JB: I think i understand what you mean, but sadly it have been so for more than 15 years now.

I think the obvious examples of what JB is saying is Invincible and Birthright.  Both have great art and artists, but take away the color and they look like coloring book pages.  All lines are the same thickness (weight), they lack shadow and textures.  I'm not saying it is bad, but it is different from a JB or Neal Adams.  John and Neals work use thickness of line and placement of blacks to emphasize the focus of each panel and move you from panel to panel.

On the other hand are guys who make lines and textures with no purpose.  They just line all over, or put highlights and shadows from twenty directions.  A young Rob Liefield is the popular example of this (he does seem better now).  Every line should have a purpose and muscle contour lines should flow into each other.

Jim Lee sold 8 million copies of one issue (Xmen 1).  Jim, Alex Ross, and JB should be all be millionaires for the work they have done. 

I always thought that an evil Sue Storm would really cause problems.  She could protect herself with a forcefield, be invisible, and project a forcefield the size of a bubble into her opponent's heart and then increase the bubble until the heart burst.

How do you stop that?  How do you see that coming?

Glad she's not evil.

That Adams page, compared to the others posted, illustrates one of my complaints about most art coming out these days.  Neil's people, including Batman, all look human.  Batman is muscular, yes, but what stands out the most is the human gesture.  The "weight" they have is in the spotting of blacks, yes, but also in the fact that they actually look in their stances and expressions like actual people.  In the other artist's work, Sue Storm is a combination of porno star tits and ass.  Longshot is now a steroidal action figure.

The problem with some artists/writers/editors is that they don't inderstand that comics are (for them) A JOB. They see it as a sort of hobby. I always appreciated artists like Pelletier, Frenz, Grummett, Ryan... They're often hated because they aren't superstars, but at least they're real pros.

Stéphane, in Italy we have a b/w collection of Neal Adams'Batman and it's amazing! I don't miss the colors, when I see those pages.

I agree with this.

Once upon a Darren, I held onto the aspiration that a Comic-Book Artist I'd make. I spent all my time plagiarizing JB and 'learning' to draw through his eyes. The importance I placed on discipline was -zero-, after all that's for those chumps that work in an office, I want to be a comic-book-artist and that was surely far more hedonistic than a 9-to-5, right!?

Retrospectively, I clearly set my priorities wrong. While my confidence in my ability to draw grew and grew, my confidence in my ability to produce the work to a regular schedule diminished.

Until I find that I have now turned down offers of work out of fear that I couldn't manage my time appropriately. So look what's happened to my dream!

I'm often reminded that my choice to put glitz and glamour before sense was the wrong one.

Recently though and somewhat ironically, I accepted a job on a feature film as a storyboard artist which has switched my drawing time, over night, up from 3-4 hours to 10-11 daily and after two months in the job beside a little RSI, I'm coping and I feel my beleaguered confidence budding.

Where I think I'm taking this point is that most of us don't imagine the regiment of producing a monthly title* when looking at the purty pictures. When we're kids and those purty pictures inspire us to try our hand. It's the act of drawing more and more spectacular pictures that is the fun part. "Look at this amazing drawing of Spiderman I did!” It's not very often that the retort is "Looks great but how many of those can you do in a day, Mon-Friday, forever?" These sorts of comments might come -if- you attend a convention -and- feel motivated enough to present your work but how long is there between -those- two points? Too late the bad habits have started.

I'm of the opinion that if, without tracing, you can draw the same paneled page 66 times over three months, you probably have the mental prowess required to pilot the Space Shuttle and maybe draw comics, al be it not simultaneously...as that would be irresponsible:-)

Bring back deadlines, the comics industry stinks of manure!

Today, more and more writers are insisting on working full script, however, and this creates all kinds of problems (not the least of which being that most writers seem to lack the ability to think visually), and renders it impossible for the artist to make a start without the writer's job being done.