I both love and hate John Buscema for his Marvel work. On the one side, he's a suberb draftsman in the classic Hal Foster style. I love his work on CONAN, SAVAGE SWORD OF CONAN, TARZAN and similar adventure work.
On the other side, he's the epitome of the 1970's marvel "House look", to some extent a Kirby imitator who took over SILVER SURFER, THOR, FF and just about every other major character for Marvel at one time. Likewise Rich Buckler, Sal Buscema, to some degree George Perez, Ross Andru, Gene Colan, John Romita Sr., Gil Kane, Frank Giacoia, Frank Springer, Larry Lieber, Mike Esposito, and (of course!) Vince Colletta. These guys were the core of the "House look" after Kirby left, and at least when Kirby was doing it, it was not a cheap imitation of someone else's work. I especially hated the melodramatic facial expressions of the House look, a hideous mask of overplayed melodrama that looked virtually identical no matter which of these artists drew it. For example, the Dracula face at the center of this poster. Many of these guys are very talented, but conforming to the House look diminished all of their individual work.
For all his talent, at some point John Buscema just began hacking it out. And I think there was intermittently both hackery and inspired work, at times coming out simultaneously. I hated his 1980's run on AVENGERS inked by Tom Palmer. And that was a very long run (roughly 250-300) and Palmer (unfortunately) inked another 100 issues beyond that. What a drop in quality from the 70 issues or so by Englehart, Shooter, Michelinie, Perez and Byrne, from about 141-220.
But Buscema did fantastic work on Conan, particularly SAVAGE SWORD OF CONAN. Especially with inks by guys like Alcala, Dezuniga and Nebres. But I also love when Buscema does both pencils and inks, particularly on Conan.
