Second, while I can at least judge (easily!) that the newer work in every single aspect is so comparatively excellent that the older is merely good (perhaps at best only fair?), to my non-professional eyes I still don't see the old drawing standing alone as out-and-out bad. I could conjecture what's objectively "wrong" with it, but... overall, it still looks good to me. I don't mean to say only that I like it, which I do, but that it seems to me to be good comicbook art.

Maybe the standards of the ordinary reader can't be as high as that of the artist? Don't give the fans what art they think they want to see?