I’m not well-learned when it comes to the artists. I just know that I HATE when Silver Surfer is drawn wearing underwear. He’s supposed to be a living Oscar(but silver), HE DOESN’T HAVE GENITALS SO STOP WITH THE BRIEFS.
Bachalo’s work now is almost as clean and easy to read as it was back when he did the Death books. IMO
His latest X-Men run is fantastic.
His AoA 10th Anniversary stuff was meh, but everything since then has been much cleaner.
I could go for hours on what makes a good inker/bad inker.
Basically it’s all in the interpretation of the penciler’s lines.
Lineweight, foreground/background separations, cleanliness, rendering and consistency are all very important.
Bad inking is shaky, splotchy, and all blends together. Nothing will pop out at you and the grays almost always don’t read well.
Check out Richard Friend on Jim Lee’s blog at http://www.gelatometti2.blogspot.com/
He has two recent additions of step by step inking over Leinil Yu and J.Scott.
It started around 187 I think.
He’s alternating every 5-6 issues with Humberto Ramos.
Basically they’re switching off every story arc.
Those 2 are the regulars for the foreseeable future.
But you should definitely give it a read. The story is actually really good.
Yeha his two arcs in Ult. Xmen sucked. As for Proteus , the style did fit like it was said but in the Ultimate War arc nothing made sense. Magneto looked like he was just a cape and helmet. WTF.
The revisit to AOA was horrid. But that was mostly the writing that sucked.
Asfor Sunfire thats fair recent. I guess fans prefered that look over the 616 so the writers changed him.
Also: to all the fans of Bachalo’s Death, I suggest taking a look at Francis Manapul’s version of her. I think it’s the a close second to Chris’.
http://that-fjm-guy.livejournal.com/
Scroll down towards the bottom and you’ll see several of them.
Not even his Superman? That takes a hard heart. I’m not the biggest fan of his other work, but I will admit that his Superman paintings impress me.
And John Byrne… I’m most familiar with his work on Superman, and it makes me want to kick him in the dick. He’s horribly inconsistent, art wise, and some of the changes he made to the Superman universe are total shit.
McFarlane shook up the industry more as a businessman than an artist, and even then, his reputation is a bit spotty. Particularly the way he tried to screw Neil Gaiman a few years back.
McFarlane’s done a hell of a lot for action figures, I’ll say that much. Before McFarlane Toys action figures sucked big time. Bringing the Japanese model look to toys was just brilliant. And after that, pretty much all toys got a hell of a lot better with people paying a lot more attention to detail.
arnold tsang for his coloring abilities
adam hughes and james jean for their cover pieces
ale garza j scott campbell for their unique style
Frank Frazetta, Nat Jones and many others that I Forget but, Nothing beats the master (Death dealer = Frazetta)
This thread makes me sad.
SO I WILL KILL TONY STARK.
No one said Dave McKean?
Im disapointed.
i really love jim lee’s shit (i think that’s pretty much a given for anyone), i also enjoyed michael turner in superman & batman.
HOW VERY TRUE!
As much as I love other GREAT’s like Frazetta, Kirby (r.i.p), Neal Adams, Bernie Wrightson, Mike Ploog, Art Suydam, Herb Trimpe, Dale Keown, Stephen Platt and John Buscema (r.i.p) to name a few… Eisner is one of the most underrated and over looked comic artists of all time. From his unique style, to his layout and overall presentation, Eisener, like Kirby, was one of a kind, and help set a tone for the comic industry, and made people look at comics differently…And Eisner’s Splash pages were phenomenal!
EDIT: http://www.scottmccloud.com/store/books/uc.html
This is a great book for those who have not read it.
Understanding Comics is a great book. McCloud has a lot of cool stuff to say, not just about the dissection of comics as a medium, but also about the role art plays for humanity in general. Very, very insightful. And McCloud is a good artist in his own right.
Yeah Understanding Comics very good book. I thought it was mandatory reading for anyone who reads comics. He talks about manga too. Best thing about it is that it is writen like a comic book, complete with panesl and word balloons. What, people who post here have not read that book? SAY WORD I WILL START BANNING PEOPLE! 
Lol just kidding but please read it. Libraries even have it so chances are you can read it FOR FREE! :tup:
Did anybody say Jeph Loeb? I like him. Even though he’s doing that awful Smallville show :sad:
Nice thread. I am also a big Chris Bachalo fan. I don’t have a preference about which era of his I like more. His old stuff was very good and his new stuff is very good. The stuff he did on Shade, The Changing Man was incredible. Probably his best run ever, thanks to Milligan’s writing. It’s been interesting to see how his style has changed over the years. You can see how it changed from Shade to the second Death mini to Gen X and the past few crazy years. His style seems to be reverting to a slightly more clear style, though. His recent issues of X-Men aren’t as manic as the stories he drew in Ultimate War or New X-Men.
Here’s my list of my favorite artists:
Jae Lee - He’s another guy whose work has greatly improved over the years. Man, I remember back in the Image days when it was just crazy, overmuscled, super exaggerated anatomy with haphazard ink splashes. Now his figures are so realistic and well rendered. He’s got this skill of being economic while maximizing the detail. Jae Lee could draw a shadow and make you believe it’s a real person.
Frank Quitely - It’s tough to think of anyone else in mainstream comics whose work is more innovative. It’s not just that he has an amazingly distinct style, but he’s constantly figuring out new and unusual ways to draw things. I know that heathens think he draws faces “ugly,” but it’s just called ugliness with a vision. That’s different than just drawing ugly.
Mike “Madman” Allred - He also drew X-Force/X-Statix. Plus, Allred is a great inker- just check out what he did for COOKE’s Catwoman run (written by BRU, of course).
Michael Lark - His work is so realistic, and yet so imaginative as well. I don’t know if he uses photo reference for his figures or not, but their posture is always so believable. And I love that noir stuff, and that’s what he does best. Even when he’s drawing superhero stuff like Batman or Daredevil, they look very realistic without looking out of place. (I think sometimes, if the heroes look TOO realistic, like in an Alex Ross painting, they look out of place. I mean, yeah, his Aquaman looks realistic, but it’s also kind of laughable in a way. Of course, I’ve never seen Lark draw Aquaman…)
Sean Phillips - He’s a master of style, layouts, and storytelling. He can draw anything. On Sleeper, he had some unique layouts that really affected the way you’d read the story. He also tends to ink his own work, and he’s got the noir style down pat. It’s dark, and sometimes he can just throw in a few squiggles of ink in the background to convey the appropriate sense of griminess in the story.
Guy Davis - He’s known for excelling at drawing period pieces. He’s also a very clear storyteller, and his people have nice faces and nice gestures. And his backgrounds and cityscapes are impressive.
COOKE - Or Darwyn Cooke, for the uninitiated. Check out DC: The New Frontier to realize why he’s not just “Darwyn Cooke” around here… He is simply COOKE. Or watch the Batman Beyond opening sequence.
Steve “The Dude” Rude - The Dude is just crazy good. He’s definitely got his own style, but if I had to compare him, I’d say he’s some kind of hybrid of Kirby, Toth, and Steranko. And Nexus is making a comeback, baby! Everyone must hail great Nexus. Even the great Bru loves Nexus! He wrote an intro for one of the Nexus Archives. That means everyone in the Church of Bru is obligated to read and like Nexus now.
Tim Sale - It’s nice to see him doing a comic written by COOKE. Jeph Loeb only holds him back from his full potential. Although I do think that their collaborations are generally excellent. Makes me suspect that Tim Sale did the heavy lifting and Loeb just rode his coattails. I need to stop mixing metaphors. I’ve never seen a construction worker with coattails. But Catwoman: When In Rome has got to be one of the most beautiful comics I’ve ever owned.
Cameron Stewart - Seaguy, Seven Soldiers, The Other Side (which was beyond awesome, by the way), Catwoman with the Bru… At first, I kinda pegged him as a guy who could just dominate with a cartoony style. But after reading The Other Side, it’s crazy how adaptable he is. He seems to favor thick lines around his sort of cartoony characters, but it still looks realistic. And his storytelling is so clear.
JH Williams III - This guy is nuts. I mean, have you seen Promethea? I’ve been working my way through it over the past couple months, and it’s mindblowing. His layouts are so lavish and intricate. It looks like everything he drew was so time consuming. I mean, just the fact that he draws excellent backgrounds and figures would be good enough… But he has to make everyone else look bad by drawing all this other crazy stuff around the panel borders, and make it part of the story… That’s just not fair, man.
Travis Charest - So what if he only managed to draw like 50 pages in the past seven years. He may be slow, but at least we’ve always got his WildC.A.T.s. Charest + Alan Moore = I’m Happy To See You
Man, I guess there are a lot of artists I really like. I tend to favor guys who aren’t so flashy and are more known for just being clear. But I definitely could come up with a sano-sized list filled with names like Bryan Hitch, Cassaday, Mark Buckingham, JRjr, Crumb, Eduardo Barreto, Mike McKone, Javier Pulido, Gene Ha, Cliff Chiang, Risso, Brian Bolland, J.G. Jones, Robert Teranishi, Scott Morse, Phillip Bond, John Paul Leon, Charlie Adlard, Phil Hester, Marcos Martin, Tony Harris, Adrian Alphona, Takeshi Miyazawa, Niko Henrichon, Quesada, Sienkiewicz, Adi Granov, Jock, Ashley Wood, the Kuberts, Oeming, Gaydos, Stuart Immonen…
The thing is, I can’t say if I would follow those guys onto any project they did. I care more about the writer. It’s that top list of artists whom I’d probably follow.
There’s also writer/artists I love like Frank Miller, Paul Chadwick, Adrian Tomine, Kyle Baker… I’d buy anything those guys made.
And painters… Alex Ross gets all the hype because he’s painted Marvel and DC, but I really dig David Mack and Jon J Muth. I’d buy anything by Mack or Muth.
And then there’s those multimedia-type guys… Like Dave McKean (happy, xjester? who am I kidding, no one’s reading this far down) and Bryan Talbot. Anyone check out Alice In Sunderland yet? I got a copy a few days ago but I haven’t read it yet. It’s obviously one of the best things ever published.
Just for kicks… Artists whose work I DON’T like.
Michael Turner - He’s just a poor man’s David Finch. And David Finch is just a poor man’s Marc Silvestri. I don’t think there are any Top Cow artists I enjoy.
Tom Raney - I don’t know why. I can’t really pin down exactly why I don’t like his work. It just bugs me.
Tom Grummett - I think I just don’t like Toms in general.
John Byrne - Talk about a guy whose game peaked 26 years ago. And I don’t mean Kevin Willis.
Todd McFarlane - I never liked his comics. Good thing he comes off as a crappy person in public. I feel better about hating on him. His figures are horribly overdrawn, the anatomy is inconsistent, his human faces look like unintentional caricatures, and he can’t draw two people having a quiet conversation. In all fairness, however, T-Mac does draw AWESOME capes.
Out of all those guys who started Image, I don’t think I was a big fan of any of them except for Erik Larsen. Larsen’s still a very good artist. And I think Jim Lee is the peak in terms of that bombastic, in your face, Image style. I know how and why Jim Lee is super popular, and I don’t hate on him at all. When he has a good writer backing him up, his art really does shine.
I tolerate Silvestri and Portacio. I like to look at Rob Liefeld’s art because it makes me laugh, but I wouldn’t call myself a “fan” or anything. (I don’t think I have an opinion on Valentino, though; I saw the cover to an issue of Shadowhawk, got bored, and never read any of his comics.)
My 2 cents on McFarlane: The guy can draw, it’s just a matter of if you like his style? For me it’s a mixed bag. I like his Hulk, but it doesn’t compare to Keown’s. As far as Spawn is concerened??? I could care less.
And as Sano mentioned earlier: He did help the Action Figure market out quite a bit, so…
Someone might want to shoot me for not mentioning Simon Bisley (BIZ). It seems whenever he illustrates a character, he brings out their persona almost 10-fold. Just look at his TMNT, LOBO or Judge Dread… To me Simon’s best work to date is the 3 book graphic novel: Slain The Horned God! I myself can draw, but if someone asked me to draw and then hand paint 3 books, I’m not sure if I’d have it in me (plus my coloring skills need some work). :sad:
I’m not trying to sound like I’m praising Simon (or worshipping him), or saying he’s the best, but he’s very good at what he does, and he’s not arrrogant like some of the younger, newer artist are.
He’s a writer not an artist.
Eh, I don’t mind Smallville or Heroes and enjoy them sometimes, but what Loeb is doing to Wolverine and Sabretooth is just terrible… :sad:
Loeb doesn’t draw. And I believe he was doing Smallville during seasons two and three, which were some time ago (and, probably not coincidentally, those are the years the show was good).
yeah david mack is really nice…loved his arc with bendis