51 replies to this topic

[Glitcher]

I'm bored, so I decided to MST3K some of the worst art seen in the Archie series. There are quite a few stories that look like they were drawn by infants, but it's difficult for me to find the images these days. Feel free to share pics of what you believe to be Archie's worst art.

[furrykef]

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Everybody probably knows this one, but here it is:
 sonic156.jpg   53.65KB   31 downloads

[Shadow]

 badsonic1.jpg   69.55KB   51 downloads

Are you kidding? That style was great.
Many Hands...he is the most fucking horrible artist I've seen in this comic.

[Morgan]

Many Hands...he is the most fucking horrible artist I've seen in this comic.

Whoa. I remember that one. Definitely the worst one I ever saw.

[furrykef]

Are you kidding? That style was great.

Are you kidding? Look at the bottom panel. Look at those absurd facial expressions that convey nothing in particular except that maybe they turned into zombies. Look at the lack of composition or focus. What are they looking at and why? And are Rotor and Bunnie on their knees or something? Did Sally turn into an Egyptian hieroglyph? What's going on?


Anyway, the Many Hands thing does beat anything I, or likely anybody else, can post.

I'm guessing what happened with the Many Hands thing was they needed a story NOW and for some reason they didn't have one -- maybe some legal issue meant they couldn't use one they had ready, maybe somebody got hit by a bus or something -- and they just grabbed the nearest guy...

Editor: Can you draw??
Guy: Um... well... no.
Editor: Great, here's the script, here's a pencil, here's some paper, get to it. We need this tomorrow.

For all my faults as an artist, I coulda done better than that, even with a tight deadline...

What baffles me the most is Lupe's arm. Look at it! All the "artist" would have needed to do was forget the musculature and use a plain old cylinder. It still wouldn't look as good as it would if he had a proper understanding of anatomy, but it wouldn't look as bad as it does now. Wrong anatomy is worse than undefined anatomy. If you're looking for practice, sure, take a chance and get it wrong so you can be shown the right way. But when you're doing a professional book, something people are going to pay money for to read... better to just play it safe and make sure the reader's eyes don't bleed.

[randomizer]

#134. At least the artist wasn't trying to make it look good but the art just looks so out of place compared to every other issue.

[Glitcher]

I just noticed this from SSS #15:





And this sort of thing goes on for several pages. You have to admire Many Hands' ingenious method for disguising his bad art.

[furrykef]

Yep. I have that issue (I ordered it specifically to see how bad it was). I'd forgotten that was also drawn by Many Hands... so I guess I have seen Many Hands' art before. But the art in that story -- when there is any -- isn't a fraction as bad as the stuff in Shadow's post. Yeah, it's bad, but it's not "MY EYES!!" bad.

I think the art in the next story in that issue is even worse. There's a reason why, until then, Michael Gallagher was only a writer and not a penciler. He even drew the "figure eight" move going sideways. Now, I've always thought it was dumb and pointless to integrate it into the comics (heck, it's kind of dumb even in Sonic CD: surely a spin dash would do just as well), but this is taking a mockery of a move and making a mockery of that.

What's really egregious about SSS #15, though, is that it's a special. The monthly comic can be kind of forgiven for resorting to the crap in "Cry of the Wolf" because they no doubt had a tight deadline and I'm sure they really, really did not want to have to print that crap. They just had no choice. (Yeah, it's their fault for letting it happen, but when you're in a hole, you're in a hole.) But with SSS #15, there was no such restriction... they didn't have to have the issue done by a specific date, unless they made promises they couldn't keep about when they could deliver it, in which case, they shouldn't have made those promises.

By the way, I'm guessing Many Hands was a sort of "Alan Smithee" name. Chances are the Many Hands of SSS #15 and the Many Hands of "Cry of the Wolf" aren't even the same person, since the apparent difference in style and skill is too great. It also would make no sense that Cry of the Wolf would have significantly worse art than SSS #15 considering that Many Hands did SSS #15 first. Most artists improve, not get worse. It could be explained away as Cry of the Wolf having a tighter deadline or something, but I'm not convinced... Cry of the Wolf isn't the product of haste, it's the product of not knowing how to draw.

By the way... though it doesn't trump Many Hands -- again, probably nothing does -- no discussion of bad Sonic art is complete without bringing up Ron Lim.

(I'm not 100% sure this is Lim, since I don't have the credits for this issue, but I'm 95% sure; it has the hallmarks of his, erm, style. EDIT: Confirmed it was Lim. This was his debut issue, in fact.)

 saltakescharge.jpg   99.63KB   45 downloads

EDIT: one last remark on SSS #15. You would think that, with the writing being the only thing carrying those panels, they would have put a little effort into witty dialogue. Instead we have Sonic apparently thinking "rodent", "exercise in futility", and "entertainment" are vocabulary items. Anybody his age that thinks so is probably stupid. Bonus points that Sonic himself uses "extravagant", undermining this impression of stupidity. He can't even be stupid consistently!

[randomizer]

Here's some images from #134. It doesn't come close to Shadow's stuff though.

[Glitcher]

Those pics are broken, randomizer.

Even though this is not official, I couldn't let this topic pass without posting James Green's fan comic Sonic Ages. I'll give you one guess which anime show he must have been watching when he drew this. ¬_¬


CLICK TO READ

God, can you imagine if this style was used in Archie's issues? It would make Many Hands look like a fucking Michaelangelo!

[Gojira007]

I disagree; it's ugly, but only in the sense that the artist's design choices are rather poor; at least you get the sense he put real effort into actually drawing the damned characters, regardless of how bad their aesthetic was. Many Hands, meanwhile, puts literally NO effort into ANY of his pictures, and even goes so far as to literally NOT DRAW AT ALL for pages on end. That's laziness on a level that is simply staggering and well beyond the pale of Mr. Green's work.

[furrykef]

Here are the pics that randomizer tried to post. The problem is that sonic-hq.net doesn't allow you to link to images (and besides, linking to images on other servers, aside from ones like imageshack, isn't very nice anyway).

 muttskitalks.jpg   105.81KB   28 downloads  ash.jpg   102.79KB   24 downloads

I don't think these are particularly bad, though (except Sally's face looks completely wrong). Where Sonic #134 falls into the abyss is the writing, particularly the infamous Sonic/Sally confrontation at the end that makes no sense at all. (That Muttski talking thing is itself a bit of a wallbanger, though, especially with how randomly it seemed to be thrown in.)


I have to agree with Gojira, BTW: Sonic Ages' DBZ style is inappropriate -- though that's a question of taste -- and the artist clearly doesn't have a great grasp of anatomy, etc. (what's with those necks?), but hey, his art is like a typical kid's, and like Gojira said, it's clear he's trying. I've seen plenty worse printed in Archie's Fan Art pages, for example. The problem with Many Hands (if indeed he was one person) was he was unprofessional in a professional's job, and he seems to show a greater level of overall ignorance. Plus, judging from other arms he's drawn, I don't think James Green would have drawn Lupe's arm looking that bad, and that arm pretty much exemplifies what's wrong with Many Hands.

- Kef

[Gojira007]

I agree on both fronts regarding #134, Kef.

Anyway, while I can't find scans of it and don't have my own copy to use at the moment, I submit Sam Maxwell's art for the scene in #50 where Sonic and Snivley have a brief face-off as one of the absolute sloppiest action sequences in Comic Book History. Seriously, can ANYONE friggin' tell what's going on in those panels?

[salamander]

Yeah, I don't think anything can top Many Hands. Artwork that half assed is just insulting, especially in a professional publication.
Ron Lim's art wasn't ugly or anything, but it was really lifeless and boring. Every character had the same expression.
Ken Penders had a penchant for really dumb looking faces. Either they look like they're made of plastic, or.. whatever the hell is going on with Tails there.



Dave Manak has a decent cartoony style, though it didn't really suit the comic outside of gag strips. Sometimes it was just plain sloppy.
(the crappy inking doesn't help here either)



Also note that in the exact same issue, there was this:


It's no wonder they just gave up and started hiring fan artists.

[furrykef]

Ron Lim's art wasn't ugly or anything, but it was really lifeless and boring. Every character had the same expression.

Really? Even with the pic I posted, that's the worst you can say about him? Since when was Sally 5 heads tall? Sonic art just doesn't look good with such proportions. (Sally's outfit is also ridiculous, but I dunno if that's Lim's fault or not.)

Lim does know how to draw, though. He just doesn't know how to draw Sonic.

Ken Penders had a penchant for really dumb looking faces. Either they look like they're made of plastic, or.. whatever the hell is going on with Tails there.

Penders' art does have a hopeless awkwardness about it, especially with faces as you pointed out. He also was apparently never particularly good at drawing Snively. But, overall, his art is just mediocre. He was basically Art Mawhinney but without the good points.

Dave Manak has a decent cartoony style, though it didn't really suit the comic outside of gag strips. Sometimes it was just plain sloppy.

I used to hate Dave Manak. He's downright decent compared to people like Ron Lim, though.

Anyway, while I can't find scans of it and don't have my own copy to use at the moment, I submit Sam Maxwell's art for the scene in #50 where Sonic and Snivley have a brief face-off as one of the absolute sloppiest action sequences in Comic Book History.

That would be these. (I do have the issue, but rather than scan the pages, I, um, "acquired" them from A Certain Website.)

 18.jpg   254.81KB   21 downloads  19.jpg   273.98KB   19 downloads  20.jpg   300.63KB   16 downloads

[salamander]

Really? Even with the pic I posted, that's the worst you can say about him? Since when was Sally 5 heads tall? Sonic art just doesn't look good with such proportions. (Sally's outfit is also ridiculous, but I dunno if that's Lim's fault or not.)

It's a pretty big issue I have with his art, though. Proportion problems aside, his art's not interesting at all, it's just static and flat. I'd rate Sam Maxwell higher just because even when he draws poorly, his art has a certain flow and movement to it that's more engaging to look at.

[Glitcher]

Let's not forget SSS #8 and #14, featuring the spellbinding artwork of Jay Oliveras and Suzanne Paddock, respectively.

I wonder if this guy has met Many Hands.


They way Paddock draws Sally makes me cry.

[Velvet D'Coolette]

Jesus H. Christ, that really is vile!

[Gojira007]

Sally's head looks like it is literally about to cause her twig of a body to snap at any second, while Sonic's mouth looks like it's going to snap off his face.

The "Ghost Busted" scene, meanwhile, looks like it was done, not for the actual Comic, but for the Korean knock-off version aimed at dumbshit parents who don't know any better. Then you realize it IS for the actual comic and you want to cry.

[Cheezmatt]

There's an upside to that awful artwork though... it rarely appeared more than once.

Unlike the inept, slap-dash scribbling of Ron Lim or the technically competent but downright annoying style of Tracey Yardley, which was/is featured month after month for years.