Gil Kane and Kurt Busiek

[Mister Mets]

Gil Kane and Kurt Busiek seem to have something in common. They had good runs on Spider-Man, but I have the impression that it's not their best-regarded work.

For example, Kurt Busiek is rated as the 15th best comic book writer ever by CBR readers, but doesn't make the top ten of Spider-Man writers in a CBR poll. His run has been collected in an omnibus, a relatively rare distinction.

Kane does better on the list, although it's his highest showing (the Newsarama Top Ten list doesn't include him.) He has the advantage of illustrating one of the most famous Spider-Man stories ever, but the CBR list of top Spider-Man artists has him surpassed by two guys who didn't make the Top 50 comic book artists like (Mark Bagley and Ross Andru, who probably should have made it but that's a different story.)

Is Kane and Busiek's Spider-Man work overlooked for whatever reason? If so, what are the reasons?

[Metamorphosis]

I think Busiek is a great writer, but his Spider-Man work never wowed me. I'm just not big on untold-tales type stories, which is what the bulk of his Spider-Man work is.

I think Kane's art looks very similar to Romita Sr's a lot of the time. I thought I'd recently heard Romita inked over Kane's work? Kane is great (the Night Gwen Stacy Died is a masterpiece, and the art sells a lot of the heavy emotional moments), but like a lot of Bronze age artists, it's the pervasive Marvel house style that kind of runs together (like Keith Pollard's ASM work later).

[Frontier]

Whatever one's opinion of Untold Tales of Spider-Man, I don't think it's as extensive a contribution to the character to merit making it into the top-ten of a list of writers who've also worked on the character. Especially when, from what I've heard about Untold Tales, it's more about building off and expanding on the ideas and elements present during the early days rather than really contributing something significant to the character and mythos or delivering a seminal run.

Just imagine if Dan Slott's major Spider-Man contribution had been Learning to Crawl and Clash, which I think would then be similar to this situation.

Not to knock Kurt Busiek as a writer, since he's awesome, and Untold Tales is something I fully intend to get into, but I imagine that's probably part of why he wouldn't make a top ten list of Spider-Man writers. Maybe if he'd had done more work with the character, it would've been different.

[Mister Mets]

Whatever one's opinion of Untold Tales of Spider-Man, I don't think it's as extensive a contribution to the character to merit making it into the top-ten of a list of writers who've also worked on the character. Especially when, from what I've heard about Untold Tales, it's more about building off and expanding on the ideas and elements present during the early days rather than really contributing something significant to the character and mythos or delivering a seminal run.

Just imagine if Dan Slott's major Spider-Man contribution had been Learning to Crawl and Clash, which I think would then be similar to this situation.

Not to knock Kurt Busiek as a writer, since he's awesome, and Untold Tales is something I fully intend to get into, but I imagine that's probably part of why he wouldn't make a top ten list of Spider-Man writers. Maybe if he'd had done more work with the character, it would've been different.

Frank Miller's major contributions to Batman were a retelling of the origin, and an alternate future story. So it's not entirely that.

Untold Tales is good, but one factor limiting Busiek was that it was mostly single issue stories. That's going to restrict how far he can push Spidey.

I think Busiek is a great writer, but his Spider-Man work never wowed me. I'm just not big on untold-tales type stories, which is what the bulk of his Spider-Man work is.

I think Kane's art looks very similar to Romita Sr's a lot of the time. I thought I'd recently heard Romita inked over Kane's work? Kane is great (the Night Gwen Stacy Died is a masterpiece, and the art sells a lot of the heavy emotional moments), but like a lot of Bronze age artists, it's the pervasive Marvel house style that kind of runs together (like Keith Pollard's ASM work later).

The house style thing is a good point. Kane has a unique style despite that, but he didn't really reinterpret major characters in significant ways. Morbius is a major addition to the mythos, but his other new characters (Man-Wolf, Gog, The Human Fly) aren't that notable, so the things you can point to as being his contributions to the series are somewhat limited.

[Metamorphosis]

Frank Miller's major contributions to Batman were a retelling of the origin, and an alternate future story. So it's not entirely that.

Except in the case of Miller's Year One, it was to be a reinterpreting of the origin to supplant the old one in the post-Crisis DCU.

Busiek's UToSM was meant more to fill in the gaps between the Lee / Ditko issues; a better analogue to Miller would be Byrne's Chapter One.

[Chazro]

Interesting to note how much Millers art was influenced by Kane during his Daredevil run, as well as by Will Eisner.

[oldschool]

Kurt Busiek not being mentioned often on lists of greatest Spidey creators is not a surprise to me. His most prominent work was on the excellent "Untold Tales" series which, unfortunately, didn't see particularly well and doesn't seem to be reference often today (despite the series getting the omnibus treatment recently). It is, IMHO, a wonderful series but sadly seems to have a small albeit very loyal audience.

Why Gil Kane doesn't rank higher in most polls is a huge mystery to me. His work on the Doc Ock story from ASM #88-90 and of course TNGSD from #121-122 alone should put in the very rarest of artistic company on any Spidey list.

[Ozymandias]

Nay to Busiek (UToS), yay to Kane.

[Scott Taylor]

Kane was a good artist, but his fame is a bit hurt by the combination of following Romita and basically being just like him. Not sure what other comic books Gil Kane did, actually. Busiek is known as a great writer, but did not earn that credential from his work on Spider-Man. Kane probably deserves another look for his work specifically on Spider-Man.

[areacode212]

Frank Miller's major contributions to Batman were a retelling of the origin, and an alternate future story. So it's not entirely that.

Timing is a big factor here. The Dark Knight Returns benefited from getting a lot of critical/media acclaim, and it was the period when reading comics was starting to become "cool" again, especially with older readers, in part due to books like TDKR & Watchmen. Remember, "grim & gritty" was a new, novel thing back then. Year One then benefited from the TDKR boost and Miller's star power at the time. And don't forget that it was originally published as part of the monthly Batman title, so it wasn't this separate thing you had to buy; it was the current Batman storyline. On top of all that, it's completely awesome....the scene with the bats might be my single favorite comics scene ever.

Whereas Untold Tales came out in mid-90s bankruptcy-era Marvel when the industry was starting to decline with the speculator bubble having burst, etc. And comics fans tend to be all about what's happening "now", so even if Spidey's normal monthly titles were doing well, I get the sense that there weren't that many people who were interested in buying a separate title about his early years. It just wasn't that widely read, so Kurt gets overlooked. At the time, I remember more people were talking about Astro City than Untold Tales.

[Speed Force League Unlimited]

Kurt's Untold Tales is better and more memorable than his work on Spider-Man Unlimited v1 (the series that opened with and initiated Maximum Carnage).
After Maximum Carnage Busiek took the second story feature while Defalco continued the first story feature in Spider-Man Unlimited v1.

[SpiderNerd]

I liked a lot of Gil Kane's work. His pencils on the initial Harry/drugs arc were pretty good, and he did the classic ASM 121 and 122. He did tend to channel Romita Sr. a bit, but it wasn't a negative for me; I liked it.

I don't have much comment on Kurt Busiek. I am not familiar with a lot of his work.

[Astrozac]

I don't think Untold Tales was a bad seller overall, but just not enough for a Spider-Man book. Both UToS and Astro City got a lot of buzz, I remember in 1995 or 1996 or so, most considered it and Waid's Captain America run as the only great Marvel books out there. It was far and away the best Spider-Man book, which was stuck in the Clone Saga mess.

I think part of it was the stigma of being a $ .99 book, plus being a retro-series, hurt it more than anything. I would have loved to have seen Busiek on the regular Spider Man title(s) at the time.

[Reptisaurus!]

Gil Kane and Kurt Busiek seem to have something in common. They had good runs on Spider-Man, but I have the impression that it's not their best-regarded work.

For example, Kurt Busiek is rated as the 15th best comic book writer ever by CBR readers, but doesn't make the top ten of Spider-Man writers in a CBR poll. His run has been collected in an omnibus, a relatively rare distinction.

Kane does better on the list, although it's his highest showing (the Newsarama Top Ten list doesn't include him.) He has the advantage of illustrating one of the most famous Spider-Man stories ever, but the CBR list of top Spider-Man artists has him surpassed by two guys who didn't make the Top 50 comic book artists like (Mark Bagley and Ross Andru, who probably should have made it but that's a different story.)

Is Kane and Busiek's Spider-Man work overlooked for whatever reason? If so, what are the reasons?

Bagely and Andru had long, long, looooonnnnnng runs, though. And it probably seemed at the time that Romita was the main artist and Kane the fill-in. Whereas he was the first, primary and one of the longest running artists on Green Lantern, the Atom, and (obviously) Rex the M************ Wonder Dog . In the '70s he was basically the Marvel Nick Cardy - The dude who did all the covers. And that's probably his major Marvel legacy.

[Mister Mets]

I don't think Untold Tales was a bad seller overall, but just not enough for a Spider-Man book. Both UToS and Astro City got a lot of buzz, I remember in 1995 or 1996 or so, most considered it and Waid's Captain America run as the only great Marvel books out there. It was far and away the best Spider-Man book, which was stuck in the Clone Saga mess.

I think part of it was the stigma of being a $ .99 book, plus being a retro-series, hurt it more than anything. I would have loved to have seen Busiek on the regular Spider Man title(s) at the time.

I'm guessing Busiek didn't want to write one of the main titles during the clone saga.