I used to help out at some weekend comics courses arranged in relation to a comics convention, and once there was this kid, who had decided that the comic he'd been working on penciling was going to be inked all with a brush, even though he'd never inked with a brush before. I tried to show him how it was done, and told him he might consider using pens until he'd learnt how to use the brush (since he apparently was on a deadline).

He just looked at me and went back to smearing wobbly, thick ink lines over his pencils with a watercolor brush. He didn't even consider lightening up on the pressure he used on the brush.

I saw his comic later, when he had it printed up. Every page was badly inked with a brush.

Lots of stories like that, unfortunately. Too many people who don't listen. And we had seasoned comics professionals running the courses, too. I just helped out as a go-fer.

Here's what Alex Toth had to say about my first graphic novel, Table for One, which I break down as 'Dirty Harry as a waiter.'

P.S. Is it this hilarious, Knut?

It really, really is brilliant work, Anthony. Bosch is one of the best talents in the business.

Thanks, Anthony, Mike.

As a non-artist who's read comics for about a billion years, I find my artistic concerns can boil down to a couple of things when it comes to deciding whether or not I'm going to read a title:

1) Am I aware of having to 'work' to interpret an artist in situations where I shouldn't have to? To use two examples, I remember finding the Miller/Sienkiewicz Elektra: Assassin to be somewhat 'heavy lifting' when I first read it, but that heavy lifting worked within the context of the story.

I also remember finding the first issue of the Millar/Hitch Fantastic Four to be heavy lifting, but the work didn't derive from any stylistic or content-related difficulty of the text itself: I just couldn't follow the panel progression without giving myself a headache.

2) Does the artist's skill at layout and continuity sometimes make me read so fast that I have to go back and check over things later? I guess I'd call this 'artistic plotting skill.' There are lots of Kirby and Ditko and other artists' works that cause me to rollick through the story in question in much the same way that a gripping storyteller can sometimes cause me to skip over paragraphs in order to find out what's going to happen next.

In super-hero comics, I'd call this the most important skill (or set of skills). I don't care that much about the sometimes wacky distance between the legs of Kirby's male heroes: I do care that I can burn through 200 pages of Lee/Kirby FF in the time it take me to read 50 pages of a mediocre comic. Savouring the art of Kirby or Ditko (or Toth) is something I see as a second or third-time-through reading attribute.

Cheers, Jon

You can barely tell Johnny Quest is the hero of this. Anything but him's the center of attention. Maybe it's good for Steve Rude fans, but it's not very good for JQ fans (if there are any) and they're the ones that really matter in the strip. The camel is dull, it has it's head completely turned away from us.

As for the gun, I don't know much, but every game I played with an Assault Riffle, they are fired from the hip and it is a spray weapon you can hit multiple targets with it.  I guess it doesn't really matter, but it's nice to read fiction that contains some accurate facts.

I have to say I like that Toth has enough faith in the reader's intelligence when he said the reader will learn.