Unmasked is a Halloween themed cover and four page comic story (two double page spreads) for the November 2nd issue of The New Yorker, by Chris Ware.

In a fashion Chris Ware fans have come to expect, the hilarious but subtle cover leads seamlessly into the story, a poignant look at generational and family relations, told in his sublime graphic style.

Ware constructs comics in the way a fine woodworker might construct an inlaid box, crafting each element with refined precision, interlocking elements that might seem unrelated to form a unified whole. Notice the parallels between panels in the second two-page spread, the interweaving of the panel designs with the exterior and interior of the masks and the repeated theme of the phone, carried forward form the cover. Also take note of Ware’s superb control of color and his interesting abandonment of perspective for isometric projection in many panels.

Also note that Ware manages to tell a complete short story in four pages, something many contemporary comics writers can’t seem to do in 6 or more 24-page issues.

Beautiful work.

[Via Daring Fireball]

Al Williamson is one of the unsung greats of comics art. Well, perhaps “undersung” is a better word (if it is a word), in that those aware of his contributions are usually great admirers, but his work is not as widely known among contemporary comics readers as it should be (not by a long shot).

Williamson occupies a unique place in the history of comics, acting as a kind of bridge between the dazzling full page newspaper adventure comics of the early 20th Century (and the traditions of the great 19th Century pen and ink illustrators that they embodied) and the modern comics upheaval and revolutions of the late 20th Century.

At the early stages of his career, Williamson fell smack in the middle, going to work for the notorious EC comics in 1952, where he was the youngster amid legendary comics greats like Frank Frazetta, Roy Krenkel, Wally Wood and others. His striking science fiction work graced the pages and covers of EC titles like Weird Science and Weird Fantasy, and influenced the generations of comic artists who were growing up at the time, goggle-eyed with flashlights under the covers, reading his lavishly illustrated tales of outer space adventures and outlandish monsters.

Prior to his work with EC, Williamson studied with Burne Hogarth, and assisted him on pages for his Tarzan Sunday newspaper strip. Newspaper adventure comics were dying at the time, however, under pressure from other forms of entertainment and economic squeezing from newspaper editors, and what would have seemed Williamson’s natural place became something of a dead end.

Though he worked within the increasingly restrictive format of small daily adventure news paper strips off and on for years, he also moved into comic books, where adventure comics went and morphed into something different in the middle of the century, and he followed them into the latter half of the century, working for the Warren comics magazines (image above, 2nd from top) and Marvel Comics in its heyday, where he was known in particular for his work on a series of Star Wars comics.

All the while he carried forward his love for the great adventure comics, and especially his admiration for the work of Alex Raymond, creator of Flash Gordon, and one of the all time greats of comics art (more on Alex Raymond in a future post).

Williamson had a chance to step into Raymond’s considerably large shoes on several occasions, taking over his spy adventure newspaper strip Secret Agent X-9, which became Secret Agent Corrigan and moved from film-noir to James Bond style adventures (image above, bottom and detail), ably scripted by Archie Goodwin. He also assisted John Prentice, who took the reins of Raymond’s Rip Kirby strip.

Williamson worked on several versions of Raymond’s star character Flash Gordon (image above, top), the strip that had obviously been such and influence on him, from the amazing King Comics version in the 1960’s to the Marvel Comics version in the ’90s (more on Williamson’s Flash Gordon work in a subsequent post).

Unfortunately, though there are scattered resources, I can’t find a major repository of Williamson’s work in the web, so it’s hard to convey the grace os his figures, the elegance of his pen lines, the chiaroscuro drama of his spotted blacks, the dynamics of his compositions or the ground breaking inventiveness of his storytelling and panel layouts. I also can’t lead you directly to great examples of his astonishingly rendered details, applied with a delicate finesse that never leaves the impression of gratuitous unnecessary fiddling, unlike so many lesser artists whose grasp of the use of pen and ink textures will never approach Williamson’s.

The only thing I can supply, apart from those resources I can list, is a hearty recommendation that those of you with any appreciation for great adventure comics art, or graphic stories told with superb draftsmanship and a subtle command of the visual language of the great pen and ink illustrators, who are not yet familiar with Williamson, treat yourself to one of the many printed collections available that feature his work.

There is a recent book collecting some of his short story work, titled Al Williamson Adventures, from Insight Studios (more here). The limited edition hardcover has apparently come and gone, and I’m unsure of the status of the softcover edition (if it’s out, Insight needs to promote it better, I couldn’t even find mention of it on their web site.)

Fortunately, there is a great new collection from Flesk Publications, Al Williamson’s Flash Gordon: A Lifelong Vision of the Heroic. This book is so terrific I’m going to make it the topic of a separate post.

It’s a common practice among contemporary comics artists to do commissioned sketches or even fully realized drawings for fans and collectors.

Often collectors will commission drawings by a number of artists on a single theme, and create over time a collection of themed works by an extensive and diverse list of creators.

Such is the case with the collection displayed on a site titled Hey Oscar Wilde! It’s Clobberin’ Time!, by a collector whose name I don’t know (email address suggests “sgettis”, presumably S. Gettis).

The collection is centered on the theme of asking each artist to portray a favorite literary figure, author or character. This collection has been in progress since 1998, and has been displayed on the web in several forms. I wrote about it in one of its previous incarnations back in 2005 as Artistic interpretations of Literary Figures.

Since then the collection has continued to grow and now includes an impressive list of artists and a fascinatingly diverse list of literary figures. You can browse the collection by either from lists in the right sidebar.

The collection includes a number of comics artists and illustrators I’ve featured previously on Lines and Colors. In the list below, the first link is to the original drawing on the Hey Oscar Wilde! site, second is to my post about the artist.

Images above: Oscar Wilde by Stephen Silver, Alan Moore by Frazer Irving, Captain Nemo by Chris Sprouse, Jim Harrison by Tommy Lee Edwards, Alice in Wonderland by Steve Rude (in Gibson Girl style), Hayao Miyazaki by Kazu Kibuishi (see my post on Hayao Miyazaki), Frankenstein’s Monster by William Stout, Raymond Chandler by Adam Hughes and George Orwell by Kevin Nowlan.

Addendum: the collector’s name is Steven Gettis. [Thanks to Dennis van Zwieten for the tip.]

Scott Musgrove is a painter, illustrator, comics artist and “Co-executive Director of the National Institute of Creative Biology”. The latter self-appointed title refers to his new imaginary bestiary The Late Fauna of Early North America: The Art of Scott Musgrove.

Musgrove is the creator and producer of the Fat Dog Mendoza TV series, which was based on his comic book of the same name, published by Dark Horse Comics. He is also the artist and writer for Loose Teeth, published by Fantagraphics Books and has had work included in a number of comics anthologies.

Lately, Musgrove has been focusing on gallery art, in particular his series of fanciful animals, in the portrayal of which he sees himself as continuing in the tradition of James Audubon (if Audubon’s subjects were from another planet, perhaps).

His whimsical take on various fauna are portrayed in compositions that combine a cartoon-like sensibility in their forms with rendereing in a detailed painting technique that speaks to his declared influences of Carlos Crivelli, Jan van Eyck and Heironymous Bosh, along with contemporary artists like Botero and Odd Nerdrum.

Musgrove’s web site includes galleries of his paintings, arranged into categories like “Accidential Organisms” and “Natural Alchemy”, along with watercolors and a section on Fat Dog Mendoza.

He also maintains a blog, in which he goes into more detail about his projects, and in which you can find out more about the new book and the limited edition version; and also see his work in place in an exhibition space, giving you a feeling for its scale.

There is an article on Wired with some large images, an interview on Millionaire Playboy, an additional gallery on the beinArt Surreal Art Collective and a gallery (scroll down) and short bio on Jonathan Levine Gallery.

Kurt Huggins and Zelda Devon, collectively known as Teetering Bulb, are a an illustrator team living in Brooklyn. Their clients include Realms of Fantasy, Dover Publishing, Wizards of the Coast, Honest Tea and Tor.com.

They are also creators of webcomics; and Tor.com, home of Tor publishing (se my post on Tor.com) is hosting their short story webcomic, The Dreaded Question, as well as a new fantasy story King of an Endless Sky (image above, bottom), which has just started.

The latter, presumably because it only has two episodes, is still lacking page to page navigation. [Addendum: this has been addressed (see this post's comments), and the complete story is available from this page. As of this writing there are three pages, with new updates every Thursday.]

Their comics approach has a nice painted feeling, while still working within the traditional comics framework of color filled line drawings. Their illustration is more painterly, but still has a graphic, linear quality that gives it a particular visual charm.

Their blog features many of their works in various stages of creation, in addition to sketches, studies, anatomy drawings, and finished illustrations.

Their portfolio is basically a subset of blog posts, as are listings in the right hand column for sketchbooks and prints.

[Via LCSV4]

Though it’s been commonly accepted in Europe and Japan for may years, it’s finally creeping into common knowledge here in the U.S. that the medium of comics, or “graphic stories”, is not limited to — a: an audience of kids, and b: stories about steroid disasters in leotards grimacing and punching each other.

Comics is simply a medium, one that can be used to convey or talk about essentially anything, including reportage.

A.D. New Orleans After the Deluge is a graphic story about the disaster (both natural and political) of Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath.

The story is published by Smith Magazine and written and drawn by Josh Neufeld, a member of the ACT-I-VATE comics collective and author of The Vagabonds, with consulting and editing from Jeff Newlet and Miles VanMeter.

A.D. was initially published as a webcomic, which you can still read online at Smith Magazine, and has now been released in book format.

There is a video interview on the making of the story on YouTube.

[Via Salon]

As a fun addition to my previous article on W. W. Denslow, here’s a piece on The Design Inspiration that has collected some contemporary artists’ interpretations of the major characters form the Wizard of Oz book and film: 25 Various Styles of The Wizard of Oz Illustrations.

To this list you can add Nancy Dorser, Marvel Comics’ Skottie Young and Image Comics’ Enrique Fernández (also here).

(Images above: Julian Totino Tedesco, Lee Gaston, Tony Papesh, Skottie Young, Enrique Fernández)

The wonderfully demented art of Basil Wolverton, a cartoonist who helped put the “Ugh” in ugly and the “Gross” in gross-out with his work for Mad Comics (later Mad Magazine) in the 1950’s and 60’s, will be on display at the Gladstone Gallery in New York From June 20 to August 14, 2009.

The gallery has a selection of his work online that inclides pieces from many stages of his career, from early, more innocent cartoons, to the gross-out “Beautiful Girl of the Month” that made his reputation, to the apocalyptic Bible illustrations to which he devoted his later career.

There is a review of the show in the New York Times.

For more, including links to more of his art on the web, see my previous post about Basil Wolverton.

Eric Orchard is a Canadian illustrator whose book credits include Anything but Hank! written by Rachel Lebowitz, Zachariah Wells, A Forest for Christmas, written by Michael Harris, and The Terrible Horrible Smelly Pirate written by Carrie Muller and Jacqueline Halsey.

His painted comics work include a story for Scholastic called Robot Museum, which is an offshoot of a longer project Orchard has had in the works for a long time (image above, bottom right, larger version here).

Orchard’s drawings and paintings, done with loose, informal linework and textural passages of watercolor or gouache, can have a charming, almost innocent feeling, while still edged with darker themes.

Orchard seems to have, at least for the time being, abandoned his dedicated web site in favor of his blog and another Revolving Portfolio blog. He also has a small gallery on toonpool.

On his blog you’ll find a variety of posts about his projects, in progress or finished, sketches, drawings and bits of personal news, as well as mentions of other artists he finds interesting. I’m uncertain how often the “Revolving Portfolio” revolves.

Orchard was a participant in last year’s Totoro Forest Project (and was the one who let me know about it) and his work was recently showcased in the Spectrum collection of contemporary fantastic art (image at top, larger version here).

There is a nice article on Orchard, featuring large reproductions of his work, on Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast.

Orchard also maintains a blog called Meta Chronicles, dedicated to anachronistic science fiction themes, which often showcases related illustration.

Once again, the first Saturday in May, this Saturday, May 2, 2009, is (Hooray!) Free Comic Book Day!

Comic book shops across the U.S. will offer a number of free comics, published specially to be given away as examples of the publishers’ lines. Many shops also hold creator signings, sales and other special events.

For more details, see my previous posts on Free Comic Book Day 2008, Free Comic Book Day 2007 and Free Comic Book Day 2006; particularly the latter, in which I discuss the event in more detail and suggest why those who don’t ordinarily read comics take the opportunity to check some out and see your local comic shop on its best behavior. I also give a brief introduction to comic book specialty shops for those who don’t usually venture therein.

The Free Comic Book Day web site features a convenient Zip Code based comic book shop locator to find a shop near you. Check with the individual shops to see the degree of their participation. Some offer all of the free titles (”Silver” and “Gold” titles), others only the most popular (”Gold” titles).

My recommendation this year, if you find a shop that is offering the “Silver” titles, is to look for the Love & Rockets Sampler (above, top center), with art by Gilbert and Jamie Hernandez.