Episode 1628 Talkback - Top 5 Underappreciated Creators
Adam_Murdough
Posts: 506
Our old friend Ian Levenstein of the Comic Timing podcast joins us to talk about a triply-tremendous Top Five topic of his own devising! It's our opportunity to show a little extra love and recognition to a few writers and artists whom we feel have been overlooked and/or misunderstood by fandom at large. Totally subjective, of course, but totally satisfying! Don't miss it! (1:55:34)
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5) Gerard Jones
You guys want to talk underappreciated ’90s writers? You can have Chuck Dixon, John Ostrander, and Fabian Nicieza. I'll take Gerard Jones. Dixon and Ostrander were solid writers who wrote some really good stories, but neither of them could have written something like Green Lantern: Mosaic. His Martian Manhunter and Elongated Man miniseries were both outstanding as well.
4) Kyle Baker
When people talk about black creators, Dwayne McDuffie and Christopher Priest usually get mentions (and rightfully so), but for some reason Kyle Baker seems to often get overlooked. Maybe because he usually does his own thing. Maybe because he often does humor work, and rarely does superheroes. Maybe because he changes his drawing style so often. But the guy is not only one of the best artists in the business, he’s also one of the best writers.
3) Colleen Coover
Another writer/artist of immense talent, but because she doesn’t make superhero comics she often gets ignored. Seriously, if you haven’t read Bandette, go do so right now. It will charm the hell out of you. She’s been around for a while now, and has a lot of great work in her catalog.
2) Paul Grist
Another writer/artist, but one who does do superheroes, albeit in a somewhat quirky style all his own. Kane, Jack Staff, Mud Man—they’re all fantastic fun. I can only assume it’s his rather cartoony style that’s kept him from becoming a star.
1) Dick Briefer
I have to throw in at least one Golden Ager, and I can think of no better choice than Briefer. Yet another writer/artist, he could work in any genre, but his absolute best work was the humorous take on Frankenstein’s monster. Not only is it some of the best work to come out of the Golden Age, I think it’s some of the best work the industry has ever produced. Briefer should be spoken about in the same breath as Carl Barks and Walt Kelly.
Yeah, that’s right. I didn’t include Bob Oksner. I talk about him all the time on this forum, so I just put him on my alternate list:
Bob Oksner
Owen Fitzgerald
Ramona Fradon
Sam Glanzman
Frank Bellamy (he gets love in the UK, but not here)
Alan Grant
Bret Blevins
Guy Davis
Tom Fowler
Tyler Crook
I could go on and on, but I'll keep it to the first ten that popped into my head.
Yeah, I went there.
I've been wanting for some time to buy one or two of those "Roy Thomas Presents" hardcovers of Dick Briefer's Frankenstein comics that I keep seeing in the Previews catalogs. Based on your forceful endorsement, maybe I'll add one to my Christmas list.
BUT NOW, Mr. Nolen-Weathington: in the Election Day spirit of finger-pointing and fractious partisanship, may I inquire as to exactly which of our selections... "interested" you? >:(
I think Fabian Nicieza is appreciated just about exactly right. As is Sal Velluto. They’re the kind of creators that, when you mention their names, people go, “Oh, yeah. He was alright. He did that thing I read that was pretty good.” And that’s pretty much how I see them.
And I feel like there’s been a recent wave of nostalgia for Bill Mantlo’s work. Five, ten years ago I would have said he was underappreciated. Now I kind of feel he’s actually overappreciated.
Sholly Fisch I thought was interesting in a good way. His work rarely wows me, but it never lets me down either. I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised you picked him, but I was.
I also loved Chase, even though it ended not with a bang, but a whimper. But can you underappreciate someone who was only in the industry for so short a period? I guess, but he gave us such a small sample size on which to judge him. Comics writing is a marathon, not a sprint.
But to get things back to the positive, I loved the more obscure picks of Eric Shanower (love Age of Bronze), Adam Warren (became a fan from his Gen-13 run), Tom Peyer, Gene Day (check out his indie work for Star*Reach), and E. Nelson Bridwell.
But, yes, do pick up the Frankenstein hardcovers. The horror version is good, and the humor version (which comes in the middle of the series) you will love.
Had he and his run on the character been appreciated further, then perhaps that would have not been the case, and we'd still be seeing his take on characters, possibly even Chase, today.
I presented this topic idea knowing wholeheartedly it would be VERY subjective, because underappreciated is all up to what an individual has read, enjoyed, and doesn't see his fellow comic fans gushing about the way he or she does. Personally, I think @wildpigcomics, @Adam_Murdough and I did a good job of varying our choices, and there were definitely a few I had not checked out that I am now absolutely looking forward to researching and reading more of.
I'm glad at least a few of the ones on our lists resonated with you, @nweathington, if not all of them, and hope you enjoyed the episode as a whole even if it had a few "interesting" choices for ya.
None of the picks made me shake my head in disgust or anything. :D There were just a few that I wouldn't even consider for my alternates. That’s part of what makes it fun.
My thoughts. It was a really fun episode. I know these lists are subject to change. I'm in @nweathington 's camp. I kind of think both Bill Mantlo and Fabian Nicieza have become slightly overrated in the last few years.
He was the perfect choice to adapt visually stunning works like The Dark Crystal and Krull for Marvel. His adaptation of Redwall really helped to bring Brian Jacques' vivid and imaginative storytelling to life on the page.
I also consider him to be one of the definitive New Mutants artists.
I'm surprised nobody mentioned J.M. DeMatteis yet. I rarely hear any of his work discussed other than Kraven's Last Hunt and his Spectacular Spider-Man and Justice League runs. Even Moonshadow seems to have faded into obscurity. He's accumulated an impressive and diverse body of work over many decades, however. Some of my personal favorites include Brooklyn Dreams, The Life and Times of Savior 28, Mercy, the Adventures of Augusta Wind, his tragically unfinished Abadazad stories, and, more recently, his runs on Justice League Dark and both volumes of Justice League 3000.
A few other names I'd throw in would be Todd Dezago, Evan Dorkin, Paul Jenkins, and Ron Marz.
Finally, @i_am_scifi , nice pick on The Luna Brothers. Jonathan's most recent book from a few years back, Alex + Ada, was an interesting read. If you haven't checked it out yet, I recommend it.
I have, and really enjoy Baker's Plastic Man run, but didn't know his career was so varied. Need to check out more of his stuff.
I love Ramona Fradon.
Todd’s a pretty good friend of mine, and I wish he got enough work to make comics his full-time job again. His sensibilities about what makes for a good, fun comic are very much in line with my own, and comics could use more voices like his.
Evan is one of those guys with a strong cult following (of which I am a part—I even have every issue of Pirate Corp$/Hectic Planet), who will probably never break free from that. But for those who pigeonhole him as “the funny guy”, just read Beasts of Burden to see his range as a writer.
Plastic Man is probably my second-least favorite thing Kyle has done. That’s not an indictment on Plastic Man, but praise for the rest of his catalog. You want to talk about his range as a comic creator, go read The Cowboy Wally Show, and then go read Nat Turner. Come to think of it, you should go read those books even if you don’t want to talk about his range.
5. Michael Golden: Golden's utterly unique artwork brought something new and refreshing to Marvel's house style of the late 70's and early 80's. His very brief stints (sometimes only a single issue) on a very eclectic range of titles only added to the mystique of his work.
4. Mike W. Barr: Great writing on a very diverse range of titles, from the more mature-skewing Camelot 3000 to fun, straight-forward adventure titles like Batman & The Outsiders.
3. Joe Sinnott: Writers and pencillers often get all the spotlight, but I've gotta sing the praises of Joe, an inker supreme who brought a polish and spirit to everything he touched. His greatest accomplishment, in my opinion, was providing a strong sense of visual continuity to Marvel's flagship title The Fantastic Four. His inks over the diverse styles of pencillers like Kirby, Buscema, Buckler, Perez, Pollard, Byrne, and Frenz made the FF title feel like one massive, sweeping epic, rather than a series of disparate, unrelated storylines.
2. Bob Haney: At one time dismissed by a great percentage of comics fans as a maverick eccentric who rarely played by ever-tightening continuity rules, its that very same quality that's inspired me to seek out more and more of his work. In today's highly choreographed and predictable comic book universes, the gonzo, go-for-broke sensibility of Bob Haney's Brave and the Bold or Super Sons stories are a refreshing rediscovery...offering more entertainment per square inch than a hundred of today's rather self-important, glacially-paced offerings.
1. Curt Swan: Though Curt is often acknowledged as a masterful illustrator, he never really gets the credit he so richly deserves for defining and expanding not only the look of Superman himself, but his vastly expanded mythos from the Silver Age onward. For almost 30 years, Curt populated countless cities, alien worlds, time periods, and dimensions with a bewildering array of heroes, villains, costumes, buildings, vehicles, creatures and gadgets. Infusing it all was a nobility, an elegance, and a spirit that made it uniquely and unmistakably Curt. His Superman, in all his gently paternalistic glory, will always be my Superman.
Michael is widely recognized as one of the most influential artists of his generation (touted loudly as such by Todd McFarlane and Art Adams among others), Joe is well loved and respected as being one of the cornerstones of the Marvel’s Silver (and Bronze) Age, and Curt Swan is many a fan’s definitive Superman artist, though I suppose he may be starting to slip into the mists of time a bit.
So how did you go about making your list? For mine I went with the people who I felt had the largest gap between their talent and their recognition from fans. Who were some of the creators you considered and then rejected?
Probably best-known for his work with Joshua Hale Fialkov, on Elk’s Run & Tumor, Tuazon does not have a large body of comics work—his day-job is with Nelvana animation—but what he’s done (including The Broadcast from NBM) has been fantastic. Tuazon’s style is very loose, but he manages to convey subtle body language with his linework, and the moodiness of his black and white art has definitely added to the stories he’s helped tell.
- Scott Morse
Morse is one of my all-time favorite comic creators, and yet he does not seem to get the attention I feel he deserves. Certainly, part of that could be his similarly small output—with his day-job at Pixar taking up the bulk of his creative time—but his work can be so impactful, that I feel it is deserving of a wider audience. Morse utilizes an animation style that is “cartoony” and, on its surface, appears innocent and playful, hearkening back to the Saturday cartoons I (we) watched. But Morse manages to upend expectations by tackling very serious topics in a mature fashion—his examination of depression and suicide in The Barefoot Serpent is a prime example of this—that, when coupled with his cartoony style allows the weightier themes to resonate far more strongly than if he’d rendered the story in a more traditional manner.
- Joshua Hale Fialkov
Fialkov is a writer who seems to fly under the radar, possibly because he’s done very little work for the “Big Two,” and was one of the creators who publicly walked away from DC’s New 52 initiative. But his work on The Bunker and Echoes and Tumor, along with many other books, is so intelligent, while remaining emotionally grounded, with interesting characters and big ideas, that I wonder why he doesn’t get more “press.” Of course, he did manage to land a writing spot on TV this past year, so maybe it’s just that the “mainstream” comics world isn’t noticing his work.
- Colleen Doran
Doran started drawing professionally while still a teenager. She has done work for Marvel and DC, as well as many other publishers, but it’s often on obscure titles or for small runs (though, for a long time now, her work has been focused on original graphic novels such as Gone to Amerikay and Orbial). Her magnum opus, A Distant Soil, is still unfinished, but it is one of the best-written science fantasy titles you’ll ever read, and it is also one of the most beautifully drawn ones as well. Doran’s linework is so clean and beautiful, that I’m surprised she never really took off as a superstar artist, but maybe that’s due to her personal choices rather than fan response. I’d like to think so.
- Ann Nocenti
She was one of the most irreverent and fun writers in comics, when I started collecting in the early 1980s, and when Nocenti took a hiatus from comics, I really missed her work. I know in recent years she’s done some new work—with the New 52, I think—but I don’t know that it’s caught on. For me, and I know this is probably blasphemy, Nocenti wrote my all-time favorite run of Daredevil, when she and JRJr and Al Williamson worked on the title, soon after “Born Again” from Miller and Mazzucchelli. Nocenti infused the title not only with fun and superheroics, but she also made it exciting because you didn’t know where she might go with the book. Daredevil goes to hell to fight Mephisto, for crying out loud, and as corny as it sounds, it works (doesn’t hurt that the Silver Surfer shows up and Romita, Jr. draws the hell out of it all).
-chris
I don't see any call from Adam for us to debate and/or defend our choices. I'm not interested in proving that one, two, or all of my choices are truly under appreciated or obscure enough for inclusion. Not quite understanding the scrutiny you're applying to my subjective choices. Weird.
I do love Scott Morse’s work, and I would definitely put him on my list of alternates. I got a great sketch from him in San Diego one year when I picked up Spaghetti Western at his booth. Going back to Kyle Baker and Plastic Man, I thought Morse’s fill-in issues were easily the best issues of the series.
I see Colleen as someone who gets a lot of respect around the industry and among fans, but who doesn’t have a very large following. I don’t see her as being underappreciated as an artist, but I do think she’s underappreciated as a writer, if that makes sense.
I wouldn’t say the Nocenti/JR Jr. run on DD was my absolute favorite, but I do love it. (I’d probably put it behind the Miller/Mazzucchelli run, and just behind the Waid/Rivera run, but that’s just me). And that run—probably because it was such a change in direction from Miller—doesn’t get nearly the attention I think it deserves. Her Catwoman miniseries was pretty good too. Another one for my alternate list.