I really can't decide if I like JR's older, newer, or middle version of Spider-Man better. From any form of qualification each is real good, but also has it;s own strong points. I guess it is hard to figure out some times what the pencils are vs what the inks are in a given picture, as well as the fact that the exact same artistic style works better (for me at least) with certain stories.

I really loved the art in that X-Men annual he did long before he did the monthly book, but I really couldn't get into his work on the title overall. I absolutely loved the heavily Layton influenced work on Iron Man, but couldn't stand the later stuff. I couldn't get enough of his DD stuff. His Black Panther to me is the new standard for the charachter, like JB's FF or Zek's Cap.

I liked the Eternals a great deal. I agree with some people that it does look somewhat rough, like the details weren't quite as detailed, the backgrounds didn't quite mesh...things like that. I think the term "rushed" is as accurate a description as anything else. It looks like it is only about 95% completed. It looks "done" but not necissarily "complete". Again, this is in regards to the final piece, so the deficiencies (at least in my eyes) could come from the penciler's work or from the inkers. And I am not suggesting that it IS a case where the job was not done to the level of what the artist wanted. It is most certainly a case of that they wanted the finished product to look rougher than it could have looked. Kind of like having chicken soup and adding salt to yours before eating. It isn't that the cook put too LITTLE salt in it. They just put in too little for YOU.

I think the term "rushed" is as accurate a description as anything else. It looks like it is only about 95% completed. It looks "done" but not necissarily "complete".

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How is "rushed" an accurate term for something not being completed? Just because something's not finished doesn't mean the person doing it was in a hurry doing it. In my experience, it's because they took too much time doing it. Not too little.

Something can look "rushed" regardless of someone working a hundred hours on it, just like something can look "sloppy" even if the artist took painstaking care to get every single tiny iota of pencil and or ink in the exact spot he wanted it. When you say something looks rushed, you are making a description of the way something looks. Using the adjective "rushed" to describe something's appearance conveys a certain idea. When someone says that a piece of artwork looks "rushed", you (as the person hearing or reading the description) are supposed to think about what artwork that is rushed looks like in your own estemation. You form an idea about certain charachteristics that the description "looks rushed" makes you think about and apply that impression to your interpretation of that work being discussed. We are talking fairly simple linguistic skills that are pretty straight foreward.

I thought that I pretty damn clearly stated that I was in no way saying that the work being referenced was in any way affected by an impending deadline or anything else. I just feel that it truely is self evident to say that if smething looks like the person didn't spend sufficient time on something, that the piece in and of itself or the style used to create it looks like it was done in too much of a hurry for it to be of as high a quality as it would have been if more time was spent on it. If you spend however long it takes you to draw a page (or write a computer program, fold up a piece of paper into a little triange "football", fold a load of laundry, whatever) and if you could have done a better job if you took ten more minutes, gues what you did? You RUSHED. When I say that something looks like it was rushed, it looks like it should have had some indeterminant ammount of time or effort put into it to make it look as good as I thought it could have been.

 On a slight tangent, even if I was suggesting that JR didn't spend as much time as he would normally spend working on those pages, nowhere would I STILL be saying anything about him being late for a deadline. In theory, if the pages were actually rushed, and I doubt they actually were, it could simply have been because he theoretically decided "I am going to only spend two hours on this page and then it is done. I am bored of this project for the day, and will start the next page tomorrow." In theory.

Let's say you go out to a concert tomorrow to go see The Who. Pete Townsend starts playing the chords to the song Tommy at double time from what the studio version (that everyone at the concert has heard a million times) is played at, and they add an extra six minute drum solo in the middle, making the up tempo song even longer than the original. This is not completely unheard of for a musician to speed up the tempo of a song for a live performance, for whatever reason. I am sure that in this case the Who have as much time as they want or need to play that song. They are playing it exactly the way that they are intending to play it. Would it be so terrible to say that it sounds like the song is rushed, even if the actual playing time of the song exceedes the regular duration of the song?

All of this assinine splitting hairs on something as silly as this is nuts.

As far as JR's years of training, dicipline etc and never getting behind on deadlines......

He has HIMSELF described his style as (I am paraphrasing) .....Whatever style gets the pages done in time. That in itself implies that he constantly rushes to meet time constraints, where he COULD, if time allowed, put more time (and so in theory more effort) into any given piece of work to improve it.

The main diference obviously between him and so many of his contemporaries (I won't use the word peers) is that the ammount of work that he CAN get done in whatever the specified timeframe, is of sufficient quality even in a state of "good enough" that it really IS GOOD enough. And the other minor diference is that his "good enough" is actually superior in quality after sometime 1/3 of the time waiting as his "contemporaries'" work.

Gregg, while I understand the argument you're making, you're still using "rushed" as a comment on an artist's work ethic. Which is fair if we know what their work ethic is. Saying Colletta's work on Thor looks "rushed" would correspond with all we know about his work ethic and methods.

But with other artists, It might be a case of deliberate stylistic choice. Someone like Klaus Janson, for instance - who has a very rough finishing style. Though Janson is rightly admired as an excellent inker, and I've never heard a bad word about his work ethic, but to someone unfamiliar with or unappreciative of his style his work could easily seem "rushed".

Using language that focuses on the work not the artist would get your point across just as well. You used the word "rough", that's a good description. lack of detail, backgrounds that don't mesh - these are all fair comments. "Rushed" is a contentious word on this board as it's seen as a rude, personal attack on the artist in question.