Art Fail: Nineties comics were a bit silly, weren’t they?

 From Razor versus Warrior Nun Areala - Faith

Warning: cartoony graphic violence

Art Fail - Barticus

Behold Barticus and his gigantic laser cannon boobs! Possessing an arsenal capable of leveling cities and yet only ever hits things with a tree! Completely indestructible only to be felled with a single rocket!

Well, I don't know about you, but I'm intimidated.

Art Fail - Storm Force

This Art Fail is a little different from the others. There's nothing wrong with the art in Storm Force; in fact, I quite like Vanyo's style. It;s certainly a lot better then the other Art Fails I've showcased. However, that doesn't change the fact that the content of the art is, well, just kind of goofy.

Case in point, let's meet our titular team of designated protagonists...

Storm Force! Fighting the war on mutant spider goons!

Art Fail - Reusing the panel

Ben Dunn had something of a reputation of being lazy, unimaginative and unoriginal, as well as copying artwork. In fact, he even was supposedly known for copying his own art. But is that reputation justified? Well, let's just take a look at some panels from Warrior Nun Areala versus Razor and see.

Art Fail - Headband people fight headband people

It's tempting to call all of Robotech: The Sentinels Rubicon one gigantic art fail. It's... a mess, with awkward characters that don't look anything like their original animated designs, skewed perspectives, weird-looking mecha and ships, cluttered backgrounds full of techno-junk and all manner of other things. Added to that is the heavy-handed and ugly inking and then the awkwardly executed tones in part one, and you have one gigantic mess.

Oh, and the terrible dialogue doesn't help any either.

Art Fails

One of the limitations of comic book MSTings is relying on the written descriptions of what's happening. This has two problems; the first is that a scene in a comic can often be hard to describe in text form, especially when it's a complicated one or involves a lot of characters, or action or the like. The second is that it means I can't really riff on the art quality. After all, I'm making a joke about the art in a way that means the reader isn't able to see what I'm joking about. It'd be like commenting on the special effects in an Ed Wood movie on the radio.

Art Fails is a new feature that will be addressing some of that. I'll be scanning selected pages or panels from some of the comics and sharing them with you in order to better illustrate some of the odder moments I've come across. They may be bad, they may be incomprehensible or they may be just plain awkward, but there's a lot to be seen.

As a way of introduction, I present a panel from League of Champions #6. I simply described this as "Kid making a weird face. I cannot describe it beyond ‘wrong’". Take a look for yourself, and see.

The Horror...

Seriously, if you can describe that face, then please explain what it's meant to be.