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George Perez & his Art
(Some uninformed speculations)
With “50 Years Ago” featuring the Avengers' 'Squadron' tales, George Perez deserves a second glance, to my mind.
In my final Marvel years, George Perez ( neck-and-neck with Byrne), was at his zenith (Bill Sienkiewicz just starting to appear! ) Which Perez pieces shone? Captain Britain vs Spider-man's cover ( MTU # 65). The UK re-printed that George Perez masterpiece bigger, and with brighter colours, in1980(?), on Captain Britain's second Summer Special cover. A 'Perez cover-Byrne interior' winning formula, for MTU # 65, also worked for X-Men # 112 (my first & favourite X-Men), and Avengers # 166 ( Nefaria), & its predecessors.
Other Perez masterpieces? Possibly George Perez's greatest masterpiece is Ultron's first arc finale (Avengers # 162.) 'The Bride of Frankenstein' & the Oedipus complex were combined (!) by Jim Shooter & George Perez, whilst anticipating the Korvac Saga's ending ( Avengers seemingly 'dying' – for tragic impact – with the team's victory helped by their antagonist's bride! )
In the UK, Marvel Superheroes Monthly featured that story ( December 1979 – the 'White Issue' – following 'the Black issue' – Ant-Man – the month before. Opposite colours powerfully delineating landmark Marvel Superheroes issues! Incidentally, the Black issue's on Kenny Everett, one episode, held by a dancer! ) Avengers # 162 ( UK's 'White Issue') being absolute top, the prior two George Perez issues shone, too. All were incredible!
( Despite George Perez's ground-breaking brilliance, on the Avengers, I just wished he'd have given Captain America a larger shield, though. Knuckle-to-elbow, Cap's shield resembled a big frisbee. A much larger, Cap # 215 George Tuska-shield's bullet-fire protection would ge greater! )
In MTIO # 64, Perez's Stingray was brilliant, too. Likewise, in the same month, his Taskmaster (Avengers # 196). Regarding Taskmaster fighting multiple opponents simultaneously, with martial arts strikes, George Perez's experience on 'Deadly Hands of Kung Fu' obviously informed that! It taking years to become “an overnight success”, was lost on 9 or 10 year old me, unfortunately! ( And, in turn, George Perez's Taskmaster experience informed Deathstroke the Terminator, whose costume wasn't entirely dissimilar! )
George Perez's best art had a novelty to it, compared with his predecessors. A special quality – something ineffable – hard to put into words. To recognize that novelty, George Perez's art needs comparing with previous, not later, art. That perspective won't be obvious, for modern readers; it just can't be. ( a similar point b.t. tactfully expressed to me, a while back, in respect of Marshall Rogers – whom I'd only read years later – taking over Batman. )
Regarding George Perez's Stingray, next issue's finale ( MTIO # 65), unfortunately, wasn't Perez-finished. ( MTIO # 65 losing Perez – c.f. Defenders # 25's finale losing Bob McLeod; and Avengers # 177 losing Perez for Korvac's conclusion; likewise, Power Man & Iron Fist # 53 – the Deadly
Nightshade Trology's finale - Zeck swapped for Sal. Winning art-teams absent from the field, for a continuing storyline's ending, seemed a 70s/80s occupational hazard! Or, the spinner-rack missed the conclusion altogether. Yes, X-Men # 137 - I mean you! )
To backtrack – art quality, not chronology, being the focus! - my first ever George Perez comic was The Complete Fantastic Four's final issue ( The Thing vs Power Man.) A good, solid issue, art-wise, by George Perez, with a terrific, bright cover. But, Perez's Ultron art brilliance being the high-bar – his Fantastic Four wasn't equivalent, at all. The Frightful Four's try-outs (Texas Twister, Ultra- man,Tigra, etc, ) likewise, good, solid work – but Ultron standard? Not at all.
Comparing 'The Inhumans' (in Blockbuster Monthly) with 'The Avengers', aged 10/11, I didn't connect their art at all, despite George Perez drawing both. Flatness / two-dimensionality rears its ugly head, in 'The Inhumans'! Black Bolt's as flat as pancake, in Blockbuster # 4, his fallen body crowed over, by a triumphant Shatterstar. Not Ultron-quality, at all. ( Shatterstar was well depicted, though, helmeted characters – c.f. Stingray - being a Perez forte! )
Nevertheless, digression's the ultimate sin, so...
My starting point, for George Perez, was the Squadron Avengers issues.
Here's my problem. George Perez was outstanding, artistically, in Ultron's first arc ( Starhawk vs Korvac likewise.) Those Squadron issues, however, were not outstanding! Good, solid issues, not masterpieces. Don't get me wrong. Classic Perez is there – the Vision vs Lady Lark/Hyperion, for example. Nevertheless, his art's uneven over the issues, taken as a whole.
So, the problem's what, exactly? From recent memory (sister blogs) – not close observation – here's some quick observations:
1.) Some “shots” appear flat/two dimensional. There's no background – figures just set against
plain white. No context for the featured character, in other words.
2.) Round/square faces plague many characters, with chins of great width – the women included! Those rotund faces hog entire small panels, sometimes!
3.) Some characters get a “cartoony” look, with 'cutesy' features/mouths.
4.) In group shots, characters 'profiled' to the “camera”/reader - or facing away. Emotion/expression thus being absent!
5.) Drawing main characters at a room's very back (“Long-shots” ), robbing faces of expression – c.f. facing away. For me, “Long shots” are a particular bug-bear. ( In his Copperhead Daredevils, Bob Brown even drew “long shot” fights. Unlike Colan & Palmer whose DD, readers never had trouble making out! )
6.) Just occasionally, is cramping/crowding a slight problem, perhaps?
Was Vince Colletta to blame ( Colletta's eraser reputation? ), with plain white backgrounds, behind figures, in certain panels? ( Vinnie being the 'impossible deadlines' inker, your scratchily-inked issue hit the spinner rack, at all, via Vinnie's eraser! ) It's possible, but Vince Colletta can't always be blamed. The Squadron issues involved other inkers, too! Nor can rotund faces, face-orientation, long shots, etc, be blamed on the inker.
( Inkers can, perhaps, bear responsibility for facial features, however. A later Ultron issue – Avengers # 202 – also in a Marvel Pocket book, as “This Evil Undying!” – had Esposito, not Pablo Marcos, inking George Perez. Cap's facial features suffer, significantly, as a result – right from the first splash/panel – as do Jan's, later in the comic! )
Luckily, in Ultron's first arc finale(Avengers # 160-62), the above problems didn't rear their ugly heads! Flatness, and 2-dimensionality disappear, through George Perez's 'foregrounding'. In front of the main characters, Perez places an Avengers chair-top, at a panel's bottom, or a large fraction of a character watching them, for a distinct foreground, and background. ( The technical term being 'overlapping/interposition', according to the internet! ) Overlapping/interposition's employed right from page one, in the Ant-Man issue, with Ant-Man's figure, watching in the foreground, in front of the Avengers, in the background! With that trick, complex “perspective lines”, like John Buscema's in “How To Draw Comics the Marvel Way”, are probably unnecessary! Interposition also solves the “long shot” issue of characters, at a room's far end, with faces readers need a magnifying glass to see. Just draw regular size figures ( i.e. fairly large), then sketch an Avengers chair-top, or part of a head/torso/arm in front, a false “foreground” providing depth to the scene!
Cramping/crowding problems? Writing and art both solve it! Few Avengers crowd the page, many being 'off the table'/ hors de combat!( Ultron's encephallo ray 'killed' – supposedly - the Vision, Cap, Wanda, etc! ) Jim Shooter used that trick again, when the Collector started spiriting Avengers away. As a kid, the writer preventing his story looking cramped on the page, through such plot-devices, never occurred to me!
In Avengers # 162 (Ultron's first arc finale), George Perez also solves crowding/cramping with character 'pairings'. In the lab, you get the Ant-Man & Ultron depicted together. Likewise, Jan & Jocasta, the life-energy transference happening. Next, the Avengers are split into Iron Man and the Black Panther, then Wonder-man & Thor. Perez's characters, in pairs, are large enough for plenty of detail, from himself and Pablo Marcos – something impossible, with lots of Avengers in panels. ( The final battles's a trio – Thor, Wonder-man & Iron Man - vs Ulron. But, that's do-able.)
Clearly, 'pairing' was frequent. Starhawk vs Korvac, I mentioned earlier (inadvertently.) Whilst Ms. Marvel & Cap bantering together, in a later Perez Avengers, Sean & I discussed, a while back.
This “pairing trick” is nothing new, I know. Cockrum employed it, in Giant-Sized X-Men # 1, the Krakoa/Living Island story (a sister blog pointed this out, a while back). The Avengers/Defenders clash also springs to mind.
'Pairing' being a stock trick or not, George Perez nevertheless carries it off with aplomb, in Ultron's first arc. Like George Perez's 'Squadron Avengers', King-Sized X-Men Annual # 3 also lacked Ultron's brilliance. K-SXA #3 being the Arkon story ( but with Storm instead of Wanda/Thor!). To me,
K-SXA #3 was a puzzle! X-Men # 112 ( 'Magneto Triumphant!' ) had a Perez cover I loved. And, on the Avengers, Perez & Marcos being a match made in heaven, following Byrne & Austin's brilliant X-Men run, Perez & Austin seemed an obvious combination to try. And, in K-S XM # 3, Perez & Austin's talents fimally, historically, combine! Unfortunately, King-Sized X-Men Annual
# 3's art is distinctly “off ”, to me, some great depictions of Storm, and Wolverine, notwithstanding! One of the BITBA gang nominated K-SXM '3 his all-time fave, I recall! Sadly, I couldn't concur.
To me, flatness/2-dimensionality plagued K-SXMA #3's panels, in many instances. Was it the wide, horizontal panels – Danger Room long shots, perhaps? ( In the Avengers, large interior spaces, like 'Drydock', didn't trouble Perez, at all! ) Or the Arkon's homeworld battle-scene, with Colossus commandeering a dragon, perhaps? Yet other flat/2-D scenes abounded too, besides! Did fore-grounding's absence make some of K-SXMA #3's scenes flat? Weren't X-Men chair-tops positioned at panel bottoms, etc? No, foregrounding of certain kinds is achieved. A rather odd problem's happening, to my eye. Background subjects are sized equal to, & sometimes larger than, similar foreground subjects. Ignoring perspective like that creates a flat look, to certain scenes. Even panels just featuring heads, have background heads sized at least equal to foreground heads!
Did George Perez have perspective problems in Jim Shooter's Avengers as well, me just being too young to notice it? I got the Grim Reaper Avengers story out to settle the point, once and for all! No perspective problems here, even looking with adult eyes. Absolutely fantastic Perez art's all over the place! A kneeling Vision, cradling the 'dead weight' of Wanda's (seemingly comatose) body, one of the stand-outs!
Here's the crucial point. Foreground faces are larger than background faces, with perspective correctly applied, as it should be. So, why's George Perez's art so brilliant here, but not in K-SXMA # 3, or the Squadron Avengers? Jim Shooter said he sketched little stick-figures, showing his artists what camera angles he wanted. Did the difference happen there? Did Pablo Marcos help? Or, were inferior issues rushed by Perez, with time the decisive factor?
Does anyone else have opinions about Perez, or any other artists?
Redartz & dangermash's art backgrounds make for more informed comments, compared with mine.
b.t. & Sean's context's wider.
Charlie's been to sophisticated European capitals.
Any thoughts, anyone?
Phillip
Not seen too much of him to be honest but I just took a quick look and Avengers #162 and Avengers Vol3 #19.
Liking what I see in #162. Reminds me a lot of Kirby comics vaguely around FF #50-100 and maybe even Dave Cockrum in some of those early new X-Men issues. Pablo Marcos inks over the top are clean and heavy, like Chic Stone, very nice. Classic silver age style artwork still around in the bronze age.
Not so keen on what I see in Vol3 #19. Too much detail, too much "violence and destruction" in the artwork for my tastes. But that was the trend at the time. The same trend that in a Todd McFarlane Spider-Man comic would have me moaning about teeth, saliva and individual webbing fibres. The artist inside me is wondering whether detailed subjects with less detailed backgrounds would be better on the eye - it's generally a mistake to create a painting with a similar level of detail everywhere. In this issue Perez might have benefited from. Giacoia style inker simplifyng his backgrounds.
And, taking a look back at #162 afterwards, yeah, that seems more detailed than the Kirby and Cockrum artwork that preceded it now I think about it.
Didn't notice any of the problems that you talked about. I wasn't deliberately looking out for them though - just thought I'd look through and see if any problems jumped out at me.
dangermash - Thanks for giving it a once-over, with your trained eye! Giacoia's always interested me - but his earlier stuff, I didn't grow up with. On Nova's Firefly issue, I thought Giacoia's inks absolutely outstanding. Giacoia's DD issue (inking Buckler), with Angar, impacted me greatly, too. But, on other occasions, I found Giacoia ordinary. b.t. pointing out Giacoia's eyes had life in them, whereas Esposito's didn't, made me notice an obvious point I'd missed. I'll look at Giacoia's backgrounds more closely, now you've highlighted it!
Phillip
Giacoia -> Coletta
Sorry Phillip - I meant Coletta not Giacoia
i was never a Giacoia fan. Hated his inking over Kane. Kane with Romita inking was great, Kane with Giacoia grating. I do remember checking some old issued after b.t. made that point about the eyes, though, and he was bang on.
dangermash - Oh, right! As regards V.C. - I'd NEVER pair him George Perez, given the choice. Pablo Marcos, through proven experience, is definitely best.
Phillip
Alas Charlie cannot offer a meaningful contribution because he has had minimal exposure to Perez but through his Teen Titans as far as he can recall.
My general feelings 45 (?) years ago were that his work was not as bombastic (?) as Kirby, Buscema, et al. of the preceding decade or two.
But it must have been good enough because i did have a run of TT of like 20 issues? Please nobody fact check me; I am going on recall.
PHILLIP- as always thank you for your wrritings! I learn a lot from them!
Big Joe
Joe - I had a couple of those Perez Teen Titans, with Deathstroke. To me, they were pretty good, but not Avengers level, by any stretch of the imagination. If you're a bit hazy on them, I'm guessing they probably didn't impact you massively, either. I just remember Deathstroke's combat training tip, about learning to think in circles!
Phillip
I only know Perez from the New Teen Titans in the early 80s. It was a popular comic when I was taking baby steps into US comics in 1983, along with the Levitz / Giffen ‘Legion of Superheroes’, so I used to get them both.
I liked the finicky line work and the tiny panels. I liked the clean-line polish of it all. But it did feel a bit weightless, and in retrospect I kind of wish he’d done pure SF comics - they might better have suited his style, and given him the opportunity to push it to more eccentric extremes?
Of the two comics, I’ve picked up reprints of LOSH, and enjoyed them, but it’s never occurred to me to revisit Teen Titans. I think I whittled the ones I kept down to ‘Who Is Donna Troy?’ and sold the rest years ago.
Was he a good writer? I recently read he revamped Wonder Woman in the 80s - was that any good?
Matthew - My knowledge largely ends in late 1981, I'm afraid. I remember M.P. said he went over to DC, in the 80s, despairing over Marvel's direction, so he knows more than me.
As regards panels, I often associate George Perez with 3 picture window panels, at the top; a long horizontal panel in the middle; then 2 (or 3) more vertical panels along the page bottom. I know Perez wasn't the only one who used that - Byrne did, in the X-Men, too. Nevertheless, I associate it with George Perez. He'd also feature a female superhero - Wanda, Storm, etc - in a long, thin vertical panel, from the page top, to the bottom - whilst, to the right of it, maybe four normal panels were stacked, two above two.
I didn't know George Perez returned as a writer. It's news to me.
Phillip
My recall then is basically like MM’s: “Weightless” = “Insufficiently Bombastic”
But compelling enough to buy NEW TEEN TITANS for a few years. (Though now that I think about it, I might have “borrowed” them from my older cousin, lol.)
Joe
Phillip, on the subject of the spinner-rack missing conclusions, I was recently able to finally read (online) She-Hulk #25 which was the double-sized final issue of the original She-Hulk run (1979-81) and which I couldn't obtain at the time because my local WH Smith's rarely sold double-sized issues so after nearly 45 years I got to read the conclusion of a story I'd started reading before I'd even sat my O Levels!
Phillip:
Well! That’s quite a thorough essay on Perez’s strengths and weaknesses. I won’t even attempt to rebut or dissect your points — don’t have that kind of time, for one thing, and I just don’t have very strong opinions about the man’s work. He was never one of my favorite artists, nor was he someone whose work put me off.
I first took notice of him on the “Sons of the Tiger” strip in DEADLY HANDS OF KUNG FU. His first “Sons” story impressed me as solid apprentice work. It was lively, told the story well, and was kinda fun to look at, even under Frank Springer’s rushed-looking inks and WAY-too-heavy ink-wash gray tones. It had a somewhat naive charm about it.
A nerd buddy of mine once described Perez’ earliest stuff as looking like “good fan art” — just a notch or two above what you would see in fanzines. He even had a theory that Perez’ “fannish” style might have accounted for his early popularity — that aspiring fan/artists recognized a kindred spirit , and gave them hope. “I could never in a million years be a Neal Adams, or Jim Steranko or Gene Colan or John Buscema, but I could MAYBE be as good as Perez someday”. I thought he might have been in to something…
I realized early on that Perez was VERY dependent on having a simpatico inker. I think his second “Sons” strip was inked by Bob McLeod, and IMO it was not a happy combo. McLeod tried too hard to make Perez’ pencils look “Neal Adams Realistic” but only succeeded in highlighting how weird and lumpy and absolutely UN-realistic the faces and figures were. Mike Esposito (to no one’s surprise) did him absolutely no favors.
Perez had better luck in succeeding issues , with Jack Abel, Dan Adkins and Tony DeZuniga (of all people) on inks. Klaus Janson added some pizzazz to Perez’ energetic pencils on his first Man-Wolf story but for most of that run, Frank McLaughlin’s stodgy inks just weighed him down. Sam Grainger did a decent job on Perez’ AVENGERS (his work also had a somewhat “fannish” quality) and Colletta was surprisingly “not bad”. I thought Marcos was pretty good and I quite liked the Perez/Sinnott FF issues and the Perez /Gene Day TWO-IN-ONEs. And that one X-MEN ANNUAL inked by Terry Austin looked pretty sharp.
By the time he went over to DC, on JLA and TEEN TITANS, I just kinda lost interest in his stuff.
b.t.
Colin - I only read X-Men # 137, ten years after the fact. But your reading that She-Hulk conclusion 45 years later - you're a completely different person, after all those years - I hope it fulfilled the wait! I only read She-Hulk in Marvel UK, which probably didn't go the distance. Didn't She-Hulk give either Richard Rory or Zapper a kiss, at the end?
b.t. - That's a pretty sharp piece of writing - a lot more concise, and to the point, than me! I was hoping somebody would chip in on Man-Wolf ( and Logan's Run, for that matter! ), those two being gaps in my George Perez reading. Decades later, I got some DHOKFs, mainly for the White Tiger vs the Jack of Hearts, back-referenced in Spidey vs White Tiger. They are languishing in the garage - somewhere. I'll have to dredge them out, one day. Maybe Sean's read Logan's Run...
Phillip
Phillip, thanks for the topic.
I always liked Perez's pencils but was never wowed by them. I always saw him as solid but unspectacular. His work was probably too neat and tidy to excite me but I always enjoyed anything he drew.
Steve - Yes. My starting with Perez's best stuff, with Ultron, possibly helped ( I saw his FF stuff, prior to that, but may not have connected it, as being by the same artist). Thus, Perez's inferior stuff seemed an aberration from "the norm", to me. In contrast, b.t and yourself, following Perez from much earlier, had already seen a lot of his "journeyman stuff", so - in contrast - saw more recent "best" Perez art - e.g. Ultron - as the exception, not the "norm". Or, more realistically, it's horses for courses - different strokes, for different folks - I must accept that!
Phillip
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