alizarin1 wrote:
GIL KANE: "Everyone had vested interests in doing as little as possible as quickly as possible. . . The editors were failed in every other level of editing and publishing: the writers were all either ex-pulp writers or people couldn’t make any other kind of place for themselves professionally, and colourists were just the kind of marginal craftsmen that comics were made for."


dearlenbaugh wrote:
OUCH!


Yes, that was a rather brutal assessment, and probably more truth in it than the average fan might guess. But Kane's argument cuts both ways. One could just as easily say that the comic book field was littered with hundreds of artists who didn't have either the talent or personal drive to
permanently move up to more prestigious and lucrative newspaper syndicate strip work (although John Prentice and Leonard Starr did), or illustration for the slick magazines (as Craig Flessel did) or fine art painting (as Everett Raymond Kinstler did).

Kane's interviews are always good reading and he is a very incisive critic, but I often come away from them detecting a carefully controlled, yet undeniable undercurrent of mild resentment that seems to linger about him as a result of his long involvement in the comic book industry. I get the same vibe from some of the other old-timers who worked in the business too, though obviously not all.  But then, if anyone else saw thousands of pages of their artistic efforts sabotaged for years by what they considered to be bad or indifferent inking, and on top of that being reduced to little more than an interchangeable cog in an assembly line, I imagine they'd be nursing a good deal of long-term frustration and sense of grievance about it too.




Last Edited By: alizarin1 Oct 27 13 4:56 PM. Edited 1 times.