Zoomer here, was the shift to ugly semi-realism instead of cartoon-like/stylized drawings in american comics through the 2000s generally a response to the 90s being dominated by the likes of Todd McFarlane, Joe Mad and other over the top artists like Erik Larsen or even Rob Liefeld himself?
it was a response to 9/11, everything bad about 2000s comics were a response to 9/11
>>153278828It's hard to believe Superman and Captain America can save the day when they couldn't even protect us from two zealots with some airplanes.
>>153278716Probably, yeah. It was a time when superhero comics really pushed to be taken seriously and everything from the stories to the art was shooting for this idiots idea of maturity and importance. Lot of imitating movies as well, that really came into play.
>>153278848you could probably give Superman an excuse since nobody gives a shut about New York in DC
>>153278716Yes, because it started with The Authority by Ellis/Hitch and that was a popular book for a while. People were praising how "realistic" the superhuman fights were in it>>153278828 is partially incorrect because part of the things in 00s comics were already starting to form a few years before 9/11. That said, Ultimates was definitely a response to 9/11.
>>1532788489/11 didn't happen in the main DC Comics universe, Lex Luthor was President instead of Bush and Our Worlds At War happenedThen Flashpoint changed everything so that the Justice League formed after 9/11, during Bush's time as President
>>153278932He was in space preventing space crime
>>153278716I'm not a fan of the 2000s comic art trend but Bryan Hitch is a great artist
>>153278716It was just the style at the time. Normies like realism and so they thought this was good. Also British writers were popular and they brought along a lot of these mediocre 2000AD/Marvel UK artists like Bryan Hitch, Gary Frank and Steve Dillon
>>153278716There were still cartoony artists in the 00s (Darwyn Cooke, Ed McGuinness, Patrick Gleason, and the guys coming in from the 90s), but this ugly, shitty art took over as part of the transformation into adaptation bait. >>153279335Hitch is awful.
>>153278716all the cool kids and teenagers who liked hooterz and splash pages got chased off after image and marvel fleeced them of their money buying variants, glow in the dark covers and no. 1s. only the most nerdy and loyal of the fans stayed and they ended up wanting progression and stories that meant something. the quick "kill superbman/batmen" schemes wore off. unfortunately the crossover became the weapon of choice, where it was all about CONSEQUENCES SHALL NEVER BE THE SAME and not so much about bright and vibrant art full of action. so yeah, blame image primarily.
>>153279478Dillon was good. Most of those UK/2000 AD guys were good or great, but some of the best eventually got relegated to covers.
>>153278716No, comic art can be thought of as existing as a continuum with formal realism on one end and cartooning on the other. Within any given time period comic art oscillates between the two as its primary output.
>>153278716The Image style had fallen out of favor by the later years of the 90s already, and more cartoony artists were the new hotness, especially guys like Madureira who had a big Japanese influence on their style.The other anons in this thread are largely right about the "ugly semi-realism" style largely growing out of the success of books like Authority and the 2000s being an era where the people running DC and Marvel and a lot of the writers were basically ashamed of themselves for being superhero comic companies and wanted to be serious, realistic, mature and edgy and talk about how if superheroes were real it would be rape o'clock.
There's always been a fascination to realistic comic art since almost the beginning, but I think the reason it's particularly uncanny in the 2000's is due to the addition of more rendered coloring on top of it.
>>153281764Hal Foster is who I think of artists like Curt Swan basing their style on. It's not quite the direct line of realism in comics as we'd know it later but a root.
>>153281801Alex Raymond is the foundational building block of superhero comic styles. In a few pages this goes into just how his secondary, photorealistic style, would be merged to lead to artists like Neal Adams and later ones like Bryan Hitch
>>153281819And then Caniff who's the figurehead when it comes to cartoonier action comic styles. Making cartoony characters in more serious stories.
>>153281819And of course there are mixes and variations of these 3 central themes which make up comic art today.Don't necessarily think of these three artists as being the direct influence, and I'm sure there's examples of similar artists before, but this works well as a conceptual practice of delineating styles, especially since American art styles tend to be less clearly defined
>>153281764To me, 00s art was always more stylized than the "house" styles of the 70s and 80s. I do think you're right in that coloring plays a massive role, by the time the 00s rolled around digital inking and coloring had moved into the mainstream but you still had artists whose fundamentals were based around non-digital coloring. Another thing to consider is that people aren't using terminology correctly and are conflating "stylized" with "expressing motion."
>>153278828Well...Marvel did stop using RoXXon after 9/11 and just start to use againg after Roxxon was used in the Ultiverse as a cellphone company.
>>153278959Authority is such shit book.aside all the gore stuff, every arch is:"The heros as farting, a sper army attack they for no reason, all the heros are capture...until they simply are not capture anymore and they win killing everyone!"Every single arc!
>>153279478A lot of those guys were already working in the US in the 90's, albeit more stylied. Bryan Hitch was an Alan Davis clone and Gary frank was more 90's. You also had Euro guys like Alex Maleev and their very dour photorealistic style.
>>153281894Calling Art Adams "non-stylized" is a hot take, but I think he means more in regards to how he uses hatching like Foster.
>>153282083There are two Authority stories, "evil third party shows up and needs to be murdered" and "legitimate governments are trying to enforce their sovereignty against The Authority and need to be murdered."
>>153278716A lot of it was also just access to digital colouring, and trying to court the nascent superhero movie fandom with more realistic art.
>>153278716>cartoon-like/stylized drawingsYou really think that's what the 70s and 80s were like?
Mark Millars a fucking hack
>>153282295Arguably he's not that far off. People say Neal Adams' art is realistic but a lot of times the poses are exaggerated, and sometimes even similar to the stuff he was doing on DC humor titles when he was drawing like Owen FitzgeraldThe other stuff from Bronze Age that was considered realistic, most would be still considered stylized and exaggerated00s is kind of when you have realism without much exaggeration
>>153278848Seriously why was 9/11 able to fucking happen when the towers were attacked by Supervillains at least twice befiore
>>153281764These guys and their contemporaries just did it so much better. I look at the art of guys like Hitch and Reis and they're just so inexpressive.
>>153278716This is way better than the lazy tumblr tranime abominations we get now
>>153278716you remember how there was this huge crash of comic book sales through the 90s
