Part 2 of The Wry's Rants/Reviews for Sep 22 (Marvel Artists)

Usually if I have any rants, I add them to the end of my reviews. In this case, I felt that with the length of this rant, not long in itself, would have made a rather large entry if included with the reviews. Hence part 1/part 2 for this week. Of course, any viewpoints/opinions in this rant might not be agreed with by the other people here on the blog, or by Comic Hunter. So let's get to..

The Rant on Marvel artists

Well, I knew this was coming sooner or later. I started noticing it last fall when the highly anticipated (for me) issue of Spider-Man came out with Deadpool starring in it, and was written by Joe Kelly himself. Then I opened it up and saw artwork that looked like I would've done on my off-hand while drunk. It was bad. No, it was HORRIBLE!!! What the hell was this... person... doing drawing on a flagship title?

But it didn't stop there. Spider-Man seemed to be getting drawn by people who had no business doing that title. Now to be fair, the art with the Lizard story worked. It also (kindof) worked with the Kraven story too, but barely. But for the most part it was done by people that I would've expected on Daredevil, not Spider-Man. For the record, the art on Daredevil works, because he's an in-the-dark and not in the daylight type of hero.

It seems that Marvel saves their BIG name artists for the Avengers titles, and with the exception of some, has other titles being done by people that make me scratch my head. Some work I have no problem, like Captain America (which has been working with the same style of art for about 4 years now), and Deadpool (the art is okay, but for Deadpool it's more about the jokes, so for me okay art is fine), and Hulk (the teams just changed, so the jury's still out on the new people). But with Spider-Man and Thunderbolts (just to name one off the top of my head) the art is too inconsistant.

And the X-books? Hit and miss. Up until a few months ago I would have put them in the Avengers category, but lately they seem to be slipping too. Most noticeably is Uncanny, which has had the last couple of issues by Whilce Port-a-pottie. I know it's Portacio, but dammit, his art is crap! Some panels are done well, but some are BAD. He puts an eye in a weird spot on someone's face or does something else that's disproportionate. And the good and bad panels are sometimes on the SAME PAGE! Blarrg, I say.

Now of course there's no way I can mention all 90 Marvel titles and tell which has art that I like and don't like. Some titles that I haven't mentioned here have art that I like. It just that it seems that the number of titles that I'm not liking the art of seem to be increasing, which is a shame considering how many of them have good writers.

While I'm ranting uncontrollably, let me also add that I'm not a fan of having a different artist doing the cover than the artist doing the interior. Especially when the two artists have completely different styles. Wheee! It's like a middle of the week surprise! Only sometimes the surprise is one of pain. Now I do want to say that Marvel isn't the only one that does this. Other companies do it as well (like DC), but it just seems that Marvel does it more often.