DC's New Event?

I'm a pretty big fan of neo-traditionalists, heavy liners, and of the simpler artforms to rest further over on the abstract side of sequential artwork.

I'm seeing many mainstream styles re-emerge from indie status after a long wait under the various ranges of the dominating "superhero style". Taken to the extreme is what I'm seeing at Marvel these days with the painterly imitations. The heavier worked shading, colors, and tones of the pseudo-realism in full swing at Marvel are far from anything new, it's simply that with the introduction of Painter and Photoshop it's gotten WAY easier to do (and fake). Some people dig it and I wouldn't fault them for it for a second.

But on the opposite end you have "indie" or non-traditional styles rolling in and that's what I'm finding interesting. It evokes a more personal and interpretive way of storytelling for me and can go places symbolically that realism styles are completely incapable of. Eisner was the master and if you ever need to find the center to the comic art world, he's it. Step to the left of him and you see so many of the artists mentioned before and others: Darwyn Cooke, Jeff Smith, Mike Allred, Bruce Timm, Melinda Gebbie, Mike Mignola, Kevin O'Neil, Dean Trippe, Kyle Baker, Frank Espinosa, Bryan Lee O'Malley, and many others. Simple, powerful, and evocative.

For anime and manga, I think it is a simple matter of artforms taking different paths. In America it went one way, in Japan you can really see the influences of early American animation styles. I think most of what you see in Japan is traced directly back to one point: Astro Boy. In this singular catalyst for all that was to come you see a character with his roots in Mickey Mouse and Betty Boop as easily as you can see groundbreaking forward thinking styles and techniques. It set the Japanese art scene off in a different direction only to have it come back around and merge into our mainstream. Where do all the big eyes in manga come from? Well, Walt Disney!

I think on the surface the style seems to seem impenetrable to some who throw it all under the Dragonball or Pokemon categories. How many times was DBZ evoked in fan rants about the Teen Titans cartoon when it really owed to so many other innovative series: Fooly Cooly, Akira, Battle of the Planets, and tons of non-Eastern styles as well. If anything its synthesis of East and West seemed more of a reclaiming of the long-since-abandoned traditions in American animation that John Kricfalusi champions on a regular basis in his blog. There is a HUGE variety in art, visual tools, and approaches in anime and manga once you get past the surface similarites and it's been influencing our mainstream for a long time. Frank Miller and Lone Wolf and Cub as one of the most noticeable examples. And for studio styles in general, American comics were founded on them as both Eisner and early comic publishers relied on them often. It's what some do to get comics out on time, another long-since-forgotten tradition in American comics.

But as for Ed McGuinness and Tintin Pantoja. I think they both have very strong styles that have roots in American comics as easily as manga. I love Ed McG's work and buy books often on his art alone but can also see his style following from 80s anime-styled american cartoons like Thundercats far more than actual anime. What I see in Tintin's work is an amazing connection to some of the core concepts of what Wonder Woman is and would actually buy say a Wonder Girl (Diana as a girl, which seems to be what she was doing in her proposal) title from her which is more than the mainstream Wonder Woman book has gotten me to do for a long time. And to actually have a book about Diana that girls would read? My god, it's revolutionary!

But back to the point, the entire dark "realism" trend is getting me down and I think taking comics away from their mainstream and new audience appeal. It excites me to see artists and comics showing up that I could actually let my children read outside of Archie.