Luke.

One of the great things about comics is the variety of styles and methods and we’d probably be a lot worse off if everything looked the same.

What I like about your site is the diversity of work and that you write about your subjects with eloquence and intelligence and along with Drawn it’s a blog I try and visit every day.

It’s always interesting to see who you’re going to write about next and I commend you for posting as regularly as you do. I’ve come to realise that maintaining a blog isn’t always easy and writing something considered and thoughtful only makes it harder.

Do you know the work of Yves Chaland? He’s been quite influential on my own work and if I may be so bold I feel he might make an interesting piece for your site. For want of a better description I’d say his work is highly influenced by Hergé but inked with a brush. There’s quite a dark element to some of it that is an interesting conrast to the ligne clair style. Beautiful work with some amazing draughtsmanship.

Control of detail is one of the ways artists can control the pacing of a story and I agree that Charest can sometimes be a little too busy for the flow. I find, though, that enough of my enjoyment of comics comes from the “illustration” aspect of it that when a story slows down because I’m being dazzled by the illustration, I’m happy as can be and not disturbed to take a break from the story and appreciate the art.

I can’t say I like Charest’s comic book work. Yes, it’s very detailed and incredibly well rendered but I find it lifeless, dull and boring. Entirely lacking in emotion. I can’t say I’ve read any of it because whenever I saw it I couldn’t get past how stiff it all seems which put me off reading any further. Nothing flows, many of the figures in the panels seem to be from photo reference, which is fine but I think it works best when the end piece looks completely natural and not hodge-podged together from a variety of photographs. From what I’ve seen of his work I don’t think he manages to pull that off.

For single illustrations that kind of work is fine but in comics where readability, movement and flow are paramount I don’t think it works. It’s almost anti-comics, asking you to stop and look at each panel too much rather than moving your eye on to the next panel.

For me, comics aren’t necessarily about technically great artists but about telling stories and there are people out there with less technical chops but with far superior storytelling abilities and with an ability to give the illusion of life.

If somebody can do both they’re onto a good thing. You wrote about the late Alex Toth recently, I think he’s a fine example of somebody that’s a great comic book artist. Technically brilliant but never over-rendered and always in service to the story. Alex Raymond and Moebius are also excellent examples of people with their foot in both camps, able to do both very well.

Sorry if I’ve ranted on a bit, it’s all a matter of taste, of course, and usually I enjoy the work of whoever it is you’ve chosen to highlight but in this instance I felt compelled to comment. I’m not saying he’s a bad artist, far from it, I just don’t find his work suits the comic book medium very well.