Looking at JB's work from the late 70's, 80's, one could argue that his work has changed. But one has to take into account: INKERS. Austin inks much differently than Kesel, Kesel much differently than Williams and so on.

Did JB's work change? Maybe, maybe not. Did he get better? Hells Yes.

Michael Golden doesn't draw Acroyear today like he did in the late 70's or 80s. Is is worse? Nope. It's fine work.

Does Jim Lee draw Wolverine any different than he did in the mid 90s? Not to my eye. He's pretty consistent. Some artists change. Some seem not to. But it doesn't LESSEN the skills involved.

There've been comments in this thread and others that Kirby's style weakenend over time, but maybe, he made different artistic decisions that fans didn't agree with? Isn't THAT possible? Instead of 'His old stuff was better' isn't a fair way to state your fan dissatisfaction..I LIKED his previous work better?

JB:
"To this extent I find myself somewhat jealous of artists I perceive as more or less stagnant. They "locked" into a style early on, and stuck with it. Their fans never have to deal with change. My fans have to deal with it constantly. As an artist, I fear stagnation far more than I fear losing readers!"

One artist that I feel locked into a style is the ever reliable Sal Buscema.  When I first started collecting, Sal was THE Marvel artist to me.  Sure, there were others that were new and innovative.  Starlin was Mr. Cosmic.  Adams was a rare treat when his work showed up.  A couple of new guys called Byrne and Perez were making me notice their work, but Sal was the one I could count on to always be on model, no matter what characters he was working on.  And his style hasn't changed much over the years.  It's still great.

"For Larsen or anyone else to question his impact because there aren't enough people running around copying him now is insane. It's also ignorant since there are numerous examples that could be thrown out there if one were inclined to be so crass. "

Now, to be fair, when we're talking about how influential an artist is, the issue of how many people are "copying" him is relevant. It is much easier to judge who a person's influences are in terms of rendering and superficial aspects of the work.  Which is why it's easy to trace how Kirby has influenced Larsen, Ladronn, Frenz and Timm. It is easy to tell that Neal Adams has influenced JB, Sienkiewicz and quite a few others. Or that Josè Muñoz influenced Keith Giffen.

And it's also why it's diffiicult to judge from modern George Perez just how influenced he was by Kirby or from modern Frank Miller just how influenced he was by Gil Kane. Or from later Kirby just how influential Milton Caniff was to his artistic development.

Sometimes influences are so assimilated that it's diffiicult for an untrained eye to spot. Or it's difficult to see if one doesn't see the full picture from the start of a person's professional development until the end. Comic Art history carries with it many surprise. Not the least of which is a person's own estimations of what is or is not an influence.

Personally, although I'm still an amateur artist, I am heavily influenced by JB. Not in rendering or superficial aspects (I wish I had the kind of skill where that was even an option), but in how I choose to pose or stage my figures.  And I think with JB's changing styles, that is the one thing that most of his fans take from his work. If you have a different surface style over a JB influenced staging, it's not necessarily obvious how influenced you are by him.

I'm not sure how to judge whether Gil Kane or Joe Kubert (to cite two obvious examples) became "looser" as they got older, as their 50's and 60's work is often inked by others while their looser 80's stuff tends to be listed as being inked by them. Kubert looks a lot looser in the 1970's and 1980's. So does Kane. But I haven't seen their pencils for their Green Lantern and Hawkman stuff from the Silver Age, so I don't really know. I do know that when Kane was inking himself, his characters often looked like they were all wearing eye-shadow, but that's neither here nor there.

Gene Colan's a good example of an artist who seems very tight and straightforward in his 1960's and 1970's work but who, certainly by the time of Night Force, can often be pretty wild and wooly when it comes to anatomy, perspective and a variety of other things. And being inked by others doesn't seem to fix this (well, maybe it does -- again, I haven't seen the pencils).

I'm not sure that Bill Sienkiewicz is a good example of an artist getting rougher or looser -- his stylistic change from Neal Adams clone to wild, Ralph Steadmanesque cartoonist is such an abrupt and major one, and the work in that later period often so detailed and yet so stylistically unusual for comics of the time (see: Elektra: Assassin) that I'd say the "looser" stuff is actually the more detailed, richer material with all the collages, shifts from cartooning to painting to collage and what-have-you, and all that stuff.

Cheers, Jon