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Andrew W. Farago
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 19 July 2005
Location: United States
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| Posted: 09 April 2014 at 9:51pm | IP Logged | 1
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Frank can afford not to work for DC, and apparently won't lose any sleep over it if he never draws Superman professionally. But if circumstances change, like if all of his kids decide to go to really expensive colleges, or if the people who keep hiring him for books at Marvel leave the company, or if one of his favorite writers really wants to see him on a Superman book...there's no shortage of people in comics who've worked on projects that they never thought they would.
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Joe Zhang
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Joined: 16 April 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 12857
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| Posted: 09 April 2014 at 10:32pm | IP Logged | 2
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To me, Superman embodies the superhero genre. So to some degree it does bother me that Frank Cho expresses such antipathy towards Superman. Sure, Frank Cho is a professional. As are the majority of the folks who work for Marvel and DC. They honor their contracts and do their best work. But its their flippancy, and sometimes outright disrespect for the genre that upsets me. Call me crazy ... I'm just a fan.
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Matt Reed
Byrne Robotics Security
Robotmod
Joined: 16 April 2004
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| Posted: 09 April 2014 at 10:46pm | IP Logged | 3
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You're taking a single comment and blowing it up to be emblematic of their attitude to the entire genre. Just because someone doesn't like Superman as much as a Superman fan does doesn't mean that they hold the same opinion of the entire genre. They've expressed their opinion on a single character (maybe two in the case of Cho and Batman) but that shouldn't be read as an indictment by them of every single character in the whole of superhero comics. If he comes out and says that, then feel free to make that statement but until such a time as he does then take it at face value instead of reading all sorts of things into his very specific statement about Superman.
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Matt Reed
Byrne Robotics Security
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Joined: 16 April 2004
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| Posted: 09 April 2014 at 10:55pm | IP Logged | 4
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John Byrne wrote:
| Here's where the line is for me: as has been already noted in this thread, I don't care for Thanos and actively dislike the Legion of Superheroes. But I've drawn both, the former in commissions, the latter in DC comics. What I haven't done is drawings of any of those characters in, shall we say, inappropriate situations. |
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Agreed. I find the image posted a page or two back with Batman hitting on a kid to be distasteful at best and downright disturbing at worst. It's the lowest potshot at the character, one that feels informed by only a casual reading of his tales as well as influenced by a certain sector that thinks the only way Batman could possibly care for his ward is if he was sexually attracted to him. Cho's opinion about Superman coupled with his reasoning for not working on the character suffer from how he's depicted those same characters in commissions, no matter that they were never meant for mass publication. It's not 1975. Commissions are generally readily available online via a number of different sites, so the notion that the work will only be seen by a handful of people in this day and age is naive at best.
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Tim O Neill
Byrne Robotics Security
Joined: 16 April 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 10937
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| Posted: 10 April 2014 at 12:08am | IP Logged | 5
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Stephen C: "Curious. Can statements like this as well as his commission work showing contempt for the character, hurt him as far as getting work?"
****
I think it helps him in the short term. He is clearly defining the kind of work he wants to do in a very public way - if it is the superhero genre, he's a Marvel guy through and through. And if not Marvel, then he does independent work. Statements like the one he makes in his blog endear him to the Marvel and independent comics crowd. I don't think it's a shrewd, calculated publicity move - he's just being honest. But it does help to define him to people like me, who only thought of him as the LIBERTY MEADOWS artist and little else.
But Andrew makes a very good point -- people's personal lives have a way of changing their outlook. And as he gets older, someone could do a different take on Superman that would appeal to him and change his opinion.
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Carmen Bernardo
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Joined: 08 August 2006
Location: United States
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| Posted: 10 April 2014 at 4:37am | IP Logged | 6
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I can hope that Frank Cho does get a little wiser as he gets older and has more experience in his field. Everyone has things that they've done casually in the past which may trouble them in hindsight. The question remains is if he's willing to walk back on his comments and try something that wasn't in his repertoire at the time.
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Stephen Churay
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Joined: 25 March 2009
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| Posted: 10 April 2014 at 5:27am | IP Logged | 7
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Carmen, Frank is in his 40's and been around for well over 15 years.
At this point he is who he is. Personally, I don't care which characters
he dislikes. Was just curious how making such a statement could
effect his future as a working artist. But, as Andrew said, at this point
in his career, he doesn't have to worry, at least about getting work
from DC. He doesn't really need them.
Edited by Stephen Churay on 10 April 2014 at 5:28am
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Carmen Bernardo
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| Posted: 10 April 2014 at 5:30pm | IP Logged | 8
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True. He has Marvel, and his Liberty Meadows stuff was pretty much a steady gig up until then. I guess I'm just kind of put off that he'd give off the answer that he gave in the interview linked to in the OP. It'd be okay to have an opinion like "I can't identify with Superman [for whatever reasons he could give], and I'm not interested in working with characters like that." It seems from some of our reactions that he got a bit snarky with the response.
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Eric Jansen
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Joined: 27 October 2013
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| Posted: 11 April 2014 at 4:54am | IP Logged | 9
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Though it was "only" an alternate version, I really liked his SHANNA mini-series from a few years ago (though it's clear that some here really hated it) and I thought Cho was going to start giving us some amazing stories after that. Well, he did some very nice art here and there, but no writing/art. Until a year or so ago with the first five issues of the new SAVAGE WOLVERINE--which was one of the stupidest, worst arcs I've ever read. It was dumb, made no sense, and I seriously hated the ending, which made me hate the whole thing.
It makes me think that either the SHANNA series was a fluke or everybody's right about it and I'm wrong.
When a creator says something really dumb, as in Cho's blog, perhaps it should serve as a warning that the creative work he puts out there might be really dumb as well and to avoid it at all costs.
Edited by Eric Jansen on 11 April 2014 at 4:56am
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