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Silvestri On New X-Men

 
  

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Matthew Fluxington
15:20 / 28.12.02
The first time this came up, it was denied by Marvel, but apparently Marc Silvestri will indeed be illustrating four issues of New X-Men in the summer of 2003. News article link.

I thought Marc Silvestri was a good artist when he drew Uncanny X-Men with Chris Claremont in the late 80s, but virtually everything the man has illustrated since then has been poorly drawn t+a Image crap - if he comes into NXM with his big splash page/crotch shot style, this will be an embarassing debacle. But it doesn't have to be, of course. Silvestri has it in him to draw great comics, and I don't think his style clashes with Quitely and Jiminez the way that Igor Kordey or Keron Grant have in 2002.

How do you all feel about this? Good thing, bad thing, indifferent? It'll be good for sales, that's for sure.
 
 
uncle retrospective
15:34 / 28.12.02
Oh God. Anyone got any more links to his art? Is it as bad as it looks?
Art like his was the reason I never left the vertigo stable for years.
Burr...
 
 
Optimistic
16:30 / 28.12.02
Since I heard this rumour I've been praying it wasn't true.

You're right though...

It might be okay...

Maybe...
 
 
Seth
17:03 / 28.12.02
I have no problem with Silvestri. I really enjoyed his old X-Men stuff, and I'd be really interested to see how he handles himself on the title now. Most of the art so far has been nice and understated, not nearly so much from the How to Draw COmics the Marvel Way school. Hopefully Silvestri will research his role and be given a nice editorial nudge in the right direction.
 
 
The Falcon
17:30 / 28.12.02
It'll be good for sales (cf: Jim Lee on Batman.)

Is that good? I think so.

Silvestri playing it straight, not exaggerated Image-style, is pretty good, actually.
 
 
The Falcon
17:31 / 28.12.02
I see I've just reiterated everything Flux said in his first post. Ooops.
 
 
Solitaire Rose as Tom Servo
19:12 / 28.12.02
He was the artist that made me stop reading the book way back in the late 80's. His style made all the women look the same, his faces are horrible, and like most of the Image artists, he sacrifices story for the sake of a page that looks like a poster.

I know WHY everyone involved is doing it, but if they have to bring back a past artist, why not Paul Smith?
 
 
Jack Fear
20:05 / 28.12.02
Because Smitty makes Frank Quitely look like a speed demon, I would imagine; and they've gotta get product out the door every month...

Besides, Smitty's committed to a run of LEAVE IT TO CHANCE OGNs, and we've been waiting yeeeeeeears. So let the man do his job.
 
 
The Falcon
20:36 / 28.12.02
LITC is James Robinson, innit?

He's good.

Here's Silvestri's cover to Uncanny #221.
 
 
Matthew Fluxington
21:53 / 28.12.02
Yikes. That's probably not the best advertisement for Silvestri, especially when that illustration dates back to his artistic peak.

You can see some more late 80s cover images mostly drawn by Silvestri here.
 
 
The Falcon
22:07 / 28.12.02
's the only big pic of his X-Men I could find, unfortunately.
 
 
The Photographer in Blowup
09:26 / 29.12.02
He was the artist that made me stop reading the book way back in the late 80's. His style made all the women look the same, his faces are horrible, and like most of the Image artists, he sacrifices story for the sake of a page that looks like a poster.

I don't think there's anything to worry about - as an artist, he pretty much has to follow what Morrison scripts exactly.

Now i know most writers working at Marvel follow the Marvel format script, giving more freedom to artists, but from re-reading Morrison's copy of the script in New X-Men 121, i see he uses the full-page format script, so what's in it, Silvestri has to draw.
 
 
Solitaire Rose as Tom Servo
13:23 / 29.12.02
I hope so...but let's also remember that The X-Men has a history of the artist changing things and the writer either being the last to know, or never knowing. Hopefully it won't happen this time, but Silvestri was one of the artists who drew what he wanted and didn't much care if it fit the story or not.

And it happens a lot more than even I thought on other books as well, according to Mark Evanier and a couple of other comics writers.
 
 
yawn - thing's buddy
14:04 / 29.12.02
Just because the artist has to draw what's in the script doesn't have any bearing on the quality of the art.

Shame he's on.

Quietly is the only guy doing it any justice really. I like to think that's not the case but when when his issues come along they just fuckin glow.
 
 
The Falcon
14:40 / 29.12.02
I've liked all the artists, but I've gotta concur; like when you opened #126, how good did that feel?
 
 
Professor Silly
14:43 / 29.12.02
I agree that his stylings on the old Uncanny issues seem rough...but I'd also like to point out that some of the work he did on Wolverine (after Uncanny, before Image) seemed a lot more crisp and cool looking...so who knows. I guess we'll have to wait and see.
 
 
Jack Fear
15:02 / 29.12.02
...as an artist, he pretty much has to follow what Morrison scripts exactly.

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha no.

If only it were that simple.
 
 
Solitaire Rose as Tom Servo
15:06 / 29.12.02
Comic Retailer Story ahead:

When I worked at a comic shop, I got a LOT of people asking questions about the books. I had pretty much decided that Silvestri only drew one female face, and one of the other clerks disagreed with me.

Then, the issue of Wolverine where Mariko dies came out, with a cover of Wolverine holding Mariko's corpse...and everyone, EVERYONE who came in and bought the comic asked, "Why did they kill off Jubilee?"
 
 
The Photographer in Blowup
21:16 / 29.12.02
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha no.

If only it were that simple.


I guess i'm that sort of naive person who think's like that. Not that an artist shouldn't have his freedom, but i see it more as part of a collaborative freedom involving the writer, rather than doing what he pretty much wants without consulting the writer.

Besides, Morrison's scripts are so good, even a top gun like Alex Ross shoudl followed them religiously.

I've liked all the artists, but I've gotta concur; like when you opened #126, how good did that feel?

No better than if it had been drawn by Sciver.

I can't believe you've all fallen in love with Quitely's art, and i haven't heard one single compliment about Sciver's art thus far, which has been the best until now.

And what's that crap that all artists have been good so far? Anyone who says that including Kordey's crappy, shitty art, can't be that good a critic.

Feel pissed off at me if you will, but that's my opinion.
 
 
Jack Fear
21:36 / 29.12.02
I guess i'm that sort of naive person who think's like that. Not that an artist shouldn't have his freedom, but i see it more as part of a collaborative freedom involving the writer, rather than doing what he pretty much wants without consulting the writer.

Artists are like anyone else: some of them are lazy, or stupid, or self-involved, or they just don't get what the writer is trying to do.

There's a famous example in The Invisibles, which I know youhaven't read: the last few issues were each drawn by several different artists, and there are a couple of pages in the second-to-last issue, pages which are extremely important to making sense of the series as a whole, which were drawn by Ashley Wood—and even though he has proved himself a very talented artist on other projects, the pages that Mr. Wood turned in were a mess. You couldn't tell what was supposed to be happening. Grant was terribly unhappy, and in the end, when the issues were collected into a trade paperback, he asked that those pages be redrawn by a different artist. (The artist of his choice was Cameron Stewart, who regularly posts here on Barbelith.)

Warren Ellis tells of working with an artist who, for no particular reason, drew a double-page spread of a dinosaur in the middle of his story. When Ellis complained, the editor told him that it was Ellis's problem now, that he would have to re-write his dialogue to work in the dinosaur.

Things like this happen all the time. Artists have favorite things that they like to draw, and sometimes they'll take any excuse to do so... or do you think that Peter David specifically asks Ed Benes for all those ass-shots in SUPERGIRL? Do you think that all of Jon Muth's collaborators have asked him for pale, red-haired heroines, vintage airplanes, and old men who look like Dylan Thomas?

Every so often a writer and an artist really "click," but it's not that common. Sometimes it's a tug of war.
 
 
Matthew Fluxington
22:05 / 29.12.02
Heh...I love that Ellis/dinosaur anecdote. Jack, do you happen to know which comic that was? I'd love to see it someday.

As Jack says, different artists process the information they are asked to illustrate differently. Different artists have varying level of draftmanship skills as well - many of today's mainstream comics illustrators have trouble with the rudiments of drawing ordinary objects and backgrounds, not to mention a firm handle on perspective. So even if an artist technically has put all of the information the writer has asked for in a panel, it doesn't mean that panel will be well drawn or coherant. There's a LOT of comics artists who have a very poor grasp on basic storytelling or page layout.

I've never thought highly of Marc Silvestri, but back in his Uncanny 80s days, in spite of his limitations, he was able to competantly tell a story with pictures, and draw passable backgrounds, so as far as that goes, I can deal with him on NXM so long as he doesn't go all Cyber-Force on us.

As for Igor Kordey, L.M. Rosa, I think you're mistaken about his skills as an illustrator. Igor Kordey is a decent illustrator in terms of draftmanship and storytelling, the problem with his New X-Men work was not in that it was incompetant but in that it was most clearly NOT his best work since it was rushed out, and that his illustration style was inappropriate to the subject matter of the comic. If you go over his New X-Men issues, you'll find that though his work is often sort of ugly, muddy, and inconsistent in quality; it is indeed decent work. There are a number of panels and pages in his seven NXM issues which are beautifully drawn, it's just a shame that it's a lot easier to remember the pages he botched (Wolverine's airborne assault on the Imperial Guard, Xorn and Cyclops' escape, the full page of Jean as the Phoenix in Germ Free Generation, to name a few.)

As for Ethan Van Sciver, I think Ethan's done some decent work on New X-Men, but he's still developing as an artist and his growth was always very obvious on the page. The huge leap of quality from #117 to #133 was pretty amazing, and I'm looking foward to what he'll produce in the future. As it stands, his first three NXM issues had some pretty obvious flaws - way too much crosshatching, visual clutter, shaky page design, unnecessarily peculiar perspective. He's a talented and ambitious guy, but I'm pretty sure the work he'll be doing a few years time will make it clear that he was learning on the job with those NXM fill-ins.
 
 
Solitaire Rose as Tom Servo
00:30 / 30.12.02
Mark Waid often tells a story about giving a script to a Hot Young Artist he refuses to name, who was put on his book by a very uninvolved editor. Waid put at the beginning of the script:

Leave plenty of room for baloons.

The pages showed up, and he could hardly tell what was going on because...the artist had drawn tons of baloons floating about in the story.

Still, Mark Evanier's story of getting pages for his run on The New Gods showed up, a page a day, out of order, without numbers on the bottom of the page, and none of them having anything to do with the full script he'd written, and the editor telling him they had no time to fix it and he'd have to make a story out of it somehow.
 
 
The Falcon
15:53 / 30.12.02
Kordey's last arc was really good. He's obviously talented; I don't know why you think I'm not that good a critic for thinking so(?). He was also extremely badly coloured in all the previous issues he drew.

Van Sciver's perspectives are, along with Keron Grant's rush-job the worst of the lot, quite skewed. He's also, I'd argue, the most 'American-style' of the NXM arists, along with the aforementioned Grant and Jiminez, whose issue had stunning backgrounds, but stiff figures in stupid costumes. But I liked the work they all did, on the whole.
 
 
The Photographer in Blowup
16:46 / 30.12.02
Kordey's last arc was really good. He's obviously talented; He was also extremely badly coloured in all the previous issues he drew.

Oh, don't put the blame on the inker; Kordey's art is horrible, as opposed to Sciver's, which is actually superior to Quitely's.

Just look at Jean Grey's face in New X-Men 114, and then in New X-Men 117, and you tell me which one is best.

And take a good, long look at Sciver's covers of Weapon X arc, and tell me you didn't feel cheated by Kordey's art inside, which had nothing to do with Sciver's wonderful covers; It's the best way of comparing Sciver/Kordey's art, reading New X-Men 130.

As for Quitely, he makes the faces of the X-men look chubby and different from the usual, whereas Sciver captures the real image of each member - and his White Queen portraits are just damn sexy.

Perhaps it's also because of the inks on his drawings, but Sciver has a more defined, detailed art, as anyone can see for themselves in New X-Men 123.

You want to worship Quitely, go ahead; i'm fine with Sciver, and without Kordey.
 
 
Jack Fear
16:59 / 30.12.02
He'll be glad to hear that: he's a semi-regular Barbelith poster, too.

(His surname is "Van Sciver," by the way, not just "Sciver." But we just call him "Ethan.")
 
 
The Falcon
17:23 / 30.12.02
Well, I thought #129 had a better cover than #128 or #130, but what do I know? And I blamed the colourist (and, as others have, I could do time-constraints.)

Van Sciver's art is, I agree, beautifully detailed and I think, assuming there still is a comics industry in 10 years, he will be a superstar.

I wouldn't say I worshipped Quitely, he's extremely similar to Moebius, but with a bit of Oor Wullie and Disney thrown in to the mix, but he is my favourite (semi-)regular comics penciller. He also, to my mind, has a wonderful sense of design.

EVS is also a semi-regular at MillarWorld and X-Fan, too. He's apparently planning a project with Gail (Agent X) Simone.
 
 
The Photographer in Blowup
17:24 / 30.12.02
Out of curiosity, is the guy british, american, whatever?

And what else has he drawn apart from New X-Men?
 
 
Matthew Fluxington
17:36 / 30.12.02
I don't really understand why people get all bent out of shape about Frank's drawings of the X-Men's faces, especially when there's this weird notion that he's drawing their faces all *wrong*, as if he's drawing likenesses of real people. I think that Frank draws the X-Men to more closely resemble real people, and not just idealized superhumans. Ethan Van Sciver's faces tend to lack a lot of character, they usually look very stiff and generic to me. His Jean Grey could just as well be Wonder Woman in a red wig, but Frank's Jean tends to be a lot more specific than that. Frank's Jean and Emma have very different faces, tastes in clothing, and body languages, the same goes for nearly every character Frank draws - he has a great skill with depicting physical mannerisms. If you examine his figure drawings and compare them to most other contemporary comics illustrators, I'm sure you will notice his skill with rendering subtle physical expressions.

I can't relate to a generation of people who seem to judge the talent of an illustrator based on how 'sexy' they draw their characters, or demand that all of the characters must be 'sexy' in the most generic and dull way possible. There's a lot more to illustration than just making people look pretty.

As a matter of personal preference, I would say that Frank Quitely's drawings of Jean Grey and Emma Frost are a lot more attactive to me than most every other artist's drawings of them that I've seen - the average comics artist just draws all of their women to look like soft porn actresses, and that's not my taste at all, bro.

A note to L.M. Rosa: Igor Kordey is his own inker, always. The job of the inker is not to color the artwork.
 
 
Matthew Fluxington
17:42 / 30.12.02
Ethan is an American, and I do believe he resides in Florida currently. He started out writing and drawing his own comic Cyberfrog when he was a teenager, and has drawn issues of The Flash for DC, including a Flash graphic novel. In addition to those four issues of New X-Men, he also drew a few issues of Wolverine for Marvel, and was supposed to draw a Jean Grey miniseries that never got off the ground. He's now working on some kind of Wonder Woman project for DC, and a sequel to that Flash graphic novel. I do believe he also wanted to do something with Plastic Man, but I don't know what's going to happen with that.

Ethan's a really nice guy, he's posted here before, and has written some pretty thoughtful and interesting things in some of the threads here.
 
 
The Falcon
18:11 / 30.12.02
Flash: Iron Heights was its' name. Didn't know he did Flash issues.
 
 
The Photographer in Blowup
11:51 / 31.12.02
can't relate to a generation of people who seem to judge the talent of an illustrator based on how 'sexy' they draw their characters, or demand that all of the characters must be 'sexy' in the most generic and dull way possible. There's a lot more to illustration than just making people look pretty.

If i only judged artists by their sexy portrails of characters, i guess i wouldn't love From Hell art so much as i do.

Characters in X-Men have had the same faces for 30 years, so i suppose any artist should know by now how to draw their faces - i mean, how many faces of Wolverine has Quitely drawn by now? There was that freaky one in New X-men 114 - when he first began changing all the familiar faces, including his awful rendering of Jean Grey (how old was she in NXM 114? fifty?); and then that other one with a goatee on the cover of NXM 135.

And i can't believe you say he's a detailed artist, when Sciver gave us such fine backgrounds of the school and the students - and even of the trees and flowers and everything i usually don't care at all - in NXM 123; it was beautiful stuff.

And what's that of Jean and Emma having different tastes of clothing? Duh, big secret you're spilling there - Emma always dresses WHITE, wheras Jean has an outfit like the rest of the team; You didn't really think you would convince me with that one, did you?

If you examine his figure drawings and compare them to most other contemporary comics illustrators, I'm sure you will notice his skill with rendering subtle physical expressions.

I haven't yet, but something tells i won't notice it, because you just seem to want to believe there is something that makes Quitely better than all the others - i guess he's better than Kordey, it isn't that difficult.

Physical expressions? Emma has her arms crossed most of the time, big deal, we all that she's a bitch with attitude.

And back to the 'sexy' affair - you're telling me the cover of NXM 116 wasn't exactly drawn for that purpose? I guess that means one of these two things - either he's just another one like Sciver, which is a compliment i'm giving Quitely here; or, if he can indeed do better than that, he's just another sell-out like all the others then, who draws what he knows will attract more - money is always the goal in everything, don't forget that.

The job of the inker is not to color the artwork.

Then what does the inker do?
 
 
Jack Fear
12:25 / 31.12.02
Um. Inks. With black ink. Over the pencil lines drawn by the clverly-named "penciller."

Colors are all done on computers, these days: the inked artwork is scanned at high resolution, and the colors are usually done in Photoshop.
 
 
Matthew Fluxington
13:01 / 31.12.02
L.M., I think it's pretty safe for me to guess that you probably don't have much experience with drawing yourself, right? I think you're fixating on very superficial aspects of drawing without really looking at why drawings work. For example, your idea of 'detail' seems to be focused on how many lines and pieces of visual information can be stuffed into a page, with little regard to how that can negatively effect important things like composition and design. I think Frank Quitely does a very nice job of packing in a lot of details in his drawings - he renders every bit of relevent information, but he never allows his pages to becomed cluttered the way that Ethan can. I think Ethan's come a long way in design sense since #117, but those first three issues did have a lot of needless and graceless clutter.

Characters in X-Men have had the same faces for 30 years, so i suppose any artist should know by now how to draw their faces

That's just a BIZARRE thing to say. The way that John Byrne drew the X-Men looks absolutely nothing like how Jim Lee drew them, or Chris Bachalo, or Carlos Pacheco, or Marc Silvestri, or Neal Adams, or Art Adams, or John Romita Jr., or the Kuberts, or Rob Liefeld, and so on. I just can't even begin to understand what you're talking about - if anything, I'd say that Frank Quitely is being a lot more true to the characters original designs and the characterization as written by Chris Claremont and Grant Morrison. I mean, are you really upset that Frank draws Cyclops as the tall, thin man he was originally meant to be rather than the hulking musclebound freak of the post-Claremont/pre-Morrison era? Should Jean Grey look like a stripper, as many of the hacks of the post-Claremont era have drawn her?

I think you're missing my point about body language and clothing, it's not nearly as obvious or simplistic as "Emma is a slutty bitch in white". And you're completely missing the point about the 'sexy' thing - of course Emma is drawn to be an over the top sexual woman, that's a major part of her character. But Frank does NOT draw her to look like some generic soft porn bimbo as most superhero comics artist do. I would say that the way that Frank draws Emma is respectful, and not exploitative and tasteless.

The inker is the artist who takes pencil drawings and finishes them in ink - it's not as simple as tracing, either. The inker gives weight and depth to the drawings, controls line quality, spots the blacks, simplifies or adds detail when necessary, among other things. The inker's focus is mainly on technical craft, and it is a job that requires a lot of skill and intelligence, not to mention a lack of ego, since the inker is trying to make the penciller's work look good. It's a crucial job; a good inker can make a weak penciller's art look competant or a talented penciller's art look even better; and a bad inker can wreck a good artist's work.

In some instances, the inker draws more the penciller - if you ever see credits that list one artist as doing the 'breakdowns' and another doing 'finishes', that essentially means that the breakdown artist plotted out the story from the writer's script and blocked out the drawings on the pages, while the finisher completed and fleshed out the drawings, and inked it. A good example of this would be the issues of The Invisibles series 3 that Warren Pleece layed out, and Phillip Bond finished. On the surface, it looks like the work of Phillip Bond, but if you compare the differences in storytelling between that and comics that Bond has done on his own, the stylistic differences are apparent.

I've also read about some cases in which the art handed in by the penciller was so poor that the editor deemed the work unprintable, and the inker is asked to extensively rework/redraw the pages over the penciller's pages. I'm pretty sure that's sort of rare, though.

Many artists prefer to ink their own work, since it gives them complete control over their art. For example, Frank Quitely clearly prefers to ink his own work, and Igor Kordey absolutely refuses to let anyone else ink his drawings. Kordey apparently does most of his drawing with ink directly on to the page over his loose breakdowns, so he's quite the purist, and it explains why he's able to finish so pages as quickly as he does. It's fairly rare to find penciller/inker teams in independent comics, it's mostly a way of speeding up the production of pages for mainstream publishers which print on a rather unforgiving monthly schedule.

We have a thread somewhere around here in which we discuss inking in depth, and Cameron Stewart wrote a lot in that thread about his experiences as an inker - I'll try to dig that up later on.
 
 
The Photographer in Blowup
16:36 / 31.12.02
L.M., I think it's pretty safe for me to guess that you probably don't have much experience with drawing yourself, right? I think you're fixating on very superficial aspects of drawing without really looking at why drawings work. For example, your idea of 'detail' seems to be focused on how many lines and pieces of visual information can be stuffed into a page, with little regard to how that can negatively effect important things like composition and design.

I don't make my living writing non-fiction books on drawing, if that's what you want to know.

And i guess that comics being a visual medium, the more information per page the better - that's the definition of detail in my dictionary. Now what do you mean with negatively effect important things like composition and design? Give me an example of what that is, because i'm reading NXM again and can't find any problem with Ethan's art interferring with the book itself. Don't find it cluttered at all, it just fills the whole panel so that every space is used as background, and quite effectively.

That's just a BIZARRE thing to say. The way that John Byrne drew the X-Men looks absolutely nothing like how Jim Lee drew them, or Chris Bachalo, or Carlos Pacheco, or Marc Silvestri, or Neal Adams, or Art Adams, or John Romita Jr., or the Kuberts, or Rob Liefeld, and so on. I just can't even begin to understand what you're talking about

I find their faces have been quite generic for the past years, and Quitely really individualizes each X-men's appearance, but no more than Ethan - Ethan and Quitely have drawn two different professors X from the past ones, and are still different from each other (Quitely draws him as old, perhaps older than he should be, considering Xavier is 41, according to NXM 123) - and that Jean Grey face in NXM 114 was also very alien - not Jean Grey at all, too old too.

I mean, are you really upset that Frank draws Cyclops as the tall, thin man he was originally meant to be

It's pleasant to call him 'slim' again, yes.

I think you're missing my point about body language and clothing

Well, don't see what you mean with body language - an example also, please, from Quitely, and contrasting Ethan's. But regarding the clothing, it's no big deal - Emma dresses in white, and Jean Grey prefers a normal X-Men outfit. What else is there to talk about? Besides, i have the impression, that's in the script.

Emma is drawn to be an over the top sexual woman, that's a major part of her character. But Frank does NOT draw her to look like some generic soft porn bimbo as most superhero comics artist do. I would say that the way that Frank draws Emma is respectful, and not exploitative and tasteless.

Come on, concerning Emma's physical appearance/attributes, Ethan and Quitely have drawn her alike, and Ethan draws her with the same respect and style as Quitely - give me an example where he made her look like a slut (more than she usually looks, anyway)

Really, the only difference between Quitely and Ethan i can see are the inks, information per page, and faces - each is different, especially the female ones, and he's not generic at all, but i don't see Ethan's Jean Grey as a redhead version of Emma, and vice-versa; he's made each X-men pretty much individualized too.

P.S. - i was looking at NXM 126 cover, and was wondering if the kid with glasses behind Beast could be Quentin Quire?
 
 
Matthew Fluxington
18:15 / 31.12.02
No, no, no - the negative examples of other X-artists were not meant to be taken as me slamming Ethan, I'm very sorry that you got that impression. The other X-artists whom I was vaguely dissing are more along the lines of the Kubert brothers (whom I both strongly dislike), and the more Image-y artists who have drawn the comics since the early 90s. I think Ethan is nothing like those guys at all, and I don't think that he draws the characters in a bad way at all, though I'm not crazy about his Cyclops.

It's weird that you'd think Frank's Xavier looks too old, because I think his Xavier looks about 15-20 years younger than Xavier as illustrated by Ethan, Igor, or Phil Jiminez. I think his face looks a lot younger, and he looks like he's got a more athletic build when Quitely draws him. I don't get the thing with Jean either - there's been a few weird panels here and there, but for the most part, I'd say Frank draws her as a very cute girl in her late 20s.

As for this:

Now what do you mean with negatively effect important things like composition and design? Give me an example of what that is, because i'm reading NXM again and can't find any problem with Ethan's art interferring with the book itself. Don't find it cluttered at all, it just fills the whole panel so that every space is used as background, and quite effectively.

I'm going to have to pass on explaining this - it's mostly just basic drawing class stuff, and it does have to deal with taste, and I'm not trying to tell you that your visual taste is *wrong*, I'm just trying to say that a lot of the things that make Frank Quitely so brilliant are technical drawing things, which may not be that obvious if you've not had some serious experience with drawing and analyzing visual art. I think it's fairly common for a lot of people to mistake style and surface detail for solid illustrating.

I don't think Ethan Van Sciver's art on New X-Men was ever bad, but I think that there are several examples throughout his first three issues of awkward layouts, stiff characters, and panels/pages in which the detail and odd perspectives overwhelmed the basic form and function of the pages. I'm thinking of one two page spread in #123 with Angel in the tree, Logan on a motorcycle, and Emma talking to the both of them, and that layout being very awkward and clumsy, almost sort of confusing to read. Design and composition are a big part of art, especially art which is meant to tell a story in a coherant fashion - it's something Ethan's just picking up now, but something that Frank Quitely does effortlessly. A lot of why Quitely's work is remarkable for its grace and economy of line, which aren't things I think you will notice if you're fixating on surface style.

That's definitely Quentin Quire above Xavier on the cover of #126, by the way. All of the Omega Gang are there, actually.
 
  

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