Among the pantheon of horrible comic artists, many will mention Rob Liefeld …and while I agree that he’s horrible, we need more than one horrible artist to fill the Hall of Shame.
So I present the first of many nominees: Tony Daniels. For God’s sake, look at this poor girl’s butt! The near cheek looks like it belongs to Ashley or Mary-Kate or whatever, and the other one belongs to…I dunno, a normally-proportioned 14 year-old girl. What the hell is happening to her shoulders? And try drawing a skull that will fit in that head!
Well, if we’re going back to the Silver Age, no one was worse than Steve Ditko. Drawings that looked to have been done by a five-year old, and a particularly bad five-year old at that. How he ever got work is beyond me.
I wanted to reply, but then I saw that people actually think that Gil Kane and Steve Ditko were bad artists (I also disagree about Don Heck, although I can see why people would think that - his figures were bland and he was overly dependant on arrows to guide the eye from panel to panel), and my head exploded.
Ditko absolutely astonishes me. His layouts were incredible, as were his character designs and figures. His Dr. Strange absolutely blows me away.
Seriously, though. Duncan Rouleau. He did JLA for a few issues (a horrible storyline, at that) and that was all I ever need to see. He’s one on a very short list of artists whose work I refuse to buy sight-unseen. I’m sure I’ll think of more later.
I hate Humberto Ramos, but I haven’t actually paid attention to his work enough to know whether it’s bad or I just don’t like his style.
Oh, and since this spun out of the other thread, might as well mention that Igor Kordey sucks.
And in the phoning-it-in department:
John Byrne and Erik Larsen - two artists who can draw well when they actually put time into what they’re doing, but for whatever reason (Byrne apperantly isn’t happy unless he’s pencilling 17 books at once, and Larsen is busy with Image stuff along with whatever else he’s working on) don’t and generally turn out stuff that looks like chicken scratch.
Byrne has been doing this for, like, over 10 years now, so I’m not sure what’s up with that. I can’t believe they’re putting him on Action with Gail Simone.
I really hate Dom Reardon’s art on Caballistics Inc running currently in 2000AD. When blood and hair and shadow and clothes all look the same, it’s hard to figure out what’s going on. And it gets a lot worse than that. Its sometimes hard even to tell one character from another. A shame, because I think there is basically a good story in the strip, I just can’t follow it because of the crappy art.
Steve Yeowell was another all black artist I couldn’t stand.
Ilike Gil Kane, but it always bothered me that you always seemed to be looking up the character’s nose.
If they did a comic book version of The Blair Witch Project, Gil Kane would’ve been the perfect illustrator.
I particularly like the issue of Ambush Bug where they arodied different artist’s styles. For the one panel that was done in Gil Kane’s style they ave Ambush Bug a nose, just so you could look up it.
Both of these men did amazing work in the 40s and 50s. Robbins in particular drew “Johnny Hazard” in a very Milt Caniff-inspired style which worked nicely in the comic strip format, but his figures looked stunted and cartoony on the full-size comic book page from about 1973-onward. He died in 1994.
George Tuska is another one who did marvelous work in the 40s, but ran out of steam by the late 60s (Compare his wonderful, Toth-inspired Skyman with his lumbering Iron Man of about 25 years later). It didn’t help his reputation that he was always paired with really awful inkers like Vince Colletta and Mike Esposito at Marvel and DC. Thre’s a compilation of his stuff in comics shops now.
I always thought Todd McFarlane and Rob Liefeld marked the beginning of the end for American comics. Not only were they awful in their own right, but they inspired a swarm of really awful imitators. The “Image Style” made me quit reading comics for a long time. Thankfully, their influence seems to be on the wane.
