We're always the worst judges of our own work, but I'm rather proud of a few of the articles I wrote, and I'm much prouder that single-panel comics criticism seems to be an idea whose time has come since I started this project. I think there are a lot of factors pushing comics criticism into a greater engagement with the visual side of the medium, and I'd hope my little column has helped it in that direction on some level.
I'm far from done with Monday analyses of comics art, by the way -- just taking this opportunity to move on to something new, which to me is the most important thing you can do as a critic. Or as an anything, really. For this week, though, I'll be lazy and just give you a list of the fifty pictures I picked apart:
1. Howard Chaykin
2. Bernard Krigstein
3. Milton Caniff
4. Al Columbia
5. Milo Manara
6. Carmine Infantino
7. Frank Miller
8. Winsor McCay
9. Robert Crumb
10. Marshall Rogers
11. Chris Ware
12. Jim Starlin
13. Steve Ditko (special fashion issue)
14. Richard Outcault
15. Moebius
16. David Hine
17. Darwyn Cooke
18. Lyonel Feininger
19. Teddy Kristiansen
20. Frazer Irving
21. Hal Foster
22. Dan Zettwoch
23. Richard Corben
24. George McManus
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25. Rafael Grampa
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26. Jack Kirby
27. Frank Quitely
28. Alex Toth
29. Gary Panter
30. Paul Pope
31. Francois Schuiten
32. Brendan McCarthy
33. Seth Fisher
34. Mat Brinkman
35. Osamu Tezuka
36. Bruce Timm
37. David Mazzucchelli
38. CF
39. Rob Liefeld
40. Benjamin Marra
41. Bill Sienkiewicz
42. Kyle Baker
43. Liberatore
44. Geof Darrow
45. Rory Hayes
46. Herge
47. Harvey Kurtzman
48. Dave Gibbons
49. Will Eisner
50. George Herriman
Thanks for reading.
5 comments:
Thanks for re-posting all these, Matt. Looking back at them, quite a body of work you put together. Can't wait to see what comes next in this space.
Looking at these I was reminded of something I always thought to myself but never posted whenever I would see WHICH panels you'd chosen once I realized which artist you'd picked, and that is I was always surprised by the panel you chose to "represent" that artist as I always saw it as atypical of their work and certainly not the big splashy moment. And that's why you're a genius because THAT is how you learn to use comics to tell stories, not by just looking at the stylistic tics and big moments. Of course they are always representative and actually very typical of that artist once you dig into it, I just noticed that it's seldom the full page bleed or shot of the sexy girl (oddly, the obvious exception is Ditko looking through them).
And my idea is that you should put together a couple POD books of features like this and sell them at Lulu or Ka-Blam if you're in need of a few bucks because some of these I'd like to have and judging from the growing comments and followers there might be more. In the meantime I'm going back and digging into a few I missed (like Richard Corben- the original "fusion" cartonist?).
Thanks for saying such nice things! Is that true, would other people be interested in buying POD collections of these? Let me know...
On Corben: yea, he definitely was the first guy to... well, not to fuse underground and mainstream aesthetics necessarily (Steranko; Gilbert Shelton), but definitely to create an artistic/story space where the two were truly equalized, where the work was equally indebted to and couldn't exist without the influence of what at the time was quite recent work by masters of both strains of comics. (Namely Crumb and Kirby.)
Also though, Corben is really "fusion comics" in a whole 'nother way: it's a fusion of classical art and comics aesthetics, like a Michelangelo/Fletcher Hanks mashup or something. Of course, guys like Hal Foster and Alex Raymond owed at least as much to classical painting as contemporary cartooning... but because of their tools, the print processes they were chained to, hell, maybe even a lack of vision, they never went the Corben route and really attempted to achieve the actual look of the Renaissance figurative masters they were so indebted to. There'd been painted comics before too, most notably Harvey Kurtzman's epic fail Little Annie Fanny, but it always reads like outsider art before Corben, an attempt to do comics without really DOING COMICS, if you know what I mean. But Corben's aesthetic was so fully wedded to the look of what then were contemporary, wildly popular comics, that the stuff can go as far as it wants in pursuit of those more rarefied influences and still feel like a part of the medium. (To me.)
these were cool and gave my reading some direction. keep doing weekly things, they're great.
I don't post here very often, lazy as I am, but I wanted to say that I've really enjoyed this series and am sad it's done. It introduced me to a few comics I hadn't read (and are now on my 'wanted list') and made me think a lot more on the building blocks of comics, the many visual concepts that are developed by creators, storytelling techniques, etc.
That and I got to see a lot of really good, diverse comic art. Sad to see the feature go, but eager to see what takes its place.
As for a print on demand collection? I'd be interested, though I'd think that reproducing the art work might be troublesome and not having that frame of reference might hurt the pieces.
Still, if it could be done I'd probably buy it.
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