Here’s the second half or our ‘breakout’ category. In case you missed it, not only is it a sturdy list, but it also included our thoughts on how you try to determine if someone has broken out or not. It’s a tricky set of categories for sure. It’s easy to imagine the artists below, with all of their years of experience, chuckling at being labeled as a breakout, as the term can easily be associated with being the new kid. In every case, the artists below have been grinding away for years, and it’s our determination that 2015 is the year their labors have pushed them into the next tier of their career.
And, of course, feel free to chime in with a comment at the end!
5. Jason Fabok
(Keith Dooley) After some strong work on “Detective Comics”, Fabok broke out big with his collaboration with writer Geoff Johns on “Justice League”. With every issue, he’s able to juggle the epic with the personal and compel us to care for this larger-than-life cast of gods. He brings a cinematic style to the page that bursts with movement and a kinetic energy that transforms every page and panel into an important event. He brings the same amount of care and detail to a scene whether it involves our heroes battling the likes of Darkseid’s minions or partaking of an intimate encounter. He’s a storyteller whose style melds perfectly with Johns and has been one half of the reason why the current “Darkseid War” storyline has been the best of Johns’ run so far. As an added bonus, he depicts the best Wonder Woman in any DC comic today.
4. Erica Henderson
(Kevin McConnell) Comic book diversity really went up a notch this year. More women than ever before cemented their claim in an industry known to be male dominated. Erica Henderson did exactly that in spades. This year she worked on “The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl” with Ryan North to create a fantastic female driven book. Squirrel Girl is not the prototypical female hero and Henderson embraced that fully. It was a much need moment of levity in a world that occasionally takes things a little too serious.
3. Daniel Warren Johnson
(Leo Johnson) Anyone who’d already been reading his webcomic “Space-Mullet” knew it, but 2015 was the year a larger comics audience finally got to see Daniel Warren Johnson work his magic. Whether it was six issues of “The Ghost Fleet”, his Dark Horse miniseries with Donny Cates; a “Quake” one-shot at Marvel with Matthew Rosenberg; a back up in the “Sinestro” annual; or the second volume of “Speculative Relationships”, the sci-fi romance anthology he’s contributed to, Daniel constantly brought passion and finesses to his work, blending Moebius and manga influences to make comics that a unique and exciting. And even with all that on his plate, Dan still found time to keep a fairly regular update schedule for “Space-Mullet”, building the story even more as it gets ready for a print release from Dark Horse in 2016. If 2015 was a big year for Daniel Warren Johnson, I’m sure 2016 will be even bigger.
2. Barnaby Bagenda
(Vince Ostrowski) While he’s been around for a couple of years now, and though it’s quite a memorable one, you might not yet know the name “Barnaby Bagenda.” I promise you that that’s going to change very soon. “Omega Men” has been an audacious series that unfortunately too few have been reading. The story is pretty complex, as far as superhero comics go, but Bagenda keeps a keen focus on giving us the information we need to proceed forward visually. Tom King and Bagenda have carefully planned the series with heavy use of the 9-panel grid, with lots of deliberate repetition and some subtle variation to patterns that Bagenda navigates quite expertly. I’m not sure I can think of the last DC comic that has been this intricately crafted – especially from such a relatively new artist. The book has been to cancellation and back again (DC recently announced that the series will reach a logical conclusion at issue #12, rather than taking a premature exit), and while that might not help it find an audience, it will at least allow Bagenda to end the journey that he and King began several months ago. You see, when “Omega Men” reaches the final issue (of a story that begins with a band of rebels rescuing Green Lantern Kyle Rayner from captivity and has only sprawled out from there), you could spread out the pages of story into a massively over-sized poster and, well, I’ll just leave it as a surprise. Maybe that will get you to check out the book and the gorgeous, painterly art within?
Continued below
1. Andrew MacLean
(Brian Salvatore) We’ve been fans of Andrew’s for a long time, so, initially, it seemed a little silly to call 2015 his breakout year. But then, the facts started streaming in: this year alone, he launched the “Head Lopper” quarterly at Image, released the “Apocalyptigirl” OGN, did back ups for “God Hates Astronauts” and “The Savage Dragon,” and did issues of both “The Tomorrows” and “Rick and Morty.” If people didn’t know his work before, more than likely they would now. And thank goodness, because he continues to impress at every single turn.
Editor’s Notes:
Mike Romeo – Man, it’s awesome to see MacLean on this list. Like the write up says, we’ve been fans for a minute, so to see our staff so soundly place him at the top of this category is certainly gratifying.
Brian Salvatore – The diversity and youth on this list is inspiring; I also have to give kudos to our staff for having such a fluid description of what ‘breakout’ means – MacLean kept doing his own thing, Fabok got hooked up with DC’s COO, Bagenda launched a, sales-wise, underwhelming book. But each artist showed that they are no fluke, and that they have a great future ahead of them.
