Taraco wrote:

Infantino bad art?

Yup. Bad enough to earn him a permanent spot on my Worst Artists of All Time list.

My goodness, I couldn't disagree more. His cityscapes and vistas still resonate in my memory; his lithe Adam Strange leaping between worlds, two Flashes rushing to the rescue, talking gorillas you could believe in -- even his crazy talking hands used with silhouettes in Starnge Sports Stories -- all were the mark of a totally original artist and one of the all-time DC Silver Age greats, along with Kubert, Murphy Anderson, Curt Swan and Gil Kane.

His early work was tolerable, and I do agree that he did cool cityscapes and backgrounds. I just never cared for his figures/characters. Something about even his early art just turned me off. When we hit the later 60's, and the 70's, and especially the early 80's, he became intolerably bad. Look at his work on Star Wars or Nova. Hideous.

Kubert I was never a big fan of. Too scratchy and disconnected, similar to Heck, Brown, and Tuska, only worse. I've seen Kubert do ok work at times, but usually I hated it. Murphy Anderson had a nice style that reminds me a bit of Perez. Curt Swan was the Sal Buscema of DC comics, only nowhere near as good as Sal. I didn't hate his art, but neither did I like it much. I'd say I tolerated it well.

Gil Kane was magic. He blew away Infantino and most other DC artists. It's funny, but DC seems to have had a certain lacking when it came to great artists, and a surplus of really bad ones. Marvel always seemed to have the better artists overall. I think of my Top 50 artists, most would be primarily Marvel artists.

In later years, Infantino became incredibly freeform and even sloppy,
Oh man, it became hideous chicken scratch! When an artists gets that bad, it's time to lay down the pencil and retire.

"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted in a profoundly sick society."

- Krishnamurti