If anyone was surprised to see Ariel Olivetti’s name mentioned as one of the creators working on DC’s newly-announced GI Combat, thinking that he was a Marvel exclusive artist these days, Rich Johnston found a particularly revealing interview with the artist where he talks about working on Iron Man 2.0:
The scripts were awful at the end, at first it worked well with the other story that Marvel was publishing… but later it went to hell. They invented an archivillian that made no sense. The scripts were backwards, the writer married in the middle, leaving everybody stuck, they put an replacement writer who was worse. The editor kicked the replacement writer off and he wrote the scripts. A disaster that thankfully ended.
In the penultimate issue I could draw ten pages and nothing more, because the script never came. So I had a week to deliver the rest and the script was not finished yet. And in the final issue I draw five pages nothing more. I got the script and they said, “How many pages you can do for next Friday?”. And we had five days, five pages. Because I color directly, How would you do it? It’s impossible. So they called in other guys and you will see for yourself. The last issues of Iron Man 2.0 are a disaster. There is one woman who is blonde, then in the other frame is a brunette. It is impossible that in a week all the artists could agree and say “Man, the blouse you have to draw is red, and the girl who was drinking tea, I did drinking beer. ”
Olivetti went on to compare Marvel to McDonalds, and say “At one time Marvel worked like a little clock, but it melted down 2 or 3 years ago,” before suggesting that he was about to ask permission to leave his exclusive contract early due to lack of available work. This really doesn’t paint whatever happened behind the scenes on the book in anything close to a positive light, and makes you wonder whether the recent spate of multiple-artists-on-one-issue at Marvel is also down to later-than-ideal scripts…
January 13th, 2012 at 1:52 pm
We could say it’s cyclical. Every company has its time to be “the place to be” and then things go downhill. It was DC, then it was Marvel, now it’s Image. Maybe it will be DC again. Maybe it will be Dark Horse or Boom. But it does seem to happen a lot.
Or we could blame Disney. It’s far from impossible.
January 13th, 2012 at 4:04 pm
Complaining about no available work? How about me complaining because he’s a terrible artist. I always flipped through Iron Man 2.0. You call that art? Give me a break.
January 13th, 2012 at 6:07 pm
Hey Clark…what the hell have you done lately? Maybe when I recognize “The Artist Known Only As Clark” for having done something without the anonymity of the internet and for actually having had something published by Marvel, DC, or maybe even Ka-Blam on his own dime…I’ll concede that his stinky opinion matters.
Grow up and give ME a break.
January 13th, 2012 at 7:00 pm
Can’t find a writer who can, you know, WRITE in the desired time? Oh well. The important thing is you didn’t hire Chuck Dixon. Keep up the good work, Axel Alonso.
January 13th, 2012 at 8:02 pm
@Steve
I am sorry but I don’t agree with the sentiment of what Clark posted, but the “You haven’t drawn anything so until then you can’t hate art” line of thinking is perhaps the most backwards line of thinking ever. It is equivalent to telling movie critics they need to make a film before they can critique film.
January 13th, 2012 at 9:09 pm
Hey Steve are you Ariel’s boyfriend? Mind getting your head out of his @$$? Last time I checked calling yourself an artist does not consist of photocopying backgrounds out of your scrapbook. Maybe I’m wrong but I think I’m right on this one. I’m on here to voice my opinion of a crummy artist not to hear these shenanigans from a clown interviewing Mike Carey on his free time.
January 13th, 2012 at 9:21 pm
Wow that sucks. Can’t draw a story if there’s no script and can’t make it make sense if said story doesn’t have any to begin with.
January 13th, 2012 at 9:43 pm
Who am I kidding? If you want to stick up for the guy be my guest. Why don’t we have our own web show where we can review comics? Sure we’d spend the whole time hating one another. Isn’t that better to do in person than over the internet?
January 14th, 2012 at 11:03 am
Rick Vance is 100% right. I don’t need to be able to do *anything* in order to know when it’s being done right or wrong or it’s good or bad. “what have you done,” is a dumb argument.
January 18th, 2012 at 5:35 pm
I liked Olivetti’s Marvel runs. #when-marvel-was-good
January 21st, 2012 at 6:26 am
I like Olivetti on Cable and on Punisher War Journal. I really like the first 8-9 issues of Iron Man 2.0. You could tell something was going wrong towards the end though with all the different creators. Kind of a shame that it couldn’t finish right.