New Mark Waid interview

[NotSuper]

You've been spending too much time with Darren Madigan's tripe.  He talks like that about 'fans vs creators'.  I've seen his site and his various articles.

I can't stand people that subscribe to the "fans vs. creators" view. It's one of those things that makes you sad to be a fan sometimes.

[Uncle Mxy]

Here's an example for you.  Read this 10-page Batman story from 1954 (http://batman.superman.nu/bat-comics/divermystery/) and see how many facts are crammed in, how many visual references to real-world architecture, how many plausible (if unlikely) dangers and escapes. Then tell me the last time you saw any of that in modern comics.

To be a little fair here... Dick Sprang had been working on Batman for 13 years at that point.  Who's the last penciller that worked on the same DCU or Marvel book for 10+ years?

[MatterEaterLad]

Well, he penciled this one in 1949 and it was an excellent mystery travel piece, the Bat Hombre trained by Batman in a fictitious South American country was given away as the plant of a local criminal by two backward facing marks of a parrot claw on his uniform...

[nightwing]

To be a little fair here... Dick Sprang had been working on Batman for 13 years at that point. Who's the last penciller that worked on the same DCU or Marvel book for 10+ years?

What's that got to do with anything?   Whether an artist works on one character for 13 years or 13 characters in the same span, he either knows how to draw recognizable vehicles, buildings, clothing, animals, etc or he does not.  Modern artists are great with muscles and capes, but they often don't draw anything else that looks even remotely accurate (including guns, a surprise since they're an obsession).

My point was that the older stories happened in something at least close to the real world.  And so a writer had to know how things worked in order to tell the story correctly, and the artist had to know how to draw them.  Many times as a kid I came away from a Batman story (especially one written by Bill Finger) having learned something new about mechanics, chemistry, electronics, spectrometry, architecture, wildlife, you name it.  When was the last time you read a modern age comic and learned anything about the real world?

The funny thing is modern comics are passed off as "more realistic."  On the assumption, naturally, that horrific violence, cruelty and despair constitute "reality."  Sorry, no matter how many friends and family Bruce Wayne sees die, he's still a guy who dresses like a bat, so reality is out.  Too many comics are written by guys who wouldn't know reality if it bit them and artists who couldn't draw it if asked.

[Captain Kal]

Another palpable hit, Nightwing.  I do miss the tidbits of real world facts the Silver Age and even the Bronze Age occasionally fed us.  That was one of Julie's gifts to us back then.  It is a shame that no one sees fit to bless us with those anymore in the books, so we have to get our fixes on forums like this one.

Part of my love for science came from those little SA/BA tidbits in the comics.

[Uncle Mxy]

To be a little fair here... Dick Sprang had been working on Batman for 13 years at that point. Who's the last penciller that worked on the same DCU or Marvel book for 10+ years?

What's that got to do with anything?   Whether an artist works on one character for 13 years or 13 characters in the same span, he either knows how to draw recognizable vehicles, buildings, clothing, animals, etc or he does not.  Modern artists are great with muscles and capes, but they often don't draw anything else that looks even remotely accurate (including guns, a surprise since they're an obsession).

The line I was specifically referring to was "visual references to real-world architecture", not any of your other points.  My thinking is -- after 13 years on the same book, any good artist will have their characters, writers, publishing processes, etc. all down pat, and can focus on building rich world(s) surrounding their characters.  AFAICT, it's not as simple as "an artist knows how to draw 'recognizable' reality or he doesn't".  There's the monthly schedule and business aspects.  

An artist acquaintance of mine is a pro animator, formerly of Disney for years until they closed their U.S. feature animation studios.  He's about as far from "real world" as it ever gets, never having wanted to be anything but an artist, never having a job that didn't involve comic art even as a teen.  Nonethless, he's capable of taking words off a page and breathing superb "real life" into it if that's his goal -- just not fast.  He's superlative in a "movie" context, but by his own admission and from what I've seen, it'd take him years to be able to make his style work in a monthly comic book schedule and produce consistently good stuff.  For awhile, until he landed with another feature animation house, he was switching gears from big budget Disney to crap that aspired to be Saturday morning TV fare (do they even show cartoons on Saturday mornings anymore?), and was not loving life.

[nightwing]

Uncle Mxy:

I hadn't intended this to veer off into a criticism of modern artists (that's a whole other rant!).  My point was that Sprang HAD to know how to draw all those real-life things because a writer expected him to month after month.  In contrast, it is now possible for an artist to have an entire career -- and a successful one -- without ever drawing a real-world automobile, a man in a suit and tie, or even a background. (Are you listening, Rob Liefeld?)

The older comics took place in the same world as TV detective shows.  Every kid knew what a car looked like, so you better not screw it up.  Since Kirby came along (god love him) and proved it was okay, even thrilling, to invent your own hardware, architecture and fabric, legions of second and third-generation artists have felt free to create their own version of reality and jump straight into comics without stopping at art school.  

I'm just saying that while it's fun sometimes to hang out in a world where everyone wears spandex and manipulates sci-fi hardware, eventually the whole scene becomes so divorced from reality that a new reader is bound to think, "What the heck is going on here?  Ah, forget it!"

As for your friend, I dare say a lot of comic artists would find it hard to do animation well.  One pretty much trains for what one wants to do.  And there is some precedent for animation artists making the leap to comics, including some true greats.  Bruce Timm and Darwyn Cooke spring to mind.  Also even Jack Kirby himself started out as an "in-betweener" for the Fleischer Studios.  

Captain Kal writes:

I do miss the tidbits of real world facts the Silver Age and even the Bronze Age occasionally fed us. That was one of Julie's gifts to us back then. It is a shame that no one sees fit to bless us with those anymore in the books, so we have to get our fixes on forums like this one.

We still have reprints.  I don't know about you, but I missed tons of Atomic and Silver Age stuff and I'm enjoying filling in the blanks with Archives (and soon the Showcase volumes).  Just last night I was reading the Robin Archives; in the space of one ten-pager ("Robin Crusoe"), I learned how to start a fire with sticks, climb a coconut tree using my belt, build a burmese tiger trap, make a fish hook from a stick of wood, survive being thrown into a pool of quicksand and use a metal swastika as a boomerang.  (Okay so maybe the last one wouldn't really work!).

[Uncle Mxy]

I hadn't intended this to veer off into a criticism of modern artists (that's a whole other rant!).  My point was that Sprang HAD to know how to draw all those real-life things because a writer expected him to month after month.  In contrast, it is now possible for an artist to have an entire career -- and a successful one -- without ever drawing a real-world automobile, a man in a suit and tie, or even a background. (Are you listening, Rob Liefeld?)

Sorry...  the "art" bit just struck a personal chord, because I know the guy who always wanted to be an artist and never lived in the real world.  (Not even really a 'friend' -- everyone who knows him would tell you that his best friend is his sketchbook, and he's pretty nearly non-social.)  He can draw "real world" just fine, but no way could he put that in the context of a "real world"-flavored comic on a monthly basis, the way a seasoned comic book pro should.  I suspect that any number of comic book artists that we think are "bad" in that regard may be good.

Well, except for Liefeld.  

Good god is his art totally disgusting!!  He can get capes right, but not muscles, faces, or much of anything else.  Ugh.  When his art works, it's strictly by accident.  

Most of your other points are well-taken.  Carry on...