Great Article: The real reasons Marvel isnt selling well

Loved that article. Quite spot on.

I have began to re-read Marvel from FF#1 (1961) forward. It will take me a few years, as I do not have the disposable "comics time" I used to have. I believe that Marvel really lost their way at about the time that McFarlane and Liefeld began to explode onto the scene. That will be my "jumping off" point in the re-reading. There have been a few great story-lines since then ("Siege" being one), but they are very few, and very far between. I'll be happy to finish the entire Marvel chronology through the very early 1990's, and then....I'm gone forever, other than the occasional glance. My biggest problem with current Marvel? The art. It either is very derivative of the plethora of comic artists today, or so individually styled that it takes the reader completely out of the story, and into some artists' half-assed masturbatory museum of style.

Where's the Romita (Sr.), the Simonson, the Byrne? Or the Buscemas? No one draws with a damned pencil anymore, either. It doesn't even look like comics anymore, it looks like a freaking generic art school exploded on the page.

Colorists working by computer have also ruined comics. Shadow and color changes on costumes & backgrounds used to be implied by pencil (thank God for Jack Kirby).

In other words, comics have become much less organic, and way too sanitized/perfect for my (perhaps too sensitive) needs as a reader.

Peace.

/rant over/