Failing Upwards

Maybe it's just me making this follow-through later than everyone else, but it just dawned on me that Jeff Smith has repeatedly cited (most recently, on Saturday night) that Milton Caniff was a big artistic influence that whatever his style is is largely a product of him trying and failing to imitate Caniff.

Follow that up with Kazu Kibuishi pointing to Jeff Smith being an artistic influence on him, and that his early just-out-of-college drafts of what would eventually become Amulet were bad impressions of Smith. (There was a piece Kibuishi shared that was very reminiscent of Smith's original "stupid, stupid rat creatures" sequence.)

Fascinating that one can become so accomplished by trying and failing to imitate someone who was so accomplished by trying and failing to imitate someone.

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