John Romita Jr.

Now personal taste in art has little to do with this. Also there is nothing in the conversation that has anything to do with JRJR as a person. having met the guy I will say that he is easily one of the most genuinly polite people in the industry.
He wasn't even sure he wanted to do KICK ASS because of the level of violence in it.

I am defending him however because it seems that some of the opinions are slightly off in description. At least to me.

First off, Romita does not just haphasardly throw lines all over the place. He puts in what is needed for the given image. He actually has an economy of line use when compared to other artists or teams such as Jim Lee and Scott Williamson for example.
romita's art is not slick by any stretch of the word.
But it is solid consistent and does a great job of telling a story. In comics when you get right down to it that is the most importent thing.
If everyone drew with the same slick inking style you seem to think is what it takes to make someones art good, you would find yourself bored to death in short order because there is no more variety in comics. They all look the same.

Tommy you out of all of these guys I am surprised you do not like Romita, I mean his work is about the closest you can get to Kirby without being a clone of Kirby in the modern industry.

Romita does something that absolutely no other artist in the Industry is capable of, he draws 3 books a month that is 66 pages of art plus covers.
The drive that got him to change his style was being able to support his family. No different than anyone else that came in during the silver and early Bronze age of comics.

Now I can easily agree that some Artists are just not a good fit for some titles. Some of Romita's major Superhero stuff is if anything, a little Blocky looking. But on a character like Iron Man, I like that because he looks like a guy wearing a suit of armor.

But just for claritys sake, Here is a link to some Romita Jr. covers including his thumbnail sketches. There is no over rendering here. Everything is from his modern art style also.
Additionally, for those of you who said that Layton would not be able to ink his modern style, the first image says you are wrong.
This is just a small sampling of his stuff. His interior work looks the same.

Now I will say that some inkers, like Klaus Janson are not a good fit for him and actually take his work down a lot. Same happened with Kirby when inked by Vince Colletta among others.

Also defient 1 I don't have to like someone using Jim Lee as a comparison for my work. Because that person is looking at your work as if they were looking at theirs. If you don't meet that standaard then you do not have artistic talent. That is the impression that an artist would get from someone who does that.
A good example is when I met Larry Hama recently and we were lookkng through this Art book by Michael Golden (a Master BTW) Larry said "You want your work to look like goldens's right?" I said "No. I want it to look like my own." this made Larry raise an eyebrow like I was stupid.
but I responded with Look Larry I would like to have many elements of what makes glodens work so strong to find their way into my work, but I do not want to draw like him nor would I ever want to emulate his style because that would take away from me finding my own feet to stand on.

I think he understood after that.
Then he crushed my portpholio LOL> which was the best thing he could have done.

Here are the covers. Now me, I think they all look very nice.

www.bing.com/images/search?q=john+romita+jr+art&FORM=IGRE6#focal=219b8434600f8abe828e3adfcd6641b6&furl=http%3a%2f%2fwww.coverbrowser.com%2flab%2fjrjr%2fimage%2famazing-spider-man-505.jpg

Tommy you out of all of these guys I am surprised you do not like Romita, I mean his work is about the closest you can get to Kirby without being a clone of Kirby in the modern industry.

As far as Kirby goes, he drew so much that in his middle years you were seeing more of the inker. In the later years you saw more of the way he really draws because he was inking himself or he had inkers that stayed more true to what he was drawing.

The whole thing I was pointing out with Kirby and Jr is that both of them used a -round style- The Era for Kirby that you like so much is his Jrjr period. The sixties.
Jacks work before that point was more grouned in traditional methods and anyone unfamiliar with his work would not be able to tell you that the guy who drew the Golden Age Cap also drew the Silver Age cap.
His approach was completely different. This is wnat happens when artist progress in what they do. They get bored and experiment and come up with something new.
Kirby went round construction.

As far as inkers goes, Kirby was stuck with Vince Colletta who sucked and Frank Giancolla who also could not capture his style properly.
Then Joe Sinnott came on with his slick vibrant inks and added some more energy to Kirby's pencils. If that was even possible.

Sinnott is also responsible for turning the Thing into a pile of Rocks. Kirby stated that he saw the Thing as having a Dinosaur or rhino hide.
That is how he always drew him until Sinnott.

I think as Kirby got into his later years, while his art may have declined, I think most of it was loss of energy after having to fight with the Publishers for so long. Kirby wanted out, and managed to do it a couple of times, like with Hanna & Barbara where he worked on designing Scooby Doo and others, but comics were easy money for him so he always went back.
You guys are sitting here bitching because Jr. uses hatch marks to add texture and muscle mass to his art, but Kirby didn't even do relative anatomy. He had muscles that do not exist within every one of his characters.

Up until the late 80's Romita Jr. drew just like his dad.
That is great and all because his dad is an awesome artist, But it did nothing for Juniors curb appeal because he was cloning his fathers style.
It wasn't until later on that junior started to experiment with his style.
It took a bit of time to take off, and IT DID take off BTW.

His style was so different from Frank Miller and John Byrne who were the biggest at the time. He also was completely different from the onset of the future Image crowd.
That is what has made him so popular. That and he always delivers with his books.

Now don't get me wrong, I don't fawn over him, I just defend his artistic stylings because they do set him apart from others in what I feel is a good way.
but, he does o some drawings that I just find ugly.

Especially when it is just a figure with no location or background to offset it.
Like the recent Advertisments for the new Avengers titles.

spider Woman in particular just looked plain weird.