"One off" was thrown out as also referring to a project so I would certainly consider the Angel mini as a one off.  Even more when you mentioned it was meant to be read all together.  I enjoy seeing creators challenge themselves.  It's great when they actually succeed.  The 'pencils only' work adds more than it takes away for me in the angel mini.  The sideways book is a good memory.  I've seen some artists do the widescreen  panel layout and just feel (to me) like it was restricting while others used it and set up the shots to get the most from it.

I picked up The Flash Companion this week -- lots of fun art and interviews to be found inside. 

The Mark Waid interview confused me a bit. While remembering his run on the book he said...

"Even though Wally had been The Flash then for about six years, we continued to get pelted, month after month, with letters from fans demanding to know, "When's Barry really going to come back and get rid of this upstart?" Even John Byrne. I'd asked him at some point about perhaps doing a one-shot or something, and in his characteristically caustic way, he stood there in the halls of DC and proclaimed that he would be glad to draw The Flash as soon as the real one comes back."

Didn't JB draw The (Wally West) Flash during his Wonder Woman run? He's also has drawn him in JLA arcs...

Eric: Yeah, but I don't think he ever drew a solo Wally story.

--------------

That feels like splitting hairs...

It seems to me that JB doesn't have a problem drawing the character. Waid might be pushing the story a bit...

JB "stood there in the halls of DC and proclaimed..." Oh come on... 

If JB was that upset about it he wouldn't have used the character in any of his work.

That Mark Waid bit might be a commentary on Waid's caterwauling about bringing back the 'real' Superman. Somebody complaining about a replacement character (though I think the soul of Superman is preserved in JB's version of Superman and is thus not really a replacement), while at the same time writing a replacement character, and then asking the man who was responsible for what he's complaining about to do him a favor?

That doesn't sound like a good idea, does it? Or Waid could just be exaggerating an incident to make a better story and illustrate his point.

Brian: And he was one of the first artists to ever draw him as the Flash in LEGENDS. Other than CRISIS, had Wally/ Flash appeared anywhere before then?

--------------

I think you're right, Brian.

"How I Draw The Flash" by Carmine Infantino:

http://www.dialbforblog.com/archives/9/howidrawflash_big.gif

Now THAT looks like super speed!

"Will Eisner seemed to insist on breaking all rules while making new ones at the same time.  That was his rule."

Will Eisner "broke" rules about page breakdowns because those rules were adapted from comic strips/sunday pages where those rules were necessary and functional into comic books where they served no function at all.

He also drew in influences from theatre, film and various other art forms. As did the comic strips, but because the technical limitations and specifications of a comics page were different from a sunday page, they were realized in different ways.

The rules he broke, were broken for a reason. The same with Stan Lee and other innovators, they changed the rules because they found a way to improve the game. But a lot of people break the rules and end up producing utter crap because they broke the good rules.

Some people change the rules because they come up with better rules. Some people say they "break" the rules when the truth is they're just to dense to understand them. And some people follow in the footsteps of innovative rulechangers and take credit for "breaking" the rules too, while they're really just copying the new ones.