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Mark Haslett
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 19 April 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 6512
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| Posted: 22 February 2008 at 12:45am | IP Logged | 1
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Considering
how many people draw in the 70s Kirby style, the idea that Kirby is a
genre might have some merit.
***
How many people draw in the 70s Kirby style? Two?
It wouldn't matter if there are a thousand, that wouldn't make him a genre.
Kirby is a Titan in comics and no one compares to him. Genre is simply a different thing. You wouldn't file Kirby superhero comics on a separate shelf to avoid confusing people. He always worked within clear genres. His work epitomized genres, blended genres, stretched genres, advanced genres-- but it did not invent new genres and it cannot possibly be considered a genre unto itself (Rawhide Kid, Hulk, The Demon and the Eternals are all the same genre?). That's just mashing words together. Might as well call him an "irony" or an "actually".
People who copy Kirby's style aren't "working in a genre", they're copying an artist's style.
(edit: not that there's anything so horrible about that. But I can't see any good in trying to call it something else.)
Edited by Mark Haslett on 22 February 2008 at 12:50am
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Erik Larsen
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 19 February 2008
Location: United States
Posts: 344
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| Posted: 22 February 2008 at 1:21am | IP Logged | 2
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Mark Haslett wrote:
Considering how many people draw in the 70s Kirby style, the idea that
Kirby is a genre might have some merit.
***
How many people draw in the 70s Kirby style? Two? |
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At times Herb Trimpe, Barry Smith, Keith Giffen, Rich Buckler and a
handful of others I'm blanking on. Jose Ladronn is a more recent example
although he's shaken a lot of that influence recently. Steve Rude, Bruce
Timm, Mike Mignola, Walter Simonson, John Romita Jr. and Darwyn Cooke
all use Kirbyesque elements from time to time as do I. A lot of Kirby's
visual language in ingrained at this point with a lot of cartoonists. Scioli
doesn't appear to have any other influences. His work looks as though he
learned to draw by looking at Kirby comics. That may seem like a recipe
for disaster but there's a very strange end result that I find pretty
fascinating.
Comics have always had their share of guys whose work is pretty far
removed from reality. There are those who would argue that Fletcher
Hanks is brilliant while most would think he's awful. Same with Basil
Wolverton. Both of these guys drew grotesque, rubbery people. But
there's something fascinating about their work and part of it is that
because they never learned the rules--they have no restraints. To many,
Rob Liefeld has that same appeal. It's distorted--it's ugly--it's wrong by
every definition of the words--but there's something oddly fascinating
about his work. I'm convinced that half the people that buy his books are
there to see the train wreck.
Again--it's almost "outsider art" because of its faults. It's like somebody's
impression of a comic book. And, for kids, it's comics drawn the way they
would draw comics if they could draw comics--with all of the emphasis
on surface flash.
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Paul Kimball
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 21 September 2006
Location: United States
Posts: 2207
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| Posted: 22 February 2008 at 2:04am | IP Logged | 3
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Same with Scioli. Regardless of why he draws like Kirby, there is no reason to consider him anything but a Kirby-imitator. (To view him as anything but is what would require mind-reading on our part.)
++++++++++++++++++++++++++
If we're not going to try to guess his motivations, wouldn't we have to say his style is similiar to Kirby instead? Saying Kirby-imitator sounds as if we are guessing his intent.
Hope that didn't sound snarky, not intended.
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Knut Robert Knutsen
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Joined: 22 September 2006
Posts: 7374
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| Posted: 22 February 2008 at 2:38am | IP Logged | 4
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"Saying Kirby-imitator sounds as if we are guessing his intent. "
I'm saying there's no reason to consider him anything but a Kirby-imitator. His style is too close to Kirby to be completely accidental, it falls into line with the art of people who admit to imitating Kirby intentionally, and even if he didn't cop to imitating Kirby intentionally (which I thought he did, but I may be wrong) our presumption should be that he is intentionally imitating Kirby. I can understand someone unitentionally imitating an obscure artist with a more "photo-realist" or "illustrative" style, but not someone as idiosyncratic as Kirby.
I'm saying that for us to consider him NOT to be a Kirby-imitator, he would have to convincingly assert that argument himself. We cannot presume it based on the available evidence and in the absence of a contrary claim.
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Paul Kimball
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 21 September 2006
Location: United States
Posts: 2207
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| Posted: 22 February 2008 at 2:47am | IP Logged | 5
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I understand Knut. I think we're at the tomato/tomahto point so I'll probably check out. I was going to say good night but I'm guessing it's good afternoon for you. Later!
Edited by Paul Kimball on 22 February 2008 at 2:48am
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Armindo Macieira
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 15 October 2006
Location: Portugal
Posts: 955
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| Posted: 22 February 2008 at 4:56am | IP Logged | 6
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I've checked some links with Tom Scioli art and no matter what one may say, his art looks too much like Kirby's! I believe it's more than influence, it's imitation or at least at some point of his life it was imitation... I'm an artist myself and I believe to have suffered lots of influences but at some time your "inner artist" tries to break free and little by little you develop your own style, based on your influences, but yours nevertheless.
I believe Scioli smothered his "inner artist" and never let it out. So he never developed his own style and became a Kirby copycat, now he does it naturally.
I believe one's art is like a fingerprint. Personal and diferent from anyone else.
This is my opinion of course, bound to be mistaken...
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John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
Joined: 11 May 2005
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| Posted: 22 February 2008 at 5:38am | IP Logged | 7
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Is it possible to grow up reading someone like Kirby and your own work becomes so much like his that this becomes your style as well? In other words, you're no longer consciously imitating? I ask because unless Tom Scioli has been seen to drawn in another manner on something other than godland, maybe that's just his style?•• Most, if not all, comicbook artists start out trying to learn the craft by copying other artists. Even Neal Adams -- one of the most imitated artists of the past fifty years -- has described his own early work as an attempt to fuse aspects of Joe Kubert and Mort Drucker. I started out myself aping Neal (badly). Influences are always there, and the really good artists are the ones who take their influences and shape them into something they can call their own. Steranko is a prime example. The Kirby influence shines thru, but no one would mistake a Steranko page for a Kirby page. Rude is another good example. Mike Mignola takes a lot from Kirby, but creates his own look. Early Frank Miller is heavily influenced buy Gil Kane.* As I have said on many an occasion, it's not so much a question of where you start, as where you end up. Problem with too many people who imitate others -- and I see Scioli as an example of this -- is that they miss the important epiphany moment. The one I had, for instance, that told me I would never be as good as Neal, and it was high time I started seeking my own "voice". Scioli needs to step back a few paces, take a long, hard look at this superficial imitation of Kirby he's doing, and say to himself "I'm really not getting it, am I?"
*Amusing story: Early in Frank's career at Marvel, someone showed Gil some of his pencils. "Who does this look like?" Kane looked at the work for a moment, and then said "Romita?"
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Armindo Macieira
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Joined: 15 October 2006
Location: Portugal
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| Posted: 22 February 2008 at 5:49am | IP Logged | 8
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Scioli needs to hear the voice saying "I'm never going to be as good as Kirby at BEING Kirby... better to be a first rate Scioli than a second rate Kirby!"
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John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
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| Posted: 22 February 2008 at 6:05am | IP Logged | 9
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If we're not going to try to guess his motivations, wouldn't we have to say his style is similiar to Kirby instead? Saying Kirby-imitator sounds as if we are guessing his intent.•• A small handful of comicbook artists can lay claim to having a style that is uniquely their own. Jack Kirby was definitely one of those artists. Unless you are suggesting a coincidence of truly cosmic proportions, it would be astonishingly disingenuous to suggest Scioli is doing anything other than consciously imitating Kirby. (Perhaps you are confusing "imitation" with "swiping"? Scioli has gone past the point, clearly, where he needs to literally swipe Kirby in order to produce his work, but he is still imitating him.)
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Felicity Walker
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 19 February 2008
Location: Canada
Posts: 349
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| Posted: 22 February 2008 at 6:37am | IP Logged | 10
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QUOTE:
| When Nelson redrew JB on Action he kept the story breakdown (which is an artistic contribution in itself) and of the composition but obliterated the texturing. The final result ended up looking like Byrne breakdowns instead of Byrne pencils--which irritated me since I’d forked over my money for Byrne pencils. |
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My reaction exactly, Jesus.
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Felicity Walker
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Location: Canada
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| Posted: 22 February 2008 at 6:41am | IP Logged | 11
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I agree with Delaney. I love the font used to letter John Byrne’s Next Men, and would gladly pay money to have my own legal copy of it, even if I had to promise to reserve it for personal use and not to letter comics that I show other people.
(In desperation, I made my own poor version of the font with a stack of JBNMs, a scanner, FCP4, and long hours of tedious glyph noodling, but in the end it’s not the same.)
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Jesus Garcia
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Location: Canada
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| Posted: 22 February 2008 at 6:52am | IP Logged | 12
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It would be interesting to see Scioli at work, at the drawing board. Does he have a mess of b&w essentials and archives opened all around the room that he consults with every new panel he does? Does he lay out a book completely, assigning a Kirby-effect to each panel, and then look for reference material? Or does he draw from memory?
As a big Nero Wolfe fan, I welcomed Robert Goldsborough's pastiches because they furthered the adventure's of Wolfe and Goodwin. In some of the novels, Goldsborough actually wrote in Rex Stout's "voice" which is what I wanted him to do and I suspect most other fans would agree. Did Goldsborough swipe Stout?
My point is that Stout's style is part and parcel of the Nero Wolfe package. To pull off a Nero Wolfe novel you need to imitate Stout's style.
Likewise, I feel that the Kirby style is part of the package of certain books he did. I even liked Devil Dinosaur! What other style but Kirby's would fit that book? And, as much as I loved Simonson on Thor, no one, nobody, NNOOBBOODDYY does Thor like Kirby. No one else has so effectively blended the visual language of technology and magic tossed against a cosmic mythological background. Kirby drew Thor travelling through space in search of Galactus, and flipped back and forth between Asgard and Earth.
It would take George Lucas and his visual techies $200,000,000 to do what Kirby did with a $0.05 pencil.
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