Bought the new Daredevil trade yesterday, prolly gonna go read some of it now 
Bought the first Preacher Trade.
holy fuck was that a great ride.
canāt wait to read more!
I started reading Kingdom Come today. I already finished chapter one and Iāve only got a few more pages to go until I finish Chapter two (I stopped so I could type this up). Alex Ross artwork contiunes to amaze me. I could look at the manās art forever. Mark Waid is a pretty good writer, too. I also like the tone of the story, which I really didnāt know anything about until I started reading. Basically, Supes called it quits and everyone else from his generation (except Bats) followed. The new gerenation is basically composed of a bunch of punks that could care less about the safety of the people they are supposed to protect. Oh and I love Supes outfit in this story. Heās pimping that blackness in that outfit.
I still like KC, because I remember reading it for the first time.
even after I grew to hate Alex Ross, and his artwork, I still look at KC with reverence.
yeah i think everyone starts hating alex ross eventually. photo realism = lazy
Itās not just that. Itās masturbatory. Most of his stuff is more focused on showing what he can do than telling a story. Art in comics has a lot to do with the pacing of the stories, and Rossās pace is always constipated because thereās so much shit to look at.
Iām just sick of seeing his overweight friends in rumpled halloween costumes.
he has like TWO female models, and theyāre both butch. So all of his women look like Lesbiamazons.
plus, his shameless egotistical tirades, and outright refusal to 1: draw Batman properly, 2: Draw Kyle Rayner AT ALL, and 3: His strange hatred of Firestorm, or for that matter, anything created after 1985 (save for things HE created).
When it was announced that Hal would be returning at Comic Con, he shouted āWE WON!ā.
I wouldāve liked to have spit on him for that.
Just because thereās too much stuff going on in a panel doesnāt necessarily mean itās not serving a purpose in pacing the story. It doesnāt always mean that the artist is just trying to show off what he can do. Just take a look at a Geoff Darrow comic, or a random issue of Mad. Or how about a Rob Liefeld comic - the level of detail in his backgrounds is just insane. You could spend hours getting lost in analyzing how the colorist fills in the gradients of a blank wall behind a lone character.
I donāt see why youāre so anti-Ross, Taichi. Hate him because heās got male pattern baldness and highly successful, not because he wonāt draw Kyle Rayner. I am sure lots of Marvel/DC artists refuse to draw things I want to see, like schoolgirl tentacle lovefests - but even I donāt hold that against them.
Zeph, Iām never gonna like the guy, and nothing can convince me to.
Iāve hated him for about a decade now, I think if I were gonna start loving him it wouldāve happened by now.
Sorry to disappoint you, but thatās just how it is. Not everybodyās gonna see the appeal of the Mona Lisa, and not everybodyās gonna love Alex Ross.
thatās not to say there arenāt Ross Works that speak to me, I LOVE his George Bush sucking blood from Lady Liberty, I donāt think I have a problem with any of his Astro City stuff. And any collaboration with Jim Lee (Especially the Batman Superman one they did), but my dislike of him goes beyond his work.
Oh, I am not trying to convince you to give him another chance or anything that would compromise your integrity. I have way too much personal respect for you to do that. I was just playing devilās advocate because I got tired of playing with myself.
LOL, itās not a personal integrity matter, really.
I do like some of his work, legitimately, and I can like his work while still hating him as a person.
hate is a strong word, but when heās allowed carte blanche to reshape the DCU, just so he doesnāt defect to the competition, what am I supposed to do?
I hate Todd McFarlane as a person as well, but respect him as a businessman. Even if he is a dirtbag businessman, and an outright thief.
heās still shrewd, and turned a poor, half-baked idea into a media empire.
Brian Pulido should be so luckyā¦
- When Geoff Darrow does it, heās actually doing something other than jacking off. The hyper-detail in his drawings actually tell you something about the story, much like the over-the-top cartooning in a Frank Miller book. Mad Magazine is the same way. Theyāre not trying to impress you with how real it looks; theyāre consciously creating an atmosphere of the bizarre. 2. The fact that you can spend hours examining a panel is not necessarily a good thingāin fact, itās rarely a good thing. Darrow, Adams, and Gibbons walk a fine line. Ross, Liefeld, Lee, and countless other masturbators cross it on a regular basis.
A detailed background might make for a great piece of art, but more often than not, it slams on the brakes when itās time to tell a story. Take a look at Eisner: you might see one or two complete backgrounds on any given page, and from there, he gives you just enough detail so you know exactly whatās going on, and no more. He trusts that the reader has a memory that lasts for more than five seconds, and utilizes it very carefully when telling the story. Whatās the storytelling purpose when Ross paints every eyelash on Supermanās face, or every non-existent wrinkle in Batmanās forehead, or every single pane of every window in every panel of the story? There isnāt one.
I donāt HATE Ross. Heās a good painter, but heās a novice storyteller, and probably always will be.
This weekend, I finished readint these trades: Watchmen & Kingdom Come.
Watchmen: Well, man, this was a very well-written story that was driven more by the complex characters than the plot itself. When the story started out, I thought it was some vendetta against masked heroes. Then we shift to the possibility of World War III. The Comedian was killed only because me had the misfortune of finding out about Veidtās plan. I have to admit that Veidtās long planning was brilliant. But millions of lives had to be lost for it to succeed. Hey if millions gotta die to keep billions more alive and prevent the world from ending from a nuclear war, I guess you gotta do what you gotta do.
Kingdom Come: What a fantastic read! My first Mark Waid tale and I loved it! Having Norman Mcay observe the events from the outside was a very nice touch and then having him talk down Supes at the end was cool. Bats was still dope even in his old age! Man, that Batsuit he was pimping was the hotness. I really liked how the story concluded. Clark and Diana, from what it seems, got married and Supes got to tap Wonder Woman!!! 
And Bruce got to be the kidās godfather. Can you imagine what that kid would grow up to be like? A super being with some of Batmanās intellect. Good freaking grief! Thatās awesome and scary at the same time! 
got my latest shipment today which includes among other things 3 omnibuses: Bruās Captain America (yes I gave in and got itā¦mainly due to how much I liked X-Men), Fourth World vol. 2, and the 90s awesomeness that is Death and Return of Superman.
It certainly was the 90s.
Stuff I have read lately:
Exit Wounds by Rutu Modan - http://www.amazon.com/Exit-Wounds-Rutu-Modan/dp/1897299060/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/104-7964370-8273505?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1191443574&sr=8-1
This is a very good book. I like the clean, crisp art. The people and settings arenāt hyper detailed, but thereās enough to them to really leave an impression in your mind as you read it. Also, the colors were very well done. The story is about an Israeli taxi cab driver who searches for his father, whom he has reason to suspect may have been killed in a suicide bombing.
Curses by Kevin Huizenga - Like Exit Wounds, this book is published by Drawn & Quarterly. Curses is an anthology starring a character named Glenn Ganges. A few of the stories didnāt really do anything much for me and there were at least two or three that were horribly pretentious. The first story was so mind-numbingly pretentious I almost gave up reading the rest of the book. I mean, it was exactly the stereotypically pretentious humdrum that I would expect The Comics Journal to laud with a 3 page essay. I soldiered on, however, and was rewarded with a couple of gems. A couple of the stories were really affecting - thereās this one story in particular about those āHave You Seen Me?ā missing persons postcards and it was poetically executed. The artās pretty well done, especially for the good stories - you can see the artistās eye for detail and storytelling. In the pretentious stories, it gets pretty bad, though; thereās a ton of just boring talking heads spewing paragraphs of uninteresting nonsense. This is worth borrowing from the library, but I wouldnāt pay money for it.
Fantastic Four: Imaginauts - Read this way back when it came out and finally got my own copy. Now my collection of Waidās FF run is almost complete. That first Waid/Ringo issue is still one of the best single FF issues ever - it pretty much shows why the FF are cool to begin with. I never even liked the FF until I read that issue. Marvel and DC need to do more 9 cent comics. FF #60 indisputably the greatest 9 cent comic of this century.
Amelia Rules! volume 3: Superheroes - Mentioned this series in my last post, but this is one I just finished reading. Itās just a great series. Anyone who likes Bone, Calvin & Hobbes, Peanuts, and life itself should give Amelia Rules a try. Thereās just no way a person canāt like it. Itās a witty, humorous all-ages comic book with comic strip sensibilities.
just got my planet hulk HC. canāt wait to read it
You know what I think I kinda hate Alex Ross too.
I can just imagine him sitting in his nerd studio surround by golden age crap dicing up 100 dollars bills and snorting them.
He draws everyone super paunchy. It gets weird after awhile. I basically have all the same gripes as Tachi.
I loved Kingdom Come though.
Rossā style is realistic enough that it just shows you how silly some of those characters actually look. Like, when you see his Aquaman, itās so obvious that no one in real life would ever wear that, not even at the SF Gay Pride Parade. When he draws Batman, it sort of reminds you of Adam West. When he draws Superman, it makes you think of that one fat friend of his he uses as a photoref model.
I remember a few years ago in some interview, he said that he probably wouldnāt ever do art for a comic without painting his own work. In other words, heād never just be a penciler. But his colors are sometimes too photorealistic and just make you realize how silly costumed superheroes would look in real life.
Itās too bad. If you read his DC art book, he is actually a very skilled penciller, and is very capable at emulating the styles of other famous artists. Heās not bad at all. I just think heād be a much better storyteller if he didnāt try to be soā¦ Alex Ross. Thereās nothing wrong with paring things down, making them look less photo-real, and just cutting to the core of whatās important in the shot.