austex23 wrote:
Most under-rated might be Mike Ploog from the later Silver Age. Absolutely loved his horror comics.


You may well be right. Ploog was absolutely amazing. I think his work was just too weird and too un-Kirbylike to get the recognition it fully deserved.

How about Frank Brunner? The 10 issues or so of Doctor Strange he did in the early 70s were among the best drawn comics of that period, but I think he probably got the appropriate amount of recognition for such an infinitesimal small body of work. Heck, compared to Brunner, Smith, Adams and Steranko were prolific.

Val Mayerick is also very under-rated. He had the makings of a fine craftsman and coulda been a real contender with a larger body of work and better inkers. He had all the makings of a stalwart albeit unremarkable talent.

I also think Rich Buckler is under-rated nowadays, and largely dismissed as a rip-off artist, making because of his chameleon-like ability to do effective riffs on Kirby and Adams/Buscema, as well as his liberal use of swipes. But Buckler breathed new life into the moribund FF and was capable of some really interesting storytelling when he used his own style, which was closer to Adams/Buscema than Kirby. His Deathlok was way, way ahead of its time.

Dan Adkins is also criminally under-rated, once again for the wide-spread misconception of him as a swipe artist. It's true that as an artist he was no great shakes, but he was one of the era's pre-eminent inkers and he could make anyone shine.
  


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