I just read a letter in an Iron Man letters page in few decades old Marvel complaining about how in one panel the coil on a telephone cord ran clockwise but in the next panel it ran counter-clockwise...
'Twas ever thus?
All I know for sure is that Murphy Anderson once drew the worst poodle I've ever seen, but I'm not a big fan of poodles anyway* (excepting Pom-Pom from Torchy The Battery Boy of course).
* cue outraged poodle owning silver age Hawkman fan denouncing me as the anti-christ.
What I enjoy most about good/great comic artists is when they have graduated to the point where, having learned the rules, they are now free to break them. They have earned the right for their conceits.
When I was an avid reader I would frustrate my friends by having wildly different tastes in artists because I was so taken by what was possible in the medium ("How can you like both Ditko's Spider-Man AND Romita's???").
Everyone of later generations can relate to not "getting" Kirby at first and then something kicks in down the road and you realize, oh, this guy is comics' Picasso, he's doing things at a different level now, having written the rules for so many for so long.
So this a long winded way to say, given that you are even asking yourself (and us) this question after so long and distinguished a career, is answer is all the answer you need. You still give a damn and aren't phoning it in. (See your lamenting about improving your abilities with animals)
Well... OK. But, quickly looking at examples by Kirby, Ditko, Buscema, Adams, Miller, all different kinds of artists drawing all different kinds of characters, and I don't see what's wrong.
Because there is nothing wrong, Michael. JB asked if there was a groundswell of complaints against his hands and feet and I replied with the only complaint I've ever seen and how that complaint was based on that person's inability to appreciate the comic book art form.