Worst Artist of 2008
Fin Fang Doom says: Larry Stroman!
I don’t think I’ve ever got to the point that I hated looking at a comic so much that I didn’t want to buy it anymore, but that was the case when Stroman took over the art duties on X-Factor earlier this year. The writing had been slipping for a while, but the art was the final (and biggest) nail in the coffin. Stroman can’t draw a face to save his own, and he doesn’t seem to understand that characters have specific looks that the artist is supposed to reasonably recreate. Like for instance, M should be a young, hot chick, not your middle-aged sister in her baggiest pair of sweats.
Jim Doom says: Billy Tan!
Man, this guy is awful. I’m sure there are worst artists out there in the comics world, but Tan’s awfulness is amplified by the prominence of the books he’s assigned to. Most recently, that has been New Avengers. Here’s what I said about him throughout the year:
“I think this guy must be convinced that there is a direct relationship between number of lines and quality of art. He’s wrong, obviously. This is just a dirty mess.”
“And Billy Tan is pretty awful.”
“Oh and Billy Tan is just terrible. Would someone do me a favor and stop hiring him?”
Doom DeLuise says: JG Jones!
It’s not that he’s a bad artist. I actually think his art is some of the finest the industry has ever seen. My problem with the guy lies in the fact that he can’t meet deadlines, and his lateness is responsible for making the art in Final Crisis uneven and frustrating. By issue five, his art was probably in less than half of the thing, and I heard that he’s not contributing a single picture to the final issue of the series. Talk about lame!
I don’t know if the reason for his tardiness is because of his attention to detail or some problem with not being given enough time in advance to work on a project, or a combination of the two, but, man, when your flagship crossover for the year has to start using fill-in artists less than halfway through the series, you’ve got problems. And the odd thing is that it still seems like each issue is delayed every month. This has got to be one of the slowest moving crossover events of all time.
Imagine if DC had decided to go the route Marvel has in the past, where they delay everything until the main book can be shipped with consistent art. We probably wouldn’t even have issue four yet, and who knows how much money they’d be losing from other series that are crossing over with Final Crisis.
Oh, wait, my bad. I think there’s maybe one other ongoing title that’s crossing over, and it’s the only other series being written by Grant Morrison right now.
Here are the picks we’ve made for Worst Artist in years past! Check it out:
2007:
Doom DeLuise: Michael Turner
Jim Doom: (tie) Billy Tan, Joe Madureira, Michael Turner
Doominator: Chris Bachalo
Fin Fang Doom: One of the artists from Countdown2006:
Jim Doom: Michael Turner
Doom DeLuise: (tie) Andrew Currie and Scott McDaniel
Fin Fang Doom: Rob Liefeld
Doominator: Rob Liefeld
+1 for Larry Stroman. I could not believe that Marvel actually paid someone to draw that mess. Everyone had these gigantic monkey heads. It was just horrendous. I’ve never hated a piece of comic art more.