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1) I love Moebius' art, and I think he's a genius, but I can't read his comics because I find them extremely dull.

2) The Spirit is Will Eisner's best, most fully-realized and executed project despite it's "low" aspirations as plain entertainment.

3) Thought balloons are a useful part of the cartooning tool-kit and should be embraced.

4) I miss exaggeration, foreshortening and distortion in mainstream genre comic art.

5) People who write eight comics a month are not writing eight good comics a month -- of course, some people writing one comic a month might not be writing any good comics a month, either.

6) If the artist is contributing actual plot and business because of lazy writing then they're co-plotters -- if not co-writers --and should be credited for contributing storytelling work.

7) I prefer inking that doesn't simply set up a lot of heavy lifting for the colorist.

8) Sometimes I think about all the young turk professionals who shit on Jack Kirby's 70s work and I hope they lived long enough to see that material go on to earn millions while their then-hip comics are largely ignored, often for good reasons.

9) Almost no one gets Howard the Duck, unless they do, and Marvel won't let them actually write him as Steve Gerber intended.

10) If you want to study humor and/or storytelling in comics check out how Carl Barks, Harvey Kurtzman and John Stanley squeezed a plot for as much material as possible -- sometimes in only one single page -- and consider how your sensibilities might work with that line of thinking/approach (or not).

11) For a company founded on creator's rights Image sure has seen some interesting lawsuits involving creator's rights. 

12) I think beloved good guy Jim Lee really fucked Alan Moore over but it apparently doesn't matter because he's a beloved good guy and Moore's a grumpy-puss old evil wizard king who makes a lot of people feel bad about their comic book lifestyle and decisions even though he doesn't know who they are and is usually talking for himself just like I am here.

13) Despite the industry being a cesspool of unfair practices, weird professional fan behavior and the usual crap everyone puts up with in any job involving people, I'm responsible for most of the problems I've had in my career (and so are a lot of other people in regards to their careers).

14) I couldn't get through Understanding Comics but that's perfectly okay, I'm glad so many people got something out of it and found it helpful.

15) I like Frank Quitely's art but sometimes the coloring makes his people look like they're made of chipped beef or some kind of meat product that isn't human flesh at all and while I might be way off I can't stop thinking about it that way because I'm human.

16) Sometimes I'm really jealous of people who work with legacy and corporate characters because they don't have to introduce or develop them the same way that new characters and concepts require and they have a pre-built audience and it's just so fucking hard to make anyone give two shits about new characters and concepts and it's not anyone's fault it's just the way life is because people tend to gravitate to known quantities.

17) Similarly, I'm envious of mainstream writers that don't have to actually write clean story endings because everything continues or carries or crosses over, or worse, just gets dropped like wrestling storylines because shit got so messy.

18)  While both are brilliant mega-extraordinary talents on their own, José Luis García-López inked by Kevin Nowlan absolutely sends me.

19) The New Teen Titans by Wolfman and Perez was my favorite comic when it was coming out but it really doesn't hold up, which is the way it goes with a lot of things and isn't a crime or anything except for that abomination Terry Long character and a few other things I could gripe about but this sentence has to end at some point so I'll leave it at that.

20) I love comics, and love all kinds of comics.



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Comments

Jamie Hickson

Evan... even though it's late, and I've eaten turkey twice today.. I think a lot of people will agree with a lot of this. I know I do.

Alex MacPhee

Preach on ABC Comics. I worship Promethea. Actually won an original art page for connecting all the pages of the Tarot issue into a circle as they all join up. Dan Dildo & Lee ruined DC Comics IMO. Every month you would see new Lee DC Direct merch

Alex MacPhee

LOL on Frank Quitely 🤣 He is one of tge most humble, down to earth guys you will come across

Alex MacPhee

This needs to be a regular thing, Evan. Weekly/bi-weekly?

David Jakoi

Some absolute truths there :)

David Jakoi

Alan Moore must be the unluckiest guy on the planet. DC in a normal world would own him 10s of Millions for Watchmen, Killing Joke and Swampy. + (V) Jim Lee screwed him over with the whole ABC/Wildstorm sell to DC Todd screwed him over somewhat with his Spawn issues Rob screwed him with Supreme Mad Love and Eclipse folded, so Miracleman and Big Numbers are not bringing him any dough 1963 was successful, but due to the Image Split it never finished, and it cant be reprinted. (Not sure how the From Hell movie happened, Eddie Campbell seems like a really nice guy, hope Alan got a big check out of that at least)

Rezolution

I like Quitely's chipped beef too

Russell Grant

#12: When I got back into comics I basically told them to add all upcoming Alan Moore into my file (basically the end LOEG material at that point, this was when that DC New 52 gimmick launched and I though maybe DC would do cool comics - They didn't) When DC announced Before Watchman, or whatever those new series were, I told them to skip it, I had no interest and I got a lot of gentle ribbing about being team Alan Moore. I brought them blueberry jam to enjoy with their Watchman toaster as a show of no hard feelings. Comics, what a world. My #21 for your list: Grant Morrison writes interesting comics that make nearly no sense issue to issue. Especially when he does superheroes .

Leighton Connor

Re: 8., I remember reading an interview with one of those Marvel writers from the 70s who badmouthed Kirby and he was a writer I had never heard of who completely disappeared, so that seems appropriate.

Tim Kocher

Say on! Love to read all of this.

Ray Cornwall

My responses: 2. I'll give you that, but Life on Another Planet is kinda bonkers good. It would never work as a movie, but as a comic, it's fantastically dizzy. 3. People forget that Warren Ellis was so influential in comics at one time that he killed the thought balloon. Seriously. He wrote about it in one of his late 90's blogs, and suddenly, we didn't see thought balloons for 15 years. He was right and wrong about them; they were terribly used for a while at the time, but they're valuable if used properly (like most things in comics). 8a. I just finished Kirby's Eternals, and WOW are they good. I've never really embraced New Gods or Kamandi, but they're now on the re-read pile. 8b. Having said that, Roy Thomas's Thor run, which merges the Eternals with the Marvel Universe, is straight up hot garbage. He gets to a point where we think we're going to get a great story with the Eternals and Thor and Odin, and then we get a huge side-plot- for at least 6 issues, including half of Thor #300- involving trying to shoehorn the Wagner opera The Ring of the Nieblung into Thor continuity too(!). Then Roy leaves the book, and Gruenwald and Macchio do a cleanup job by giving us half of an issue of Odin! Fighting! The! Celestials! In! The! Destroyer! Armor! And then #301 cleans everything up, and it's never mentioned again, and there are three years of terrible Thor comics, and then Walt Simonson saves us all. 8c. Peter Gillis does an amazing job with the Eternals, and so he gets fired. He needed a better editor, but his story was really good. It's a shame Shooter fired him (allegedly). 9. There's a blog out there that really explains the Gerber/Marvel lawsuit, and basically, Gerber never stood a chance in that lawsuit AND he knew it. And yet, he convinced everyone to contribute to his legal help because Marvel is EVIL. And then Gerber pulled a fast one on Tom Brevoort, nearly getting him fired. And yet...your point is 100% accurate. There's no way Marvel or DC would ever let anyone do that again. And honestly, I never really want to see another Howard comic again. Talented people have tried to make good Howard comics, and they're good comics, but they're not real Howard comics. 11. Todd vs. Gaiman was such a stupid thing on Todd's part. I'll never understand why Todd did that. I can at least understand the Kirkman/Tony Moore situation. But Todd vs. Gaiman...ugh. 12. Which time, 1963 or ABC? Yeesh. And if Jim Lee was in as much financial problems as he said he was, and knew he was going to have to sell Wildstorm, why even put Alan in that position? There's an oral biography of Wildstorm that I read one night, and it's fascinating. 19. Counterpoint- no one gives Marv Wolfman any credit for the Son of Doom storyline or its culmination, Fantastic Four 200. That issue is probably one of the finest examples of superhero comics ever. Tons of action and drama, amazing art by Keith Pollard and Joe Sinnott, and Kirby's last cover for the Fantastic Four (a doozy- I have a poster of it on my wall). Thank you for giving me something to think about today.

Andy Ihnatko

3) "Thought balloons are cheap and old-fashioned" is just dogma. And embracing a dogma is never good for a creative work. 4) My favorite artists are all great cinematographers. There's an artist (whom I won't name) who was technically brilliant, but his work kept leaving me cold. I eventually figured out why: he "shoots" everything with the same, medium-focal-length lens. Never compressing foreground and backgound with a longer focal length, never exaggerating the difference with a wider one. 5) Part of the difficulty is when the writer starts to write all of these eight comics as if they were the same story. Even when there are no crossovers, it feels like there's an invisible "Meanwhile..." caption bridging their last comic and the next one. 8) Time isn't the only arbiter of true art or greatness. But yeah: when something still works long after it's been stripped away from its cultural and contemporary context, that's an almost failure-proof sign that its creator tapped into something objectively good and eternally relevant. 12) Alan Moore has done exceptional work, and many of it is truly important stuff. I like that he does exactly what the hell moves him. Though, yes, I read his later stuff with the knowledge that at some point, this sensible and engrossing tale is going to hit an oil slick of Magical Woo-Woo and skid straight off a cliff, ending in a fireball that will consume any interest I have in reading the rest of it. It's just not for me. 16) There's room for both McDonalds and the weird-ass taco shop behind a gas station that makes you think "Well, do I feel lucky today?" I like reading a book without any pre-conceived knowledge or expectations about who these characters are and what their deal is. I also enjoy books where EVERYbody knows who the protagonist is, and the writer can just dive right in with Page One. (This is why Multiverse stories annoy the hell out of me. If you're going to do a story with one of the most familiar and famous characters in cultural history, why on _earth_ would you want to make me figure out why they don't look, talk, or behave like I expect them out? Why not just write a whole new character? 17) A story must have a beginning, a middle, and an end. A creator can make all kinds of excuses as to why their story doesn't have all three of those things. They can put on their Amazing Visionary Creator sunglasses and patiently explain why the concept of a Beginning, Middle and End is a limiting artificial construct and the expectation of mere ordinary minds. Doesn't change the fact that they're building a bridge that dangles into dead air at one or both ends. It's nonsense. 20) Ditto! And even when there are comics I don't like, I'm glad they're entertaining other people. You can't call yourself a true fan if that stuff doesn't matter to you.

CLUEPAC

Thank you for the inspiration and the many, many laughs.

Cosmonaut Chris

I have two of my own: 1) I respect Tim Sale's creative vision, but I personally can't stand his artwork. 2) People who write for Marvel are just creating plots for billion dollar movies and not getting properly compensated for it.

Evan Dorkin

I've never connected with Sale's work, which is entirely okay. No one likes everything. No one whose writing and design work has been adapted to MCU/DCU has been properly compensated. Writers, cartoonists and animators are generally treated like trash, no matter how much treasure they come up with. We're not businessmen and we're told to be grateful that we're getting to work on beloved franchises and characters, and most of us don't seem the type for bossing others around or have a head for contracts and whatnot, so it's easy to treat us as disposable no-accounts to exploit. At least animators have a union, but on the other hand cartoonists don't have to sleep under an animation desk and not get paid for crunch time while they're actually helping to make a film or tv show. We're caught in a shitty lopsided system where employment is attached to benefits, or at least connected to earning something like enough money to semi-survive and hope you stay healthy. It's great for the bosses, whose only ideas are to make money off people who have ideas. There's hundreds if not thousands who would take jobs if there were strikes, by and large we're all McDonald's fry cooks when dealing with Disney, marvel, WB, ATT etc. Disposable, replaceable, things to use until no longer useful. Wheee!