Individually, George Perez and Ron Lim are both excellent artists, but they have distinctively different visual styles. Perez, who became a star for DC in the 1980s, utilizes a more classic aesthetic that gives his work a more epic, operatic feel. Lim rose to industry prominence in the early 1990s as the entire mediums aesthetic was changing drastically thanks to the influence of more extreme artists like Todd McFarlane, Rob Liefeld and Jim Lee (aka, some of the founders of Image Comics). As such, mixing these two styles together within the same comic book storyline is a recipe for a complete tonal clash. And yet, thats exactly what ended up happening in The Infnity Gauntlet. Perez had originally signed on to provide pencils for the project, but had to leave after issue #4 due to have too many other outstanding commitments. Marvel then brought Lim in, who had worked with writer Jim Starlin on his Silver Surfer series, to finish up the last two issues. As one might imagine, this transition from Perez to Lim was neither seamless nor unnoticeable. After four issues of Perez giving readers the Marvel version of Crisis on the Infinite Earths, Lims sketchier, 90s-ified pencils look out of place and immediately take the reader out of the story.
Mark is a professional writer living in Brooklyn and is the founder of the Chasing Amazing Blog, which documents his quest to collect every issue of Amazing Spider-Man, and the Superior Spider-Talk podcast. He also pens the "Gimmick or Good?" column at Comics Should Be Good blog.
