The era of the superstar comics blogger continues, however.
Answer a few more of your questions? Oh, if you insist!
Nate A asks
“Is the era of the superstar penciller over? Will there be another Byrne or Lee (proportionate to the current baseline sales) or did something happen in the market to make that impossible?”
That’s a question I’ve been thinking about since I saw you ask it. Given the current comics market ecosystem (and for the purposes of this question, I’m sticking to just the “superhero-dominated direct comics market” as implied by the examples of Byrne and Lee, otherwise I’d just say like “Raina Telgemeier” and be done with it) is, for whatever reason, isn’t one in which one or two artists can rise to dominance.
Part of it is the market size. In the 1990s, if a comic sold 500,000 or a million or more copies, that went a long way toward making its artist a “hot” one. Your standard comic book nowadays isn’t reaching such lofty heights. There are lots of good artists, and lots of popular artists working on great books that sell well (as graded on the current curve), but the “superstar” ranking probably remains an artifact of the ’90s.
And as such, the remaining “superstar” artists are the ones who achieved that status before and haven’t done anything to undermine it. Jim Lee is the superstar artist of today. Maybe Todd McFarlane. Byrne is basically retired, sticking to commissions and his X-Men fanfic. And there are a couple of others from that period whose fortunes have waxed and mostly waned over in the decades since.
There is a new Batman run by Lee, with Jeph Loeb, a sequel to that jukebox-musical of a popular story Hush, coming, and we’ll see how demand and sales look on that to determine Lee’s remaining superstar status. (Though his $20,000 price tag on commissions probably locked that in pretty well.)
McFarlane’s ongoing devotion to Spawn doesn’t necessarily burn up the shelves, but he still retains that superstar reputation. He has name recognition value, and customers are always curious about what he’s doing, and his old Spider-Man and early Spawn sell incredibly well. And if he were to ever do a Spawn/Spider-Man crossover special, that would probably be the biggest selling superhero comic in recent memory.
Matthew sorts out the following
“You’ve had your own store for ten years (good job! congrats!), what’s the biggest mistake you’ve made (comics related or not)?”
Yup, it’ll be 10 years on…um, Election Day here in the States, it looks like. Huh.
Biggest mistake, I think, was not keeping all the stock in the backroom completely sorted from the get-go. Part of the problem was — and this is not something I expected — once you open a comic book store, people are dying to just give you boxes and boxes of comics. I ended up with several boxes from multiple collections coming into the store in short order, too much to easily sort right away, so they got put to the side to be done at a nigh-mythical “later date.”
At least most everything’s on shelves back there, though I wish I can devote the time to properly sorting everything out. It’s gonna take me hiring someone else to do it for me, because it’s just too many at this point for me to do it. But I go through ’em on a pretty regular basis so even if it’s not as organized as I’d like, I at least have a fairly good idea where stuff is.
Tom W dares to ask
“Do your comics retailer abilities, honed over many years, mean your comics are in mint even after you’ve read them?”
Now, I wish I had the power to make low grade books suddenly mint just with my mere touch, but I know that’s not what you meant. If it’s mint when I get it, or “Near Mint,” more likely, or…let’s just say “new” condition…it stays that way after I’ve had my way. I mean, it’s not like I’m eating ribs or anything while paging through the latest Batman/Scooby Doo.
I am (contrary to popular belief) only human, and maybe I’ll accidentially drop or bump a comic, or otherwise damage it, and I just kinda shrug and deal with it. But that’s the exception, not the rule.
Thanks as always for all the great questions, pals. If you need clarification on any of my answers, always feel free to ask!
Re Superstar Artists: The devaluing of comic book art in relation to the medium (not in terms of how much originals go for, hoo boy) is one of my least favorite aspects of modern comics. We have some terrific artists drawing books at the Big 2 – Dan Mora, Jorge Jimenez, Pepe Larraz, Marcio Takara, etc.- that would be highly lauded in any other era. Yes, some reviewers and fans usually take notice, but the attention usually goes to the writer.
I think Big 2 comics switching artists to keep on a schedule has something to do with the diminished status of current artists. I also think insisting on full scripts rather than Marvel method writing can inhibit artist from showing off as much as they might want to.
There is also the phenomenon of artists switching to covers full-time. I can’t blame them, it pays better and is probably less of a grind. I think of “cover artists” as different from interior artists, though, and they might only help to sell variant covers.
Bottom line: art good! pay attention to it!
I am familiar with Raina Telgemeier’s amazing graphic novels (thanks to my kids), but has she done any comic book format works? (Excuse my ignorance!)
I work in academia and one of the things that is wild is people who write critically about comics and don’t mention the artists. I read an article a few years ago that included art and only credited it to the writer. Mind blowing. Of course, I also recently read a book that barely even credited the writer either (writer was mentioned in image caption and endnote, artist was only mentioned in image caption). It’s not like these things pop into existence from nothing, people have to make them!)
I think a lot of this comes down to people not knowing how to discuss/talk about the art. It’s definitely an issue for people who are relatively new to comics, but even for those that have read a lot of them, if they’ve only ever written about prose fiction, they don’t have the language to discuss different aspects of the art. (I mean, if you asked me to write a review of an opera I would definitely struggle to write anything meaningful, so I can understand up to a point, but also I’m not writing opera reviews.)
Ben–
I don’t think she’s gone anything in traditional “floppy” comics. She published some mini-comics and had stories in DC’s Bizarro World anthology and one of Image’s Flight anthologies.
“gonna take me hiring someone else to do it for me”… my first job as a young lad back in early 80’s was to sort back issues at my LCS for store credit. I am not sure if that is option these days, but was great for young Kyle to be able to afford his funny books and I am sure it was a good deal for the owner as well.
I’m thinking of the modern comics artists whose involvement can get me to buy a book, and I’m coming up with 3: Dan Mora, Chris Samnee, and Fiona Staples. Of the three, I think Staples is the closest to Modern Superstar* status, though Mora could get there. Samnee, I fear, is probably deemed “too cartoony” to achieve the massive following he so richly deserves.
*a diminished form of Classic Superstar of the Lee/McFarlane generation, or the Byrne/Miller one before that.
After Image took all the talent in the 1990s, Marvel and DC stopped promoting the artists as a big deal.
It’s been deliberate to try and keep control.
Something not mentioned above is the infrequently and non-consecutiveness(I mean a long run ala Byrne, Perez, Miller, Lee, McFarlane, heck going back to Kirby and Ditko, okay Don Heck on Iron Man) of artist output nowadays, which can be attributed to re-numbering/digital piracy maybe.
John Cassaday had a long run on Planetary which is seemingly impossible today. Dan Mora’s long run(i think) on World’s Finest shifted him over to Superman. Even on flagship/prominent titles no artist stays beyond a renumbering which puts paid to fans thinking of an artist having superstar status.
Only Fiona Staples, Cory Walker, Ryan Ottley and Charlie Adlard in recent (well, last 12 years and on(?) memory lasted multi years on consecutive issues(unless I missed some artists?) and if those were Dc/vertigo or Marvel Epic comics, would have shot them to stratosphere maybe.
Every superstar artist I can think of(who stayed in comics) either had long runs or consecutive runs I believe. Since that’s mostly gone away, I believe there’s slim chance of new superstar artists; notwithstanding the above comment which says Marvel is not pushing artists to superstar status to avoid a repeat of the Image exodus.
Ooh, I forgot Scott Campbell in the 90s. He might be exception to my theory but I can’t think of any others. Even Madureira and Turner had long-ish runs before Battle Chasers and Fathom, right?
Mike Mignola seems to generate excitement if he does something non-Hellboy.
In the same breath as Raina Telgemeier you have to include Dav Patel.
“Is the era of the superstar penciller over?”
Frankly, yes. Seems like that last one was the (tragically deceased WAY too young) Michael Wieringo. I’m sure there’s some fairly popular ones I just haven’t heard of, but I don’t see/hear of anyone getting HUGE like Bryne, Lee, & McFarlane were.
“once you open a comic book store, people are dying to just give you boxes and boxes of comics”>
So THAT’S the way to increase a collection!
“I at least have a fairly good idea where stuff is”.
Except the Ark of the Covenant, which I KNOW you misplaced.
There are absolutely superstar artists today, but most of them seem to have concluded the real money is in covers, not sequential art– your Jenny Frisons, Skottie Youngs, Warren Louws, and so, so many others. Even vets like J. Scott Campbell and Adam Hughes rarely do interiors any more. Dan Mora is the one major “new” artist I can think of who still seems to concentrate on interiors over covers.
I did the “very scientific” research of looking at a bunch of creators on Instagram and counting how many followers they had.
I ignored webcomics-specific creators. For reference Jim Lee has 630,000 and Todd McFarlane has 534,000.
After those two, the next highest I saw were Jorge Jimenez (426,000), J. Scott Campbell (412,000), Skottie Young (364,000), and Dan Mora (320,000).
At least, that was the case until I got to Gabriel Picolo (who did the YA Teen Titans graphic novels). He has 3.5 million. So there, he’s the current superstar.
Anyway, tons of others artists I didn’t look up, but interesting to see some numbers.
I feel like Bryan Hitch and John Cassaday could still command some good sales numbers when they drew interiors. But they both probably fall into the “90s creators” category. Not exactly current.
Nicola Scott should be a current superstar, but she’s probably more known/popular for that series of covers she did for DC than her (gorgeous) interiors.
I would think that the era of the “superstar penciller” is pretty much dead because virtually nobody actually pencils anymore–on Bristol board– mostly they are drawing on their tablets. And many of them take shortcuts, reuse the same image for multiple panels–sometimes only slightly altered.
Jason Fabok and Ivan Reis come to mind quickly as artists who should be considered “superstars” due to actually possessing great drawing prowess and an accurate grasp of anatomy, but there are many artists in the industry now who create bland pages, or whos work is so cartoony or manga-influenced that it beats little resemblance to the zenith of the comic book art by superstar pencilers of the Bronze Age. Howard Chaykin wrote a great essay a few years ago about how many contemporary comics artist lack the basic skills of visual narration to move a story along smoothly.
*whose work…
* bears little resemblance .. .
*contemporary comics artists…
“or whos work is so cartoony or manga-influenced that it beats little resemblance to the zenith of the comic book art by superstar pencilers”.
That’s an issue I have with lots of modern comics art, also.