise from the forum members. Okay, people are allowed to post what they wish, but it's absurd to me to think that all those posters don't have a problem with the absolutely ridiculous face we see here on Thor. It looks like he got a bad botox injection or has been subjected to Joker gas! This is sort of amusing because he seems to have taking smiling superheroes to an extreme of late as a sort of retaliation against all the scowling heroes we see in modern comics. I'm not against this at all, I'd like to see a bit more personality myself, but one wonders if the man is having vision problems or is playing some sort of joke on his fanbase with this stuff. On the other extreme, when I look at current work by Walt Simonson, Art Adams and George Perez, I still see all the great stuff I used to love plus actual improvement and evolution. Why do you think some artists devolve why other continue to get better? Byrne has made no comments to my knowledge that his vision or health has been paying any factor in his recent work, so I'm going to assume with him that he's simply made these stylistic decisions on purpose. ![]() |
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Post by crazyoldhermit on Jun 5, 2015 3:47:50 GMT -5
Artists are always developing and changing. If they're lucky they'll hit a sweet spot at some point. If they're really lucky they'll keep hitting sweet spots. It's just a natural thing.
One cause is art becoming incestuous. Stylization is an abstraction you use to hit the notes reality can't. Reality is still an absolutely vital foundation for good drawing. To learn to draw good faces you need to draw realistic faces, then use your creativity to tweak reality to taste. But once it's learned it tends to be neglected. In that case all artistic evolution develops based on previous stylization and you gradually lose touch of what a mouth really looks like. Style is where your aspirations meet your limitations and if you don't keep up with your studies and stay fresh your limitations are going to get heavier. Look at Frank Miller's recent stuff. When was the last time he drew from a model?
It's also possible he's just out of practice. John Byrne isn't a comic artist anymore, he crudely Photoshops together Star Trek screencaps to make "comics." Doesn't surprise me that he's slipping.
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Post by Icctrombone on Jun 5, 2015 4:42:26 GMT -5
I think a lot of it is just the aging process. The hands lose precision and what crazyoldhermit said about them just recycling their own art till it becomes a parody of their previous work. Bryne drew the same stock poses and stopped drawing backgrounds until the big 2 just didn't wanna put up with it anymore.
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Post by Nowhere Man on Jun 5, 2015 5:09:49 GMT -5
It's a sad thing to see with some artists. I remember when Jim Aparo's art started to suffer in the late 80's, but I believe that had everything to do with poor vision. I believe Aparo was about the same age then as Byrne is now.
Some artists just seem to lose that internal fire that they need to keep producing great work. I wouldn't doubt that many star artists never recover from being on top of the industry and then having to endure that "slow fade." I wouldn't doubt that in many cases, the problem is as much psychological as it is physical.
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Post by fanboystranger on Jun 5, 2015 10:15:40 GMT -5
My theory on Byrne is that once the huge royalties dried up after the bubble burst in the '90s, he felt he had to do everything to get an adequate paycheck. So, he started inking himself, lettering himself, and coloring himself, mostly to poor effect. He no longer had an inker like Austin, Kesel, Gordon, etc, to smooth out his rough edges.
I also think the failure of Next Men to gain more than a cult audience while the Image guys were making money hand over fist for their much less interesting work was a tremendous blow to his ego, but instead of trying to do a better job, he basically thought that fans don't care what they get and he'd turn in whatever. For years, he maintained that he had a steady audience of at least 30,000 "Byrne victims", but that was continually proven false by the failure of his various books in the late '90s and '00s. He could get those numbers on Wonder Woman because it was Wonder Woman (or his Superman/Batman Elseworld books), but other projects failed.
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Post by MDG on Jun 5, 2015 11:41:14 GMT -5
The main problem I see in that pinup is something that I've always seen as a weakness with Byrne: when he's inking himself, he doesn't vary line weight much and when the art isn't colored, things aren't always distinct without looking closely.
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Post by Nowhere Man on Jun 5, 2015 12:57:14 GMT -5
My theory on Byrne is that once the huge royalties dried up after the bubble burst in the '90s, he felt he had to do everything to get an adequate paycheck. So, he started inking himself, lettering himself, and coloring himself, mostly to poor effect. He no longer had an inker like Austin, Kesel, Gordon, etc, to smooth out his rough edges. I also think the failure of Next Men to gain more than a cult audience while the Image guys were making money hand over fist for their much less interesting work was a tremendous blow to his ego, but instead of trying to do a better job, he basically thought that fans don't care what they get and he'd turn in whatever. For years, he maintained that he had a steady audience of at least 30,000 "Byrne victims", but that was continually proven false by the failure of his various books in the late '90s and '00s. He could get those numbers on Wonder Woman because it was Wonder Woman (or his Superman/Batman Elseworld books), but other projects failed. I agree with all of this. The thing is, I always liked Byrne's inks during his FF run. His stuff was tighter and more realistic during that period and had a less glossy look than the Austin inks. I liked that style and felt it worked well with the FF's Sci-Fi adventures.. His inks were pretty good on Alpha Flight, too, but after his style changed to a more cartoony style he seemed to lose the ability to ink his own work.  |
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