absolute beginner's questions

torranced Strange Apparitions over the weekend, looking forward to reading it

Look forward to learning that Marshall Rogers didn't "lose it" in the late '80s, he really couldn't ever draw properly

miller more or less stopped doing anything of interest immediately following sin city tho ymmv

specifically after the DHP run, not the decade+ of subsequent series

(I call Give Me Liberty #1 as his last sort-of-interesting / sort-of-good work. By the fourth issue you could see 90s Miller in full flowering.)

the daredevil run is canonic, dark knight really doesn't hold up.

Dark Knight holds up exactly as well as it did in 1987 - formally clever* & thrilling, gorgeous to look at (Varley), operatically overblown in a really fun way, seethingly right-wing & nigh-fascist 5 microns below the surface.

*heavily influenced by American Flagg, but Miller did process those lessons and develop an incredible sense of pacing & panel rhythm along with the grid variation, talking screens & quick cutting.

i agree that the first book of sin city is the cut off point; the other books and Liberty have moments but they're often horrible

it's very very hard for me to see dark knight the same way as i did when it first came out as i got copies about a year after the release and those babies are catnip for a thirteen year old. they're all but unreadable now but v v pretty btw.

my longer form miller flowchart is roughly as follows (the importance of Darrow, Gibbons, Mazzucchelli, Jansen is hard to understate):
daredevil first run > daredevil second run > ronin > Sin City v.1 up to big fat kill >hard boiled > year one > martha washington > rusty and the big guy > elektra > later sin city > wolverine > Dark Knight > DK2 > all star batman and robin

"hard to overstate"

http://thegoldenagesite.blogspot.ie/2013/11/marshall-rogers-batman-portfolio-1981.html

I haven't seen much Marshall Rogers, but this stuff is pretty good.

Jeez, when it comes to a lot of the art you'll have to tolerate from mid-80s onward superhero comics, Romita Jr is a godsend. Tim Sale, Walter Simonson, Jerry Ordway, Chris Weston and Alan Davis are talented too. Mike Weiringo and Ed McGuinness have quite pleasant cartoony styles but don't know how often you're likely to bump into them if you're looking for storylines. I don't think Kevin Nowlan ever done a proper "run" on any superhero but he's good.

Rogers' artwork got more anatomically wayward the further he got away from Terry Austin, but I like the architectural flamboyance of his best work, and even have a fondness for Detectives Inc

Agree that JR JR only got really good after DareDevil Year One, but for a while he was easily Marvel's best, most consistent superhero artist