Blue skies up above, superheroes in love...
This week's Comic Art Friday is being composed in four-part harmony. If every man, woman, and child across the globe began every morning by blowing a B-flat — the universal frequency — on a pitch pipe and gently humming that note, this old world would be a happier place.
Most hardcore comics geeks won't admit this, but superhero comics are really just a variation of soap opera. A soap opera in which the players wear colorful spandex costumes and occasionally whale the living tar out of one another, but a soap opera nonetheless.
As happens in any soap opera, characters in superhero comics occasionally fall in love.
Sometimes, these star-crossed relationships turn out well. Reed and Susan Richards of the Fantastic Four got hitched way back in 1965, in Fantastic Four Annual #3 (the very first comic book I ever read, by the way, though my copy was third-hand, coverless, and a year or more old by the time it fell into my possession). Despite the usual marital ups and downs, Mr. Fantastic and the Invisible Woman are still happily wed.
Other times, relationships end tragically. Peter Parker, aka Spider-Man, still wrestles with the death of his long-ago lady love, Gwen Stacy, some 32 years later.
Other times, much like the majority of relationships in real life, superhero romances simply end — the Scarlet Witch and the Vision, for example, or the multi-identitied Henry Pym (known at various times in his crimefighting career as Ant-Man, Giant-Man, Goliath, and Yellowjacket) and his erstwhile wife Janet Van Dyne, the winsome Wasp (though Hank and Jan periodically make overtures at getting back together).
One of the great ongoing love stories in comics thrives between the aforementioned Peter Parker and his flame-haired bride, the former Mary Jane Watson. Since the moment the gorgeous redhead first entered Peter's life — uttering the now-famous line, "Face it, tiger... you just hit the jackpot!" — the oddly matched pairing of studious, easygoing scientist and photographer Peter and brash, outspoken actress and model MJ has been a staple of Marvel Comics' universe, as well as a couple of hit motion pictures. Although never entirely free from the spectre of Gwen Stacy, Peter and MJ share a love that has weathered the test of time, not to mention the occasional supervillain.
When I decided to add a testament to this classic relationship to my gallery, I turned to one of comics' finest and most consistent inkers of the past 30 years, Bob McLeod.
Like another of my favorite inkers, Josef Rubinstein, Bob toiled in his early days as a member of Neal Adams' Continuity Studios, an entity that kickstarted the careers of numerous artists, inking specialists in particular. The Adams studio often took on inking assignments from the major comics publishers in which every artist on the staff put in a hand (or a pen, or a brush). These collective works were usually credited to "the Crusty Bunkers," as Adams's men referred to themselves.
A hallmark of the inkers who came out of the Crusty Bunkers is their talent for drawing. Those uneducated about comic art often suppose that the inker does little more than trace what the pencil artist has already drawn. In fact, the best inkers lend an entirely new perspective and depth of detail to the work they finish. And, as Bob McLeod pointed out to me recently, "back in the day" practically every inker had solid drawing skills.
Case in point: Both McLeod and Rubinstein are brilliant pencilers, even though most comics readers think of them primarily as inkers. McLeod, in particular, has done a ton of penciled work in comics, that people for whatever reason tend to forget: various Spider-Man titles, Star Wars, two years of Superman in Action Comics, in addition to being the co-creator and original artist of Marvel's New Mutants. (Outside the realm of comic art, McLeod and Rubinstein are also accomplished painters. People with talent can be so... talented.)
When I commissioned this artwork, I asked Bob — one of the finest Spider-Man interpreters in the character's 40-plus-year history, in my estimation — to create something that expressed his view of the joy and fun of Peter and Mary Jane's lengthy yet still effervescent courtship. If a picture speaks a thousand words, this one recites an entire romance novel.
Comics fans have always enjoyed speculating about what would happen if certain favorite characters "hooked up." Two of the three "pillars" of the DC Universe, Superman and Wonder Woman, are frequent subjects of these fantasies. Adding his unique spin to this concept, we feature popular penciler Mike Wieringo, here ably inked by Richard Case.
Wieringo's unmistakable style is a throwback to the days when comic book art was more cartoony and less gritty and/or photorealistic. In Ringo's pencil, there's a healthy dash of the classic "bigfoot" cartoon style immortalized by such artists as Elzie Segar (the creator of Popeye) and underground legend Robert Crumb. There's also more than a soupçon of the looser, lighter approach typical of manga (Japanese comic books; anime is the animated equivalent). Although I'm not a fan of manga, and generally speaking, I prefer the less stylized character of traditional American superhero comic art, I'm a huge fan of Ringo's. I'm delighted that he's starting a new Spider-Man series (Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man) that will keep us fans enjoying his work on the Web-Slinger for the next several months.
That's your Comic Art Friday, friends and lovers. I'm going to go ring a few chords with my quartet this weekend. Maybe we'll dedicate a romantic ballad or three to you and your sweet babboo. (Assuming you have a sweet babboo. Which, if you spend all your time reading comic books, you may not.)
Most hardcore comics geeks won't admit this, but superhero comics are really just a variation of soap opera. A soap opera in which the players wear colorful spandex costumes and occasionally whale the living tar out of one another, but a soap opera nonetheless.
As happens in any soap opera, characters in superhero comics occasionally fall in love.
Sometimes, these star-crossed relationships turn out well. Reed and Susan Richards of the Fantastic Four got hitched way back in 1965, in Fantastic Four Annual #3 (the very first comic book I ever read, by the way, though my copy was third-hand, coverless, and a year or more old by the time it fell into my possession). Despite the usual marital ups and downs, Mr. Fantastic and the Invisible Woman are still happily wed.
Other times, relationships end tragically. Peter Parker, aka Spider-Man, still wrestles with the death of his long-ago lady love, Gwen Stacy, some 32 years later.
Other times, much like the majority of relationships in real life, superhero romances simply end — the Scarlet Witch and the Vision, for example, or the multi-identitied Henry Pym (known at various times in his crimefighting career as Ant-Man, Giant-Man, Goliath, and Yellowjacket) and his erstwhile wife Janet Van Dyne, the winsome Wasp (though Hank and Jan periodically make overtures at getting back together).
One of the great ongoing love stories in comics thrives between the aforementioned Peter Parker and his flame-haired bride, the former Mary Jane Watson. Since the moment the gorgeous redhead first entered Peter's life — uttering the now-famous line, "Face it, tiger... you just hit the jackpot!" — the oddly matched pairing of studious, easygoing scientist and photographer Peter and brash, outspoken actress and model MJ has been a staple of Marvel Comics' universe, as well as a couple of hit motion pictures. Although never entirely free from the spectre of Gwen Stacy, Peter and MJ share a love that has weathered the test of time, not to mention the occasional supervillain.
When I decided to add a testament to this classic relationship to my gallery, I turned to one of comics' finest and most consistent inkers of the past 30 years, Bob McLeod.
Like another of my favorite inkers, Josef Rubinstein, Bob toiled in his early days as a member of Neal Adams' Continuity Studios, an entity that kickstarted the careers of numerous artists, inking specialists in particular. The Adams studio often took on inking assignments from the major comics publishers in which every artist on the staff put in a hand (or a pen, or a brush). These collective works were usually credited to "the Crusty Bunkers," as Adams's men referred to themselves.
A hallmark of the inkers who came out of the Crusty Bunkers is their talent for drawing. Those uneducated about comic art often suppose that the inker does little more than trace what the pencil artist has already drawn. In fact, the best inkers lend an entirely new perspective and depth of detail to the work they finish. And, as Bob McLeod pointed out to me recently, "back in the day" practically every inker had solid drawing skills.
Case in point: Both McLeod and Rubinstein are brilliant pencilers, even though most comics readers think of them primarily as inkers. McLeod, in particular, has done a ton of penciled work in comics, that people for whatever reason tend to forget: various Spider-Man titles, Star Wars, two years of Superman in Action Comics, in addition to being the co-creator and original artist of Marvel's New Mutants. (Outside the realm of comic art, McLeod and Rubinstein are also accomplished painters. People with talent can be so... talented.)
When I commissioned this artwork, I asked Bob — one of the finest Spider-Man interpreters in the character's 40-plus-year history, in my estimation — to create something that expressed his view of the joy and fun of Peter and Mary Jane's lengthy yet still effervescent courtship. If a picture speaks a thousand words, this one recites an entire romance novel.
Comics fans have always enjoyed speculating about what would happen if certain favorite characters "hooked up." Two of the three "pillars" of the DC Universe, Superman and Wonder Woman, are frequent subjects of these fantasies. Adding his unique spin to this concept, we feature popular penciler Mike Wieringo, here ably inked by Richard Case.
Wieringo's unmistakable style is a throwback to the days when comic book art was more cartoony and less gritty and/or photorealistic. In Ringo's pencil, there's a healthy dash of the classic "bigfoot" cartoon style immortalized by such artists as Elzie Segar (the creator of Popeye) and underground legend Robert Crumb. There's also more than a soupçon of the looser, lighter approach typical of manga (Japanese comic books; anime is the animated equivalent). Although I'm not a fan of manga, and generally speaking, I prefer the less stylized character of traditional American superhero comic art, I'm a huge fan of Ringo's. I'm delighted that he's starting a new Spider-Man series (Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man) that will keep us fans enjoying his work on the Web-Slinger for the next several months.
That's your Comic Art Friday, friends and lovers. I'm going to go ring a few chords with my quartet this weekend. Maybe we'll dedicate a romantic ballad or three to you and your sweet babboo. (Assuming you have a sweet babboo. Which, if you spend all your time reading comic books, you may not.)
SwanShadow was randomly pounding the keyboard at 12:19 AM
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