The Energon Pub

After reading Spotlight Nightbeat for the nth time I've come to a realization, MD Bright's artwork is not good, it looks hurried and just screams amateur to me, but maybe that's because I'm so used to seeing Milne, Roche, Matere, Guidi, Su, Musso, and Figueroa do the artwork for most, if not all the TF comics for IDW, and I just can't seem to register MD Bright as a great artist. There was nothing wrong with the story in regards to Nightbeat, I thought it was interesting, but is there something wrong if I happen to not prefer the artwork?

Mechabreaker wrote:There was nothing wrong with the story in regards to Nightbeat, I thought it was interesting, but is there something wrong if I happen to not prefer the artwork?

No, there's nothing wrong if you don't like the artwork. Can't form an opinion on something I haven't read, though...

I was fine with the artwork. It certainly was not my favorite, but it certainly did not 'suck' in my opinion. It was different than the artists you mentioned, but I found it to still be worthy. And if I remember correctly from other TF art books MD Bright has some good looking stuff.

But I haven't looked at it in awhile.

I think the Nightbeat artwork is intentionally off-kilter.

First, it fits the 'tone' of the story - a mystery delving into the darkest depths of the universe, which ends with Nightbeat being psychologically altered to forget everything that happened. I thought the rough look helped give it a grittier Even-Horizon feel, which wouldn't come off well with the clean sharp lines we usually seen.

Secondly, the artwork heavily imitates some of the work Marvel did in their old TF run. Now, by our standards, that old artwork is crap, so using it now seems foolish. Nevertheless, I'm confident there was an intentional homage to the old style, since Nightbeat, who AFAIK never appeared in the cartoon, was primarily the product of work done at Marvel Comics.

Ah, the Matrix Quest, one of my favorite story-arcs in the old Marvel series. I loved Nightbeat back then. The world needs more Nightbeat!!

Savage wrote:The world needs more Nightbeat!!

If that were plural I could imagine it being the title of a very bad porn film...

It does not suck, and it's not amaturish, the artist draws Tfas longer than most of the artists you mentioned.
It's not my fave art, but once you look at it long enough it's quite interesting and nice, it has this retro feal to it.

I must admit that I am slightly disappointed by it when compared to everything else. To me it feels as if what we got were rough sketches which were meant to be done properly, but the artist didn't have time to finish them.

Ok, so maybe I should have rephrased the title, but I can't think of a better word at the moment, what I was really trying to do was see if I was the only one who didn't prefer the art, but I guess I'm not. But I realize what Dead Metal is saying, in that every artist has their own style and way of doing things, I didn't want to start a whole internet brouhaha over this, I was just trying to bring up a point for discussion.

Mechabreaker wrote:Ok, so maybe I should have rephrased the title, but I can't think of a better word at the moment, what I was really trying to do was see if I was the only one who didn't prefer the art, but I guess I'm not. But I realize what Dead Metal is saying, in that every artist has their own style and way of doing things, I didn't want to start a whole internet brouhaha over this, I was just trying to bring up a point for discussion.

You're not. The artists and writers get critiqued all the time. It's just about matter of opinion and being able to back up your opinion.

No worries. I basically did the same to the guy who did the Blaster Spotlight, but after reading it, and looking more closely at the art again, realized my judgement was a little skewed.

No worries man, opinions are why we are here.

It's certainly got it's own style, but like Spotlight Kup, the art style fits the story quite well.

Personally, I find Ruffalo's work on Spotlight Sixshot has been the most disappointing, uninspiring and boring of all of IDW's work thus far.

i_amtrunks wrote:It's certainly got it's own style, but like Spotlight Kup, the art style fits the story quite well.

Personally, I find Ruffalo's work on Spotlight Sixshot has been the most disappointing, uninspiring and boring of all of IDW's work thus far.

And it wasn't horrible, I think the subject matter was a bit...boring. Not that Sixshot is boring, but the Reapers part was a little meh to me. And they were just used as fodder eventually, but I suppose it is good, they brought Galvatron to Earth, and showed us a new power.

tigertracks 24 wrote:

i_amtrunks wrote:It's certainly got it's own style, but like Spotlight Kup, the art style fits the story quite well.

Personally, I find Ruffalo's work on Spotlight Sixshot has been the most disappointing, uninspiring and boring of all of IDW's work thus far.

And it wasn't horrible, I think the subject matter was a bit...boring. Not that Sixshot is boring, but the Reapers part was a little meh to me. And they were just used as fodder eventually, but I suppose it is good, they brought Galvatron to Earth, and showed us a new power.

Thats just the thing, the story wasnt horrible. A tithe boring? Yes. and the art wasn't confusing, cluttered or undecipherable, it just wasnt as good (again, to me) as what had come before and afterwards.
I think the fact the colours were very well done helped though!

I think the art style of that story was done that way on purpose to give a old style mystery comic feel.

I've never liked the art for Nightbeat either. Sometimes it was downright awful. But I like the neater, cleaner look myself.