Monday, May 28, 2007

Replacing David Finch

Lay them on me, kids. I'm going to list a LOT of alternates, but I'd like the first four or so to be fast, fast workers. So far, Mark Bagley's the first choice. Charlie Adlard's going to be on the list somewhere; I don't think his style's right for the book, but I don't think it's totally wrong for it, either.

6 comments:

Patrick Cook said...

For the life of me, I just can't imagine why David is not getting back to you. I've found him to be very responsive!

Sean Kleefeld said...

Just throwing out some names that might work here...
Stefano Raffaele
John McCrae
Ryan Kelly
Gabriel Bá

Philip Schaeffer said...

I'm not comfortable putting any of these guys on a book of this scope and prominence. Or Charlie Adlard for that matter, now that I think about it.

Then again, we don't have much of a choice at this point, do we?

I'll say this; I'm putting Greg Land in as my first alternate for Mark Bagley. This will drive many people crazy, but I kind of like his stuff and he works fast (you would too if you were that devoted to your lightbox). Beyond that, who knows?

Philip Schaeffer said...

I'm also going to throw out the crazy suggestion of using a backgrounder, so that a higher profile penciller would only have to draw the foreground, main characters, etc.

This is a concept I heard floated around when Steve McNiven was getting so behind on Civil War. It's not a particularly appealing one, but I will point out that animation has been dividing labor thusly for decades.

Here's what I'll probably be posting as my list of suggested alternates: Bagley, Land, Jimenez, Olivetti, Epting, McNiven, JRJr., Deodato.

Clearly many of those guys I would only suggest if a backgrounder were doing the grunt work. Hopefully Finch will still draw the damn thing, but we've got to have backups for our backups.

Sean, I'm going to post right at the deadline so you can have as many opportunities as possible to 1) tell me not to be so snooty with choices for artists, and 2) tell me not to suggest dividing pencilling duties.

Otherwise, I'm proceeding as outlined here.

Michael Heide said...

Mark Bagley is fast. John Romita jr. is fast enough to pull off double-duty on Balance of Power as well as Amazing Spider-Man (if any problems come up, we could live with Amazing getting delayed, since it doesn't tie into BoPow or the other books).
Other options are Darryl Banks (though he's probably not high profile enough anymore), Alan Davis (I think we could delay ClanDestine for a couple more months) and Ron Garney.
Sadly, all of the former or current Top Cow pencillers whose styles are reminescent of Finch's (Silvestri, Joe Benitez, Brandon Peterson) are too slow to bring in this late in the game.

Philip Schaeffer said...

Ditto on (and shame about) the Top Cow guys.

If you're okay with spreading JRJr. a little thin on ASM, then I'll suggest him more prominently.

I'll stick Alan, Ron and Darryl on as well, perhaps in lieu of some of the more ridiculous suggestions.

Hopefully this is a lot of wheel spinning, and David Finch will stick around.