Dude, I'm getting a Panther
Now that you're wondering — and I know you are — how I came to be scanning five-year-old interviews with comic book artists on the Internet, I'll explain that I've been hunting for some of the all-time greats of the comics biz to create some commissioned artwork for me, to decorate my office space.
Can you believe that great comic artists will actually do commission work for nobodies like me? I couldn't believe it myself, when I learned about it recently. Of course, many of the giants from the '60s through early '80s, when I was in my comics-reading prime, have either passed on (Jack Kirby, John Buscema, et al.) or faded into retirement. But a surprising number are still active, and, even more surprising, some accept (even actively solicit) commissions from comics fans and collectors for original artwork.
My first commissioned piece is being created for me by Bob McLeod, probably best known as the co-creator of Marvel's New Mutants series. Bob was the inker — and at times the penciler — on Amazing Spider-Man and other Spidey titles during a lengthy run. In fact, he was the artist who inked the first two issues of Spider-Man penciled by then-unknown Todd McFarlane.
Bob also was the inker for several issues of one of my favorite forgotten Marvel comics: Jungle Action, starring the Black Panther. Despite its now embarrassingly politically incorrect title, Jungle Action was a landmark book, even though few of today's comic-reading kids have heard of it. It was one of the first mainstream comics to feature a black superhero as its lead character, and one of the first to be drawn on a regular basis by an African American artist, a guy named Billy Graham (no relation, so far as I know, to the famous evangelist). The issues of Jungle Action inked by Bob McLeod featured a storyline in which the Panther (who in his everyday identity was the king of a mythical African country called Wakanda, which specialized in advanced technology) battled a group of villains patterned closely after the Ku Klux Klan. It was heady stuff for its time, because no other publisher in the comics industry would have dared even flirt with such volatile subject matter.
Anyway, Bob has very kindly agreed to create an original pen and ink drawing of the Black Panther for me, in the style of the old Jungle Action series. I can hardly wait to see his finished design.
Can you believe that great comic artists will actually do commission work for nobodies like me? I couldn't believe it myself, when I learned about it recently. Of course, many of the giants from the '60s through early '80s, when I was in my comics-reading prime, have either passed on (Jack Kirby, John Buscema, et al.) or faded into retirement. But a surprising number are still active, and, even more surprising, some accept (even actively solicit) commissions from comics fans and collectors for original artwork.
My first commissioned piece is being created for me by Bob McLeod, probably best known as the co-creator of Marvel's New Mutants series. Bob was the inker — and at times the penciler — on Amazing Spider-Man and other Spidey titles during a lengthy run. In fact, he was the artist who inked the first two issues of Spider-Man penciled by then-unknown Todd McFarlane.
Bob also was the inker for several issues of one of my favorite forgotten Marvel comics: Jungle Action, starring the Black Panther. Despite its now embarrassingly politically incorrect title, Jungle Action was a landmark book, even though few of today's comic-reading kids have heard of it. It was one of the first mainstream comics to feature a black superhero as its lead character, and one of the first to be drawn on a regular basis by an African American artist, a guy named Billy Graham (no relation, so far as I know, to the famous evangelist). The issues of Jungle Action inked by Bob McLeod featured a storyline in which the Panther (who in his everyday identity was the king of a mythical African country called Wakanda, which specialized in advanced technology) battled a group of villains patterned closely after the Ku Klux Klan. It was heady stuff for its time, because no other publisher in the comics industry would have dared even flirt with such volatile subject matter.
Anyway, Bob has very kindly agreed to create an original pen and ink drawing of the Black Panther for me, in the style of the old Jungle Action series. I can hardly wait to see his finished design.
SwanShadow was randomly pounding the keyboard at 11:55 PM
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