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Post by codystarbuck on May 19, 2018 21:02:29 GMT -5
I thought Dillin did a fine job, with the inkers he was given and the often complex scripts. I always thought he rose to the occasion with the JLA/JSA crossovers and he could handle pretty much any kind of story, from mystery to sci-fi, urban environment to a jungle. He was a solid pro who got his work done on deadline, with a professional look. I doubt anyone ever approached him about what he wanted to draw or create and let him really strut. A lot of his generation were far better artists than comics showcased.; they produced solid, commercial work on a deadline, then really let their artistic talents fly on stuff they did at home, or for better paying, more appreciative clients/outlets. Dan Spiegle is rarely named as one of the greats (though he should be, given how good he was on so many different comics and genres); but, was considere a solid, reliable pro. His paintings, though, are fantastic. He put the work in on the comics; but, he put the love in on his painting.
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Post by Prince Hal on May 21, 2018 16:56:31 GMT -5
I thought Dillin did a fine job, with the inkers he was given and the often complex scripts. I always thought he rose to the occasion with the JLA/JSA crossovers and he could handle pretty much any kind of story, from mystery to sci-fi, urban environment to a jungle. He was a solid pro who got his work done on deadline, with a professional look. I doubt anyone ever approached him about what he wanted to draw or create and let him really strut. A lot of his generation were far better artists than comics showcased.; they produced solid, commercial work on a deadline, then really let their artistic talents fly on stuff they did at home, or for better paying, more appreciative clients/outlets. Dan Spiegle is rarely named as one of the greats (though he should be, given how good he was on so many different comics and genres); but, was considere a solid, reliable pro. His paintings, though, are fantastic. He put the work in on the comics; but, he put the love in on his painting. I think this is fair. I wanted to like Dick Dillin's JLA work a lot more than I did, though. I thought his work on Blackhawk was generally better, and I wonder if it was because of Chuck Cuidera's inking. When I was a kid, Cuidera's inking seemed to me to make many of the characters look as if they'd been smudged with oil or dirt, but I liked it. It seemed perfect for the military adventure stories that were the staple of Blackhawk.
I think Cuidera's heavier style gave Dillin's work more heft or realism -- or something! -- than McLaughlin or Giordano could provide. I never thought Dillin could gracefully fit a bunch of characters into panels as well as Sekowsky had, love him or hate him. That his figures tended to be blocky and looked inflexible didn't help. And while it's quite an accomplishment to be the artist on a book like JLA for many obvious reasons, I always opened a new JLA issue hoping that if Dillin hadn't been given a month off, that at least they'd given Dillin a different inker. Now I know JLA was not anybody's favorite assignment, and that's why the editors probably loved Dillin, but, man, I wondered why DC couldn't get a better artist on one of their top-shelf books every so often at least. (Cardy? Kane? Bueller?) As much as I really don't care for Sal Buscema's pencils, I think he's the type of artist who would have done a better adequate job (if that makes sense) on JLA than Dillin did. Sorry if I sound as though i'm bashing Dillin; I'm not. I just think that sometimes you have to face the fact that there are horses for courses, as they say.
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Post by codystarbuck on May 21, 2018 23:36:48 GMT -5
Sometimes, too, you get an artist on a labor of love, vs the job that pays the bills. Blackhawk might have been a bit more up Dillin's alley, as much as Cuidera's inking, though I haven't really cracked open my Blackhawk stuf, for that era.
You also have to remember that DC artists, generally, were working from full scripts, with art directions, to boot. The "Marvel Method" gave artists more freedom and I think that is part of why their team books, generally, looked better. Plus, DC editorial had some rather narrow of views of what constituted top art.
Regardless, JLA, with Dillin's art, sold well enough that DC was happy, for quite a while (up to his death).
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Post by Prince Hal on May 22, 2018 15:04:39 GMT -5
Sometimes, too, you get an artist on a labor of love, vs the job that pays the bills. Blackhawk might have been a bit more up Dillin's alley, as much as Cuidera's inking, though I haven't really cracked open my Blackhawk stuf, for that era. You also have to remember that DC artists, generally, were working from full scripts, with art directions, to boot. The "Marvel Method" gave artists more freedom and I think that is part of why their team books, generally, looked better. Plus, DC editorial had some rather narrow of views of what constituted top art. Regardless, JLA, with Dillin's art, sold well enough that DC was happy, for quite a while (up to his death). I have to think that no one was exactly clamoring to take over JLA,and faced with art that was sometimes workmanlike as opposed to electrifying, but always turned in on time, and made a difficult title that much easier to produce, was just fine with DC. I do think, though, that Dillion was woefully underserved by his inkers. Good point about the Marvel Method's being a difference between the looks of the team books. I wonder if unbridled Dillin would have been much different, but it would have been nice to see him off the leash. Of course, he might have preferred it the DC way. Re the difference an inker makes: Check the Hourman story Dillin pencilled in Spectre 7 (Found it here:http://diversionsofthegroovykind.blogspot.com/2010/02/bring-on-back-ups-hour-hourman-died.html The entire story is there, but here's a nice sample: ![](http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_qZK742rc1hc/S1-UD1W3yMI/AAAAAAAATyk/oWrHzfpzRXg/s1600/spectre-07-18.jpg) Inked by Sid Greene, like Cuidera, an inker who most definitely leaves his mark on the pencils, brings a real vitality to Dillin's pencils that make you long for more like this in JLA. (Greene inked a nice stretch of Dillin's JLAs when he first took it over, and they were quite good.) And here's Dillin inked by Murphy Anderson, who gives a suppleness to his figures that the likes of Giella and McLaughlin never did. (Would it be fair to call McLaughlin Colletta-lite? For that matter, Giella, too? Both seemed to drain pencils of life and detail. Maybe they're more like Colletta-clones...) ![](https://dyn1.heritagestatic.com/lf?set=path%5B2%2F3%2F2%2F9%2F2329636%5D%2Csizedata%5B850x600%5D&call=url%5Bfile%3Aproduct.chain%5D)
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Post by Icctrombone on May 23, 2018 6:30:27 GMT -5
Comics needed real pros like Dillan, Sal Buscema and Ross Andru to faithfully, if not spectacularly churn out monthly titles. I have nothing but respect for them, but they don't rise to the level of a Neal Adams, J Buscema and more of the top shelve artists. But we needed both types in the Silver/ Bronze Age in order to keep the industry afloat. Can you imagine if we had the artists of today who can't even turn out 8 books a year working in that era?
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Post by brutalis on May 23, 2018 8:04:16 GMT -5
Comics needed real pros like Dillan, Sal Buscema and Ross Andru to faithfully, if not spectacularly churn out monthly titles. I have nothing but respect for them, but they don't rise to the level of a Neal Adams, J Buscema and more of the top shelve artists. But we needed both types year?in the Silver/ Bronze Age in order to keep the industry afloat. Can you imagine if we had the artists of today who can't even turn out 8 books a year working in that era? The days of "professional" are lost in comic books anymore. The publisher's wanting to schedule weekly or bi-monthly to increase revenue combined with the artist's who either don't want to or can't produce on a monthly basis has only helped increase the declining sales, at least that is what I think. I wonder if any of the creator's now understand that making comic books is a job and not a hobby? The days of yore with consistent art which you wanted to read about being produced on a regular schedule so you had the same production team are pretty much gone. Having such solid artists producing comics only helped to create an atmosphere for knowing something special was really happening when an Adams, Steranko or Chaykin did pop up on your radar. In the "good old days" it was the solid selling books which carried the lines. Spider-Man, Justice League, Superman, Batman, Fantastic Four, Avengers and their likes while having special moments were all solid and traditional comic books relying on the writer/artist keeping the series going and in the public eye on a shipping schedule which was reliable and accountable in every way. Without an internet hype machine or any type of publishing schedule I KNEW which days of the month to go and hit the stores in search of my favorite comic books and I KNEW that they would be there on the shelf (barring occasional glitches) for me looking and tasting like the comic i read last month. Anymore today it feels like you never know what to expect in writer/artist for the next issue! Give me Heck, Andru, Brown, Colan, Sal Buscema, Dillin, Tuska, Infantino, Swan and their brothers in stability and dependability creating fun, solid and entertaining comics every month and surprise me during their run's with a Steranko, Adams, Weiss, Wrightson, Kaluta, Chaykin, Perez, Byrne and others filling in and helping out with special issues.
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Post by codystarbuck on May 23, 2018 8:29:06 GMT -5
The ironic thing is that Chaykin, in recent years, has been working for Marvel, doing artist "boot camps" to teach them professionalism and hone their skills. Chaykin was an experimenter; but, he was also someone who could hit a deadline and produce a certain level of professional, finished product. Gil Kane instilled that in him, as did the editorial demands at DC (far more rigid than Marvel) and he talks a lot about professionalism in The Art of Howard Chaykin, from Dynamite. Glad to see someone is still trying to instill that into younger talent.
I think one of the things lost, by the Bronze Age, was the apprenticeship that many would-be comic artists went through. It was a standard of the Golden Age to work in shops or studios, where an artist might go from erasing pencils or drawing backgrounds, to pencilling background figures, to producing full story art. They learned their trade along the way. Others might work as an assistant to an artist, doing the same kind of things. That continued into the early Bronze Age, with guys like Wally Wood and Neal Adams having a bunch of assistants doing everything from production work to inking. However, by the middle and late 70s, that pretty much disappeared or was drying up. Things like the Kubert School, which teaches the same skills in a classroom environment, but with an emphasis on the old apprentice model, do a pretty good job of building those professional skills. I've heard similar things about the Savannah College of Art and Design's comics program, which was originally developed by Bo Hampton (a graduate of the School of Visual Arts).
However, you still have a lot of guys, from the 80s onward, who were fans who did the portfolio rounds of conventions and then secured a job. The dollar boxes are littered with the work of the guys who couldn't develop the professional skills.
I think part of the problem is a similar lack of skill and professionalism at the editorial level. It seems like you don't get the kinds of editors that developed talent and were really good about demanding professionalism. Guys like Dick Giordano, Archie Goodwin, Roy Thomas, Len Wein, Karen Berger, Paul Levitz, Louise Simonson, etc.. They had an eye for talent, could guide it and inspire it to reach higher, while still meeting their professional obligations. If artists can't hit deadlines and books can't be put out on time, that, to me, is more a failure of the editor than the artists. It says the editor doesn't know how to manage his talent. If you have a great artist who is going to need longer time to craft something that is more artistic than the norm, then you build a production schedule that will fit that artist, starting them early so that the book will be on time. However, that should be the special project, not your monthly bread and butter title. Books like Starman and Sandman built breaks into the structure, with longer storylines separated by short stories and special issues, with fill-in artists (the Times Past stories of Starman and things like "A Midsummer Night's Dream," at Sandman).
Then again, it's hard to manage comic book lines when the bosses don't even have backgrounds in publishing. Putting entertainment people, instead of publishers, in charge, like at DC, just says getting books out on time and being successful isn't important. We just want trademarks to be kept going, so we can make more money off them elsewhere.
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Post by EdoBosnar on May 23, 2018 9:06:20 GMT -5
Give me Heck, Andru, Brown, Colan, Sal Buscema, Dillin, Tuska, Infantino, Swan and their brothers in stability and dependability creating fun, solid and entertaining comics every month and surprise me during their run's with a Steranko, Adams, Weiss, Wrightson, Kaluta, Chaykin, Perez, Byrne and others filling in and helping out with special issues. Don't know if Perez and Byrne belong in that latter category, in the sense of occasionally 'filling in' and 'helping out.' Besides being top-tier artists, both of them were workhorses who had no problems meeting deadlines - and Byrne was usually ahead of schedule; I remember back in the late '70s and early '80s it wasn't unusual to see his art in three or four different books in the same month.
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Post by Deleted on May 23, 2018 11:36:20 GMT -5
Comics needed real pros like Dillan, Sal Buscema and Ross Andru to faithfully, if not spectacularly churn out monthly titles. I have nothing but respect for them, but they don't rise to the level of a Neal Adams, J Buscema and more of the top shelve artists. But we needed both types year?in the Silver/ Bronze Age in order to keep the industry afloat. Can you imagine if we had the artists of today who can't even turn out 8 books a year working in that era? just to point things out, JLA was an 8 times a year book not monthly for a chunk of Dillin's run. So were many DC books. Many were bi-monthly t0o, same with Marvel. A lot of those runs happened when books were not monthly, so be careful when you start criticizing guys in today's market for not producing monthly books like the "old-timers" did, because many of the books the old timers worked on weren't monthly books. -M
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Post by Deleted on May 23, 2018 11:39:48 GMT -5
Comics needed real pros like Dillan, Sal Buscema and Ross Andru to faithfully, if not spectacularly churn out monthly titles. I have nothing but respect for them, but they don't rise to the level of a Neal Adams, J Buscema and more of the top shelve artists. But we needed both types year?in the Silver/ Bronze Age in order to keep the industry afloat. Can you imagine if we had the artists of today who can't even turn out 8 books a year working in that era? The days of "professional" are lost in comic books anymore. The publisher's wanting to schedule weekly or bi-monthly to increase revenue combined with the artist's who either don't want to or can't produce on a monthly basis has only helped increase the declining sales, at least that is what I think. I wonder if any of the creator's now understand that making comic books is a job and not a hobby? The days of yore with consistent art which you wanted to read about being produced on a regular schedule so you had the same production team are pretty much gone. Having such solid artists producing comics only helped to create an atmosphere for knowing something special was really happening when an Adams, Steranko or Chaykin did pop up on your radar. In the "good old days" it was the solid selling books which carried the lines. Spider-Man, Justice League, Superman, Batman, Fantastic Four, Avengers and their likes while having special moments were all solid and traditional comic books relying on the writer/artist keeping the series going and in the public eye on a shipping schedule which was reliable and accountable in every way. Without an internet hype machine or any type of publishing schedule I KNEW which days of the month to go and hit the stores in search of my favorite comic books and I KNEW that they would be there on the shelf (barring occasional glitches) for me looking and tasting like the comic i read last month. Anymore today it feels like you never know what to expect in writer/artist for the next issue! Give me Heck, Andru, Brown, Colan, Sal Buscema, Dillin, Tuska, Infantino, Swan and their brothers in stability and dependability creating fun, solid and entertaining comics every month and surprise me during their run's with a Steranko, Adams, Weiss, Wrightson, Kaluta, Chaykin, Perez, Byrne and others filling in and helping out with special issues. And a great many of those artists wouldn't be able to fill the panels with the level of detail demanded by today's market and still meet deadlines. Panels of figures floating without a background or with just a few vague lines to suggest a background, which were common in the silver and bronze age to speed up production, would not be accepted by today's audiences or publishers. You have to be very careful when you start comparing eras and people working int hem that you aren't comparing apples to oranges. -M
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Post by MDG on May 23, 2018 12:02:56 GMT -5
And a great many of those artists wouldn't be able to fill the panels with the level of detail demanded by today's market and still meet deadlines. Panels of figures floating without a background or with just a few vague lines to suggest a background, which were common in the silver and bronze age to speed up production, would not be accepted by today's audiences or publishers. You have to be very careful when you start comparing eras and people working int hem that you aren't comparing apples to oranges. -M The meaning of "detail" often gets lost in discussions about comics. I've seen plenty of incomprehensible panels with plenty of "details," but miss the big things like design, composition, and coherence. The detail needs to be in the expression and posture of the character, the layout of the panel, etc--not bricks in a wall. To quote someone who knows what he's talking about:- Simplify, simplify, simplify, throughout!...
- By learning to eliminate unnecessary objects, figures, and background, etc., you can focus on what is left to draw in the shot-and draw it well enough to "carry" the shot!
- In other words: strip it all down to essentials and draw the hell out of what is left!
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Post by Deleted on May 23, 2018 12:09:41 GMT -5
And a great many of those artists wouldn't be able to fill the panels with the level of detail demanded by today's market and still meet deadlines. Panels of figures floating without a background or with just a few vague lines to suggest a background, which were common in the silver and bronze age to speed up production, would not be accepted by today's audiences or publishers. You have to be very careful when you start comparing eras and people working int hem that you aren't comparing apples to oranges. -M The meaning of "detail" often gets lost in discussions about comics. I've seen plenty of incomprehensible panels with plenty of "details," but miss the big things like design, composition, and coherence. The detail needs to be in the expression and posture of the character, the layout of the panel, etc--not bricks in a wall. To quote someone who knows what he's talking about:- Simplify, simplify, simplify, throughout!...
- By learning to eliminate unnecessary objects, figures, and background, etc., you can focus on what is left to draw in the shot-and draw it well enough to "carry" the shot!
- In other words: strip it all down to essentials and draw the hell out of what is left!
Oh I agree "detail" doesn't equal quality, but then audience preference often has nothing to do with quality either, and the "detail" in modern comics is there because of audience expectations and is what is demanded by that modern audience. You can simplify and improve the art, but if it's not what the audience wants, it won;t buy it. They don't want the stripped down essentials, they want all the bells and whistles in the panel and if it's not there, they won't be either. I'm not saying they are right, I am saying that is the reality of the current marketplace. A big reason why a lot of veteran artists aren't getting work from the big 2 is that their style doesn't resonate with current audiences for that very reason. -M
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Post by brutalis on May 23, 2018 13:09:23 GMT -5
Give me Heck, Andru, Brown, Colan, Sal Buscema, Dillin, Tuska, Infantino, Swan and their brothers in stability and dependability creating fun, solid and entertaining comics every month and surprise me during their run's with a Steranko, Adams, Weiss, Wrightson, Kaluta, Chaykin, Perez, Byrne and others filling in and helping out with special issues. Don't know if Perez and Byrne belong in that latter category, in the sense of occasionally 'filling in' and 'helping out.' Besides being top-tier artists, both of them were workhorses who had no problems meeting deadlines - and Byrne was usually ahead of schedule; I remember back in the late '70s and early '80s it wasn't unusual to see his art in three or four different books in the same month. I included Perez and Byrne more as examples of more stylistic and detailed art that jumps out at you.
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Post by Deleted on May 23, 2018 13:27:54 GMT -5
Don't know if Perez and Byrne belong in that latter category, in the sense of occasionally 'filling in' and 'helping out.' Besides being top-tier artists, both of them were workhorses who had no problems meeting deadlines - and Byrne was usually ahead of schedule; I remember back in the late '70s and early '80s it wasn't unusual to see his art in three or four different books in the same month. I included Perez and Byrne more as examples of more stylistic and detailed art that jumps out at you. And how man uniterrupted runs without fill ins or dreaded deadline doom reprints did Perez have while at Marvel the first time? He did better meeting deadlines once he got to DC, bue was hardly stable doing monthly books during his first stint at Marvel. I really dug Preez's first stints on Avengers but they were littered with reprints, guest artists and inventory issues to fill in missed deadlines when the comics were only 17 pages at the time, so he's hardly your poster boy for reliable monthly artists during that time. Time and nostalgia glasses make us forget about the realities during that time. -M
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Post by Prince Hal on May 23, 2018 14:12:06 GMT -5
I don't know if I'm the only one who thinks this way, but it's worth a shot mentioning it here.
Ross Andru's work on Spider-Man always looked so much better than virtually anything he did at DC. I think Frank Giacoia's inks always helped, but it wasn't like Giacoia inked Andru all the time. Most of the time it was good old Mike Esposito, his forever partner at DC. But their work at Marvel still looked better than their DC work.
I'm wondering if having John Romita as his Art Director helped, with layouts especially, which always seemed to me to be much more dynamic than the the work he did at DC. I'd read his Spider-Man and be asking, "Why can't DC get guys like this?"
Anybody else feel that way?
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