The Soul Sisters Revisited

[Proper Dave]

This is really just me asking, because obviously partial, but am I completely deluded about this or what ...?

Last week, some friends bought a bunch of my old stuff over, which included old comp copies of the Megs with the Soul Sisters in. So I re-read em. And the strip is much, much better than people have been going on about forever, to the point where even I bought into that.

David's story is great, Shaky's art is outstanding - and even my own script-doctoring contributions strike me as the better end of my stuff when it's good.

The only real fault I can see is that it was pitched at a mainstream 12-year-old audience who simply didn't get it - and it's their reaction that's remembered, not the strip itself.

Can someone who knows give some feedback on this. I'm almost certain I'm right, but, like I say, there's every possibility that I might be completely deluded.

[BPP]

One of the problems I feel a lot of readers had with Shaky Kane 'back then' is that you didn't get much 'comics' for your pages worth. Add to that few readers would have been as into Kirby as they now are likely to be*

Comic readers are always demanding more detail - be it the constant swipes at Steve Yeowell on here (ignoring how glorious his line work is) or the idea that alternative 'fantagraphics' style isn't 'real' comics.

Of course the more people get into comics the more their tastes develop and the appreciation widens then those sort of things don't get said so frequently.






* yes yes, you can all come and say you were into Kirby but I worked in a comic shop at the time of Soul Sisters and it was the heyday of the 'new' Image comics... not even superhero comic readers were into Kirby at the time, much less 2000AD readers.

[Steve Green]

I've never really liked Kirby, I totally get his contribution to comics but I just don't particularly like his art.

I grew up with very little American comics input, the odd Steve Ditko spiderman and that's about it - consequently Shaky Kane doesn't do much for me either...

There was a lot of godawful art (IMHO) around the time Soul Sisters was published and I can't remember much of the story other than it involved 2 brit-cit nuns.

But that may just be viewing it through shit-tinted glasses...

[radiator]

Comic readers are always demanding more detail - be it the constant swipes at Steve Yeowell on here (ignoring how glorious his line work is)

I think you'll find that the majority of us on the board are fans of Yeowell, but many of us agree that his work has slipped somewhat in the last few years. If you look back at even the early Red Seas you'll see a massive drop-off in quality when you compare it to what he's turning out nowadays. Last week's cover was downright awful, and I'm astonished that it wasn't rejected.

[BPP]

Just an observation, I certainly notice more digs at Yeowell & The Red Seas on here than just about any other artist. Personally I thought the Red Seas latest instalment was lovely. About the time it moved to the Hollow Earth stuff he seemed to move from detail to fluidity and suggestion and I think it works beautifully. Maybe drawing that 'huge fish chasing a galleon' in detail knackered him.

People do seem to like detail-for-their-buck Interestingly Shaky Kane's revival seems to have come with him returning with a much more detailed style. As much Geoff Darrow as Jack Kirby. His Elephant Man stuff was great.

[radiator]

Just because someone doesn't like Yeowell's recent work doesn't mean they're one of those tedious, conservative types who only like detail and realism in their comic art - 'line-counters' as Kyle Baker calls them.

For me, the stuff Yeowell does on Red Seas just isn't what I want from a pirate comic. I'd be a lot more interested if it had a bit more grit and character. At present it doesn't exactly fire the imagination.

[Colin YNWA]

I personally enjoy Steve Yeowell's work across the board. Yeah there's great value in his more 'detailed' stuff (for want of a better word) but there's a confidence and energy to the 'simpler' stuff (again for want of a better word) that I really like.

I know its going back a ways but there's a panel right at the end of Zenith Book 3 of three or four of the surviving heroes in silhouette in the distance and yet it conveys so much. Some one mentioned it a while back in relation to a similar discussion and that's one that always sticks in my mind.

[Emperor]

Just because someone doesn't like Yeowell's recent work doesn't mean they're one of those tedious, conservative types who only like detail and realism in their comic art - 'line-counters' as Kyle Baker calls them.

If there were a lot of "line-counters" folks like Dom Reardon would be in trouble.

I think concerns over Steve Yeowell's Red Seas style might come down to a... lightness of line perhaps. I'm still a fan but prefer his Zenith-era B&W work and his Devlin Waugh/Tyranny Rex-era coloured work, both of which have more... solidity. However, I think that is just a stylistic choice, I'm just with radiator in that I am not 100% sure it fits the story as well as a more... weighty style might.

[Proper Dave]

I hesitate to ask, on account of the danger of it coming off me-me, but why is everybody talking about Steve Yoewell? Steve yowell didn't draw the Soul Sisters, Shaky did.

[BPP]

don't fret Dave, you can log-in in ten years time and ask 'why didn't people like The Red Seas? Steve Yeowells art on it is amazing.....'

[TordelBack]

About the time it moved to the Hollow Earth stuff he seemed to move from detail to fluidity and suggestion and I think it works beautifully.

Yeah, much as I'm still in love Yeowell's earlier B&W, there's something incredible about the Hollow Earth pages, vast subterranean plains full of dinosaur armies brilliantly conjoured up with a handful of precise scratches - real genius.  That said, I did feel he was losing heart and his recent 3riller was not to my taste at all - nothing to do with detail or lack of, just not holding together for me. 

Back on topic momentarily, I've never been sure how I feel about Shaky Kane.  I do really like his style, and never having been a real Kirby fan (although I admire his stuff greatly, the books themselves have never been on my Top 20, I'm more of a Ditko man) I don't mind the similarities - I just never gelled with any strip he was actually on. 

[Grant Goggans]

Art-wise, my problem with Soul Sisters is that while I love elements of Shaky's work, and love bits of Pinhead Nation and the Soul Gun stories, it rarely looks like the characters have any presence in their environments.  The backgrounds and the worlds around the figures looks like a complete afterthought.  You look at Kirby, you see surfaces, walls, bricks, etc that all feel solid, with visible textures.  Shaky put all his imagination into what his weird characters look like, and not where they are.

That said, I honestly liked Shaky's work a lot more in the '90s.  Over time, the shock of the neatness, and just how unexpected it was to see this kind of work in 2000 AD, has worn off, and it just looks like the work of an incredibly imaginative amateur.

That said, the bit in the second Soul Gun story where the two solar-system-sized protagonists start smacking each other over the head with planets really is amazing.

[Proper Dave]

The thing you have to remember is that Shaky wasn't/isn't trying to do a Kirby. He was making pieces of art in comics form, and the 'Kirby-style' was one idiom, amongst others, that he fixed on to telegraph that.

[TordelBack]

He was making pieces of art in comics form...

Are we still talking about Soul Sisters?   

But point taken - I wasn't suggesting that Shaky was trying to 'be' Kirby, just noting that since I'm not a worshipper the use of that visual idiom didn't bother me one way.  I just wasn't engaged by the strip. 

[I, Cosh]

Well, I'd never heard of Jack Kirby and I thought Soul Gun Warrior looked great. Never read Soul Sisters, but I have those Megs in the cupboard so might give it a try one day, although I can't say any of the other Bishop scripted strips I've read fill me with confidence.

Love old Steve Yeowell, loved Red Seas Yeowell up to a point but I find it's getting close to the point where it's just too vague. The highlights of his most recent outings have been the Roman mosaic and Norse woodcut styled mythological backstory pages. I had hoped that this would become a recurring theme and looked forward to an Arabic/Moorish style for Sinbad, an Aboriginal Dreamtime type affair and so forth. Sadly it looks like this wish will go unfulfilled. His art should never be coloured, that's just a fact.