Tatjana Wood, R.I.P.

Sorry to hear about the passing of comic book colourist Tatjana Wood, three days ago just before what would have been her 100th birthday today.  A mainstay at DC from the early 1970s to the early 2000s, a lot of her earliest work isn't documented since colouring credits weren't standard at DC until the 1980s.  Just to highlight a few key runs that are especially dear to my heart:

She coloured almost all of the original run of THE QUESTION by Denys Cowan and Dennis O'Neil, a run I've written about before.  She was a key part of what made that one of my favourite comics of all time, really bringing a distinct look to the physical action in the urban landscape.

She's probably most associated with SWAMP THING, having coloured something close to 200 stories of the character through many creative collaborations. Always excellent work, often called upon to deliver some really experimental work, especially through the Bissette/Totleben/Veitch years, which are full of effects I'm pretty sure had never been done in mainstream American comics before.

She was the colourist for most of the last few years of SGT. ROCK stories with writer/creator Robert Kanigher, editor Joe Kubert and a host of artists (on this page, Dan Spiegle).  Might be almost as much of those (and other war stories) as Swamp Thing, a lot were uncredited. 

One of her last regular assignments before retiring was most of Walter Simonson's run on ORION from 2000 to 2002.  A classic run, with some bold clear colouring matching the epic and bombastic nature of the storytelling being brought to the Kirby creations.

Some other noteworthy points from her body of work are WONDER WOMAN (with George Perez) CAMELOT 3000 (with Brian Bolland) and ANIMAL MAN (with Chas Troug, Steve Dillon, Steve Pugh and others). She was also the main colourist for DC's covers for quite a while in the 1970s and 1980s.

You can also find a nice sampling of Wood's colour guides on-line, which can be fascinating:

A couple of cautions, these colour guides were definitely made with tools and dyes not meant to hold their look for four decades. Also, the guides are just one part of some larger conversations, one between Wood and the colour separator, meant to convey what the mechanical procedure would be to get the effect she wants, and another between Wood and the printer, using her experience to know how what she puts on the page will translate to how the inks they use will look on the paper they use.  It's all the more impressive that colourists like her knew how to get the look they needed being so far removed from the final result.

Sal Buscema, R.I.P.

 Just heard of the passing of Sal Buscema at age 89.  A talented and prolific artist with a long career in comics, mostly at Marvel, with long runs on Spider-Man, Hulk, ROM, Captain America, Thor and Defenders, plus work on almost everything else at some point.

A couple of covers he drew:

Good mid-career interview with him in that issue of CI to go with the career spanning one in the TwoMorrows book (still available digitally).  That THOR cover is the only one he did on his run with Walter Simonson on the book in the 1980s, drawing most of the second half of Simonson's run, including the BALDER THE BRAVE mini-series.

And some interior pages

A page from the aforementioned BALDER mini-series with Simonson, maybe my favourite work of his.

A Christmas story featuring Jack Kirby's Orion and Highfather, also written by Simonson, from a brief late 1990s stint at DC where he mostly worked as an inker, but did a few pencils and even fewer full art jobs like this one.  I especially like the sequence at the bottom of this page.

Another Christmas story, this time from Marvel in the early 1990s, featuring the X-Men, written by Karl Bollers.

A 1970s page from THE INCREDIBLE HULK, maybe the character Buscema is most associated with, written by Bill Mantlo, one of his most frequent collaborators.

Another Mantlo collaboration, this one from ROM #1 in 1979, a character ostensibly based on a toy, but one where the comic book creators pretty much had to create all the back-story for.  

And another Simonson collaboration, from their final issue of THOR in 1987, an action packed conclusion to a classic run.