Animal Man #1

[ratcreature]

So, I couldn't resist giving the new Animal Man series a chance, because I love the character, and the story may have potential, or at least the opening doesn't seem worse than average, but yikes, that art is seriously bad. (I preordered just based on series title, if I had seen page samples I might not have spent money on this.)

It completely lacks details and textures in the background that would create atmosphere, or even just normal looking rooms and environments. Seriously, it's like empty squares, boxes and tiles, and the artist couldn't be bothered to put in any effort, but not in a deliberate minimalist way, but just because they couldn't think to put something else on a nightstand besides a square clock, or give texture to a windowsill that would make a square look like an actual window and so on. (ETA: I don't necessarily expect excessive detail rendering, considering that there time/effort constraints on a comic production schedule, but there are ways to make panels *look* decent and alive through blacks and dynamic lines and hinting at detail and texture, just look at for example Ditko's art in old Spider-Man comics.)

Then the layout is atrocious with panels being given odd shapes for no good reason, same for some perspective choices. And the artist can't really draw humans well either. All their hair just looks odd, and okay, hair is difficult, but they get paid for this after all. Then there are sometimes odd scribbles on the faces, like in one scene taking place at a hospital I thought Animal Man contracted a weird infectious disease and those were skin sores, but he didn't. I have no idea what that texture on his face was supposed to be.

I honestly have trouble believing that they paid someone for this.

Comments

[lilacsigil]

Wow, that sounds awful. Thanks for the warning!

[ratcreature]

In the comments to the LJ entry I scanned a few bits to show the parts that made me go wtf? to illustrate the sporktasticness, so you can see there for yourself:
http://ratcreature.livejournal.com/439660.html?thread=2073708#t2073708

[lilacsigil]

That's not just bad, that's unnecessarily bad! A little more time on the art and a little less on the pointlessly wonky panels might have helped.

[ratcreature]

Yeah.

There are a few pages that are more internal, like nightmare monsters and Buddy connecting with his power that actually look fairly decent, but most is just not. I think some could have been salvaged if a good inker had done away with the ridiculous zick-zack lines and done proper feathering, done decent crosshatching for shadows instead of these weird scribbles on the faces, made the lines more dynamic, added some more black and maybe some detail suggestions and such.

[astridv.livejournal.com]

Who's the artist on that one?
To be fair, it's possible that the artist got the script too late, with the request to draw them 20 pages in the next three days or something like that.

Then the layout is atrocious with panels being given odd shapes for no good reason

Ugh, I hate that. Just because it's possible to play with the panel shape doesn't mean one should do it all the time and without a reason.

[ratcreature]

The credits give Travel Foreman for pencil and cover and Travel Foreman & Dan Green for inks. And seriously, it's atrocious. Like in one panel I wondered whether a person had some sorts of scales on their face, before I realized that the zick-zack scribbles were supposed to be beard stubble.
ETA: The only pages less awful were some dream sequences with monsters (the monsters weren't that bad, and for once there were some ink textures) and a page where he connects to his animal powers.

[ratcreature]

To illustrate that I'm not exaggerating, here are some scans. The first shows both the weirdly character-less rooms, in this case their kitchen (supposedly belonging to a family of four who regularly cook), as well as the needlessly odd panel shapes:

Incidentally the artist couldn't be bothered to be consistent from one panel to the next, since in the panel before that view from above there are some boxes on the fridge, which aren't there in this view
And this is the panel with the beard that I mistook for scales, not to mention the rest of the face, which I suspect is due to an attempt at rendering "grief" gone wrong:

and here in the first panel you can see the odd textures put onto faces, the instance when I thought Animal Man had skin sores:

[astridv.livejournal.com]

Yikes! No kidding!
These aren't skin sores? Seriously, what's wrong with his face? And that kind of thing isn't explained with short deadlines since adding lines to the face actually takes more time than... not doing that.

And the panel arrangement in the first cap is hideous. Wow.

eta: these would make a decent instructive manual: The Pitfalls of Drawing Comics - what not to do

[ratcreature]

Normally I just shrug over not so great comic art, but this was really distracting me while I was reading.

And there are really no skin sores. Earlier his eyes were bleeding (not really explained yet, supposedly somehow connected to something with the Red and his power) but nothing is supposed to be wrong with his skin or forehead, so I have no idea what is going on with his face.

While looking at this I kept thinking that some maybe could have been salvaged if a good inker had taken some liberties, done away with the ridiculous zick-zack lines, the weird crap on their faces, the odd hair rendering etc etc, and instead either inked it maybe with a more dynamic brush linework with variations in the lines instead of all being thin and/or decent crosshatching for shadows and such instead of these scribbles you try to read as who knows what, and had been more bold with some more black areas and detail suggestions through textures. Like I haven't scanned this, but in other panels houses are just blocks with squares in them for windows, and actually the windows not even arranged in the most believable areas and such. But since the penciller did the inking at least in part, it looks like they just traced the pencil maybe? I mean, maybe the scribbles were initially in pencil and then didn't look so odd. IDK.