Preface?

I wrote a piece about three topics recently in which I mentioned a few of the random comic book artists I like and would follow no matter the title or character. I didn't mention specifically the good writers I respect, like Neil Gaiman, Alan Moore, John Byrne, maybe John Ostrander. This was more about artists, or those really cool creators who both write and pencil the work.

What I've done for this post is go through my collection and find the random things some of the guys I named have done and have some pictures. The guys I named were Frank Miller, Tim Truman, Mike Mignola, Mike Allred, and my favorite superhero artist, Joe Quesada.

Todd McFarlane and Jim Lee and Erik Larson and Sam Kieth and Greg Capullo...the powerhouse of the Image comics lineup, while spectacular, aren't really for me. I recognized the skills, but I wasn't around while they were cutting their teeth on things like Spider-Man and the Hulk, and I always felt like going with them would be just too easy and trendy. I found my own guys I liked.

Tom Mandrake's a guy I liked, but he was the artist for a specific title I read, and I'll be getting to that one in due time.

Okay, so...Frank Miller has become mostly famous lately because of the movies made from his Sin City and 300 properties, two collections I have pretty much have all of. I first found Sin City in 1991, when it was that weird smelling paper and nothing but stark black and white, expressive silhouettes, and adolescent boy fantasy. I started then and followed it going forward. 300 was beautiful, while "based of historical events", was a fun comic miniseries.

Here's my random Frank Miller comic:

It's designed to look like an old "Tales from the Crypt" book, and has three stories, all written and illustrated by Miller. The first is a Lance Blastoff story, the first story with this character, reprinted from the A-variant cover of "Dark Horse Presents #100", but in color for the first time. The second story is a Sin City tale, and the third story is an original Lance Blastoff tale. The different styles between the two Blastoff stores is interesting; the first is the original, and the original was initially done in the black-and-white Sin City style, the stark contrasting that fans are used to. In this edition, it's colored in, but retains a bit of the original blocky flair. The second Blastoff story is similar to the cover, closer in style to a space-comic.

Tim Truman is the next guy, and his style is much different. I can't really describe the design, but "un-flashy" may be a start. He tends to bring in elements of the old west and science fiction, blending them seemlessly with his unique artwork. At first I was not a fan, but it grew on me. His most famous work may be his screwball Jonah Hex mini-series', the one of which I have is "Riders of the Worm and Such". An early project that Truman created for the small publisher Eclipse was called Scout. In this post-apocalyptic tale the main character is an Apache warrior, because in Truman's own words, "who else would still be surviving?"

He was given the reins to a title I followed, Turok, Dinosaur Hunter, and drew and wrote issues 7, 8, and 9 with it's own contained story line. Here's the cover for #7, with Turok, the dinosaurs, and the Spider-people, who Truman brought into the Lost World. Up until this story line, Turok was one of the sleekest looking, dinosaur killing Miwoks ever presented in comic form. With this issue, I remember thinking, WTF? What did they do to my character? Eventually I came to like the artist and found some of his older books and kept an eye out for his newer ones.

Mike Mignola has become "famous", kinda, also, with the two Hellboy movies. Hellboy was Mignola's creation when he left the constricting gigs and was given more freedom. One of the earliest works he did is seen here, an off-regular-timeline tale of Batman, "Gotham by Gaslight." This story is set in London in the late nineteenth century, where the Wayne's are wealthy philanthropists, get gunned down, and young Bruce does his thing, and eventually we get Batman tracking down Jack the Ripper. The cover below shows off the basis of Mignola's eventual off-kilter Hellboy look.

Mike Allred is a different story. His comic here is anything but random. He's spent many a year trying to forge a career outside the mainstream, and created his most famous character, Madman, a few years before getting this almost-major company, Dark Horse, to publish a new series. The colors are eye-popping, the action is cartoony and anachronistic, and the plots are bizarre enough to be fun as hell. I have an even more random and harder to find book by Allred, from an even smaller imprint, but I'm trying to raise awareness to Madman. Allred sued Warner Brothers Animation for their character Freakazoid, who looks almsot exactly like Madman, except he's got a purple suit with a black exclamation point. I think they settled, or Allred dropped the case because he couldn't afford the court costs. He's since worked on Superman and a few other things, but his unmistakable character design always catches the eye.

Ah, on to my favorite superhero artist, and candidate for simply favorite comic artist, Joe Quesada. This is the third, and last, issue of Ninjak that Joe Quesada worked on. His work for Valiant was fast and bright. He did some covers for Solar, did the for Bloodshot #0, did the entire X-O Manowar #0, and the first three issues of Ninjak. I'm pretty sure that's all the Quasada Valiant work. Seems so bizarre, thinking about it now. Even now, fans like me can pick his work up easily.

Maybe this is some kind of introduction to a lengthy attempt to discuss my time with comics and how it's evolved through the years.

No, this isn't an introduction, it's more of a preface. A tiny taste.

Look at all the pretty pictures!