Ryan Mascord sent me this message which raises a great many topics. Let's see if I can answer all of them. I have left his spelling and punctuation almost intact…
Here is a okay question for you I think and kinda builds on some stuff with artists and Inkers. kinda a bit long so sorry for that.
In the UK, we are more used to comics having an artist who draws, inks and often colours their own work, with a second person doing the lettering or sometimes colouring, through it's not out of the norm to have one person handle all that themselves, where in the US comic style, you are more used to a penciler, inker, colourist and letterer.
This isn't going to ask if you think US artists are lazyer as they often don't get the choice and sometimes I can see how some inkers can improve some work.. but that's been talked about alot. the question is more do you think some artist who work with a inker (who is themselves an artist.. I probably should just say 'penciler') gets a bit lazy? I can't remember his name but there was a famous 18th/19th century designer who when he did a house, he designed the wallpaper and stuff, but over the years of working with the same people, his pencil sketches would get rougher because the person that was 'inking' the work knew what some line was so they knew what detail to add.
I know from my own experience that when you ink your own work, your sketching can become more sketchy and worse because you know you are inking it and what you mean with various bits. This can also be said to some pencilers who ink their own work, do you think there sketching can get lazyer when they know they can 'fix' something in the inking. Do you think if they then have to use another person, there work suffers because of the habbit of being lazy? I started to think more about this, not only work my own minor work but when re-reading one old interview with the… great writer of Harlan Ellison:
"When PCs first started being used by writers, I said "This is not a good idea". Using PCs for doing term papers, or scientific treatises, for lists, for stuff like that, it's fine, but NOT for creative work. Because all I've ever heard, and I've heard this from many many writers, now I'm no longer alone in this philosophy, in saying "Gardez Vous", you know, "Be careful" – what I've heard now is many writers saying yes, it has made them write in a more slovenly fashion. They are not nearly as alert to the fact that they're going to actually have to do the physical labor of changing something. All they know is that if they do it wrong, all they have to do is press a button."
which seems to me to apply equally to artists who became 'lazyer' because of the inker they are working with, or if they do digtal inking/corrections on their work.
and while i'm at it, since i have asked before without an answer.. The best and 'most complete' collection of DNAgents so far is the industrial strength. while i'm in two minds about the 'editing' and redoing of some pages, they do look good.. even if they are major changes in some places.. When are the rest of the issues, spin-offs and stuff gonna get some love and a collection so people can enjoy these stories? picking up old issues is a pain if I was in the US, let alone the UK.
Okay, I'll try this in reverse order: There are currently no plans for further reprints of DNAgents and its allied titles, especially Crossfire I wish I could tell you it was in the offing but it ain't so and won't be so until some honest, trustworthy publisher comes forward with a smart proposal.
I argued often with my old friend Harlan — sometimes, I thought, because there was a genuine issue on the table and sometimes, I thought more often, because he just liked being an old contrarian. Our ongoing debate about writers using computers started out about writers using those primitive things called "word processors" and his was an odd position for a writer obsessed with delivering the cleanest-possible copy.
You stated his position. Mine was that composing on a computer has made it easier for me to go over and over what I've written and revise, revise, revise. Something I liked doing and still do is when I'm midway through a script is to take what I've written, save a copy as "Version 1" and then I can revise and extend the script in radical ways, safe in the knowledge that if it doesn't work out to my liking, I can go back to Version 1 in two secs.
It used to be that when I had what could have been a finished script, I mailed it off or delivered it. Now, I fiddle with it longer, time permitting. I replace some words with better words, punch up jokes, trim out redundant passages, smooth out speeches, try moving around sections, trim out redundant passages…
…and then I hit Send and it's off. It can be waiting in the inbox of the editor/producer tomorrow morning. He or she can give me notes that day and I can upload revisions while the writer who writes at a typewriter is still looking for a manila envelope and some stamps.
I know it makes it easier but I think it makes it better. At least, that's been my experience.
As for thinking of artists as lazier (or even "lazyer") when they don't ink, I think you're wrong. The artist who doesn't ink his or her work is usually not lazy. Usually, that artist is choosing to pencil two stories in the time he or she might be doing the complete art on one.
Sometimes, that's the artist's choice. He loves the "storytelling" aspect of drawing comics and feels that inking the comic means spending more time working on a story he's already told instead of getting to the next one. Jack Kirby was in that category.
Some artists simply think they're better (or maybe faster and can therefore make more money) doing just one part of the job. Frank Giacoia once told me — and these may not be the exact numbers — that he made fifty cents an hour penciling and five dollars inking. Inkers are often matched with pencilers to achieve a certain "look" to the finished art that would not have resulted from one guy working solo. There are other reasons.
I'm not saying I agree with the casual division of work this way. Elsewhere on this blog, I've argued that too often editors had one artist pencil and another ink because it served the company's interest, and that an awful lot of comics of the past would have been better if they'd allowed one person to do them both. But I have never seen laziness as a reason. I haven't even seen laziness on some comics I thought weren't very good. An artist who's lazy usually doesn't stick around the business for very long.
Thanks for the long letter, Ryan. I hope you thought my not-as-long replies were worth it.
