Morrison/Moore Tie Breaker Poll Thingumajig

From Hell wins, as the others all have their flaws (or are things I have not read).

The Invisibles gave me the most excitment as I was reading it month by month, but yeah, From Hell is the most perfect thing here.

From Hell the best thought-out, but that doesn't outweigh the delight of reading Doom Patrol or Swamp Thing issue by issue. Also it is wank.

LOTG is the only one of these I didn't read in singles. I agree with energy flash gordon - must remain faithful to the thrill-power experience. Still a pretty tough decision between DP and ST - the first issues of each I ever read had that unforgettable total WTF hooked-4-life vibe.

(My first issue of DP - the Yeowell one set mostly in the Ant Farm with extracts from "The New Mother" and the DP not even showing up until the last page)

(My first issue of Swamp Thing - penultimate American Gothic, a tour of the magical DCU from the perspective of an alcoholic superhero trying to read the mind of a formerly human bird attempting to wake the ultimate evil. And people say Final Crisis is confusing to 'new readers'!)

(The bird transformation scene in the previous issue is still probably the most horrifying thing I've ever read in a horror comic.)

It only took an instant, but that pretty much went to a Swamp Thing/Doom Patrol face-off (both winning through on childhood joy stakes) and then Doom Patrol took the mental crown.

But no Flex?

At first blush it's coming down to the two big statements about 'magic' for me - From Hell and The Invisibles. It occurs to me also that these kind of try to be each author's answer to "why do bad things happen to good people?" I'm not sure which answer I like better, and I think also they happen to have the best art of either author's work in the poll. This is gonna take a bit of a think.

Ah well, since We3 isn't an option, I went with From Hell.

No Flex and We3 because I only included the ones that got joint 1st place in their respective polls. This skews the poll to Moore a little, but on the other hand perhaps his vote will be more split.

Has to be Doom Patrol for the sheer bloody everything-ness of it, the range of stories and ideas and characters and the sense that anything could happen, while still being a thrill-powered people-in-tights and baddies-with-candles-for-heads type romp.

Swamp Thing I've always found completely unreadable -- does it get better once you're a dozen or so issues into it? -- but perhaps I missed reading it during that time in my life (i.e. being thirteen) when reading lots of overblown text boxes didn't seem a really boring idea.

Oh, when I was thirteen I thought overblown text boxes=good writing. As an adult reader it's the audacity and inventiveness of the plots that impress about Swamp Thing rather than the overcooked method of their telling.

From Hell is the only option on here (besides V for Vendetta) that doesn't have some egregiously shitty artwork at some point, and its certainly a more mature work than V so it wins.

well I guess LOG has solid artwork all the way through too - even so its slighter and not quite as impressive as From Hell.

I think DP is the only one with significant dips in the art. The artists on Invisibles and ST were all pretty solid!

ugh no the first volume of Invisibles gets pretty bad, I thought. so much so that I stopped reading it when it was coming out, and didn't come back to the series until it was almost over.

as for ST I loved the Bissette/Totleben stuff so much I was fairly disappointed by the considerably uglier veitch/alcala issues - altho they had their moments

Vol 1 of the Invisibles had a fine artist line-up. Yeowell, Jill Thompson and Phil Jiminez were the only ones who did big arcs, I think, and they're all good. Agreed about Bissette/Totleben being far superior to Veitch/Alcala - though you couldn't call the latter partnership actually bad.

Though IIRC, Yeowell's second chunk of vol 1 had very rushed-looking inks.

DOOM PATROL. If it were DOOM PATROL+FLEX, they would super-win. I can forgive any lapses in the art because I dearly love the characters so.

Now, ask me ten years ago, it would be SWAMP THING. But ya didn't.

god I haven't read any of these, wtf me

Yeowell, Jill Thompson and Phil Jiminez were the only ones who did big arcs, I think, and they're all good.

Jiminez only drew three issues, and while Thompson's second, self-inked short run was good, her longer original run with Dennis Cramer inks was really awful. The colouring was pretty dire on the first year, too.

I think Richard Case really rose up to the challenge of illustrating even the most surreal of Morrison's visions in Doom Patrol, but the rather standardish superhero colouring didn't always fit the series that well. If only DP would've had an equally dedicated colourist as Sandman had with Danny Vozzo.

For fuck's sake, Tuomas!

Translation: Tuomas, could you stop saying "superhero" for, say, a month? You don't seem to be using it for the same purpose as other people, which makes communication a little tricky. Also it would probably help you to think through your objections to things rather than just stamp it with "I associate this aspect with the THREE QUARTERS OF THE MEDIUM* that I don't pay much attention to".

*figure may be inaccurate

Hold on, why do you get so angry? I wasn't using "superhero" as a negative term here rather than a decriptive one. I think superhero colouring can fit superhero comics (including the more superheroish bits in DP) well, but it isn't necessarily well suited for more surreal parts in comics like Doom Patrol.

DESCRIBE WHAT YOU MEAN.

For example, take a look at the parts in the "Painting That Ate Paris" storyline where the characters travel through different levels in the painting done in different visual styles (impressionism, futurism, surrealism, etc). Case tries to change his pencils to make the comic adjust to those different styles, but he really would've needed more help from the colourist to make the effect more impressive.

(x-post)

I'm sorry, I thought "standard superhero colouring" was a term people would understand.

I actually almost quit The Invisibles midway through Vol. 1 too. And now... I just voted for it!

Haha, I looked at credits of the Doom Patrol books, and it seems they were actually coloured by Danny Vozzo. But his work with DP doesn't really seem as inspired as with Sandman... Or maybe it just didn't fit Case's pencilling?

I actually almost quit The Invisibles midway through Vol. 1 too.

I gave up on it after a couple of issues, then read a slightly later issue and realised it was G*R*A*T*E, then went back and bought all earlier issues. But I still voted for From Hell.

I was in a hotel room at the weekend from which I could see Christchurch Spitalfields. Helltastic.

Finally went for Invisibles just for the excitment of that first couple of years.

Haha, I looked at credits of the Doom Patrol books, and it seems they were actually coloured by Danny Vozzo.

This is what I was shouting about! Last week you were claiming that Sandman was painted by Michael Zulli when it was actually computer-coloured by Danny Vozzo, and now you're complaining that Doom Patrol was done on colour guides by someone else instead of being computer-coloured by Danny Vozzo, when it ACTUALLY WAS COMPUTER-COLOURED BY DANNY VOZZO. Who got the job on Sandman because of his work on Doom Patrol!!

Down here we would say "Tommy's just talkin' out the side'a his neck."

Anway, despite the name confusion, my main point was that colouring on DP isn't particularly good. I was merely using Vozzo's work on Sandman as an example of colouring that fits a particular comic well. So maybe Vozzo got better later on, or maybe his style just didn't fit Doom Patrol, who knows.

I guess (computer) colouring and colour printing techniques in mainstream comics also got better throughout the 90s... Vozzo's work in the later Sandman issues certainly looks more nuanced than in DP.

The colouring on Doom Patrol is fucking amazing for 1989. Name some contemporary DC comics that look better.

I guess (computer) colouring and colour printing techniques in mainstream comics also got better throughout the 90s...

Considering that Doom Patrol was THE FIRST MONTHLY COMIC EVER COLOURED ON COMPUTER, you would hope that at least one better example came out in the next eleven years!

(actually I do think he got worse or slacker on DP as the years went by (and presumably he was being pushed to spend a lot more time on Sandman) but I haven't pulled them out in years so I unfortunately don't have anything specific to say)

The colouring on Doom Patrol is fucking amazing for 1989. Name some contemporary DC comics that look better.

Ronin, Watchmen, DKR, Enigma, V for Vendetta, etc... I think all of these have a colouring that fits the drawings better than Vozzo's colouring in DP does. I'm not saying the colouring in DP is bad or anything, just very generic for the era, so I don't think it supports Case's strong sides as well as it could have.

sorry, should have specified monthly.

[Ronin: really does suit the art well, shame about lots of the art and pretty much the entire content. DKR: excellent yes but a painted special project with months of lead time. Enigma is five years later, doesn't count (and IIRC is plagued by Vertigo Brown? have not read since it came out though, I've only got the first three issues I think). V For Vendetta: one of the most sensitive colourisation jobs evar but still a tragedy compared to the original]

The computer colourisation of the Epic Akira reprints was a bit of a big deal at the time, no? I think that might've been Vozzo as well.

I didn't really read montly DC titles back then, so it's hard to say. I do remember liking the colouring in JLI and Swamp Thing, but it's been ages since I read those, so maybe my memories are wrong. But even if DC didn't have a monthly title with better colouring than DP in 1989, that doesn't necessarily mean the colouring in DP is good, does it?

(xx-post)

Enigma came out in 1993, the same year Morrison's run on DP ended. I guess it is a bit unfair to compare it to DP thgh, since it was a miniseries too and not a monthly title.

Wasn't two thirds of V for Vendetta released by DC and done in colour to begin with? So only 1/3 of it was colourized after the fact. I haven't seen the original version though, but I do agree it would probably look better in black & white.

It was only the last third which didn't originally appear in Warrior.

Epic's Akira was Steve Oliff. And yeah, is also an astoundingly non-shit job of colourising.

FOUR years later for Enigma then!

V was all drawn in the same style of all shadows/no lines, so probably would have all looked as good in B&W as the first two books did. (Also the original artist working on and supervising the colourising goes a long way towards being sensitive to the original artist's intent.)

[Incidentally and just because it's relevant to the poll, if From Hell had been collected as a movie tie-in by a big corporate entertainment giant in the mid-90s, +he art!st would have been blithely happy for it to be colourised by in-house staffers.]

It's possible if I went back to read DP now I would be let down at how badly the colouring has aged, but it was definitely fantastic by the standards and technical capabilities of the time. IE it may not be good compared to Acme Novelty Library #17, but I'm pretty sure it's still actually good by its own standards.


(I'm now responsible for leaping aboard a Tuomas Derail Express and confidently steering it even deeper into the fields though, so without actual issues to refer to I shut up.)

I don't think it's derailing to talk about colouring in certain comic books in a thread where were supposed to poll said comic books.

Like I said, it's not that I think the colouring in DP is bad or anything, and it's perfectly possible it couldn't have been done much better given the time and budgetary limitations of a monthly title, but it's still the main thing that makes DP look worse to me than the other comics in this poll. (Except maybe Swamp Thing, I need to reread it.)

I like Richard Case.

Swamp thing, now and forever.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Landslide!

As pointed out, this crowd favors the Mozzer just a wee tad.

What are you talking about, the Invisibles came third!