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Brett Booth on Batman/Superman in November
AlexanderBenjamin
Posts: 163
It is really frustrating that Jae Lee was making such an elegant look for this book along with some backup from Ben Oliver who is another great artist. Now the art of Brett Booth is going to completely alienate fans of this title, it is really frustrating. He belongs on a title like Nightwing or Teen Titans and lately has been given work that just does not suit his style of pencilling. WHY CAN'T ARTISTS JUST STAY ON BOOKS!
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1) The artist is too damn slow. The day when the average comic artist could turn out two or three books a month is gone. That was Kirby speed. That was Professional speed. Today's artists draw so detailed -- and a lot creep so close to photorealism -- that it's just not that possible for them to get the pages done by the projected deadline.
2) The artist has been trying to get off the damn book for months and has finally nailed the assignment he has always wanted -- and which you probably never wanted to see. Artists don't always get the books they want but chug along on assignments on other titles in order to pay the bills. But as soon as they can get that one dream assignment, the one title or character they've always wanted to work on -- well, who can really blame them?
3) The artist seriously cheesed off someone with a lot of serious clout in the company, and now we're all paying for his sins. Stories abound... Sometimes the creator isn't even aware of giving offense, but it all comes back to bite him in the nether regions.
4) Someone in charge made some dumb rule or decision that every creator working on a title for the company had to swap with somebody else on a different title at least once a year in order to keep the titles 'fresh'. There could be other reasons similar to this one, like somebody really, really high up, who knows absolutely nothing about this side of the business other than that it somehow falls into his branch of the corporate tree has decided to flex his muscles by moving people around so that his bosses will think that he's actually doing something.
The extra background detail is part of the reason for most artists slowing down these days. But another big part of the equation is that most pencilers are drawing much tighter than in the past, leaving nothing open to interpretation by the inkers. Some of that comes down to ego, some down to the fact that fewer inkers these days are good artists in their own right. The joke in Chasing Amy about inkers being “tracers” has never been truer than it is now. For some time there was speculation among some of the creators I know that the “keeping it fresh” approach was really just a cover story, and that the real reason was to weaken artists’ future claims of copyright ownership. Yes, they all had pretty solid work-for-hire contracts by then, but this was during the period where everyone—guys like Carmine Infantino, Joe Simon, Siegel and Shuster, and Paul Norris, among others—was suing DC and Marvel for ownership of characters they created in the early, legally murky days of the business. The idea was that if a particular creator was too closely associated with a particular character, they could argue partial copyright ownership.
Now, I still don’t know if there was any truth to those speculations, or if the argument would even hold water in a court of law, but at the time it seemed pretty reasonable.
One more reason for artists being moved around: New titles can sometimes take months, if not years of development before they are launched. During that development process, though, the artist still has to eat, so they take on a fill-in arc on another book (or two or three) in the meantime until their official book is given the green light.
And sometimes the artist is just deemed by editorial to be more valuable on one book than another. Take Ivan Reis. He was getting a lot of attention on the new Aquaman book, which I think I can safely say was exceeding expectations. But when Jim Lee left Justice League, a flagship title, Reis was moved over to replace him, leaving a hole in the Aquaman team someone else had to fill.
There is also the case of Brett Booth who just does not fill the high creative bar set on the title. Take the current Batwoman series as another textbook example of what is happening here. J.H. Williams and Trevor McCarthy bare no resemblance to each other and should not be rotating arcs.
This is just all reaching a boiling point for me, as the artist that is signed onto the book should A. ATLEAST TRY TO HIT SOME DEALINES or B. BE SOMEWHAT SIMILAR TO THE ARTIST WHO CAME BEFORE UNLESS THE STORY CALLS FOR THAT ARTIST.
Either that or announce two people on a title BEFORE the book comes back.
WE NEED TO DEMAND MORE from the industry in order to be taken seriously as the people who spend money on their books.
And most artists actually do hit their deadlines. They just happen to know whether they can or cannot produce a monthly book up to their and/or their editor’s/publisher’s expectations, and their deadlines are set accordingly. So, some artists might have a three-week deadline, while others have a six-week deadline for each issue. Very few artists can get away with consistently missing deadlines (it helps if you're also a publisher).
You may be asking, “But why can't they speed up, take a few shortcuts, do less background work?” Because they will get reamed for it. There are too many artists out there competing for jobs. If the average artist gets perceived as regularly turning in less than their best work, they'll be out of a job. Most of the guys I know in the industry are already working at least ten hours a day, six days a week. And most of them also have to do better paying work on the side—commissions, storyboarding, licensing work, etc.—in order to make a decent living.
On the whole your explanations seem to make sense though, there is still something in me screaming that Lee and Oliver could carry that book together in a way that made sense.
Atleast in the instance that you are talking about the writer took the time to justify why it was happening.