By the 70s Kirby's art was shit.
I'll concede that he wasn't drawing with the same level of detail as, say, FF 44-51, or JOURNEY INTO MYSTERY/THOR 120-130.
But a few examples that certainly weren't "shit" :
NEW GODS 5, 6, and 7.
THE DEMON 1 and 2 (origin story), and 6.
KAMANDI 1, 2 and 6.
ETERNALS 1 and 2.
2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY 8 (origin of Machine Man, before he moved to his own title)
All these are well-told stories with some beautiful pages, and definitely not "shit". Again, I'll grant that much of Kirby's 70's work is less detailed, but his best 70's efforts had a dynamic quality that matched or arguably exceeded his best 60's Marvel work. Certainly, it has been popular to the point that it has ALL been reprinted, much of it in multiple editions.
And I can acknowledge that many others consider his 60's Marvel work the best of his career. But there is some debate on that.
Arguably, Kirby's 70's work was his most personal, that he had the most control over, and poured more effort into. That he had the most editorial and creative control over.
Although beyond ETERNALS, I think his 1976-1978 work was overall pretty half-hearted, as was much of his DC work after 1972 (after the Fourth World books were cancelled out from under him). Kirby is well-documented to have been crushed after the cancellation of his NEW GODS titles. But there were still moments of inspired greatness from him, at both DC and Marvel in the 1970's.
I think Kirby's most clear and precipitous decline was in the 1980's, with CAPTAIN VICTORY, SILVER STAR, and the SUPER POWERS series for DC. As well as the HUNGER DOGS graphic novel that was an unrecognizable version of Kirby's original 1970's Fourth World series it was intended to conclude.
But I have to give him his due as an influence. Along with Eisner, most of the language of comic book storytelling (the way pages were laid out, the use of dynamic foreshortening, the way action was delineated) came from Kirby.
Well, that much we can agree on.
But Nowie has a good point. You can't start a thread about comic book blasphemies and then get even mildly perturbed when someone points out problems with "the King."
Where am I perturbed? It frankly is amusing to me that Nowie's this torqued up about it. It makes my point about "comic book blasphemies" that he's this annoyed about my opinion of Dave Gibbbons' WATCHMEN work. The irony is,
I like WATCHMEN! I just think another artist could have possibly done an even better job with it.
Arguing against my own opinion, maybe WATCHMEN as done by Gibbons is better in not having an artist show off too much, but instead (with Gibbons) the story was better because the art was in service to the story, instead of filled with pin-up pages like a Jim Lee or Todd McFarlane story.
A parallel example is the Stern/Romita Jr. AMAZING SPIDER-MAN run (recently released in collected hardcover, by the way). Much as I like Romita Jr's work, it likewise doesn't draw too much attention to itself, and is subservient to the story, not filled with pin-up pages in a way that the artist would have been showing off, that would distract from the story itself. And it's better that way.
So maybe WATCHMEN is better Gibbons' way.
It's all personal preference, but I just think the Leach and Davis art on MIRACLEMAN, and the Lloyd art on V FOR VENDETTA, and the Gilbert art on MR MONSTER 3, and the Don Simpson art on ANYTHING GOES 2's "Pictopia" were (art-wise) all more interesting Alan Moore collaborations.
While WATCHMEN is an incredible Moore story, my opinion is it's purely an Alan Moore show, and the art is functional to the story, but unspectacular, and I was more impressed by the other artists in their collaborations with Moore.
And that's the fun of it. That my opinion on the subject is blasphemous, relative to the majority of opinion on the subject of WATCHMEN.
