kevinh
Junior Member
Posts: 61
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Post by kevinh on Apr 17, 2024 17:12:59 GMT
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Post by willybarret on Apr 21, 2024 17:13:29 GMT
A shop owner friend of mine alerted me to this board, and suggested I post the following essay here. I had read somewhere about the Bubbles paper magazine (have not seen it in the flesh) but since I don't do social media, was not aware of this forum. The impression (perhaps incorrect) I had of the magazine was that it was more focused on alternative modern books, but he pointed me to this thread, so I'll humor him and give it a try. This is a very long (too long?) article about the Charlton comics drawn by Enrique Nieto. I submitted this to TCJ.com, but it's been a couple weeks without a response, which I must assume means they weren't interested. I have not seen their print version in several years, so don't know if this thing would fall within their purview either, nor would I know who/how to submit there. If there are any other trade mags currently running that would be an appropriate home for this sort of article, I don't know them. I'll post it here piecemeal over a a few days, instead, I guess. Feel free to ignore it or disparage my discursive ramblings. The first several graphs are general contextual (and opinionated) observations of the company circa 1970, then I finally get to a more specific aesthetic analysis of the subject with a fair number of examples (I assume I can post images here?) Part I: Mannequin Shop: The Op Art Comics of Enrique Nieto
By Will Barrett Riffle with me, reader, through the decaying piffle of early-1970s Charlton brand romance and horror comics. The pages wilt like musty leaves in your fingers, the limpidly printed ink lines bloodless veins, the off-register chroma evaporates into the autumn air with every flip. Throw a dart at the Charlton Comics timeline (1945 - 1986) and any bullseye will just as likely be a nadir. By the juncture in question the company afforded writers and drawers little in the way of gratifying creative outlet or even the mere professional courtesy of a well-paid job well done, instead providing a last (perhaps least) resort, if not sanctuary, for cartooning has-beens, commercial artist never-weres, and teenaged hangers-on going nowhere. The wordsmiths and ink-slingers weren’t the only ones to suffer; fifty years in the rear view mirror, these books proffer neither the palatable edifice of simple pop entertainments nor substantial nutritional edification for me or you, fellow disappointed comic fan. Pleasures of surface and rewards of spirit will have to be found elsewhere in the overpopulated Overstreet white pages. The company was cheap and uninspired, inept and perhaps even semi-criminal, and their books look it. Hell, Charlton’s comics didn’t even smell as good as other publishers’ pamphlets… Of course, I hyperbolize - the late-60s/early-70s Charlton could admittedly function as vocational infrastructure, a fan-to-pro pipeline diverting practicing cartooners from the miasma of mimeographed APAs and fanzines to editor George Wildman’s unceremonious offices on the polluted shore of Derby, Connecticut’s Naugatuck River. From there, then, incipient or aggrieved pros might board the garbage barge to the Housatonic waterway and ferry it south into Long Island Sound, where the currents would finally deposit the brush-clutching and Bristol-cargoed refugees at the feet of Manhattan’s skyscrapers. Somewhere within the maze awaited the expectant desks and red grease pencils and blank checks of Carmine Infantino or Len Wein. Welcome, young man, let’s nudge my butts and ash tray and yesterday’s half-pastrami aside, spread your artwork out upon this blotter for consideration. Some known names did already contribute to Charlton’s comics at this time: Dickie Giordano, editor, penciller, inker, soon to assume a lifelong suit-and-mustache ensemble as editor, penciller, inker again, at DC Comics. There was José Luis García-López, shortly to be a DC branding stalwart, uniformly but handsomely ushering that company into a post-Neal Adams decade of licensed coloring books, vacuum-formed and rubber-noosed Halloween masks, uncannily adhesive Colorforms kits, weaponized tin lunchboxes, and primary-hued children’s underwear emblazoned with heat-transferred images of corporate strongmen - Superman, Batman (and for the girlies who have come a long way, baby: Wonder Woman.) Jim Aparo, too, made the leap from CC to DC’s Batman and Spectre titles, not so much a funambulist feat as a blue and gray continuation of his, uh, able work. Steady as she goes, good ol’ barge. As the excelsioralistic decade inexorably advanced and comics sales dwindled, Wildman’s assistant editor Nicola Cuti would bivouac a batch of potentially livelier artists and writers from the familial pages of the zine Contemporary Pictorial Literature. Present and accounted for were Byrne, Layton, Grant & Zeck, subsequent principals of the firm X, Iron & Punisher, as well as eventual Action Comics scribe Roger Stern, Green Lantern delineator Joe Staton, and others. Cuti’s generous assignations, perhaps emboldened by standing toe-to-cliff with despairing sales figures, allowed the crew some relative measure of expression, however interim their tenure. With the parent company’s other products (song-lyric mags, crossword puzzle books) probably moving higher numbers than the comics, this was at least a nod towards words revitalization. What’s a five letter onomatopoeic for “plummeting circulation”? But no one ever went broke betting that any of the above creators’ best work was unleashed for the company, because even in comics no one was ever dumb enough to make that bet. Funnybook fans can be both ravenously omnivorous and pettily particular, attaching themselves to publishers, books or characters (or their creators) for any number of illogical, contradictory, or subconscious reasons: nostalgia, comfort, identification, titillation, escapism… even a critical appreciation of craft and history is, in moments of weakness, allowed to color favoritism, believe it or don’t. But despite the complementary cravings of fan appetites and the naïve ardor of newly minted pros, the drawings were at best ordinary, insular, uninspired, or even smug in the way that only comics-readers-turned-comics-makers’ work tends to be. The house and its modest harem of identifiable jobbers had (still has?) its adherents, but it’s a fandom wholly lacking the fervency of loyalty to DC, EC, Marvel or Warren. Charlton’s comics are a passing bewilderment at best, subject of an obstinate “it’ll do” curiosity, or an historical footnote (most often mentioned as the proto stable of thinly-robed characters upon which Alan Moore’s subversive, satirical Watchmen was based.) Whatever limited appeal Charlton’s comics had is matched but not bested by its fandom; it remains an alley or side street in comics history, rather than a grand, undiscovered boulevard promenaded upon by costumed celebrants (does anyone ever cos-play as Charlton characters? Don’t answer that - I’d rather not know) with genuine glee or love. Ah, yes: love! What are we looking for in these girl comics anyway? These dollar-box remnants and garage sale cast-offs, these uncle and cousin hand-me-downs forgottenly shoeboxed in a bedroom closet? This… junk. How about the slightest vibrancy of desperate effort, an intriguing accident of unintentional style, an electrical quirk of personality unconsciously transmitted from the artist’s hunched spine down to and around the bursitis-swollen elbow and out the fingertips to the quavering, freshly pointed pencil… some sequential semblance of life or imagination not duly (nor dully) eked out by artists as indistinguishable as middle-aged accountants or dentists. Anything of interest at all, here, to choke the flatulent whiff of shuffled drug store pulp? Ugh, turn the page, cut the deck. Please, not another dreg of boorish cartooning! Mere illustrational competence would be a delightful startlement to this old man’s tired senses. Is that too much to ask? Forget it Jake, it’s comics: anything is too much to ask. I suppose it’s unfair to say the company’s books were not without other artists of distinction… though I use that last term about as loosely as I can without completely altering its spelling. Whether they produced work of lasting merit while toiling in the Charlton dungeon, well… let’s see what cards we’ve been dealt. Here’s Art Cappello, easily mistaken for an id-driven Archie artist, his frankly voluptuous women unassembled Lichtensteinian puzzles of heaving cleavage, parted or pouting lips, tear-creased cheeks, broken necks and cascading hair; his men sideburned and sunglassed Me-Decade dickheads, their cocksure prowess expressed and simultaneously constrained in thick, swaggering, home run swings of the brush. Here’s Pete Morisi, moonlighting NYC fuzz, a high, tight and uptight Toth & Tuska aspirant without the virtuoso dynamism - but not without design - every panel an evocative noir vignette, every page a miniature Dragnet in six flat pics. And let’s not neglect the cautionary métier of Vince “Nicholas” Alascia, the unfortunately ubiquitous, gold watch recipient for too many years of company service, whose half-assed full-hack chicken-scratch is some of the most pedestrian cartooning I’ve ever laid glazed eyes or chip-dusted digits upon, his sloppy linework unraveling like a hastily made macramé sweater, the fibrous weave of the paper itself squirming against the slipshod mark making. He makes Steve Ditko’s harmless inking (also seen in many of these comics, a post- Spidey hidey-hole for the eccentrically principled creator) seem positively finessed. There were others. To wit, the nominal subject of this disquisition: Enrique Nieto. Neato? I hope so! (to be continued)
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Post by willybarret on Apr 22, 2024 23:29:04 GMT
Part II: Let your pupils dilate as you regard these indigestible 7 x 10 inch sheets of windowpane acid, potent enough to super-heroically dose the entire overweight attendance of the Sand Diego Comic Con, boom Hollywood years inclusive. Despite Charlton’s characteristically sorry in-house reproduction, the shapes and colors spring and flash like the pages of a giallo pop-up book, a permanently short-circuiting neon storefront spelling out “AT LEAST I MADE AN EFFORT” and deservedly blinding the other artists in the book as they scurry meekly back into the lightless gutters. Stop the presses, this cartoonist is actually alive! Imagine existence inside of a pinball machine (for readers under 75 years of age, first Google “pinball machine,” then retreat to this treatise.) Someone slid a Batcave-sized quarter into the slot to animate these little dioramas, but the only “players” here are already under the glass, inside the works. No thumb-swinging Godhead looms large over the horizon; no moon-sized silver globe will come tumbling down or ricochet around the corner to flatten the unsuspecting taxiderms. The machine is largely abandoned, yet smally inhabited, by inch-tall mannequins modeling the latest tasteless fashions on a rainbow-enameled runway. The dudes pose and swivel like cuckoos on kite-sized, flapping bellbottoms or don leather chaps held pelvis level with twinkling belt buckles, collars flared sharp as nylon palm fronds in a Pier 1 Imports, limbs and unbuttoned hairy chests bejeweled with pinkie rings, fat watches and gold links. If shirtless, the men display actual nipples (when did male pointers make their first appearance in over-the-counter US comics?) The ladies more often than not sport one-pieces or low-rise triangles of bikini briefs, sarongs with giraffe high heels, spangled bandeaus or elastic tube tops, or for more formal, indoor, or modest (ha!) situations, mini-skirts, peasant dresses, the swirling drapery of a disco blouse. Like Farrah Fawcett’s famously not-so-subliminal poster, their cursive curls might as well spell out S-E-X and are regularly lidded with sombrero-scaled, floppy brims shielding them from the ever present and limitless arcade suns and stars. Night and day know no difference here. The place is thoroughly decorated. Every surface undulates with pattern and vibrates with texture. A dizzying array of volatile scrims resonates with claustrophobic frequencies, but the spaces are also completely uncontained by conventional walls: at least one plane of any chamber opens to an infinite sky or a receding linear landscape, as much an unfolded Q*Bert tesseract as a single living room or café. Mere shelter? Pfft! These are the sap-drenched, wood-paneled pages of Playboy advertorials, replete with gadget accoutrements courtesy of Sharper Image catalogs, or a Spencer’s Gifts shop where black light posters and fiber-optic anemones beckon fluorescently in a dark, incensed corner of the mall, beyond the family-friendly Radio Shack and Hickory Farms. The furnishings are hectic: the sequined, carapace lampshades scatter as much light as they constrain, the carpet rustles and grows taller with every panel, the corduroy and Naugahyde bean-bag chairs swell and sigh like sporing toadstools. And the wallpaper! We can thank Bridget Riley and the synthetic trio of Letraset, Chart-Pak and Zip-A-Tone for this William Morris moiré assault. Even shadows and silhouettes are invaded by illogical textures, including rub-on letterforms that veritably shout nonsense verbiage at the comic’s occupants, who as a result often look like ornamental flora pressed between the pages of exotic books. I’d rather live in an actual McDonalds than a modern McMansion, but more than either I’d like to dwell within the impossible graphic prison of these wish-fulfillment lifestyle comics. (to be continued)
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Post by willybarret on Apr 25, 2024 0:06:57 GMT
Part III: (This is a very text heavy section, sorry) But is Nieto even a “cartoonist”? For all the s-m-a-r-t remarks written by its defeated practitioners and propeller-headed scholars and credulous fans about how cartooning is, like, an idiom, man, a language that uses the body and its gestures as symbols/words, the panel as paragraph or stage, the page as fractured cubist unit, etc. etc. etc. (Spiegelman, McCloud, Ware, blah blah blah,) mainstream comics (most humor and funny animal books excepted) have historically hewed towards simple, naturalistic, representational imagery, imagery a caveman with a camera might make. Emphasis on distinct light sources and modelled forms, believable textures, and livable depths of space, rendered with an economical reduction of line, seems hardwired in cartooning’s DNA. The appealing and serviceable work of Kurt and Curt - Schaffenberger and Swan - might be the ACME exemplars of the art, under whose pens the fantastic became surreally plausible (or the inverse.) This was the sort of shorthand “cartoon realism” you might buy at Sears or JC Penney in a better time, if they sold aesthetic principles alongside Craftsman impact drivers. Even most underground or alternative comics submit to this orthodoxy, tracing their style backwards to EC’s chiaroscuro, almost woodcut panels, panels that become casements from which to gaze out of or peep within to. Thus, ordinary narrative comics have almost always been an illustrative sop to narrative film, whose makers have to be willfully perverse or merely inept to abuse the illusion of real people, in real milieus, in real time. But rarely have cartoonists had it so easy - visually relaying even the simplest of settings and actions can be a failed-to-met challenge for even the most talented. Worse yet, the public ideation of the medium is often a bland, generic mockery of its genuine syntax and quirks. How many commercial artists (I’m looking at you, Arlen Schumer) outside the industry reduce what’s unique about comics drawing to a debased clip art, a noise-reduced marketing enticement, an ad-man’s wet dream of selling and branding. Say what you will about fine art fops like Roy Lichtenstein, but he at least made an effort to comprehend and translate what it is that makes single comics images powerful and compelling - but still universal. Still, there’s no shortage of comic book artists who establish strange or signature - even inimitable - styles, either through deliberate intention or, more often (in an industry that values deadlines more than ink lines) professional pressures or, just as often (in a medium where the only real tradition is an alcoholic narrowing of focus) gimmickification of already limited skills. Stiff posturing, anatomical omissions or additions, awkward or absent storytelling, shortcuts instead of remedies… some comic artists are stunted for life, others apprehend the stunt and try to best it. Both withdrawal and approach can engender novel articulation. H. G. Peter’s naughty and naïf bondage fancies, Walt Simonson’s spiraling energy myths and sub-Toppi totems, Mike Mignola’s footless (pre-Liefeld!) Frazetta-in-mist geometries… just a few examples of idiosyncratic, non-realistic figurations adorning our simple spinner rack reveries. And, as always, Jack Kirby is the brilliant sui generis perfection of and exception to any analysis: His expressionist clay musculature carries punishing sedimentary mass and weight, human anatomy as measureless geologic inertia, tableaued amidst Aztec/Mayan/Egyptian motifs and the abstrakt krackle of one/two/infinite dimensions. Few cartoonists wield volumetric forms you can wrap your hands around (almost archeologically unearth from the ground) at the same time tiling the images with collapsed space, as Kirby does. Kirby’s oeuvre is about as far from realism as a cartoonist can get, which can make his perpetual popularity perplexing to non-fans or others who can’t also appreciate his protean imagination and genuine outsider attributes. Poor “cultured” Artie Spiegelman, more wrong than anyone ever was about Kirby. But Willy, you ask, what does all this windbag digression have to do with Enrique Nieto? What slack ligament or taut(ological) tendon links Kirby and our man? Two words, both names: James and Steranko. Sunglasses, coif, silk suits and dentition - and his drawing. Steranko catapults Kirby’s pages (often literally, when embellishing over the King’s layouts) through the morass of the Negative Zone and out the thundering Boom Tube, where cosmic and microscopic mingle alike, where Bucky Fuller golf balls buoy in a lunar aquarium, and triangle eyes shed square tears. Steranko the decorator hangs an Op Art membrane over the proscenium arches of writhing tree trunk legs and plunging barrel fists, all the elemental vitalities so constituent to the genre, envisaging magnetic machine energy and psychic emulsions that bleed into the “reality” of a prosaic superhero universe. After a few pages of Steranko’s shifting surfaces and hallucinatory gleam, the uninitiated or stodgy reader surely can’t be blamed for begging a return to the reassuring comfort of regular comic book realism. They may wake blinking and dazed from their dream ramble in the plastic elastic mirrored funhouse, and longing for the sturdy normalcy of stick-built frame construction, plead “Got Wood?” Yes, we’ve all got Wood. Many consider Wally Wood one of the great realist cartoonists. Even his gag material, more fluid and formally inventive, maintains a realistic patina and touchability via his descriptive and supple line. But magnify a section of his inking in your mind’s eye, immerse yourself in the recursive, almost fractal uniformity of his sable-caressed fabric folds, or take one small step upon the single worlds of each Zip-A-Tone pip… in these details he shared with Steranko a certain hypergraphic horror vacui, an obsessive and illusory pattern-marking akin to the “Magic Eye™” autostereograms that confound millions of viewers (this writer included) unless their optical synapses are suitably altered or damaged. Is it possible Woody lost himself, as much as we observers, in the atom-dots of 20% Gray? Despite similar techniques, Nieto does not seem caught in the constricted rabbit-hole of his work like Wood, but neither is he a polymath like Steranko, who - antecedent to his later film duties and illustration projects - never committed fully to one style. The frisson of Steranko’s cape books may be the consequential collision of approaches he dares to employ, often within the span of a single story. In any of his Nick Fury tales you may discern strands of Kirby, Eisner, Victor Vasarely, Peter (the Leroy Neiman of psychedelic salesmanship) Max, or the other Max, Ernst. Steranko dipped his nib for but a single romance story, and the result for whatever reason exhibits little of the churning invention of his S.H.I.E.L.D. or Captain America gigs. The seven pages of Our Love Story #5 are a marvel of uniformity, a conscious wholeness of style (if also, it could be argued, a tad too professional, facile, reticent,) a just slightly more angular interpretation of the noodly, linear Push Pin Studios drawings of the great Milt Glaser, John Alcorn and others. It was (or was becoming) a common style in print advertising and editorial imagery. It was not unusual in the 1970s to see newspaper spots for local furniture stores selling neo-colonial rocking chairs drawn in this anachronistic, incongruously pillowy manner, as if the furniture were Jeff Koons inflations rather than leather and lumber assemblies. The human body, too, was not exempt; faces - even recognizable celebrity portraits on magazine covers - might look like risen loafs of freshly baked bread, albeit candy colored. Steranko would almost immediately abandon his brief foray into this style for harder edged, faceted designs of light & shadow (prefiguring both Frank Miller’s much less virtuoso Sin City as well as the overlooked work of Ken Steacy [though where Steranko often used none or just one color to compliment his spot-lit images, Steacy’s airbrush generously discharged a prismatic variety of hues]) and eventually settled into a mode more along the lines of classic pulp illustrations, with classically organic forms, velvetly rendered. Nieto’s work for Charlton appears to have suffered no such confusions or explorations - nor any obvious single predecessors. With small variations, it is what it is, instantly recognizable as, if not organic handwriting, then a calligraphic flourish, a signature vainly practiced until meaningless to its owner - but illegibly intriguing to the viewer. He conflates Steranko’s early detonations of pattern and texture with the later, more porous style, and hones his figures to a chiseled, grotesque ideal, akin to Jack Katz’s loin-clothed, elongated science-phantasies, or El Greco’s astigmatic distortions. Even if his physiques are correct (they are, and it’s also frequently obvious he’s using bodybuilding photos as reference) they sometimes feel subtly off, as if instead of a six abs, a man might have eight or ten, plus an extra half dozen ribs for good measure. In this way Nieto predates the Image Comics crew, most of whom (besides gym rat Marc Silvestri, the best draftsman of the bunch) were poor studies of human anatomy, never hesitating to add a dentist’s delight of extra teeth in every evil grin, or bless their heroes with two right hands (not an unenviable super power, now that I think of it.) (to be continued)
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Post by willybarret on Apr 28, 2024 0:08:47 GMT
Part IV: Another similarity to the Imageers is their shared indulgence of rococo inking. The boys may have publicly claimed the influence of strong storytellers like Kirby, Ditko, Byrne, Perez, but it’s obvious they took their rendering cues from Arthur Adams, who of course drew from Michael Golden. Each generation, from Golden to Adams to Liefeld (and beyond, God help us,) added the insecure busywork pretense of more lines, more details, on top of decreasingly understood forms. Until we arrive, circa 1990, at a style that would make Alex Toth’s head erupt in slow motion, à la David Cronenberg. Is it an exaggeration to suggest that the mainstream “squares” at Image Comics - the mulleted “Canadian Tuxedo” and the Orange County 501 Fade - may have inadvertently had more in common aesthetically with the manic, paper attacking art school brats of Fort Thunder than with staid stand-bys like Ross Andru? Arguably it was Whilce Portacio’s intricate, whiplash, filamentary inking on Adams, in Ann Nocenti’s Longshot, that set the example that so many so ineptly attempted to mimic. In this respect, the ensuing Image artists’ work may also bear the significant (and unspoken) influence of the 1970s “Filipino Invasion.” Technically dexterous artists like Rudy Nebres , Alfredo Alcala, Alex Nino, and others, deployed decidedly unusual, almost indulgent mark-making unlike any North American cartoonists. Nino was among the most creative with his varied, chunky deposits of ink, his puckish character designs, and his often wild page layouts. As Golden was to Art Adams, Nino was to Sam “Toothbrush Fukuda” Kieth. Other Image artists had styles both derivative and unique, sourced and adapted from assorted forebears to greater or lesser effect. Erik Larson brings to mind an eye-patched, learning disabled Sal Buscema, for example. Dale Keown lifted Byrne’s entire physiology - faces, features, musculature - discarded his charming handmade inking, and replaced it with a robotic, chromium sheen. Silvestri - actually, who does Silvestri draw like? I couldn’t say, now that I think about it - that’s a credit. But Image Silvestri without Marvel Dan Green’s slashing yet judicious brush trails just doesn’t work as well. Scott Williams tried every key in his pocket to open that lock, to no end. Jim Valentino… wait, what did he do? It doesn’t even register. Ever hear of Nicholas Alascia? Nieto’s linework exhibits many of these contradictory traits, the curvilinear/angular lines of Portacio, the mossy textures of Nino, the thorniness of Williams, festooned upon more traditionally derived forms and novel shapes, somehow made whole and his own. His figures might utilize one inking style, the background spaces another, the sky, weather, atmosphere yet another. Sunlight itself is often indicated with a Mesoamerican starburst, a hatched corona describing a flat yellow or white orb. Texture and pattern are often used as much for compositional purposes as representation. These suitcases, for example, each given an identifiable tactility of their own, also almost register as musical notes on an airport’s conveyer belt. How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way might emphasize the importance of manipulating texture for verisimilitudinous reasons, but for Nieto a car reads as a car because of its schematic correctness, not because of its metallic gleam. The surface does have a metallic gleam, but it simultaneously exists only as a metallic gleam. Take away all the defining contours of shapes, and the textures and patterns remaining on the page would still be interesting, if not functional. For him the figures - especially the men, whose flexed and stretched traps, delts, rhomboids and obliques often resemble Rubenesque chandeliers of flesh - are just one element in a larger tapestry. He doesn’t exaggeratedly deform or contort the bodies for their own sake, or to forcefully fit them within a panel or page, and his gestures are not given to standard comic book theatrics or melodrama. There is an admitted stiffness here, a lack of bodily emotion; and the faces too, are doll like, occasionally evoking Kabuki masks. A kiss or embrace is an opportunity for a clever design, not an emotional moment, even if that design is an attempt to express feeling. Likewise, Nieto will frequently elaborate an elegantly composed “floating world” landscape that threatens to overwhelm the characters as much as express any climactic exuberance of passion or despair. This is unusual in American romance comics, which more routinely focus on the studio-like crucible of interior soap opera sentiments. In context, these panels don’t operate as complexly (or as subtly) as an Ozu “pillow shot” or as airily as one of Seth’s silent cityscape “beats” or even as a moment of reflection, but frankly seem to exist because the artist just wanted to draw something interesting for the Hell of it. (to be continued, I'm sorry to say...)
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Post by willybarret on May 1, 2024 0:19:25 GMT
Well, it seems I submitted this article to TCJ.com at the worst possible time. They have just announced a change of editors, something no doubt in progress for a few weeks. I can imagine they almost completely disregarded blind submissions during this time frame. I have to assume my email was either readily discarded or lost in the shuffle. Of course, assuming this is the type of article they might publish is presumptuous of me - I will say it is the type of article I wish they would publish more of. Looks like you gents are stuck with it. Part V: At its best, the coloring in these books should complement or enhance Nieto’s already idiosyncratic figuration, composition, settings - but “at best” is elusive because the coloring varies in quality from innocuous to impedimentary. Who colored Charlton’s comics? Your guess is as bad as mine. I have to imagine Nieto himself at least provided guides on the more fortunate efforts (who else in the assembly line would care?) One instance where a story was printed twice with startlingly different colors illustrates the effectiveness of the discrepancy. “Older Than I Look” first appeared in My Only Love #2 (Sep 1975) and was reprinted in I Love You #126 (Oct 1979.) The earlier iteration of this story is the most creative and smartly colored Nieto work I’ve seen, possibly the culpability of someone experiencing a color-blind seizure (and capable of inducing one in the reader.) Otherworldly Bava-esque gels wash uniformly over entire characters with no logical rhyme or reason; fealty to the visible world is flung from the dune buggy with hardly a care, nor does character identification, continuity, or mood seem to be a consideration. The reprint reduces all of these Ph. Martin non sequitur delights to rudimentary naturalistic hues. Flesh is pink (not a submerged Lovecraftian ultramarine) and skies are blue (not a kaleidoscopic gamble) and foliage is customary coloring book green (not a crystalline canopy of Tiffany stained glass.)
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Post by dominocorp on May 1, 2024 3:11:03 GMT
thanks so much for posting these, they're beautiful.
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Post by robindh on May 6, 2024 0:05:38 GMT
Silvestri - actually, who does Silvestri draw like? I couldn’t say, now that I think about it - that’s a credit. There was a period in the 80s (I think) where Silvestri was aping Mignola when he was on Wolverine with Dan Green.
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Post by willybarret on May 6, 2024 3:28:30 GMT
Silvestri - actually, who does Silvestri draw like? I couldn’t say, now that I think about it - that’s a credit. There was a period in the 80s (I think) where Silvestri was aping Mignola when he was on Wolverine with Dan Green. That's interesting, was that after his X-Men run? I thought he had pretty much cemented his own style by that point. I'll have to look those issues up, thank you. I was thinking about it the other day, and the only artist I could see as an obvious influence on Silvestri (in the 80s) was John Buscema. Both used a sort of Michelangelo "heroic" gestural approach, and their facial construction and expressions share similarities as well. In fact, it's kind of obvious in hindsight, considering how many of the same books they both worked on: Wolverine, Conan, etc.
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