I may still have mine in a box somewhere. I know of the shooters got a little messed up. It would still shoot, but it would misfire and jam up if you tried to shoot too quickly. We kept all our extra discs in a Tupperware container—must have had 500 of the things.
The first Lee Weeks comic I bought was Daredevil #284 (Sept. 1990), when he took over as penciler from John Romita Jr.’s fantastic run. There was no drop off with Lee. He had already cut his teeth with Eclipse’s The New Wave, and Marvel’s Justice, and by the time he came on board Daredevil, he was hitting his stride. His style was very well-suited for DD, being more in the photo-realistic realm than the stylized, and Al Williamson’s inks made his work look even better.
His storytelling in the “Last Rites” storyline was amazing. After this story I made sure I picked up everything he worked on (except the Gambit mini-series he would do next—I just don’t like that character). Lee inked this cover himself.
He did a very good story (and cover) for Batman Chronicles #1.
The Tarzan Versus Predator series he penciled and inked (written by Walt Simonson) was actually pretty cool, and it was gorgeous to look at. At first Lee didn’t want to take on the job, because he had already done a Predator/Magnus Robot Fighter book (which originally was supposed to be a Terminator/Magnus book), and didn’t want to be stuck as a “Predator” guy. But when he found out Walt was writing it, and that it would be set in Pelucidar, he agreed to do it.
If you haven’t read Batman Chronicles: The Gauntlet, you’re doing yourself a disservice. If it isn’t among the best Batman stories of all time (and I think it is), it certainly is the best Robin story.
Spider-Man: Death and Destiny was a pretty powerful, emotional story that Lee wrote himself. It’s recommended if you like stories that go back and explore moments from a character’s past in greater detail.
Lee does an awesome Hulk. There’s so much weight and power in the way he draws the character, and I like the more monstrous look.
A few years back, Lee teamed up with Roger Stern for two excellent Spider-Man fill-in stories. This was after the marriage reboot, so I’m sure a lot of people who would have greatly enjoyed these stories missed out while boycotting the book. Too bad for them.
My first John Romita Jr. comic was Amazing Spider-Man #208 (Sept. 1980)—cover inks by Al Milgrom—which was also JR’s first issue of Spider-Man as the regular artist. It’s an eye-catching cover with a great Spidey pose. It’s a fairly run-of-the-mill story, but the artwork’s nice. At this point JR was only doing breakdowns—tight pencils without any blacks or shading. He wouldn’t do full pencils until he took over Daredevil in 1988, more than ten years after first breaking in to the industry.
As a kid I was pretty erratic in what I would choose. I never followed one particular title—in large part because it would have been very difficult for me to do so given my access to comics. But I did buy more Spidey comics than any other Marvel character, and for these two, JR’s covers were a big selling point. Looking back now, I think both are good examples of the direction his work was evolving. His style was moving out from under the shadow of his father’s influence and becoming a unique blend of Kirby, John Buscema, and Romita Sr. that was something all its own.
Inks by Terry Austin.
Inks by Bob Wiacek.
I was never a big X-Men fan or reader, but I would pick it up every now and then. JR got a lot of grief—and hate mail—when he took over from Paul Smith, who had taken off on one of his many sabbaticals from comics. There’s nothing wrong with JR’s work on X-Men, other than the fact he wasn’t Paul Smith (who I’m sure got his share of grief for not being Dave Cockrum), but he didn’t get the best finishes from Dan Green. Green wasn’t a bad inker at all, but I don’t think he was the best match for JR. Still, whether you liked JR on X-Men or not, you have to admit he did some cool covers for the series.
Inks by Bob Wiacek.
Once he started doing full pencils on Daredevil, his work really took off. Al Williamson’s inks brought out the best in JR’s drawing. JR has always focused on storytelling over drawing. He knows he’s not the best illustrator in the business, so he doesn’t worry about making the drawing perfect and instead puts that energy into making sure the drawing enhances the storytelling. When he gets paired with inkers like Al Williamson and Klaus Janson, we get the best of both worlds.
And speaking of Janson, the work JR and he did on Thor was quite impressive—perhaps their best collaboration to date.
But I’d say JR’s best work overall was for the Daredevil: Man Without Fear mini-series inked by Al Williamson. He added a lot to the story—quite literally. Based on what he did with the original script, Miller was inspired to go back and add nearly 80 pages to the story.
Although, the first issue of his all too brief run on Black Panther (also inked by Janson) comes really close. Perhaps my favorite first issue of any series ever.
I, and a few others besides, have posted several Mike Ploog covers in this thread, but they’ve mostly been his ’70s horror work for Marvel. Mike left comic books for the most part in 1976, when he went to work for animation producer Takashi on a feature film called Winds of Change. After six months, though, Ralph Bakshi called Mike and brought him over to help him finish off Wizards and primarily to work on the animated The Lord of the Rings, on which he did character designs and concept art. From there he worked on such films as The Thing, Heavy Metal, Superman III, Gremlins, Little Shop of Horror, Dark Crystal, Shrek, and X-Men. And occasionally in between films, he’d do a little comic book work.
Then in 2004 Mike teamed up with J.M. DeMatteis to create the delightful all-ages Abadazad for CrossGen. The story had a nice Wizard of Oz/Alice in Wonderland feel to it. Unfortunately, CrossGen’s demise ended the series with issue #3.
The series was in limbo for a while until Disney bought up the rights. Eventually Mike and Marc were able to continue the story, though not as a comic, but rather as standard book-sized hybrid of prose, sequential art, and full-page illustrations, with artwork from the CrossGen issues repurposed for the books. Though they were contracted for eight books, only two saw print in the US. The third volume was only released in the UK, so I’ve never seen it, much less read it, but here’s the cover.
In between the end of Abadazad the comic and the start of Abadazad the book series, Mike and Marc came up with another comic series—but one they owned outright—The Stardust Kid. Another all-ages book, The Stardust Kid has an ecological message that at times is a bit heavy-handed, and so the story doesn’t have quite the same charm as Abadazad. But Mike’s artwork is as lovely as ever.
My introduction to Kyle Baker’s work was his first graphic novel—one of the best graphic novels ever produced, and probably my favorite to this day—The Cowboy Wally Show. The Cowboy Wally Show actually started out as a newspaper strip pitch. While working for Marvel, Kyle worked up two months of samples to pitch to the syndicates. Then Maus came out, and suddenly publishers wanted to produce graphic novels, so Kyle took Cowboy Wally to Doubleday and reworked it as a graphic novel for a then-meager $5000 advance.
The problem was, Baker, having worked on Spider-Man the year before, owed the IRS more than $5,000 in taxes, and they began garnishing his Marvel wages. So Kyle went to work for DC instead, where he took over art chores on The Shadow—a critical success, but sales flop.
Kyle did a beautiful job with the Dick Tracy movie adaptation, which he penciled, inked, and hand painted (using watercolor and colored pencil). He took on the job because he was a big Chester Gould fan, but, of course, he ended up getting a lot of grief from Warren Beatty. Beatty liked everything Kyle did... at first. But before long, he started requesting changes to Kyle’s Dick Tracy faces so that it looked less and less like Gould’s Dick Tracy, and more and more like Warren Beatty. Because of all the changes—and changes to the changes—Kyle got further and further behind schedule and ended up having to do the entire last issue—64 pages (!)—in a week! He brought in five assistants to help with the coloring, which was pretty simple because of the very limited palette. He also made stats of the Dick Tracy faces from previously approved panels—and even the T-shirt designs—and pasted them into the pages to avoid having to go through several more rounds of revisions, and he got the job done on time.
While he was working on Dick Tracy (as well as the Alice Through the Looking Glass adaptation for Classics Illustrated), Kyle was also working on the classic Why I Hate Saturn, which Kyle says has never sold particularly well, but which has gotten him a lot of work outside the comic book industry. Doubleday passed on the book, as their experimentation with graphic novels was over, so Kyle took it to DC, which published the book under their new Piranha Press imprint.
Kyle came on board for The Truth: Red, White, and Black mini-series because he really liked Robert Morales’s—who unfortunately passed away recently—idea for the book. Kyle and Robert had met when they were both doing work for Vibe magazine. And despite some Marvel editorial interference, The Truth turned out to be a really good story.
I had high expectations for Kyle’s Plastic Man series. Unfortunately, it didn’t quite live up to them. Not that it was bad; it was actually pretty good. It just wasn’t as good as I was expecting. I actually enjoyed Scott Morse’s fill-in stories much more—they were fantastic. Still, they’re worth picking up if you run across them in a dollar box.
I’ve bought and read just about everything Chris Sprouse has ever worked on. Not so much because I love his work (I do), but because he tends to work on projects I’m interested in reading. I first saw his work very early on in his career in Justice League Quarterly #1, where he penciled and inked over Keith Giffen’s layouts. And he kept popping up in the titles I was reading at the time.
Cover inks by Bruce Patterson.
Hammerlocke was actually the first assignment—other than a Starman inventory story—Chris was hired to draw. But it took almost a year after Chris drew the first issue before it was put on the publication schedule. By the time it finally came out, Chris had done a lot of other fill-in and cover jobs, and had been named the penciler on the upcoming Legionnaires book. Hammerlocke had some interesting ideas, but the story left me a little disappointed. Chris’ art was nice though.
Cover inks by Keith Wilson.
Cover inks by Karl Story.
Chris did some great stuff for Supreme. His clean linework was both classic enough and modern enough to be a perfect fit for the book.
Cover inks by Al Gordon.
But his work really came into its on with Tom Strong. It was a book written for him to draw, and he’s still quite attached to it—and who could blame him? It was a fantastic series.
Cover inks by Al Gordon.
He’s also done some nice work for mediocre WildStorm series, such as Midnighter and Number of the Beast. Worth getting for the art if you can find it cheap. Some of his best work was for Ocean, for which unfortunately he didn’t do the covers.
I first became aware of Mark Buckingham as the inker of Hellblazer, so it was a bit of a surprise when his first issue of Miracleman hit the stands. This inker could draw—and in so many different styles! Bucky didn’t draw the covers for Miracleman, but he did do the covers for the Apocrypha mini-series.
Actually, Bucky didn’t really start doing covers regularly until he went to Marvel as Chris Bachalo’s inker. They’d had success as a team at Vertigo, so when Chris got the gig to pencil Ghost Rider 2099 and Generation X, Bucky tagged along. Almost immediately Chris’ work developing the Generation X series took over his time, so Bucky slid into the penciler’s chair of Ghost Rider 2099.
As it only took Bucky about a week to ink an issue of Generation X, he was still able to pencil a monthly series as well, and after his run on Ghost Rider 2099, he moved over to Shade the Changing Man—another title he took over from Chris—and then Doctor Strange.
After taking of the penciling from Chris a third time with the second Death mini-series, and a year-long run on Batman: Shadow of the Bat, Bucky was finally able to do covers for DC on a regular basis as the artist on the newly relaunched Titans book.
Inks by Wade von Grawbadger.
Bucky had a nice long run on Peter Parker: Spider-Man with a couple of stand-out issues featuring Peter as a kid with Uncle Ben along the way.
Issue #49 sans display type with inks by Wayne Faucher.
And then it was on to Fables with Bill Willingham. Bucky had worked with Bill before on the outstanding Merv Pumpkinhead: Agent of D.R.E.A.M. one-shot. Originally he was meant to be only one of a small group of rotating pencilers. He was able to choose between the first two story arcs as to which he wanted to draw, and he chose the second, “Animal Farm,” which turned out to be the perfect story for him. So much so that he was signed on to be the regular artist rather than one of many. He hasn’t done many covers for the series, but he has done a handful of painted covers for Fables and the tie-in mini-series The Literals.
He also had a short run of covers for Madame Xanadu which were more design-centric.
Bucky’s been a huge Dr. Who fan since childhood, so his current job as a regular cover artist for the comic series is a dream gig for him.
I think I saw Guy Davis’ work in Sandman Mystery Theater before I bought all the back issues of Baker Street. I know I read Baker Street right around the same time SMT started, and I know that I wanted more—still do. I bug Guy about it every now and then, but he’s been busy out in Hollywood the past several months doing concept designs. By the way, Baker Street is still in print in trade paperback, and I highly recommend it.
Matt Wagner brought Guy on board SMT because he was a fan of Baker Street and thought Guy’s style would work well for SMT. Wagner made an excellent choice. Unfortunately, SMT went with photo covers for the most part, so no Guy covers, so we’ll jump ahead to Nevermen, a weirdly cool mini-series for Dark Horse—kind of a mash-up of L.A. Confidential, Dark City, and Dick Tracy.
Guy had started working on The Marquis right after SMT ended, but before he got very far he got enough work to keep him busy for a couple of years. But after Nevermen, he got back to it. The Marquis is Guy’s tour de force—he does everything but the lettering—and is another book I highly recommend.
But most fans probably know Guy from his long stint as the artist of Mike Mignola’s B.P.R.D. series. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. It’s a great series, and Guy did some incredible work for it over the years.
And if you’re into zombies—or even if you’re not—you should definitely check out The Zombies That Ate the World, which originally appeared in Métal Hurlant, but which has been reprinted in comic and graphic novel form here in the States. Think more Shaun of the Dead than Night of the Living Dead, and you’ll have an idea of what the story is like. Guy even went cartoony with his artwork, and it looks great. I’d really like to see him do more in that style.
I'm glad you mentioned Baker Street; that's a little, oft-overlooked gem that I enjoyed a lot. I was lucky enough to pick up the issues shortly after the series had gotten underway. That and SMT are the two series Davis worked on that I know best.
I'm glad you mentioned Baker Street; that's a little, oft-overlooked gem that I enjoyed a lot. I was lucky enough to pick up the issues shortly after the series had gotten underway. That and SMT are the two series Davis worked on that I know best.
Yeah, as a Sherlock Holmes fan, I really enjoyed Baker Street’s fresh take on the concept. The second story arc was especially good. SMT was equally good, but I tended to be more interested in the interaction between Wesley and Dian than the actual mystery. Wagner and Guy did a great job developing those characters.
Jeff Smith had me at “Stupid, stupid rat creatures.” I didn’t pick up Bone initially, but I did read the issues during down time at the comic shop where I worked. When the first trade paperback (with the original not-so-great spine design) came out, I was all over it. And I continued to buy it in the trade format because it seemed to read better that way. Perhaps because it was Jeff’s hope all along that it would eventually be published as one volume. And if you have the regular issues, you can see that it was written that way. The only text on the opening page of each issue was a relatively small Bone logo that could easily be removed without much effort.
Jeff rarely works for the Big Two, but he did do this alternate Avengers Forever cover.
Jeff and Paul Pope are good friends, so it was only natural that Jeff drew a cover for Paul’s excellent THB series.
Walt Kelly is probably Jeff’s biggest influence. When Fantagraphics collected Kelly’s Our Gang stories from the 1940s comics, Jeff was the guy they called to provide covers for the three volumes.
And, of course, there’s Jeff’s Shazam mini-series, which wasn’t quite as good as I was hoping it would be, but then my expectations were pretty darned high. It’s definitely worth a read though.
And finally we come to RASL, which I’ve been buying in the oversized trades. I love the stark graphic look of the first issue’s cover, and the approach he’s taken with the covers in general.
I first saw Frazer Irving’s work when he was drawing a Judge Death series for 2000 AD. It was impressive stuff, and I made a point to keep a lookout for his work. It would be a while before I saw his name again, but he did a lot of great work for 2000 AD in the meantime. The Simping Detective is probably my favorite.
Frazer was chosen by Grant Morrison to draw the Klarion the Witch Boy mini-series as part of the Seven Soldiers project. This was the first time I saw Frazer’s coloring, and I loved his palette and how he used it to enhance the storytelling. Sadly, most colorists these days simply try to make things look as “realistic” as possible rather than taking advantage of the medium and using color as a storytelling tool. Not so with Frazer. He’s not afraid to take risks with his color choices if it helps set a mood or helps clarify the scene.
His third teaming with Grant was for three issues of Batman and Robin (the second being Batman: The Return of Bruce Wayne #2). His third cover was exceptional.
Xombi was a cool series that was canceled before its time. I wish it had been given more of a chance.
Gutsville is a series long in the making. Hopefully Frazer will have time to finish it one of these days, but he’s busy on Uncanny X-Men at the moment, so who knows.
My first Ron Garney comic was Daredevil #304 (May 1992), a fill-in issue that came just before I dropped the book. The art was good, but Ron was still learning, and coming after Lee Weeks’ amazing run, it was a somewhat forgettable outing.
Before that he had worked on Moon Knight, taking over just after I had dropped the title. And after his Daredevil job, he helped launch the new Nightstalkers series, which I dropped after the first issue. It was nothing against the art, which was heavily inked by Tom Palmer and looked pretty good; the story just didn’t do anything for me. After eight issues, Ron was moved over to a more prominent title in the Midnight Sons line, Ghost Rider—again, right after I had dropped it.
Look, everybody’s got to start somewhere. Ron definitely was working his way up the ladder, paying his dues. But then Ron was offered his choice of Avengers, Thor, and Cap. As soon as Cap was mentioned, Ron could see exactly what he would do with the book—and he had a lot of input into the direction of the stories. He then got paired with Mark Waid, and something clicked. The result was some of, if not the best material Marvel put out in the early to mid-’90s.
But then the top brass at Marvel made one of the worst decisions in the history of bad decisions: Heroes Reborn. Just when Ron and Mark were really hitting their stride, suddenly they were off the book, replaced by Rob Liefeld of all people. As a consolation prize, they let Ron pick what he would draw next, which was Silver Surfer.
Inks by Bob Wiacek.
It turned out to be a rather short stint though. Before long, Marvel was asking Ron and Mark to come back to Captain America. They reluctantly agreed, and while the second run (which included a title change to Captain America: Sentinel of Liberty) was enjoyable, it didn’t quite capture the magic of the first run.
Some of Ron’s best covers came during his long (for him) run on Amazing Spider-Man.
But perhaps his best work to date was on the Wolverine “Get Mystique” story. Really good stuff.
Rich Buckler doing his best Jim Steranko swi—I mean, imitation. It’s probably what Keith Pollard was thinking too when he did this (uncredited) “homage” (inked by Kim DeMulder).
As much as I loathed Civil War itself, I loved the storyline of Spider-Man in the Avengers, with Steve and Tony filling his desperate need for a father figure.
This cover perfectly captures the whole dynamic and all three personalities.
As much as I loathed Civil War itself, I loved the storyline of Spider-Man in the Avengers, with Steve and Tony filling his desperate need for a father figure.
This cover perfectly captures the whole dynamic and all three personalities.
Not only is Eric Powell an über-talented artist, he’s also a pretty good writer. The Goon may not be for everyone, but it’s definitely worth giving a shot. What I like most about it is that Eric can (and does) tell just about any kind of story within the framework of the series. There’s horror, there’s comedy, there’s tragedy (lots of tragedy), a little romance, crime, western—you name it—and it all works.
The Chinatown graphic novel is probably the highlight of the series—a fantastic bit of storytelling.
Eric really looks up to guys like Mike Mignola and Jeff Smith, so while The Goon is his main concern, he’s also got other pans in the fire. First there’s Billy the Kid’s Old Timey Oddities, which puts Billy in with a traveling group of monster-hunting freaks. His co-creator Kyle Hotz does the interior artwork, but Eric writes it and sometimes does the covers.
Eric seems to have a thing for circus freaks, because his all-ages Chimichanga is set in a carnival freak show too with the main character being a very young bearded lady (though she’s no lady). It’s a very cute story despite the weirdness of the characters, very much in the “don’t judge a book by its cover” vein—sort of a modern Melvin the Monster.
On occasion Eric does a job for Marvel or DC, though it’s becoming rarer and rarer. He took on the Action Comics gig because they offered him Bizarro and because Richard Donner was co-writing. The story is pretty good, but Eric’s art is the definite highlight.
The Devil Dinosaur one-shot he did for Marvel with his old buddy Tom Sniegoski—who got Eric his first professional work in comics—is a ton of fun, but I wish we could have seen their original plan for the story. As it happened, Eric and Tom had been talking on the phone about what Marvel property they would most like to work on, and Devil Dinosaur was at the top of the list. Eric is a big Kirby fan, and he (and Tom) thought the idea of doing Devil Dinosaur was hilarious. Not long after that phone call, Marvel called Eric and offered him the Hulk/Devil Dino book, so naturally he (and Tom) accepted. They wanted to make it as crazy as possible, but Marvel made them tone it down and play it fairly straight. It’s still a good book, but what could have been...
I admit it; I’m a Godzilla fan (though not as much so as my kids are). So when Eric did a stint as co-writer and cover artist on IDW’s newly launched Godzilla series, I was first in line. The story is an interesting humanistic take. Eric and Tracy Marsh left the book before the storyline wrapped up, and the ending is a bit weak perhaps because of that. Still, if you a fan of Big G, it’s worth giving a look.
Comments
For some reason, though it became much more inaccurate, it hit twice as hard.
Oh yeah, my first ones were Star Trek Phasers as well.
I tried for years to design a scaled-up version that would shoot my endless supply of AOL CDs.
His storytelling in the “Last Rites” storyline was amazing. After this story I made sure I picked up everything he worked on (except the Gambit mini-series he would do next—I just don’t like that character). Lee inked this cover himself.
He did a very good story (and cover) for Batman Chronicles #1.
The Tarzan Versus Predator series he penciled and inked (written by Walt Simonson) was actually pretty cool, and it was gorgeous to look at. At first Lee didn’t want to take on the job, because he had already done a Predator/Magnus Robot Fighter book (which originally was supposed to be a Terminator/Magnus book), and didn’t want to be stuck as a “Predator” guy. But when he found out Walt was writing it, and that it would be set in Pelucidar, he agreed to do it.
If you haven’t read Batman Chronicles: The Gauntlet, you’re doing yourself a disservice. If it isn’t among the best Batman stories of all time (and I think it is), it certainly is the best Robin story.
Spider-Man: Death and Destiny was a pretty powerful, emotional story that Lee wrote himself. It’s recommended if you like stories that go back and explore moments from a character’s past in greater detail.
Lee does an awesome Hulk. There’s so much weight and power in the way he draws the character, and I like the more monstrous look.
A few years back, Lee teamed up with Roger Stern for two excellent Spider-Man fill-in stories. This was after the marriage reboot, so I’m sure a lot of people who would have greatly enjoyed these stories missed out while boycotting the book. Too bad for them.
As a kid I was pretty erratic in what I would choose. I never followed one particular title—in large part because it would have been very difficult for me to do so given my access to comics. But I did buy more Spidey comics than any other Marvel character, and for these two, JR’s covers were a big selling point. Looking back now, I think both are good examples of the direction his work was evolving. His style was moving out from under the shadow of his father’s influence and becoming a unique blend of Kirby, John Buscema, and Romita Sr. that was something all its own.
Inks by Terry Austin.
Inks by Bob Wiacek.
I was never a big X-Men fan or reader, but I would pick it up every now and then. JR got a lot of grief—and hate mail—when he took over from Paul Smith, who had taken off on one of his many sabbaticals from comics. There’s nothing wrong with JR’s work on X-Men, other than the fact he wasn’t Paul Smith (who I’m sure got his share of grief for not being Dave Cockrum), but he didn’t get the best finishes from Dan Green. Green wasn’t a bad inker at all, but I don’t think he was the best match for JR. Still, whether you liked JR on X-Men or not, you have to admit he did some cool covers for the series.
Inks by Bob Wiacek.
Once he started doing full pencils on Daredevil, his work really took off. Al Williamson’s inks brought out the best in JR’s drawing. JR has always focused on storytelling over drawing. He knows he’s not the best illustrator in the business, so he doesn’t worry about making the drawing perfect and instead puts that energy into making sure the drawing enhances the storytelling. When he gets paired with inkers like Al Williamson and Klaus Janson, we get the best of both worlds.
And speaking of Janson, the work JR and he did on Thor was quite impressive—perhaps their best collaboration to date.
But I’d say JR’s best work overall was for the Daredevil: Man Without Fear mini-series inked by Al Williamson. He added a lot to the story—quite literally. Based on what he did with the original script, Miller was inspired to go back and add nearly 80 pages to the story.
Although, the first issue of his all too brief run on Black Panther (also inked by Janson) comes really close. Perhaps my favorite first issue of any series ever.
Then in 2004 Mike teamed up with J.M. DeMatteis to create the delightful all-ages Abadazad for CrossGen. The story had a nice Wizard of Oz/Alice in Wonderland feel to it. Unfortunately, CrossGen’s demise ended the series with issue #3.
The series was in limbo for a while until Disney bought up the rights. Eventually Mike and Marc were able to continue the story, though not as a comic, but rather as standard book-sized hybrid of prose, sequential art, and full-page illustrations, with artwork from the CrossGen issues repurposed for the books. Though they were contracted for eight books, only two saw print in the US. The third volume was only released in the UK, so I’ve never seen it, much less read it, but here’s the cover.
In between the end of Abadazad the comic and the start of Abadazad the book series, Mike and Marc came up with another comic series—but one they owned outright—The Stardust Kid. Another all-ages book, The Stardust Kid has an ecological message that at times is a bit heavy-handed, and so the story doesn’t have quite the same charm as Abadazad. But Mike’s artwork is as lovely as ever.
The problem was, Baker, having worked on Spider-Man the year before, owed the IRS more than $5,000 in taxes, and they began garnishing his Marvel wages. So Kyle went to work for DC instead, where he took over art chores on The Shadow—a critical success, but sales flop.
Kyle did a beautiful job with the Dick Tracy movie adaptation, which he penciled, inked, and hand painted (using watercolor and colored pencil). He took on the job because he was a big Chester Gould fan, but, of course, he ended up getting a lot of grief from Warren Beatty. Beatty liked everything Kyle did... at first. But before long, he started requesting changes to Kyle’s Dick Tracy faces so that it looked less and less like Gould’s Dick Tracy, and more and more like Warren Beatty. Because of all the changes—and changes to the changes—Kyle got further and further behind schedule and ended up having to do the entire last issue—64 pages (!)—in a week! He brought in five assistants to help with the coloring, which was pretty simple because of the very limited palette. He also made stats of the Dick Tracy faces from previously approved panels—and even the T-shirt designs—and pasted them into the pages to avoid having to go through several more rounds of revisions, and he got the job done on time.
While he was working on Dick Tracy (as well as the Alice Through the Looking Glass adaptation for Classics Illustrated), Kyle was also working on the classic Why I Hate Saturn, which Kyle says has never sold particularly well, but which has gotten him a lot of work outside the comic book industry. Doubleday passed on the book, as their experimentation with graphic novels was over, so Kyle took it to DC, which published the book under their new Piranha Press imprint.
Kyle came on board for The Truth: Red, White, and Black mini-series because he really liked Robert Morales’s—who unfortunately passed away recently—idea for the book. Kyle and Robert had met when they were both doing work for Vibe magazine. And despite some Marvel editorial interference, The Truth turned out to be a really good story.
I had high expectations for Kyle’s Plastic Man series. Unfortunately, it didn’t quite live up to them. Not that it was bad; it was actually pretty good. It just wasn’t as good as I was expecting. I actually enjoyed Scott Morse’s fill-in stories much more—they were fantastic. Still, they’re worth picking up if you run across them in a dollar box.
Cover inks by Bruce Patterson.
Hammerlocke was actually the first assignment—other than a Starman inventory story—Chris was hired to draw. But it took almost a year after Chris drew the first issue before it was put on the publication schedule. By the time it finally came out, Chris had done a lot of other fill-in and cover jobs, and had been named the penciler on the upcoming Legionnaires book. Hammerlocke had some interesting ideas, but the story left me a little disappointed. Chris’ art was nice though.
Cover inks by Keith Wilson.
Cover inks by Karl Story.
Chris did some great stuff for Supreme. His clean linework was both classic enough and modern enough to be a perfect fit for the book.
Cover inks by Al Gordon.
But his work really came into its on with Tom Strong. It was a book written for him to draw, and he’s still quite attached to it—and who could blame him? It was a fantastic series.
Cover inks by Al Gordon.
He’s also done some nice work for mediocre WildStorm series, such as Midnighter and Number of the Beast. Worth getting for the art if you can find it cheap. Some of his best work was for Ocean, for which unfortunately he didn’t do the covers.
Cover inks by Karl Story.
Cover inks by Karl Story.
Actually, Bucky didn’t really start doing covers regularly until he went to Marvel as Chris Bachalo’s inker. They’d had success as a team at Vertigo, so when Chris got the gig to pencil Ghost Rider 2099 and Generation X, Bucky tagged along. Almost immediately Chris’ work developing the Generation X series took over his time, so Bucky slid into the penciler’s chair of Ghost Rider 2099.
As it only took Bucky about a week to ink an issue of Generation X, he was still able to pencil a monthly series as well, and after his run on Ghost Rider 2099, he moved over to Shade the Changing Man—another title he took over from Chris—and then Doctor Strange.
After taking of the penciling from Chris a third time with the second Death mini-series, and a year-long run on Batman: Shadow of the Bat, Bucky was finally able to do covers for DC on a regular basis as the artist on the newly relaunched Titans book.
Inks by Wade von Grawbadger.
Bucky had a nice long run on Peter Parker: Spider-Man with a couple of stand-out issues featuring Peter as a kid with Uncle Ben along the way.
Issue #49 sans display type with inks by Wayne Faucher.
And then it was on to Fables with Bill Willingham. Bucky had worked with Bill before on the outstanding Merv Pumpkinhead: Agent of D.R.E.A.M. one-shot. Originally he was meant to be only one of a small group of rotating pencilers. He was able to choose between the first two story arcs as to which he wanted to draw, and he chose the second, “Animal Farm,” which turned out to be the perfect story for him. So much so that he was signed on to be the regular artist rather than one of many. He hasn’t done many covers for the series, but he has done a handful of painted covers for Fables and the tie-in mini-series The Literals.
He also had a short run of covers for Madame Xanadu which were more design-centric.
Bucky’s been a huge Dr. Who fan since childhood, so his current job as a regular cover artist for the comic series is a dream gig for him.
Matt Wagner brought Guy on board SMT because he was a fan of Baker Street and thought Guy’s style would work well for SMT. Wagner made an excellent choice. Unfortunately, SMT went with photo covers for the most part, so no Guy covers, so we’ll jump ahead to Nevermen, a weirdly cool mini-series for Dark Horse—kind of a mash-up of L.A. Confidential, Dark City, and Dick Tracy.
Guy had started working on The Marquis right after SMT ended, but before he got very far he got enough work to keep him busy for a couple of years. But after Nevermen, he got back to it. The Marquis is Guy’s tour de force—he does everything but the lettering—and is another book I highly recommend.
But most fans probably know Guy from his long stint as the artist of Mike Mignola’s B.P.R.D. series. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. It’s a great series, and Guy did some incredible work for it over the years.
And if you’re into zombies—or even if you’re not—you should definitely check out The Zombies That Ate the World, which originally appeared in Métal Hurlant, but which has been reprinted in comic and graphic novel form here in the States. Think more Shaun of the Dead than Night of the Living Dead, and you’ll have an idea of what the story is like. Guy even went cartoony with his artwork, and it looks great. I’d really like to see him do more in that style.
Jeff rarely works for the Big Two, but he did do this alternate Avengers Forever cover.
Jeff and Paul Pope are good friends, so it was only natural that Jeff drew a cover for Paul’s excellent THB series.
Walt Kelly is probably Jeff’s biggest influence. When Fantagraphics collected Kelly’s Our Gang stories from the 1940s comics, Jeff was the guy they called to provide covers for the three volumes.
And, of course, there’s Jeff’s Shazam mini-series, which wasn’t quite as good as I was hoping it would be, but then my expectations were pretty darned high. It’s definitely worth a read though.
And finally we come to RASL, which I’ve been buying in the oversized trades. I love the stark graphic look of the first issue’s cover, and the approach he’s taken with the covers in general.
Frazer was chosen by Grant Morrison to draw the Klarion the Witch Boy mini-series as part of the Seven Soldiers project. This was the first time I saw Frazer’s coloring, and I loved his palette and how he used it to enhance the storytelling. Sadly, most colorists these days simply try to make things look as “realistic” as possible rather than taking advantage of the medium and using color as a storytelling tool. Not so with Frazer. He’s not afraid to take risks with his color choices if it helps set a mood or helps clarify the scene.
His third teaming with Grant was for three issues of Batman and Robin (the second being Batman: The Return of Bruce Wayne #2). His third cover was exceptional.
Xombi was a cool series that was canceled before its time. I wish it had been given more of a chance.
Gutsville is a series long in the making. Hopefully Frazer will have time to finish it one of these days, but he’s busy on Uncanny X-Men at the moment, so who knows.
Before that he had worked on Moon Knight, taking over just after I had dropped the title. And after his Daredevil job, he helped launch the new Nightstalkers series, which I dropped after the first issue. It was nothing against the art, which was heavily inked by Tom Palmer and looked pretty good; the story just didn’t do anything for me. After eight issues, Ron was moved over to a more prominent title in the Midnight Sons line, Ghost Rider—again, right after I had dropped it.
Look, everybody’s got to start somewhere. Ron definitely was working his way up the ladder, paying his dues. But then Ron was offered his choice of Avengers, Thor, and Cap. As soon as Cap was mentioned, Ron could see exactly what he would do with the book—and he had a lot of input into the direction of the stories. He then got paired with Mark Waid, and something clicked. The result was some of, if not the best material Marvel put out in the early to mid-’90s.
But then the top brass at Marvel made one of the worst decisions in the history of bad decisions: Heroes Reborn. Just when Ron and Mark were really hitting their stride, suddenly they were off the book, replaced by Rob Liefeld of all people. As a consolation prize, they let Ron pick what he would draw next, which was Silver Surfer.
Inks by Bob Wiacek.
It turned out to be a rather short stint though. Before long, Marvel was asking Ron and Mark to come back to Captain America. They reluctantly agreed, and while the second run (which included a title change to Captain America: Sentinel of Liberty) was enjoyable, it didn’t quite capture the magic of the first run.
Some of Ron’s best covers came during his long (for him) run on Amazing Spider-Man.
But perhaps his best work to date was on the Wolverine “Get Mystique” story. Really good stuff.
As much as I loathed Civil War itself, I loved the storyline of Spider-Man in the Avengers, with Steve and Tony filling his desperate need for a father figure.
This cover perfectly captures the whole dynamic and all three personalities.
listed as Ed Hannigan and Bernie Wrightson
The Chinatown graphic novel is probably the highlight of the series—a fantastic bit of storytelling.
Eric really looks up to guys like Mike Mignola and Jeff Smith, so while The Goon is his main concern, he’s also got other pans in the fire. First there’s Billy the Kid’s Old Timey Oddities, which puts Billy in with a traveling group of monster-hunting freaks. His co-creator Kyle Hotz does the interior artwork, but Eric writes it and sometimes does the covers.
Eric seems to have a thing for circus freaks, because his all-ages Chimichanga is set in a carnival freak show too with the main character being a very young bearded lady (though she’s no lady). It’s a very cute story despite the weirdness of the characters, very much in the “don’t judge a book by its cover” vein—sort of a modern Melvin the Monster.
On occasion Eric does a job for Marvel or DC, though it’s becoming rarer and rarer. He took on the Action Comics gig because they offered him Bizarro and because Richard Donner was co-writing. The story is pretty good, but Eric’s art is the definite highlight.
The Devil Dinosaur one-shot he did for Marvel with his old buddy Tom Sniegoski—who got Eric his first professional work in comics—is a ton of fun, but I wish we could have seen their original plan for the story. As it happened, Eric and Tom had been talking on the phone about what Marvel property they would most like to work on, and Devil Dinosaur was at the top of the list. Eric is a big Kirby fan, and he (and Tom) thought the idea of doing Devil Dinosaur was hilarious. Not long after that phone call, Marvel called Eric and offered him the Hulk/Devil Dino book, so naturally he (and Tom) accepted. They wanted to make it as crazy as possible, but Marvel made them tone it down and play it fairly straight. It’s still a good book, but what could have been...
I admit it; I’m a Godzilla fan (though not as much so as my kids are). So when Eric did a stint as co-writer and cover artist on IDW’s newly launched Godzilla series, I was first in line. The story is an interesting humanistic take. Eric and Tracy Marsh left the book before the storyline wrapped up, and the ending is a bit weak perhaps because of that. Still, if you a fan of Big G, it’s worth giving a look.
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