The first in a series? Also, coming up: Overrated Artists I Hate! 🙂
Frank Robbins. He’s that Invaders guy. He’s that weird artist who drew rubber-limbed, contorted figures with insanely distorted, grimacing faces. Everything he drew looked bizarre & wrong, didn’t it? He wasn’t very good, was he?
No. He was GREAT! I mean, come on, get a load of this…
Cover of THE SHADOW #7 (DC Comics, 1974).
Read More »Underrated Artists I Love #1: Frank Robbins
As this idiot is still in the news, somehow, I present an old strip pertaining to The Man With No Comb… which references the UK’s supremely annoying NLP three-sting “COVID” mantra (Hands! Face! Space!).
Thought I’d give a quick mention to John, who passed away aged 93 on June 12th. His death is no tragedy—he had a very long life, well lived—but a sad loss nonetheless, especially as the Silver Age greats of comics are dwindling rapidly now.
John was, of course, the third best Spider-Man artist.
I’ve been reading & re-reading a lot of THUNDER Agents tales of late. By way of hopefully starting a trend of longer reviews, this is my thoughts on the seventh issue…
Out of the first eight issues of THUNDER Agents, #7 definitely stands out as the best to me. Is it, perhaps, also the best issue of the entire 20-issue run? It must be in the running.
LOL, as they say. This is my third try at this Marie Portrait concept, done last December… I think I’ll leave it at that now! Please! No fourth tries!!
(NOTE: Marie is one of my characters, late of Club Vamporama [RIP], and, forthcomingly, Adventures of M.)
Previous attempts below, from 2019 and 2011 respectively…
Read More »Marie Portrait 2021
Really, really sad to hear about the passing of Neal Adams. I think most of us can agree that he’s a highly significant figure in comics history.
I thought Neal was sure to be around for another 10-15 years, and producing decent art more or less till the day he died. The latter is virtually true—he was working on commissions as recently as ten days ago—but sadly, he had been fighting the effects of a sepsis infection for the past 11 months. That’s a tough battle at any age.
His later work is probably the stuff that will come to mind for some folks, and that’s… well, a small part of the story!! Neal’s art, for the past 30-35 years, has been generally solid and consistent, sometimes quite beautiful, if seldom a match for his peak stuff from the late ’60s through mid-’70s. But, it might be his increasingly eccentric writing that’s gained the most attention in recent years.
Batman: Odyssey, from 2010-11, which ran for 13 issues over two mini-series, had a lot of people scratching their heads. The distinctive and occasionally stunning visuals were a given, but Neal’s writing—barely flirting with conventional structure or internal logic—made the series something of a cult item. His writing only got weirder and more esoteric later on!
Of course, everyone knows that Jack Kirby designed the original version of Spider-Man, which never got used. We know, also, that Kirby pencilled the cover to Spidey’s first appearance, in Amazing Fantasy #15 (1962)—because the original cover Ditko drew was rejected by Stan Lee.
But how about Kirby artwork inside this landmark comic? Well, surely, the iconic origin story is fully-pencilled & inked by Mr Ditko. But there’s one aspect I never paid much attention to before—the teeny-tiny Spidey figure at the top right of the opening splash page…
Done for my friend, Nigel. It was his request & his concept… and I believe this “mythical kiss” might have actually been done for-real in an Archie comic in recent years. Not sure—I pay no attention to this stuff!
I decided to employ a couple of techniques I’ve been playing with of late, namely doing the inks solely with a brush pen (a Sakura Pigma, if you’re curious), and adding some “colour accents”…
Read More »Betty & Veronica: The Kiss
