Artist August: Eric Powell [Art Feature]

Eric Powell is almost impossible to pin down. He’s an artist who seems to have mastered a wide array of disciplines, which gives him the mobility to tell a wide variety of stories. Whether a page calls for textured pencil drawings, inks, or even full on oils, Powell can do any of it expertly. He’s talented enough to seamlessly blend these different mediums onto one page. His voice seems to be an amalgamation of Jack Davis and Frank Frazetta, which makes the work feel like it could be either modern or from an early EC comic.

Not only is Powell a fantastic artist, but he’s a hell of a writer as well. His issues of The Goon vary so widely in tone, at times it’s an action comic, others it tugs hard on your heart strings. He can be a horror writer just as easily as he could be a humorist. He’s also taken the reigns on licensed characters like Godzilla and the Universal Monsters, and made some great comics with them. The images below are just a taste of what Powell is capable of. I especially love his pencil work, but find the vast majority of his output to be very impressive. There’s a new Goon miniseries happening right now called Occasion For Revenge. If you haven’t picked up the first issue yet, it should still be available from your friendly neighborhood comic book purveyor.

Cover to The Goon #35

Page from The Goon #7. Not only does this page feature two of my favorite characters in comics, but Powell shifts to just pencils for the last panel as a transition out of the sequence.