"Image" Artist Era

[dr chimp]

Even Seinkiewicz on New Mutants. Look at that interior art and look at anything he does now. A striking difference, with the New Mutants art being a bit blander than his other work

(removed for nonsense)

Bill's run was pre that "image style" though no? mid 80s.

[Aaron King]

Even Seinkiewicz on New Mutants. Look at that interior art and look at anything he does now. A striking difference, with the New Mutants art being a bit blander than his other work
And again, New Mutants was a second tier title at best. I believe Elektra was too but I can't really remember for sure. It was some sort of out-of-continuity thing wasn't it?

I would say that New Mutants is closer to his current style than to his old Neal Adams style. Here are some examples. Lots of characters stressed past the shape of realism. Lots of compositions centered more on the emotion of the scene than the shape of the people and things being portrayed. It blew my mind when I first saw it.

[hoopsguru]

Image artists drew better boobs

[hoopsguru]

However on a serious note........Greg Capullo's work on Batman is fantastic, IMO

[dupont2005]

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Bill's run was pre that "image style" though no? mid 80s.

Yeah, but Marvel has had a particular style since the beginning. Not an unchanging style, the 1960's Marvel doesn't look like the 1980's Marvel, but I'd say the majority of 1960's Marvel books shared a look, the majority of 1980's Marvel books shared a look, and so on.

[destro]

Image artists drew better boobs

If by better you mean unrealistically huge with their backs so arched out it looked like their spines were broken, sure.

[dupont2005]

That Moon Knight picture is still him doing Neal Adams. New Mutants and later Daredevil and Elektra were more experimental. Don't know whether Elektra was in-continuity or not, Daredevil was at least.



I don't know about New Mutants being second tier: X-Men was big at that time, Claremont was one of their top-writers and this was their first spin-off. Can't find any sales figures for it though.

This page looks awesome. How long did his Daredevil run last? I'd have loved to see more of this kind of stuff at Marvel back when I was reading them.

[Slam_Bradley]

However on a serious note........Greg Capullo's work on Batman is fantastic, IMO

It seemed OK to me but nothing super special. The story was boring as hell though.

[dr chimp]

Yeah, but Marvel has had a particular style since the beginning. Not an unchanging style, the 1960's Marvel doesn't look like the 1980's Marvel, but I'd say the majority of 1960's Marvel books shared a look, the majority of 1980's Marvel books shared a look, and so on.

60s Marvel books look very different from 60s DC books and same for late 80s early 90s Marvel books but do books in 70s and up to late 80s look different from each other? Not having read much from either company in 70s and 80s I literally have no idea.

[dupont2005]

60s Marvel books look very different from 60s DC books and same for late 80s early 90s Marvel books but do books in 70s and up to late 80s look different from each other? Not having read much from either company in 70s and 80s I literally have no idea.

I haven't read much 60's DC but yeah they had a different style in the Silver Age. I think by the Bronze Age both companies shared a similar style though. By the time Adams was on Batman at least. Then again I haven't read too much DC at all. I guess it all depends on what one considers "similar." Of course every artist is going to be different, even those McFarlane clones can be viewed as individuals if you look close enough, but a shared style is obvious. I think the same can be said for Bronze Age comics, even if the shared style was not as stylized as the over-exaggerated 90's style. Not that it's a bad style either, as far as uniform looking mainstream comics go, I like the Bronze Age style the best.

[destro]

double post

[destro]

This page looks awesome. How long did his Daredevil run last? I'd have loved to see more of this kind of stuff at Marvel back when I was reading them.

I believe that was from a graphic novel. I don't think Bill S. had a Daredevil run. Do check out his Moon Knight run if you haven't though, it's worth it.

[Roquefort Raider]

I believe that was from a graphic novel. I don't think Bill S. had a Daredevil run. Do check out his Moon Knight run if you haven't though, it's worth it.

That was the graphic novel Love and death, written by Frank Miller. Sienkiewicz was really pushing what one can do in a superhero book, here.

[hondobrode]

What I found laughable during the period was that some well established artists were either editorially mandated to or chose to ape the Image style in other books. Specifically Herb Trimpe doing Fantastic Four Unlimited comes to mind.

As to writers like Gaiman, Moore, and others writing for Image (specifically Spawn at first), my recollection from reading articles in Comics Buyers Guide and such was that the Image founders approached such writers to do issues for them specifically in response to criticisms about how bad the writing was in the earliest Image efforts, and that many of these writers commented they agreed to do so to support the cause of creator rights and creative freedom which they felt the move to form their own company by the founders represented. That and the Image founders offered boatloads of money to do those issues, mostly it seems as an attempt to legitimatize their efforts in the eyes of some.

Longer runs by Moore, Ellis, etc. didn't occur until later, after the second wave of talent went to Image to do their own stuff (Mike Grell's Shaman's Tears, Jerry Ordway & Al Gordon's Wildstar, Moore's 1963 pastiches etc.).

I have mixed feelings on this era. I had little interest in the early books whatsoever (not buying an Image book until Moore's first 1963 issue) and didn't like what I saw when I flipped through them in the shops, I didn't like the effect they had on other artists aping their style in books by other publishers, and didn't like the role they played in fueling the speculator craze of the era, but I do respect the move towards creative freedom, carving a place for creator owned-work in the mainstream of comics rather than the fringes, and for opening up the field to more legitimate players in the American market beyond Marvel and DC. Some of that however, is overshadowed by the backpedaling on creator-rights and legal shenanigans McFarlane later engaged in regarding the Angela, Tony Twiss, and Al Simmons cases.

But just because I respect what they accomplished in the industry doesn't mean I liked their output for Image at its launch or thought it was quality. It has its fans, but popularity is not a measure of quality either. When I look at things like panel to panel storytelling, overall page layout, flow of the eye from page to page and panel to panel, depth of character development, verisimilitude of dialogue, story structure of plotting, etc. the things I look to as benchmarks of quality comic storytelling and art regardless of stylistic choices, I find these early Image comics don't measure up for me. Of course neither do a lot of mainstream Marvel and DC books from the era, and preceding and proceeding periods as well.

-M

This.

Exactly this.

Every word.

It was an exciting time, and I bought the first couple of issues of some of the Image stuff. To this day, I still immensely respect McFarlane for establishing Image, but felt then, and still do, he got very, very lucky. Spawn is probably the single more overrated character of the last 30 years IMO, despite its immense success.

Lee was very appealing but the stories were lame, and by the time Ellis and Moore had helped out, I was beyond caring.

There was some good stuff from then, but I think what makes most of us wince is how artificial the bubble was, driven by speculation which fueled some upstarts to crank out stuff as fast as they could and caring less about quality or more about gimmicks.

[hondobrode]

Agreed. Sienkiewicz, like most artists, found his own voice eventually. You have to learn somewhere, from someone, as an example. Reading interviews, esp with artists, they cite multiple influences. Some, like Sienkiewicz, eventually sort of grow into some stylization of their own being a blend of A + B + C and their own flair.