Why is comic book art so bad?

Is it just the new style or is the art simply terrible these days for both Marvel and DC. Catwoman art is so lousey I can barely read the book. Spider Man had the same issue last year. Is that a new style of drawing or the companies cant find decent artists? No damn wonder sales are down. The art work is terrrible. Not in all books but in some it is so bad that it makes up for the good art that is around.

I like the art in Catwoman. It's the story I don't like.

I assume you are talking about Darwyn Cooke's issues of Tangled Web. I thought they were the best Spider-Man books I'd read in a long time. I can see them not selling well to people who think Jim Lee is a good artist, though.

Check out Spiderman #51 & 52 by Herrera HORRIBLE, just HORRIBLE!

Ellwood

I like the story and art. I don't like the staples.

Could you be specific? Are you actually saying that the art is of low quality, or are you saying that you dislike the style? They are very different statements. 'Horrible, just horrible!' makes it sound like you are speaking to the quality/artistry/technical merits, but, I would take issue with that description. I did like Ramos' art better, and I assume Herrera is just copying the style, but I think he's done okay at it.

Staples are vastly underrated. They don't have a vast PR machine behind them, but if they do their job well, they become practically invisible. Where would we be without them? Use paper clips? Scotch tape? I don't think so.

It's only when the staples in a comic book fail that they grab your attention. We should all be more mindful before we jump to criticize.

Who are you thinking of in particular? Marvel have some great artists at the moment - Hitch, Quitely, Kordey, Maleev. And, although I find DC's house style rather dull, there are a few artists who manage to do something interesting with it, like Casey Jones and Yvel Guichet.

Now that was a post that I could get into. You know I agree 100%.

skyking

Just which 'artists' are you refering to? Name names.

Heh, I wouldn't list Quitely as a great artist. I could see him easily flunking out of pre-school art classes. Heck, I could see him being rejected by the commercial/infomercial art school that sends out the little flyers where they ask you to draw the turtle in the turtleneck. If anyone can convince him to try, it would be interesting to see the results. Should only take him about a year to finish the three or so pictures.

Kordey has decent good art and bad art. When rushed badly, his art obviously suffers. More than anything, he's probably in higher regard simply for being able to churn out pages for so many books a month at quality levels comparable to other artists who struggle with one book a month.

Though some people don't like him, I like Larroca's art. But that starts to dip into an area where the artist messes up things from the script. The best example of that would be the artist for the first half or so of Priest's Deadpool run. Bad art in general, and didn't match the provided script to a degree that some scenes were downright incomprehensible (until Priest explained the script or posted sections of the script to explain the action for him).

<< Is it just the new style or is the art simply terrible these days for both Marvel and DC. Catwoman art is so lousey I can barely read the book. Spider Man had the same issue last year. Is that a new style of drawing or the companies cant find decent artists? No damn wonder sales are down. The art work is terrrible. Not in all books but in some it is so bad that it makes up for the good art that is around.

skyking >>

I believe the art styles have depressed since Marvekl implemented artists like Rob Liefeld and Todd McFarlane on top books like Spider-Man and X-Force. While both have an in your face style, both guys are awful at anatomy just focusing on interesting panel designs and outragous proportions. McFarlane, granted, is a good in your face storyteller, but people imitate his style of drawing not educating themselves on his visual choices. It's more difficult to draw like a John Buscema, Neal Adams, Steve Rude or a Jose Luis Garcia Lopez especially to a young reader with the new manga influenced styles creating that awful hybrid of Amerimanga. Anyway, that's my point of view. Artwork with decent illustrative skills is considred old school. Why? Talk to the readers and current artists.