My running joke about Keith Giffen is, he's probably the only comics artist who is on some fans' "most loved" list-- and "most hated" list-- AT THE SAME TIME.
I slowly grew to enjoy his stuff on
THE DEFENDERS, partly because of David Kraft's writing, and partly because, although he was doing a really CRUDE, STIFF take-off on Jack Kirby, at the time, he seemed to be one of the FEW artists working for Marvel who actually seemed to know how to lay out interesting FIGHT scenes.
He dropped out of site for awhile after getting fired from blowing some deadlines. When he was trying to put his career back together, he'd begun "channeling" Phillipe Druilet, of all people. You can see this in his
Dr. Fate back-up in
THE FLASH (inked by Larry Mahstedt), and his earliest episodes of
LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES. Within about 6 months on
LEGION, he began to simplify his work a lot, and it struck me as almost being in a strange sort of way a "modern" version of Curt Swan. but then he simplified it EVEN MORE (following a 6-month stint on
OMEGA MEN, which he says he felt "burned him out"-- doing 2 books a month for all that time), and suddenly he was "channeling" Alex Toth.
I'm still not sure who Jose Munoz is, though I bet I've seen his stuff. This Breccia story was downright eerie, the way he seemed to borrow SO heavily from it.
When he returned to
LEGION after a long stretch, with
LEGION #50 (the issue where they defeated The Time Trapper in the far, far future), he seemed to have gotten his thing back together. But the next issue, he began "channeling" Kirby again-- only, with excessively-FAT faces. Then, when they switched from Mike DeCarlo to Al Gordon, it began to go downhill, and when he got to the "
Five Years Later", he was actually "channeling" the look of Kirby-ROUSSOS, which I have long felt was the ugliest period of Kirby's art ever.
And then you had that
TRENCHER crap. So, as you can see, his art has really been schizophrenic.
I think the BEST damn thing any editor ever did with him was when Andy Helfer realized how good he was writing stories and laying out out pages, and got SOMEONE ELSE to do the finished art. For 5 years,
JUSTICE LEAGUE INTERNATIONAL was one of DC's best books. It also had Giffen's "upside down" mentality at work. He killed
Dr. Fate, who'd been immortal. He turned the
JLA into a comedy. And he turned the
LEGION's utopian future into a hopeless, depressing, violent nightmare. 2 out of those 3 things NEVER should have happened, if his editors had just told him, "
NO. We're NOT doing this."
After
JLA, Giffen never should have been allowed to do "full pencils" on a DC book ever again. I often think he NEVER really learned how to draw. And if it were up to me, he'd NEVER be allowed anywhere near the
LEGION, ever again. The book has NEVER, in my view, really recovered from what went on between him, Mark Waid & Mike Carlin (2 reboots in 2 months-- only 5 issues into a run-- followed by an even bigger reboot 4 years later that happened as a direct result of the earlier ones).
You reach a point where "enough is enough". I try to have patience and sympathy for my best friend, who keeps saying things like, "
But I REALLY like the characters!" Well... SO DO I. But sometimes, SO MUCH damage has been done... I reach a point where I don't EVER want to read a new story about some characters-- EVER AGAIN, no matter WHO does it. I'd rather just go back and read the earlier stories... WHEN THEY WERE GOOD AND FUN.
I hope one of these days to spend more time reading the stuff at THIS site. There is an INFINITY of fun stuff here, so much one could spend the rest of their life reading this stuff and never run out of books.
Of course, I've just spent the last 7 months reading nothing but POE comics... the overwhelming majority of which, I have NEVER read before!
