The mind which plunges into Surrealism, relives with burning excitement the best part of childhood

[kali921]

So is it just me or is Yahoo flipping out and sending every single e-mail, regardless of the originating address, into everyone's spam folders? And also prompting for passwords over and over again? And ignoring the fact that all the legitimate e-mails I'm getting have addresses that already exist in my Yahoo address book? And ALSO ignoring the

Comments

[thehefner]

I really, really didn't want to like B&R, but god help me, I really dug issue # 2, which came out today. It helps that the first page was:



Between that and the page from ALL-STAR SUPERMAN with Clark and the goth girl, I'm starting to really appreciate Quitely's abilities to lay out a scene. I try to imagine what that above image would have looked like if Tony Daniel had drawn it, and just feeling that same sense of overwhelming apathy that permeated that entire earlier run.

I just wish B&R was out of continuity, like ALL-STAR SUPERMAN was. Then I could enjoy it more for what it is, rather for what it's doing to the rest of the Bat-continuity.

[kali921]

I do like that page - mostly because Dick's face isn't a moon. But wow, you think Quitely does dynamic layouts and can actually lay out a scene? Look at how soul-deadening his work on the Authority book was - I don't think of him as an artist that can do anything but talking heads in static poses with irritatingly flat backgrounds.

Looking at this page of Dick - AHAHAHA. Look at how EVERYTHING droops - look at the bottom of Dick's cape, his hair, everything is pulled downwards. If that's deliberate, it's a nice little touch to convey how utterly dejected he is in a metanarrative (it's also a bit manipulative), but if it's not intentional, it's hilarious because it works.

That Supes-rescues-the-goth-girl page was beautiful to me, but not because of Quitely's pencils - it was beautiful because of the colors and the words.

[thehefner]

No argument about his AUTHORITY work. Honestly, when I think about Quitely at his best, I think about WE3 and ALL-STAR SUPERMAN. He seemed to grow leaps and bounds over those books, far superior to his work anywhere else in X-MEN or JLA: EARTH 2 or wherever. Those are the ones that have really influenced my feelings on his layouts.

You're totally right, everything *is* drooping! haha, I hadn't noticed just how much before. All I can think is that drooping sound effect, "bweooo," or however you phonetically translate that sound.

The goth girl page was, I feel, even more striking by that page-long panel of the girl dropping the phone. She's so small, so alone, so fragile amid the building and the city. It tells a whole story in that panel alone.

[kali921]

That was a phone she was dropping? I though it was a note or a book! Artfail, Quitely - I've gone back and looked at that page at least a hundred times and did not know it was a phone.

Yes, I concede that on that page, her tiny figure against the empty cityscape worked to reinforce how alone she felt - it really told the story from her perspective. Everything around her was impersonal, gray, and dead.

I do think that Quitely's comic work is getting better, and yes, his work on WE3 was absolutely instrumental in making it work.

Another nice thing about the Alfred and Dick page above: Alfred doesn't have a usual Quitely snub nose.

My feelings about Quitely still stand, though: he can only draw three body types, he can only draw two faces (well, four if you count his Dick and Alfred above), his women are disgustingly anorexic looking, and dude cannot draw action to save his life. Well, since you've read Batman and Robin #2 today, is there action in it? Did Quitely do a good job? If you think so, maybe I'll read it.

[thehefner]

Well, there was stuff earlier in that issue with a guy on the phone, trying to talk her down. Little bits here and there for Superman to have heard and eventually go, "Wait, hold on, I need to take care of something, BRB."

Agreed about Quitely's faces and body types. I think that ties into the bigger point about what I was saying earlier about Morrison needing artists like Quitely: neither Morrison nor Quitely are suited for the humanity of their characters. They don't care. Their strengths are in the plot, the action, the events and ideas of what's happening. Not the people, by and large.

Morrison's characters are often flat, broad caricatures that exist to further the story and his ideas. As such, you get stories like FINAL CRISIS, which is loved by people who love a sweeping superhero epic but hated by people who--like me, and many of the scans_daily folks--far prefer their superheroics from a down-to-earth, internal look at the characters from a human level, from their relationships. Grant doesn't care about that, which is fine, he doesn't need to. What he does, he does well, and it's understandably loved by people who love that kind of storytelling. Not me, though.

But that's why I think Quitely is uniquely suited for Morrison's work, as they play to each other's strengths to a point where even *I* like it.

That said, there is some good action in B&R # 2, as I recall. I rather liked a moment with a fire extinguisher, which Quitely did in a manner that--again--I couldn't help but thinking would have suffered in effect if Tony Daniel had done it. Can you tell I REALLY hate Tony Daniel, and his work on BATMAN R.I.P.?

[kali921]

I think that ties into the bigger point about what I was saying earlier about Morrison needing artists like Quitely: neither Morrison nor Quitely are suited for the humanity of their characters. They don't care. Their strengths are in the plot, the action, the events and ideas of what's happening. Not the people, by and large.

Excellently said - and I do think that you're right. I'm trying to think of who is the exact OPPOSITE artwise from Quitely in showing naught but the humanity of their characters. Possibly Sienkiewicz is one of them, even with his impressionistic smears? With Sienkiewicz it's all mindscapes looking outwards, it's very self-focused from the POV of his characters - it's like I'm looking out at the world from their eyes.

I'm sitting here envisioning Clark saying "Going to save *insert anything here,* BRB" and LOLing to the point of hysteria.

I didn't really follow Batman R.I.P. - I kept trying to read it and just not getting engaged at all, and I do agree that the art was a detriment. (Also, I keep parsing Tony Daniel" as "Tony Harris" and having these microseconds of cognitive dissonance until my brain readjusts to the cold reality that no, Tony Harris did not work on a Batman book.)

[thehefner]

Good question. Maybe Kevin Maguire? Or David Mazzucchelli? He's brilliant at all aspects.

I've found Gary Frank to be quite adept at down-to-earth humanity in his faces and bodies AND action sequences (which also feel weighty and grounded in reality; a punch in a Gary Frank comic looks like it actually hurts).

God, but I hated BATMAN R.I.P. Partially because I knew I would have liked it a lot better if, like ALL-STAR SUPERMAN, it was in its own continuity (now *that* is what ALL-STAR BATMAN AND ROBIN should be) and he had an artist that better suited him. I never knew any artist could be spectacularly mediocre, but Tony Daniel fit the bill. And yet, there are people who love his art. I just don't get it. But then, there are people who love Michael Turner's work, so whatever.

If Tony Harris drew R.I.P., it'd have been fifteen times better. As it was, Victor Fries couldn't have left me as cold. Meanwhile, you have Paul Dini doing kick-ass work on DETECTIVE COMICS, month in and month out, and no one pays any attention. He even made Hush almost interesting! HUSH, for fuck's sake!

[kali921]

I've found Gary Frank to be quite adept at down-to-earth humanity in his faces and bodies AND action sequences (which also feel weighty and grounded in reality; a punch in a Gary Frank comic looks like it actually hurts).

YES. Absolutely, YES - he's so good at expression, he's so good at grounding his characters, making their emotions tangible. You can reach out and touch his faces, you know? Supreme Power! Remember when the big confrontation between Doc Spectrum and Hyperion was posted on S_D 1.0 and we all talked about how WONDERFUL it was to see what a real fight between two superpowered beings would really look like? The toll it would took on the landscape, the sheer magnitude of awesome forces at work? My god, it lasted what, four pages, and I put the book down and thought "Finally, finally, finally someone nailed how destructive it would be."

Kevin Maguire - yeah, I was going to mention him, but didn't because I knew that you would. :-) Maguire's more suited to comedy (for me), although I blame you for showing me definitively that he can do gut wrenchingly sad - Tora, Guy, and Bea in hell. YOU made me read that and I cried, damn you!

(Have you ever seen the way he drew Jack Hart? Jack of Hearts? In the few issues he did of Geoff Johns' Avengers? There's one sequence where Jack goes from enraged (undercut with total exhaustion, absolute enervation and blinding pain) to just so raw and sad, without any hope that his life will get any better, and Frank just NAILED it. I'll have to post those pages - it's Jack talking to Tony Stark, and even Jack's BODY LANGUAGE is perfect in what little we see of it.)

Oh. Hitch is good with faces at times - some of his work with Jenny Sparks and Angie Spica on the Authority book was fantastic!

[thehefner]

First off, here, found a list of what will be in the Director's Cut, in case you didn't already know: http://www.aintitcool.com/node/41595

Huzzah, glad you agree about Gary Frank! Indeed, those pages from AVENGERS are just so wonderful and dynamic. He understands physicality beautifully, and his superheroes actually feel like real people. It helps that he seems to understand proportion too. His Superman is just about perfect.

[kali921]

I broke my layout because I neglected to reduce the Frank pages to a reasonable size. *smacks self*

So, the Director's Cut - the three-hour version - is mostly twenty-five minutes of stuff that wasn't in the comic at all, or that's changed from the comic. Hmmm. Not really enticing. It's interesting that Adrian doesn't get any more screen time - I wonder why? (And why is it that every time AIC publishes a news tip from a fan, it's always rife with horrible typos and grammar? CONTACT SHAME.)

Here we go, by way of Gary Frank example.

[kali921]

Here we go, by way of Gary Frank example:



And later:



You don't even need to see Scott and Jack's faces.

Addendum:

[kali921]

Addendum: look at any of the other pieces of art that I posted above from Hey Oscar Wilde, It's Clobberin' Time (I never get tired of typing that out). Every single individual piece that I posted above conveys more vibrance, character, and STORY than an entire issue of Quitely pencils. Look at that Mary Shelly piece - relatively empty and simple background, yet there's so much going on. Look at the piece with Peewee, the Mother Thing, and Kip Russell. Look at the Marlowe piece - he has his face turned away and I see more expression and story than I do in the Dick and Alfred page (and again, that page is exceptionally well done for Quitely).