There really is no accounting for taste

Original version:

Recoloured:

Original version:

Recoloured:
…and so on, for 140 or so pages.

I find it — no exaggeration — genuinely hard to read Laura Martin’s recolouring of Dave Stevens’ Rocketeer, as it appears in the 2011 reprint volume from IDW. I cannot understand how anyone could possibly look at something like this:

and decide that what it needs is a bunch of slick, plastic-looking colour gradients to muddy up Dave Stevens’ linework.

My critical motto has become “different strokes for different folks”, but I look at this reprint and my mind just boggles. The people who published this — and according to the internet, Laura Martin was hand-picked by Stevens himself to recolour the work — thought this was an improvement? Some readers prefer it? Fuck it, any readers prefer it?

Are you shitting me?

Kuhn was right: I literally live in a different world from these people; it is impossible for us to understand one another.

[Images pilfered from: IDW preview art, Chris Sims -- one of the readers who, mirabile dictu, actually prefers the recolouring, and Wil Pfiefer]

That’s entertainment!

Let’s You and Him Fight Exclusive:

Let’s You and Him Fight can today report exclusively  that DC is digging up Neil Gaiman’s dead grandmother, and publishing a fumetti series about her posthumous sexual escapades. Jim Lee has told Let’s You and Him Fight that everyone at DC is totally psyched for the new project, which will showcase some of the industry’s hottest writers, including Micah Wright, Laurel K. Hamilton and Grant Morrison.

‘We’re taking the property in a bold new direction. You’ve never seen Neil Gaiman’s dead grandmother like this before — this ain’t your granddaddy’s Neil Gaiman’s dead grandmother.’

Dan DiDio added, laughing, ‘This comic brings a whole new meaning to the phrase “splash page”!’

You can find the full press release, as well as previews and concept art, here.

***

PS: Apologies to Mr Gaiman’s grandmother. Also to Mr Gaiman himself, subtlety, good taste, so-called humour

PPS: What’s striking about the Mazzuchelli thing is that it looks like such an unforced dick move. Watchmen Babies, you can at least understand the logic of — a curse be upon them and their children, sure, but it was probably going to happen eventually, just as it was going to happen eventually that Mr Burns would try to blot out the Sun so he could squeeze a few more pennies from the poor. This thing, though…maybe those spells Alan Moore has been casting at DC are finally starting to work, and they’ve all gone completely fucking insane?

Top 10 Comics of 2011

(10) Some boring bullshit

…

(2)  Some boring bullshit

 

And the number one comic of 2011 is….
(1) My awesome comic. It’s reprinted below; I’m really proud of how this one turned out.

It’s titled “Your Mom”