Shaenon Garrity, ladies and gentlemen. I knew I recognized that name from somewhere - she's a MODERN TALES webcomic creator. I used to have a comic over at sister site GRAPHIC SMASH.

I think we got off on the wrong foot. Alex Ross doesn't get a free pass here any more so than other creators - in fact, he's been criticized lately for his slavish attention to realism, warts and all. Do I really want my heroes to look so much like Alex Ross's art model in a wrinkly costume?

Anyway, Ross doesn't do monthly 22-page comic books, for good reason - his stuff takes a long time.

BTW, if Quitely went to advertising and missed a deadline, I doubt they'd give him a free pass. He'd be out on his ass.

Who cares? Why waste money on shit artwork by Quitely? This dude gets more buzz on less work than any other professional in history and his ability is so sub-par it is laughable. I get it that he is KEWL because Morrison says so and the fanboys fall in line like good little drones and parrot the hype they are told to repeat and buy what they are told to buy....because Wizard magazine says the guy is the shit...

Lifeless, flat and dull would be the best way to describe the guys work.. He is not a genius or a Frazetta or Adams who warrents our awe and admiration..he is hte new flash in the pan. I have seen the guys work in X-men and Authority and it is not that good...certainly not at all deserving of the accolades this guy gets. The Superman pages we have seen are nothing groundbreaking or innovative by any stretch of the imagination... I have seen more dynamic and better storytelling and anatomy from Sal Buscema who gets no love from the hip Wizard crowd.

If this premaddonna is getting a career and perks handed to him because he has some endeared himself to Morrison and Morrison is gonna set him up then that is something Morrsion has been able to fanaggle.... Certainly this guy who was fired from the X-men can't obtain work without having his gorilla in the room "buddy" to get him work.

Welcome to the world of its "Who you know, not your ability that gets you anywhere" This guys work is dull as dishwater... I'll take Neal Adams or Alex Ross over him anyday at least they produce art that is exiting and competent.

Like the All-Star Batman which is crap this will sell like hotcakes the EVENT and HYPE has already captured the audience they knew they could grab.. what is interesting is that this hyped up gimmick is all they can do to get the "fans" exiited and the sales an this thing aren't going to crack what the top sales are of the top book now so they arent getting anyone new just selling to the same 50,000 fans..... They better have a gimmick like this for everybook because all of this fabricated "exitement" and hype just makes it look like all their other books are total crap and undermines the sales of all their other books just to pay these "Schlock errr Rock star creators to pump out a few books and spike up sales for a little while...

C'mon, Eric, tell us what you really feel! ;-)

Jokes aside, I agree with your message, if not your tone....

QUOTE: I get it that he is KEWL because Morrison says so and the fanboys fall in line like good little drones and parrot the hype they are told to repeat and buy what they are told to buy....because Wizard magazine says the guy is the shit...

Do you honestly believe he's buoyed only by hype? That he actually managed to trick the guys at the Eisner Awards? That Neil Gaiman selected him alongside luminaries like P. Craig Russell, Milo Manara, and Bill Sienkiewicz because WIZARD talked the guy up?!

And...has WIZARD even talked the guy up? He's hardly the kind of artist they usually fawn over the way they do with the Jim Lees and Mike Turners of the industry - the glitzy types. DC is actually taking quite a risk with Quitely, more of a Vertigo-type artist, precisely because he's not traditionally commercial. He's liked in what I guess you might call hipster circles, but I was managing a shop during the NEW X-MEN years and let me tell you: Quitely is not a fan-fave by any stretch of the imagination. For good or ill, folks like their superheroes very pretty and Quitely just doesn't do the glam thing.

Trust me, even if WIZARD is on the Quitely bandwagon to be a good little PR tool, his artwork is probably as controversial among fans as Sienkiewicz's in the NEW MUTANT days.

QUOTE: That's the best Kordey picture I have ever seen in my entire life. Very pretty and very detailed.  But I've got some X-treme X-Men books sitting around that look so much worse than that it is not even funny.

It's well-known that Kordey was brought in to knock out a lot of X-Men material in a pinch because he's fast, and even he's acknowledged the hurried look on some of them. Personally, I could still see all his strengths beneath the rough veneer and immediately recognized a strong draftsman. And in fact, I liked the rough veneer. Thought it fit some of the darker beats Morrison was writing and even on a basic aesthetic level...I just thought it looked good. YMMV. 

I've mentioned Bill Sienkiwicz in this thread, and I'll mention him again here because time has elevated his stature among fans, even those who don't like his more exaggerrated moments. And yet I've got a friend who actually thinks he's a poor artist, says it looks like his stuff was "drawn with a rake." Guy's a lifelong comic reader and there's no accounting for taste, but he's also a guy who's never formally studied art, so he misses a lot of what makes Sienkiewicz great, evaluating him purely on a surface level ("Why's Cannonball's head look so weird?"). I feel that Kordey's been the victim of similar assessments, judged even more harshly because he had the bad luck to be called to pinch-hit in the middle of the most high-profile X-Men run in a decade.

I take some solace in the fact that lots of folks still don't get Kirby, either.

QUOTE: I still think Quitely and 98% of what I've seen of Kordey is poor art.

I'd let that kind of assessment stand if it was more specific ("poor superhero art" at least) or if it laid down some specifics (is the anatomy bad? the perspective? the storytelling? anything beyond the fact that these artists have quirks of style that don't glamorize their characters?)

QUOTE: As far as as storytelling goes, what the heck is going on in those two pages you posted?

The Quitely image I think is pretty clear, though I've never read that story. Looks like Batman glides into some place, pokes around for clues, gets spotted, throws a batarang into the spotter's flashlight, and then confronts him.

The Kordey image I picked probably wasn't the best when it comes to championing his storytelling, though. It's from his recent series for IDW - SMOKE - and appears to be a montage of overlapping scenes with no moment-to-moment storytelling to gauge. My bad, there. Great draftsmanship, but not a lot to go on for evaluating storytelling. Here's a more traditional page from a BATMAN/TARZAN book he did some ways back (the dialogue's in French, but it seems like a clearcut scene).

Here's a page, too, from a painted STAR TREK graphic novel Kordey did. No dialogue, but the storytelling looks clear, the craft excellent:

Interestingly, that image is cribbed from the site of Jim Warden, who also reps JB for original art. And Steve Rude, Mike Zeck, Paul Chadwick, Alan Davis, Carlos Pacheco, and many more.

With clients like that, y'think Jim would just take on any schmuck artist in the biz? Or maybe he's just been fooled like Neil Gaiman and the Eisner judges...

Ultimately, these is no way short of years upon years of artistic training and hard work to tell whether an artist is good, bad, or indifferent. It all comes down to "I like it". (With my years of training and hard work, I think Rob Liefeld is an appallingly bad artist. His success in the field indicates there are legions of people who disagree.)