“I don’t think I remembered how ugly these books were.
I think it came about because that was [Abe Simpson voice] the style at the time.
If you had a gritty book, like Swamp Thing or Hellblazer, you had these darker art styles with a more abstract look to everything. It’s very of its time, and I hate to call it ugly…more than once, but it just feels like a style that has not aged well.
I think the style gets in the way of the story more often than it works.
Thor, for example, is depicted as this ridiculously muscle-bound creature at some point, and his hammer is tiny, and that kind of works because he’s a mythical god, so his body doesn’t have to look like anything, really.
I am reading the re-colored versions, which are definitely better. The original colors combined with shitty paper (I used to own these volumes, and the paper felt like phone book paper) didn’t do the visuals any favors.”