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Altered Ego Update.
Last night I received an email from the printer and everything is set to go. They are also giving me a bit of a discount, which they really didn't have to do but which I really appreciate. Every bit helps. (I love this printer!) The collected AE should be available online soon. I promise this time. No more messing around with it.
... Really!
Under the influence.
Everyone is always asking me who my influences are and then set about guessing who my work reminds them of. I'm always interested and at times totally flabbergasted by their choices. The truth is that I could never put together a complete list of all the creators who have had an influence on me and my work. Every artist, writer, musician and person on the streets influences me in some way but there are few certain comic book artists that hit me at the right time and were the greatest influences in my comic book art style and the way that I, personally, draw funny books. After all, there has never been a comic book quite as great as those you read when you were ten years old and these guys ruled my ten year olds comic book world.
John Buscema (1927 - 2002)
Whoa. I wanted so badly to draw like Buscema. He was the classic, cool artists-artist. Buscema is perhaps the best comic book artist ever and is best known for his work on The Avengers and The Silver Surfer, and for over 200 stories featuring the sword and sorcery hero Conan the Barbarian. Sweeet work.
Gil Kane (1926 - 2000)
Kane co-created the modern-day Green Lantern and Atom for DC Comics, and numerous other superheroes, including Marvel Comics' Iron Fist but it was his pioneering work on graphic novels, His Name is...Savage, in 1968, and a seminal graphic novel, Blackmark, in 1971 that make me sit up in awe. While never as famous as many, he was always first. Not ahead of his time but outside of it. I wanna' be Gil Kane.
Joe Kubert (1926)
He is best known for his work on the DC Comics features Sgt. Rock and Hawkman. One of my first and my very favorites. His work was powerful and 'real' like few others. Kubert's art still holds up today and is some of the most powerful comic book art I've ever seen.
Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez (1948)
If Buscema and Neal Adams were combined and the best parts of each put into one single artist, Lopez is it. His notable works include Atari Force, Cinder and Ashe, Road to Perdition, Deadman, New Teen Titans and various DC superheroes. Under-appreciated and head and shoulders above just about everyone else. If I had to choose one artist I wish I drew like, Lopez is the man. If anyone knows him tell him that I love his work.
Jim Aparo (1932 - 2005)
Jim Aparo was best known for his work on various Batman stories for DC Comics. There is a whoooole lot of Aparo inside my work. Probably more Aparo than any other single artist. He could draw Batman like no one else ... except ...
Neal Adams (1941)
He has helped create some of the definitive modern imagery of the DC Comics characters Batman, Green Arrow, and others before going out on his own and creating Continuity Comics. An early and steadfast pioneer for creator's rights. Adams created THE Batman and THE Superman in my eyes. I still can't help but compare every other artists take on those two icons against his versions and they always come up short.
Mike Grell (1947)
Grell's first assignment at DC was on Superboy and the Legion of Super-Heroes and that's where he caught me and changed my art forever. Right place. Right time. I was a GIANT fan of TOLSH but only while Grell was drawing it. When talking about influences Grell was my number one. Like I keep saying - right place, right time. I was about ten when I first saw Grell's work and I was never the same after. Even my signature was influenced my his.
Finally ... the many and numerous unnamed artists whose work I loved but never knew their names. Because as a kid it's the ride that matters, not who created it and there are just too many for a single mind to hold on to.
You wanna' see other artists' work inside of mine ... ? Look at these guys and see if ya' can do it.
Well, now I've shown you mine. Let's see yours.
Different stroking.
Some writers are poets. Some write fiction. Short stories or novels. Some writers write for film, some movies, some comic books, some cartoons, some greeting cards. Some writers write for video games. Some writers write fiction while others write nonfiction. For every writer there is a different desire and a different path to see those desires realized. The same can be said for artists, musicians and just about everyone else walking beneath the same blue sky. We're all different from each other and this isn't a bad thing. In fact it's a very, very good thing.
As artists, and more specifically as human beings, I think that we make the mistake of thinking that everyone shares the same hopes, dreams and desires as we do. People are different. Everyone dreams of different things. Has different desires. Different plans. Different goals. It's a mistake to think that because someone else isn't following the same path we've laid out for ourselves that they have somehow 'gone astray'.
Do your own thing, sit back and let others do theirs. After all, it's our diversity and our differences that makes this world interesting.
The Invisible Man.
I look around myself, around this site, around the few other sites I'm a (teenie tiny) part of and I can't help but feel like the 'Invisible Man'. Not a big deal, just an observation of a continually repeating phenomena. This could actually be considered a super power if I could only find a way to harness it. (Me = Endless search for silver lining.)
Drug of choice.
To me art is like a drug. It controls my life and everything in it. My every thought and desire is wrapped up in the idea, the very thought, of creation. Like a drug, many might say that art has ruled, some would say controlled, some even destroyed, my life ... but nothing gives me the same high. Nothing lifts me like art does. Creating. More than simply pencil to paper, art is an act of creation. How can I not crave this? If art is my drug of choice, then I'm an admitted addict. I can't stop myself and I can't turn away. I don't want to. Fame, notoriety, success? These things don't matter to me. They don't even enter in to the process. To create is the thing. It's the only thing. Let others have the notice and the success, just let me create and I'll be blissfully happy.
Or at least I'll think I am and isn't that really the same thing after all?
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