I had a conversation today with an editor buddy of mine who was put out to pasture long before his expiration date. And that got me wondering.
Y’see, yesterday I went into my friendly neighborhood comic book shop and thumbed through a bunch of new comics from Marvel, DC, and several other companies — some of which I’d not even heard of before yesterday.
One thing really jumped out at me: How much some of these writers, artists, letterers, colorists, and inkers DON’T know about the comics they’re producing.
The page-after-page of conversation scenes in a visual medium; some horrible balloon placements; submarine-shaped balloons that look horrendous; boneheaded spelling errors; colors that look “off” because someone probably colored in RGB then converted to CMYK, not realizing how much colors shift when printed; so much art that so obviously looks digital; truly weak storytelling with characters just standing around, never making eye contact or interacting with their environments; and on and on.
And yet so many talented comic book creators have been minimized or sidelined because their hair turned gray or were considered “old school” without being even a chance to reinvent — focusing on the word “old” instead of “school.”
In my recent dealings I’ve discovered so many editors who don’t even know how much they don’t know. Or artists/inkers whose minds turn off at the mention of Will Eisner or Wally Wood or Alex Raymond or Jack Kirby. “Oh, a dead guy, so he doesn’t count,” one artist said to me.
So much can be learned from talents like Tony Isabella and Alex Saviuk and so many others. The very idea exhausts me at how so much inferior work could be made so much better just by listening to the still virile, available veteran professionals who have so much to teach.
