[net.comics] Daredevil, New Mutants, etc.

boyajian@akov68.DEC (JERRY BOYAJIAN) (02/22/86)

> From:	reed!tina

> By the way, has anyone noticed that, concerning the New Mutants, there are 2
> general classes of people, those who liked Sienkowitz (or however you spell it)
> and those who didn't.  I definitly fall into the latter category....

And I fall into the former category. It's funny, when Sienkiewicz (which is,
by the way, pronounced Sin-kev'-itch, which doesn't help if you want to try
to spell it phoneticly) took over the book, I liked the art, but I didn't
think it was all that appropriate for that particular comic). After a while,
I didn't care --- it was great stuff anyways. What I like about it is that
it's different --- he's trying *artistic* things with his drawing, rather
than simply rendering characters on a page. The figures may be distorted,
but they are done so on purpose, for a reason.

I talked with Bill for a while at the Boskone sf con here in Boston the
other weekend [by the way, I want to mention that I was pleased to meet
some other net.comics readers there], and mentioned what I felt about his
art on the Newties. He said something that made sense to me as to the
appropriateness of his distorted art style for that book. He felt that
since the main characters were today's teenagers, that a punkish/new-
wavish style of art seemed right. Despite the fact that the characters
aren't particular punk or new-wave, that style of art was meant to give
a feel of *today* to the comic. With this in mind, I have to now agree
that is was appropriate.

However, I should mention that I'm not that fond of his inks on either
Mary Wilshire's pencils or the Art Adams cover (of a couple of issues
ago). But this is for different a different reason --- I think the
styles of Wilshire and Adams clash too much with Sienkiewicz's.

> Personaly,
> my favourite artist is Art Adams, at least in the Marvel line.  
> Well, both Adams and of course, Frank Miller!!!

Adams is *extremely* good, and certainly one of Marvel's best artists.
Miller is very good at design and layout, but I'm not that fond of his
actual pencilling. I think he's a much better writer than artist. I'd
add Walt Simonson to the list of top Marvel artists (though, as with
Miller, I think he's a better writer than artist), as well as Barry
Windsor-Smith, now that he's doing semi-regular work for Marvel (he
did the cover for the last issue of FIRESTAR, and he's the new "regular"
cover artist for THE NEW MUTANTS, starting with the most recent issue).

> Ah well, I await eagerly the next Daredevil.  By the way, does anyone out
> there still read X-Factor?  I quit after issue two.  Could someone let me
> know what is going on?  I refuse to support it with my mula, but I am 
> curious...

I've been keeping up with it reluctantly. Don't worry, nothing of great
consequence has happened except for two rather superficial things. (1)
Warren is turning into a schmuck now. There's one scene that indicates that
he's ready to dump Candy Southern and move in on Jean. (2) Hank has become
"human" again and is now back to speaking like an erudite gentelman. I
think the only reason for these is to regress this book further back to
the way the original X-Men were. Blechh!
	It should be noted that starting with issue #6, Louise Simonson,
who is currently, in my humble opinion, Marvel's second best writer
(after Miller) is taking over while Layton writes/pencils/inks the
X-FACTOR ANNUAL. Supposedly, she'll be (finally!) bringing to a head
the Jean/Scott/Maddy situation.

--- jayembee (Jerry Boyajian, DEC, Acton-Nagog, MA)

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