Why do Marvel comics change artists so much? I was reading a run that had great art, then halfway through the quality of the art dropped off a cliff. like 3 different artists came in, all of them utterly shit, and none of the characters looked even remotely recognizable.
Why does this happen?
Is it the same with DC comics? I just don't understand. I'm a noob to comics.
Because they're idiots and their readers are bigger idiots.
I've been reading comics for over a decade, and it still pisses me off when the artist is replace, even if temporarily.
>tfw when the comic goes from Jorge Jimenez to Tom Raney
They put their best artists on the opening storyline of a book, then move them away to the opening storyline of another book, and just put whoever else on to replace them afterwards. Unless the artist is adamant about staying on that one book, and the editor wants to keep them there, it keeps happening. And neither Marvel nor DC have a 'house style' anymore, so the look of a book can vary from one issue to the next as artists change.
They understand that a good artist is a draw, but they're terrified of creating new stars that could leave them and become their new competition like Image did in the 90s.
>They understand that a good artist is a draw, but they're terrified of creating new stars that could leave them and become their new competition like Image did in the 90s.
Just get an exclusivity contract like what they did with Dan Mora the second he went from being known for Klaus and Power Rangers to being adored by DCfags at large
Because modern 'good' artists can't draw for more than 6 issues without delaying
Really art standards became way too high for monthly books if anything. Not even a-list guys in the 80's were drawing with the level of detail a lot of books have these days And the ones who could often used looser/scratchier inks to compensate, something which has fallen out of fashion with the advent of digital art and digital comics. So you have artists who can only do 6 issues a year at best.
This has a counter where in the fill-in artists you see have to hash out an issue(and often do their own inks) in a very short time in order to break even.
Yeah its pretty weird. You can read a comic book series which will then suddenly change their art style in the next issue then change again after a couple issues and so on and so forth.
Who knows, I'm always happy when books have one consistent artist instead of bait and switch.
Those exclusivity contracts at Marvel or DC usually just restrict you from working for the other of the big 2, some talent get "exclusive" contracts that have allowances made for them to do creator-owned work at smaller companies. It was heavily rumored that DC won't be offering exclusive contracts anymore, so Marvel will probably stop as well when they don't have to compete with that DC are offering.
It's interesting to read that in the 40s and 50s most comic companies had all their artists draw them same style.
You think editors are happy to contact all those different artists for one title instead of keeping it consistent? I wonder whose problem it is
That was practically practice as late as the 80's at Marvel. They had a house style, while you could tell individual artists, they definitely tried to keep within parameters
Part of it is just an issue of an artist not being able to do the work. Or just plain not needing to. An artist high enough on the payroll can afford to only do 6 issues a year. Conversely, there's a lot of smaller, simpler styled artists who'll pick up work quick.
The way it works for a lot of artists tends to be employement isn't guaranteed; you keep contact with editors until one day, for whatever reason, they stop contacting you regularly
So an editor might want to keep an artist on hand to make sure they don't get scooped up by another company, but its not viable to give them exclusivity.
Ultimately, things are driven by the fact that you NEED to have something in print regularly, you need a constant flow of media, you budget for certain print time allotments and expectations of what books will sell to get funds for future books, etc. so while it might suck that issues 56-57 of Rutabaga man used an artist who had to hash it out in a week, ultimately the book needs to get out that month.
>It was heavily rumored that DC won't be offering exclusive contracts anymore, so Marvel will probably stop as well when they don't have to compete with that DC are offering.
When was this? Because they got Tom Taylor, Jorge Fornes and Cian Tormey under exclusive contract
They do it on purpose just to spite you.
I don't think I ever saw a comic fall apart as quickly as Dragonforce. One issue it looked like this...
And then it happened, mid-issue Dale Keown got headhunted to draw The Incredible Hulk. One page, everything was fine...
And the very next page, THIS BULLSHIT.
And the next issue was all this bad. And the book was cancelled after that last issue.
Where do you even find artists this bad? Even before the internet and Deviantart, you could go to any convention and pick up a dozen talented kids who'd work for peanuts like finding ladyboy hookers in Bangkok. Hopefuls were sending in their work unsolicited to companies, there was an embarrassment of artists to draw from, and they give the job of following the fucking Heavy-Metal-magazine-quality Dale Keown to some spaz who can't even draw a simple face. I mean, if they were that short on time, the writer, Barry Blair, could have done better himself. He was a giant coked-up pedophile and had real trouble drawing anyone who wasn't 12 years old with a hardon, and his Ripper is a meme for portraying every black person as a gangsta rapper rapist with lips like the plant from Little Shop of Horrors, but he could actually draw when he had to.
Which isn't to say that the Big Two don't occasionally let a complete artistic meltdown past the editors.
I have never understood what went wrong here. Was it some kind of failed attempt at a last minute art change by a non-artist?
Bill Sienkiewicz used to do that shit for Marvel, did DC have no art drones to do touchups? I still can't believe that this got to print during the Bronze Age, the last period when editors had actual jobs.
What this honestly looks like to me if an editor, possibly under the influence of cocaine, tried piecing together a face by xeroxing eyes, nose and mouth like an identikit, and hoped the colourist would make it look natural. those eyes look kind of like Todd MacFarlane, circa Amazing Spider-Man.
>Those things aren't human.
Is the character who says that human?