Valiant's bad art rap

Todd Luck · Post by **Todd Luck** » Tue Jul 06, 2004 8:01 am

What's everyone's theory on why a lot of people said Valiant had bad art in their books? Most people I know who said that had never bought a Valiant comic.

I thought the majority of the art for the time I collected them (the first three years) was good though there were some bad artist/inker/colorist combinations on the books sometimes which got more and more common as the titles proliferated and creative resources were stretched thinner and thinner. But honestly most companies published art that was far worse than the worst Valiant, and if you compared the top 25 comics at the time with Valiant stuff, Valiant would probably come out on top.

So why the bad rep on the art? My theory was the rep grew out of two things:

First, Valiant didn't prescribe to the "popular" styles of the time. Though their were bigger panels after Shooter left and occasionally some artists attempting to immitate Joe Quesada or something, for the most part Valiant kept it's more "realistic" look while everyone else was trying to look like Image.

Second, Valiant didn't have any artists who were considered "legendary" or "hot". The ones they did left when Valiant became popular (BWS and Lapham) or didn't produce much during their brief periods with the company (Sears and Quesada).

Sometimes perceptions and fads are more important than the actual lines and colors on the pages. Anyone got any other thoughts or insights?

cjv · Post by **cjv** » Tue Jul 06, 2004 9:25 am

I think it was a lot of the former (not subscribing to the "hot art styles" of the time).

Valiant art was supposed to be "this is what you see outside your window". You don't see pin up poses, you don't see people with 300 small, sharp pointy teeth, you don't see capes that would weigh 20 pounds to wear, you don't see guns that look like something out of Star Trek, etc.

As Valiant went on, the art style STARTED to become more flashy (with people like Bart Sears and Queseda (sp?) drawing the books) but a lot of their books still remained "realistic" - well, as realistic as flying energy beings, spider aliens, guys with nanite blood, etc can be.

Here's a quibble - when Darque was first introduced, he wore suits a lot. Why is it that later on he was always drawn mostly just wearing a loin cloth?

Chris

DawgPhan · Post by **DawgPhan** » Tue Jul 06, 2004 9:34 am

well this may or may not be i the same vein. I was reading

a magnus book last night..sorry done remember the number and it had 1 page in near the end that was a picture of bloodshot and the said and the top of the page "valiant house style?" What did this mean? Was the house style the realistic style that was popular with valiant or was it a new style developed towards the end of the run when things were sliding? Oh yeah this issues was before birthquake, but after magnus became president and got the new armour...it really wasnt that great and I read it in like 5 minutes...

depluto · Post by **depluto** » Tue Jul 06, 2004 9:38 am

Just about every comic book company has had its art criticized at one time or another.

I enjoyed the Valiant style. I thought it was light years better than some of the Image crap from the same time. But people who liked that flashy (I say substance-deficient) style were the same ones ripping Valiant.

As for Darque, as I get older I tend to dress less snappy, too. Shorts and a T-shirt every chance I get. Five more years I might be wearing a loin cloth, too.

Brother J · Post by **Brother J** » Tue Jul 06, 2004 9:41 am

1 page in near the end that was a picture of bloodshot and the said and the top of the page "valiant house style?" What did this mean? Was the house style the realistic style that was popular with valiant or was it a new style developed towards the end of the run when things were sliding?

I think it was referring to the fact that many accused Valiant of using a "house style" of art on all of their books, meaning basically all the books looked the same. The ads were meant to challenge that opinion, showing work by Bernard Chang and Sean Chen and basically letting it speak for itself, showing that Valiant used many artists with unique art styles. At least that's what I got out of it!

RyanMcLelland · Post by **RyanMcLelland** » Tue Jul 06, 2004 9:42 am

Even when I was...damn...what age was I...16ish, buying Valiants and looking over Image books, I could look at BWS's art and Liefeld's art and see genius versus bad.

No offense to Valentino, but I'd rather see Ernie Colon's quirky art over what Shadowhawk was doing anyday.

I guess it is just a difference of opinion. I like the basic storytelling that Valiant was trying to do. And sometimes it is not always about the art it is also about the storytelling.

Can you see Jim Lee drawing Harbinger? I know I can't...and I'd prefer Lapham's art on the book anyday.

Death to the haters...

depluto · Post by **depluto** » Tue Jul 06, 2004 9:49 am

That's exactly it, Ryan.

Valiant was using the art to tell the story. Image was trying to sell comic books by drawing women with big hooters.

Actually, I wouldn't have minded Jim Lee so much. The HARD Corps cover worked for me. Liefeld would have been worse. Did you ever see that initial drawing he did of Captain America he did where it looked like Cap had stripper-sized breast implants?

Brrr.

Brother J · Post by **Brother J** » Tue Jul 06, 2004 9:49 am

I know most people hate Liefeld's art nowadays, but I have to admit, I still like it. Sure, he's probably not what you'd call a technically good artist, but I think his stuff was neat because it was kind of stylized, he had his own thing going on (which others later came along and imitated, which kind of took away from the initial appeal). I won't defend everything's he ever done, but I enjoyed his New Mutants run.

DawgPhan · Post by **DawgPhan** » Tue Jul 06, 2004 10:01 am

depluto wrote:That's exactly it, Ryan.

Image was trying to sell comic books by drawing women with big hooters.

Brrr.

You say that like it is a bad thing..

depluto · Post by **depluto** » Tue Jul 06, 2004 10:07 am

Big hooters=Good
Captain America w/big hooters=Very, very bad

Daniel Jackson · Post by **Daniel Jackson** » Tue Jul 06, 2004 10:49 am

The Valiant art style was part of what drew me to the books in the first place (besides the great stories). Valiants artwork was much more appealing to me than what all the rest were doing. I personally do not like all of the super flashy and gaudy art that Image and others were pumping out. Huge unrealistic muscles on everything they drew and the pages just seemed to have to much action and posing going on. It seemed like they were trying to make each page suitable for framing.

cjv · Post by **cjv** » Tue Jul 06, 2004 10:56 am

You know what would be funny - if someone got together some bad artwork from some of these "hot artists" (and I don't collect comics now, so I don't know who is a hot artist, or if the trends from the mid 90's are still continuing) and just sort of put together a website of "bad art".

You know, like the Liefeld Cap. America. Or some of his stuff with guys were you can see 80 teeth - each one short and pointed.

I don't know of other examples, but I bet they are out there.

On another note - when Image came out, did anyone else think it was just stupid how each artist "created" a character or characters that just allowed them to continue to draw the type of character they were drawing over in Marvel.

For example, Keown drew a big strong guy at Marvel (Hulk) and drew a big strong buy at Image (I think it was Pit or something).

McFArlane drew a brooding, sulking character in the skylines at Marvel (Spiderman) and drew a brooding, sulking character in the skylines at Image (Spawn).

Liefeld drew a team of superheroes with big guns and weapons at Marvel (X-Force) and drew a team of superheroes with big guns and weapons at Image (Youngblood).

The only one I can thing of who was at all different was The Maxx.

Chris

depluto · Post by **depluto** » Tue Jul 06, 2004 11:49 am

http://grotesqueanatomy.blogspot.com/20 ... atomy.html

Bob Layton · Post by **Bob Layton** » Tue Jul 06, 2004 12:08 pm

There is a simple explanation for the style of art at Valiant.
No one popular would work for us!!
(Partly because of Shooter's rep and part because we couldn't match Marvel rates.) We knew we'd have to get by on strong storylines and characters because the big gun artists--
(A) usually refused to follow any kind of editorial direction and--
(B) were making more at their present jobs than we could afford to pay them.
Barry came over because we were best friends, at the time, and I convinced him that he'd have more artistic freedom with Valiant (BWS was always about the work more than the money).
Other than BWS, it was just the few core veteran artists and the ones I could quickly train to jump into the mix (i.e.: Lapham, St.Pierre, Chen, Chang, Ryder etc.)
Bob
bob@boblayton.com

depluto · Post by **depluto** » Tue Jul 06, 2004 12:17 pm

You say no one popular, Bob, but the early days of Valiant had a pretty good roster (yourself, Lapham, BWS and some old pros) and got the job done.

Who needs popularity when you've got talent? And the results speak for themselves.

We love that stuff!

whetteon · Post by **whetteon** » Tue Jul 06, 2004 12:29 pm

depluto wrote:You say no one popular, Bob, but the early days of Valiant had a pretty good roster (yourself, Lapham, BWS and some old pros) and got the job done.

Who needs popularity when you've got talent? And the results speak for themselves. We love that stuff!

Agreed. The early Valiant roster would be a dream team to any comic book title today. I'm positive that it would be front page news on all the fan sites. Just the mentions of Layton, Lapham & BWS collaborating on a project would cause lots of free publicity.

Todd Luck · Post by **Todd Luck** » Tue Jul 06, 2004 1:16 pm

cjv wrote: Here's a quibble - when Darque was first introduced, he wore suits a lot. Why is it that later on he was always drawn mostly just wearing a loin cloth?

All the storylines almost always had him wearing both. As a general rule, when he was just walking around or talking he was clothed, when he was doing "magic" he was nude or in his birthday suit (the "magic" was shown as requiring a lot of concentration and Darque skin's was portrayed as being very sensative to the touch, I suspect that was the main practicality there). I suppose in a way that would make his time in plain clothes an unsuspecting "secret identity" and when he takes them off he reveals his "super villian" persona. The only villian in comics whose "costume" was his birthday suit

Todd Luck · Post by **Todd Luck** » Tue Jul 06, 2004 1:30 pm

Just an additional thought on hot artists and fan thought. While Unity 2000 was out I made a suggestion on a newsgroup that an old Valiant artist who was more familar with characters and the Valiant artstyle might have truer to Shooter's plots than Starlin was. One fan responded saying that wasn't possible. Windsor-Smith and Lapham wouldn't do it (he speculated) and Perlin wasn't flashy enough.

In my response, I named over half a dozen artists off the top of my head other than the ones he mentioned who would've been perfect (Leeke, Brock, Morretti, etc). It's funny how some people react so differently to well known artists than they do to the ones who aren't "hot".

Shakespeare · Post by **Shakespeare** » Tue Jul 06, 2004 4:23 pm

Hot artists are best when they're just coming out of their shell. McFarlane Spidey #300, Jim Lee X-Men 248, Liefeld Hawk and Dove...when their just starting to figure out their style and are still caring about how each panel looks.

Once they get free reign to do anything they want, watch out...and that's what was wrong with Image...oh, yeah, and artists thinking they can write.

Most artists are not at their best when they're most popular...Jim Lee comes close, as I'd say he was most popular around the time of the Hard Corps #1 cover...an awesome cover indeed, and where my avatar comes from. Jim stuck to his good guns longer than most hot artists and just recently strayed.

As for Liefeld, I'm not gonna start bashing him...he was pretty good at covers (New Mutants #94 comes to mind) and he was much better than the people he trained (Brigade...barf...) So what if he didn't know human anatomy...neither did the artists of Looney Toons.

ZephyrWasHOT!! · Post by **ZephyrWasHOT!!** » Tue Jul 06, 2004 5:27 pm

Image artists weren't all 'suck'. Rob Liefeld had a totally unique style that hadn't been seen before in comics, and his Hawk & Dove and New Mutants work showed that...he just never got better.

In fact, he got fat & lazy and got worse. He didn't have editors telling him NOT to be lazy, and the result is the nonsense that is Youngblood and Heroes Reborn, which is page after page of pose, with NO storytelling at ALL, NO backgrounds, totally unrealistic accoutrements, and so out of proportion anatomy that a contortionist would be hard pressed to mimic any of it (I'm not talking about size GGGGG breasts, either, I'm talking about misshapen heads, spines that are totally contorted, wrists that would snap in half if they waved them a little too hard, etc.)

He's always been a dumb kid, and has made some horrifically bad errors in judgement.

The same can be said of any work that has come out of his 'Studio'; work by Marat, Pacella (god awful...someone should ban that guy from comics) etc has always been technically and stylistically crap.

McFarlane is the 'hottest' artist in the past 20 years. No one since the heydays of Miller's Daredevil and Byrne's X-Men has even come close to the popularity that McFarlane has received (and rightly so.) In fact, he could possibly be the biggest and most popular comics artist of all time.

But, he got lazy too. You can start to see it in Spiderman, and especially by Spawn. The fact that he has not drawn a montly comic book in TEN YEARS (Spawn #24 was his last issue) is testament to that. But his Amazing Spiderman run, and the Hulk issues where he inked himself, are just gorgeous, even if Spidey became a little too 'spidery'...Spidey #312 is a really good example of the fine line work McFarlane could do. Just breathtakingly stylized stuff, along with technically solid storytelling, that has never waned in popularity.

Jim Lee has perfected his craft over nearly 20 years. His very first work was published in 1986 (Samurai Santa) and he's dedicated his life to being a good ARTIST first and foremost. Even if you don't like his style, technically he's a VERY good artist, and stylistically he's got a very large following. Look at his Batman run...it's beautiful, beautiful stuff, not displeasing to the eye at all.

Jim Lee was around before Image (natch) and he'll be working in comics long after everyone else has quit (McFarlane, Liefeld, Portacio, Valentino, and Silvestri haven't drawn a monthly title, even a mini-series of 6 issues or more, for YEARS.) It's what he does. He's just a really good artist.

Heck, Larsen's the only one who's maintained his book this long.

The Valiant artists, however, weren't out to be pretty. They just wanted to tell a story. The only superstar they had was BWS, but he wasn't NECESSARY...but art doesn't need to be 'pretty', it needs to tell a story. And you can tell a story with 'ok' pictures or 'really pretty' pictures....but when the 'really pretty' pictures get in the way of the story, something is lost.

It is interesting to note that there has not been a single 'new hot' artist since Image started. Oh sure, there's Mike Turner, but there are tons of this books that aren't worth a dime, and it's not as if his art is 'sought after'. There was also Stephen Platt (who?) but he was a flash in the pan...and a rather bad McFarlane clone.

That's about it. No huge breakout artists since Jim Lee was drawing X-Men....and that was 14 years ago.

Shakespeare · Post by **Shakespeare** » Tue Jul 06, 2004 5:42 pm

I DID like Quesada on Ninjak, that was really good but just too short a stint. Cartoony in a cool kind of way

Those first three books were a quagmire...so much extra stained glass and panel add ons that, although it's pretty from five feet away, takes away from the storytelling. I'm reading Allen Moore's Promethea right now, and though the pages are pretty, it also distracting. One of the worst coupling of writer and artist in quite a while.

Rob Liefeld had a totally unique style that hadn't been seen before in comics, and his Hawk & Dove and New Mutants work showed that...he just never got better.

Woo hoo, Zephyr and I are back on the same page! Though I think Jim Lee's Batman is overly-stylized.

I always liked Lee and Byrne for the same reason...they drew the characters in the way that you like to see them. In other words, the characters look cool without the style detracting from the story. They look heroic without being unbelievable.

DJSpecter · Post by **DJSpecter** » Tue Jul 06, 2004 6:10 pm

I guess I'm somewhat alone in this. Not being an art expert or anything here goes. I thought Valiant had a house style of art. And I LOVED that. The books that strayed from the style I couldn't stand. Early books include the Unity Magnus's (and those around it). It seemed to me like putting on glasses when you had perfect vision. I disliked the art of the post Birthquake computer issues for a similar reason. They seemed to lack the real personal touch of the previous issues.

I dunno.

-Dave

CLA · Post by **CLA** » Tue Jul 06, 2004 6:15 pm

I was never a fan of Jim Lee or any of his clones over at Image. I don't consider Rob Liefeld or Todd McFarlane to be good comic book artists.

I've always preferred the work of Al Williamson, Gene Colan, Bob Layton, Curt Swan, Mike Zeck, Gil Kane, Steve Rude, Paul Chadwick, Jack Kirby, Bill Everett and others. The work of these guys has solidity and definition.

Early Valiant artwork was about realism and storytelling. It was really classic art. Valiant artists displayed the quality and skills of comic artists from the past and their focus was finding the best way to tell the story.

Knightt_333 wrote:Artists... I dont think that Don Perlin gets enough credit. His Bloodshot work was among the best for Valiant artists. He KNEW anatomy and was always OTB (on the ball) in the way that his work looked. You dont have to be 'flashy' to be a good comic book artist. Look at the crap that is in comics today (Batgirl comes to mind)... now THERE I think that they got a Looney Toons artist to draw that comic. So, I want to just bring up Mr. Don Perlin as being one of the best Valiant artists that was there... ever. Of course this is all IMO as he is my favorite.

But, to date... Don Perlin ROCKS.

True. Mr. Perlin really did some great stuff in Solar!

dave · Post by **dave** » Tue Jul 06, 2004 7:22 pm

don't forget that frank miller and walter simonson did some very nice covers for valiant too! that was something that made me take a second look at Valiant after i had already decided to stay away because i didn't WANT to like them. (when you see rai 1-4 on the wall for 5 or 600 dollars you think...stay away!!!).

i ddin't realize that they had only done the covers, and picked up some cheap ones that i found.

i was cheap then, and i'm still cheap now!

hey knight have you checked out perlin's work on timewalker! if not, you'll think he's even more underappreciated once you do!

Daniel Jackson · Post by **Daniel Jackson** » Tue Jul 06, 2004 10:14 pm

There is a simple explanation for the style of art at Valiant.
No one popular would work for us!!
(Partly because of Shooter's rep and part because we couldn't match Marvel rates.) We knew we'd have to get by on strong storylines and characters because the big gun artists--
(A) usually refused to follow any kind of editorial direction and--
(B) were making more at their present jobs than we could afford to pay them.
Barry came over because we were best friends, at the time, and I convinced him that he'd have more artistic freedom with Valiant (BWS was always about the work more than the money).
Other than BWS, it was just the few core veteran artists and the ones I could quickly train to jump into the mix (i.e.: Lapham, St.Pierre, Chen, Chang, Ryder etc.)

Don't sell yourself short Bob I thought the early issues of Valiant would rate right up there with the very early Marvel books as far as great art. I especially liked the way you guys colored the books, very pleasing to the eye, soft colors, realistic human proportion and no one else was doing this at the time. I don't know where the current trend started (probably Image) but it never appealed to me. I for one got real sick of these so called hot artists like Mcfarland and Liefeld real fast. All of the characters looked like the same guy in a different costume. They were not trying to draw comics they were looking to draw some kind of masterpiece. To me it was like someone hiring Michelangelo to paint his barn.