So, is it the art or is it the writing?

AngryBadger

On foot of come comments about Stan Lee and his contribution to superherodom, or more specifically the fact that many see him as the father of the whole superhero concept.

If memory serves a huge part of the dispute between Stan lee and jack Kirby was to do with them disagreeing about what "made" a character. Kirby felt it was imagery, Lee felt that without narrative/story an image was just an empty shell. I'm paraphrasing, and not familiar with all the specifics so please feel free to correct me.

In any case, I'm using that particular case in a purely demonstrative capacity as a set-up for my question, what do you think is more important, the look of the character, or the story behind the character?

When I say "story" I'm referring to any scripting/writing elements which give the character a persona, a motivation, a raison d'etre.

Personally I think both are very important, but I do feel that the writing trumps the art. Most instances I can think of where artists attempted to move into the writing realm (eg. many of the image stable of characters) were absolutely lousy, and this seemed to be mainly because their creators had no appreciation of the distinction between form and substance. You had a great deal of properties who looked totally awesome, but had all the character of a taxidermists pet.

I definitely think a good artist can enhance a writers concept far beyond the initial imaginings, and I'm in no way attempting to take from the story telling ability endemic to an artists craft, but I do think there's a significant difference between the contribution a good artist can make to the identity of a character, and the embryonic idea which a writer generally comes up with that defines the character.

Essentially I guess what I'm saying is that to me, without a writer to give a concept substance, the "look" of a character is just a shell. Whereas it's clear that a writer can survive without a artist, I'm not so sure if it works the other way around having read very, very few stories which were told solo through imagery with no narrative, and even then, someone had to shape the story and tel the artist what to draw, even if that was in rare instances the artist telling themselves what to draw.

Please feel free to correct me, and apologies to any budding/established artists I've inadvertently insulted with my musings. It's nearly 3am and I can't sleep in spite of the fact that I have to be up in little over 3 hours so my tact level is set to low

JangoFett

To me its about 70-30. 70 for the writing and 30 for the artwork.
The writing has to be the most important. It IS the story, obviously. But the writers take into consideration the rich histories, recent developments, the characters state of mind after events that have JUST unfolded in the characters lives and then write a new story while all of this is driving the character. They write dialogue, inner monologue and direction, their vision is incredible!

My favourite writers would be Stan Lee(how could he NOT be?!), Jeph Loeb, Geoff Johns, Ron Marz and a few others but they'd be the main ones I guess. For example, Loeb wrote Hush. Its a masterpiece!! He captured Batman's persona and Psyche perfectly, expecially in the face of a new villain, torturing him with the return of Jason Todd and then his childhood friend betraying him!

Geoff Johns and Ron Marz have done so much work on Green Lantern, taking in a huge history, a whole galaxy and still making them stories you can get involved in. Green Lantern Rebirth is probably my favourite story of all time. And the artwork is breathtaking!

Ok, so onto the art. I think each artist has a character or set of characters they're perfect for. Examples would be Jim Lee and Batman, Ethan Van Sciver and Green Lantern (I met him, he doesn't think a GL movie would work, too much history and he says its too like Wizard of Oz), Ed McGuinness and The JLA (dunno why, but he draws the team well to me), Ed McGuinness and The Hulk, Michael Turner and Batman/Superman.

When those artists team up with the right writers I think it can be almost 50-50 cuz the writer and artist seem to be on the same level as each other when they want a certain image. You can tell the artist is REALLY telling the visual story rather than just putting down the pencils, ya know?

Fysh

Argh, my brain hurts to see Loeb described as a good writer :P

I find it depends on what I'm in the mood for. Usually I want to read comics with a decent story, and a good writer will save crappy art a lot more easily than beautiful art will save a crappy story. Stories don't have to be epic in scope or length; Pekar's American Splendor is essentially made up almost exclusively of mundane stories about day-to-day life, and yet it's still engaging. Similarly Gilbert Hernandez's Love And Rockets material is illustrated with simple clean linework that, while expressive, is by no means an apex of illustration. But it works very well with the stories he tells and adds an extra depth to them that a more dynamic style might not contribute.

For superheroes in particular the artistic requirements change a bit. Given that superheroics necessitates central characters who dress up in what amounts to fetish gear to fight crime, you want an art style that's dynamic and energetic to draw the reader into the action. You don't want the art to encourage the reader to pause and linger over individual scenes too often, because they might then find themselves thinking "hang on, I'm reading a comic about a guy dressed in a spandex bat outfit fighting crime?!" It's a limited genre, more so when it comes to the mainstream publishers, so the art style becomes more important because there's less freedom for the writer to weave a strong narrative due to continuity constraints, established tropes for character x, and so on.

Then there's art comics. I'm not hugely into art comics. I'd argue that the likes of the Flight Anthology are to an extent art comics, and the likes of Jim Woodring's Frank and both of these are great; fantastically whimsical stories with lavish illustrations everywhere. Truth be told, though, ztoical is probably much better able to extoll the merits of the art comic than me and can suggest a lot more examples to boot.

AngryBadger

Fysh wrote: »

Argh, my brain hurts to see Loeb described as a good writer :P

Have to agree, I hate to kick a man when he's down, but I'm gonna do it anyway!

Loeb sucks balls. The man can generate (occasionally) great et-ups, but he ALWAYS completely chickens out at the last minute. Lookat the Batman/Superman story where they re-introduce Supergirl, it was awesome when it seemed like she'd been killed by Darkseid, but then, literally in the final act, it turns out she was teleported away at the last instant.

Similarly for Hush, he built up a tonne of stuff, then hit the recent button at the very last second. Even undoing the whole romantic angle with Bats and Catwoman by having her say "Hush". Lame.

And his current Ultimates is terrible. Gods how it hurts my eyes to slide over the covers in FP. For the record, I read the first issue and thought it was garbage, I read a friends copy of Hush, (he's an artist so the Jim Lee pencils were enough for him), and I have to admit I read Superman/Batman for the first 20 issues or so. Admitting that fills me with shame

Fysh wrote: »

For superheroes in particular the artistic requirements change a bit. Given that superheroics necessitates central characters who dress up in what amounts to fetish gear to fight crime, you want an art style that's dynamic and energetic to draw the reader into the action. You don't want the art to encourage the reader to pause and linger over individual scenes too often, because they might then find themselves thinking "hang on, I'm reading a comic about a guy dressed in a spandex bat outfit fighting crime?!" It's a limited genre, more so when it comes to the mainstream publishers, so the art style becomes more important because there's less freedom for the writer to weave a strong narrative due to continuity constraints, established tropes for character x, and so on.

So are you saying that you feel in superhero books at least, the choice of artist saves writers who find themselves in a limiting genre? That in fact, the artist is in some ways more important than the writer? What about artists like Jae Lee? Or Dimitri Mendeleev, I don't know if I'd class them as particularly dynamic, brilliant pencillers, but not the most dynamic at all. But I can't argue that generally comics do call for a particularly dynamic artist.

ztoical

JangoFett wrote: »

To me its about 70-30. 70 for the writing and 30 for the artwork.

Haven't got time to write a massive reply as I'm late on a deadline but just had to mention - Silent comics hello? Many master storytellers out there that don't use a single word [Thomas Ott being one of my personal fav's and closer to home our own Bob Byrne]

Storytelling is an art forum, wither it be written word or visual language. The layout of the page, being able to guide someone's eye around a page without resorting to using arrows, the placement of the balloons, tangents, the gutter spaces, etc etc All of these play a massive role in telling a story. If you go to college to study comics or animation there are whole class blocks on just visual language and storytelling. Actually take an fine arts course and they will spend ages showing you how a painter tells a story, guides your eye around a piece using just perspective and colour.

Go read Scott McClouds understanding comics and read about the different panel transitions and how they effect the pacing of the story in the same way an editor effects the pacing of a film. One of the senior Editors at DC gives interns this storytelling project to work on when they start - he gives them comics pages with the words all taken out of the balloons and asks them to write the story based just on the artwork to show how you can "read" art work.

AngryBadger

ztoical wrote: »

Haven't got time to write a massive reply as I'm late on a deadline but just had to mention - Silent comics hello? Many master storytellers out there that don't use a single word [Thomas Ott being one of my personal fav's and closer to home our own Bob Byrne]

Bob Byren did pop into ym head thinking of this, but I haven't actually read Marmaduke, although I do remember his first piece for 2000 AD which was completely devoid of any kind of narrative.

ztoical wrote: »

Storytelling is an art forum, wither it be written word or visual language. The layout of the page, being able to guide someone's eye around a page without resorting to using arrows, the placement of the balloons, tangents, the gutter spaces, etc etc All of these play a massive role in telling a story. If you go to college to study comics or animation there are whole class blocks on just visual language and storytelling. Actually take an fine arts course and they will spend ages showing you how a painter tells a story, guides your eye around a piece using just perspective and colour.

See I'm not disputing that, but to me this is like the relationship between a tradesman, and an architect. Sure it takes skill to do proper building work like but without an architect there's no building. Period.

Also, my question is more to do specifically with the creation of characters than the actual story telling aspect of what artists do. Which I don't think anyone can really dispute.

Earthhorse

AngryBadger wrote: »

If memory serves a huge part of the dispute between Stan lee and jack Kirby was to do with them disagreeing about what "made" a character. Kirby felt it was imagery, Lee felt that without narrative/story an image was just an empty shell.

If you look at some of the early Spiderman comics drawn by Steve Ditko, there's this sequence where Spiderman is trapped under a fallen girder or masonry or something, and the way Ditko has drawn the panels requires no narrative whatsoever. Lee, being Lee, has thought bubbles in almost every one.

The thing about comics is, it's a collaborative medium. Okay, not always, but almost always, it's collaborative. And the delineation between writer and artist isn't always as clean as those labels suggest. I was reading V for Vendetta recently (and for the first time) and there's an article by Moore at the end describing the evolution of the character. V starts out a very different comic than the one we end up reading. Importantly, Lloyd (the artist) introduces some of the themes we see running through the comic. If I'm not mistaken it was he who first suggested, in letters to Moore, that anarchy be something they tackle as a theme. Not saying Moore would have done it were he not interested himself but the seed of the idea was Lloyd's (not to mention the Guy Fawkes mask, now an iconic image, was his idea too).

If the writing was all that mattered then why make a comic book? A novel, short story or poem would be more appropriate. If the art was all that mattered then surely painting or film would be exact substitutes for the medium, but they aren't.

In defence of writers I will say that a lot of artists out there seem to think they're better storytellers than they are. What I mean is, when I pick up a lot of solo projects the dialogue and narrative suck. They're heavy-handed, cliched, tired; in short they have no ear for dialogue or sense of rhythym when it comes to language. And language is important to me, as someone who writes, I value it highly. I'm a verbaliser before I'm a visualiser. Thing is, you need an artist to produce a comic book, you don't need a writer.

Fysh wrote: »

Argh, my brain hurts to see Loeb described as a good writer :P

He can be guilty of some pretty hackish writing alright, particularly in his recent work, but some of his stuff is great. Long Halloween is, well, it's almost perfect as far as I'm concerned. Great pacing, characterisation and an intriguing plot. Hulk: Grey is also a good read, as well as Challengers of the Unknown Must Die, though I found the latter difficult to follow at times. I'm aware that his paring with Sale may be biasing me here.

Sale is one of the few artists whose work I will buy regardless of who's writing the projects. His simple lines and the way (as Loeb says) he "draws the space" just appeals to me.

AngryBadger

Earthhorse wrote: »

If you look at some of the early Spiderman comics drawn by Steve Ditko, there's this sequence where Spiderman is trapped under a fallen girder or masonry or something, and the way Ditko has drawn the panels requires no narrative whatsoever. Lee, being Lee, has thought bubbles in almost every one.

See again, as with some of what Fysh was saying, I'm not disputing any artists ability to tell a story, I'm jsut curious as to where people think the more relevant contribution comes from the artist or the write. Which is not to say there aren't instance where one person is both, (although often this proves disastrous IMO).

Earthhorse wrote: »

The thing about comics is, it's a collaborative medium. Okay, not always, but almost always, it's collaborative. And the delineation between writer and artist isn't always as clean as those labels suggest.

See, I completely agree with this in terms of the month-to-month production and tell ing of the story. However if, as a writer, someone creates a character and has an idea in their head of how that character they can pass that along to an artist and the artist can come up with some kind of visual concept, and they have a lot of material in terms of backgroun and so on to work with. However, if an artist draws up their vision of a characters and passes it onto a writer, well the writer still has pretty much nothing to work with except this image, and perhaps with the notable exception of a few particularly exceptional artists, that often elaves the bag squarely in the hands of the writer to come up with something compelling to tack onto this idea.

Earthhorse wrote: »

I was reading V for Vendetta recently (and for the first time) and there's an article by Moore at the end describing the evolution of the character. V starts out a very different comic than the one we end up reading. Importantly, Lloyd (the artist) introduces some of the themes we see running through the comic. If I'm not mistaken it was he who first suggested, in letters to Moore, that anarchy be something they tackle as a theme. Not saying Moore would have done it were he not interested himself but the seed of the idea was Lloyd's (not to mention the Guy Fawkes mask, now an iconic image, was his idea too).

Fair point, but is this more the exception than the rule?

Earthhorse wrote: »

If the writing was all that mattered then why make a comic book? A novel, short story or poem would be more appropriate. If the art was all that mattered then surely painting or film would be exact substitutes for the medium, but they aren't.

I'm not saying the writing is all that matters, but since you brought it up any thoughts as to why we see thousands of works based on narrative alone, but very few based on imagery with no narrative whatsoever?

Earthhorse wrote: »

I'm a verbaliser before I'm a visualiser. Thing is, you need an artist to produce a comic book, you don't need a writer.

What? I mean seriously, what? You can't honestly believe that a comic book could surviev in the long term without a writer?

JangoFett

How COULD they kill Supergirl after just introducing her, it would have been so monumentally pointless!!!

And yes, his work with Sale is excellent! Long Hallowe'en especially!

I thought people would like him, weird

ztoical

Earthhorse wrote: »

The thing about comics is, it's a collaborative medium. Okay, not always, but almost always, it's collaborative. And the delineation between writer and artist isn't always as clean as those labels suggest.

+1 well put. If we're going to look at superhero comics then more credit needs to be given to the editor rather then just the writer and artists. With most books these days the writer and artists are rarely in the same city let alone the same room. The editorial staff work out the direction they want the book to go and contact a writer and get him to write the script which the editor then hands over to an artists and so on down the line to inks, letters, layout and print - its very much a conveyer belt system of production and not the big writer/artists collaboration people are lead to believe.

With creator owned books its different of course but in those cases there is usually a much bigger collaborative interaction between artists and writer [or in the case of alot of indie press writer and artists are one in the same] Take books that are drawn and written by one person - for some reason craig thomspons Blankets has sprung to mind and I don't know why as its not a book I like but lots of people like the book for its storytelling and the storytelling is the art combined with the words not one or the other.

Your of course going to find books where the writing is great but the art **** and vice versa - glancing around my studio right now I can see a dozen books I picked up purely cus I thought the art was pretty but the story is utter rubbish. But the true great comics are the ones that match the right style of writing with the right style of art [which isn't just penciling but inking and colouring as well] South Park works as the style of animation matches the writing style if you were to do that show with more classical disney style of animation it wouldn't work at all. Transmetropolitan is a fav comic of mine and I love it for Ellis' writing but I think Darick Robertson art plays a 50/50 part in it as they type of story wouldn't work with a different art style [or colouring] imagine Jim Lee style art in that book and it doesn't work even if the writing stays the same.

Fysh

AngryBadger wrote: »

So are you saying that you feel in superhero books at least, the choice of artist saves writers who find themselves in a limiting genre? That in fact, the artist is in some ways more important than the writer? What about artists like Jae Lee? Or Dimitri Mendeleev, I don't know if I'd class them as particularly dynamic, brilliant pencillers, but not the most dynamic at all. But I can't argue that generally comics do call for a particularly dynamic artist.

It's not necessarily a case of "saving" writers as such, more a case of playing to the strengths of what material will fit to the demands of the genre. Where the likes of autobiographical comics have a relative freedom in terms of character, for example, superhero comics (or at least those with established central characters) have to keep certain personalities within the constraints of what has gone before them, which limits the writer's options somewhat. However, since another convention of the genre is to have a certain amount of action and fight sequences, a good artist who can vividly depict those sequences will help bring out the strengths of the material in such a way as to hide its shortcomings. And let's face it, every story has shortcomings somewhere, the point is whether its strengths are compelling enough to make you ignore its faults.

ztoical

AngryBadger wrote: »

Also, my question is more to do specifically with the creation of characters than the actual story telling aspect of what artists do.

With alot of comics the artists will actually be the main creator [Danger Girl, Battlechasers, Crimson, Fathom, etc] They come up with the idea, develop the plot and character backgrounds and usually do a quick written blurb and thumbnails/storyboard for each issue but get a writer in to do the actually script writing. Just check the credits - alot of time it will say "story by" and "written by"

AngryBadger

ztoical wrote: »

With alot of comics the artists will actually be the main creator [Danger Girl, Battlechasers, Crimson, Fathom, etc] They come up with the idea, develop the plot and character backgrounds and usually do a quick written blurb and thumbnails/storyboard for each issue but get a writer in to do the actually script writing. Just check the credits - alot of time it will say "story by" and "written by"

Of the examples you listed I've read some of Danger Girl, and Battlechasers, and they were completely flat titles. Sure J. Scott Campbell, and Joe Mads pencils were good, but the story/characters were completely un-engaging.

So I think those titles speak more to my own experience that artist-created titles are generally weak than anything else. That said I've never read Crimson/Fathom, but I still maintain if those books were any good they'd be the exception as against the rule. And regarding any success in terms numbers of books shifted, I know plenty of people who will buy books jsut ebcause a certain person is drawing them, so I don't think reflects any overall quality, (obviously this also applies to writers!).

Fysh wrote:

It's not necessarily a case of "saving" writers as such, more a case of playing to the strengths of what material will fit to the demands of the genre. Where the likes of autobiographical comics have a relative freedom in terms of character, for example, superhero comics (or at least those with established central characters) have to keep certain personalities within the constraints of what has gone before them, which limits the writer's options somewhat. However, since another convention of the genre is to have a certain amount of action and fight sequences, a good artist who can vividly depict those sequences will help bring out the strengths of the material in such a way as to hide its shortcomings. And let's face it, every story has shortcomings somewhere, the point is whether its strengths are compelling enough to make you ignore its faults.

I'm not sure I agree with you here. Off the top of my head, the original "sentinel" series written by Paul Jenkins is a perfect example of a comic which was not limited to the idea of "fast movey pictures". Still I take your point in a general sense.

However, I still think you're dealing with artists ability to tell a story, as against their contribution to the creation of a character vs. a writers contribution.

Earthhorse

AngryBadger wrote: »

I'm jsut curious as to where people think the more relevant contribution comes from the artist or the write.

Not to cop out of answering the question but I think you can only answer that on an individual basis and even then you don't really know who came up with what (which is also what makes it so hard to generalise about who contirbutes more).

AngryBadger wrote: »

However if, as a writer, someone creates a character and has an idea in their head of how that character they can pass that along to an artist and the artist can come up with some kind of visual concept, and they have a lot of material in terms of backgroun and so on to work with.

Well, I'm not sure it's ever as clean cut as that. To stick with Spiderman (because it's one case I'm mildly familiar with) there's a lot of ambiguity to this day about who came up with what. From Wikipedia:

Stan Lee wrote:

Lee cites the non-superhuman pulp magazine crime fighter The Spider as an influence,[3] and both there and in a multitude of print and video interviews said he was inspired by seeing a fly climb up a wall—adding in his autobiography that he has told that story so often he has become unsure of whether or not it is true.

All well and good except that...

Jack Kirby wrote:

Jack Kirby, in a 1982 interview, claimed Lee had minimal involvement in the character's creation, and that it had originated with Kirby and Joe Simon, who in the 1950s had proposed a character called The Silver Spider for the Crestwood comic Black Magic until the publisher went out of business.

And we're not done yet either...

Joe Simon wrote:

Simon, in his 1990 autobiography, disputes Kirby's account, asserting that the supernatural anthology Black Magic was not a factor, and that he (Simon) devised the name "Spiderman" (later changed to "The Silver Spider"), while Kirby outlined the character's story and powers.

After Lee got approval for the Spiderman character he had Kirby draw up some initial pages but he wasn't happy with them so he turned to Ditko instead.

Steve Ditko wrote:

One of the first things I did was to work up a costume. A vital, visual part of the character. I had to know how he looked ... before I did any breakdowns. For example: A clinging power so he wouldn't have hard shoes or boots, a hidden wrist-shooter versus a web gun and holster, etc. ... I wasn't sure Stan would like the idea of covering the character's face but I did it because it hid an obviously boyish face. It would also add mystery to the character....

Even leaving aside who's account is the most accurate the question now becomes which contribution was the most valuable? Where does the costume end and the character begin? Is it really that important what super-powers he had? Isn't the fact that he was a real guy struggling with real issues what made Spiderman unique?

More importantly when did any of these attributes come true in the comic. Was it at the story-boarding stage? In his first appearance in Amazing Fantasy? First solo issue? By issue ten? All the ideas a writer or artist might have may only be important if they're executed well.

I've picked an admittedly convoluted example but only to illustrate there's no fine line between writer and artist and all this, as ztoical points out, before we consider the various parties that might be involved.

AngryBadger wrote: »

Fair point, but is this more the exception than the rule?

Dunno.

AngryBadger wrote: »

I'm not saying the writing is all that matters, but since you brought it up any thoughts as to why we see thousands of works based on narrative alone, but very few based on imagery with no narrative whatsoever?

Not thought about it much but it could be because it's more challenging (for both the artist and the "reader" (are you really a reader if there aren't any words for you to read)) or because the technology to mass produce narratives (i.e. printing presses) have been with us for hundreds years whereas the technology to produce sequential art to the same scale and quality hasn't been with us nearly as long.

AngryBadger wrote: »

What? I mean seriously, what? You can't honestly believe that a comic book could surviev in the long term without a writer?

Way I see it, I can come up with a character and write all the dialogue and narrative I like but without someone to draw it it won't get drawn. On the other hand an artist can take any idea he has all the way through to execution (not as simple as that but...). Essentially, artists will have some command over language (you'd hope anyway!) and can fill in the job of the writer whereas most writers don't have any command over creating visuals so the artist can become artist/writer more often than a writer can become writer/artist.

ztoical

AngryBadger wrote: »

Of the examples you listed I've read some of Danger Girl, and Battlechasers, and they were completely flat titles. Sure J. Scott Campbell, and Joe Mads pencils were good, but the story/characters were completely un-engaging.

So I think those titles speak more to my own experience that artist-created titles are generally weak than anything else. That said I've never read Crimson/Fathom, but I still maintain if those books were any good they'd be the exception as against the rule. And regarding any success in terms numbers of books shifted, I know plenty of people who will buy books jsut ebcause a certain person is drawing them, so I don't think reflects any overall quality, (obviously this also applies to writers!).

I listed those titles as they were the ones I figured the majority of people on here would know, I wasn't saying if they were good or bad titles. It was to point out that artists do take part in the creation process and aren't just trades men brought in to do a work for hire job.

If you really want to see how the balance of great writing and great art work then check out series like Incal written by the amazing Alejandro Jodorowsky and illustrated by the equally amazing Moebius - and I use the word illustrate rather then pencil/draw as I feel there is a difference between someone just penciling story and someone illustrating it - the aim of an illustration is to elucidate a piece of text via visual representation. Franco/Belgian comics, for me at least, are far better examples of both the text and the visuals working equally together.


Just for entertainments sake a different take on the whole thing

Fysh

Earthhorse wrote: »

Way I see it, I can come up with a character and write all the dialogue and narrative I like but without someone to draw it it won't get drawn. On the other hand an artist can take any idea he has all the way through to execution (not as simple as that but...). Essentially, artists will have some command over language (you'd hope anyway!) and can fill in the job of the writer whereas most writers don't have any command over creating visuals so the artist can become artist/writer more often than a writer can become writer/artist.

I'm not sure I agree with this. In the same way as artists have to have certain basic linguistic skills, writers will probably have basic drawing skills even if they're not very good. Alan Moore started out as a cartoonist for example, but decided he was a better writer than artist. But the fact that an artist can handle the writing doesn't mean his writing will be any good or will be saved by the quality of his artwork, any more so than a comic illustrated with stickmen by someone who's primarily focused on the writing.

Bill Watterson reckons good writing will save mediocre art more often than good art will save mediocre writing, but the issue is that if one aspect of a comic regularly has to be "saved" by another, it's going to struggle unless the saving aspect is strong enough to find it an audience. This can work - XKCD and Cyanide & Happiness both have fairly basic artwork but their popularity is down to the writing & humour.

Earthhorse

I take your point but I would still say that generally speaking writers will be less able to bring a comic into being without an artist. In truth there are very few comics where a crude or matchstick style will work at any level.

Fysh wrote: »

This can work - XKCD and Cyanide & Happiness both have fairly basic artwork but their popularity is down to the writing & humour.

There's an art to lo-fi art too though. It may very well be simple but that doesn't mean it's easy.

AngryBadger

Earthhorse wrote: »

Not to cop out of answering the question but I think you can only answer that on an individual basis and even then you don't really know who came up with what (which is also what makes it so hard to generalise about who contirbutes more).

In a general sense what you're saying has a certain logic to it. Without both of us going and reading all the biographies you've quoted, I think we'll just have to agree that it's hard to pin down where the writers contribution ends, and the artists begins.

Although I think it's obvious that I feel the writer is the source of the story, and while the artist can often, in very significant ways, add to the story/character, in general it's reasonable to say that most artists are artists not writers, and without writers there wouldn't be any stories.

Earthhorse wrote: »

Not thought about it much but it could be because it's more challenging (for both the artist and the "reader" (are you really a reader if there aren't any words for you to read)) or because the technology to mass produce narratives (i.e. printing presses) have been with us for hundreds years whereas the technology to produce sequential art to the same scale and quality hasn't been with us nearly as long.

Ah come on, on the one hand you're asserting that artists are every bit the story-tellers that writers are, and in the same breath you're suggesting the reason we don't see more books based solely on telling a story sans narrative is because the technology hasn't been around long enough? People used to "write" on wax tablets, artists have been doing art on buildings, animals, people, and in frigging caves for years. We have seen projects that were 100 % narrative free, it's jsut that they're very rare. So I don't think it's valid to say the technology hasn't been around long enough, sure all you'd be doing is printing a comic the same we've printed comics for decades just without narrative, and all artists would have to do is use the visual story-telling ability (that they already use under the direction of writers every month) to tell their own stories. Simple.

Earthhorse wrote: »

Way I see it, I can come up with a character and write all the dialogue and narrative I like but without someone to draw it it won't get drawn. On the other hand an artist can take any idea he has all the way through to execution (not as simple as that but...). Essentially, artists will have some command over language (you'd hope anyway!) and can fill in the job of the writer whereas most writers don't have any command over creating visuals so the artist can become artist/writer more often than a writer can become writer/artist.

This, I suppose, is kind of an individual thing. Some artists might make fantastic writers, from what I've seen of the comic book industry this is not the case for the most part. You maintain that you could do this, fair enough, I can only take you at your word, but if what you're saying is even remotely accurate I say again, why are we not seeing any significant body of art-driven stories?

ztoical

Earthhorse wrote: »

There's an art to lo-fi art too though. It may very well be simple but that doesn't mean it's easy.

simple is the hardest thing to do, just look at something like the Perry Bible fellowship.

On the whole art vs writing thing, its very much a case by case thing and in the end comes down to opinion most of the time. Its like asking which is more important in a film the writing, the acting or the directing? Why care if one is better then the other when they all come together your going to get something amazing. I have comics I've picked up purely for the writing, comics I've picked up just for the art and then theres the wonderful ones where it all comes togeher. Then theres the ones were everything crap and I can't remember why the hell I have them.

ztoical

AngryBadger wrote: »

Ah come on, on the one hand you're asserting that artists are every bit the story-tellers that writers are, and in the same breath you're suggesting the reason we don't see more books based solely on telling a story sans narrative is because the technology hasn't been around long enough? People used to "write" on wax tablets, artists have been doing art on buildings, animals, people, and in frigging caves for years. We have seen projects that were 100 % narrative free, it's jsut that they're very rare. So I don't think it's valid to say the technology hasn't been around long enough, sure all you'd be doing is printing a comic the same we've printed comics for decades just without narrative, and all artists would have to do is use the visual story-telling ability (that they already use under the direction of writers every month) to tell their own stories.

we haven't printed comics for decades, big publishers have but with the arrival of POD's like lulu, comixpress and Kablam your seeing more cartoonists self publishing work and a bigger increase of the number of comics out there. Theres a huge difference between drawing on the side of cave and mass printing something and selling it over the internet. Most people when you say comics in this country they think Marvel and DC and leave it at that and aren't aware of the massive amount of comics that are out there. Mainstream comics have a system for writing comics - you get the odd good title out of them [ie most of the vertigo books] that deviate from this system but the big books are very much controlled by the editor. The system for creating Manga in Japan is totally different to american mainstream comics as is the system for BD's in France.

Up until the end of the 80's inking and colouring comics was a pain as everything was litho printers and standard comic size pages were there because that was the only way to draw in ratio to the printer but with digital printers people can draw comics at any size with any medium and print them with ease - it has made access to the medium easier for alot of creators who would have struggled to get their books out before.

Earthhorse

AngryBadger wrote: »

This, I suppose, is kind of an individual thing. Some artists might make fantastic writers, from what I've seen of the comic book industry this is not the case for the most part. You maintain that you could do this, fair enough, I can only take you at your word...

Yawha? I maintain that I could come up with characters, a story, a script but that without an artist that's all it would ever be. The only thing I've ever drawn with any degree of success is breath.

JangoFett

Brian Azzarello drew me a picture at the 2007 New York Comic Con, it looked like a retard had a fit whilst holding a marker, but somehow it looks like Batman holding a steering wheel

I told him I knew who he was and I just wanted an autograph and he seemed embarrassed, like he thought I didn't know who he was.

He should stick to writing.

AngryBadger

JangoFett wrote: »

Brian Azzarello drew me a picture at the 2007 New York Comic Con, it looked like a retard had a fit whilst holding a marker, but somehow it looks like Batman holding a steering wheel

I told him I knew who he was and I just wanted an autograph and he seemed embarrassed, like he thought I didn't know who he was.

He should stick to writing.

I think he should stop having anything to do with comics.

Didn't know he fancied himself as an artist, but of the projects he's scripted I've read
Luke Cage - Crap
Lex Luthor:Man of Steel - Crap (although I liked the whole pitting bats against supes angle)
Superman with Jim Lee - Crap (Super-Amnesia FFS)
Batman 100 Bullets - Passable, but only just

Fysh

Earthhorse wrote: »

Yawha? I maintain that I could come up with characters, a story, a script but that without an artist that's all it would ever be. The only thing I've ever drawn with any degree of success is breath.

Conversely, an artist with no story to tell, characters to examine or themes to explore can come up with a bunch of pictures (some of which may even string together sequentially to ostensibly form a narrative) but that doesn't make it a story or a good comic.

There's a lot more to the artist's work than just dragging pencil over paper and leaving markings behind; there's also a lot more to the writer's work than just putting words in character's mouths. As ztoical says, there's more to each side than one person. The art has pencillers, inkers, colourists, letterers and so on, whereas the writer has editors and, depending on the comic concerned, editors-in-chief and co-writers of related titles. Trying to pin it down to one person whose contribution will always be invaluable is just stupid and doesn't benefit anyone because it just encourages one side to act as though they're superior to the other.

Edited to add:

Not liking Azzarello's work is one thing, saying he should get out of comics is another entirely. One of these things is completely stupid, the other isn't.

100 Bullets is fantastic stuff, tight writing that benefits from having great artwork to boot. He also did a great run on Hellblazer which benefited from similarly lovely artwork. I've not bothered with his Luke Cage stuff or his Superman though, because it looked a bit rubbish. There again, given what I've read of his work I suspect he finds writing superheroes a bit limiting.

Earthhorse

Ah yeah, Fysh, I realise that, I was just clarifying with regard to my own abilities. AngryBadger seemed to think I was saying I was both an artist and a writer and I was just clearing things up.

AngryBadger

Earthhorse wrote: »

Ah yeah, Fysh, I realise that, I was just clarifying with regard to my own abilities. AngryBadger seemed to think I was saying I was both an artist and a writer and I was just clearing things up.

My bad, must've confused your psot with someone elses.

AngryBadger

Fysh wrote: »

Not liking Azzarello's work is one thing, saying he should get out of comics is another entirely. One of these things is completely stupid, the other isn't.

You're right, I should have said he'd have been better off never getting into comics at all

Would it matter if I'd made the same comment about Jeph Loeb?

I'll accept that Azzarello may have at one time or another produced something worthy of being read, but of the 4 projects I've written which he was involved in, only one of them was passable as far as I was concerned. So I don't think it's that much of a stretch to say he should stop writing comics. Why is that a stupid statement?

constitutionus

whilst the ideal would be 50/50 if im honest i have to opt for the writing side of things.

while i can forgive crap art in a comic if ive got an amazing story going on i wont read a book thats only got nice art. case in point transformers. i LOVED the G2 story furman did but it had undeniably crap art in the form of manny galans stuff. still it was possible to get involved in the story. when you contrast it with the dreamwave micromasters mini series you had at times some very good art. but no discernable story whatsoever and the whole thing collapsed into a mess. in fact the same could be said of the gi joe cross over they did. AMAZING art from jae lee, but WTF was going on half the time!?!

so while as a medium you'd expect the answer to the question to be "both" i have to side with the writers in terms of importance to the final product. if we want to see what books just done by artist result in we only have to look at image and liefeld back in the 90s

Fysh

AngryBadger wrote: »

You're right, I should have said he'd have been better off never getting into comics at all

Would it matter if I'd made the same comment about Jeph Loeb?

I'll accept that Azzarello may have at one time or another produced something worthy of being read, but of the 4 projects I've written which he was involved in, only one of them was passable as far as I was concerned. So I don't think it's that much of a stretch to say he should stop writing comics. Why is that a stupid statement?

It's a stupid statement IMO because to the best of my knowledge nobody is forcing you to either read or buy his work. So if you don't like it, don't buy it and by all means point out the flaws you see in his work. But saying that he should stop writing comics, even though there are plenty of people out there who enjoy his material, just because you personally don't like it? Well, that bit is stupid.

(I know, I know, it was probably just an off-the-cuff hyperbolic remark, but I see it thrown around far too much and it's one of those things that winds me up...It's the same reason I won't post on the likes of Millarworld or the Newsarama forums though)

AngryBadger

Fysh wrote: »

It's a stupid statement IMO because to the best of my knowledge nobody is forcing you to either read or buy his work.

I actually only bought the Superman story. Anything else I read belonged to someone else.

But fair enough, I take your point overall. he's still a **** writer though

JangoFett

Superman: For Tomorrow

I remember leading up to that I was excited, kick ass artist, Mr. Jim Lee, and Brian Azzarello who has done some pretty good work in his time

And half way through it I lost interest, I though "Maybe Lee's artwork will salvage it", and it didn't. Proving to myself that its the writing/storyline that drives me to buy and collect