Ah, "Worst Of" covers, how I love to diss thee...
Ed McGuinness' work and I have a love-hate relationship, with "eye-rollable dismissal" in place of the word love, there. Case in point-- She-Hulks #1. You would think I would be all about his art -- it's large, bulky, cartoony, but above all, expressive. But in fact it only appears this way at first glance. If you take a second look, there are poor layout choices, odd choices of focal points, and balloony-cartoony at the sake of realism. I'm sure that McGuinness DOES follow the old adage, that he must "know the rules before he can break them," but I have to admit that when I see his stuff, all I can think of are the broken rules.
More specifically, I don't like the distorted torsos of both figures here, nor do I like the wonky distortion going on around Thundra's head and neck. He's chosen a difficult pose for Thundra to feature her head, but at the same time he wants to fully render the expression-- and the thing falls apart. She-Hulk's figure is composed well (aside from the torso, oddly-connected left leg, and sigh-inducing suggestion of nipplage) but it isn't composed in conjunction with the other figure. As a result, there is a mishmash of figures, with Escher-like dimension-bending going on with Thundra's right foot and arm.
Points are taken away from the coloring here, too, with over-rendering being McGuinness's cartoony style-- everyone, remember, if you are going to have graphically-stylized art, do not have photo-realistic textures! Plus, the inclusion of Hulk behind the poses is really distracting, muting the vibrant greens of the main figures. Why include the Hulk at all? If it's for marketing, he really isn't distinguishable, so … ? Oh, and if at all possible, avoid brown as a background color unless you want to sap all complementary colors entirely and leave the whole thing utterly failing to be eye-catching.
Better luck next time!
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