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Post by Slam_Bradley on May 6, 2015 22:48:44 GMT -5
Brunner went to work in Hollywood in a number of capacities. Thorne went into doing work for the likes of Playboy, Heavy Metal, National Lampoon as well as writing novels, working in films, etc.
A lot of the "flashes in the pan" found they could make a whole lot more money in other areas besides comics.
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Post by MDG on May 7, 2015 8:05:23 GMT -5
A lot of the "flashes in the pan" found they could make a whole lot more money in other areas besides comics. Yeah--a lot of people do good work--and make good money--that's "invisible." |
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Post by adamwarlock2099 on May 7, 2015 8:47:09 GMT -5
Brunner went to work in Hollywood in a number of capacities. Thorne went into doing work for the likes of Playboy, Heavy Metal, National Lampoon as well as writing novels, working in films, etc. A lot of the "flashes in the pan" found they could make a whole lot more money in other areas besides comics. And to some it may be just a job like everyone else has to have. There's a good chance some artists don't have a passion for the work they just have the talent. Any number of building I've see in the making and really are at awe at the talent, organization and machine operators capable of brining materials together to build a finished product. But to them I'm sure it's just as boring of a job as I find mine and many others find there's to be. |
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Post by Randle-El on May 7, 2015 9:35:05 GMT -5
Brunner went to work in Hollywood in a number of capacities. Thorne went into doing work for the likes of Playboy, Heavy Metal, National Lampoon as well as writing novels, working in films, etc. A lot of the "flashes in the pan" found they could make a whole lot more money in other areas besides comics. And to some it may be just a job like everyone else has to have. There's a good chance some artists don't have a passion for the work they just have the talent. Any number of building I've see in the making and really are at awe at the talent, organization and machine operators capable of brining materials together to build a finished product. But to them I'm sure it's just as boring of a job as I find mine and many others find there's to be. Knowing several (non-comics) artists and professional musicians myself, creative fields are always a tricky balance of finding enough work that pays well even if you aren't necessarily enthused about it, while still producing the art that actually interests you. It's rare that a creative worker will find that perfect job that pays comfortably and is consistently engaging from an artistic perspective. |
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Post by hondobrode on May 7, 2015 10:20:15 GMT -5
I think the great ones do have a passion for it, stay with it, and stretch themselves in different genres, characters and publishers.
Kirby, Adams, Steranko, Kaluta, Art Adams, Lee, Byrne, Perez, Kubert, Sienkiewicz and others I can't recall at the moment, have all done that.
Brunner, Thorne, Platt, Pini, Bode, Kaare Andrews, Geof Isherwood, Pat Lee ...
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Post by adamwarlock2099 on May 7, 2015 10:33:13 GMT -5
Knowing several (non-comics) artists and professional musicians myself, creative fields are always a tricky balance of finding enough work that pays well even if you aren't necessarily enthused about it, while still producing the art that actually interests you. It's rare that a creative worker will find that perfect job that pays comfortably and is consistently engaging from an artistic perspective. I don't know any personally, but that has been an assumption of mine. People are good at a lot of different things, and I think as people who aren't in a creative field to tend to view people that are in it in a romantic way, as if they absolutely have to love doing what they do because we admire it so much. But work is still work, and even if they do enjoy doing it, it's still because people pay them money to do it. |
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Post by fanboystranger on May 7, 2015 10:34:03 GMT -5
I think the great ones do have a passion for it, stay with it, and stretch themselves in different genres, characters and publishers. Kirby, Adams, Steranko, Kaluta, Art Adams, Lee, Byrne, Perez, Kubert, Sienkiewicz and others I can't recall at the moment, have all done that. Brunner, Thorne, Platt, Pini, Bode, Kaare Andrews, Geof Isherwood, Pat Lee ... Kaluta and Sienkiewicz are interesting in that during the period they weren't doing much comics work, they were still regularly contributing covers to comics. Both of them had more lucrative jobs in book/magazine illustration, but they loved comics enough to keep one foot in the water. Brian Bolland and Dave McKean manage to stay within the comics headspace simply by providing covers.
Some one like Chaykin is interesting, too. Arguable at the moment of his greatest popularity as an artist in comics (after Wolverine/Nick Fury: The Scorpio Connection), he stopped drawing comics for a television job. However, he was still writing comics, and probably built up more of a fan following as a writer than artist. He was able to go back to drawing around fifteen years later, but his art was not as accepted as much it had been in the '80s or as much as his writing until Satellite Sam.
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Post by MDG on May 7, 2015 12:03:28 GMT -5
I think the great ones do have a passion for it, stay with it, and stretch themselves in different genres, characters and publishers. I agree with the first part of your sentence, not necessarily the second. The best do have a passion for it, but many can express that in a single genre or series, though few of these work in mainstream comics, e.g., Hernandez, Crumb, Clowes, Barks, Dan DeCarlo, Eisner... Working (for hire) in mainstream comics sometimes means taking what's available. |
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Post by hondobrode on May 7, 2015 12:57:14 GMT -5
It's not an absolute rule, but I see the artists that tend to be more accepted as having worked in multiple genres.
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Post by fanboystranger on May 7, 2015 13:52:08 GMT -5
It's not an absolute rule, but I see the artists that tend to be more accepted as having worked in multiple genres. That's probably true, especially in an editorial sense. Walt Simonson has talked about being considered a "sci-fi" artist until Archie Goodwin gave him a break with their Manhunter run. (Although his first published professional work was a pirate story. Go figure.) Typecasting is pretty rampant within the comics industry. |
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Post by hondobrode on May 7, 2015 21:38:30 GMT -5
I've noticed that.
Where you first get noticed, and sell some copies, is where another editor gets a safe pick.
"He worked on Daredevil. I can use him on Batman." (Scott McDaniel, Alex Maleev, Klaus Janson, Michael Lark)
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Post by Reptisaurus! on May 8, 2015 9:19:59 GMT -5
People with a classic style tend to remain popular if they ever get popular in the first place. So someone like Wally Wood or George Perez will always remain popular I think. People with a more unique and stylized look can gain noteriety and then lose it when mainstream tastes change, the whole Liefeld look is a good example. I don't think Kirby ever lost popularity, but I think his popularity was among people less likely to try something new. They wanted Kirby on Spiderman or nothing. They weren't going to try anything creator owned by him, but would have lined up to buy his return to Avengers like it was the new Star Wars movie. I think those people's tastes are nostalgia based though. I think that was true short term, but I think that long term his all-over-everywhere genre hopping really helped his popularity - Especially among more independent-minded fans (Like Jaime Hernandez, Frank Miller, Stan Sakai.....). I think that honbrobe's definitely got a point. The people who have really long term careers are artists who (A) venture outside their comfort zones, and (B) can get fans to follow them! Like Mike Mignola made a pretty major career jump when he stopped doing Marvel and DC, but it didn't really seem to affect the size of his audience. |
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Post by fanboystranger on May 8, 2015 9:58:47 GMT -5
People with a classic style tend to remain popular if they ever get popular in the first place. So someone like Wally Wood or George Perez will always remain popular I think. People with a more unique and stylized look can gain noteriety and then lose it when mainstream tastes change, the whole Liefeld look is a good example. I don't think Kirby ever lost popularity, but I think his popularity was among people less likely to try something new. They wanted Kirby on Spiderman or nothing. They weren't going to try anything creator owned by him, but would have lined up to buy his return to Avengers like it was the new Star Wars movie. I think those people's tastes are nostalgia based though. I think that was true short term, but I think that long term his all-over-everywhere genre hopping really helped his popularity - Especially among more independent-minded fans (Like Jaime Hernandez, Frank Miller, Stan Sakai.....). I think that honbrobe's definitely got a point. The people who have really long term careers are artists who (A) venture outside their comfort zones, and (B) can get fans to follow them! Like Mike Mignola made a pretty major career jump when he stopped doing Marvel and DC, but it didn't really seem to affect the size of his audience. I think timing had a lot to do with Mignola's success, too. Legend was formed at the same time as the speculator's bubble and the formation of Image, and it's not like Mike was making the move alone (Miller, Byrne, Darrow, Gibbons, Allred, etc were all initially part of Legend). Mike had fans follow him to Hellboy because fans were following creators everywhere. Before his first stories, no one really had a clue what to make of Hellboy-- it certainly didn't seem like it was going to be a major character that would develop one of the most popular characters and franchises in comics-- but those first few comics showed that HB was going to be something really different from most books on the stacks. I'm not sure this happens a few years later, although I do think HB would have been a success, just at a smaller scale. The movies also helped improve HB's profile.
These days, it's more a matter of starting with your own thing, getting noticed by the Big Two, working a few years there, then going back to creating your own thing again when you've developed an audience. Creators don't really get their starts at Marvel or DC anymore-- that's the middle period of their career.
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Post by Deleted on May 8, 2015 13:18:34 GMT -5
Another distinction is Mignola, Miller, Sakai, and the Hernandez bros aren't just illustrators and a significant part of their appeal is their writing as well. They also don't have inkers finishing their pages, it's all one vision start to finish. So while there's no doubt Migbola has a following, I don't think it should all be attributed to his illustration.
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Post by fanboystranger on May 8, 2015 13:34:10 GMT -5
Another distinction is Mignola, Miller, Sakai, and the Hernandez bros aren't just illustrators and a significant part of their appeal is their writing as well. They also don't have inkers finishing their pages, it's all one vision start to finish. So while there's no doubt Migbola has a following, I don't think it should all be attributed to his illustration. That's a good point, although when Hellboy started, Mike didn't have much confidence in his own writing ability. That's why he approached John Byrne to script Seed of Destruction.
I think we also tend to underplay the amount that artists are involved in the storytelling process as far as plot. Obviously, there was the Marvel style that we always hear about, but even artists working from a full script had a lot of latitude as far as how the story was going to be told. Even when working with other writers, artists like Mignola, Perez, Simonson, etc had a lot of input towards how the story was told, and it made sense for them to transition into being writers as well.
Also, we tend to downplay how much the great artists might have been mentoring uncredited assistants in their work. For example, we tend to divide Los Bros into Jaime and Beto, but Mario was helping out a great deal with their work in an uncredited capacity. (He obviously had his own work in L&R, too.)
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