Artwork
Giffen's art has taken on many styles over the years. His early work tended towards a heavy influence from Jack Kirby. After an early stint at Marvel, he began doing layouts for artist Wally Wood during the 1976 revival of the Justice Society of America in All Star Comics.
When he returned to comics after a hiatus, his style was more precise and reminiscent of George Pérez and Jim Starlin, and helped make Legion of Super-Heroes DC's second most popular comic after Pérez's New Teen Titans. It was his work on the Legion that rocketed him to comic book artist fame and gave him a creative control with the national companies that few artists achieved. He peppered his artwork with in-jokes such as upside down Superman logos, hidden Marvel characters, eyeball creatures, and scrawled humorous messages on signs in the background of his panels in the alternate futuristic alphabet Interlac.
As Giffen's style loosened up, he found himself drawn to the work of José Muñoz (see Controversy). Soon thereafter he developed a scratchier, more impressionistic style, using a highly stlylized method of drawing directly with ink, on titles such as Trencher, Lobo Infanticide and Images Of Shadowhawk.
After his lengthy sabbatical from comics work, Giffen returned with a style influenced by his Justice League artist Kevin Maguire that was mid-way between the tight, controlled pencils of his early Legion days and the freer but less anatomically correct style he had later adopted.
Read more about this topic: Keith Giffen