...and yet in any of AR's work, whether poster or comics, his superheroes never come off as arrogant or looking down on anyone. Instead, they appear to be aware of their responsibility, but interact with people not as overlords, but as people to rely on--people who are dedicated to the cause no matter the odds. That's a Ross flair/trait he puts into his superheroes if ever there was one.

Yes, I see that, and I've enjoyed many of Ross's stories. I was commenting only on those portraits that were posted.

For instance, in that oversized solo Batman book, Bruce takes off his shirt and we see that his back looks like a topographical map, so scarred is it. That scene showed a glimpse of what Batman's life would really be like, and as I recall, Bruce is not at all dismissive of Alfred's concern for him.

I just think the portraits on this thread make the JLA look self-satisfied.

You've never read Marvels or Kingdom Come? Might be worth your while.

Covers are mainly what he's known for due to the price of his labor. He has done a few series, and I enjoyed them. YMMV. Here's a scene of Hawkman and Hawkwoman bursting out of a tight space in Justice.

For all that I owe Kingdom Come a great debt of gratitude as it's the reason for the existence of CBR and by extension this site, every time I've tried to re-read it I've found it completely unreadable.  

Scot McCloud argues that energy/action and art detail are inversely related, which I can see some sense in.

Really taking in those images requires you to scrutinize the details, which means holding the scene in freeze frame.

In defence of rberman's point, since he quoted Scott McLeod I assume he's talking about sequential art, comics, rather than stand-alone illustrations like the Frazetta piece is (I think?). The Hal Foster piece OTOH is from a sequential story (the Prince Valiant comic strip?), but even Foster's most fervent admirers would agree that his style of story-telling was more illustrative and static than what the medium evolved into later on.

However, I disagree with McLeod on this score: I think that in comics you can pause and savour the details of an individual panel without losing the momentum of the story. I think it's a mistake to think that comics have to be read in the same way that movies and tv shows are viewed - as continuous flows of narrative that the viewer has to passively receive at whatever pace the film-makers have created for their film. Though comics are a visual medium, that shouldn't mislead us into drawing too close an analogy with other visual media like film and tv - and I think this is exactly the mistake a lot of modern American comics have fallen into, both artists and writers. Comics are a literary as well as a visual medium and can be read at leisure, pausing to admire a panel or turning back to re-read a scene, etc.