I have been reading on this other forum that after the Empire Strikes Back adaptation , the new editor Louise Jones started having various inkers like Tom Palmer and Carlos Garzon work on Infantino’s pencils to make the comic look more film accurate .After the Empire adaptation , the artists had to up their game . I know you like the charm of Infantino’s more cartoony art ZkinandBonez , and I can see your view to a degree, but he never drew the ships and hardware correct and I much prefer the Walter Simonson Era .Even in the examples you posted of Archie Goodwin’s layouts , I can see a difference in proportion that Infantino brought to bear on them .Goodwin’s characters are leaner in his layouts , and it’s most noticeable in the proportions of R2-D2 . I think part of the problem is that Infantino was primarily a super hero artist and he drew all of his characters with that aesthetic . I think the best we got from him was the water world issues where Terry Austin did the inks .but this is all subjective .oh , and here is the forum I mentioned …http://classiccomics.org/thread/1039/star-wars-marvel-reviews-confessor
Thanks for the forum link, I’ve only looked through it for a few minutes and already found a lot of interesting stuff. They even covered the weird panel from “Droid World” I talked about earlier in the thread.
As for the art, it makes sense that there was more of a push for movie-accurate art after Al Williamson. Adding to this Infantino’s growing frustrations with Marvel and his future offer to return to DC, it makes sense that the last two-ish years of his SW art would be a little weird and uneven.
I do like the Walter Simonson era, but, as odd as this may sound, my admiration for Simonson’s art is the main reason why my reaction to his collaboration with Tom Palmer is somewhat lukewarm. I just feel that a lot of what made Simonson’s art unique is lost in Palmer’s inking. I’d much rather have had pure Simonson art (like we got on some of the covers), or pure Tom Palmer art for that matter. Though I do understand that Simonson probably didn’t have time to ink his own stuff due to the slightly tighter schedules that they had on SW comics. Plus, all of this was before Simonson’s famous run on the Thor comics, so I guess he was just a guy for hire at this point.
However, I still think Goodwin had a grasp of the characters and a feel for the SW-universe like none other before or after him. Jo Duffy did a great job overall and invented some really memorable characters (like Kiro & Dani), though I personally feel that she did occasionally slip into Roy Thomas territory with other characters like Minka. And, despite my fascination with Infantino’s stylized art, I do think the best pairing for SW comics was Goodwin and Al Williamson on the newspaper strips, and later on; Classic Star Wars. Williamson’s art do lack some of the dynamic qualities which Simonson had, but his old fashioned style just fits so well with that movie-serial feel of the OT.