Kind of like Branch Rickie's main motivation (according to him) for recruiting Jackie Robinson to the Brooklyn Dodgers was to win more baseball games. The historic part of it was just a bonus.
Branch Rickey's selection of Jackie Robinson was well-calculated. If I correctly recall, Rickey also said there were more talented Black players he could have brought on board, but Robinson showed a temperament that convinced him the man could take racial abuse from fans and fellow players without retaliating.
It’s funny, I remember when I found out that you were moving over to Fantastic Four from X-Men. I was a little bummed for a minute that you weren’t staying with them, but I was so excited, because I knew FF was a perfect fit for you based on the earlier work with them.
When the first issue came out, I was knocked out by the look of the art with you inking yourself. I noticed right away that the art and script fit much tighter than many of the other books done in the Marvel style.
I know that there were a bunch of fans that were mad that you changed books, but after a few months, things settled down, and we ended up getting more powerful stories.
I’m still amazed at the difference that you inking pencils instead of Terry or Joe S. produced. Fun times.
When I was a young ‘un and credits started to appear with regularity, I puzzled over what an “inker” was. I finally decided it must be whoever did the colors—tho that couldn’t really explain the great differences seen in the art.
It was something of an epiphany when I learned the truth.
I fought for a long time with Chris over his use of “Author” for himself, “Artist” for me, and “Inker” for Terry. I insisted that Terry was just as much an “artist” as I was, and that as co-plotter I was every bit as much an “author” as Chris.
Credit where credit is due—for everyone—has been a campaign throughout my career.
Speaking of which, I know a lot of effort goes into drawing those 11x17 pages. Back in the good ol' days sometimes I would pick up a comic that had murky/blurry print (covers notwithstanding). It had to be somewhat frustrating for the artist to see their work not being reproduced as nicely as it was originally drawn.
Looking back at the ol’ letterpress/newsprint comics of yore, I wonder how I could have loved ‘em so much. Certainly my own work suffered under that printing. A case of “the only game in town”, I guess.
I worked the dark room area for a commercial print shop for 11 years. There were so many things that could go wrong to cause muddy line work.
The vacuum board being the only mechanical error. All others were in the pursuit to save time and cut corners.
E.G: trying to develop too many pieces of film at once. Trying to get too many pieces of artwork on the live artwork board. Not getting a good vacuum seal when burning the plates. Trying to use less plate developer solution to save money.
no doubt in my mind that Terry Austin had a huge influence on my work at the print shop. His zip-a-tone use made me very aware of how things can “close up“. Not on my watch.
In my youth, I mistakenly thought that in some cases the letterer handled the scripting. In a way, I could see how I made that assumption, particularly with how well Tom Orzechowski's style meshed so well with Claremont's increasing dialogue 'ticks', and there was a time when his work was not appearing on other writers' books. The spell was broken when I saw Orz on a Louise Simonson issue of NEW MUTANTS, and the dialogue was decidedly different!
Edited by Vinny Valenti on 28 June 2022 at 10:34pm