Who is your LEAST favorite comic book artist?

[AfghanAnt]

I also thought he was great on The Authority.

As a Quietly fan I can honestly say I hated his work on the Authority and was relieved when Art Adams picked up where he left off.

[Carravaggio]

I also thought he was great on The Authority.

As a Quietly fan I can honestly say I hated his work on the Authority and was relieved when Art Adams picked up where he left off.

Likewise. I'd rate Quietly among my top three artists, but you can see on the Authority that he was still making a lot of mistakes and working the bugs out. You compare The Authority to say, JLA E2 and you can see a huge leap in ability and competency.

[Blkcasanova247]

Y'know...I'm not going to say Rob Liefeld (even thought he is ). I will say that I loved Larry Stromans stuff back in the 80's (Alien Legion is one of my all time faves) and most of his stuff on Xfactor in the 90's but....WOW....his stuff is TERRIBLE right now. And one of my alltime least faves is Carmine Infantino. I don't hate Quitely's work... I just don't like his work on Authority and XMen. Even though with Xmen I like the overall look of the uniforms. No masks or costumes...just miles and miles of leather and not jumpsuits like those god awful Xmen Movie uniforms. Igor Kordy is also in my top 5.

[doctorchallenger]

Here's a name no one has mentioned:

Neal Adams.

I won't deny he revolutionized comic book art, but some of the sylistic changes he instituted were perfected by later artists (Byrne, Perez, Grell, and Marshal Roger in particular).  But I don't think his artwork, except for maybe his Batman, stands up to the hype around him.  I own reprints of Deadman, GL/GA, X-Men and Kree-Skrull war.  There was a time when I thought when he was a god (the same time when I though Don heck was lousy, and Kirby was overrated).  I really want to like his work. But it leaves me cold for the most part.  He has a tendency to draw figures really long, but hunches them over alot. He has a lot of awkard poses. The way he drew the beast in particular really bugs me - Typical adams figure with somewhat thicker shoulders and really long feet. 

There I said it.

[daglob]

Silver Shocker:

I haven't seen Dan Green much lately, but there was a time he was pretty good. That's pretty much what I said about Don Heck, too.

Too may "artiste's" have a "style" that leaves you wondering if they ever actually had art lessons. All artists and inkers have styles: they are a set of techniques and/or tricks they use to solve scertain problems in depicting imaginary people, places, and events in an acceptibly realistic manner, and methods to tell a story using more-or-less sequencial panels of action (or incaction). Now, "realistic" is open to interperatation: relalistic for Jack Kirby isn't the same as realistic for Neal Adams (or Charles Addams). Not all use the same tricks, not all use the same ones all the time. Wally Wood, Steve Rude, Russ Manning, Dave Stevens, Paul Gulacy, and Jim Steranko have a lot in common. I can't even  count the ones that have a lot in common with Milt Cannif (Ray Bailey, Mort Mesklin, Romona Fradon, Ross Andru, Frank Springer, and Frank Robbins isn't even a decent start). Sometime compare Joe Kubert war stories to early Steve Ditko SF/monster stories. Speaking of Ditko, he reminds me that artists who's art don't really look all that much alike can have a lot of the same influences and use a lot of the same techniques to solve the same problems. That's why Wally Wood was one of Ditko's best inkers.

Some "styles", though, seem more like excuses NOT to draw. I'm thinking primarily of Kyle Baker on The Shadow and Bill Sinkewitcz (sp?) on whatever X-comic he was working on. Baker's Shadow devolved into blocky outlines like a bad coloring book drawn by a kindegarden class (I originally worte "first grade", but I could draw better than that in the first grade). While not as bad, in my opinion, as Grandinetti, I don't see why the art director at DC let it get by. Sinkewitcz reduced the detail on some things and let the exaggeration of others get out of hand. Things stopped looking like what they were suppose to be. Jae Lee did the same thing. None of it should have gotten past the art director.

Of course, I have run into people who, when I quesitoned something about he spattering of paint or ink they insisted was a well-known comic book character, told me that I had to be an artist to understand it. Sorry, but excrement is excrement, no matter what shape is it. And I don't have to be an artist to know excrement whne I see it.

Sometime look at the Wolverine mini-series by Frank Miller. This was the book that showed me that Miller knew how to use negative pace. For him, the white lines between the panels weren't gutters, they were part of the design. Then he finished up Batman: The Dark Knight with the little postage-stamp panels and gave up design over... something... I don't know what. Look at Chaykan's Scorpion and early Dominic Fortune stories.

[Reepicheep]

Frank Miller. The man should be working at Wendy's.
I had this Catwoman comic that had some kind of really plain and weird-looking artwork, but I can't find it so I guess I threw it away. It was stupid.
Everyone in the world can draw better than me though, so I dunno.

I never knew what I thought of Frank Miller 'till recently, think I've come to a conclusion.

I like him as an artist, but not as a comic book artist. His work is visually interesting and appealing in the same way a lot of abstract art is, but his style is reader-unfriendly. I haven't read a comic book of his cover-to-cover, simply because they're too difficult to read. Outside of a comic book dimension, though, its really quite enjoyable.

Sadly, I don't have enough knowledge to decide on a worst.

[Alaric]

And one of my alltime least faves is Carmine Infantino.

Same here.

[daglob]

Infantino is another guy who's style got looser as time went by. This is not always a good thing. His later stuff from Marvel (Star Wars?) was painful to look at. His early illustrations of The Flash were TIGHT, almost like they were intended to be ink and wash magazine illustrations. I didn't much like his own inking on Elongated Man-like Jack Sparling, it looked like he left in a lot of sketch lines.

[Courtnall6]

Anything hyper/photo realistic is boring and stiff....so Greg Land and anyone like him.

Other artist I'm not too fond of...

Rob Leifeld - Look at me! I've been in the biz 20 years and I still can't draw!
Frank Quietly - Just plain ugly
Leinil Francis Yu - Blech...

[bat1987]

On top of my head

Ryan Benjamin
Tom Mandrake
Alex Ross (like his covers though)