Bingeing the Phillips/Brubaker pulp library

So over the last two months or so I've read 37 books by Sean Phillips and Ed Brubaker, totalling over 4500 pages and representing most, but not quite all, of their comic book collaborations from 2003 to 2025 (and still on-going with two books scheduled in 2026 and likely beyond, unless the boys go Hollywood with their TV deal and leave comics behind). I've read them intermittently over the years, maybe about half of their signature collaboration CRIMINAL (TV adaptation allegedly upcoming for several years now), the first book or two of most of the other serializations (FATALE, THE FADE OUT, KILL OR BE KILLED) and a few of their one-shot books. Completely new to me are their first major series (following a series Phillips just inked and some Batman stuff), the DC/Wildstorm SLEEPER, INCOGNITO and a few other one-shot books and most of the hardcover original RECKLESS series.

Before I go on, I do want to plug the entity that made this reading possible in a quick and affordable manner, the Toronto Public Library. If anyone ever asks what's the best comic book store in Toronto, the hidden answer is the library system.  Over 27,000 different items (with between one and several dozen copies of each) available for you to take home at the low, low price of nothing if you live or work in the city (and a not unreasonable $150 a year if you don't.  $3 a week, that's not even a coffee or a subway fare), plus many thousands more for in-library use in some remarkable special collections, including some very rare and/or expensive things, plus free access to a few thousand more digitally through the Overdrive/Libby and Hoopla services. That's in addition to pretty much a lifetime supply of non-comic books (can such a thing exist?), music and movies both in print and digital.  All of this well catalogued, primarily by creator as the good lord intended (well, age level and then creator, the good lord does have to allow for community standards), but also searchable by other key words, conveniently delivered (except the special collections) to any of a hundred locations probably a short walk or bus ride from you. And with a professional staff which will mostly leave you alone if you look like you know what you're doing, but also provide trained help in finding items you're interested in without feeling the need to explain who they'd think would win in a fight between Thor and Conan (Thor, if you were wondering). They also have one of the most liberal return policies of any comic store I know.  They'll not only take everything back for a full refund, but will eventually charge you extra if you don't use their return policy.  Now I ask you, is that any way to run a railroad?

(most of the books pictured above, a few I already returned)

But seriously, the public library is a valuable and far under-utilized service, and Toronto is lucky to have such an excellent system, not just for comics (but, obviously, most importantly for comics...) but all sorts of services.  Hopefully you live in an area with a similarly valuable public utility, and if not badger your local government until you do.

TPL was able to get me 37 of the 38 books I was looking for in this project, everything except INCOGNITO - BAD INFLUENCES, the second and final book of that series, and given the fact that for whatever reason Brubaker and Phillips haven't chosen to re-publish that series under their current deal at Image, so the last edition is now some 15 years old, that's understandable. And I can find a copy easily enough. They could also provide two anthologies with CRIMINAL short stories, NOIR and LIBERTY, if I didn't already have them.

So, the history, for those who don't know (skip ahead if you do for my thoughts on the book, skip the whole thing if you don't care about those). Sean Phillips was a very prolific comics artist in the British industry in the 1980s, and starting in 1990 did a lot of work for US publishers, most notably DC's horror/fantasy Vertigo line (even before it had that name). Ed Brubaker started as a writer/artist on some small press and independent comics, with work strongly reminiscent of the Hernandez Brothers (PURGATORY USA) and Chester Brown (LOWLIFE). Later on he concentrated on writing with a few well regarded short stories, eventually finding his way to DC/Vertigo, where, oddly, Sean Phillips ended up inking a series Brubaker wrote with artist Michael Lark, SCENE OF THE CRIME (which TPL does have available digitally, and I'll read eventually). Later Brubaker would do a lot of Batman stories, and Phillips would draw a few of them. By 2003 DC had bought the Jim Lee's Wildstorm line (previously published through Image) and both Brubaker and Phillips did some work separately for that line. They were paired together for a series called SLEEPER, which sold okay as a serial but did quite a bit better critically and later in sales of the collections. That lasted for two series of 12 issues, oddly called "seasons". By 2006 Brubaker was well established writing for Marvel's superhero line. At that time Marvel had a line for their creators under exclusive contracts to do creator-owned work, the mostly forgotten Icon imprint. Brubaker and Phillips launched their series CRIMINAL through that line with various series and collections until 2011, in the later years alternating with two mini-series of the super-hero book INCOGNITO. 

Then in 2012 they set up shop at Image, serializing and later collecting FATALE (24 issues), THE FADE OUT (12 issues) and KILL OR BE KILLED (20 issues) over the next six+ years, along with some new one-shots and collections of the old Marvel CRIMINAL stories. In 2018 they released a longer CRIMINAL story as an original hardcover, MY HEROES HAVE ALWAYS BEEN JUNKIES, before returning to a serialized CRIMINAL series for a dozen issues up to 2020. But JUNKIES must have done well, after that they've been mostly doing longer hardcover originals, with four stand-alone books and five books of the RECKLESS series coming out between 2020 and 2024. Last year they returned to CRIMINAL (as noted, maybe soon to be a TV series) with a massive 200-page book, KNIVES (11th in the CRIMINAL series), which is the most recent thing I've read. Since then they've also done another single issue CRIMINAL one-shot and have both another CRIMINAL hardcover and another stand-alone book scheduled for later this year. 

That's the history (with, yes, a lot of gaps). Now the books. With all of them available at once, I decided to mix it up on the reading order. I could have gone strictly chronological, which appeals to part of my brain, but doesn't have a lot of variety (I mean, four collections of SLEEPER to start, followed by six of CRIMINAL with only one INCOGNITO to break it up, then five of FATALE...). Alphabetical appeals to another part of the brain, but that part is silly and we don't listens to it. I decided to put the four non-CRIMINAL serialized books in sequence so I'd get to them in order, but never consecutive volumes of the same series. Then I randomly stuck the CRIMINAL*, RECKLESS* and stand-alone books on the shelf, again with the only rule being no consecutive books of the same series (treating "stand-alone" as a series), so no matter how much I like a book, I won't read another in the same series without reading at least two or three other books. Why create so many convoluted rules? Because I can (and because I'm free to ignore them for any or no reason, though in this case I didn't). 

[* both those series already have have jumping timelines, and that and their pulp fiction rooted origins encourage reading them in any order you happen to encounter them] 

So as noted 500 paragraphs north, this took a little over two months. It's not fair to any creator to consume over 4500 pages of their work, the product of over two decades of hard labour, over so little time, but if there's one thing I learned from these books, it's that life is seldom fair. There are a few tics in their styles which stand out reading so much at once, but obviously I wouldn't have kept reading until I got to the end if I wasn't overall enjoying it. After a suitable gap, maybe a year, I even plan on re-reading them at a more leisurely pace. But some very quick thoughts on them at this point... 

SLEEPER was all new to me, heard a lot of praise for it in the day, never got around to it. It's set in the very convoluted Wildstorm universe that Jim Lee & Co. created back in 1992 and developed with hired hands of variable talent over the next few years before selling it all to DC, who only made it more convoluted. The story involves an agent, Holden Carver, from a shadowy government organization being sent undercover by his boss Lynch to infiltrate a shadowy international criminal organization run by Tao (who's one of the few characters here I understand, coming from the Alan Moore written run of WILDCATS). In a previous series by Brubaker (POINT BLANK with artist Colin Wilson, which I did read before reading SLEEPER) Lynch is shot and comatose, leaving Carver without any way of proving he was working undercover. Things progress from there. This is overlong at 24 issues, and mired in some nonsense continuity that it tries valiantly to explain, but doesn't always succeed, and I didn't really care for the ending. But overall I liked it, the good parts make up for the flaws, and I'm glad I read it. 7/10 

CRIMINAL is the big one, eleven books so far, and I've taken so long to write this that a twelfth has come out, which should be available soon. It's mostly the story of the nominative determinist Lawless family of Bay City and the people unfortunate enough to be in their sphere of influence over the past half century. Each book stands alone, but builds on the past, feeling free not to make all the connections explicit but leave them to the reader to pick up. While staying firmly in pulp tradition, there are also a lot of clever stylistic choices in each book. Definitely looking forward to more and re-reading it, this is probably the series I'm most likely to buy for my own collection in some form. 4½ stars 

INCOGNITO is pretty much a basic super-hero (or rather super-villain) story, ratcheted up in the sex and violence department. It's about a villain, Zack Overkill, who is in witness protection until his past catches up with him. This was okay, maybe when I read the second series I'll like it more. Both Phillips and Brubaker have done a lot of super-hero comics in their day, and it's interesting to see them do it without restraints, but it's played pretty straight, no parody elements like a lot of "extreme" super-hero stories. Incomplete, pending part 2 

FATALE, THE FADE OUT and KILL OR BE KILLED, I kind of had similar feelings towards, with varying degrees of severity. They start strong, don't have enough story to maintain the number of pages they've been given, really drift in the middle, pick up a bit at the end, but aren't completely satisfyingly tied up. Of the three, THE FADE OUT is the best, as the shortest, most straightforward (a tale of murder and intrigue in old Hollywood) and devoid of fantasy elements. FATALE I'm not sure if I missed something, I might enjoy more if I read it straight through. KILL OR BE KILLED is the one I'm most likely to never read again. Overall for the group, C+ 

There are four stand-alone books, PULP, WHERE THE BODY WAS, NIGHT FEVER and HOUSES OF THE UNHOLY. Overall the most successful was THE BODY, that I can recommend unconditionally. It has an interesting story structure, some well drawn out characters that you could care about. Next was PULP, which started out as a straightforward story of a pulp fiction writer in the 1930s before getting a bit ridiculous, but its heart was in the right place. NIGHT and HOUSES were okay, nothing wrong, just nothing new. Collectively 82.7% 

And finally the RECKLESS series, five original hardcovers published in under two years from 2020 to 2022, and nothing since. They tell stories set over decades in the life of Ethan Reckless, who like the Lawless clan of Bay City lives up to his name while living in Los Angeles working as a private eye after his previous life as an undercover agent. This series switches off with CRIMINAL as my favourite of the Phillips/Brubaker collaborations, and I could very much see adding some or all of them to my collection at some point. Presumably there is going to be at least one more book (Reckless' narration is from far in the future of the published books, and hints at some major events to come). 3.8 GPA

Len Strazewski, R.I.P.

Sad to hear of the passing of writer Len Strazewski at the too young age of 71.  Strazewski only spent a short amount of time active in comics, working in the mid 1980s on the TROLLORDS comic by Scott Beaderstadt and Paul Fricke as a consultant, later editor and occasional writer.  Later he'd write at DC with some fun comics, most notably in collaboration with the late Mike Parobeck on THE FLY and JUSTICE SOCIETY OF AMERICA.  Then he was one of the founders of the Ultraverse line over at Malibu, writing their flagship book PRIME and other books like PROTOTYPE and ELVEN.  He's mostly worked in other fields before, during and since, journalism and education it appears, which was a loss for comics.

Trying to pick something to post for a writer is always a bit harder, then I came across this in his final issue of the JSA series he did with Parobeck in 1993, which seems worth preserving for posterity.  Maybe later I'll add some comic pages and panels...

Just a few thoughts about heroes, especially senior heroes, before I go.

Eighteen or so years ago when I was a cub reporter for an advertising magazine, I made my first business trip to San Diego to cover the annual conference of the Savings & Loan Marketings Assn., an august organization dedicated to convincing consumers that there could be nothing safer and more satisfying than putting their money in rock-solid savings and loans institutions. We all know how that worked out.

The luncheon speaker at the conference was Buckminster Fuller, the all-purpose genius who coined the terms “Spaceship Earth,” and “synergy,” and designed the first geodesic dome.

He was pushing 80 at the time, but was still spry in body and mind. He needed a microphone to be heard, but his ideas were still powerful. I ignored my rubber chicken lunch and focused my attention on Bucky. I consider myself a pretty bright guy, but I knew that what I managed to understand from his talk was just the tip of an intellectual iceberg I could spend a lifetime trying to figure out.

Around me at the table, the savings and loan marketers were starting to mutter. “Who is this guy? What does this have to do with marketing?”

“Shut up,” I said. “He’s trying to tell you how to save the world.”

After his presentation, I was the only person to go up to the podium to shake his hand. He was cordial and answered my questions with a smile. He didn’t seem at all disturbed that he had been ignored by most of his audience who had no clue about who he was or what he had accomplished in a 50-year scientific career.

I guess when you've spent most of your life tilting at windmills and have been dubbed “A Fool on the Hill” by the Beatles, a few marketing executives can’t get you down.

Some years later when I was in graduate school and taking a class in labor history, I attended the opening of “Union Maids,” a documentary about women in the labor movement. A few of the women who had supported the pre-World War II steel strikes were on hand to take questions from the audiences. In their 70s and 80s, they looked more like the grandmothers they were, instead of the dangerous radicals they had been said to be.

A young female student raised a hand and asked the Union Maids if they had ever experienced sexual discrimination in their activities. The old women turned to each other briefly and then started to laugh.

I guess when you've spent much of your life shoving a union card in the face of National Guardsmen armed with bayonets and live ammo, some of the social problems of the present don’t seem so imposing. Not that sex discrimination and sexual harassment isn’t an important issue—Anita Hill is, after all, one of my contemporary heroes.

When I received the opportunity to write JUSTICE SOCIETY OF AMERICA, I thought about the Silver Age JSA/Justice League crossovers and how much I enjoyed seeing two generations of heroes in action—good, solid slugfests against really despicable villains. But I also thought about what it must be like to be a hero at the tail end of your career. Would you be sad? Would you be depressed? Angry? Jealous of the younger generation?

Maybe, but the senior heroes of my experience, folks like Buckminster Fuller, the Union Maids and others of their sort who had been making their statements and bucking conventional wisdom for decades seemed to me, for want of a better word, secure.

They've been around, taken some lumps, given some back and have survived with their integrity intact. Eventually their end would come, but until then, they would continue on as they had before—representing the ideals they had always represented.

So, as I thought about the JSA, I figured that when you've fought Hitler, UltraHumanite, Vandal Savage and have been sent into another dimension to stave off the end of the universe, it’s hard to be upset by a few wrinkles and gray hairs.

As I’ve written these past ten issues, that’s the model I’ve used for the JSA: older, grayer, a little less active, but strong where it counts—in their hearts.

It’s been suggested that perhaps characters like the JSA have run their course and don’t have a place in contemporary comics. After all, they are not psychotic, misshapen or compelled by dark demons to perform tasks of ambiguous morality, so how could they sell seven million collectable copies?

That may be so, but I continue to believe that there’s room for all sorts of heroes in comics and in life, and that the greatest super power is the power to inspire. These characters have that power in abundance.

As I close out this DC comics assignment, I want to say thanks to my colleague Mike Parobeck who made the ideas come alive, to my friend and editor Brian Augustyn who dragged me kicking and screaming into comics writing, all of the fans who supported the JSA and wrote letters on its behalf and all of those heroes out there, past, present and to come.

So long, it’s been good to know ya!

—Len Strazewski

Random Realities 2026.04.26

 Time for the irregular attempt to get some regular posting up in this place again...

Reminder that the old Update-A-Tron is somehow still out there and working, if you're interested in weblogs that update more often than mine.  Looks like we're in a period where it allows updates, so feel free to let me know if there's anything you think is worth adding or anything that's no longer appropriate to be there.

Congratulations to Stephen Bissette and company for the wildly successful crowd-funding campaign for some reprints of TYRANT.  Note that they still allow for late pledges if you want to get in on the action, but act quick especially if you want any extras beyond the basic books.  Best news about that is that the show of support seems to have motivated Bissette to get going on some other comics projects, including some new Tyrant stories, an anthology of his share of the 1963 characters (Hypernaut, N-Man and The Fury), a reprint of some of his other creator-owned comics and more. Hard to know what would be the book of the year if all of them come out in 2026. And all this in addition to his on-going film history and sketchbook projects and other things.

Equally big year for the other half of Creative Burnouts, Rick Veitch.  Most visibly next week will see the publication of SWAMP THING #88, just shy of 37 years since it was due, with the continuation of his Swamp Thing lost-in-time saga, with special guest artist Michael Zulli.  In addition to that, he's continuing his King Hell Heroica, with the penultimate issue of TRUE-MAN out a few months ago.  With one more issue of that and one wrap-up volume for the whole saga it could finally all be done in 2027.  All previous episodes available in various print-on-demand books, so easier than ever to catch up and be there for the finale.  Also in the latest issue was the news that Veitch had come to a satisfactory agreement with Marvel regarding his co-creation of the character The Sentry (recently appearing in the film THUNDERBOLTS) and there may be news soon regarding his long-unreprinted contributions to the Ninja Turtles line.

Last year I was very happy to see the DALGODA OMNIBUS by Dennis Fujitake and Jan Strnad bring an old favourite back into print from About Comics.  This year About surprised me with a follow-up I never knew existed, a Fujitake and Strnad teaming up again for RETIEF, a six-issue adaptation of some Keith Laumer science fiction stories from 1987/1988, now available in a new collection. I'd seen Retief comics before, but only the later 1990s comics not by Strnad and Fujitake, didn't realize they had done it first.  Nice looking book, can't wait to dive into it.

Dalgoda was also part of second in the LEGENDS OF INDIE COMCS: WORDS ONLY series of short story collections that have come out in the last few years. A lot of old favourites in here, mostly in new stories (I think a few are older  archival pieces, but most are original to this book), including:

Concrete by Paul Chadwick
Mister Monster by Michael T. Gilbert
Grimjack by John Ostrander
Desert Peach and Stinz by Donna Barr
Bitchy Bitch by Roberta Gregory
Flaming Carrot by Bob Burden
Nexus and Badger by Mike Baron
Stig's Inferno by Ty Templeton
Star Slammers by Walter Simonson

Also a lot of features I've been curious about but never tried.  And, oh, let's say, other stuff (for plausible deniability, not everything I'm excited about was listed above).  Most stories also feature a chapter illustration and the second book has a jam story by most of the creators, which I haven't read yet but seems fun.

Should mention that there's a new edition of the J. M. Dematteis / Glenn Barr book BROOKLYN DREAMS out recently from Dark Horse, which is in every way superior to the previous version (and as someone who now owns four versions of it, I think I'm qualified to judge).  Among my favourite comics of the 1990s, on some days my favourite DeMetteis work (other days it's MOONSHADOW with Jon J. Muth, which also a recent new edition from Dark Horse.  Sometimes it's THE LAST ONE with Dan Sweetman, which is overdue for a reprint.  Sometimes it's DOCTOR FATE with McManus and Giffen, which also had a big book from DC last year).

It was good to see Mike Kunkel finally return to his HEROBEAR AND THE KID series through Papercutz, with a reissue of the original THE INHERITANCE out last year, part one of the previously unfinished SAVING TIME out last month and the conclusion of that story due out in September (I've since found out he actually did publish all of SAVING TIME in a crowd-funded complete book a few years ago, which I hadn't heard of, but these mass-market editions are much easier to find).  Always a delightful book, leafed through the new one and it seems good, though I'm waiting for the rest of SAVING TIME to be closer to re-read the first book and read the second. If you've never had the pleasure, it's a highly entertaining story about a 10-year-old boy who finds a magic watch and toy bear left to him by his grandfather, which results in all sorts of wacky adventures with a lot of surprises and heartwarming nonsense thrown in.

I'm liking the DC Finest line, mostly in theory, although there are a lot of books I might pick up in the future.  Did pick up the first War volume, with four months of DC war comics from 1956, and have the Sgt. Rock book on order, with the first few years of that character.  The first is all-new to me, and I'm enjoying it, although of course it's uneven (I'd love a book of just  the Kanigher/Kubert stories...). Second will be all stuff I have in other forms, but will be nice to see fresh. It's weird to see DC jump in headfirst in a line like this.  Everything from the original announcements came out, and they've continued scheduling around three a month, with over 50 out so far and over 80 by the end of the year.  At this rate by the end of 2027 in three years they'll probably have reprinted more pages than either the ARCHIVES line in 25 years or SHOWCASE PRESENTS line in 11 years, maybe more than both combined if you take out the overlap and the licensed material (SPIRIT, ELFQUEST, DOC SAVAGE, THUNDER AGENTS, MAD, etc). In addition to that they'll have almost 50 books in their $10 Compact line by the end of the year, with a wide variety of stuff (more modern than the Finest line, primarily post-1990 work with the obvious 1980s exceptions).  They also seem to be doing a good job of keeping both lines in print and getting some headway into mainstream markets as well as the direct market.

Fantagraphics is wrapping up their EC Artists' Library books, which they started in 2012.  SPAWN OF VENUS, wrapping up the Wallace Wood science fiction stories, was the 38th book. After that they're abandoning the feature artist format and combining Wood and Jack Davis in MY GUN IS THE JURY with their stories from PANIC (the Orlando, Elder and Kamen PANIC stories already being included as parts of their respective books). Then they're combining the various New Direction books not included into at least two other books, SHOCK TREATMENT with the medical books, MD and PSYCHOANALYSIS, and one assumes at least one more unannounced book for PIRACY and VALOR. And maybe some more beyond that with some stragglers from the pre-Trend and stuff from the Illustrated magazines and whatever (they are doing a cover gallery, but in a different larger colour format).  Whatever the case, the heart of it is wrapped, and the rest should follow within a year or two.  They've also gotten the rights to MAD (too late to include them in this line unfortunately...) and are doing a collection which will include not only the original (oft reprinted) Kurtzman edited colour comics but also the mostly unreprinted Kurtzman b&w magazine issues (24-28 plus leftover material used later). Unfortunately this is all in a box set that'll sell for US$300.

Okay, that's enough for now.  Next time maybe more on some comics created in this century.  Been reading all the Phillips/Brubaker collaborations, and I have some thoughts on those...

Stephen Bissette's TYRANT on the way back

Lighthouse publisher Chris Stevens is so preoccupied with whether or not he could he didn't stop to think if he should...

The previously teased crowd funding campaign to bring out some reprints of Stephen R. Bissette's 1990s classic dinosaur comic TYRANT is in full effect, and an unquestionable success with over four times the initial goal and over 1400 backers in the first week.  

Two editions of the book.  The 100+ page Original Art Edition,  a 12"x19" book reprinting all the artwork for the series and some other material at the full size Bissette drew it, duplicating the look and feel of the original art as much as possible. The 200+ page Complete Edition reprints the same material slightly smaller (9"x12", still much larger than the original comics) plus a lot of extra material, including all backmatter from the original comics and more.  Your choice, either book or both, with various optional features

Runs until April 16, 2026, so still a lot of time to hit more milestones, including several stretch goals which will bring the backers new prints from Bissette's 1989 Carnosaurs portfolio and more.

If you back right now, even a token placeholder amount while you decide what configuration of items offered you want (including a black light posters, metal bookmarks, slipcases, signed book plates, digital edition and more), you can join Bissette and book designer Jim Rugg in a video conference call with other backers this Thursday, March 26 at 6pm EST.

The Tyrant/Lighthouse crew, Bissette, Rugg and Stevens, have been on a media blitz for the book.  I put together a playlist of all the interviews they've done on various YouTube shows over the last few months, plus some key earlier videos like the Cartoonist Kayfabe review which led to the book.

Sam Kieth, R.I.P.

Sorry to hear about the passing of Sam Kieth last week at the far too young age 63, reportedly after some very long and difficult health problems.  

In lieu of flowers, his family asks for donations to be made in his name to either Hero Initiative, Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, or the Lewy Body Dementia Association.

He had a long running blog that he posted to fairly steadily from 2010 to 2023, with thousands of image filled posts packed with some stuff you've probably never seen.

Here's a small selection of some pages and a few covers which caught my eye while pulling out some samples of work from his long career.

Some notes on them...

The Maxx was his signature character, really distinctively designed, playing into all the excesses his work was known for and stretching them even further, to the breaking point. This is from his (kind of) first appearance in DARKER IMAGE #1, scripted by William Messner-Loebs.



More of the Maxx, also with Messner-Loebs, a few issues in to his on-going series, when things started to get really strange and there was even more going on than you might have expected.



Kieth is also known as the co-creator of The Sandman (with Mike Dringenberg and Neil Gaiman, who also worked on the page above).  He only worked on the first five issues, but brought a lot to the book and key to its success.  In this page he also gets to draw a nice version of Jack Kirby's character Etrigan.


A 1991 page from a Wolverine story, written by Peter David.  I just have a few chapters of this, it's really wild.  Would love a nice book of those.



A Hulk page written by Peter David, this time inked with Kelley Jones, a really intense standalone issue of the series which presents a  different version of the character, really like nothing else being published by Marvel at the time.



A nice double page pin-up of Hadji Quest and his brother Jonny, from when Kieth's frequent collaborator William Messner-Loebs was writing the book featuring the boys. Lot of nice little details in this when you start looking around.

Speaking of Messner-Loebs, he lettered this backup by John Holland and Kieth which appeared in the back of his comic JOURNEY. A nice early work by Kieth, showing signs of where he'd go but much more restrained than he would be soon.


A relatively tame page from a truly bonkers Lobo story that Kieth did with Scott Ian.

This is a really fun cover, a tribute to classic 1948 Carl Barks cover. A lot of weird early work appeared in Kim Thompson's CRITTERS, some collected in the two I BEFORE E issues of early Kieth rarities which I've never been able to find (but the existence of which helps me remember the spelling of his name).



The most recent page here, from the 2017 ELEANOR & THE EGRET with writer John Layman. 

EPICURUS THE SAGE, another work with William Messner-Loebs, has always been my favourite work of Kieth.  I wrote about it over here, I'll just add that, four years later, I like it even more.




A really nice fanzine cover, Kieth always had a way of interpreting existing characters in some distinctive ways which stayed true to their roots while looking like nothing you saw before.



From 1990, a nice interpretation of the Giger designed movie xenomorphs, written by Mark Verheiden.



And finally from a 1986 issue of ANYTHING GOES, the earliest example of Kieth's writing I have, which does indeed make me feel a bit stupid, but that's not a bad thing.

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.