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Post by Slam_Bradley on Aug 9, 2015 12:22:29 GMT -5
Beware the Creeper Hawk and Dove Ted Kord Blue Beetle for Charlton The Question for Charlton Captain Atom for Charlton tons and tons of horror & sci-fi shorts for anthologies for DC and Charlton Speedball for Marvel that's just off the top of my head and I am not a big Ditko fan by any means, but he had a huge body of quality work post-Spidey & Dr. Strange I view the above series as short lived. He never went on to do memorable great stuff like Kirbys New Gods saga or Kamandi. The Fourth World books lasted less than two years. It seems bigger because they were interconnected, but they were pretty short lived and didn't sell all that well. And frankly I'll take Creeper or Hawk & Dove over The Fourth World. They had a ton of ideas, but overall they were a mess and I find them extremely difficult reads. |
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Post by Deleted on Aug 9, 2015 13:02:37 GMT -5
Beware the Creeper Hawk and Dove Ted Kord Blue Beetle for Charlton The Question for Charlton Captain Atom for Charlton tons and tons of horror & sci-fi shorts for anthologies for DC and Charlton Speedball for Marvel that's just off the top of my head and I am not a big Ditko fan by any means, but he had a huge body of quality work post-Spidey & Dr. Strange I view the above series as short lived. He never went on to do memorable great stuff like Kirbys New Gods saga or Kamandi. And it's still more creative output in terms of new ideas and characters than someone like Big John Buscema ever did, who, while I talented artist, was a journeyman who spent his entire career travelling creative trails blazed by others rather than creating his own. Every major run he had in his career was working on characters made famous by other more creative talents. Long runs following in the footsteps of others is not necessarily more impressive or makes one less overrated than the sheer creative output of ideas by others, even if short-lived. Achieving a long run because you are standing on the shoulders of giants who did all the creative work of creating, establishing, and making the characters popular is not necessarily a sign of greatness. Ditko had a constant stream of new ideas being put on the page throughout his career. Kirby's output post-Marvel featured a lot of new ideas, but none of them had a lengthy run aside from 40 issues of Kamandi, the tail end of which DC forced a scripter on Kirby to dialogue the books. Other than that-New Gods and Forever People 11 issues, OMAC 8 issues, Eternals 19 issues plus an annual, Demon 16 issues, Mister Miracle 18 issues, Captain Victory 13 issues...he did have a 22 issue (plus 2 Annuals and a Treasury Special) run when he returned to Captain America, but really nothing that lengthy either if that is your standard you are using to measure who is overrated. -M |
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Post by Icctrombone on Aug 9, 2015 14:42:08 GMT -5
I view the above series as short lived. He never went on to do memorable great stuff like Kirbys New Gods saga or Kamandi. And it's still more creative output in terms of new ideas and characters than someone like Big John Buscema ever did, who, while I talented artist, was a journeyman who spent his entire career travelling creative trails blazed by others rather than creating his own. Ha! I'll take the bait. Journeyman is a term meant to draw me out but J. Buscema was The go to guy to sell a book and launch books ( She Hulk, Nova, Ms Marvel). He Innovated the Avengers when he took over and made them the franchise that it became. He carried Conan where a lesser artist might have been the cause for cancelation. And on and on... |
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Post by Icctrombone on Aug 9, 2015 14:46:04 GMT -5
There are some creators that went on to do great things beyond their first great works. Kirby went on to do his fourth World saga and Byrne went on to do FF and Superman runs that were very good. I don't know of anything that Ditko did worthy of that type of acclaim. Beware the Creeper Hawk and Dove Ted Kord Blue Beetle for Charlton The Question for Charlton Captain Atom for Charlton tons and tons of horror & sci-fi shorts for anthologies for DC and Charlton Speedball for Marvel that's just off the top of my head and I am not a big Ditko fan by any means, but he had a huge body of quality work post-Spidey & Dr. Strange None of these characters that he had a hand in presenting have lasted or have been a commercial success. As for his Spider-man run, Romita Sr. sold more books and it became a bigger property under his run. |
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Aug 9, 2015 15:25:06 GMT -5
Beware the Creeper Hawk and Dove Ted Kord Blue Beetle for Charlton The Question for Charlton Captain Atom for Charlton tons and tons of horror & sci-fi shorts for anthologies for DC and Charlton Speedball for Marvel that's just off the top of my head and I am not a big Ditko fan by any means, but he had a huge body of quality work post-Spidey & Dr. Strange None of these characters that he had a hand in presenting have lasted or have been a commercial success. As for his Spider-man run, Romita Sr. sold more books and it became a bigger property under his run. Your own examples didn't last and had limited financial success. Kamandi had a decent first run but was still at best a second tier title. And he's been a afterthought ever since. Not to mention being a blatant Planet of the Apes rip-off. The Fourth world titles have never been able to maintain any kind of success. Darkseid is the only character from those series who has had anything like a lasting effect. Lee/Romita Spider-man may have sold more books, but that doesn't speak in any meaningful way to the resonance of the stories or their impact. Lee/Ditko Spider-man is the touchstone of the series. Virtually everything meaningful about the character and the series was created in that time period. |
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Post by Icctrombone on Aug 9, 2015 19:04:42 GMT -5
I believe that, although the Fourth World series didn't have a long run, the characters are constantly being used and brought back in the DC universe. I understand that Neal Adams is doing a New Gods series this year. Not so much the Creeper ,Hawk and Dove, Ted Kord Blue Beetle , The Question and Captain Atom. But it's kind of silly to compare anyones output against Jack Kirby.
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Post by berkley on Aug 9, 2015 20:09:12 GMT -5
I understand that Neal Adams is doing a New Gods series this year. This was the first I'd heard of this and I was briefly excited, but a quick google tells me that it's a Superman series with some New Gods characters, which is never a combination that works for me. Oh well, maybe someday ... |
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Post by Deleted on Aug 9, 2015 21:43:19 GMT -5
So what long runs on books/characters he created did John Buscema have? Or was he always working on other stuff made by more creative folks? Sure Buscema was a talented draftsmen and met deadlines, but so were several other long time comic artists, but what is the legacy of stuff Buscema actually created? Or was he just a hired hand? And if he was, how is he not overrated when the creative legacy of others you say are overrated is much larger?
-M
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Post by Icctrombone on Aug 9, 2015 22:33:49 GMT -5
So what long runs on books/characters he created did John Buscema have? Or was he always working on other stuff made by more creative folks? Sure Buscema was a talented draftsmen and met deadlines, but so were several other long time comic artists, but what is the legacy of stuff Buscema actually created? Or was he just a hired hand? And if he was, how is he not overrated when the creative legacy of others you say are overrated is much larger? -M While on his Avengers run he created the Vision, Yellowjacket, Ultron, Squadron Supreme, Arkon and I'm sure he had his hand in creating new Characters in his Conan run. And I wouldn't scoff at "Hired Hands" because that list has names that I would take any day of the week over Ditko. I'll just name Neal Adams and Jose Garcia Lopez to start and leave it at that. I see that people consider Ditko to be a legend in early Marvel but He did Spider-man and Dr. Strange and I would consider Dr. Strange to be a character that has had trouble keeping a book for too long before it's canceled. |
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Post by berkley on Aug 9, 2015 22:38:52 GMT -5
So what long runs on books/characters he created did John Buscema have? Or was he always working on other stuff made by more creative folks? Sure Buscema was a talented draftsmen and met deadlines, but so were several other long time comic artists, but what is the legacy of stuff Buscema actually created? Or was he just a hired hand? And if he was, how is he not overrated when the creative legacy of others you say are overrated is much larger? -M I think he was more or less a hired hand and a lot of his work looks a little tired and by the numbers to me and this became more noticeable as the decades passed. I say that as a fan, and it's a credit to his talent that even his "by the numbers" stuff was usually of a pretty high quality. At his best he was almost as good as it gets, but he was overworked to the point where his best was often dependent on the inker he was assigned. |
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Post by berkley on Aug 9, 2015 22:46:08 GMT -5
So what long runs on books/characters he created did John Buscema have? Or was he always working on other stuff made by more creative folks? Sure Buscema was a talented draftsmen and met deadlines, but so were several other long time comic artists, but what is the legacy of stuff Buscema actually created? Or was he just a hired hand? And if he was, how is he not overrated when the creative legacy of others you say are overrated is much larger? -M While on his Avengers run he created the Vision, Yellowjacket, Ultron, Squadron Supreme, Arkon and I'm sure he had his hand in creating new Characters in his Conan run. And I wouldn't scoff at "Hired Hands" because that list has names that I would take any day of the week over Ditko. I'll just name Neal Adams and Jose Garcia Lopez to start and leave it at that. I see that people consider Ditko to be a legend in early Marvel but He did Spider-man and Dr. Strange and I would consider Dr. Strange to be a character that has had trouble keeping a book for too long before it's canceled. I don't judge creators by how commercially successful their creations have been. The superhero comics audience has often shown its inability to appreciate work that ventures outside the narrow bounds of its favourite genre. Doctor Strange was never a high-selling book, but the Ditko and the Englehart runs are amongst the most innovative comics Marvel has ever produced, as was the Roy Thomas run as far as Gene Colan's artwork is concerned. Kirby's Eternals has never found a large audience amongst fans or an understanding one amongst writers that followed Kirby. That doesn't mean that original creative work doesn't sometimes find an appreciative audience - Alan Moore's 80s stuff for DC became hugely popular. But often it doesn't - often enough to make popularity unreliable as a criterion of quality. |
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Post by Deleted on Aug 10, 2015 0:51:11 GMT -5
So what long runs on books/characters he created did John Buscema have? Or was he always working on other stuff made by more creative folks? Sure Buscema was a talented draftsmen and met deadlines, but so were several other long time comic artists, but what is the legacy of stuff Buscema actually created? Or was he just a hired hand? And if he was, how is he not overrated when the creative legacy of others you say are overrated is much larger? -M While on his Avengers run he created the Vision, Yellowjacket, Ultron, Squadron Supreme, Arkon and I'm sure he had his hand in creating new Characters in his Conan run. And I wouldn't scoff at "Hired Hands" because that list has names that I would take any day of the week over Ditko. I'll just name Neal Adams and Jose Garcia Lopez to start and leave it at that. I see that people consider Ditko to be a legend in early Marvel but He did Spider-man and Dr. Strange and I would consider Dr. Strange to be a character that has had trouble keeping a book for too long before it's canceled. Actually, a lot of those were created by Roy Thomas and designed by Jazzy Johnny Romita as the art director, then given to Buscema to draw in the books (which was SOP at the time for the bullpen, as Romita and his Raiders were designing covers for many of those books before the script/plot was given to the penciller to start work on). So while he was the firs tto draw them in the books, he didn't actually create a lot of them. At best, he was the designer of some of those characters created by Roy Thomas and given credit as co-creator. -M |
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Post by Reptisaurus! on Aug 12, 2015 23:20:57 GMT -5
If you don't have much interest in comics beyond corporate properties and superhero nostalgia I can totally see not getting Ditko - He was basically a psychological horror artist, even when he was doing superhero stuff, so he had a completely different, darker, more introverted aesthetic than Kirby or Buscama or Garcia Lopez or whoever.
Basically, I think that post-Marvel Ditko is important because he was one of the first guys to use comics as a medium to discuss moral philosophy and real world issues for an intelligent adult audience. I'm not saying his writing on stuff like Static or Mr. A was good, per se but it was a legitimate attempt to do something smarter than what was possible in the Marvel/DC/Dell/Archie studio system, which had been kid-a-fied by the comics code authority. He at least saw the potential of comic books to discuss serious philosophy, not just pap to entertain children.
Also: Squirrel Girl.
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Post by Gene on Aug 13, 2015 0:33:43 GMT -5
Favorite non-comics artists
5.Caravaggio
4.Francisco Goya
3.Albrecht Dürer
2.Emil Nolde
1.Käthe Kollwitz
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Post by Jesse on Aug 19, 2015 21:42:23 GMT -5
Favorite Spider-Man Costumes- Spider-Man 2099
- Miles Morales
- Ben Reilly Spider-Man
- Classic
- Black Suit / Alien Symbiote
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