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

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.

I stumbled across a woman artist the other day (well her work anyway - no actual physical contact with the lady herself) who while not necessarily a standout artist for me, I was astonished to discover the extent of her contribution and influence on Silver Age Marvel, and that is Marie Severin. She drew dozens of early Marvel comics such as Strange Tales, Tales to Astonish, The Incredible Hulk, Peter Parker: The Spectacular Spiderman, Sub-Mariner, What If..?, as well as Crazy, What the, Not Brand Ecch, and many others and even more covers. She is credited as co-creator on such things as Dormammu, Jessica Drew, Living Tribunal, Serpent Crown, and numerous others.

Her style back then was very much in line with the rest of the Marvel silver age style and I am impressed and pleased that as a woman artist in the 50s and 60s she was given so many frontline comics. She has been awarded a number times and I am not really surprised.

I wouldn't call her one of my favourite artists but I thought she fitted in with this conversatin and deserved to be mentioned.

Thanks, Stlie.

Yep, back in the Silver Age there were Marie Severin at Marvel and Ramona Fradon (co-creator of Metamorpho) at DC. And they were the only women artists actively working in mainstream comics at that time. Some of the younger female artists in the underground, notably Trina Robbins, did see potential in the superhero genre to evolve in more female-friendly direction, but the genre itself really does need to reckon with making comic books and comics-fandom such a retrograde, misogynous environment.

I suppose that's already happening as I type this, what with Warren Ellis and other men of power in the industry being called on the carpet for their predatory behavior. And superheroes do continue to progress into something more positive, but a glacial pace.

I would be remiss if I didn't mention the handful female artists who, in the 80s, did follow Severin and Fradon into the super-belly of the super-beast -- Colleen Doran, Mary Wilshire, the aforementioned Cynthia Martin, and my personal favorite of that generation, June Brigman (co-creator of Power Pack.)

I suppose Amanda Conner, who broke into comics at the end of the 80s, should be considered the bridge between The Dark Ages of the late 20th Century and the slightly more enlightened present day.

Just want to mention that I loves me some Ramona Fradon!

There are of course a handful of Golden Age female comics artists, such as Tarpe Mills, who created Miss Fury, and Barbara Hall, who worked on Black Cat and the Girl Commandos for Harvey.

Thank you, EDE.

It's great how we can always rely on you to fill us in on what was going on during the Golden Age.

Lately, I've been thinking that Chuck Patton, who left comics more than 30 years ago for a successful career in animation, would definitely qualify for my personal criteria of good, solid, all-around capable drawing. His work on JL Detroit holds up a lot better than the stories do.

I was just looking at his Wikipedia entry, and it turns out that the proverbial final straw for him was that he almost drew the Las Vegas Era of Peter David's Hulk run, only to back out after editorial pressure to draw in the same style as Todd McFarlane. That really angers me, because I consider that Era to be excellently written but horribly drawn. What might have been...

Second on Chuck Patton. He had the unenviable job of following Perez on Justice League and knocked it out of the park.

Also wanted to add a vote for Joelle Jones. Her issues were some of my favorites of King's Batman run, leading me to seek out her other work.

Thanks, Rob. And I'd forgotten to add that Patton's Vixen is to my mind the definitive version.

Thanks, too, for bringing Joelle Jones to my attention.

Jose Luis Garcia Lopez on *Atari Force* !

He always knew just what to leave in and what to leave out. <3 I also loved Eduardo Barreto, who inherited the book from him.

[ETA - I think we already had a whole thread devoted to Gene Colan. What a talent he was, too.]

Garcia Lopez never disappointed me, even when the scripts were not so good. Same with Barreto -- I love the one issue of Legion that he drew, with Shadow Lass trying to find a way to get Mon El healed after the Time Trapper nearly killed him.

Colan was impressively versatile, like all artists of his generation. That said, I'm especially fond of his work on fantasy-horror. I got him to autograph his first two issues of Doctor Strange. Gentleman Gene...I'm grateful I got to meet him and Adrienne.

I think Colan had the ability to look fully absorbed in (or by) whatever genre they placed him in, though I guess his special fondness was for horror/suspense. But you never got the feeling he was a "fan favorite" dropping down from Olympus to wow all the regulars before disappearing back to pursue whatever he was really into. He just fit in seamlessly wherever they sent him. <3

J'emm was a great book, and his Ragamuffins work for Eclipse really stood out at a time when slice-of-life stories were years away from being hip and attracting mainstream critics.

Amen to that. Colan's generation in a nutshell.


More good stuff for me to track down. Thanks, Cleome.

You all know I'm a big Joe Prado fan specifically because of his take on Lightning Lad from Action Comics.

Rick Mays draws some incredibly beautiful men with the right balance of masculinity and femininity in their features.

Jill Thompson's artistic abilities are versatile and she's capable of utilizing a lot of different styles but retaining her own signature touch so you know it's her

Thanks for chiming in, Sarky. I'm mostly familiar with Prado as an inker, and I don't think I've ever seen any of Mays' work. I will look into this.

Thompson I like very much, though, ironically, her best-known work is, for me, tainted by proxy due to its association with Gaiman's Sandman. My dislike of that series and my bewilderment at its popularity are well-documented in this forum.

Thompson did do a lot of work on Morrison's The Invisibles. As I recall from our discussions elsewhere, Sarky, you seem to have given up on that series early-on. I admit it has some problematic aspects, but I think it's worth giving a second chance.

Well I haven't gotten rid of my issues yet so maybe.

Thompson also worked heavily on Wonder Woman during the Perez/Newell era, AND she is of course the creator of Scary Godmother.

Rick Mays is the artist who worked on the Arsenal miniseries with Devin Grayson. He's the one who designed Roy Harper's Navajo-based costume, the best one. He also worked on Nomad, Guy Gardner, Gen13, and Adam Warren's Livewires.

*Ragamuffins* was originally a series of Don McGregor's childhood memoirs which appeared in the original *Eclipse* anthology magazine: before they started producing standalone comics. The entire magazine was in B&W, and Colan's art was printed as un-inked pencils. This gave it a really unique flavor at a time when the likes of Drawn & Quarterly was still over a decade off. Of course, I think Raw and Weirdo were already around back then, but they were more about ironic detachment and art-for-art's sake: though they were also committed to showcasing a wide variety of artistic styles. (And I was still in High School when I first discovered Eclipse. I doubt that I even heard of those last two until I started college.)

McGregor wasn't the greatest writer in the world, but these stories had a directness and instant accessibility that I've always remembered. Each story could say a lot in just a few pages. At some point, Eclipse collected all the stories in a single comic, with coloring. There might still be copies out there. I don't know if I ever picked it up. I might have been put off by the addition of color, which didn't seem necessary even if it made the book more saleable.

http://www.donmcgregor.com/C_ragamuffins.html

Cleome, I did find one used issue of Eclipse that had an installment of Ragamuffins. I thought the story was wonderful, and seeing Gene Colan's uniquely styled pencils uninked was a special treat, the icing on the cake. Thanks again.

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John Buscema is still my top artist, but recently I reached a somewhat unsettling conclusion to something about his work I'd always puzzled over. Namely, why was it that the assignments he claimed to "hate" (i.e. Avengers and superhero teams in general) often turned out so much better than the ones he "liked" (Conan, Silver Surfer, and especially Thor?)

What I now think is that the team books challenged him in ways which forced him to work harder, while the barbarian stuff and the Asgard stuff he could just breeze through with a minimum of effort in order to meet his daily quota of pages (always his main prerogative, as he was very pragmatic about being a good provider to his wife and children.)

And just to clarify, I still regard JB's work on the first 11 issues of Silver Surfer as always good and often great. It's the later issues, and most of his Surfer work from the 80s and 90s, that looks tossed off to me. As for Conan, well, when one works on the same character and setting for a nearly unbroken three-decade run, there will inevitably be peaks and valleys.

Favorite artists? Dang, I don't think we have enough time.

Jose Louis Garcia Lopez. Simple, clean and dynamic. His style guides were used forever, and were so good that they kinda became house styles used over many media formats. And his women were always classic beauties without the hyper sexualization that so many newer artists do. When she's in a fight and you are wondering how she doesn't spill out of her thong that barely covers there, naaaah. But his stuff was always beautiful and powerful.

Wally Wood. There were a couple of issues of the Justice Society he did back in the 70's that I still consider gold standard to this day.

Jim Aparo. I mean, jeez. This guy.

Dick Giordano. His black canary was killer.

Tom Nguyen. I know he's largely known as an inker, but i've seen his artwork and it's just stunning.

Irv Novick. He made the flash for me.

Jimmy Janes. I know a lot of folk don't think of him, but he carried Legion through a bad time story wise and never gets any credit for it. A real shame.

Alex Saviuk. Same for Green Lantern during some really lean writing times.

Romana Fradon. A true classic.

John Byrne. Yeah, I know, but no one can deny that his run on X-men with Terry wasn't an instant classic.

Curt Swan. It seemed kinda stodgy to me when I was a kid, but I think his Superman stuff would have been so much better with better stories to work with in the seventies.

Dick Dillon. Just an absolute powerhouse workhorse.

Jan Duursema. Her Arion was killer.

Nicola Scott. She's been outstanding, love her stuff.

Leonard Kirk. His JSA stuff is just fantastic, and his Supergirl was amazing.

And sooooo many more. Denys Cowan on Question. Cockrum of Course. Lightle and Giffen. Larry Mahlstadt's ink was terrific. Ordway on All Star Squadron. Rich Buckler on All -Star Squadron...

Like I said, the list is many and varied.

And of course my all time favorite Legion artist ... Mike Grell.