My Opinion - Take It Or Leave It!

[Deep_Sleeper]

So I have a bunch of stuff that I need to get off my chest and I didn't know where to put it. There's a good chance this thread will sink to the bottom really fast, but let's see what sticks.

The point of this thread is to just spout off a bunch of personal opinions and see what like-minded or antagonistic response I get. Being a comic book forum, I figure I'll lead with a comic book related topic.

Olivier Coipel vs. Jim Lee

As you can see from my sig, I'm a huge fan of Olivier Coipel. I get books just for his art. I mainly got House of M, Siege, and the first collection of Fraction's Thor just for his art alone. The man is an amazing talent. If you have a chance to read his run with JMS on Thor, you will not regret it. I think Thor is a fairly lame characters, but man did JMS grab my attention with his interpretation of Thor and Coipel just knocked the art out of the park.

Then we have Jim Lee. Really, Jim Lee represents my first comic book love. I read a comic here and there, but the day I became a comic book fan was when I bought a copy of X-Men #1 by Chris Claremont and Jim Lee. His art featured characters that were larger than life, powerful and beautiful. With Claremont turning the drama up to 11, Jim Lee's art caught on more fire. Obviously, all of this was reinforced by the inclusion of some of the greatest characters to exist in comics...the X-Men.

My problem is...as good as Jim Lee was and still is, I feel that his art has plateaued. At the same time, the same amount of vibrant energy and powerful illustration has been elevated to the levels of astonishing by Coipel. So why is it that Coipel does not get the same amount of acclaim that Jim Lee is getting?

Is it because the comic book fans of the 90s are the ones that still determine which comics are in and which comics are lame?

Is it because art is subjective, but subjectively...Jim Lee is better than Olivier Coipel?

Is it because Jim Lee is working on characters that more people want to read about than what Coipel is doing?

What is it?

[Arvandor]

If you're trying to be controversial, you're going to have to do better than saying Jim Lee is overrated. It's quite the in thing to bash Jim Lee around here.

[Cavemold]

If you're trying to be controversial, you're going to have to do better than saying Jim Lee is overrated. It's quite the in thing to bash Jim Lee around here.

Pretty much.......

[Darrell D.]

I don't think Jim Lee is overrated.
He's rated where he should be, people like his work and they buy it, and he is a very successful businessman.

[Deep_Sleeper]

Not trying to be controversial...just wondering if people actually think Jim Lee's art is better than Coipel's. Lee's got a lot going for him. Chief amongst it is that he knows the business. The man was smart enough to go where the money was going to be when he co-founded Image. Then he was smart enough to create a bunch of characters and put together a studio of artists that creating the Wildstorm house style. He brought some great creators into the fold and let them go creatively wild. He sold the studio to DC and then the studio became even more popular.

So he's definitely a better businessman than Coipel. I'm just talking about the art and what makes people crave his art. I really do think that anything Lee can draw, Coipel can draw better. I'm not trying to take anything away from Lee. I'm just saying that Coipel deserves more.

[Mr. Rice]

This is normally when you'd get a blog, but I like these kinds of posts. When I get time, I will ingest your thoughts thoroughly.

--edit--

The answer to your question is name recognition. I can't spell or pronounce Oliver Coipel's name, but Jim Lee... that has six letters in it!

[Johnny P. Sartre]

This is normally when you'd get a blog, but I like these kinds of posts. When I get time, I will ingest your thoughts thoroughly.

--edit--

The answer to your question is name recognition. I can't spell or pronounce Oliver Coipel's name, but Jim Lee... that has six letters in it!

That and saying Jim Lee's name, has a kinetic feel to it.

[Mr. Rice]

That and saying Jim Lee's name, has a kinetic feel to it.

Yeah, it only has two freakin' syllables.

Good luck trying to be a fan of Duane Swierczynski, you know? Underrated writer, impossible name. Wish he'd come back to marvel.

[Deep_Sleeper]

This is normally when you'd get a blog, but I like these kinds of posts. When I get time, I will ingest your thoughts thoroughly.

--edit--

The answer to your question is name recognition. I can't spell or pronounce Oliver Coipel's name, but Jim Lee... that has six letters in it!

Marketability has definitely got to be a factor. My real name is very difficult to pronounce and I find that saying my name as introduction leads to a 2 minute conversation about how to say it. I've gotten great conversations on the basis of my name alone and I've had frustrating conversation.

So, that leads to another question:

Is comic books, in general, not marketable enough?

I honestly don't know what the sales records are or how big the books are, but with the advent of movies being mined from hot new books (you have to admit that Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter really created a new pop culture where Hollywood had no choice but to pay attention) it makes you wonder why more people aren't seen walking around with copies of the Dark Knight Returns in anticipation of the Dark Knight Rises?

I went to work and sure enough, my assistant manager is walking around with a copy of Mockingjay...third installment of the Hunger Games books. Twilight is a certified moneymaker and we all know what happened with Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings books.

So why are comics having such a hard time with acceptance?

[dupont2005]

It's really just a matter of opinion. I'm not terribly interested in either of them but both are obviously up to par in their field. The good thing I can say about Coipel (had to Google his work) is that he seems to break away from the "house style" just a bit, but I've noticed, to the credit of the big two, there seems to be less and less of a house style these days. The good thing I can say about Jim Lee is that although his most prominent artwork falls right into the claws and teeth big muscles big tits style that I dislike so much, he's a pioneer of that style and one of the reasons it is a style, and that's no small accomplishment. His art impacted comics in a big way. And no matter how much I dislike that style, I've seen him break away from it on rare occasion and seemed to do pretty well. As far as mainstream comics are concerned I always gravitate toward the Sam Keith, Bill Sienkiewicz, and Frank Miller types.

[coveredinbees]

Coipel gives everyone hydrocephalic heads.
They're both decent enough, but I'm not into either.

[Matt Algren]

I choose to leave it. Good day, sir.









I SAID GOOD DAY.

[Mr. Rice]

Marketability has definitely got to be a factor. My real name is very difficult to pronounce and I find that saying my name as introduction leads to a 2 minute conversation about how to say it. I've gotten great conversations on the basis of my name alone and I've had frustrating conversation.

So, that leads to another question:

Is comic books, in general, not marketable enough?

I honestly don't know what the sales records are or how big the books are, but with the advent of movies being mined from hot new books (you have to admit that Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter really created a new pop culture where Hollywood had no choice but to pay attention) it makes you wonder why more people aren't seen walking around with copies of the Dark Knight Returns in anticipation of the Dark Knight Rises?

I went to work and sure enough, my assistant manager is walking around with a copy of Mockingjay...third installment of the Hunger Games books. Twilight is a certified moneymaker and we all know what happened with Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings books.

So why are comics having such a hard time with acceptance?

Well, I like to hear the stories about some of the older users discovering comics in the supermarket, picking up a random issue of Claremont's X-Men. This is still very possible today, but people need more exposure. Free comic book day is coming up, and if local retailers could just attract more than the usual crowd, non-comic readers could get a better appreciation for the medium.

When people see me reading comics, they just tune it out as "nerdy," but as we've seen with video games, if people just give the medium a chance they'll find something they like.
That's one of the bigger problems. Comics are a medium. Not just superheroes, or Japanese gibblygook, just like T.V. isn't just drunk people and cartoons. If people knew about how diverse the comic medium really is there'd be many more readers.

And on the subject of movie adaptations, you have to appeal to twelve year old girls. Then all the forty year olds hop on it, and it becomes silver screen success. There aren't many comics for little girls, and that's where the consumers are.

[Paradox]

Deep_Sleeper confuses me:

I honestly don't know what the sales records are or how big the books are, but with the advent of movies being mined from hot new books (you have to admit that Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter really created a new pop culture where Hollywood had no choice but to pay attention) it makes you wonder why more people aren't seen walking around with copies of the Dark Knight Returns in anticipation of the Dark Knight Rises?

Why would they? Number one, Dark Knight Returns has jack all to do with Dark Knight Rises, as far as I know. Two, they already know who Batman is. It's culturally ingrained. A Batman movie isn't going to suddenly make a bunch of people check out Batman comics.

So why are comics having such a hard time with acceptance?

Why is that even an issue? People think "comics" are silly little things with arrested adolescents running around in their underoos beating up fancy dressed psychotics and that's not going to change, at least in the U.S, no matter how many "serious" movies are made. People have been trying to get comics "accepted" for decades, to no significant impact. Super-hero comics are a niche. Just accept that and move on, because there's little to nothing that can be done about it.

[Deep_Sleeper]

Well, I like to hear the stories about some of the older users discovering comics in the supermarket, picking up a random issue of Claremont's X-Men. This is still very possible today, but people need more exposure. Free comic book day is coming up, and if local retailers could just attract more than the usual crowd, non-comic readers could get a better appreciation for the medium.

When people see me reading comics, they just tune it out as "nerdy," but as we've seen with video games, if people just give the medium a chance they'll find something they like.
That's one of the bigger problems. Comics are a medium. Not just superheroes, or Japanese gibblygook, just like T.V. isn't just drunk people and cartoons. If people knew about how diverse the comic medium really is there'd be many more readers.

And on the subject of movie adaptations, you have to appeal to twelve year old girls. Then all the forty year olds hop on it, and it becomes silver screen success. There aren't many comics for little girls, and that's where the consumers are.

Is it perhaps the content that causes them to be dismissed as childish or nerdy? There's so much good stuff, but why does it always get dismissed as childish? I remember a friend of mine came over and noticed I had an issue of Planetary in my hand. He's like "Planetary? Is that a magazine about astronomy?" I went on to say that it's a comic, a particularly awesome one. I talked about how it's a comic about pop culture and comic history...using a comparison I remember John Cassaday once used. It's like X-Files meets Astro City. This was a particularly cool issue. I had all the individual issues of Planetary, save for issue 20 which I managed to find at a very recent convention. I flipped through the issue, showing him various images and what the story was about. He asked me a few questions about the subtext and if not knowing about what the issue was homaging, would anyone get lost? I said, well the story itself is really good and you don't need to know everything about comics to enjoy the book, but knowing about comics...you'll enjoy it more.

And that was it. He didn't ask if he could borrow the issue and read the story or where he could pick up that comic or other comics. It was just a brief curiousity but that's where it stopped.

I find a lot of people are fine with comics being a niche market. I don't get that. I don't get people that don't like discussions on things that they enjoy or getting into conversations about something they find so immensely entertaining that it bothers them not to talk to people about it.

Anyone else happy with the world of comics where it is? It appears Paradox is. I imagine people being happy with the niche-like nature of comics are the same people that automatically dismiss it "selling out" or "diluted" as soon as it gains mass appeal.