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Vent: The word 'overrated' gets thrown at artists who never got a fair shot
I saw someone call Dave Stevens' work overrated last week on a Facebook group, but they only knew him from the Rocketeer movie poster. Dude drew for 20 years, did one iconic book, and died broke at 49, so calling him 'overrated' ignores the fact he never got the marketing push like McFarlane or Liefeld. Why do fans judge creators on hype instead of actual page layouts and storytelling, and has anyone else noticed this pattern with indie artists?
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kim_ramirez31mo ago
My buddy picked up a random indie comic at a con once and the artist was literally sitting right there, no line, no hype. He sat and talked with them for 20 minutes about how they inked a single panel for hours, and that book ended up being way better than half the stuff with big #1 sales that month.
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keith_bennett1mo ago
The thing is, that one good panel doesn't make a whole book worth reading. I've met plenty of indie guys who obsess over a single page but the story falls flat, the writing is muddled, and the pacing just drags. Big #1s from major publishers at least have a whole team behind them, so the baseline quality is usually steadier. You got lucky with your buddy's con find, but for every hidden gem there are fifty books that are basically just someone's sketchbook with dialogue slapped on. I'd take a dependable mainstream title over a lottery ticket at a convention table any day.
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