A Reply to Watkins: Random Thoughts on McFarlane, Larsen and Contemporary Mainstream Comics / Randy Kinden

A Reply to Watkins:

Random Thoughts on McFarlane, Larsen and Contemporary Mainstream Comics

Randy Kinden

McFarlane’s work on Spider-Man was stellar, I thought. I loved how he shook things up with the changes he made—i.e., the positions he would put him in and the ‘spaghetti’ webbing. The big bug eyes on his mask were really cool too, I thought. I remember initially not really liking his art, but it quickly grew on me! He made major changes with Mary Jane’s look as well.

Of course the editors at Marvel were against all of these changes, and when he became popular with the fans, they had a bunch of artists ape his style.

He pushed the envelope with his run writing Spider-Man, which, as you know, caused him to eventually leave Marvel for Image. ‘Torment’ was a good story making use of a lesser known villain, Calypso. The ‘Perceptions’ story was good as well.

I recently looked at a trade paperback of McFarlane’s work from his early Amazing Spider-Man days, and I wasn’t as impressed. Maybe it was how they recoloured it—I’m not sure. Sometimes when they publish reissues they recolour them and they look like crap!

I totally forgot he did many of the covers for Marvel Tales. Looking back on them, I wasn’t a big fan of many.

As for Erik Larsen, I was never a fan of his. I found him to be a bad imitation of McFarlane. That said, I haven’t seen his stuff for a while. I may think differently if I saw it again. I’ll have to revisit Larsen’s work on Spider-Man. His work on Savage Dragon, I thought, was much better. I never read it, but I found the art to be very good! Whatever happened to that title?

The public interest certainly waned after McFarlane left Marvel. When Liefeld, Jim Lee and him left to form Image there was still a little interest, as Spawn sold a million copies, I think. Wild C.A.T.S sold well too. This was a time when everyone it seemed was into comics, buying them in bulk, thinking they were going to be worth a lot. These buffoons soon realized that the ones which had a high print run would prove worthless!

This, along with all the useless gimmick covers from DC, Marvel and Image, was the death nail for mainstream comics. Add to the fact that the stories were not very good. The whole Spider-Man clone story wasn’t very good at all. When Marvel announced that Ben Reilly was the real Spider-Man, I stopped buying it!

The best story out of the late 90’s (I think it came out in 1996) was Kingdom Come from DC. Mark Waid wrote it with painted art by Alex Ross. It was an Elseworlds story (DC’s answer to Marvel’s What if?!) It was Waid’s response to all the antiheroes that were flooding the market. The story is set in the future with most of these antiheroes taking over (many are the children of the originals); meanwhile Superman has retired and Batman is a recluse who has bat robots throughout Gotham. It’s a really good read and worth checking out.

Lobo was a pretty good comic in the mid to late 90’s. I thought Spawn was pretty good after Greg Cupello took over the art duties. Not much else springs to mind as being very good during that period. Silver Surfer with Ron Lim as artist was good, though.

I always thought the Spider-Man ‘Brand New Day’ stories were good in the mid 2000’s. Since Doc Ock took over, I haven’t even bothered to read it.

In the early 2000’s Marvel and DC started to improve. Here’s a short list of notable titles and story arcs from the past decade and a half:

DareDevil: ‘Guardian Devil’ (Vol. 2, Nos. 1-8), 1998-1999. Director Kevin Smith did the writing while Joe Quesada did the art. The dialogue was very wordy, much like Smith’s movies.

Batman: ‘Hush’ (Nos. 608-619), 2002-2003. Written by Jeph Loeb with art by Jim Lee.

Spiderman: Blue (Nos. 1-6), 2002-2003. Written by Jeph Loeb with art by Tim Sale. A throwback story with Gwen from the 70’s. Very well done.

Identity Crisis (Nos. 1-7), 2004. A DC story with the Justice League. Written by Brad Meltzer with art by Rags Morales.

Green Lantern: Rebirth (Nos. 1-6), 2004-2005. Written by Geoff Johns with art by Ethan Van Sciver. The return of Hal Jordan.

That’s all I can think of right now. If I think of any more, I will let you know!

Images taken from Spider-Man and Amazing Spider-Man, copyright 1990 and 1991 Marvel Entertainment Group; and Savage Dragon, copyright 1993 Erik Larsen.