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Post by Deleted on Feb 4, 2017 11:29:33 GMT -5
Yeah, man. That's my answer. Two legends of the genre were awesome and then became caricatures of themselves - Aparo and Byrne. Check me on this, but isn't that "later" example of Aparo's art inked by Decarlo or someone besides Aparo? I think his art significantly lost something when others inked him.
If the art is from BATO #1 then Aparo inked it. He started doing pencils only a year later in BATO #12. So maybe his art skills were starting to decline. I also wonder if that page wasn't from a recolored trade. Here is the original page:
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Post by Cei-U! on Feb 4, 2017 12:10:18 GMT -5
It was pure economics that caused Jim Aparo's art to become less detailed. At his height in the late sixties and early seventies, Aparo worked exclusively on titles that were either published bimonthly or semi-monthly (eight times a year), giving him time to produce complete pages (pencils, inks, lettering). Once DC made all their titles monthlies, he had to simplify his art and later give up the inking and lettering parts of the job in order to compete with faster artists and maintain his previous level of income. Kind of sad.
Cei-U!
I summon the overtaxed titan of the drawing board!
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Post by Paste Pot Paul on Feb 4, 2017 16:40:41 GMT -5
I've thought for some time that many artists get looser as they age. The comparison of Neal Adam's work as an example.
However you do also need to compare like for like. Gil Kane inked by anyone vs by himself will always look different.
I would also suggest that some classic artists may be inking digitally now and not getting the variation in line weight they may have had with brush or pen.
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Post by tarkintino on Feb 4, 2017 17:56:41 GMT -5
Kirby 1968 vs. 1983  Kirby's work definitely took a negative turn into the 1970s. On occasion, his non-monthly work could show traces of styles you would never see at DC or Marvel, but in general, he seemed to fall back on a "Kirby style" as early as his Jimmy Olsen work in the early 1970s. What's worse is Mike Royer's "inks" which added nothing to Kirby's work--and certainly did not tone down his tendency for illustrating humans as if they were robots. |
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Post by Icctrombone on Feb 4, 2017 18:22:59 GMT -5
I really liked Royers inks on Kirby. I thought it looked more like the original pencils with him. In the later Kamandi books, D Bruce Berry inked it and it was bad.
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Post by Icctrombone on Feb 4, 2017 18:27:43 GMT -5
It was pure economics that caused Jim Aparo's art to become less detailed. At his height in the late sixties and early seventies, Aparo worked exclusively on titles that were either published bimonthly or semi-monthly (eight times a year), giving him time to produce complete pages (pencils, inks, lettering). Once DC made all their titles monthlies, he had to simplify his art and later give up the inking and lettering parts of the job in order to compete with faster artists and maintain his previous level of income. Kind of sad. Cei-U! I summon the overtaxed titan of the drawing board! Yeah, it looked like Aparo was doing a lot less. John Buscema was bashed for doing a lot less in his later books , as well. |
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Post by berkley on Feb 4, 2017 18:51:48 GMT -5
The Kirby question is a bit tricky, partly because of the difference in inkers, but partly because his focus had changed: I think he was less interested in action scenes in general and more concerned with the big science fiction ideas he was dealing with. So while his rendition of the Black Panther might not be as effective as in the 60s, I'd maintain that the Celestials out-do Galactus in every way, conceptually and visually - and not just because they're physically even more gigantic than the devourer of planets. Similarly, his double-page spreads of spaceships and the like in the 70s are perhaps even more impressive than his 60s tech, which was already amazing.
The sample of his later work posted above is from the 80s and yes, by then age and health problems had begun to have an effect.
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Post by rom on Feb 4, 2017 19:08:37 GMT -5
The answer to this question is - it depends. I really strongly preferred Frank Miller's distinctive & clean line art in his early work on Daredevil (late '70's - early '80's) to his later '80's work with much more elaborate & in some cases grotesque detail (Dark Knight Returns, Ronin, etc.) and beyond (Sin City, etc.) His style changed dramatically from the early '80's - late '80's; I'm not sure if he was trying to be more realistic with his later work, but in my opinion it wasn't as effective as his earlier artwork/series.
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Feb 5, 2017 16:25:40 GMT -5
Yes. They get get better or worse with age.
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Post by Ish Kabbible on Feb 5, 2017 16:35:11 GMT -5
After a certain age, everything gets worse
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Post by Paste Pot Paul on Feb 6, 2017 3:35:24 GMT -5
After a certain age, everything gets worse I'm thinking THAT age has discovered me... |
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Post by SJNeal on Feb 9, 2017 22:27:12 GMT -5
Regarding classic artists, I don't like most of my favorites earliest work. They usually peaked several years into their career, and are currently bad. Perez, Byrne, Jurgens... all did their best work in the late 80's-90's, imho. Today their pencils often hurt my eyes.
There are a few exceptions, of course. For instance I think Aparo's best work was in the 90's (Grant/Milligan era Batman, Puckett/Dixon Green Arrow, etc.) which were at the tail end of his career.
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Post by chadwilliam on Feb 10, 2017 0:11:14 GMT -5
What strikes me as odd is when an artist's judgment seems to change with age. Erik Larsen once said that every artist gets bored drawing the same punches, same leaps, same everything over and over and over. Even if an artist achieves perfection, he'll still want to shake things up just to relieve the monotony of something which has become overly familiar. That makes sense to me and yet there seem to be certain artists whose style has not only changed, but settled into something that doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Neal Adams work looks as if he puts as much time and effort into it as he ever did and yet he seems to have decided that faces don't look right if they don't have pronounced overbites, for instance.
Here's an example where he actually went back to a previous drawing...
and said "you know, I got Batman's face all wrong back then, time to make it look right" and decided upon this...
I can understand an artist not being able to draw as well as he used to due to failing eye sight, arthritis, an inability to spend as much time as he used to on his work, but Adams doesn't seem to have lost any talent - I mean, quite a lot of his new stuff looks fantastic - but it's lapses in judgment such as these which confounds me.
And I hate to single Neal Adams out, it's just that I couldn't think of any better side-by-side comparison from any one else to illustrate my point. |
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Post by berkley on Feb 10, 2017 1:10:45 GMT -5
How bizarre. I wonder if anyone tried to tell him, "uh Neal, I'm not sure this is as much of an improvement as you think ...".
Mind you, the original isn't one of his better moments, so I can understand the urge to work it over. I actually think some of his recent stuff looks pretty good, including some bits of Batman Odyssey I've see online. Rougher than his 70s work but sometimes that works. But I haven't looked at it closely enough to really have an opinion.
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Post by Icctrombone on Feb 11, 2017 18:25:39 GMT -5
How bizarre. I wonder if anyone tried to tell him, "uh Neal, I'm not sure this is as much of an improvement as you think ...". Mind you, the original isn't one of his better moments, so I can understand the urge to work it over. I actually think some of his recent stuff looks pretty good, including some bits of Batman Odyssey I've see online. Rougher than his 70s work but sometimes that works. But I haven't looked at it closely enough to really have an opinion. I get the feeling that long time legends can intimidate some editors. I can't see anyone sending Neal's art back for corrections. |
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