"A lot was happening, plus there were an enormous number of people in the industry that were going to conventions, so it was a pretty fun time. Also there was a lot of controversy and I was at the forefront of some of that"
About this Quote
Nostalgia, here, is doing double duty: it’s a warm spotlight and a strategic alibi. McFarlane frames an era of comics not as a set of aesthetic choices or market forces, but as a scene - busy, crowded, social. “A lot was happening” and “an enormous number of people…going to conventions” turn industry history into lived experience, the way you remember a cultural boom: not in balance sheets but in bodies, noise, and adrenaline. Conventions aren’t just venues; they’re proof of mass attention, a metric of legitimacy for a medium that spent decades being treated like disposable pulp.
Then the sentence pivots, casually, into self-mythology: “a lot of controversy,” “at the forefront.” The phrasing is tellingly non-specific, as if the details are less important than the posture. McFarlane doesn’t name the fights (creator rights, Image’s disruption of Marvel/DC’s talent pipeline, the speculative bubble, the taste wars over “extreme” style). He doesn’t have to. The vagueness lets “controversy” read as both badge and blur: enough heat to signal impact, not enough specificity to invite a verdict.
The intent is to place himself in the center of a moment when comics became louder, richer, and more performative - aesthetically and economically. The subtext is that prominence is inseparable from friction: if you were moving the culture, you were annoying someone. “Pretty fun time” sits beside “controversy” without contradiction, which is the point. For McFarlane’s generation of superstar artists, the thrill wasn’t just making work; it was watching the industry reorganize around their names.
Then the sentence pivots, casually, into self-mythology: “a lot of controversy,” “at the forefront.” The phrasing is tellingly non-specific, as if the details are less important than the posture. McFarlane doesn’t name the fights (creator rights, Image’s disruption of Marvel/DC’s talent pipeline, the speculative bubble, the taste wars over “extreme” style). He doesn’t have to. The vagueness lets “controversy” read as both badge and blur: enough heat to signal impact, not enough specificity to invite a verdict.
The intent is to place himself in the center of a moment when comics became louder, richer, and more performative - aesthetically and economically. The subtext is that prominence is inseparable from friction: if you were moving the culture, you were annoying someone. “Pretty fun time” sits beside “controversy” without contradiction, which is the point. For McFarlane’s generation of superstar artists, the thrill wasn’t just making work; it was watching the industry reorganize around their names.
Quote Details
| Topic | Art |
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