art that lives

[johncomic]

I've seen a lot of mention about Morning Glories online lately, so finally got around to looking at some of it. Very tasty sutff, I can see why it excites a lot of people.

However, when I look at this I can't shake this feeling of everything being very constricted and tight. I notice this feeling a lot when I see comic art that's very concerned with being naturalistic and hi-detail. I enjoy and admire this kind of work, but for me it doesn't have the same feeling of life and breath and movement that I find in something like Dare Detectives, which I also enjoy and admire. And which clearly is much less realistic. (I mention it because I also recently heard that there will finally be a new DD book in the near future!)

I dunno. A certain amount of cartooniness needs to be there for me in order for the characters to truly live. This is why Paul Gulacy or Bryan Hitch don't engage me and appeal to me the same as Alex Toth or Jaime Hernandez, even though I like all of them. Even Al Williamson, who's considered something of a realist, is actually surprisingly loose and interpretive when you study him up close (as I've been doing lately).

Furthermore, I don't think it's just me. Seems to me that this very tight realism style finds its greatest success within the pre-established comic book hardcore -- work which succeeds with a larger public doesn't usually conform to that style.

My point? Don't really have much of one. Just noticing that I like what I like.