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Post by adamwarlock2099 on Aug 20, 2019 13:38:07 GMT -5
The bad of the 90’s are like a birthmark or huge mole. You’re trying to pay attention to anything else but you’re weirdly attracted to the bad. And so that’s a lot of what most people remember.
And that’s despite all the good mentioned in this thread so far.
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Post by berkley on Aug 20, 2019 16:38:34 GMT -5
I know a lot of people like Kelly Jones's artwork a lot but to my eyes it looks like more 90s-style excess, an ill-conceived attempt to combine Bernie Wrightson with Liefeld/Image-style exaggeration.
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Post by Cei-U! on Aug 20, 2019 16:53:21 GMT -5
I know a lot of people like Kelly Jones's artwork a lot but to my eyes it looks like more 90s-style excess, an ill-conceived attempt to combine Bernie Wrightson with Liefeld/Image-style exaggeration. Yuppers. Jones' art makes my eyes bleed.
Cei-U! Not a fan!
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Post by Duragizer on Aug 20, 2019 18:41:01 GMT -5
I think Jones' style was of inconsistent quality throughout the '90s, but still good overall. I'm not fond of how it's evolved in the past two decades, though. Too many of his figures look like sketchy blobs nowadays.
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Post by codystarbuck on Aug 20, 2019 18:49:21 GMT -5
Jones, I think, worked better in supernatural stories, where his style fit the mood and atmosphere. not as much in superheroes, though it depended on the story. It worked better on some Batman, than others. I wouldn't quite lump him in with the Image crowd, as I think he was more technically sound and creative, though he did share their tendency to excess. I'd say he and Sam Kieth had more in common the he and Liefeld, McFarlane or Lee.
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Post by Reptisaurus! on Aug 20, 2019 23:29:57 GMT -5
I think Jones' style was of inconsistent quality throughout the '90s, but still good overall. I'm not fond of how it's evolved in the past two decades, though. Too many of his figures look like sketchy blobs nowadays. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm re-reading his SANDMAN stuff right now and he just slays. |
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Post by MDG on Aug 21, 2019 8:45:29 GMT -5
^^^ Li liked jones' early stuff, but his Deadman turned me off and I never really got back on the train.
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Post by captainthor on Aug 21, 2019 14:37:44 GMT -5
It's obviously easy to generalise and there is a lot of great writing in the 90s, even from the Big Two who were having a bad era at the time (although DC were generally better at avoiding the era's excesses than Marvel were).
However, there were definitely some high-profile errors made in the era for major characters. For example, a lot of major Marvel characters had a run which started with The Crossing, moved onto Onslaught and then into Heroes Reborn followed by a renaissance just before the millennium. That's 3 or 4 years of consistently terrible storylines. It says something when I'd probably pick Onslaught as the high point of that particular run.
It was the era that gave us Cap looking like a wardrobe, Teen Tony (*shudders) and The Clone Saga. These are all major missteps with significant characters and are merely examples of a wider malaise affecting the industry at the time.
To be fair though, I feel like a lot of major producers learned from the 90s to produce a significant better era for mainstream comics in the 00s which combined the big events and attempts at more serious storytelling from the 90s but actually managed to pull it off without crossing into "Extreme" territory.
It was perhaps the only era where the Saturday morning cartoons on TV were often better than the comics being produced at the time.
There was still plenty of good stuff, particularly at the start and the end of the decade.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 22, 2019 3:36:54 GMT -5
I'd baled from comics by the late 80s and didn't come to to around Avengers Disassembled, whenever that was (2005?), so I missed pretty much all of that era, and got to say, there's not much of it I regret missing. Having gone back and read some since, one of my biggest issues wasn't around the stories, which were often terrible, it was the astoundingly bad artwork, especially from the supposedly hot artists. Everyone riffs on Liefeld, and rightly so, for his abysmal grasp of anatomy, but pretty much every 90s comic I've read since had several similar tropes - the over-muscled guys and broke-back women, ludicrous hair-styles, utter inability to draw appropriate facial expressions, and for some reason all the characters were inked and coloured to look shiny, as though they'd all been dipped in oil. From this thread, that Xtremebrood, or whatever it was earlier, is a dreadful example of bad anatomy, terrible composition and just general sub-professional ability, but this Batman picture is another example of anatomy being completely abandoned for effect, as well - how on earth are Batman's arms that long? To make that pose, with his forearms at that angle, his elbows would have to be down somewhere below his hip line. Unless this is a new Bat/Orang-utan hybrid (Batarang!), that pose is just impossible |
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Post by codystarbuck on Aug 22, 2019 11:17:00 GMT -5
I'd baled from comics by the late 80s and didn't come to to around Avengers Disassembled, whenever that was (2005?), so I missed pretty much all of that era, and got to say, there's not much of it I regret missing. Having gone back and read some since, one of my biggest issues wasn't around the stories, which were often terrible, it was the astoundingly bad artwork, especially from the supposedly hot artists. Everyone riffs on Liefeld, and rightly so, for his abysmal grasp of anatomy, but pretty much every 90s comic I've read since had several similar tropes - the over-muscled guys and broke-back women, ludicrous hair-styles, utter inability to draw appropriate facial expressions, and for some reason all the characters were inked and coloured to look shiny, as though they'd all been dipped in oil. From this thread, that Xtremebrood, or whatever it was earlier, is a dreadful example of bad anatomy, terrible composition and just general sub-professional ability, but this Batman picture is another example of anatomy being completely abandoned for effect, as well - how on earth are Batman's arms that long? To make that pose, with his forearms at that angle, his elbows would have to be down somewhere below his hip line. Unless this is a new Bat/Orang-utan hybrid (Batarang!), that posse is just impossible Well, here's a few things you missed that I would say are worth reading: Batman Adventures-ostensibly written for children who were fans of Batman TAS, it was actually the best Batman series on the stands, with Ty Templeton and Mike Parobeck. Justice Society of America-Len Strazewski and Mike Parobeck handled the returned JSA in an excellent series that was killed by DC editorial, because factions didn't want old heroes. Starman-best superhero book on the market, in terms of writing and innovative art. Embraced the generational nature of DC The Flash-Waid and company turned this into a fantastic series Legends of the Dark Knight-it varied a bit, as teams changed for different storylines; but, many great pieces from James Robinson, Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale, Moench & Gulacy, Marshall Rogers. Archer & Armstrong-Barry Windsor-Smith with two of the most fun characters in comics I could go on and on about indie titles that are worth reading, with excellent art. Mainstream, high profile? Well, yeah, some really awful crap there. |
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Post by beccabear67 on Aug 22, 2019 12:27:24 GMT -5
Ty Templeton seems to have always been an amazing artist/cartoonist. I think maybe he broke in through Captain Canuck? I remember a Mister Canoe-head one-shot as well (based on a Canadian tv comedy bit).  I think I only ever saw Kelly Jones art on some Micronauts after Guice left it. I associate lots of cape with Todd McFarlane. |
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Post by codystarbuck on Aug 22, 2019 12:47:27 GMT -5
Ty Templeton seems to have always been an amazing artist/cartoonist. I think maybe he broke in through Captain Canuck? I remember a Mister Canoe-head one-shot as well (based on a Canadian tv comedy bit). I think I only ever saw Kelly Jones art on some Micronauts after Guice left it. I associate lots of cape with Todd McFarlane. Well, Berni Wrightson and Marshall Rogers were doing that even earlier. First noticed Ty, as a fill-in artist on Justice league, in the BWA-HA-HA years. He dd some great stuff with Elongated Man, as well. Love his site. One of my favorite 90s comics was Bongo's Radioactive Man, which poked fun at all those old stories and conventions. The original mini--series had each issue in a different decade and poked fun at the styles and stories of that period. The 70s one spoofed GL/GA, with Purple Heart becoming Bleeding Heart, and the female hero Black Partridge (think Black Canary dressed as Shirley Jones, in the Partridge Family). The last issue, set in the 90s, spoofed McFarlane.       |
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Post by badwolf on Aug 22, 2019 12:53:05 GMT -5
I think I only ever saw Kelly Jones art on some Micronauts after Guice left it. Yes, that was his first professional work, I believe, or at least his first work for Marvel.
The second Micronauts series was moody and a bit creepy under him and Peter Gillis (who I miss).
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Post by Deleted on Aug 22, 2019 16:57:09 GMT -5
]Well, here's a few things you missed that I would say are worth reading: Batman Adventures-ostensibly written for children who were fans of Batman TAS, it was actually the best Batman series on the stands, with Ty Templeton and Mike Parobeck. Justice Society of America-Len Strazewski and Mike Parobeck handled the returned JSA in an excellent series that was killed by DC editorial, because factions didn't want old heroes. Starman-best superhero book on the market, in terms of writing and innovative art. Embraced the generational nature of DC The Flash-Waid and company turned this into a fantastic series Legends of the Dark Knight-it varied a bit, as teams changed for different storylines; but, many great pieces from James Robinson, Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale, Moench & Gulacy, Marshall Rogers. Archer & Armstrong-Barry Windsor-Smith with two of the most fun characters in comics I could go on and on about indie titles that are worth reading, with excellent art. Mainstream, high profile? Well, yeah, some really awful crap there. To be honest, one of the things that was the tipping factor in me baling completely when the big 2 went into the post-Secret Wars/post-Crisis dumpster fire, was that all the indies that I was following had pretty much jumped the shark as well: Mage 1 had finished, Mage 2 hadn't started and I loathed Grendel; Nexus had massively jumped the shark with the interminable Next Nexus; Badger and American Flagg had gone off the boil; I'd lost interest in Concrete; Elementals had disappeared up its own butt; Cerebus was getting really tedious; probably a few others that I can't remember, but they'd pretty much all gone to crap around the same time. Dragging us back to the subject at hand - Planetary debuted in the 90s (just), and that's one of my favourite series of any era. |
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Post by profh0011 on Aug 23, 2019 20:58:26 GMT -5
I think I only ever saw Kelly Jones art on some Micronauts after Guice left it. I associate lots of cape with Todd McFarlane. I think I first saw Kelly Jones inking Jackson Guice on MICRONAUTS. They were SO DAMNED GOOD together, it was like Kirby & Sinnott, only different.
I somehow never got to like Jones' pencilling. To me, he always seemed 10 times better at inking. And I remember one issue of John Ostrander's run of THE SPECTRE where he returned to inks, which I absolutely loved. (I'm not even sure who the penciller was, without looking it up... but I suspect it was Jim Aparo, who usually inked his own stuff.)
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