Stick to DC, says me, especially Vertigo. Sandman, Hellblazer, Doom Patrol, Shade, 100 Bullets—what Marvel stuff comes even close?

And yes, it may be that the artist thinks he is drawing something well, but he really isn’t. Intentional choices can be mistakes too.

Why is the parasauropholus so enamored with her… erm… anatomy? Is the dino, in fact, prying her legs apart with his claws? Is he actually floating, or just balancing on his tail? Isn’t She-hulk afraid she is about to fall of that cliff? When did Wasp acquire her sense voyeurism? And what is with all of the pearl necklaces?

Actually, “inability and haste” is exactly what happening. I mean for chrissakes the man can’t draw feet (like at all). Or hands. Or guns/swords. He certainly can’t draw hands holding guns/swords. He lacks a basic understanding of scale and perspective. The exaggerated musculature and the pouch addiction might just be silly stylistic choices, but the 17 foot Doc and the mouth full of teeth indicate suggest he’s probably just incompetent.

there’s an obvious way to talk about mistakes: would the work be better if it were different?

Isn’t this just begging the question?

(But if you look at the Belisarius, David clearly Got It Wrong, because one can imagine it being improved were he to get the perspective right.)

So quite clearly if you look at the work sensibly there’s an obvious way to talk about mistakes: would the work be better if it were different? And quite obviously those works would be; the errors aren’t valid artistic choices, they’re incompetence.

Yes, perhaps. But this rather depends on knowing that it’s a “fuck up”: that the artist intended to get the perspective right, and failed through incompetence. Usually the situation is a bit less clear than that: to take an example from a Prix de Rome winner, Ingres’ Grand Odalisque features a female figure with distorted proportions (a bit more subtly than Liefeld’s women, but still). Sheer incompetence or mannerist allusion?

Page 19. Why? Just let the costuming on the female character sink into your consciousness for a little while.

But if I look at a 17xx entry in the Prix de Rome and say: he fucked the perspective up, that is a valid criticism. If I say the same about Klee, it is not. Clearly we use different standards to evaluate different art works.

It isn’t absurd exaggeration, it is incompetence.

“this is bad because it’s unrealistic”

I’m referring to this kind of drawing of a highly distorted figure in an anatomically impossible pose (found via the amusingly cruel 40 Worst Rob Liefeld Drawings).

Pointing out that comic book characters are absurdly exaggerated is great fun, but if you say “this is bad because it’s unrealistic” then you’re making the same kind of complaint as someone who says that Picasso’s Demoiselles d’Avignon are bad because they don’t look like real women. You need a critique that’s a bit more sophisticated than that.

My vote is for “Black Bolt and Medusa” by George Perez. Medua’s hair wraps around her body in way reminiscent of Mucha, except that it looks wrong somehow, especially where the hair extensions join her head. Meanwhile, Black Bolt sits on a pile of rocks overlooking the sea that could have been lifted out of a Japanese print. His arms bulge unhealthily, as if he has a malignant tumour rather than muscles.

Give the boys what they want.