by Scott Tipton
July 6, 2005
HERE WE GO AGAIN – COMICS 101’s TOP 5 ARTISTS
It’s that time of year again, kiddies: Comic-Con International is here, or rather, almost here, which means that the next few weeks will be somewhat abbreviated here at COMICS 101, as I make ready to prepare for booth construction, panel attendance, stocking up with necessary supplies for the week, and the million and one other details involved in both working the world’s largest comics and pop-culture event in a professional capacity, and trying to see everything there is to see, while at the same time doing a year’s worth of shopping for rare comics, toys and memorabilia. I love this time of year, I tells ya. Christmas in July.
And since my “Top 5 Writers” column of a few weeks back seemed to be well-received (and hotly contested as well, if the mail is any indication), why not go back to the well once more with an even more subjective category: Top 5 Artists. I’ve previously admitted in these pages my tendency to follow writers more so than artists in terms of picking up or dropping books, which actually makes my voting criteria even easier for this one: Whose work will I always pick up, no matter who’s writing it or what the book is?
5. Alan Davis: I’ve always been a tremendous fan of Alan Davis. His work first came to my attention back in the ‘80s, in his short-lived but memorable run on DETECTIVE COMICS with writer Mike W. Barr. Davis was one of the first artists in years to really accentuate Robin’s youth, rendering him much shorter and slighter than the Dark Knight, making for a very dramatic contrast that had been missing from the characters since the 1940s. His style incorporates a cartoonier edge that I find very appealing, yet he’s still capable of conveying real emotion through his characters, a difficult trick to pull off with any regularity. He also draws some of the most appealing women in comics, managing to consistently illustrate beautiful, sexy women without resorting to skimpy costumes or unrealistic physiques. Davis has been all over the place in recent years, with high-profile stints on books like FANTASTIC FOUR, AVENGERS and UNCANNY X-MEN (with his AVENGERS run being a particular high point). However, it’s been on his work in miniseries that he’s really shined, titles like SUPERBOY AND THE LEGION, KILLRAVEN, and particularly the DC Elseworlds series THE NAIL and its sequel.
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THE NAIL uses a single delicious hypothetical as its jumping-off point (“What if the Kents had gotten a flat tire on that dirt road in Kansas and never found baby Kal-El’s rocket?”), and from there Davis gets to go wild with all his favorite Silver Age DC characters, taking them in dark and unexpected directions, made all the creepier by his trademark cartoony style. Alan Davis’s work is a treasure, and I’ll follow him to whatever book he wants to do next.
4. Carl Barks: Known for years only as “the Good Artist,” Carl Barks labored for years in anonymity working for Dell Comics on the publisher’s line of Walt Disney Comics, not only writing and drawing dozens of pages per month for decades, but also creating many of the familiar Disney characters like Uncle Scrooge, the Beagle Boys, Gladstone Gander and many more. Barks had started his career at the Disney animatiuon studio in the 1930s, but health problems forced him to relocate to the desert, where he discovered his true calling, writing and drawing the wildly popular Disney comics, which for many years sold in equal or greater numbers to top industry sellers like Superman and Captain Marvel. Barks first found success on the DONALD DUCK series, which was where he introduced Scrooge McDuck, Donald’s hyper-fantasticatillionaire uncle, an industrialist tycoon who earned every cent of his millions, refused to part with a nickel of it, and was constantly dragging Donald and his nephews on globetrotting adventures to either protect his fortune or expand it. While the scripts in these comics were first-rate (Barks excelled at both physical comedy and high adventure), with Donald having much more of a personality here than he ever did in the cartoons, the art was absolutely marvelous. Aside from the gorgeous backgrounds and authentic details (Barks would painstakingly research all of the exotic locales he would send the ducks to, despite having never left California for most of his life), Barks’ true gift as a comic-book artist was the ability to so convincingly wring emotions from his ducks, creating characterizations deeper and more keenly felt than anything found in more “grown-up” comics of the time. And look at that storytelling. Just gorgeous.
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Barks retired in the early 1970s, and it was only in his retirement that he finally received any recognition for his work, as determined fans, now grown, learned his identity and tracked him down, In his twilight years, Barks earned the well-deserved financial success that had elude him for most of his life, producing oil paintings and of his duck characters that would bring big money in galleries nationwide.
Barks passed away in 2000 at the age of 99. Thankfully, his work is now once again available to an American audience with Gemstone’s new DONALD DUCK and UNCLE SCROOGE monthly comics.
3. Tony Harris: Harris first gained renown as the artist and co-creator of DC’s STARMAN series, the Eisner-award-winning book about Jack Knight, second-generation Starman and reluctant postmodern superhero. Harris’ moody style was a perfect fit for the book thematically, which was as much about the ambiguity of family loyalty as it was about beating up the bad guys.
It was also clear the first time I met Harris just how much of himself he’d invested in the book – he was a dead ringer for Jack, or rather, Harris had based Jack on his own likeness. The varied narrative styles of the book also proved to be well-suited to Harris, as he got as much opportunity to draw personal drama and interplay as he did big superhero action.
Another way Harris got to put his personal mark on the series was in the backgrounds, as Harris became the visual creator of Opal City, Starman’s hometown, a beautifully ornate city like no other in the DC Universe.
Harris checked out of STARMAN before the series ended, although he continued to contribute covers throughout the book’s run. With writer Dan Jolley, Harris produced a pair of excellent Elseworlds JSA miniseries, involving a sort of plainclothes version of the original Justice Society. Nowadays, Harris can be seen monthly on his newest creation, EX MACHINA (working with writer Brian K, Vaughn), the unexpectedly gripping mix of city politics and superheroics that tells the story of Mayor Mitchell Hundred, the first ex-superhero mayor of New York. While Harris doesn’t have the luxury here of a city all his own to create or the familiar DC Universe to fall back on, he still succeeds in creating compelling identifiable characters who feel a lot more real than most appearing in mainstream comics. And while there’s no accomplishing that without Vaughn’s excellent scripts, it wouldn’t be anywhere near as effective without Harris’ work behind the pencil.
2. George Perez: Here’s all you need to know about George Perez: in a period when many top artists didn’t want to draw a team book, Perez was doing two. Monthly.
The uncontested king of the team book, Perez has lent his pencil to nearly every superhero-team series at both Marvel and DC: Fantastic Four, Avengers, X-Men, Justice League, Titans, you name it.
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Best known for his intricate, numerous-panel breakdowns and insanely detailed backgrounds, Perez first rose to fame in the 1970s and early ‘80s on runs on FANTASTIC FOUR and AVENGERS, then cemented his spot as a top guy in the industry with his move to DC, where he worked his magic on JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA and the book he’s probably still most identified with: THE NEW TEEN TITANS, his creation with writer Marv Wolfman. Wolfman was also Perez’s collaborator on Wolfman’s other smash hit of the 1980s, CRISIS ON INFNITE EARTHS. CRISIS in turn gave Perez the opportunity to grow creatively on his next project, the re-creation of WONDER WOMAN, which he both wrote and drew. Perez’s WONDER WOMAN subtly redesigned the character’s look, giving her more of a Mediterranean appeal, while he juiced up the entire WONDER WOMAN mythos with heavy doses of Greek mythology.
After that, Perez was a little less active for a while, concentrating on projects for smaller publishers and struggling with a round of poor health, before returning in a big way in 1997 on Kurt Busiek’s AVENGERS revival, and reclaiming his crown as king of the team books with a lengthy run on the new series. And if anyone had any doubts, the maddening complexity and cast of thousands on display in his long-awaited JLA-AVENGERS miniseries should put them to rest.
Perez has everything I’m looking for in comics art: strong, understandable and compelling storytelling, individually identifiable and compelling character acting, a touch of realism and a nice splash of detail. The recent announcement that he’s signed an exclusive agreement with DC Comics is good news indeed.
1. Jack Kirby: You probably saw this coming, right? Sorry to be predictable, but who else it could it be? Not only was Kirby one of the top guys in the business in the 1940s, on books like CAPTAIN AMERICA, SANDMAN, BOY COMMANDOS and dozens more, but he out-and-out revolutionized the industry in the 1960s, creating nearly all of Marvel Comics’ trademark characters, from the Fantastic Four to the Hulk to Thor, from the Avengers to the X-Men. Kirby’s dynamic sense of storytelling and larger-than-life style swept the comics world, and his timeless ability in character design can still be seen to this day.
The fact is, nearly everyone working at Marvel Comics is still in some shape or form playing with the toys Jack “the King” Kirby created, and while there’s certainly no shame in that, it bears repeating from time to time.
And just in case anyone doubted the man’s abilities, when he left Marvel in 1970 for DC, he unleashed another salvo of brand-new characters and concepts that are still in use today, titles like THE NEW GODS, MISTER MIRACLE, KAMANDI, THE DEMON and OMAC.
In my previous “Top 5 Writers” column, some folks wrote in to say that it didn’t make sense to include “classic” writers like Lee or Eisner, because they weren’t producing new material. My response to that applies equally here. Although we’re sadly unable to get new work from the King, between hardcover archives, trade collections and back issues, I’m still constantly able to be delighted at new, never-before seen (at least by me) Kirby material. Long live the King.
Once again, there are dozens of artists who might well be on this list on any given day. Feel free to tell me how wrong I am (today, anyway) at stipton99x@moviepoopshoot.com.
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