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Artist August: Who Are the Most Underrated Artists in Comics?

By | August 29th, 2013
Posted in Columns | 3 Comments

One of the funny things about doing Artist August every year is how, without fail, I am introduced to new artists during the conversations with the great creators we’re talking to. While everyone and their mother loves the work of current greats like Marcos Martin and Sean Murphy as well as legends like Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko, a lot less people are all about the work of people like Winsor McCay and Jorge Zaffino. Which is a shame, because those two artists are two of the most gifted people to ever work in the comic book medium.

With that in mind, and inspired by a few particular conversations from this year’s edition (namely, with Michael Lark of “Lazarus” fame), I decided to ask a few select artists one question about who exactly they think are the most underrated artists of today or yesterday. The artist’s artists, if you will. The question I asked is below, and please, chime in with any artists you think are underrated as well.

A lot of artists manage to skirt the limelight throughout their career, never really hitting it big despite being incredibly gifted. What artist or artists, either currently active or not, would you say are amongst the most underrated in comics?

Jorge Zaffino

Declan Shalvey (Deadpool, The Massive)

I have to admit, while I do hate to see a wonderfully talented artist not getting appropriate attention and success for all their amazing work, sometimes you kind of want them to stay unknown, as it means you can find other like-minded artists from the secret treasures you share.

Such artists for me, have been the work of Jorge Zaffino and Goran Parlov. Zaffino has unfortunately has passed away, but Parlov continues to do amazing work on titles like Punisher Max and Fury Max. Both of those artists have come up in conversation with other artists I know, and I’ve ended up becoming great friends with them. A personal favourite of mine is also JP Leon, who has had a wonderful career working on great books like Wintermen, but I don’t think a lot of fandom are currently aware of him. Younger readers might recognise his stunning covers for The Massive. D’Isreali is a UK artist who is wonderfully accomplished but also doesn’t seem to be well known outside of Europe.

Another contemporary cover artist who does phenomenal sequential work is Massimo Carnevale. The guy is incredible, but not really recognised by mainstream fandom. As for more recent artists, I love Roland Boschi‘s work on Punisher and Wolverine Max, but I never hear him mentioned much, along with the excellent Davide Gianfelice and Gabriel Hernandez Walta. They all do excellent work but haven’t seemed to have found a ‘fanbase’.

I think a lot of these guys are artist’s artists; we will always have art-crushes on them as we appreciate and understand what they do but the mainstream will never fully understand or appreciate them. I certainly wouldn’t have the career I’ve had or be the artist that I am without them to inspire me.

Bruno Premiani

Gabriel Hardman (Kinski, Station to Station)

I’d have to say 1960’s Doom Patrol artist Bruno Premiani is my favorite underrated comic artist. I stumbled on his work through ragged back issues of Doom Patrol when I was a 13 or so and he has been a huge influence on me ever since. I think he’s relatively obscure due to the limited amount of US comics work he did though all of it is so confident and beautifully crafted. He brought the solid draftsmanship of a magazine illustrator to superhero comics. What little Premiani original art there is available has steeply risen in price over the last few years so he may be more widely appreciated now. I’m always on the lookout for a Premiani original (I only have one half page) and the dealers are always baffled that I’m not looking for a page with a particular character, it’s the artist’s work I’m interested in.

Jeremy Bastian

David Petersen (Mouse Guard)

It’s hard to answer this question only because it comes down to personal tastes. Obviously I feel there should be a wider audience for every artist or writer I like, no matter how many readers they currently have. However, at conventions, in conversations with other comic fans and professionals, I’m surprised by the lack of familiarity with two artists in particular. Now, that’s not to say that they are unknowns, both have successful careers and creator-owned books. But I really enjoy their work and would like for their names and books to be as well known in comics fandom (and even outside it) as they are in my house. Jeremy Bastian and Rick Geary.

Continued below

Jeremy does amazingly detailed artwork reminicent of 19th century engravings or the work of Franklin Booth or Albrecht Dürer. He does his work all at actual size (no reduction for printing) and inks with a brush. Both of these facts will make your head swell with amazement and jelousy of his talent once you see his pages. The name of his series is called Cursed Pirate Girl and is a nautical fairy tale with equal parts Alice in Wonderland and Little Nemo in Slumberland as it’s genealogical inspiration points. The story is magical and with the level of detail and hidden/implied imagery Jeremy packs into each panel, the book is worth a re-read or re-look (with a magnifying glass) even after you have gone cover to cover a few times.

Rick has a series of books called The Treasury of Victorian Murder (which has now expanded into the Treasury of XXth Century Murder) where he illustrates non-fiction accounts of famous true crimes. Rick has a beautiful way of creating grey values with line and texture that remind me of my woodcut printmaking days. Seeing his work enlightened me to the fact that stippling and basket hatched textures were allowed to be the grey values of comics and were not just confined to children’s books. Rick’s books also were the first non-fiction comics I’d ever read, a genre not often explored in graphic storytelling. But beyond Rick’s artwork, he compiles a great deal of research, maps, floorplans, photos, case files, newspaper articles and more into each book, exploring the case through it’s dead-ends, red-herrings, possible contaminated evidence and crime scenes, and various posed theorys of whodunnit.

Al Williamson

Aaron Kuder (Action Comics)

Wow, this is a hard question! I guess it all depends on what you consider the lime light…Grzegorz Rosiński and Al Williamson are the two that pop into my head as great, great artists that aren’t considered common names in today’s comic world. Though, again that depends on who you’re talking to. Rosiński, who’s style is fairly similar to some of Moebius’s work, was incredibly popular in Europe. Williamson is huge among some folks…George Lucas personally asked for him to draw Star Wars comic strips. However, I don’t think either are appreciated they way they could be.

Sam Hiti

Brian Hurtt (The Sixth Gun)

This is a tough question as I don’t know how plugged in I am to what talents out there are getting their due credit and acclaim. I’m sure there are a several talented journeyman artists operating in the work-for-hire field that deserve more praise but I don’t know that I read enough of those books to be really up to speed on all the artists. I tend to think that talent will out and that the artists who deserve attention will ultimately be recognized. If you had asked me this a couple years ago I would have said Chris Samnee was the guy who more people needed to be aware of but he’s had a fantastic couple of years and is finally getting his due.

Outside the work-for-hire field I have two names that spring to mind. Both are great cartoonists/artist-writers and both should be more widely known and recognized in our field.

The first is Sam Hiti, a guy I originally met around 2001-2002 at Wizards World Chicago. He had a comic that he had self-published called END TIMES. At some point around there he received a Xeric grant which he then used to rework his End Times comic into a wonderful graphic novel called END TIMES: TIEMPOS FINALES in 2004. It was this book that made a life-long fan out of me. The story is rich in atmosphere (think Mignola) and his brush work is lush and alive. I would almost compare it to a chunkier, weightier Paul Pope. Paul Pope via Jack Kirby with a heavy European influence. So I’ve been following him since then, buying sketchbooks and a couple mini comics. Then, a few years back, he began serializing a new comic on his website called DEATH DAY. It’s a beautiful, dark, mind-bending sci-fi comic whose story would be a perfect fit in 70’s and 80’s era HEAVY METAL/METAL HURLANT. Death Day was collected as a graphic novel a few years back and I can’t recommend it enough. It’s one of my favorite GNs of the past decade and sits prominently on my bookshelf as I’m constantly returning to it to remind me why I love the medium.

Unfortunately, I don’t know that he’s done much comic work in the past couple years. If he has, I haven’t seen it. But, you can still find sketches and illos by him on his tumblr and read Death Day in it’s entirety, on his website — though I recommend just buying the book through his store!

The other artist that I would love to plug is also the first one to pop into my head when the question was asked. Specifically, because I have had this conversation with a handful of comic guys in recent months about why he isn’t more recognized. I’m talking about Zander Cannon, who–though known in the industry and guy many people may recognize by name–is not as widely known as he should be. Zander has been working in comics since the early 90’s. His first work was on the Tick spin-off series, THE CHAINSAW VIGILANTE, which I believe he was both writing and drawing. His name is probably most recognized as being the layout artist on TOP TEN as well as doing the pencils on the Top Ten spin-off miniseries SMAX. He done some comics writing as well but it’s his creator owned series THE REPLACEMENT GOD that has made him one of my favorite creators of all time. In the mid-to-late 90’s he did around 13 issues of this series and it still remains one of my favorite comics ever. More than being a good artist, I believe Zander is one of the best storytellers the medium has to offer. He’s one of those guys who has a cult following among comic creators but whose work has never had reached the broader audience that it deserves. Aside from writing and doing layouts for other artists, he has spent much of the last decade working non-fiction/educational comics–a couple of which are the fantastic BONE SHARPS, COWBOYS AND THUNDER LIZARDS (written by Jim Ottaviani) and STUFF OF LIFE (written by Mark Schultz). In both those cases he was working with fellow artist Kevin Cannon (no relation). This past year or so has been really exciting for me as a fan of his work because he returned to doing long form creator-owned work. He and Kevin Cannon launched the excellent digital comic anthology DOUBLE BARREL (highly recommend–of great interest are the comics tutorials in the back, written by Zander) which, in part, serialized his newest work, a Graphic Novel called HECK. Heck started out as an exercise in doing a graphic novel in the spirit of the 24-hour comic. That is, a page an hour. I believe he abandoned those time constraints as he got further into the work but, whatever the approach may have been, the graphic novel that came out of it ended up being one of my favorite reads in the last several years. Heck is published by Top Shelf and I highly recommend it to anyone and everyone!


//TAGS | Artist August

David Harper

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