I don't usually receive hate mail (except from the occasional B. A. T.*) in reference to this blog (due to the combination of low readership and my usually innocuous entries), so I was surprised when I received an email the other day from someone who claims to be the child of pulp comic artist Maurice Whitman. He apparently found exception to this entry, Comic Book Covers: Firehair vs Tiger Girl, in which I state the similarity between two comic covers as being "lazy"work by the artist.
attention mr sleezebag, oh my apologys ....sleestak, what you know of my father is 0, and an art critic you are not , if you did your home work , my father was considered one of the most versitile artist out there , and as far as the rest of those artist you mentioned copying my dads stuff , news flash , they all worked together at one point in time and alot of the work they did together was a collaberated effort , you may enjoy reading comics , and collecting them , however you dont have a clue what goes into the imagination it takes to come up with all that art work from scratch ,simply from a script . so unless your painting such works as leonardo davinci , shut your hole , untill you do ...jon whitmanSorry, sport. I calls 'em like I sees 'em. Two covers of similar theme and layout that are nearly identical I would have to critique as the product of taking a shortcut. From a purely creative standpoint it is lazy. To be nicer about it though, I recognize that comic artists of decades past were grossly underpaid and overworked. So out of respect for work I respect I am willing to couch what I perceived as not a best example of original work by a master of the genre not as lazy, but rather as frugal. If I worked under the same horrible terms and deadlines as most creative teams did back in the early days of comics then I might also avoid going to the genius well too often out of worry I'd drain the aquifer and create a sink hole of suck.
My original post really praises the work of Whitman and found fun in comparison of the covers. After all, monkey covers rule! Maurice Whitman is one of the greats of the era and if anyone collects vintage comics for the cover art then he definitely needs to be on the shortlist of must have artists. That said, I was dissapointed by the lack of creative originality of the latter cover.
* Byrne Attack Troll
Sleezy, I must say that you have the right to your opinion. Don't let someone with a vested interest deter you,
ReplyDeleteI don't see him actually denying that one of the covers was copied from the other, just attacking you for not being a comics artist. What a rude man.
ReplyDeleteWell attention mister Witless, oh my apologies (which unlike you I can spell) ...Whitman, there's a big difference between Da Vinci and your dad, however good a comics artist he was, and your lumping together of such completely different disciplines merely betrays your lack of understanding of art.
Oh, and I am a published comics artist, so I know all about translating scripts into pictures and working 50 hours without a break to hit a deadline. Since all your understanding of what it is like to be an artist is apparently (I think you would have mentioned it if you had done anything yourself) second hand, I win.
:P
If this is the same J. Whitman I think it is, then I wonder how many of his customers walk out of the tattoo parlor with the word 'MAWM' on their arm.
ReplyDeleteI hope Mr. Whitman taught his son to draw, since apparently no one taught him to write.
ReplyDelete