Two requests for help and/or suggestions, other stuff also

-The hate poll is technically still open, but I don't see Mark Millar making a comeback. As much as you hate Millar, you really, really hate Quesada. Which brings us to a new question: who on earth can compete with Quesada? I don't think even Satan himself could win because, (a) most of you care more about Iron Man than your souls, (b) I think some of you believe the two are actually one and the same, and (c) let's admit it, Satan is a pretty popular dude, especially if you're the type who read Gearhead and carries a zippo. So anyway, I'm going to hold off on another poll until Monday, and hopefully I'll figure out who, if anyone, will give Quesada a run for his money. Suggestions are welcome.

-Now I like Silver Age comics quite a lot, largely because I really did grow up reading them (and yet I'm not bald or even grey--take that, baby boomers!). And I did enjoy the first issue of the new Brave and the Bold series quite a lot, for many of the same reasons noted in this review. But a "perfect" comic? Naaah. Actually, that's what made it so enjoyable--it had no particularly deep message to convey, yet it wasn't a self-consciously "fun" comic. (Also, I think almost everyone had trouble following the action scene in the Batcave.)

-While we're on the subject of recent DC comics, did anyone else think Ken Lashley looked exponentially better on Firestorm than Flash? This is almost certainly because Lashley was pencilling over Dan Jurgens' layouts. Add in Jurgen's rather poor pencils on this week's 52 and I'm thinking that Jurgens should abandon pencilling and go the Keith Giffen route. Then again, a new class of dedicated layout-ists might lead to the further assembly line-ification of Marvel/DC. And you could certainly make an argument that any artist who can't handle layouts probably isn't ready for the intense spotlight of a mainstream superhero book.

-Jesus, I just looked at Chris Allen's (er, make that Christopher Butcher's...oops) preview for next week's books, and there's too much stuff. I mean, yes, in any given week I would probably buy a lot more if I had unlimited time and money, but this week has a number of things I would make a special trip to the store to buy. Two Brubaker books, the new issue of Morrison and Ha's Authority, a new Castle Waiting, another volume of Dungeon (I haven't read the last one yet, but thankfully this appears to be apocrypha--I'll still get it, of course), and, lest I forget, the second volume of Smith's Shazam. Goddamn.

-With any luck, I'll be starting a feature here next week that will actually be of some use to those of you interested in the business end of the industry. I just need to figure out how best to record the interviews (yes, I am fishing for advice).

Totally serious question about comics

This is kind of a Brian Cronin question, and I don't mean that as a diss. And I'm assuming here that cartooning and drawing comics are two different things. Cartooning to me is a style of comics-drawing in which the artist is intentionally unrealistic (in anatomy, physics, etc.) in order to better express emotion, character, movement, etc.

Are there any contemporary Marvel/DC artists who you would consider good cartoonists? I mean besides Darwyn Cooke, whose background in animation pretty much guarantees his proficiency as a cartoonist. And Jeff Smith obviously is a great cartoonist, if you consider him a DC guy (I don't). There are plenty of artists considered "cartoony"--Ramos, Bachalo, McGuiness, Madureira, Brooks, etc., etc. But none of them are really cartoonists--they distort reality more for style than expression. In other words, it's cartooning without meaning or substance. If everyone has big bubble muscles, is it really carooning? Or is it just a stylistic choice?

Another question: how many SA superhero artists were good cartoonists, anyway? I can think of plenty of good GA superhero cartoonists, but Silver Age artists aren't renowned as great cartoonists--most of them were too realistic (Adams, Smith), polished (Romita, Kane), or stiff (most of the DC artists, some of the Marvel ones). But Jack Kirby clearly meets my definition--his style was often divorced from reality, but only in the service of characterization, action, etc. He's rarely described as "cartoony," but maybe he should be. John Buscema and Steve Ditko weren't averse to cartooning either. Buscema's villains often had exaggerated, gaping mouths, while Ditko's Spider-Man was rubbery and kinetic. Maybe we should create a new term for this style, like "heroic cartooning" or something, in the hope that some aspiring young artists will seek to emulate it.

Just a few thoughts that occurred to me as I was reading Monster, a "mature" and relatively realistic manga which nevertheless features some great cartooning by Naoki Urasawa.

PS: The wikipedia page for "cartoonist" has a picture of Mark Trail artist Jack Elrod. That has to be the work of someone who reads The Comics Curmudgeon.