Top 20 Comic Artists Of All Time (Part 1)

I've been toying around lately, shuffling my favorite comic artists around on paper, seeing how I would rank them and such. I came up with a list of way too many and it ended up getting harder and harder to secure a top 20.
I had about 50 artists down on paper whom I love before it was all over. You'll get to see the extras and everything, but as a theme for the next 23 or so posts, I will be going through each artist in the top 20, as well as a few bonus artists that I'm going to kick off this theme with.Let's get to it.

TOP 20 COMIC ARTISTS OF ALL TIME:

HONORABLE MENTIONS.

I decided this first post, so that I don't just ravage your senses right off the bat, should focus on 2 artists who deserve to be recognized in the top 20, but wouldn't fall in the list for certain circumstances (which I will get to for each).

First off:

GLENN FABRY (click the thumbnails for full images)











Now fans of Glenn might hate me for saying this, but his pen and ink work is shit. I can't stand looking at it, its like Steve Dillon but with down syndrome.
His painting however, is masterful. The way he works the tones and layers makes me want to cream my jeans. I don't want to sound like a wuss but when I was younger his stuff freaked me out, his excessive attention to detail (look at the skin wrinkles in the hands, the extensive face shading as well) was too over the top for my comic tastes. Nowadays however, you'd be hard pressed to find a finer cover artist in the business (I would say he ranks number 1 in cover artists, with that short list followed by Bolland, Hughes, and Bradstreet, all also unfortunately not among my top 20, but don't cry just yet). Here's to you Glenn (may I call you Glenn?) for being so special that I can't even rank you in the top 20, but instead get a post of your own along with...


JIM BURNS (click the thumbnails for full image goodness)


















I would imagine about every single one of you going "Uhhh who?!!". Well a certain sexy someone (Alicia) bought me a copy of Planet Story for like $5 at a thrift store many months ago, and I flipped though it and thought "Not bad." then I sat down and read it, and loved the art. Beautiful 13x13 full page paintings, this book was a hidden gem. Now about a month after that a friend of mine went nuts on Heavy Metals. He was into about 60% or more of all the issues I would say. I started noticing covers and galleries of none other than Jim Burns in a lot of these back issues (owning a few myself thanks to the Toronto Fan Expo). If you haven't heard of Jim Burns, have a look for his art books on amazon, or his Heavy Metal work on their official website (don't look online for his stuff, a lot of the images I found were incomparable to his work in print).

There you have it, with the honorable mentions out of the way, we can get into the real meat of my top 20 artists choices. Coming next post, we start at 20 with a very very questionable choice on my part, but someone who has a lot of talent, despite only about 5 comics worth of published work.

God bless eBay

Guess who's in for some good reading tonite?









The answer of course would be me. Don't get too jealous, I mean the other 3 Xstatix trades havent arrived yet, but apparently they just cleared customs so they will be here soon enough. Not a bad haul, 9 trades for $90, 3 of which are out of print. If it wasn't for the fact Im a brokeass I would have bought about 4 times as many from the same seller. Well gonna get back to customizing so I have something to show for on my other blog.

Panties! Glorious Panties!

One more thing: PANTIES! GLORIOUS PANTIES!

O/T - DANKO JONES!!!!!

This is gonna be off topic, so if you dont like it, eat shit and read on anyways. Last night was the Brier (aka curling, whatever its not the important part) concert. Idle Sons, Danko Jones, and the Trews. Needless to say I didn't stay for the Trews because of the annoying radio (man what a douchebag) host inbetween, but thats besides the point. I brought a couple CDs along in case I bumped into Danko. This is the essential point here. As Idle Sons opened (yes I do like Idle Sons alot, and yes I still need to buy their cd) Danko came in and was checking them out for a bit. So Alicia (my sexy lady) turns to me and goes "Hey, isn't that Danko?".
Well after freaking and passing out for about 30 seconds, I compose and head up to God himself. Well my incarnation of god at least, I know most of you look to Alec Baldwin for that (watch the clip below all the way to the end)

Wow, I'm really getting off topic here. Lets bring it around again shall we? Brier, Music, Coat Check, Danko...so I go up to Danko and JC finally, and pull out my cds to sign. Since I'm a lameass I panic and don't know what to say so I tell him I saw him in Toronto and he rocked, and ask how the new CD is doing. And if what Danko says is true (being a man of his word) then this new album should be the best yet. Well played good sir, well played.
Now I realize what I forgot to to ask him, about putting a song on the new Guitar Hero. That would be like the 2 greatest things in the world come together as one, much like peanut butter and anything else (chocolate, jam, crackers, celery, uhh did I mention jam?).
The only thing missing was my camera, and I'm a little pissed I didn't bring it, but I'll get him next time. For now this creamed my goat (is that an actual phrase?):





















The show needless to say was phenomenal, despite the idiots who got onstage and were either promptly hauled off or taken off by a cop after they fucked up Lovercall. But Danko knows how to play the crowd, play off the dumbasses and still always look classy. Yet again, well played sir. Well played.

I Can't Believe Its Not The Justice League Movie!!

Inspired by one of my favorite teams of all time, the JLI (or whatever incarnation of Justice they were going by) I started scribbling down actors I would like to see as members in a movie version. Its not going to be hard to tell who some of my favorite characters are (mostly due to the mind shattering lineup that fought Doomsday causing me to back track into Giffen/DeMatteis/MacGuire runs). Its really an incomplete list, but its just something I came up with while studying...instead of studying:













John DeLancie as Max Lord: (otherwise known as Q from Star Trek or Jeff Bridges buddy in Fearless) , I was thinking Conan O'Brien at first, actually watching Conan O'Brien got me started on this movie thing, but then I realized he would be too over the top insane, DeLancie has just the right amount of over the top insane.














Ryan Reynolds as Blue Beetle: (sans goatee) has the funny and the physically fit body to pull this off no problem, and I don’t think I’ve seen a movie with him that I didn’t like. Reminder to have a tribute post to the beauty that is Smokin Aces.














Neil Patrick Harris as Booster Gold: Dougie Howser himself has not only proved himself to be consistently funny lately (if you’re watching How I Met Your Mother that is), but he’s definitely kept in shape. Not only that, but the Beetle/Booster gay jokes can roll in since Neil is openly gay.














Ben Affleck as Guy Gardner: (Mallrats), who can go through a wide range of emotions yet deep down still be an asshole. Perfect.














Elisha Cuthbert as Ice: lets face it, any ideal movie to me would have the eye candy of Elisha Cuthbert, plus Ice isn't too much of a stretch for any female to play characterwise.













Carla Gugino as Fire because we know she looks fantastic nude (evidence from Sin City) so her naked and green shooting Fire and being sassy really works for me (I dont know about you, ;) fag) Also if she can stand her ground with Mickey Rourke throwing fake punches at her, she can handle Guy.














Michael Dorn as Martian Manhunter: (better known as Worf from Star Trek) has clearly played an alien for 8 years, I don’t see this being a big stretch for him. He’s tall, used to wearing eyebrown makeup, and has a good, deep, commanding, yet still isolated voice.





















Tim Roth as Mister Miracle: (Pulp Fiction, Reservoir Dogs) His face just screams Kirby-esque to me for some reason, plus I always kind of see Mr Miracle when I look at the cover to his movie Invincible.













Christian Bale as Batman: (Patrick Batman haha clever pun!!!) would show up in a cameo, because lets face it, why not, this is my movie after all.















Pam Anderson as Power Girl: maybe shes not the greatest actress the world has seen but she knows how to be funny and how to spoof herself (which is what Power Girl is all about to me). That plus she has a great rack (which is ACTUALLY what Power Girl is all about to me).














Michael Clarke Duncan as Despero: has proved himself in not just one big budget comic movie, but two. If he can convince me that the Kingpin is black then he can convince me a giant pink phallic-looking alien is badass.



BONUS













Gene Hackman as Oberon: I mean if they can shrink Elijah Wood and Sean Asten, they can shrink Gene Hackman. I generally hate Gene Hackman, but only because he generally plays roles where you have to hate him, and I think this is one of those roles (since the Leaguers are always getting pissy towards him).

Parallel Blogs!

I've added a few links. First off are Dave's Long Box and Chris' Invincible Super Blog. Never before have comic reviews been so entertaining and accurate. Go now, read the archives and catch up!
Also I added a link to my action figure blog, Lone Wolvie's Meifumado. I'll be posting there a lot more regularly, well maybe not, but it gives me a chance to update the pictures of my action figures.
Also, don't forget to check out pretty Alicia's pretty illustrations, they're wicked sweet, but don't take it from me, go look for yourself you lookie loo.

Because nobody demanded it!

This will be the future blog of the Comix Underground, where you will find the latest comic and trade picks while I (and others) pick them apart. Sounds typical and uninteresting so I hope to mix it around a bit every once in a while. We'll see...