Legion World Forums LEGION COMPANION Dr. Gym'll's Cultural Rarities Who are your favorite comic book artists, and why?

The idea for this thread came to me while reading a quote from Dave Cockrum where he credited his artistic growth on the Legion to having inked John Buscema pencils for Marvel in between Legion stories.

John Buscema is my favorite comic book artist, because he did everything well. Not necessarily outstanding, but always well. I've always preferred the humble craftsmen like Big John and disciples of his such as Greg LaRocque, Steve Epting, and Kerry Gammill. Somehow, the wild visionary superstars always somehow come up short for me -- either they do cosmic widescreen stuff really well but draw ugly people, or they draw beautiful people but their layouts lack the needed oomph. It could be argued that Big John never quite equaled his late 1960s work due to some misguidedly harsh criticism from Stan Lee, and indeed his 1970s work on Thor was never quite as great as it should have been, while he was completely miscast on Fantastic Four (but then, who other than Jack Kirby and Walt Simonson was artistically right for the FF? Many would also rate John Byrne, but I beg to differ.) But even Big John's worst was still solid and professional, and that's how I like my comics. Big John was also a ground-breaker in drawing team comics thanks to his work on Avengers during the 60s, 70s, and 80s.

Another fun, though bittersweet, thing about being a Big John fan is that he did so little work on DC characters that I often have a blast imagining what might have been if he'd switched companies (I seem to remember reading somewhere that acquiring Big John's services was something of a Holy Grail for Jenette Kahn.)

I mean, imagine Big John drawing Wonder Woman (he actually did draw a few panels of Wonder Woman when she guest-starred in the second Superman/Spider-Man team-up.) Or any version of the JLA. Or reviving something obscure like Viking Prince. Or reteaming with Roy Thomas on All-Star Squadron or Infinity Inc. Or even -- dare I imagine -- the Legion!!

So that's my story. What's yours?

There are several, so I will hit them one at a time. These are the artists that make me want to check out a project, regardless of the publisher.

First up we have Michael Allred. His art to me is just amazing. There a simplicity to it, but at the same time can be extremely detailed. It never looks over crowded to me...unless he plans it to.

From his own Madman and Atomics characters, to the Superman crossover he did with Madman. His work at Marvel with X-Force/X-Statix to the FF and now Silver Surfer, he shos himself to be versatile yet consistent. His characters look like they are wearing clothes. Something else else that I have come to really appreciate over the years. Give me someone wearing an outfit and not a naked picture with lines and colors on it any day.

His characters are rarely static. There is constant movement, if ever so slight. A head tilt, a slight downward glance, a kid sticking their tongue out in one panel...it all adds to the reality that he is trying to convey.

I like super-clean art, all bold lines and bright colors. Back in the day, the gold standard for that was people like Dave Cockrum, but newer faces like George Perez and John Byrne and Karl Kesel and Ron Lim and Jim Lee and Brett Booth took it to a new level.

And then Image found Mike Turner, who I remembered from the Ballistic mini-series (a spin-off of Silvestri's Cyberforce), and he just brought it up another notch, and in Image's own artist-focused environment, went on to produce Witchblade, the Darkness and Fathom.

Mike Turner's art seemed pretty much the logical evolution of where the clean lines that I loved from Legion artists like Greg LaRocque and Steve Lightle were headed.

That said, his pin-up worthy art, so beautiful and big, led to an ever increasing focus on large pages of art, and decreased use of smaller panels and tighter storytelling, and to fight scenes degenerating into a big splash page of everybody jumping at each other, instead of seeing smaller shots of individual characters actually doing stuff. I'm not sure if comics have yet recovered from that notion, stylistically, and I long for the days of the Byrne's X-Men or Perez's Teen Titans, when a battle might include a dozen individual shots, and not be 'here's another two-page spread of two teams jumping at each other.'

So, I'm gonna have to change my vote mid-stream to George Perez, who managed to make clean art that did not overshadow and shift the nature of the story itself.

George Perez, for the win!

Jim Aparo - For me the quintessential Batman artist. His Batman is still what comes to mind when someone mentions the character. His Gordon was also the definitive take on the character for me. Loved his B&B, Spectre, Aquaman, Outsiders, it just goes on and on.

Bissette/Totleben - That Swamp Thing run is still magical and dynamic to me. Their individual efforts are great, but the alchemy of their collaborations are on a whole different level.

Mike Dringenberg - Gets a bad rap I think. To me, his art grounded Sandman and really helped it click for me. Other more acclaimed artists came and went, but I never appreciated their contributions as much (and often felt, like Kelley Jones, they detracted).

Second on my list (I'll probably do a top 5 in total) of artists I love...or those artists that will get me to check out a book sight unseen is Alan Davis.

Case in point. his 4 issue arc on a new Savage Hulk book.

Setting the story back in the X-Men First Class days, and the beginning of Hulks career makes me willing to commit to the four issues regardless of price point.

Why? I adore his art. From his own Clandestine, to the X-Men, to Superboys Legion. Everything he does, no matter how dark some of the subjects can be (or not be), has a feel good look to it. Some may not like his wide smiles and seemingly optimistic way of portraying things and characters, but I love it.

His Legion covers are among some of my favorites, right up there with Steve Lightle and Giffen himself.

Slap Davis' name on there, and I am at least grabbing the first issue.

Jose Louis Garcia Lopez - to me he was the next stage in comics art evolution after Neil Adams brought anatomy to mainstream comics. He combined Adams' "realistic" style with the fluid mobility of Infantino. He's an impeccable draftsman, qually adept at drawing fantastical machinery as he is the mundane, and capable of both dynamic action and character acting through body language and facial expressions. Many comics fans only know him from the style sheets he produced for DC in the early 1980s, but if you want to really experience what JLGL is capable of take a look at Twilight (http://dc.wikia.com/wiki/Twilight_Vol_1) and Cinder and Ash (http://dc.wikia.com/wiki/Cinder_and_Ashe_Vol_1)

I've just finished a reread of Twilight and his art is gorgeous. It's a take on the early DC sci fi series such as Star Rovers, Planeteers and Star Hawkins and Manhunter 2070. But it's a very, very dark look at them.

DC might have had plans for the Charlton characters when they asked Moore to come up with his own characters. They gave Chaykin a green light to take on the sci fi characters directly.

I think I'm missing an issue of Cinder & Ash. I think it's stopped me reading it. Atari Force is my other big Garcia Lopez favourite.

I really don't look as closely as I should about upcoming comics, so artists that I really like probably slip past.

George Perez drew comics that had an impact on me before I knew who he was. Sergio Aragones would be another one. Alan Davis would be a third. David Lloyd. I'd buy Bryan Talbot's phone doodlings...

Garcia-Lopez is another like Big John, a talented artist who is mostly associated with one publisher. The only exceptions I can think of were one or two OHOTMU pin-ups and the Batman/Hulk team-up, which is kind of a silly story, but worth seeking out for the art alone.

Wow one of the hardest questions I know, but here I go.

First top of the top at the moment is Alan Davis. God I wish he was working on Legion. I loved the Superboy and the Legion books. I can’t remember when what was the first thing I read with his art but the most memorable is Excalibur which got me to then find the old Captain Britain books. I was trying to find everything he did.

Jose Garcia Lopez was one of my favorites too. I only wish I had seen more. I absolutely loved the Atari Force series.

Here’s some others that will possibly get me to buy it just for the art.
Bryan Hitch
George Perez
Neal Adams
Steve Lightle
Eric Shanower
Charles Vess
Adam Hughes
Frank Cho
Moebius
Jack KIrby

I just saw in the June Previews catalog that DC is releasing trade of Cinder & Ash.

Synchronicity by Jove!

Lots of great artists mentioned here. I have a ton too that I hope to get to one day. Though the idea that someone will say they don't like their art has me sharpening machetes.

Count me as a big fan of Jose Luis Garcia Lopez. To me, he's THE great DC artist of the late 70's, and he stayed great for his whole career. I think I can say with 90% accuracy that we own all of his American work, even the random stuff he did in the late 80's and early 90's. He may be my favorite Superman artist of all time.

Regarding JLGL...I will be meeting him this May at a local comic convention...woot!

What always strikes me as awesome about the Batman/Hulk crossover is how Marvel and DC both had pretty strict house styles for the two characters at the time and Garcia-Lopez not only managed to nail both of them, he blended them seamlessly AND put his own distinctive touch on it. That was quite a feat considering the amount of oversight and scrutiny the project must have had.

Well said, Dave.

I like so many of the ones mentioned - Steve Lighte, Neal Adams, Dave Cockrum etc - especially the LSH ones and their Legion work...

I would add Mac Raboy because he was so great in the early 1940s - probably the godfather of comic art as comic art.

Wes, I love what little I've seen of Mac Raboy's work. I'm also glad you mentioned him because it's a good reminder that I should seek out more of his work now that a lot more Golden Age stories are available online. Thanks.

I'll start with non superhero favorites. Mike Kaluta for his Carson of Venus & The Shadow in the early 70s & Howard Chakin for his Fafhrd and Gray Mouser & Ironwolf series. They both had a pulp fiction feel to them. Basil Wolverton for the bizarre.

Superheros it has to be Curt Swan, Gil Kane & Carmine Infantino.

Eduardo Barreto is another under-appreciated artist who fits this description.

Agreed. I love Eduardo Barreto.

Thanks for bringing up Mike Kaluta, Goo! Add him to my list!

How could I forget to mention Dick Dillin? A triumphant 14-year run on the original JLA, with only 2 fill-ins. Truly, Dillin was to the JLA what John Buscema was to the Avengers.

Neal Adams

I caught pneumonia in my freshman year of high school and had to be hospitalized. Someone brought me a stack of comics taken off the rack at random. I don't remember what the other titles were, but the art in the Deadman story in Strange Adventures #209 was light years beyond anything I had ever seen in a comic book. It's sorta like the first time I heard Jimi Hendrix's Purple Haze. Nothing I had heard before could even approach it.

Yes, there have been many quality artists since then, just as there have been many great guitarists since Hendrix. But none have stood out from the pack as much as Adams did in 1968.

No argument there, Neal Adams was a ground-breaker.

One artist I forgot to add to my list of craftsmanlike John Buscema disciples is Keith Pollard. Among his Marvel credits are two of that publisher's best centennial issues, Amazing Spider-Man #200 and Thor #300. At DC, he drew an early appearance of the Omega Men in an issue of Green Lantern.

Love both of those issues Fanfie. Pollard was a great utility player at Marvel in the early 80's with a plethora of great work. What ever happened to him?

As for Neal Adams, I firmly believe he's one of the all time greats. I read an interview with Jack Kirby where he said when Neal came on the scene, Kirby and all the other artists at DC and Marvel were just blown away by his work. He brought something to the table that comics had only just barely touched on before, and inspired everything that came after.

And I agree, that original run on Deadman in Strange Adventures is phenomenal. I was just talking about a poster my Dad used to have in another thread, and it's a poster size of the cover where Deadman is looking up screaming at God while he's "standing" over his own corpse. It's fucking mesmerizing!

And of course, the Adams Superman covers, to me, are the best Superman covers of them all.

One of my favorite Adams Superman covers has an adult Lex punching baby Supes, with baby Flash and Batman lying in the background...

Director Lad and I got to see Adams, Scott Shaw and Sergio Aragonés square off at this year's "Quick Draw" at San Diego Comic-Con. It was freakin' amazing!

Pollard left the comics industry in the mid-90s, but still does the occassional convention appearance.

I forgot to mention before that Pollard also drew Fantastic Four #200, which wasn't nearly as good as Amazing Spider-Man #200 or Thor #300, but IMO is still pretty good for a post-1968 FF issue. Marv Wolfman's FF run definitely had its moments, even though Wolfman himself doesn't think highly of it.

BUMP



Since this thread was last active, I have actually come to appreciate Big John even more! His Thor and Fantastic Four art may be more erratic than his Avengers and Conan art, but it definitely has some tremendous moments -- FF #113-116, in particular, the Overmind story which Archie Goodwin took over from Stan Lee about halfway through, is utterly splendid IMHO. And I really underrated some of his Silver Surfer issues, too: really, all of the first 11 issues are rarely less than stellar.

I've also added a few other artists to my list of modern-day practitioners of the Big John style -- Greg Capullo, Dan Jurgens, and Mark Bagley.

And, finally, Big John always said that of all his contemporaries, the one he held in the highest esteem was Joe Kubert, whom I thoughtlessly failed to mention in previous posts. I've always liked Joe K, but recently my esteem for him has vaulted to a whole new level for a variety of reasons, one of them being that I can much more readily see similarities to Big John in his style, and vice versa, especially when Big John did his own inks.

Ooh, Mark Bagley, another artist I love the work of, especially after his days on the early Thunderbolts.

Those 50 or so consecutive issues of T-Bolts that Bags drew are the quintessence of post-Image team-book art -- as dynamic as the new school artists, but with the clarity and fluidity of the old school artists.

Bags is also, at least in my view, the last and youngest of the consummate craftsmen -- he almost always meets his deadlines, he's rarely less than solid, and he knows deep down that even though he loves his job, it's still just a job -- another hero of mine, Charles Schulz, once publicly advised aspiring cartoonists/comic book artists to never fool themselves into believing they're creating "art." In middle age, I've come to regard the best comics as "Accidental Art." The less you strain to create something timeless, the more likely it will turn out timeless.

Back to Bags -- his runs on New Warriors and Spider-Man started out rough, but just a little bit into the 2nd year on NW, holy crap! He just exploded! I can't recall his precise turning point on Spidey, though, as the writing on the Spidey books went into a temporary spiral around the time of "Maximum Carnage" and I quickly phased myself out of that franchise.

His brief run at DC may have been a necessary change of pace to recharge his batteries, but sadly, he chose what I regard as a particularly bad time to work at DC. "Trinity" should have been no more frequent than bi-weekly, and lasted no more than 24 issues. JLA by Robinson...sheesh, what a waste of Bags' talent.

There is one DC character I'd love to see Bags draw in a solo, out-of-continuity, done-in-one special: THE FLASH! Bags would KILL on that, I just KNOW it!

This thread brings up a question that has been nagging at my mind, as I remember more of my youth, and less of what happened today.

This is a little something I have wondered about for years.

Some of my favorite comics as a child were Harvey: Casper the Friendly Ghost, Wendy the Good Witch, Little Hot Stuff, Spooky the Bad Little Ghost, and his girlfriend ‘Poil’, Little Audrey, Little Lulu, Little Lotta, Little Dot, Baby Huey, Richie Rich.

Stumbo the Giant and Witch Hazel as backups.

About 1950, the artwork changed. It became more consistent, with bolder lines, rounder, more simplified. I find it hard to believe that a single artist produced all those books each month: but if it was a stable of artists, they did a very good job imitating one another’s styles and maintaining consistency across the various magazines.

Being a kid, I never really paid attention to the artists, if they were ever credited, and I never really ‘collected’ them as a youth.

Admittedly, the artwork was extraordinarily simplistic, even childish, but it was part of the charm of the comics. This were books where sometimes objectively terrible things happened-- the main characters were ghosts, witches and demons after all-- but the optimistic, happy-go-lucky storytelling and simple drawings made them very attractive.

Does anyone know anything about these old artists? I am past the point in my life where I can begin collecting 65-to-70-year old children’s comic books.

Yeah, I think he'd do well with a speedster, just from what I remember of how kinetic and fluid he made characters like Jolt, Songbird and Citizen V look. (I think he used Speed Demon a bit later, and actually got to play with one of Marvel's rare speedsters.)

I think Songbird's niche popularity is almost entirely down to his amazing visuals for the character, and it's just amazing that Screaming freaking Mimi could turn into such an interesting and dynamic character!

I've always liked but not loved Bagley's work overall, I'm not sure why. But he is in my mind the best designer working in comics today. No contemporary can create striking and memorable costumes with the seeming ease with which he does it. You talk about poor timing on his DC stint. Can you imagine if they had set him loose on the New 52 redesigns instead of Jim Lee? The mind boggles.

All true, but on the other hand, how many of Bags' designs, no matter how good, would have survived when DC shifted from Nu 52 to Rebirth?

My current Top Ten artists:

1. JOHN BUSCEMA

2. STEVE EPTING

3. LOU FINE

4. JOE KUBERT

5. STEPHEN BISSETTE

6. SARA PICHELLI

7. TOM PALMER

8. JIM APARO

9. RON SMITH

10. WALTER SIMONSON

Honorary Mentions:

11. GIL KANE

12. WALLACE WOOD

13. DON NEWTON

A new thread started by Brain Fall Out Boy, about what comics-related gifts to ourselves we got for Christmas 2018 got me thinking:

My gift to myself was the early 90s OGN, "Conan the Rogue," John Buscema's ultimate statement of the barbarian genre so loved by him; over a period of at least six years, he plotted, penciled, inked and colored it. But Marvel put zero promotional muscle behind it, so it flopped, and became an expensive rarity. And I adore Big John's artwork so much that I spent quite a bit on it. No regrets.

I have also, over the years, acquired original printings of seven of John's movie adaptations from the late 1950s/early 1960s, and original printings of all three of his issues of "Indian Chief," done around that same time.

Among other John Buscema rarities.

I could go on and on, but by now, I'm sure you get the idea.

Question to other Legion Worlders: What are some of the rarities by your favorite comic book artists that you have acquired, or wish to acquire, at any cost?

Jeff Moy. Love his adorable artwork, how well it fit in with the Reboot Legion. And plenty of nostalgia on my part.

I'll second that, Ibby. Jeff Moy may well be the most underrated artist of an era (the mid-to-late 90s) that was noticeably lacking in finesse, cleanliness, and prettiness.

Yeah, I love how his art was just LOVELY, nice to look at, clean.

One old favorite whom I had been neglecting in the last few years is Dale Keown, best know for a 2.5 year run on Incredible Hulk, which coincided with some of the best scripts of Peter Allen David's long stint on the Hulk's book.

Here's some stuff I cut and pasted from my 2015 reviews in the Re-Reads thread:





I probably should have said "believability" instead of "verisimilitude," but otherwise my opinion still stands.

A pity that whatever happened to Keown after he got poached by the Image founders happened, resulting in extended periods of inactivity. In recent years, he's done a lot of variant covers for Marvel, but I think they lack that special spark that his early 90s work had.

More timely, considering the gender wars currently being waged within comics fandom, Keown once said that, back in the late 80s, his drawing samples were rudely rejected by the first editor he approached. This jerk --whom I shall not publicize by revealing his name -- allegedly said to Keown, "I can't use you. You draw like a girl."

30 years on, and, despite a lot of female artists, both cis and trans, now actively working in mainstream comics, things haven't really gotten that much better. Sigh.

Another old favorite I'd been taking for granted until just recently is Bill Sienkiewicz.

Maybe that's because, as exceptionally talented as he is, and as impressive as a lot of his stylistic innovations remain, I have to admit I kinda feel he peaked on his controversial year-and-a-half run on New Mutants. He got a bit self-indulgent after that, and he also started doing a lot of crime stories -- not my favorite genre.

Guess I should try to track down affordable copies of the 2 completed Big Numbers issues. I have an old magazine interview with Alan Moore which showcases some very impressive panels from the first issue.

I almost forgot, he also did an adaptation of Moby Dick for First Comics' short lived Classics Illustrated revival. I do have the Count of Monte Cristo adaptation (by Steven Grant & Dan Speigle,) and it's very good. But Sienkiewicz doing Moby Dick sounds iffy. It could be a...incoming pun...washout.

In the end, what matters is that those New Mutants issues hold up pretty damn well. Very few comic book artists, especially those working in mainstream genres, have blended photorealism with neo-expressionism as seamlessly as Bill Sienkiewicz.

Thinking back on Mark Bagley, I just love that long, lean, clean stylized artwork of his, and he really works well with bold colorful costumes that might not 'work' in live-action, but look amazing on the page.

Other artists with that same sort of look, to my eye, are Ron Lim (famous for his Silver Surfer/Infinity Gauntlet work, but also showcased nicely in X-Men 2099) and Brett Booth (lots of amazing Image stuff, and a not-terrible Teen Titans relaunch a few years back that introduced Bunker and the (hopefully) never-to-be-seen again Harvest and Skitter). Both do lean and dynamic figures, and would look great with characters like Spider-Man or Nightcrawler or Nightwing or Timber Wolf, all fast-moving and flexible and acrobatic.

I definitely have a thing for that sort of art.

And bold colors! I remember when Cyberforce came out from Image (from Marc Silvestri), and I couldn't even recognize the artist I'd basically ignored from his run on the X-Men previously, because the rich vibrant colors just made his characters *pop* in ways that the X-Men never had. I feel like, with the same colorist behind him, he could have made an amazing Legion artist, with all those colorful costumes, like Cham and Lu's purple and orange outfits, and the greens and reds on characters like Violet, Jo and Mon.

Mark Bagley and Ron Lim...yes, now that you mention it, Set, I can see some stylistic entwining there! Good catch!

My favorite work of Lim's is a handful of his Silver Surfer issues that start with the one that has the Imperial Guard cameo and climax with the one that has the Tyrant vs Galactus battle. In-yer-face cosmic spectacle at its best!

Neither Brett Booth nor Marc Silvestri have ever done much for me, personally, but when you opined that Silvestri would've made a good Legion artist, that reminded me that one of the few really good things to come out of the Retroboot was that *awesome* batch of variant covers by Jim Lee -- he's one artist that I feel peaked just before he became a super-star (Uncanny X-Men 275, with the climax to the Savage Land arc and the start of the Shi'ar/Skrulls arc,) and has rarely scaled those heights since then. Those Legion covers are one of those times where the old guy showed he still has it -- especially the Saturn Girl one.

Mike Deodato (whom I hear has recently retired from Marvel, and possibly from comics altogether) has an interesting history with me.

Because while today I can appreciate the better 90s art by Jim Lee and the other Image Founders, I vocally hated that look back in the actual 90s. It was just so blasted ubiquitous, and I have always been contrary by nature. And so when Deodato began working for American publishers in a blatant emulation of the Image Founders (especially Jim Lee,) I reeled. Especially because the first two regular series he did were Avengers (on which his predecessor was Steve Epting, one of my personal Top Three artists) and Wonder Woman (whose first Post-Crisis series I'd never cared much for in the first place, but she was still a character I considered completely inappropriate for that over-the-top boobs-and-butts look.)

So when I returned to comics in the mid-2000s, I was pleasantly surprised to see how much more nuanced, understated, fluid, and unique his style had become. Now it was less like Jim Lee and more like an update of the early 70s Marvel House Style (Deodato's inventive use of shadows, in particular, hearkened to Gene Colan in his prime.)

And, more recently, when I filled in gaps in my collection of Darkstars back issues (don't laugh -- for about 10 months, Darkstars almost fulfilled its potential), I found that even though Deodato's Darkstars covers had been done around the same time as Avengers and Wonder Woman, they seemed somehow...purer, less affected, like Deodato was being much truer to himself. Do a Google Images search, and you'll see what I mean.

Most recent of all, I borrowed the 2016 trade collecting all of Deodato's Wonder Woman issues, and I must admit, as garish and bombastic as they still look, I actually find it...refreshing! Because even though there are several (mostly female-identifying) comics artists who are currently doing exciting and fun things with this art form, I find there is far too much modern comics art that is lazy, flat, stiff, and dull. Whatever else Deodato's 90s work was (and his Avengers work still looks horribly sloppy today,) it wasn't boring!

My personal Top 10 Marvel stories by my personal favorite comic book artist, John Buscema, in order of publication:

- Avengers #49-50 (Versus Magneto and Typhon, featuring a kick-ass one-on-one fight between Hercules and Typhon; also inked by JB himself!)

- Sub-Mariner #4 (Namor vs Attuma, with Dorma indirectly saving her beloved; gorgeous inks by Frank Giacoia)

- Silver Surfer #3 (The first, and best, Surfer vs Mephisto battle; JB's visions of hell, magnificently inked by Joe Sinnott, are worthy of the Night on Bald Mountain sequence from Disney's Fantasia!)

- Captain Marvel #18 (One of the brightest spots of JB's erratic 1969-1970 output, even though he only drew half the issue after default Mar-Vell artist Gil Kane took ill; JB seems genuinely inspired from having to equal Kane's dynamics)

- Avengers #83-84 (Lady Liberators, Enchantress, the return of Arkon; inked by Tom Palmer)

- Fantastic Four #129-130 (Thundra's debut appearances, these issues blow away most of JB's other efforts on F4; Steranko hardcore collectors note, he drew the cover to 130!)

- Conan the Barbarian #59 (The origin of Conan's greatest love, Belit the pirate queen, who had just been introduced in the previous issue)

- Avengers #262 (Hercules vs Namor, but it's all in fun; Captain America then asks his old friend Namor to join the team; inks by Tom Palmer)

- Wolverine #7-8 (Guest-starring the Hulk during his Las Vegas mob thug Mr. Fixit era, and inked by JB himself)

- Conan the Rogue OGN (I've raved about this one in earlier posts in this thread; in brief, it's JB's ultimate statement with his favorite character; imagine if the Conan movie had been directed not by John Milius, but instead by Mario Bava or Sergio Leone)

Thoughts on some of the artists previously named in this thread whom I did not mention nor comment on until now:

Mike Allred: I am finally learning to appreciate him, after resisting for years, just because of my stupid, contrary "he's hip, so he must be overrated" attitude. A lot of it has to do with my appreciation in recent years of his friend, the late, great Darwyn Cooke, who worked in a similar not-retro-but-something-far-richer vein. Also, I find his lifelong commitment to positivity and his can-do spirit about everything to be very inspiring.

Mike Turner: I had a look recently at some of his early art (the Ballistic mini-series that Set mentions,) and I like it. It's very derivative of the Image Founders at this point, but in the best possible way. As for his recurring problem with over-endowing his female characters, hey -- so did Wallace Wood, and that didn't make him any less of a genius.

Alan Davis: I guess I didn't say anything because I've raved about him so much in other threads, both in this forum and the Legion one. His combination of warmth, whimsy, high-octane layouts, and generous (but never excessive) detail has made me a fan since I first saw his work -- Summer 1991, when I was first getting into superhero comics and happened to spot a plug for his return to Excalibur as writer/artist. The rest is history.

Bryan Talbot: Pure, unadulterated brilliance as both artist and writer. Luther Arkwright is one of the few works which could genuinely be said to have reinvented genre fiction in comics. His work on Nemesis the Warlock outdoes even the character's signature artist, Kevin O'Neill -- and not just because Talbot's style is prettier, though that does have a bit to do with it.

More to come...

Alan Davis: I think my first Alan Davis (unless he drew some Doctor Who) was in the Mighty World of Marvel, after the departure of Alan Moore from Captain Britain. I think it was written Jamie Delano, who wrote those excellent early Hellblazer issues. It concerned the aftermath of the Warp and Meggan.

Cap's heroic stature was matched just as well in Davis' work by Meggan's ferocity and her two friends warmth and selflessness. Davis made an instant impression. I probably picked up a few scatterings of his UK work through DR & Quinch in 2000AD and then the reprints of Harry Twenty on the High Rock. I probably caught his X-Men issues before I had the pennies to go hunting for issues of Warrior or his Moore Captain Britain work. One exception would be that big trade paperback they did showing the stories between Alan Moore on Captain Britain and the launch of Excalibur. He gives such a classic look, while still able to provide plenty of emotion and action across any number of settings.

Bryan Talbot: Like my DC reading, there was a large gap between my first issue and the next. With DC, I had to build myself up to spending my pennies on a second issue. 2000AD may have been a case of parental persuasion to replace other titles. While my first DC book would be the one that got me, it was the second 2000AD one that pulled me in, and the cover was by Bryan Talbot.

The story was Nemesis. He was protecting an alternate Victorian Empire against an assassination squad of ABC Warriors. The detail was spectacular, yet not at the cost of any of the action or character. I didn't even realise there was an extra twist with the heroic history of the ABC Warriors, or the dark deeds of Nemesis. Outside 2000AD I got an copy of Near Myths. That contained a chapter of Luther Arkwright and I was caught. Valkyrie Press continued the work and then Dark Horse. My Avatar is a Talbot too Later, we got Heart of Empire, The Tale of One Bat Rat and Alice in Sunderland.

2000AD Cover



Luthor






Mike Allred: I read Madman for ages. I couldn't tell you what the plot was. I couldn't tell you who was in the cast. I just remember it as being a relaxing, quirky fun read. Easily good enough for my pull list.

There is one artist who has done a lot of work I like, but whom I only mentioned once in this thread, and in a disparaging manner:



So consider this post a much-belated corrective.

It does have to be said that Byrne's public persona gets under a lot of people's skins. I am no exception, having gone through extended phases of dismissing even his best work on that basis.

Today, I feel like I have arrived at a place where I can finally separate the art from the artist -- and quite a bit of that art is pretty damn good.

The very first trade paperback I ever bought was Byrne and Chris Claremont's "X-Men: The Dark Phoenix Saga," at my local Book Stop (anyone remember Book Stop?) in 1991. I looked through it again a couple days ago, and Byrne's art (abetted by Terry Austin's inking and Glynis Oliver's coloring) still holds up beautifully. So pristine yet so rich in detail. So dynamic, yet never bombastic. Equally excellent in both the "loud moments" and the "quiet moments."

I would go so far as to say that, during the late 1970s and the beginning of the 1980s, Byrne could do no wrong artistically. I do respect those who feel that he shouldn't have become his own inker and scripter (an opinion I myself held for years,) but I have come to greatly appreciate both his long run on Fantastic Four and his shorter, but still substantial, run on Alpha Flight (characters Byrne created who got the "backdoor pilot" treatment during the Byrne/Claremont X-Men era.)

It's when he moves to DC in the mid-1980s that his work starts to get more problematic for me, but then almost everything about DC from about 1967 on has gotten problematic for me of late. But his end-of-the-decade return to Marvel does nothing positive for me, either. Nor, really, anything Byrne has done since then.

However, since this thread is intended to praise artists, not bury them, I will stop there and let other posters sing the praises of his work from Man of Steel to the semi-retirement of the present day.

Alan Davis, much like Jeff Moy, really captures a sort of child-like innocence and joy and also wide-eyed terror, every feeling writ large on the expressive faces they specialize in. I like that, for certain sorts of books, but don't feel like it works for every story or every character. Art Adams' style isn't quite as 'soft' to my eye, but also goes to that same well, with big (sometimes comically distorted) smiles in the place of wide emotive eyes.

Alan Davis and Art Adams are also two of the very few artists who I think did imaginative justice to Bill Sienkiewicz's creation, Warlock from "New Mutants."

Very true. Under other artists, Warlock sometimes looked like an artist's doodle, more than an actual character who belonged on the page, but I remember in the New Mutants annual set in Asgard, in particular, he was drawn in such a way as to show emotion and react (the picture where Hela appears and he points, and a tiny face on his index finger is screaming, and the speech bubble says, 'Scream!' is just hilariously meta) that is both cartoonish, and yet doesn't detract from the seriousness of the surrounding narrative, which was a juggling act that not many artists have been able to pull off successfully. (A struggle for characters like Deadpool, Rocket Raccoon and Squirrel Girl, as well, IMO, finding a balance between artistically portraying 'whacky' and playful, without degenerating into farce.)

If I had the money to buy pages of original comic book art, the story I'd most want is the Uncanny X-Men/New Teen Titans inter-company team up, drawn by Walter Simonson & Terry Austin:

http://legionworld.net/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=143590

The main reason is that it's the only one of the original four inter-company books that was not printed in the oversize "tabloid" format.

As beautiful as it as in the standard format, the thought of being able to see it at the size it was actually drawn...wow.

BUMP

For Lardy, who recently mentioned in the Anywhere Machine forum that the writers of the DC television shows made a particularly nasty metafictional insult to John Byrne by naming a fictional human trafficker after him.

Hope this helps you feel better.

There are some comics folk where I can separate the creator from the created, and appreciate, say, the writing of Morrison, while finding the man himself to be... a bit curmudgeonly and off-putting, or the art of John Byrne, while noting that he's got issues by the spinner rack, or the writing of Jim Shooter, who is apparently impossible to get along with.

And then there's creatives who I hear bad stuff about, like Rob Liefield purportedly screwing over / cheating other people at Image, and I also happen to dislike their art/writing/tiny stinky feet/whatever, so it just doubles the heat of my burning disdain.

All good examples. Thank you, Set.

I have to admit that my opinion of Neal Adams' work has been somewhat tainted by nasty accusations -- stories of him contradicting his stance on creators' rights by treating his proteges badly and disrespecting his collaborators (the latter is amply on display in the Green Lantern/Green Arrow stories, where he basically imposed his counterpoint to Denny O'Neil's opinions in an increasingly dissonant way.)

And then there's the strange case of a wonderful Golden Age artist named Jack Burnley. Overlooked by historians despite working in a style similar to Mac Raboy or Reed Crandall, poor Mr. Burnley would be unheard of today were it not for the vocal admiration of Starman scribe James Dale Robinson, whom I find overrated as a writer and nigh-impossible to like as person. So I feel I have to give Robinson credit for that, at least.

Gil Kane.

It's not easy for me to put aside his remarkable qualities as a person and focus mainly on his work. But I'll do my best.

I'll start out by admitting that I was a skeptic in my misspent youth. Kane inked by Kane, in particular, turned me off with the choppy lines, lack of proper shading, and ugly faces. But even then I could appreciate how a softer, more shadowy inking style, such as those of Wallace Wood or John Romita Senior (or, to a lesser extent, Sid Greene or Murphy Anderson), could do a remarkable job of bringing out Kane's artistic strengths.

Kane was an intense, passionate individual, and from about 1965 on, those qualities consistently shone on the pages he produced. Green Lantern circa issues 35 through 50, along with the concurrent issues of Atom (as well as a short but very sweet 1968 run on Captain Action), was an astonishing display of Hogarthian anatomy and Kirbyesque dynamics, with a generous side portion of lyricism derived from the best Golden Age artists such as Lou Fine and Reed Crandall. Much as I love John Buscema, I think the title "Michelangelo of Comics" is better suited to Gil Kane. Especially since the men are far more sensually rendered than the women, just as it arguably was with that particular Old Master. This homoerotic aspect of Kane was not lost on his peers and editors, to the point where Stan Lee was alleged to have been unnerved by Kane's style, and that is why Kane only began to get more work from Marvel than DC only after Roy Thomas began taking over most (and eventually all) of Lee's editorial responsibilities.

Gil Kane's work from his Bronze Age Marvel years is often criticized as being amped up to the point of wearing down the reader. And while I think that is a legitimate criticism of some of his lesser interior art, I also believe there are plenty of examples where he regulates the intensity to produce a reading experience that is not exhausting, but rather exhilarating -- Captain Mar-Vell, Warlock, Iron Fist, John Carter, What If, select issues of Amazing Spider-Man and Daredevil. And then there were the covers -- I *love* Kane's Marvel covers, especially when they were inked by John Romita. If anything, Bronze Age Gil Kane was probably better suited to covers than interiors.

As the 70s gave way to the 80s, Kane was increasingly at odds with Marvel's then-EiC Jim Shooter, who had quickly developed a tendency to impose a uniform look to the publishers output -- rigid six-panel grids and a profusion of medium shots. This, ironically, was exactly what Kane had rebelled against at DC in the mid-60s. So it was understandable that he'd expand his horizons (newspaper strips, animation storyboards and designs, a return to DC) until he'd left Marvel altogether (though he did return after Shooter left, and probably would have done more work for them had it not been for a near-fatal health scare at the end of the 80s.) Most notable of his second run at DC were, of course, his Superman stories, as noted by Lardy in the Bronze Age Superman thread. These are a near-perfect culmination of his various artistic passions -- even Kane's own inking is rarely less than good.

During the 90s, Kane's work generally stayed close to the quality level of the 80s Superman art, and by the time he passed away in 2000 at the age of 74, his legacy was assured. Fittingly, a Superman Elseworlds that Kane was unable to complete was finished by none other than John Buscema, with the always-remarkable Kevin Nowlan keeping the ink style consistent.

Gil Kane's body of work is a remarkable one, evolving from near-anonymity to near-overwhelming power to near-perfect balance. His articulate opinions and insights, faithfully chronicled by the fan press with whom he cultivated a wise elder statesman relationship, combine with the artwork to keep that special Kane fire burning brightly.

One artist who I have not seen mentioned in this thread is Tony Harris. His work on the early Starman issues was a major draw for me, he made Opal City and its characters come alive with his unique style.

While Tony Harris's Starman work does not appeal to my personal tastes, I do appreciate his art as being in a style very much his own. And I do like Harris's Legion covers from around the middle of the DnA era.

Carmine infantino and gil Kane were the first artists whose art I could recognize Without checking the credits of the book, so I have a soft spot for them, but I wouldn?t call them favorites. (In fact, I remember being bewildered when Gil Kane was put on Wonder Woman bc I thought it was such a bad fit.)

Bill Siekiewicz was the first artist that truly turned my crank, as it were. Man, how I loved his style. Moon Knight and then... Demon Bear and Warlock!

Keith Giffen?s style during most of his Legion Work really made me happy, although I know that is not an opinion shared by many people here. Great future tech.

I loved the dark foreboding of Olivier Coipel?s art.

Today, I love the crisp cleanness and facial expressions of Jamie McKelvie, and the weird, expressive puffiness of Frank Quitely. And Nick Dragotta?s work. He draws a very expressive nasty, mean face.

Rokk Steady, thank you for mentioning Coipel and Quitely. Both of them took a while to grow on me, but today I adore both their styles.

I, too, like Coipel's flair for the dark and the foreboding. I can't think of anyone better at drawing Umbra-slash-Shadow Lass, and the displays of her powers. I love how he portrayed Saturn Girl's powers, too.

Quitely is a whole school of art unto himself. I think his frequent collaborator Grant Morrison nailed it when he noted the influences of early 20th century newspaper-funnies pioneers and of early 1930s Disney animation.

A wonderful 2018 interview with Frank Quitely that I found a couple days ago:

https://www.syfy.com/syfywire/comic...nterview-looks-back-on-his-iconic-career

Turns out one of his key influences was none other than John Buscema. Yay! No wonder I came around to loving Quitely's art.

Kane never did Wonder Woman interiors. You might be thinking of his brief run on Teen Titans, where he drew the original origin story for Wonder Girl. But I agree, he was not a good fit for that kind of thing. He was almost equally "miscast" on the Batgirl feature.

One very good artist I had been taking for granted until recently was Carlos Pacheco. But when I just skimmed through my favorite block of Flash issues (Waid's v2 run #75-100, The Return of Barry Allen through Terminal Velocity), I noticed that Pacheco's two full issues (93 and 94, the 2nd & 3rd appearances of Bart Allen,) really stood out to me in contrast to the artists who preceded and followed him, Mike Wieringo and Salvador Larocca. Pacheco's style was not quite yet fully formed, but compared to Ringo's hard-hitting angularity and Larocca's lack of distinction (at that early point in his career,) it's very impressive -- dynamic yet clean, with nice curvy lines.

This immediately put me in mind of how I have always felt that Pacheco was one of the very few outstanding artists to emerge during the overall stultifying blandness of late 90s/early 00s superhero art. At his best, Pacheco refined what had been most promising about his early work into an easily recognizable style that combined smooth draftsmanship with energetic, gut-punching layouts. At the time, I was buying very few superhero comics, but I almost always made an exception for Pacheco, especially his spectacular work on the Avengers Forever maxi-series. I do have to admit that I started losing interest when he started doing his own writing on Fantastic Four, and that the last time I was actively paying attention to Pacheco was more than 10 years ago, when he did a very bland tag-team job with Doug Mahnke on Final Crisis, after J.G. Jones was unable to follow through on his commitment.

^^Update on Carlos Pacheco:

I finally read 2018's "The Life of Captain Marvel" mini-series starring Carol Danvers. Carlos drew all the present-day sequences, and very well, too. Even if the mad energy of his vintage work is largely gone, he can still out-draw most of the people who have come along in the last 15 years.

So, nice to see Carlos has still got it. Unfortunately, the story itself is a mixture of SyFy Channel Original Movie cheese and Hallmark Channel treacle. So I'd only recommend it if you're a lapsed Carlos Pacheco fan like me.

I feel like if I tried to compile a list like this, at least half the artists would be from the "alternative" age. That is, becoming known in the mid-eighties or later... and not primarily for superheroes.

It'd be hard to do. Once in awhile I'll take a deep dive into current webcomics, and some of those have really terrific art, too.

Good point, Cleome. This thread has been rather superhero-heavy until now.

Maybe it's time for it to evolve.

I would have to have Mary Fleener and Gilbert Hernandez on my list. No question about it.

I tend to prefer the previous generation of off-the-beaten-path comics artists, from when it was called "underground" rather than "alternative."

Diane Noomin (whom I've been told I vaguely resemble) and Aline Kominsky-Crumb are only a little younger than my mom, but their work resonates with me more than artists closer to my own age.

And having said that, I do like both Mary Fleener and Gilbert Hernandez a great deal.

My favorite artist from the milieu of Noomin and Kominsky-Crumb is probably Carol Tyler. I sold off my issues of Drawn & Quarterly that she was in a few years ago. It was with a somewhat heavy heart. But I'll always treasure her feel for color and line.

If we are going beyond super-hero artists I'm going to put in a vote for my two favourite duck artists, Carl Barks and Don Rosa. Of course in both cases part of the appeal was their writing as well.

Barks really reinvented the way to look at funny animal characters. His clear lines and detailed worlds tied with his adventure stories to create three dimensional characters out of slapstick movie fill-ins. He made them "people" you cared about instead of just something worth a few chuckles.

Don Rosa tried to follow and expand on Barks legacy and to a large extent succeeded. Barks is still my favourite but Rosa was able to add in some of the techniques developed in later years to good effect.

As I said it is pretty impossible to separate their art from their writing but picking up one of their comics will always bring a smile to my face.

Cleome, I like Carol Tyler, but the reason I prefer Noomin and Kominsky-Crumb is the way that they soften the harsher stuff by filtering it through the farcical antics of their over-the-top alter-egos. Tyler sometimes cuts too deep for my personal comfort.

Stile, I've been a Barks fan since before I could walk or talk. My parents were both fans when they were kids, so they raised me on Barks reprints. I agree with your description of Barks's innovations to the funny animal genre.

Not that crazy about Don Rosa personally, but I do love the Italian Disney stories from the 70s: great artwork by Giorgio Cavazzano, Giovan Battista Carpi, Romano Scarpa, Massimo DeVita, Gino Esposito, Sergio Asteriti, Giulio Chierchini, Franco Lostaffa...and the writers included none other than Jerry Siegel!

Never knew Jerry Seigel wrote some duck stories. Cool.

A number of recent posts in more than one LW forum have inspired me to work harder at keeping this thread vital. The most crucial was this one from Cleome in the current Kill This Thread game in Spaceopoly:


Suddenly, what should have become obvious to me a long time ago finally hit me like a falling ten-ton weight in an old cartoon:

This thread is in serious need of gender diversity! True (and thanks again to Cleome,) we had the recent posts about underground/alternative/indie artists, most of whom are female-identified, but what about all the women who *have* done genre work over the decades?

I hope this post will be only the first step in remedying that. I'll start with my some of favorite current female genre artists (of whom there's been an explosion in the past ten years alone) and work my way further and further back in the past. First up:

Sara Pichelli (whom I did mention earlier here when she placed in my personal all-time Top Ten list)

Now in her late 30s, she is a former animator who switched fields and broke into comics in the mid-2000s. Like a lot of female-identifying genre artists, her work has a great deal of expressiveness in such a way that it never comes across as smarmy, nor treacly, nor cliche. Her line is loose and often angular, but her obvious knowledge of the basics of drawing, combined with a compositional gift similar to that which Cleome identified in her Cynthia Martin post) makes Pichelli both accessible and distinctive. Her breakthrough was a single arc of Runaways with writer Kathryn Immonen, collected in the Runaways: Homeschooling trade. Pichelli reteamed with Immonen for the equally charming miniseries X-Men: Pixie Strikes Back before becoming one of the go-to artists for the ever-controversial (and sometimes interesting, honest) writer Brian Michael Bendis. Their co-creation of Miles Morales, the second Ultimate Spider-Man who now inhabits Marvel's canon universe alongside Peter Parker and the whole Spider-Family, is a breakthrough that cannot be underestimated -- Miles is a biracial superhero (part Black and part Latin) who has managed, in his decade or so of existence, to never suffer the indignities and stereotypes visited upon so many of the non-white superpeople who preceded him. Pichelli followed that up with a brief but memorable run on Guardians of the Galaxy (also written, at the time, by Bendis.) When she was announced as the artist on the much-hyped 2018 relaunch of the Fantastic Four, her future looked bright. Then, for whatever reason, she left F4 after only the first 3 issues -- but at least she stayed around long enough to introduce a potentially awesome new cosmic villainess, the Griever At the End of Time, and to kill the Molecule Man, a character I passionately hate (by now, he's probably been brought back, but I'll always treasure the panel of Griever zapping him good and dead.)

She has been low on the radar since then, but with her frequent collaborator Bendis no longer DC Exclusive, I think she will most likely make a richly deserved return to the spotlight.

I've also edited in a couple posts from another forum with examples of Pichelli's work:

https://legionworld.net/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=913579#Post913579

https://legionworld.net/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=913580#Post913580

Good idea. As I think I have mentioned I often fail to note who the artists are on what I read but I do enjoy the information I read here so please keep it coming.

Will do. Thanks for the support and encouragement, Stile.

Nope, still dead... I read my buddy Mike's copy of the latest FF last night. Reed managed to rescue Dragon Man and the Future Foundation kids, and Bentley, their resident brainiac, commented to Val that he'd only been able to recover one atom of Molecule Man. The next issue is a big confrontation with the Griever, who wants to kill a powerless Franklin...

Hmmm. Thanks for the heads-up, Pov. Could you please also spoil how the next issue turns out after you read it? I have a feeling she's going to be defeated in a way that's just as lame as in the third issue.

Three artists I enjoy, who happen to be female, are Fiona Staples (Saga), Pia Guerra (Y: The Last Man) and Becky Cloonan (Conan the Barbarian: "Queen of the Black Coast" for Dark Horse, American Virgin). I also love Amanda Connor's style.

I like all three of those artists, too, Lardy. Especially FiFi.

Regarding Amanda, I think she's a great talent, and I actually met her at a convention back in the late 90s, long before she became a superstar, and it's a very nice memory. I asked her to autograph one of her Barbie issues for my little cousin, whose name is also Amanda, and she was more than happy to do it.

I think that no matter what anyone's opinion of Harley Quinn is (I'm not a fan,) there's no reason to begrudge Amanda her success with the character. Amanda is a dues-payer several times over, and she is the first female artist to have an across-the-board success in the superhero genre. Respect.

The artists most recently added to this thread:

Sara Pichelli (by me)

Fiona Staples (by Lardy/Paladin)

Pia Guerra (by Lardy/Paladin)

Becky Cloonan (by Lardy/Paladin)

Amanda Conner (by Lardy/Paladin)




Today they are joined by Sophie Campbell, who is an out-and-proud transwoman, and the first openly trans artist to get high-profile gigs on well-known Intellectual Properties, namely Jem and the Holograms, which I love, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, which I've never really gotten into. Like some of the artists listed at the top of this post, Sophie's work is quirky, playful, highly influenced by manga/anime, and always on just the right side of cartoony. On the Jem series, she did a favor for all women by portraying a diversity of body types, most notably making both Aja from the Holograms and Stormer from the Misfits full-figured and happy about it. She was also instrumental in having mainstream comics deal with LGBTQ issues directly, although that particular Jem issue was a controversial one even within the LGBTQ community (as discussed by Sarcasm Kid and I, at the end of the Jem thread I linked to above.)

Artists I love who work in more traditional, representational styles include Paulina Ganucheau (although she's just as good whenever she goes in a more cartoonish direction,) and Jen Bartel

And, of course, Emanuela Lupacchino.