If you study my first post very, very carefully, you made detect the subtle reference to the fact that this cover represents a pet peeve of mine. I would have posted that cover if Neal himself had drawn it -- tho that would have made me extremely sad.

QUOTE:  QUOTE: Do Not start deliberately negative threads. Don't post just to bash. How is this not a deliberately negative thread, started just to bash an artist's drawing? I ask not because I'm judging, but because I honestly don't understand the distinction.

But, anyway, I feel really sorry for you, suffering your way thru the awful threads in this forum. Let me make it all better!

As for the two covers at the beginning of the thread...

The first is a really nice picture... I'm glad Dick posed for that one.

The second... how did the photographer get that shot? It looks like Batman doesn't even notice the "camera" is there, he's just ... being Batman, naturally, without any outside influence. Is he slinking back into the shadows? Coming out of them? Hanging his head because he failed to save someone? Looking down at a clue? What happens next? Where does that moment come into the story? He's clearly doing something, and clearly not paying attention to the guy taking the camera shot - that guy doesn't matter, whatever Batman's doing matters.

I'd like to read that second comic.

I just don't get a lot of the more modern comic artists.

There seems to be this idea of making things realistic, and having everyone look like an actor, or a guy/girl as they would dress in a real life super hero outfit,i.e. me going to a fancy dress party as Batman.

When did Tony Stark go from being Tony Stark to being Tom Cruise as Tony Stark.

This post may be off the mark, but it's something I just had to get out...

It leads to odd little quirks, too. Over-literalization. Take that first image, the cover on the left. Is this really a giant Batman, or Batman standing over a model city (a la FF236)? If no to both, why the upcast shadow?

I also think there are a great deal of artists now who cannot tell a story (and this is a problem I saw in a lot of Marvel books in the 1990's), but instead think drawing sketches of characters in cool poses can substitute for it.

As Frank Miller said in an interview on the Daredevil DVD:

Comics should be constantly moving, they can't slow down or stop. A comic book artist has to be extremely clever to slow a reader down. A comic book story moves through time.

The page JB posted has long been among my favorites

___________________

It's such a wonderful page. The last panel with Gordon laughing is pure gold. That is really an image worth a thousand words.

One of the most recurrent compliments I have received for my current STAR TREK stuff at IDW is how well I have captured the feel of the original series. That has a lot to do with drawing lots and lots of panels of people sitting, standing, walking, and only occasionally running, jumping and hitting. It's my job to make the "dull" scenes interesting -- which is what TOS did.