Diseased #Comicsgate - The Culture Wars Hit The Funny Books!

As the resident weeaboo in this thread, I feel like I can settle this dispute without showing any favoritism.

You're all right. Each of your submissions are indeed shit.

Read more manga. 😁
You don't remember my occasional dip over onto the weeb threads? :lol:

I don't think the artwork is as bad as it looks, and the reason for that is that whoever was doing colors both phoned it in and wasn't very good in the first place.

First, like you point out it's an old-school style, which means that poor printing technology at the time led to an emphasis on shadow and inking. The colorist though has put in high contrast gradient (in line with more modern comic art) inside the heavily inked artwork which has resulted in each page and every panel having two clashing communications of weight and structure.

Second, even with this approach, multiple errors can be seen in the one page Newman's Own posted

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Here we see "Vikki" cast a flesh-colored shadow. Also your artist for some reason is struggling to draw a circle and gave up half way, but we won't go there.

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Here we see some blotchy soft brush tool work, where the coloring in no way compliments but instead competes with the sense of depth the lineart (which again is having trouble drawing circles, in this case the sewer tunnel) is trying to convey. I've emphasized the best example of what I'm talking about where a fuming sewer mist trail drawn in ink has a brush of green color that in no way conforms to the linework set out by the artist.

Bad coloring can ruin a good comic - just look at Tamra Bonvillain's body of work consisting of drenching everything she works on, from William Gibson's Aliens 3 comic adaptation to superheroes in tonally inappropriate neon bisexual lighting. Is there any way that a page colored in such a way could feasibly convey horror?

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I'd even go so far as to say no colorist is better than a bad colorist - Frog should hang on to a talent like Kyle Ritter for as long as humanly possible.
Honestly great post Mr. Dongs. Both You and Newman articulate the problem well.

As to the art in question, a big problem with abstract art is defining what is good. Good abstract art work is more than just depicting a scene or anatomy. Abstract artwork uses a blending of color, shape, and form to create a composite image that exists independent of the 'real' world. Good Abstract artwork expands the mind and leads you to associations you perspective you wouldn't obtain.
 
Looks like 80s Mark Bagley work
Mark Bagley in the 80's was already heads and shoulders above your artist Jon. Dynamic figures, exciting page layout and good sequential story telling. Your artist checks the box where story telling is concerned but falls way short of Bagley in the other two areas. Also, Bags runs circles around her on anatomy, perspective, and he knows how to draw a man hole cover or a car way better..
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80's Bagley.
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Your artists work is passable the way Alex Saviuk's work on Web of Spider-Man was passable but if you can't see the chasm in ability between the two artists then you have no place talking about comics.

You just don't understand comics, but I will lead the way
You should probably find your way before you try to lead anything.
 
Mark Bagley in the 80's was already heads and shoulders above your artist Jon. Dynamic figures, exciting page layout and good sequential story telling. Your artist checks the box where story telling is concerned but falls way short of Bagley in the other two areas. Also, Bags runs circles around her on anatomy, perspective, and he knows how to draw a man hole cover or a car way better.. View attachment 1899561
80's Bagley.
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Your artists work is passable the way Alex Saviuk's work on Web of Spider-Man was passable but if you can't see the chasm in ability between the two artists then you have no place talking about comics.


You should probably find your way before you try to lead anything.
Ur pics lead to dead links.
 
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Mark Bagley in the 80's was already heads and shoulders above your artist Jon. Dynamic figures, exciting page layout and good sequential story telling. Your artist checks the box where story telling is concerned but falls way short of Bagley in the other two areas. Also, Bags runs circles around her on anatomy, perspective, and he knows how to draw a man hole cover or a car way better.. View attachment 1899600
80's Bagley.
View attachment 1899597View attachment 1899599

Your artists work is passable the way Alex Saviuk's work on Web of Spider-Man was passable but if you can't see the chasm in ability between the two artists then you have no place talking about comics.


You should probably find your way before you try to lead anything.

You just don't understand circles.
 
You:"WhAt iS aBsTrAcT ArTs?"

Me:What is Bill Stinkbug, Dave McKean, and Ted McKeever.

Far be it from me to leap to the defence of the alt-ricer as he momentarily raises his face from the frog's lap, and I would need to see more from the artist he's complaining about, but I wonder if your examples are of artists who know how to draw and how to abstract what they draw, and the object of Jon's ire... doesn't.

But on the other hand, many likes and winners for @Mister Dongs and @Newman's Own's appraisal of what looks like a mild insult to Mark Bagley. All I could think about the color was man, it looks muddy and murky. It's almost the same problem as with the examples I pointed at earlier - I think the lure of easy gradients, airbrushing and an infinity of 'realistic' colors in digital coloring is too strong for new guys who should probably sit down with a book on color theory and a box of watercolor paints first.
Circles too, yes. One of the first things I noticed was that this city invested in leaf-shaped manhole covers.

While I'm here, Jon, couldn't your Bagley Jr. think of something more organic than a stiff keep on truckin' pose, or hauling a manhole cover out of the ground with a little more animation than holding a losing poker hand?

I used to think comic crowdfunding success was simply a matter of which youtuber could whip their audience into the biggest pwn-da-libs froth. The last page of this thread lets art quality the shocking lack of it, even the basics back into the equation.
 
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Far be it from me to leap to the defence of the alt-ricer as he momentarily raises his face from the frog's lap, and I would need to see more from the artist he's complaining about, but I wonder if your examples are of artists who know how to draw and how to abstract what they draw, and the object of Jon's ire... doesn't.
Possibly. As I pointed out Abstract art is harder define what is good and what isn't. It's less about anatomy or motion and more about how the images tie to each other and stimulate the brain.

From what I saw I don't think it was fantastic and certainly not at the level they were praising, but far from appallingly inept without further context beyond what was given.

1973, pushing 50 years old.

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This isn't a Youtube grifter board, some of us in this thread have actually read comics before.
nah Kid Spectrum looks a lot more like Nova than that generic looking guy.

Ah Doc Spectrum aka notHal Jordan.
 
1973, pushing 50 years old.

View attachment 1899656

This isn't a Youtube grifter board, some of us in this thread have actually read comics before.

Yeah, I got sent all of that stuff from a fan recommending I make a scoffing video about it, and I couldn't. It's all pretty smart stuff, drawing from Marvel's obscure past in a way that DC used to do all of the time, but Marvel used to discourage. Good designs too. As much as I dislike Kamala Khan, her new costume is beautifully updated, and "Girl Power" is, again, very DC Comics.

"Kid Spectrum" is pretty rad, especially if he actually is ASD.

Miles Morales as the new Falcon, also very good idea. Lots of fun.

The designs, all around, are excellent. I can't tell who the artist is. Kerschl? Did McGuiness take a shot at them too?

Not everything is Kibblesmith's NEW NEW WARRIORS. Sometimes Marvel does something right.

Meanwhile, in the mainstream industry, critics hail this as "Using lithesome, intricate drawings and mixed-media collages, Spector debuts with a graphic memoir of desire and loss that expresses emotions viscerally and with a tactile immediacy."

It looks like my 7 year old drew it. Does it really work when they try to gaslight people into thinking this is high art?

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That actually IS art.

Sometimes I wonder about you, JDA. Usually, in fact.
 
Yeah, I got sent all of that stuff from a fan recommending I make a scoffing video about it, and I couldn't. It's all pretty smart stuff, drawing from Marvel's obscure past in a way that DC used to do all of the time, but Marvel used to discourage. Good designs too. As much as I dislike Kamala Khan, her new costume is beautifully updated, and "Girl Power" is, again, very DC Comics.

i'd almost say you should make a video explaining it for ignorant people like me who had no idea, but i'm guessing it probably wouldn't work well with the youtube algorithm.
 
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In Comicsgate News:

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Thanks to all the Comicsgate coverage and commentary of Meyer's disastrous launch of Rock N' Roll Ninjas, it supplied all the marketing needed to alert Meyer's fans of the campaign's existence to get it funded, marketing that Zack himself refused to give. Truly another inspiring Comicsgate story if ever there was one.


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Time will tell if this outing will cross the Pandemic Threshold or linger in the Zack Zone between Do as You're Told: The Ballad of No and PANdemIC. However Zack was not the only veteran creator in the process of unlearning what were once considered to be basic crowdfunding business concepts...



Jeff Hicks of WorldClassBullShitters (WSBS) and creator of Stealing Solo has made his very subdued return to Comicsgate by being part of the art team for Everlasting Survivors by Donald Osborne. Osborne has forgone basic concepts like building a platform or a following for any form of self-marketing whatsoever. Even stranger, Jeff Hicks, a guy with 167,000 subscribers on his own plaform is going to be doing the art without questioning this. This is sort of like the situation with Antonio Brice and Daym Drops with their comic, except if Daym Drops was actually drawing the comic on top of Antonio Brice being in charge of promotion.
The comic right now stands at 30 backers 4 days into the campaign - it doesnt look like it's target goal of $20,000 is going to be met.



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Mandy Summers announced she will be launching Wart the Wizard: Remastered within the day. The... ever-faithful Peter Gilmore pledged to both draw a new 48 page comic as well as redraw the original with the ominous tagline of "Two Books, One Campaign". Wart the Wizard, a crudely drawn 22-page children's comic has somehow become the focal point for recriminations against Frog after mocking its art, constant fighting over whether something so badly made should be allowed in CG, along with a sex scandal, this is something I think we all can look forward to revisiting in the coming weeks.

i'd almost say you should make a video explaining it for ignorant people like me who had no idea, but i'm guessing it probably wouldn't work well with the youtube algorithm.

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Frog laudably made the effort to defend the Squadron Supreme on tonight's livestream to his audience, slavering for a new "Snowflake and Safespace" to dab on. In 1985 Mark Gruenwald made a maxiseries on Squadron Supreme (Marvel's analogue for the Justice League), a series I'd say is one of the medium's best and belongs side by side with its contemporaries at the time like Watchmen and Dark Knight Returnss. Yet it is nowhere near as well regarded as those two, possibly for its classic Silver Age superhero aesthetic versus the grim and gritty tones.

The premise and even much of the plot of the comic was borrowed from rather shamelessly by the real Justice League and made into Injustice, an extremely successful video game franchise and then adapted into a very successful comic series spanning sixty issues that brought a lot of fame and recognition of a little known artist named Mike S. Miller. It also had included creations by Frog and Shane Davis that gave significant royalties.

Frog's unwashed audience of course grumbled that he was "turning soy" for appreciating the update to a little known franchise and "these characters look gay, more like gender spectrum amirite?"
 
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Four ninja Vietnam veterans becoming rock stars sounds like the stupidest fucking idea I've ever heard in my life.
It's like he took the idea of Country Joe and the Fish and added Ninjas.

Richard's heyday was when he called out troons of wearing party time wigs and went nuts like a comic book Jim Cramer.

His shit is boring as fuck now. His comics are overpriced trash and he expects EVS to carry water for him. One day, sooner rather than later, Ethan will realize Richard is dead weight and no longer brings in viewers.

The day Richard quit telling jokes he lost the momentum. He forgot what made him popular in the first place and tried to join a "mainstream" that will always hate him.

Instead of crossing the Rubicon ya boi Zack crossed the Euphrates. Instead of laying siege to Rome he attacked the Parthians. Instead of standing in the frog man's limelight he stands in his shadow.
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This isn't a Youtube grifter board, some of us in this thread have actually read comics before.
Quite right.

nah Kid Spectrum looks a lot more like Nova than that generic looking guy.
"The Man Called Nova" debuted his look in 1976. As Mr Dong's said, "some of us in this thread have actually read comics before".
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Everything about Kid Spectrum's design calls back to the bronze age of comics.

90's character design was characterized by pouches, shoulder pads, shiny metallics and eventually extreme boredom for readers.
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The very best years in comics predate the 90's. I would argue it was the 80's but a very legit argument for the 60's or even the 70's could be made.

No hardcore comics fan argues the 90's unless they are biased because it was the decade they were introduced to comics. Hell, I'd even hear arguments about 2000-2010 long before I'd listen to arguments in favor of Clone Sagas and Youngblood.

People who love comics but haven't read the era of Miller's DD, Stern's Avengers, Simonson's Thor, Byrne's FF, Stern's ASM, or even Owsley/Preist's run on Power Man and Iron Fist have missed out on content that blows away just about every cape comic since.

(Of course Watchmen, Dark Knight and Man of Steel among others deserve mention but Marvel was my first love. )
 
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