A sympathy vote for Brent Anderson. Alex Ross’ covers and Kurt Buseik’s name are the first things to draw people’s attention to Astro City, but Brent’s pencilwork keeps them reading. I still have my copy of God Loves, Man Kills, and would love to get his Strikeforce: Morituri run in a TPB someday.
And yes, Neil Gaiman does some artwork. I’m reminded of this exchange that I heard about thirdhand:
Ring*Ring
“Hello, John Byrne here.”
“Hi, John. This is Peter David. Krause is putting together a collection of my But I Digress columns, and we were wondering if you would be willing to do something for the back cover.”
“Back cover?! I’m insulted! Who are you going to get to do the front cover?”
“Neil Gaiman.”
Ron Lim. I don’t know why he’s not a fan favorite. His run on Silver Surfer was spectacular - he was the definitive SS artist, as far as I’m concerned. Especially when he was inked by Joe Rubinstein. Lim certainly did the best Thanos.
Once again I’m coming late to a thread I should have been all over when it opened-- but here’s a few folks whose names weren’t mentioned:
John Cassady
Moebius
Richard Corben
Frank Quitely (I am aware he has Doper detractors. If you are one, I am afraid that this is symptomatic there is something fundamentally wrong with you. Seek help yesterday.)
David Mazzuchelli
Jose Garcia-Lopez
Los Hermanos Hernandez (with a big personal preference for 'Beto, for Palomar stories and Birdland)
Scott McCloud
George Herriman
Paul Chadwick
Jeff Smith
Lynn Johnston
Charles Monroe Schultz
The last eight being premier examples of “natural born cartoonists.”
The following Alan Moore collaborators: Chris Sprouse, Kevin O’ Neil, and especially John Totleben (with a nod to Steve Bissett)
Oh thank goodness, at least one other person appreciates Moebius. I just adore his work. Another favorite of mine, though terribly hard to find in the US, is Lorenzo Mattotti. I was overjoyed to meet him at a San Diego Comic Con many years ago, and just gushed over his work - he didn’t call for security or anything, so I guess I wasn’t too obnoxious.
A lot of them have already been mentioned but the most awe-inspiring to me are:
Alex Toth - the great minimalist
George Perez - represents 80’s mainstream superhero comics to me. Everything he drew was round. So round. Especially his women. So many curves.
Alex Roth - his Kingdom Come made me interested in superhero comics again. I love that full page spread with Captain Marvel sportin’ a huge grin over Superman.
Brian Bolland & Steve (the Dude) Rude - everytime I see their artwork, I stop dead in my tracks. The Dude draws the way I wish I could draw.
Steve Ditko & Jack King Kirby - The Greats. More than just artists. 'Nuff said.
I should have added Robert Crumb to my list. Everything he draws looks so simple but what he draws about is so complicated. Always loved his cross-hatching.
Mike Mignola: He’s just the best there is. I can’t think of a single panel from Hellboy that I wouldn’t be willing to hang up and frame. And there’s not a single panel in any of his stories that’s out of place or unnecessary. It works as art, it works as a comic, it works as cartoons (with gashes for mouths, big weird hands, and spindly legs).
Walt Kelly and Carl Barks: Masters at being experimental and innovative in environments that are downright hostile to do anything other than the accepted. And people don’t appreciate just how difficult it is to create just one universally appealling character, while they came up with dozens.
Steve Purcell: Great stuff, wildlly imaginative and just plain cool. And he’s a hell of a nice guy to boot.
Matt Wagner: He was my hands-down favorite for a while, but his stuff overall is kind of hit-and-miss. IMO he went too far down the path of creating a style, and got sloppy with it. But some of his stuff works perfectly.
Jack Kirby: I actually don’t like his stuff, personally, but the things people have been saying about him are true – it’s awe-inspiring, massive in scale, and extremely influential. He started the whole outer-space-as-a-bunch-of-black-circles thing, right?
Chris Sprouse: Maybe not one of the “masters of the form” or anything, but his stuff is solid and I like it a lot.
I forgot Kyle Baker. He’s always playing around with his style, but his basic strengths come through in everything – he’s a master of expressions. His static drawings have more life and perfectly convey an expression better than any animation.
I find Matt Wagner’s stuff looks better when he inks it himself. I’ve got a page from Batman/Grendel up on my wall in fact.
I also have Sensational She-Hulk #1, page 1 up - of course by John Byrne. I used to be a really big fan of his art as well.
Currently my favorite would be Mike Mignola. Hellboy is great and I really loved a Batman Elseworlds he did a while ago (The Doom That Came to Gotham) as well as the Bram Stoker’s Dracula adaptation.
A friend of mine used to worship Neil Adams. We went to San Diego Comicon a few years ago and Adams was there promoting himself. Anyhow after the conversation my friend had with him, where Adams explained his theory on continental drift that the earth was growing, the hero worship toned down a lot and he just appreciated Adams for his art.
Brian Bolland – static and lacking feeling? The man who did THE KILLING JOKE? [A1?](oops!? url=http://image.milehighcomics.com/istore/images/fullsize/00718493448.1.GIF) TANK GIRL? POWERMAN? THE INVISIBLES? All those ANIMAL MAN, WONDER WOMAN and VERTIGO covers?
I deeply suspect that’s a minority opinion.
Did no-one mention Dave Johnson, Paul Dini or Sergio Aragones?
[QUOTE=Askia]
Brian Bolland – static and lacking feeling? The man who did THE KILLING JOKE? [A1?](oops!? url=http://image.milehighcomics.com/istore/images/fullsize/00718493448.1.GIF) TANK GIRL? POWERMAN? THE INVISIBLES? All those ANIMAL MAN, WONDER WOMAN and VERTIGO covers?/QUOTE]
Well, I’m not impressed. He can only do one picture and a rude caption.
