....I feel like there is something wrong with me.
I have read ALOT of book and material, and I find Alan Moore..... boring. I mean, his stories have a good plot idea and all, but they start feeling like they are draaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaging.
Watchmen and V For Vendetta come to mind. While I ultimately enjoyed them, I didnt feel like they were AMAZING. I havent read From Hell or Swamp Thing, so maybe these are better?
Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow? wasnt bad either, I just feel it wasnt on par with alot of other stuff.
I sometimes feel that subconsciously, people feel more the need to pay homeage to the originals, rather than truely think they are great. In my opinion, Alan Moore isnt bad, but someone like Garth Ennis or Mark Millar run circles around him.
It's all about taste I think. The trouble with defining greats in comicbooks is people don't tend to allocate creators into genres or area's. For some reason we group everybody into COMIC BOOK and that's the genre, as opposed to the artform. In my opinion, we need to think of it like we think of novels and other literature. That way, you can still have a mostly agreed upon "greatest ever" but also point out he isn't the "specific greatest ever". Like Shakespeare. Greatest writer in the English language, but specific to only one or two genre's. Go into other genre's and James Joyce, Emily Bronte, Mark Twain, Thomas Pynchon, etc. stand at the pinnacles, but they are still secondary in the grand scheme to Shakespeare.
Same thing with Moore. In terms of the overall scheme, NO other writer has brought as much innovation into the artform as he has. Variations and deconstruction of character portrayal and plot structure, cerebral and intellectual depth, artistic usages, film conventions. All these things had been beginning to peek up here and there, but Moore was really the one who brought them all into the medium IN COMBINATION and showed it was really possible to expand beyond the basic panel/picture/story structure. It's what allowed people like Ennis and Millar to tell their stories like they tell them.
On that note, even though he was the revolutionary and everybody after him owes Moore something, he is only the top writer in the genres he works in, which is pretty much the Cerebral Epic. All of Moore's stories are pretty grand in scope, but the true conflicts of his stories are the mental and spiritual battles of his characters. He isn't as good of a Balls-Out-Action writer as Millar. He can't write Operatic Punk like Ennis can. His Whimsical Weirdness doesn't even touch Morisson. But Moore is still the top.
That's my opinion at least
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Do you REALLY feel like that? Like when you see his drawings of the Avengers, and then look at Brian Hitch's, do you think "well, Hitch isnt bad, but Kirby is better." And PLEASE dont take this as offense, I mean none, im just insanely curious as to what you see that I do not.
The old school artwork doesnt do it for me I guess. I can read a story and enjoy it, but I feel greatly unimpressed with alot of it.
I think our basis for comparing across era's is skewed too. It falls back once again I think to everybody assigning COMIC BOOK as this supergenre and everything falling into it is on equal comparison to everything else. You got to look at it in era's and styles.
Hitch is the superior artist in terms of realistic quality. I'll give that. But imagine the pages in basic stick layout, and then do the same for Kirby. What do you see? The EXACT same principles and approach, Hitch and Kirby just layer different styles on top of it. For my money, Kiby wasn't the BEST artist of all time. He wasn't even the best of the silver age, Steranko, Buscema and Adams had him beat by a mile I think. But when you go back and consider both the extreme amount of artistic innovation and depth he brought too the field, the extreme breadth of his work in different genre's, and the sheer output of quality he had, I think without question Kirby is the most prolific.
As for comparing artwork, thats a matter of taste. I happen to love the silver age artwork, but it's a different style and bare no comparison too modern work, outside of structural and stylistic conventions. Aesthetically, I appreciate both in their genres.
Once again, just my opinions.
