A Dan DeCarlo "stick figure"

It may be a case of the artist(s) having to work that much harder when the subject matter is perceived as slight or juvenile. Many were quick to dismiss the early, crude Simpsons. Early MAD is another great example; the material is proudly, vehemently juvenile and low-brow, but the Kurtzman, Elder, Wood, etc. art is as carefully crafted and painstakingly executed as an Alex Raymond or Hal Foster IMHO.

I was entertaining the idea of posting One of Buscemas pages next to one of Decarlos pages but I figure why bother. We will have to agree that we disagree. 

When he was alive, back in the late 70s/early 80s, CC Beck of Captain Marvel fame wrote dozens and dozens of opinion pieces praising simpler,cartoonish art versus overly-rendered realistic art. Back then I thought of him as just a cranky old curmudgeon who was just stuck in his old fashioned ways. As I got older I began to see his point

But it shouldn't be a question of one version being better than another. There's good or bad in each method. I enjoy art thats easy to follow, where my eye knows instantly where to focus, where I'm not confused by exactly what is taking place in a panel. To me theres nothing worse than scratching my head with what the artist is trying to do and completely being thrown out of the story because of it

However I can enjoy innovative layouts, realistic facial renderings,detailed backgounds etc.  Just like movies I can enjoy light comedy or heavy drama. That just means I can enjoy more movies and who could ask for more?

This was my original quote. I didn't really have time to respond to the various comments that were posted trying to prove me wrong , or even some that were condescending towards my opinion, but I have time now.  First of all, I made a general statement that artists drawing Archie comics didn't have the burden of drawing as much detail as a book by , lets say, DC or Marvel artists. I still stand by my assertion.
Mrp, I respect you but you made what I said into Don Decarlo vs. John Buscema, thereby stacking the deck against John by showing his latter work which was mostly breakdowns. John Buscema didn't always draw in breakdowns. I'm sure the first dozen or so years he worked in the  standard way until he became the go to guy for fill-ins and the like. But here's a sample of his stuff that you didn't show



Not the poor barely there breakdowns that you posted while trying to make him a lesser talent.

But AGAIN, you made it Decarlo vs. Buscema. Lets see some of the work of the other pencilers that Dcindexer provided.

Jack Kirby


John Byrne



Really Guys,  Decarlos never had detail like this on his work.  This is not to bash him in anyway. he drew beautiful books , but that type of genre didn't require him to draw that way.

Gene Colan



Gil Kane

I never said Buscema was a lesser talent, I really like his stuff (especially his early Conan stuff), what I said was his stuff shouldn't count more than DeCarlo or other Archie artists because a lot of his work was just rough breakdowns like I showed. I said if you are going to discount those Archie pages for not being detailed, then you need to discount all the Buscema pages that were just rough breakdowns form his total of pages down when measuring how prolific he was because they were in no way more detailed than the Archie stuff you were denigrating. You then said Archie was barely more than stick figures and Buscema's breakdowns were still more detailed, to which I showed evidence to the contrary. I never said Buscema wasn't talented, I said a lot of his work was very rough, barely sketches, where the bulk of the finished page was done by the inkers. He was a great talent, but he took a lot of shortcuts to meet the production schedule he maintained. Yes he pages you showed are more detailed, those are not the ones I said shouldn't count if we are discounting less detailed pages. However, if we use your measuring stick that less detailed pages shouldn't count, how can you count the rough breakdowns I showed the same as the finished work you showed? They obviously don't have as much detail as his other work, which is your standard that you put forward. If we discount those breakdown pages then, Buscema's total is far less than the numbers DC Indexer showed us, and thus he wouldn't count as one of the most prolific because a good chunk of the pages he did weren't detailed. If you want to count those pages, then less detailed pages such as those by the Archie artists should count as well, so they then do stand among the most prolific artists. It's not about quality, it's about what should count towards measuring how prolific an artist is. You put forward level of detail as a measure of whether a page should count. I showed how that standard also disqualifies some of the Marvel artists at the top of the list, especially Buscema who did not include high levels of details on a lot of his work. Say he only did it on a third of the pages he produced, reduce he total DC Indexer gave us for his total pages by a third, and where does Buscema stand among the most prolific then?

If you don't think that level of detail should affect Buscema's totals? Why not? And why should it then count towards Archie artist's if it doesn't count towards Buscema? Is there a reason other than you don't like the Archie style and you are a fan of Buscema's work? Is there an objective rather than subjective standard here?

If level of detail is the measuring stick, it needs to be applied universally no matter what company they drew for. That was he argument I was making, not taking a swipe at the quality of Buscema's work.

-M