Eye Candy vs Eye Poison

I reckon David R is dead wrong. I rate JLA realy highly, despite my regard for Howard Porter's ranging from apathy to dislike.

I think Priest's official line is that he & Bennett are creative soulmates [see The Crew (RIP) for more love], while Bart just wasn't on the same page due to some failings in the script - I think Priest is being way too kind (or he prefers turning the other cheek to planting a boot betwixt them), but so be it.

Re: Andrew's x-post: I reckon I'm dead wrong, too, if you reduce things to absolutes (which I did for the sake of space). I say "writers win!" in that other thread along w/ everyone else, and I'll stand by that, but I think artists cover the spread more often than not & make bookies happy.

2) HOWEVER, there are times when bad art does ruin decent to great writing. For example, there was a time when I was enjoying reading old Hellblazers and current Mike Carey titles (Lucifer, My Faith in Frankie) so I said, "hey, why am I not reading current Carey on Hellblazer?" I picked up an issue in the low #190s and OH MY EYES. The art was so bad that I just couldn't give a shit about the story, which was probably fine. See also: the penultimate issue of the Invisibles.

3) ON THE THIRD HAND, really cool art can sometimes stand on its own. For ex., the much-maligned WOLVERINE: SNIKT! mini-series that featured aweome dystopian manga goth-Wolvie and no story or dialogue whatsoever. This was just fine with me and most of my friends. I'm also (post-poll) interested in reading Elektra: Assassin just for the art.

Sean Phillips was ace! He stuff was just weird enough. One of my favourite Hellblazer stories was, probably mid-20s, when JC winds up in a junkyard fighting a possessed dog. Wait, that was Steve Pugh!

Sean Phillips did the awesome laundromat story. The one-off Hellblazers were always the best, because JC works better without context, as Rod Serling with more bile.
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* Making it hard to tell characters apart (Byrne has this problem lately -- i.e. the last 10-15 years -- whenever people aren't in costume; there are others who are worse, though, and it's the bane of bad art in backup stories in annuals) or, in the case of characters the writer expects me to recognize immediately, making them unrecognizable (there was an FF story a few years ago I had to read twice because I wasn't sure who the people in it were!);

* Confusing, ridiculous, and otherwise problematic layout;

* Muddiness or sketchiness that makes it hard to pick up on details -- the problem with a lot of Golden Age reprints, in my experience (bearing in mind I've never bought one of the expensive DC Archive editions);

* Over the top whatthefuckism, like when Liefeld draws Cable with an extra pair of biceps, or when Liefeld draws the Hulk with ridges of washboard abs on his back, or when Liefeld draws a woman with breasts that aren't simply improbably sized, they're not even shaped like breasts, or when Liefeld draws.

I guess the common theme there is that if something is drawn so badly that I can't tell what's going on -- or if it just doesn't jibe with the writing, to the same effect -- then it's not going to matter how good the writing is.

I agree with Tep about needing to tell what's going on. Every now and then I can forgive though, like the last issue of Bullseye where Steve Dillon drew the FBI agent and young Bullseye EXACTLY the same, but I laughed it off because his storytelling/characterization is otherwise crystal clear.

Jim Aparo is great for drawing EVERYONE, man, woman, child, with the same face! I love it.

Jordan is calling out Andy Kubert!

Actually, I don't mind him so much (his work seems to give a general glossy impression of 'fancy' art while possibly not being very good on a more detailed level), but my girlfriend HATES HIM.

Vindication!

Okay, I think I usually think about this not in terms of bad or good art, but in terms of a perfect fit. The point isn't art being quantitatively good or having the maximum number of shading lines *or* telling a story well, but about it "translating" the specific story at hand. For ex--Mark Lark in Gotham Central or Maleev in Daredevil. These aren't really "beautiful" styles. You can't detach them from the stories, but they fit pretty well.

Morrison and Quitely are the perfect match, for example--just like Anna Karenin and Godard, Maggie Cheung and Wong Kar Wai, etc. I think Quitely's draws the way GMO "sees" his concepts: quirky, semi-deformed, but sleak, cool in a reflective, campy, subtext-free way, but also elegant. When Quitely draws, I fee like GMO writes better.

However, I actually liked Howard Porter and Igor Kordey on those issues. (Thumbs down on everyone else, esp Ethan Scrivener.) Porter's thick-outlined cartooniness is perfect for those faux-silver age stories.

Anyways, I think what people see as great comics usually have this perfect coupleness: Ennis and Dillon, Moore and Gibbons and Lloyd. Say what you will about Marvels and Kingdom Come--only Alex Ross could've captured that level of grandeur/pompous fatuousness.