Here's one unique answer: From several years ago, a high-visibility title with big-name penciler John Byrne doing so-so work and a mediocre inker named Nelson taking considerable liberties with the inking. In making several sensible changes, Nelson takes the work all the way from "Enh..." to "Meh."
Yes, Byrne drew Supes with legs of two different lengths, his own peculiar and fanciful bullshit leg anatomy.
But despite Nelson's anatomical improvements, and rationalizing of shadows, it still isn't really very good, is it? Maybe only good in the eyes of the editor, who likely urged Nelson to fix things up, and was probably good and tired of Byrne turning in half-baked work.
(Though comics are in some sense done to a higher standard now, remember it's still a job, one that does not demand perfection.)
This non-uplifting, unredemptive little fable reminds of us of that time-honored maxim, "You can't polish a turd." When something is fundamentally off, you can't fix it with little adjustments. You really can't. You can massively redraw... But many inkers are not good enough draughtsmen to pull it off, even if they felt it was the right thing to do, had the OK, and didn't mind putting in extra effort for the same money.
So what could have prevented this admittedly inconsequential flub in the first place?
Thumbnailing a better pose early in the process.
John
Are you serious? The art on the right is not inks over the pencils on the left. They are similar but not the same. Too many minor details (belt loops, angle of feet, boot tops, hair, lips, background buildings, etc.) don't line up for it to be from the same original artwork. Be aware that almost all pencilers come across a pose they prefer when drawing a character and continue to draw it that way whenever they can with slight variations. Besides professional inkers are not allowed to redraw what the penciler laid down. I was a professional inker and colorist at Harvey Comics in the 70s and 80s and I know that once pencils are inked over for publication the pencils cease to exist and there's no way to compare the two.
ReplyDeleteHi, Paul. I don't think there's anything to say suggest the inker wasn't allowed to repencil the page. Normally, it's done by a bigger-named, more skilled finisher like a Kevin Nowlan, but I think that's what happened here.
ReplyDeleteNowlan, btw, was given a lot of freedom to fix up up Dan Jurgens pencils for Superman-Alien, for example to the extent that --rather famously--one of Jurgens's pages was returned unlinked because Nowlan had totally redrawn it.
DC keeps a photocopy of every penciled page, so there would in fact be a way to compare.
Did you work on the Harvey big-foot titles or others?