Read this intro first, to better understand the list i.e. my choices, but also to avoid misunderstandings which might otherwise arise.
Even though this post consists of the "bottom half" of my Top 100 list, it was put together many years after I'd completed the Top 30 - which I had posted on a different blog 9 years earlier (and then re-posted it as Top 50 here a few years after that).
Nevertheless, just in case you're new to this blog (and you must be because hardly anyone ever visits the damn thing), and you prefer to start at the beginning, here are a few key points you need to know about before browsing through my choices. It will prevent confusion and (some of the) bewilderment.
1.
I am far more interested in the best talent than the greatest innovators. I reward skill, not reputation. Many pioneers (in all artistic domains) tend to get overrated (simply because "they were there first"), whereas many obscure cartoonists that came (much) later are underrated. Everyone gets equal treatment: I am only interested in what's on the paper (or screen). An illustrator's political orientation, likability or lack thereof, their reputations, and other extraneous things of that nature do get mentioned - but they do not affect my decision to include them nor do they affect their placement on the list.
2.
How an illustrator presents his pages (colour, paneling, bleeding, transitions) is important too, it's not "just" about the technique itself.
3.
I have a "genre bias" just like everyone else does, but I don't allow it to affect my appraisals of cartoonists. My preferences are far-and-away horror, sci-fi, fantasy and historical comics, also humorous comics to a lesser extent. I am usually bored by westerns so I avoid those if I can. I have very little interest in pretentious "socially aware" hipster shit either: all that badly doodled stuff about alienation and "minority rights". I steer clear from political-propaganda comics full of inept/cheesy moralizing - which is all the rage now. But regardless of how good or bad the content, all genres are treated equally here, at least in terms of skills and presentation. I am nothing if not a very objective robot: I have no issues praising the work of detestable assholes.
4.
Technique and style: two entirely different species. Great technique is all well and fine, and I applaud it, but if I consider a style ugly or boring then I am quite unlikely to include that person in the top 100. If a gifted illustrator decides to diminish the quality of his output by utilizing an unappealing or dreary style i.e. drawing well under his potential, then that is his decision and his fault, the consequences being that his work will be appraised as poor(er) hence won't be included. For example, many younger illustrators are inferior to their predecessors, partially because of poor "CGI" colouring, and partly because of ugly and/or generic or overly fashionable approaches to drawing. It's not my fault if gifted cartoonists present their work in a shitty way (with bad computer colour), or if they refuse to draw in a more artistic, expressive, natural style. (Not to mention lazy assholes who "draw" on screens with light pens.) I don't rate talent, only the results. Some gifted cartoonists fully showcase their potential, while others choose not to.
5.
Quality is the crucial factor obviously, but quantity plays a role too. A great talent who only produced 10 top-notch pages (for Heavy Metal magazine) is at a disadvantage compared to a somewhat weaker talent who'd published many 100s of pages of good drawings.
6.
Likewise, famous (book) cover illustrators who only sporadically did just a few pages of comics will not be included, no matter how good they are. This is not a list of the best illustrators, it's a list of the best comic-book illustrators: big difference. A cartoonist needs to have a big enough body of work to qualify. This amount doesn't have to be large, but merely sufficient. (I'll be intentionally vague on what this exactly means, because obviously nobody can define this imaginary "minimum quantity" precisely.)
7.
Nearly every good illustrator has his better and weaker phases, or even great and crap phases which completely contrast each other. As a general rule, I tend to focus on the good stuff, while taking into consideration what I wrote in rule 6 (about quantity as a factor). I choose to not let the weakest work spoil my good impression i.e. I take the "glass is half-full" approach. I do the same on my music blog too, preferring to focus on the good stuff rather than anally average out everything, like some maths nerd. Besides, finding these elusive "averages" in terms of a cartoonist's whole body of work would be far too complex, time-consuming, and perhaps even impossible in most cases. Nevertheless, if an illustrator's weak stuff completely outweighs the small amount of his best material in terms of volume, then I have to take that into consideration too, hence might place him (much) lower than if I solely focused on his great stuff. Obviously, it is often not easy to gauge precisely how much of a comicography is great or weak because I don't always know how much stuff a person had published. This kind of overview is far easier with movies and music/bands, for example.
8.
Ideally, a drawing works well both from the distance (or diminished) and from up-close under the microscope. Obviously, when analyzing the quality of a drawing style, it helps to zoom in very closely: this helps in assessing the elegance (or lack thereof) of the lines. I am a stickler for how the lines look, not just for the overall impression.
9.
Colour makes the assessing more difficult. High-quality colouring can create the illusion that the drawing is (much) better than it is (which is otherwise a good thing), just as bad colouring can ruin a drawing. I prefer to appraise certain illustrators by primarily looking at their b&w output. But even this can be tricky: some comics were intentionally drawn for colour, whereas others aren't suitable for it, hence comparing the two would be illogical and unfair. Comics which rely on colour are rated as a whole, as a sum of all of its parts - rather than only the basic drawing. Complications can arise when a deceased illustrator's work is re-coloured after his demise, leaving him no opportunity to disallow the release of an inferior, ruined album.
10.
This isn't a list of my favourite comics, but of the best-illustrated comics. Not the same. Sure, nearly all of my favourite series and one-offs are included, but that's not how they are ranked. Many comics featured here I've never read.
11.
I don't give three shits about reputations and "legendary" names: if a world-renowned cartoonist is overrated (Will Eisner, Jack Kirby) or even downright crap (Gipi), then he has no chance of making it on the list. I have my own criteria, and my standards are high. I am not interested in the slightest about how other people rate/rank illustrators and their comics. Most best-of lists are horrible, quite laughable, which is btw the main reason I decided to do my own list: to showcase the real talent, not frauds. Most other lists either focus too much on superhero comics, or too much on historical significance, or are dipped in unbearable levels of hipstery pretentiousness. My list, however, isn't superhero-biased (quite to the contrary), it doesn't glamourize pioneers (unless they actually deserve the adulation), and there is almost zero interest in hipster comics (except to bash them occasionally). Besides, I don't trust the opinions of either individuals (dumb/lying critics) or the majority (i.e. the brainwashed rabble who follow the herd).
12.
My standards are so high - i.e. I'm such a stickler for detail and nitpicker extraordinaire - that despite being aware of at least a thousand illustrators, I struggled to find enough of them worthy of the Top 100. This is, after all, why I initially had only a top 30, then a 50 list. I decided to expand it to 100 because I'd gradually found a bunch more cartoonists worthy of featuring, but I had to thrown in a few "fillers" at the beginning.
Best Comic-Book Illustrators
Of All Time (Part 1):
100-51
Updated: 20.10.22. (Ito, E. Breccia, Kakizaki, Kishiro)
250. Hugo Pratt - Italian
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| And we start off with an... Italian! Yes, you'll be seeing a lot of Italian guys on this list (or at least their illustrations, not them literally). If this fact surprises you then you must be either utterly clueless about comics (which is OK, that's partially why this list exists in the first place: to educate), or you're one of those nitwits who limits their tiny brains to those utterly boring, vacuous American superhero comics - and/or a fan of those boring conveyor-belt mangas, with their huge-mouthed juvenile-looking Lolita characters talking a lot of shit while humping aliens with their triple penises and dislocated mangled vaginas - providing pleasures to a whole army of middle-aged latently pedo guys (and a bunch of confused cheap-thrill-seeking kids). If you belong to either readership (or God forbid both) then obviously you can't know that Italy is one of the top 3 nations in terms of quality output and talent. Of course, it must have caught your attention that Pratt is ranked 250 - on a top 100 list. So I guess Hugo isn't in the top 100 after all! The "great", legendary Hugo. In fact, even 250 is probably a little too flattering. I put him here as a bit of a joke, to annoy the hardcore prattistas who consider him a genius. In reality, he'd only make my Top 300 list. (Which should please the ol' curmudgeon, considering that there are several thousands of past/present illustrators, most of whom put in more effort than he did.) If you're acquainted with Hugo's comics then you might (or might not) wonder why he is so low on the list. So low in fact that even if I added another 150 names he'd still end up behind them in last place; always destined to be the name to open the list. The reasons are as follows: 1. His drawing style is too sloppy for my taste. It's definitely an acquired taste, as pretentious as that sounds (but is true), and an original one, but I wish he'd shown a bit more discipline. Actually, a lot more. His later works (late 70s onwards) are lazy and mediocre, even awful at times. It's as if he was trying to be too "clever", too "arty", by minimizing the detail of his drawings (even more), and this sloppy habit just got worse and worse. Plus he got very obviously lazier. I get what he was trying to do - if in fact his intentions were "artistically sound" rather than just born out of laziness - but he didn't strike the right balance between "artiness" and discipline. His lines became increasingly ugly, to the point where his comics started looking like as if Picasso had doodled them in a rush - with his feet. No, that isn't intended as a compliment: Picasso's undeserved fame stands for everything that's wrong with the art world. (More on the charlatan midget in my other posts.) Of course, that's just my opinion; most Pratt fans would vehemently disagree. But then, they are mostly hype-happy zombies... 2. This is a little known fact, but before Pratt developed the recognizable style depicted here, he used to draw in a standard, mediocre way. His series Junglemen is a good example. Pratt had a certain flair, but from a technical standpoint he had very clear limitations. He must have realized this inherent flaw, this lack of real skill, hence why he resorted to playing the "I'm an intellectual artist" card - which managed to fool most of the comic scene into deifying him. His earliest comics are pretty bad, practically amateur. Nothing in them whatsoever to even hint at a "great talent". Nothing at all. To be fair (and I hate having to defend Hugo), many great illustrators had very humble beginnings: nobody starts off right away with 10/10 drawings. It is primarily a skill, not just some fictional God-given super-talent that just falls into your hands, allowing you to effortlessly and with great speed produce pages and pages of mastery at an early age. That's not how it works. That's not how the world works. As with both music and sports, even the most gifted athletes/musicians will tell you the old cliche that it's "90% work and 10% natural ability." Only the most pompous, narcissistic poseurs among them will deny that this is true. A fairly accurate cliche. So no, Pratt's early stuff being shit doesn't affect my overall assessment of him - but it's still worth a mention, if nothing then just to piss of his deluded fans, who probably worship his every single page just as they worship the ground he walked on. 3. His comics look a LOT better in colour (which the hipsters among you will vehemently disagree with - because you half-witted, indie-rock-worshiping, tree-hugging w***ers are totally delusional about anything related to aesthetics), but because he didn't do the water-colouring himself, I can't give him any credit for it. In b&w his work simply doesn't measure up to the best illustrators. People who prefer his b&w to colour are delusional nitwits - especially since his coloured comics are generally very lightly/moderately coloured, i.e. they are the complete opposite of the colour-drenched garbage we get these days due to horrendous computers doing most of the work. (More on that "CGI" shit later.) 4. There is a lack of consistency. Some of his albums are quite inferior to his best material - of which there is anyway fairly little. For example Fanfulla and the third Desert Scorpions installment display crap and mediocre drawings respectively: a level of sloppiness that I can't tolerate. Corto Maltese also got progressively worse, becoming downright pitiful already halfway through the series. In fact, I read that Hugo was so lazy and/or busy (with other things... such as women and pizza?) that he hired other illustrators to do certain panels in absentia, for example all those trains and airplanes which he clearly didn't do himself. If true, this would be rather pathetic, especially for such a "legend". "Ghost illustrators"? Really? Only in Italy... Having said that, he did actually make it on this list (if only as a meme), and that alone is a feat, a real achievement, because there are so many solid cartoonists who didn't make the cut. So while I generally dislike his work, I do appreciate aspects of it enough to at least include him as an honorary "list opener"... and meme. In 250th place. Yes, hipsters, I can feel your anger levels ballooning, not just because I'm pranking Pratt but also due to the word "cartoonist" being used to describe the "mythic" Pratt. Well, it's been a pleasure pissing you off! And this is just the beginning! Feel free to proceed, you might find yourselves pissed off at least another 100 times. |
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| Corto Maltese in a nutshell: exotic locations, fancy dresses, and LOTS of dialog. Not that much action. (Considering how stupidly Pratt drew people in motion, it's probably for the better anyway.) Some episodes are way too talky and slow (which doesn't necessarily make them more intelligent, as some of you gullible goofballs think). Sometimes one has to wonder whether it wouldn't have been wiser to expand the script i.e. turn the bloody thing into a novel and just forget about illustrations altogether - since they're anyway on the minimalist side, devoid of much detail. His characters are like robots; Pratt's inability to illustrate different emotions is blatant. The page above is about as emotional as it ever gets. I am not a great fan of fattening panels with lots of text: it's usually overkill, and isn't anyway what comics are or should be about. Sure, a certain level of exposition is gonna be there, but this is - or ideally should be - primarily a visual medium. Some writers seem to struggle to understand this, or at least to apply it from theory into practice. It takes real skill to tell a story with a minimum of words, to strip down the text to the smallest necessary word-count (as happens in some of the greatest movies), to let the illustrations speak more than the balloons. (Kind of the way I babble on and on in my descriptions of illustrators... Yeah, don't worry, I get the irony.) Much hoopla is made of how great Hugo's Corto stories are. A lot of that reputation is laughably overblown. I'm no expert on Corto Maltese, but I've read enough albums (five i.e. half of them) to realize that the quality can vary quite a bit, and that the writing gets downright horrible in some episodes. The 1st one, Ballad of the Salt Sea, is quite entertaining with many plot-twists and goings-on, but it's also full of logic holes and absurd behaviour from the characters. Corto's decision-making process is at times just plain weird. After reading it I briefly even considered writing up a whole essay about these flaws. (I didn't, but only because I wasn't writing comic-book reviews at the time. But it would have been a lengthy and fun review.) I did do an extensive and detailed review for the Siberia episode though, because it's an utter piece of shit. Ditto the Venice episode, which is merely average story-wise and barely average in terms of its drawing. (Links below.) Admittedly, comic-books have lower standards regarding logic and "script tightness" than for example novels and movies (should), but a "serious" and universally praised serial such as this one should be held to a higher standard than for example an episode of Spiderman. You'd be surprised though how sloppy Pratt's writing can get: lots of nonsense, bad logic, and flawed characterization. But I suppose that most readers are so naive that they easily get tricked into taking the series seriously, not just due to Hugo's artificially ballooned reputation but simply on account of the tons of bonus material/texts that Hugo provided for each album, trying to give the series an aura of seriousness and intellectual weight that other comics don't have. It was a cheesy con though, nothing more. Corto Maltese is neither historically accurate nor realistic (at all). It is often just as idealistic, naive, romanticized, bombastic and uber-fictional as the bulk of other adventure comics. The premise is very good, but the execution is totally overrated. |
100. Jean-Claude Gal - French
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| Jean died early, before completing Arn (shown above). It's a 100-page album illustrated over a very long period, at least a decade. Considering how long he needed to complete these 100 pages - which isn't even the completed story - and considering his fairly thin comicography, he barely deserves to be in the top 100. Additionally, I don't like how he draws faces: bland and inexpressive. Still, the scenery is pretty good, very detailed. However, if you spend over a decade drawing just 100 pages then there had better be some damn detail... Better and more efficient illustrators would have done 100 such pages in a year or two. You know the saying: give a monkey a typewriter, a billion years, and... No disrespect to Gal, but he is probably more of a placeholder on this list, until I find someone better. |
99. Michel Plessix - French
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| Primarily known for The Willow Wind, shown here, one of the rare newer-day serials that weren't CGI-ruined i.e. it's not featured in plasticorama. (Computer colouring so plastic it makes the comic look more like LEGO toys than drawings.) Kudos to Plessix for taking the time to colour these albums himself (brilliantly, I might add) - rather than whore off his hard work to some dim-witted publisher who'd hire the cheapest IT student available to CGI-shit all over his originals. |
98. Enrique Breccia - Argentinian
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| Not quite as good as Alberto Breccia, or as experimental (which in Al's case is much more bad than good), but what Enrique lacks in precision he makes up for in effectively creating mood. It's all about the overall effect rather than the details. If you zoom closer, his lines aren't always particularly elegant or clean, but he does have a distinct style, which nevertheless has some common ground with his contemporaries - especially fellow Argentinians and Spaniards. It's the gritty-grimy "Spanish-Argentinian" school of the 70s and 80s, whose purveyors dabbled mostly in sci-fi, horror and fantasy. (Nope, no pretentious "slice-of-life" kitchen-sink bullshit that's so hip these days - among the more aesthetically-challenged, comictarded zombies.) Alvar Mayor is his best-known series, consisting of 700 pages, all of them short 12-page stories - which means that sometimes plot-points are rushed through. The advantage though is that things move at a brisk pace. Alvar had the potential to become one of the best ever adventure series, but was unfortunately somewhat ruined by a decline in drawing and increasingly illogical and absurd scripts. As the element of dreamy fantasy gradually increased, the quality decreased - and I say this as a fantasy fan. Some writers believe that doing fantasy comics gives you carte blanche to write bullshit. How wrong they are. Even a fantasy world needs to adhere to its own logic, just as (good) comedy does. Nevertheless, most Alvar fans fail to detect the bullshit in the stories. If you also belong to this demographic, then check out my blog entry about Alvar Major: it is very extensive, reviewing in detail dozens of (bad/dumb) stories. Enrique's specialty is doing close-up portraits of ugly/evil characters. He revels in using great detail to depict these savages. By the same token, he greatly struggles in drawing beautiful young women - most likely because they require a minimum of detail and shading, plus it helps if your lines are elegant, which isn't his strong suit. (Kinda tough to draw a pretty female face using haphazard, ugly lines. Elegant lines are nearly always essential.) Scenery is something Enrique does quite well, sometimes using lots of shading and detail, sometimes going for the minimalist approach. Both work for him, but only when he puts in the effort. When he rushes his comics are (barely) average, but when he tries they are very good. In Alvar Major, the drawing quality varies from episode to episode, sometimes even from page to page. He also helped illustrate Che, a laughable communist-propaganda "biography" transcribed from Historese to Bullshitese by the very deranged German Osterheld. (More on that lunatic later.) |
97. Georges Bess - French
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| I've mentioned in the intro that I didn't have enough top-notch illustrators to fill up all the 100 places required, hence Bess is one of those "filler" entries. Now, calm down... I know that many of you probably consider him to be a giant of BD comics. I don't. He has a relatively clean technique, and is sometimes generous with the details - which is something I like - but whenever I zoom in his drawings reveal themselves as kind of... ordinary almost. The lines are good but not brilliant. His backgrounds can be very lush, and the page layouts are fun and adventurous (with regular usage of splash pages), but the one big fat minus in his career description is his rather mundane depiction of faces: George's characters lack style. When a face is in close-up he does it very well, as a general rule, but otherwise his longshot faces tend to be too bland. Try it yourself. Look at the page above (Frankenstein) from a distance, then zoom in to check out his strokes, his lines. You may be disappointed, as I am. Just make sure you can find a big enough scan, of course. |
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| Nevertheless, a worthy addition to the list, probably safe for a while - though long-term a future candidate for being kicked out of the top 100 should I find better cartoonists. Known for his recent albums Dracula and Frankenstein, around which there is so much hype: baffling, since the original Dracula story is so bled-dry and boring. Besides, there is a much better, older version of Bram Stoker's novel anyway by Fernando Fernandez. (More on that later.) Bess is also known for his collaborations with legendary lunatic Jodorovsky: The White Lama, Anibal Cinco and Juan Solo are popular but visually uneven albums. Some consider them masterfully done; I don't. Perhaps these people haven't read some of the best-drawn comics hence get easily dazzled by Bess's skilled but less-than-masterful style. The latter album has a reputation for being wild and perverse - which are hallmarks of Jodo's writing. Escondida is a better showcase of his skills, as is Leela and Krishna (above). In fact, the page above made me realize another reason I am not that crazy about his style: his lines are too pale. This is understandable when you expect your album to be coloured, but he has a bunch of b&w one-offs that are intentionally done this way. Ironically, even these pale drawings look better than nearly everything he'd published in colour. This absurdity is partly a result of most of his colour albums being fairly recent hence susceptible to inferior computer colouring - which is trendy. |
96. Željko Pahek - Serbian
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| Zeljko's comicography is fairly small, hence why his ranking is somewhat lower than it would normally have been. |
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| Judging from his drawings, I'd say he was predominantly influenced by French/Spanish 70s/80s comics. If I were an illustrator and could pick a style to draw in, it would probably be similar to this. He did the colour for several Hermann albums. He didn't do an exceptionally good job though. |
95. Yaroslav Horak - Czech/Russian
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| When I was a kid, I was repelled by Jaroslav's drawings. Horak's (longshot) scenery is almost impeccable, but his faces are definitely an "acquired taste", if we can even call it that. As if Jim Holdaway had taken an overdose of acid pills and had permanently fried the part of the brain that's in charge of facial recognition. (Which is btw half of the brain.) With half of his brain AWOL, Jim - I mean Jaroslav - bravely plowed on, insisting on drawing people like scary semi-alien mutant monsters. Thankfully, his women are somewhat more normal, though very uneven: sometime they look normal, cute even, and sometimes they are as repellent as Oprah's fat ass. Well-known predominantly for his 60s/70s James Bond involvement. I've read only one story so far; it appears to be a well-written series that isn't too far from the Connery era film depiction. But because it's a comic-book there are some stark differences in terms of presentation. |
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| Some comic-book historians might scoff at the fact that I listed Jaroslav as "Czech/Russian". Let me clarify... Larry Horak (his occasional pseudonym) was born in China, which doesn't make him Chinese, as we can all agree. (Right? We can agree on this at least?) He had Australian citizenship, but moved there at a fairly late stage, aged 12, which to me doesn't make him Australian enough. Sure, that country gave him career opportunities that the Czech Republic most likely wouldn't have done (nevermind Russia), but that doesn't make him an Aussie. He also spent a number of years working in England, so should I list him as English too? Of course not. His parents were Czech and Russian, respectively - and that's what counts the most. If he had moved to Aussieland as a young child I would have listed that country as well. And another thing: if Horak himself told me that he "feels Australian" I still wouldn't budge. Because it's not about what one is feeling, it's about facts. All clear? Coz that's how we roll here... I go by my own logic, in everything, rather than parrot other people's (dumb) opinions or mindlessly copy-paste "facts" from Wikipedia. |
94. Luc Collin aka Batem - Belgian
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| I am fairly amazed how chameleon-like some cartoonists are. When I first saw Marsupilami, I never suspected it wasn't Franquin (who was its original cartoonist). Batem so (nearly) perfectly apes Franquin's ultra-fluid style that it made me question whether Franquin was that special an illustrator! But instead of doubting Franquin's immense talent because someone copied his style so well, I decided for the reverse logic: to acknowledge Batem. Not a particularly original style, and one that is common among BDs, but he is one of the very best at it. |
93. Zoran Janjetov - Serbian
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I haven't read this yet, but will soon, hopefully. This is a segment from Before the Incal, the 6-part prequel to Incal, which he did early on in his career and which is the reason he is on the list. The later stuff, such as Technopopes, has been somewhat ruined by awful "CGI" colouring, but is nevertheless recommended; partly because Zoran's drawing manages to shine through in some panels, though more so due to the interesting story. Technopopes is a weird series and as such transcends some of its flaws. Both serials are part of the so-called Jodoverse, one of the most essential sci-fi comic series, named after its creator Jodorowsky, a Tarot-reading lunatic and part-time film director.
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92. Yukito Kishiro 木城 ゆきと - Japanese
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| Only recently have I discovered Battle Angel Alita, a sci-fi manga that's a very fun read. (Ignore the garbage Hollywood movie, if you know what's good for you, it bares no resemblance to the comic aside from its name.) More importantly, the scenery is drawn with great attention to shading and detail. As happens with so many "semi-serious" mangas, this one too offers a stark contrast between the characters (basic) and the backgrounds (lushly detailed). Nevertheless, the characters are rarely idiotic-looking and many have some semblance of "dignity". Shown here is a rare colour page; obviously, the majority of Alita is b&w. I can only vouch for the quality of the first series, not for the sequels/spin-offs/whatever because the drawing quality probably drops there, or maybe a different illustrator takes charge of the series... |
91. Raymond Reding - French/Belgian
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| A typical, though some would even say stereotypical, old-school BD illustrator. There are some people out there, let's call them hipsters just for the sake of argument, who believe that only journeymen drew in this "formulaic" fashion, copying styles set before them by more gifted cartoonists. Total bullshit, of course. Originality & hipsterism: Drawing comics isn't the same as making music. Apples and oranges, or in this case apples and hamsters. In music, it is quite legit to seek out original tunes/styles while dismissing corny, boring, uninspired copy-paste bands. Hipsters try to apply these music rules to the comic world, which is a deeply flawed approach. One of the crucial differences between the two is that a good musician always strives to come up with something new, whereas a good cartoonist must first-and-foremost maintain his discipline, stay focused on keeping his (hopefully high) level, and simply get the job done - preferably on time. Because it is a tough, time-consuming job, first-and-foremost, not an activity peppered with whores and free drugs. An illustrator spends half his life bent over a desk, alone, busting his balls to meet deadlines, whereas a (successful) musician travels a lot, faces adulating crowds and has groupies fall on his face. (There is hard work involved in music, too, but the element of glitz, glamour and instant recognition makes this lifestyle much more appealing, to certain types at least.) Music is incomparably more glamorous than drawing comics: in fact, in this sense they are polar opposites. Even though high-quality comic-books are doubtlessly artistic, cartoonists themselves are first-and-foremost tradesmen. Even gifted song-writers need to go through years of hard work and practice before being equipped with the necessary tools to create great music. The idea that great tunes simply come out of nowhere to people who've never even lifted a musical instrument is a fable. With cartoonists this work aspect is even more pronounced. Yes, cartoonists can be artistic, but the aspect of hard work is even more essential for an illustrator than a song-writer. A skilled musician can theoretically come up with a complete/finished song - a masterpiece - in just an hour, whereas an illustrator typically has to bust his balls for months to create an album, regardless of whether he is creating a great album or a commercial piece-of-shit superhero comic for the kiddies and kiddie-minded adults. Hipsters live under the delusion that illustrators must at all cost be original, and that originality is the pinnacle of quality. Even in music this is often not the case, let alone in comics. So many pretentious (and too often untalented) bands made "original" but unlistenable crap. Personally, I place far more value on originality in music than in comics, but despite this I will always place precedence on a good tune over a new sound that features bad or boring tunes. Of what use is an innovative new music style that's dreary? Style is all well and fine, but it should never trump substance. Music and comics are completely different art-forms, with certain very different rules. As a result of this delusion, this total misunderstanding of comics, music - and art in general - hipsters tend to overrate anything that is "out of the ordinary". This explains partially why they praise various charlatans - devious, sly con-artists such as Gipi and Satrapi - because to a hipster any "new" approach, no matter how ugly, dumb and unappealing, gets thumbs up, simply because it is mistakenly interpreted as innovative. Shitting on an empty canvas is innovative too (or was) and it'd already been praised in modern art as revolutionary. Lazy con-artists hurling mud, blood or their own feces (or all three) at a blank sheet of paper had already been done before; those kinds of retarded "innovative" activities had made it all the way to the media though, where they are often praised by quasi-intellectual poseurs, left-wing deviants and other types of opportunistic liars. Hipsters take cues from the laughable world of modern art and its bizarre/idiotic rules/laws then transport them into music and the comic-book world. The results are trve cvlt black metal, indie rock, and Gipi. Sorry, I meant "graphic novels". Because a hipster wouldn't be caught dead reading a mere "comic", unless of course he was doing it "ironically", faking enjoyment during the process of mocking it. "Graphic novels" are the intellectual version of comics, don't you know. Speaking of irony, the uber-irony is that hipsters are the ones who require mocking, and I am only too happy to have done that on numerous occasions on music sites, on YT, on my music blog, and now here too. (Read my blog post about hipster comics for a much more extensive analysis. Link below.) |
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| The rant above is just one of many that you will find on this list (and this blog in general). These mini-essays are always preceded by a bolded, italicized, blue/purple-coloured heading which serves as a warning that an opinionated rant is coming up. Anyway... Reding is best-known for his sports comics: football (what a certain nation stupidly refers to as "soccer"), and to a lesser extent tennis. I've never had the opportunity to read any of them because none of this stuff was ever published here in Serbia, and because I tend to avoid reading scans. I am a "purist" that way (though one of many). Reding's style is hardly original, but it is pretty, elegant and gets the job done. Which is far more than we can say about nefarious dilettantes such as Larcenet, Sfar or Rabate... But don't get me started on another anti-hipster rant, at least not just yet. Reding needed several days (probably) to complete a page, whereas Gipi and Larcenet can finish an entire album in a week. This says it all, really. It's the Picasso School of trashy mass-production. If you read and enjoy hipster comics - let alone if you actually waste money on them - know that you're a naive, aesthetically-challenged peasant fool: no ifs or buts about it. Or perhaps you simply don't care about the quality of the drawing hence prefer to focus on the writing. If the latter applies to you, just one question: why don't you read Beatnik poetry instead then? Or just books in general: they have none of those pesky drawings that you care so little about... There is nothing more laughable than comic-book fans who place far more importance on story than illustrations. The logical conclusion is that they are aesthetically-challenged i.e. aren't anyway equipped to appreciate art of any kind so they focus on what they do (somewhat) understand. |
90. Michael Zulli - American
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| One of only two Sandman albums I've read so far. (More on that later.) An excruciatingly dull "final" episode which completely relies on the reader being well-acquainted with the back story i.e. you have to be a fan to understand what's going on. Still, what it lacks story-wise it makes up for in sheer pretentiousness, cheesy poetry and fortune-cookie philosophizing. No, wait, start again... What it lacks story-wise it makes up for with its very unusual, interest drawings and excellent use of colour. Yeah, I admit it: I'm a sucker for well-coloured comics, and I mean really well-coloured comics, such as this one. Placing the right colours in the right way over pencil and ink is an art form that is almost lost by now, with the vast majority of modern albums coloured by computers hence often looking inferior, or even downright unusable i.e. boycott-worthy. I have boycotted many an album because they'd been given the "CGI treatment". There are two great ways to turn a good comic into trash: tearing it up, or colouring it stupidly thereby ruining the drawings (almost) completely. Computers are probably anyway the death of comics. Some illustrators even draw on a monitor rather than on a paper! That kind of lazy short-cut approach rarely leads to a decent result. |
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| Stylistically, Zulli isn't always totally up my alley, but I can appreciate the amount of detail and effort he puts into his pages. Shown here is a Ninja Turtles episode (believe it or not). Yup, even the ultra-cheesy gang of shelled reptiles is being thoroughly modernized, i.e. made more grim and serious, put through an Eraserhead filter - which is a rather laughable trend. What's next: a mean, bloodied Mickey Mouse chopping up limbs, fighting ghouls and demons in serial-killer torture chambers? The "Modern Age" never ceases to amaze with its peculiar brand of nonsense, bombast and overkill. I never even liked the cheerful cartoonish ninja turtles anyway. Utter rubbish, if you ask me... (Yes, you can grow up having criteria, as a child even. Yes, it is possible. I am proof of this. You don't have to like everything that is hyped all over you when you're a damn, mindless semi-toddler.) |
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| A page from Witchcraft. Some of the lines here resemble Gera's style. A similar presentation is to be found in his Seeking Into the Mystery albums. Creatures of the Night features a somewhat sloppier version of Zulli; it's solid but not as good as the above. There's also an Alice Cooper comic that he'd illustrated very well. |
89. Milton Caniff - American
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| The first really big name on this list (not counting Pratt who got pranked), Milton's career spanned half a century (or thereabouts), centering around Steve Canyon and Terry & the Pirates. Very influential too. How influential? Just ask Frank Robbins. (More on that later.) |
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| Going through Caniff's scans, I instantly recognized which were from his earlier and which from his later periods. The early stuff is much more primitive, more basic, less appealing, quite stereotypical. Like many illustrators, Milton needed time to find and develop his own style, which had gradually morphed into something very recognizable and original. Both pages shown here are from this later period. (Why would I show you a cartoonist's weak(er) stuff? As a rule, I never do this - with 2-3 exceptions, which you will find later on.) |
88. Jijé - Belgian
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| Here is another very big name. One of the pioneering BD cartoonists, with a huge bibliography that spans many decades. His early stuff is quite average, some of it poor even, but through hard work he gradually improved, while trying his hand at different styles. After Uderzo quit Tanguy & Laverdure (shown here) in order to focus completely on Asterix, Jije took over for quite a number of years. Not as good as Uderzo, mainly because Jije doesn't do faces as well, but in terms of airplanes/machinery and scenery Jije turned out to be a very good replacement (as did most of the people who succeeded Jije later). It's just a pity that the writer wasn't replaced as well: Charlier did nearly all of the episodes, despite being one of the shittiest writers in the history of BD. More on his incompetence later on... Suffice it to say, despite the almost uniformly high-quality drawings, I don't recommend this series to anybody - except people with extremely low criteria. The dumbest and most repetitious/formulaic plots ever. (More on it later.) |
87. José María Casanovas - Spanish
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Also known as John Casanovas, the third-best illustrator for Judge Dredd, in my never-humble opinion. (Obviously, you'll find the other two further down the list. Can you guess who they might be?) Jose isn't the lazy type, preferring to stuff his pages with lots of detail, leaving not much empty white space standing - which is how I like my comics best. After all, anyone can leave empty space: you need no talent for it. The page above is from the story The Tower of Babbit. |
86. Warren Tufts - American
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| Warren is a hardcore old-school cartoonist, very much in the ilk of Foster and Hogarth, and to a lesser extent similar to Raymond. (Raymond would do rows and rows of neat lines, which Tufts didn't do as much.) If you like that sort of elegant, clean, optimistic, cheerful, conservative, traditional approach (and who doesn't - besides brain-damaged hipsters) then you should definitely check out his stuff. |
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| Lance and Casey Ruggles are his primary serials. I haven't read either, but it doesn't take a genius to figure out what they're about and what they are like. |
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| And here's a page for all of you b&w purists... B&W Pvritanism: B&W fanaticism is a peculiar affliction in comic-book-land, more often found in (poorer) countries that predominantly publish(ed) low-quality comic-book magazines, saving money by publishing colour comics without colour, and doing it on toilet paper. Having been conditioned from a young age to read mostly or even exclusively b&w, many adults who grew up on such inferior packaging belong to this "elite" group. They claim to prefer b&w to colour, even when it comes to comics that can be presented as either - and even regarding comics that were specifically drawn in order to be published in colour. Another category of b&w lunatics are merely confused, attention-seeking hipsters, but these are to be found in all regions. My personal stance is very pragmatic and logical (as always) and goes as follows... I am more drawn toward colour, but don't have a clear-cut preference. If a style is detailed and very dense then it should most probably remain uncoloured, depending on the style. If the pages are "pale" and based on a simpler, less dense presentation, i.e. more "contour-based" drawing, it should definitely be coloured. But this is a general rule. There are cases when I'd pick the b&w version of a colour comic, but only when the colouring is botched, which is an increasingly common occurrence these days... (For example, Subic's new Conan album, illustrated for the BD market, is almost completely ruined by computer colouring, looking far better in its original non-coloured form.) |
85. Eugenio Sicomorio - Italian
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| I know nothing about this guy. A young Bonelli illustrator most likely. Surprisingly disciplined and "traditionalist" (relatively speaking) for a younger-guard cartoonist. If it turns out that his work is mostly this good then I will move him higher up the list. |
84. Victor de la Fuente - Spanish
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| A page from Les anges d'acier. A very typical "old-school" Spanish illustrator, and by this I mean the Spanish Armada who dominated the 60s/70s/80s. Many great talents there, all of which you will find further down the list. |
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| Fuente did a great amount of comics, among them some westerns, sci-fi, but he focused mostly on historical and/or religious albums, including several albums for a Bible-based European series. He did several episodes for the excellent 24-volume History of France in Comics series, which is very difficult to come by - if you don't live in France - and for which a number of great illustrators contributed their work. |
83. Masasumi Kakizaki 柿崎 正澄 - Japanese
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| I only know him from his one-off tankobon Hideout (pic above), which is so atypical for a manga that it can barely be considered as part of the Japanese comic industry. Only the depiction of some of the characters betrays its Japanese origins. Though even there, Kakizaki is head and shoulders above 99% of his countrymen. Judging from his drawings, Masasumi is far more orientated toward Spanish-Argentinian styles than anything else. The level of detail and extreme shading is the polar opposite of what 95% of the manga scene is about. (I.e. generic copy-paste bullshit and very basic drawing.) If the page above reminds you of a secret lair from some serial-killer movie, that's because it is. Very atmospheric, and very elegant. |
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| Does this remotely appear manga-ish? |
82. Raymond Poïvet - French
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| In the previous entry I mentioned History of France In Comics. There is also its parallel series, illustrated by a similar group of cartoonists, the 24-album History of the World In Comics, which also ran in the late 70s and 80s. Poivet contributed a bunch of (24-page) episodes for each series, including the one shown above, Walter Raleigh In Virginia. Just to give you an idea how good both series are, here are some of the contributors: Manara (7x), Toppi (4x), Ribera (4x), Battaglia (3x), Fuente (4x), Sio (10x), Gattia (2x) and of course Poivet (8x). Only 2-3 mediocre cartoonists were invited to do their boring or shit drawings, including the vastly overrated doodle-meister Guido Crepax, whose asymmetrical, ugly women are considered erotic to some people. Some deranged people, to be exact. The kind of people who have sexual attraction towards chairs and tropical fruit. Perverts. |
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| Raymond's career spanned many decades. He was active pretty much throughout the 2nd half of the 20th century, meaning that he was part of all of the best eras. As a result, the many styles he'd dabbled in are all at the very least aesthetically pleasing. Not all long-lasting illustrators tried out different types of styles and presentations though. For example Caniff was far more conservative. |
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| Just one example of the diversity to be found in his comicography. Damn, they don't make 'em like they used to... This kind of presentation would be considered too quaint these days, too naive, old-fashioned and silly for this oh-so exalted, "progressive", cynical, snowflake age. The neo-liberal/neo-Marxist belief that everything from the past should stay in the past is at the core of why modern "art" - whether it be movies, music or comics - relies very little on old techniques, styles and approaches. Instead, ugliness, mediocrity, laziness, sloppiness and decadence are promoted as the hallmarks of left-wing "progression" i.e. regression/devolution. If you disagree with the above, that simply means that you've already been brainwashed by the PC Establishment... you gullible, fad-happy peasant sheep. Get your hand out of the sand and face the (real) music, you cowardly ostrich. |
81. Colin Wilson - New Zealander
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| Mostly known for taking over from Giraud/Moebius on the Young Blueberry series, shown here. I haven't read any of his stuff, as indeed I routinely skip even Blueberry itself, but because this list isn't subjective, isn't orientated just toward what I personally read, Colin is included too. He lacks originality, but one simply cannot ignore his discipline, precision, consistency and skills. I have great respect for that. |
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| Roughly-speaking, this page is a cross between Font and Moebius; Wilson took cues from the BD school and the 70s/80s. Nevertheless, he's also done more modern-looking (i.e. much weaker) comics while working for the American mass-production machine, for example the recently decrepit Star Wars franchise. |
80. Burne Hogarth - American
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| I'm not a fan of Tarzan at all because a clean-cut yuppie-looking Ken-doll guy swinging on trees and going "aaaghaaaalillaaaaliaaaahaafgaaaliaaaaaa" is only moderately less silly than a guy who lurks around street corners at night dressed as a winged cave rat. Nevertheless, this is a list of great illustrators, not necessarily great characters, and Hogarth is one of the best pioneers of comics, alongside McCay, Raymond and Foster. These "first Gen" cartoonists were often disciplined, elegant and very precise. You may sneer at the naivety of these old-fashioned stories, but nobody with an ounce of taste can deny the artistry involved. |
79. Giancarlo Alessandrini - Italian
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| Probably one of the best five all-time Bonelli illustrators. He is most well-known for the Indiana Jones-inspired Martin Mystere, for which he did a bulk of the earliest episodes, all of the (early) covers, and a number of later episodes as well. Alessandro managed to maintain a fairly high level of quality for a number of years/episodes but then his output predictably got sloppier and lazier, though not extremely. His style is very fluid, relaxed, and recognizable. I particularly like how he draws faces. The page above doesn't show his early, better, more typical style. You'll just have to trust me that this example is weaker and less original than his best stuff. As nearly all "name" Italian/Spanish cartoonists, his one-offs include the extremely popular-yet-ultra-boring Tex (shown above), plus a lengthy episode of Dylan Dog, plus a few other bits and pieces. |
78. Jack Davis - American
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Probably one of the best 5 MAD Magazine legends. Shown above is a typical Davis MAD entry.
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77. Katsuhiro Otomo 大友 克洋 - Japanese
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| Katsuhiro is one of the very best manga illustrators, and doubtlessly one the most famous ones, mostly due to Akira. The reason he isn't closer to the top 50 is fairly simple: his faces are too mangatarded for my taste. Sure, he doesn't draw humans as extremely as 99% of his (useless) Japanese colleagues, but the big-mouthed mangafoons (manga buffoons) still look too moronic for my anti-mangic taste - especially when being contrasted with the excellent scenery, which Otomo is masterful at. I find it laughable when illustrators choose to portray people like Mickey Mouse characters yet parallel to that opt for serious, "real world" backdrops. This kind of "Disney slum" style (for lack of a better term) is utterly silly, but unfortunately increasingly popular these days. (One of the reasons BDs had drastically plummeted in quality in recent decades: disnification.) This type of clumsy, dumb blend of toddler-friendly commercialism and adult-friendly gritty art can be found in music too: for example in metalcore. In this putrid sub-genre of "extreme" metal the verses are Slayer-heavy whereas the choruses are Rihanna-soft. This kind of nonsense doesn't work in metal (almost never), and it certainly doesn't work in comics. You either draw everyone/everything realistically or you do a cartoonish type of comic: pick one, because the two do not mesh. Apples and oranges. Or more like apples and elephants. Wanting to have your cake and eat it too: no dice.
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76. Esteban Maroto - Spanish
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| One out of a whole army of gifted and influential Spanish illustrators, who hit the comic-book world in the 60s and 70s. |
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| What he lacked in technique he made up for by arranging the pages in adventurous and unpredictable ways, which became quite fashionable by the 70s. In that sense he is a bit like Druillet (and some others) - i.e. not the most skilled talent, not the most elegant lines, but hard-working, detail-orientated and rarely settling for an overly traditional panel distribution/presentation. It is typical of him to be quite uneven: on one page he might have for example badly drawn bits right alongside very well drawn figures or landscapes. He is one of those illustrators where the phrase "the sum is greater than the parts" applies quite well. |
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| A page from The Paradise Tree, a story from Dax the Warrior aka Dax the Damned. So much glitz in a lot of Esteban's stuff. |
75. Sydney Jordan - British (Scottish)
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| Jeff Hawke is a nifty-looking sci-fi daily-strip serial that spanned 19 years, hence consists of 6,500 strips i.e. roughly 1,100 4-strip pages. The early episodes looked very different however, very old-fashioned in style, totally inferior to how the drawing later evolved (shown here), and are perhaps to be avoided hence. (At least from my perspective i.e. a person who refuses to read badly- or averagely-illustrated comics.) Jordan is a typical example of a cartoonist who gradually, slowly improved over a long period, reaching his peak with the series shown below. Roughly speaking, the last 20-30 episodes consist of this kind of style and level. The quality of the drawing tends to vary somewhat on a "micro level", from panel to panel. Typically, in one panel Jeff may be drawn averagely, yet in the next one another character may be done really well. The backdrops are much more consistent, and add a lot to both serials. |
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| After finishing with Jeff Hawke, Jordan started the even better illustrated Lance McLane, shown here. It ran for 12 years. I would love to get my hands on both series, but odds are very low I'll ever get any of this stuff, because it's fairly obscure and available only in a few countries. In fact Titan Books released two volumes but due to low sales gave up. Well, duh!!! How about releasing the best-illustrated, more appealing phase first? There are probably many like me who'd never buy the early stuff but would gladly dish out money for the 70s era. Just one of numerous examples of blatant publishers' stupidity and cluelessness. Unfortunately, many comic-book publishers throughout the world don't know much about comics, which is why various kinds of screw-ups happen so often. This is why quality publishers have a communication with their readership while cretinous publishers don't, believing arrogantly and stupidly that they know everything, that they don't need any feedback or advice. |
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| To give you an idea how weird, cheesy and entertaining Jeff Hawke can get, here's a summary of episode 62, shown above. A couple of virtue-signaling amphibian-like aliens visit Earth, shaking their little green heads, wondering aloud why humans are "destroying their own planet". But moral speeches aren't the reason these environmentally-aware frogs came here. They came to evacuate Earth because it'd been sold, because evidently there are buyers for this dump, and Earth never belonged to Earthlings in the first place. Their evil master-plan is to use special sound-instruments to hypnotize all of mankind into willingly leaving the Earth via spaceships (and that must be LOTS of spaceships!). The 5 billion morons would then be dumped on some alien planet, where they can continue in peace their politically-incorrect destruction of the environment. Now here's the weird(er) part: the tree-hugging Manbearfrogs need Hawke first, for whatever muddled reason. But first they need to get him on their spaceship: however, Jeff needs to voluntarily enter it. Somehow, these kind and considerate planet-stealing frogs don't mind hijacking an entire planet, displacing countless people without even asking them (very Stalinist), yet they are concerned about coming off as sleazy kidnappers! "He must enter the ship of his own free will!" Why pretend to be "fair" to one individual - when you're displacing an entire race?! They use a woman to lure Hawke into a flying car. Because, obviously, Hawke thinks with his penis: any sexy female can act as bait for the naive dummie. Hawke didn't know that the car was a flying vessel before stepping into it - so technically speaking he voluntarily entered a spaceship - but does this absolve the highly moral frogs from accusations of abduction? Methinks these Manbearfrogs are treading on rather thin moral and legal ground here... Clearly, they aren't averse to loopholes i.e. they are no less devious than the oh-so awful humans. But then again, frogs and humans have totally different understandings of law and morality; this is common knowledge. Frogs... humans... Not the same. Later, on their home planet the froggy quasi-kidnappers place Hawke in a series of brutal tests, the aim of which completely escapes me - other than to entertain the aliens(?). They are "nice enough" not to want to abduct him, technically speaking (which they do anyway because he never actually agrees to leave Earth) - yet they don't mind torturing him! These bizarre tests have Hawke dealing with a noise monster, and then trees shaped like nude women (i.e. aliens once again testing how easily Hawke can be manipulated coz he thinks only with his penis). Which kinda makes sense, because these are tree-hugging aliens who perhaps have a sexual thing for trees - not just the usual pro-environmental hippy-love affection - hence why they could come up with such a crazy idea as trees that look like sexy women. After Jeff survives these tests (without even once sticking his pecker into a tree), the aliens inform Hawke of their cunning plan, claiming he was chosen as Earth's emissary, representative, or whatever. I have no idea why these peace-loving alien hijackers couldn't just start hypnotizing Earthlings straight away, rather than go through this whole labyrinthine nonsense with the abduction and the violent tests. But hey: Jeff is the hero so the plot must revolve around him, I guess... Jeff goes back to Earth to tell everyone that Earth had been auctioned off to the highest bidder. Well, not exactly everyone; he hires the help of a recluse magician living on a Greek island appropriately called Meteora. This man (well, Satanist) summons demons in a pentagrammic ritual, telling them to warn their master Pan (yes, the Greek god) of the aliens' plans: the hope is that Pan would get angry and foil the invasion. Pan does get angry, he does foil the plan (check out the hilarious 2nd panel), and in return he asks for just one thing - for the Satanist to sing him a song! The lyrics are about Pan himself, of course, because Greek gods are apparently all a bunch of eccentric narcissists... Yeah, it's awesome old-school pulp. You didn't see that Pan twist coming, did ya? Neither did I. What a refreshing take on sci-fi (dumb as it may be - but we love a bit of dumb in our sci-fi), the kind of originality alien to America's superhero factory production. Imagine how utterly boring Marvel's supertards would have made this episode... They save the Earth (or the universe) every other week, but never once did any of them deal with Pan, nor did they ever employ the services of a skilled Satanist. Thor would have hurled his stupid hammer around, Spiderman would have been masked like an asshole as per usual, poorly imitating a "spider", and Iron Man would have flown around ejecting missiles out of his ass or from wherever. Don't these superhero geeks ever realize what garbage they're reading? |
74. Mike Noble - British
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| This is as 60s as it gets. Very much a product of its era. The warm, striking colours and unashamed glitz are reminiscent of 50s/60s technicolour movies in that sense - only better, of course, because comics will always be visually superior to movies. Nowadays, it is fashionable to attempt to literally imitate cinema, especially in the realm of superhero and fantasy comics, but the results are completely different than this and totally inferior: modern bombastically coloured/presented comics appear nearly always totally plastic, looking rather soul-less and depressing, as if created by mindless robots, whereas this old era's "fattened up" sci-fi fantasy had real style. I am not sure whether Noble copied Don Lawrence's style (Trigan Empire started in the mid-60s) or whether it was the other way round, but I am almost convinced there is a connection between the two British cartoonists and their somewhat similar shticks. Nowadays, Satrapi-hugging hipsters and millennial superherotards would scoff at this kind of "naive" presentation, but to true comic-book enthusiasts (such as myself) this is the kind of stuff that justifies the existence of comics. The series Zero-X went for only roughly 170 pages, but there are also Fireball XL5 and a few other similarly illustrated/coloured serials. Sometimes it isn't about great technical abilities, but the right presentation. Noble was a rather good illustrator, but perhaps not as skilled - in the pure sense - as most others on this list. Nevertheless, he made up for it by cleverly/effectively peppering up his panels with lush colours and nifty shading. He made the most out of his panels, something that can't be said of many good cartoonists. |
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| From Thunderbirds. Noble did comics for Gerry and Sylvia Anderson, creators of several popular TV shows, including the fairly underrated sci-fi series Space 1999. He did that too, but in b&w. An "honourable mention" for Frank Hampson who did something very similar during the same era, but didn't make the list. |
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| A page from a Yugoslavian magazine for kids and young people, Politikin Zabavnik, which is still running after 83 years. I have fond memories of Zero-X, and a strong sense of nostalgia draws me toward this comic. The "they don't make 'em like they used to" cliche applies 100% to this. |
73. Ugolino Cossu - Italian
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| Cossu may be one of Bonelli's very best and most consistent illustrators, most notable for his many Dylan Dog episodes, but isn't universally liked, however. Some bonellitards don't like the elegance, the precision, the skills. They prefer garbage, in other words: hacks such as Bigliardo or the infamous duo Grassani/Montanari. |
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| Admittedly, Cossu's neat clean-cut style, a blend of traditional BD and (the more modern) manga, isn't necessarily conducive to a horror atmosphere. Nobody would argue that people like Roi, Stano, Mari or Dall'Agnol aren't more suited to illustrate the Dylan Dog series; their depictions of scenery and characters are rougher and/or darker hence they are a more logical choice for these horror stories. Nevertheless, the sheer elegance of his drawings totally make up for this "deficiency". |
72. Rajko Milošević aka R.M.Gera - Serbian
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| At first I wasn't thrilled with this style, because the faces are a bit too "imprecise" and messy for my taste, but it gradually grew on me. It is the scenery that won me over, especially the way he presents urban decay. He excels in that. Fortunately, his Scalped series (shown here) was coloured fairly well - which is an exception rather than the rule in modern comics. Hence colour adds a further dimension to his work; it may obliterate some of the lines i.e. detail but overall it's an asset. Certainly an old-fashioned or "retro" colouring technique would have been a better choice, but hey, beggars can't be choosers: this is the shitty 21st century. Not all of his stuff looks like this though. For example, in the 80s he drew in a style very similar to Giraud's Blueberry. I am not acquainted with his entire comicography, but it appears he might be one of those versatile cartoonists, capable of doing very different styles equally well. (At least two styles, anyway...) That early stuff contrasts quite clearly with the drawing he utilized for Scalped. Being versed in different styles, while being good at several or all of them, is always a great indicator of above-average talent. |
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| Scalped is a gritty noir-style anti-hero series with extreme violence and some nudity, a typical modern-day series in that sense. Some might say these brootal new serials are "pushing the boundaries" and they are right: but usually only pushing the limits of bad taste. Still, in this case the story is quite good, full of plot-twists and interesting situations. The only problem is the occasional moralizing, and the annoying bouts of political correctness here and there: unfortunately a completely unavoidable aspect of nearly every newer comic series. Paradoxically, things get somewhat un-PC too i.e. not all the American Indians are portrayed as good guys. Far from it; hardly any character here is admirable, and that is one of the serial's biggest strengths: the fact that practically everyone has dirty laundry, that everyone is morally corrupt at least to some degree. No Flash Gordons here... And yet, before you start thinking that Scalped is close to being politically neutral, I shall have to disappoint you by telling you that while it is true that this ultra-decadent Indian reservation is a cesspool of corruption, violence and hopelessness - the writer Aaron puts the blame for all of this squarely on whites, completely taking away any responsibility from the Indians themselves. In this way Aaron inadvertently and completely unintentionally (not to mention ironically) becomes what he (allegedly) hates the most: a racist. Because he treats American Indians as little children: helpless, lost and as perpetual victims. Think about it: if you suggest that a certain race or ethnic group is completely incapable of succeeding, and whose destiny is completely in the hands of others, then you're just a hair-length away from implying that they are in fact intellectually inferior - or at the very least totally incompetent and child-like. Aaron never explains how it's everybody else's fault that these larger-than-life Indian failures are so backward and self-destructive, but I guess these days it's enough to point the finger at the usual scapegoats - white men - and no questions need be asked, let alone answered. Not to mention how utterly exaggerated the Indian situation here is. Anyone who actually believes that American Indians live this badly must be a fairly gullible, brainwashed moron. This is not a realistic depiction of a modern Indian reservation, it is merely an overly dramatized version of it, the only point being to create extreme situations - for your entertainment (which in turn benefits Aaron's bank account). Plus, to vilify America and white men, because clearly they are at fault for everything, even for earthquakes and violent Pacific storms. If you lose your job: blame it on the white man. If your girlfriend dumps you: blame it on the white man. This is so trendy, you can't possibly miss. Even she might start believing she dumped you because... of white men and their legendary evil. Dumped BF: "Let me guess... You're gonna say it's me not you, right?" Dumping GF: "No. It's the white men's fault." Aaron is quite fashionable/trendy, in the sense that he created a series that appears to be un-PC, but is in fact totally PC. (This is a "clever" but transparent trick the Left uses a lot recently. A con I never fell for.) It is Aaron's confusion, not his intention, that lead to this series actually portraying Indians as extremely immoral and incapable of sorting themselves out. Aaron may believe that he made a valid point about white settlers destroying some fictional "pure Indian spirit" (the usual noble savage idealization), but he totally failed in that, because any rational person reading this would conclude that these Indians (Aaron's Indians, mind you, not real Indians) are avoiding blame by taking the easy way out: seeking for scapegoats for their own shortcomings. To illustrate how stupid Aaron's logic is, I quote a character who speaks for Aaron: "We've had enough of these white bastards with contemptuous looks pushing their vile kids to college thanks to drunken Indians." How the hell does white America profit from drunken Indians?! They finance their kd's college tuition - by getting Indians drunk??? Because sober hordes of these "alcoholics" would... do exactly what? Overthrow the U.S. government? (Indians overthrowing Biden's regime - that'd be hilarious and awesome on so many levels.) Utilizing the tired old Wild West cliche of "cowboys" turning Indians into alcoholics to more easily control them is completely asinine within a modern context. If anything, any poor minority is a burden for American society, not its great success. It's akin to those retarded old conspiracy theories about Bush Sr exacerbating or even creating the drug problem intentionally, just so blacks could be turned into crack-addicted failures. How exactly would this amazing "master plan" benefit the so-called "white elites"? Besides, only morons and very lazy people fail to see the bigger picture. If Europeans hadn't discovered, invaded and colonized America, some other culture or race would certainly have done so, not much later. Do the aarons of this world actually think that American Indians would have experienced a better or different fate under the Chinese, Japanese or under Turks or Arabs? Hell no. Genocide and colonization are traits exhibited by pretty much all large ethnic groups, races and cultures. Anyone who has the numbers and power on their side will eventually misuse it to steal land from others: this is the essence of human history, and a fact so obvious it makes me embarrassed to belong to the same species as nincompoops/phonies such as Aaron. Sorry to have to get so political, but I didn't bring politics into comics: the Left has. They've drenched them in propaganda and flawed moralizing. I am merely reacting to their nonsense. Politics is unfortunately an unavoidable subject on this list. I'd prefer it wasn't. |
71. José Pepe González - Spanish
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| Unfortunately, I never got to read his stuff, hence can't comment on its content. A lot of this awesome 60s/70s (horror/fantasy) stuff illustrated by Spaniards and Argentinians is hard to get, sometimes because the original pages are damaged and/or missing and/or scattered all over the world. It's a damn shame, because this period is the strongest in terms of drawing and style, so completely superior to modern-day comic-books. (If you expect me to call them "graphic novels" you might as well expect Santa to deliver you a ready-and-willing nude Czech model through your non-existent chimney on Christmas...) |
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| Very similar to Esteban Maroto, and to a lesser extent to Jose Ortiz and Fernando Fernandez. Style-wise as well as in terms of presentation. |
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| I'm a sucker for this kind of detailed, well-drawn, stylish b&w Spanish/Argentine horror pulp. I wish more of this stuff would get published - instead of the crapavalanche of manga, superhero and hipster garbage that's been bombarding/dominating the world market in recent years. But that's how it always is, with everything: the best music is pursued by a minority, the best movies are appreciated by a small faction of cinemaphiles, and fans of the best-illustrated comics are a minority too. Quality is always in the minority. Garbage always dominates, in every arena. Because most people are mindless zombies who prefer hype over substance, peasants who often can't even differentiate between trash and real art. This non-fixable, permanent situation is only exacerbated by the fact that the vast majority of notable "critics" are plebeians who don't know their asses from their elbows. |
70. Horacio Lalia - Argentinian
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| I would have likely never even heard of Nekradamus had I not found a cheap 300-page copy of a pirate edition. This was at the same time my introduction to Lalia, who instantly impressed me with his dark b&w pages full of detail and dripping with old-school mood. A typical cartoonist of his era, it's that Spanish-Argentine school I often mention on this list, one of the very best. Nekradamus consists entirely of short 10-page horror stories, written by Oesterheld. Now, "German" as he was nicknamed, was an overrated Commie psychopath (more on his political lunacy in the Breccia entry), but despite his often disappointing writing for other illustrators, in Nekradamus he does a fairly good job: no subliminal Marxist preaching, no laughable bouts of bad logic, no pretentious bullshit. Just good old horror pulp. |
69. Ron Smith - British (English)
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| Until relatively recently, I was under the very false impression that Judge Dredd is just another mindless masked-hero series, hence to be avoided. How pleasant was my surprise when I started reading it, realizing that it was more like a tongue-in-cheek dystopian spoof than yet another pretentious-yet-laughable superhero joke. At the outset the stories are fairly simplistic and mostly limited to 4 or 6 pages, but soon the series started featuring lengthy episodes that went on for 100-200 pages. Cursed Earth is an example of a longer one. |
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| Another way in which JD is superior to all of the Marvel/DC superhero serials is the fact that many of its illustrators were very good. Visual consistency is surprisingly high, and this goes mostly for the first 6-7 years (late 70s to mid-80s) which is when the best illustrators were working on it, with rare poorly-drawn episodes - called "progs". (All episodes are referred to as progs, not just the shoddily drawn ones - obviously.) One of the best 3 is undoubtedly Smith, whose very disciplined, clean, more traditional - and comical/caricature - style contrasts the techniques of most other JD cartoonists, especially McMahon and Ezquerra who are much more modern, much more 70s/80s, and much darker in mood. In fact, because Smith's style is so close to a MAD Magazine type of presentation, Ron was usually assigned the more humorous - and shorter - episodes.
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68. J. H. Williams III - American
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| All I know from this guy is his Sandman episode Overture, which is artistically by far the best entry in the series (alongside Zulli's). Based solely on that album, I decided to add Williams here. Overture is visually spectacular, mostly due to the use of a whole variety of totally different drawing styles - on the same page usually i.e. side-by-side, which is extremely rare. My favourite style here are the Moebius-like illustrations. Other bonuses are excellent and varied use of colouring (real colouring, not just CGI), plus many splash pages, two-page spreads and even foldouts. So how come the rest of the Sandman series is predominantly illustrated by hacks and journeymen? I've heard a rumour/theory once that Gaiman is one of those egomaniacal writers who intentionally choose mediocre illustrators in order for the writing to be the central focus at all times, i.e. he allegedly doesn't want illustrators to "steal his thunder". I had never heard of such a thing before, and it had never occurred to me because it seems completely counter-intuitive to deliberately ruin one's own stories by hiring incompetents. Nevertheless, human pathology is almost limitless hence nothing surprises me much anymore. It isn't impossible that such writers exist: people so narcissistic that they'd rather offer the readers an inferior product than have to share the glory with other people. Certainly we've had examples in cinema whereby an actor or director would resort to destroying a movie's or TV show's quality, just to have revenge on a colleague, or out of spite, or for other reasons - despite this being self-destructive behaviour. |
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| I have only read two Sandman albums (because only two of them are well-illustrated), so I am not an expert on the series itself. I can say this though: Gaiman is vastly overrated. He isn't a bad writer, but considering his laughably blown-up reputation I have no choice but to call him out. While the album does start off promisingly, the story itself is just another save-the-universe Marvel/DC puff-of-smoke non-bonanza. It would seem that the "great" Gaiman could think of nothing better to write but to recycle a plot that'd been milked dry at least 500 times in Marvel's shittarded universe. Just because James Bond can get away with saving the world every few weeks, doesn't mean Marvel/DC can too. Furthermore, Gaiman likes to pepper his comics with quasi-intellectual philosophizing (corny poetry), half of which makes little sense, i.e. remains fuzzy and "mysterious" on purpose, in order to keep his primitive readers convinced that they are reading "clever" comics, so they can "brag" about it to non-fans: many comic-book fans have a chip on their shoulder hence have a need to "justify" themselves to the uninitiated, to non-fans who look down on comics. (This is why we have the term graphic novels: purely a result of the inferiority complex that some comic-book fans suffer from.) Some people achieve this "higher strata" by forcing themselves to read hipster comics (Gipi, Spiegelman, Satrapi and other such horribly-illustrated pretentious-yet-moronic garbage), while some are content with seeking out a more "intellectual" (read: less dumb) variety of Marvel/DC hero fluff. There's even been a concerted effort in "intellectualizing" Batman by making the series (as well as the movies) darker and grimmer. Laughable - because no matter how much they try that shit still is and always will be about an adult man dressed in tights who thinks he can't catch criminals unless he puts on fake bat ears! Don't even get me started on that whole superhero bullshit... If you're a marveltard you must be hating this list, huh? Keep hating... Or perhaps you might learn something. |
67. Michel Blanc-Dumont - French
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| One of the best classical BD cartoonists. Very much a typical product of the Franco-Belgian school: disciplined, neat, elegant, and gifted. What he lacked in originality he made up for in sheer professionalism. No slacking here. Still, his later works aren't as good. A typical devolution, to be found among most illustrators of realistic comics. His later drawing became less detailed, and more plastic-looking, less stylish. Most modern-day French comics look plastic, going so far as to sometimes even resemble a movie screen more than a comic-book page. The baffling need for modern illustrators to emulate cinema is extremely annoying, totally absurd and plays a large role in the destruction of comics as a true art form. If you want to make a movie then make a bloody movie instead! Why bother with comics? They can never be movies. Each medium needs to exist within its confines, its own rules, rather than desperately and futilely try to "bridge chasms" between them and other, completely different, mediums. Not that I expect many comic book fans reading this to even vaguely comprehend what I'm talking about: most of you have been brainwashed/conditioned to appreciate only modern "aesthetics" or lack thereof, unable to even differentiate between plastic-looking Disney-like garbage and real art. |
66. John M. Burns - British (English)
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| As I mentioned earlier, sometimes it's not about the technique and bare-bones drawing style as it is about the overall presentation. That is to say that greatness can be achieved not just by raw talent but by framing panels dynamically, by effective use of colour, and through other means. John Burns isn't as naturally gifted as many others on this list, but he'd created very appealing, excellent comics, Zetari (shown above) being doubtlessly his pinnacle. Just imagine how awful this page would look if it were given the "CGI treatment" by modern, lazy, mentally-impaired colourists - who simply let the computer do most of the work. Young comic-book fans are so brainwashed/indoctrinated by "CGI comics" from an early age that they are completely unaware how bad it is: some of these young plebeians even prefer it to old-school colouring! For example, I have actually come across baboons who prefer the CGI Inkal to the original-colour Inkal. One needs to be completely autistic about art to take that kind of nebulous stance. Zetari is a two-part serial consisting of only 90 pages, but don't let it slip under the radar just because it was prematurely abandoned. (Whether it was cut short or was planned to be short, I have no idea.) It is well worth buying. If you can get your hands on it, don't hesitate. It's an 80s fantasy series reminiscent of Storm, Conan and El Mercenario, except that a female does the ass-kicking instead. She's a sort of politically-incorrect Wonder Woman: she has no mercy, kills and dishes out punishment without hesitation (chops off a thief's hand in one scene), and best of all - she is bare-breasted on most pages. Somehow her buttons never seem to work, or she forgets to use them, or maybe they simply fall out due to the frequent fighting... Rare are (older) serials in which the hero/heroine doesn't show much mercy, a big plus because I am sort of an anti-pacifist. What I'm saying is, she's no Flash Gordon: that clean-cut bastard regularly spares the lives of his enemies - just to end up paying for it later. Won't he ever learn? |
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| Eartha is a far more obscure comic, even shorter-lived than Zetari, consisting of roughly 30 pages, or thereabouts. It's about a half-naked cavewoman within a modern setting. That's all I know. Totally trashy, of course, but that's part of the charm hence fun of Olden Golden comics, kinda the way Plan 9 is a great movie. (Not an ideal analogy, but you get the point. Content-wise it's Plan 9 territory, but artistically speaking it's way above anything Ed Wood could have ever hoped for.) I never read Eartha, because it's never been properly published. Pity. It's no wonder the colours in Zetari and Eartha are so good: Burns did colour for other illustrators. Burns also had a brief sting with Modesty Blaise, for which he did two episodes, i.e. around 240 dailies/strips. He couldn't match Holdaway's or Romero's precision and elegance but nonetheless did a very good job. |
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| Also notable is the (even) more obscure Danielle, another sexy b&w serial that more-or-less shows Burns at his best (plus the usual degree of minor sloppiness). He has a distinct style, and his characters seem to be always in motion, rather than appearing static. They don't just stand around looking bored, the way for example Ed Wood's moronic characters do. Many illustrators lack that kind of dynamism. As you can see, Danielle is no different from Zetari - in the sense that her top is always open too. In the third strip on this page, she unsuccessfully tries to seduce her alien captor. Hey, nobody said she was the brightest cookie... Script-wise, Danielle appears to be a somewhat clumsy, cheesy, off-the-wall series. In other words, ideal. |
65. Junji Ito 伊藤 潤二 - Japanese
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| A page from the double-volume Gyo. A typical body-horror serial, the way Ito does them. Other stuff I've read so far: Uzumaki, Smashed, Lovesickness and Fragments of Horror. I particularly enjoy his short stories, which is why I'd recommend you start off with Smashed or Fragments of Horror - or any of the other three collections I plan to get: Venus in the Blind Spot, Shiver and Frankenstein. Ito has had several of his longer serials turned into movies, including the three-volume Tomie. If you're a horror film fan then you must have heard of it. However, beware: Tomie is possibly his earliest manga and the drawing is pretty bad in its earlier episodes, a very far cry from what's shown here. The early Tomie stories are also rubbish. |
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| You may have heard of Uzumaki too, shown here, one of Ito's most well-known horror titles, and filmed in 2000. The movie was intriguing when I'd seen it, which was a few years after its release, but after reading the manga I found it less enjoyable. It's a decent movie but the comic is a lot better - and far more detailed of course. Sorry, did I say "comic"? I meant manga. Same thing, just different words... Uzumaki is a three-volume series consisting of about 18 30-page stories that go chronologically. A highly original premise with many interesting splash pages. Typical Ito: he lines up several well-drawn but non-exceptional pages, then suddenly throws all he's got at the reader in one very dense, very detailed horror-terror page. It's these bombastic splash pages where he shows his full ability. Ito doesn't have a particularly fantastic i.e. elegant way of drawing lines, but he makes up for this through paying attention to detail and typical Japanese discipline. His mangas are riddled with relatively normal-looking humans which is why I can read them without throwing them away in disgust. I refuse to read any manga with cretinously-drawn humans, just as I generally avoid western comics with a similar deficiency. Ito's faces are somewhat manga-like but closer to the European school than the usual mangatarded characters with enormous mouths, huge eyes, and very dumb Hobbit faces. Thank God he made the decision not to ruin his comics this way, as dozens of his Japanese colleagues had done, otherwise all his great, innovative stories would have been completely wasted. |
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| Oh yeah, also very important: he draws women wonderfully. At least the main characters. A beautiful woman - in a manga: who woulda thunk it possible... Which is so ironic, considering how attractive Japanese women generally are. Certainly an impossibility in the earlier history of Japanese comics. But things are gradually changing in manga - for the better - which is the polar opposite of western comics which have devolved drastically in this century, and will probably get even worse before they get any better. (More on that later, and especially in my top 50 post... which features a few more manga illustrators.) |
64. Frank Robbins - American
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| An instantly identifiable style, original for its time, very disciplined and precise yet fluid enough so as not to appear too robotic. Johnny Hazard has to be read in colour though. Unless you're a b&w-sniffing hipster, of course... ... but then again a hipster would never even get anywhere near an episode of Johnny Hazard. Plot-wise it's your standard spy/crime stuff, quite mainstream. It's more than obvious that Robbins ripped off the highly influential Milton Caniff. However, Robbins was better at this style than Milton, and that goes hand-in-hand with my attitude to place quality above pioneering. I do that in music and in cinema too, whenever ranking/comparing people and their work. Most fans/critics tend to get too hung up on originators, over-worshiping all the people "who were there first", forgetting that people who were born earlier (or at the start of a particular movement) had that advantage in terms of getting the chance to innovate - whereas younger generations find it harder to come up with new drawing techniques (or styles of music, or whatever). Originality and innovation is great, but ultimately it is the "empirical" quality that needs to have the highest priority when evaluating. |
63. Alberto Breccia - Argentinian
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| The early 60s series Mort Cinder is ground-breaking, and with a very distinct style - something that can hardly be said of the manga-drooling Japanese (mangas are drawn by robots, right?) or of most prominent American illustrators with their bloody silly superhero clowns jumping around buildings in tights, saying the stupidest, most predictable virtue-signaling things. Mort Cinder stories are fairly unusual, in content but especially in style. A touch of The Twilight Zone about them. There are only 10 of them, roughly 220 pages worth. One of very few comics featured here that should not and will not get published in colour. For obvious reasons. A rundown of some of the episodes (SPOILERS alert): Story-wise Mort Cinder is uneven. Some episodes are quite good, some are rather bland. The final episode, centering around the 300 Spartans, is possibly the best one. The prison episodes aren't as good, especially the second one which is muddled and pointless. The introductory story, the second one, is by far the longest at almost 90 pages. It is moody but flawed: abduction of Mort and Ezra is actually repeated, making the story far longer than necessary. It's interesting how strange the moral messages are. Oesterheld, who wrote the series, was a hardcore communist fanatic, which explains partly why his moral sense occasionally seems off. Namely, communists have no morals, so it comes as little surprise that Mort sometimes treats killers with much more kindness than they deserve. (They deserve none, of course, but commies are such paradoxical/hypocritical cretins, preaching love, equality and pacifism, yet ready to kill millions at the slightest opportunity. Never trust a Commie: whatever he says, the opposite is usually what he means.) In the 3rd story, Oesterheld doesn't seem to condemn the despicable actions of a WWI veteran who betrayed his troops by having them all killed, which is typical communist logic. (Then again, communists don't consider WWI a "valid" or "noble" war, hence betrayal of one's own troops is considered an acceptable move.) Mort and Ezra do nothing to punish this guy, or at least to condemn his actions in no uncertain terms. Because Oesterheld is a Marxist asswipe. In the 9th story, an alien infiltrator posing as an archeologist sacrifices the lives of his entire staff "for love". I.e. when you're a communist sacrificing people's lives for a "higher cause" this is considered not only normal, but is encouraged. Of course, by that I mean sacrificing OTHER people's lives... Admittedly, the archeologist ultimately sacrifices his own life too for this woman. The message: be a fanatic, kill and be killed for idealism. It's the message of a jackass moron, and Oesterheld was a jackass of a high order. More communist subtext - or at least blatant disregard for human life (same thing, really) - can be found in the 4th episode, the Babylon story. In it, Mort (as a slave) actually supports the construction of an edifice that is costing the lives of thousands of slaves! He is such an obsequious tool to his masters that eventually he gets under the good graces of his masters. Why? He actually prevents a rebellion among the slaves! Keep in mind: Mort is the good guy here. Or is supposed to be. Indeed, Oesterheld presents this rebellion as a negative thing because the making of Babylon represents yet another "higher noble cause" for which people must sacrifice themselves in very large numbers. It is essentially Oesterheld telling us that building Utopia (Marx's ultimate goal for all sheepkind) requires self-sacrifice and mass-murder, and that this is OK as long as the end-goal is "noble". Commie Logic 101. Nevermind that a human Utopia can't exist or that humans don't even deserve one... Or that a slave supporting his masters in the construction of an edifice that kills thousands of innocent people (including his own family and friends) is a ludicrous, unrealistic concept that only a dumb Commie dirtbag can concoct. Yet, probably because the illustrations are so serious and glum, readers completely ignore all these flaws. Whether Oesterheld was aware of this "subliminal" Marxist propaganda is hard to gauge, but ultimately it is irrelevant whether it was calculated or whether this garbage immorality simply flowed naturally and unintentionally out of him. No spoilers: In Mort Cinder Breccia plays the old geezer Ezra; it's an autoportrait. But lest you think Ezra, Mort and all the other characters featured in the series were attacked by a gang of rabid cats, I assure you they weren't. They were attacked by razors and bicycle handles. Yes, those are pretty much (allegedly) the only tools Al used to draw MC. He was far more experimental in his approach than most cartoonists, and - for better or worse - always sought for new ways to illustrate... ... Which is why Mort Cinder is not representative of his career as a whole. A bulk of his other work is completely different, and some of it is adventurously coloured. Breccia was firmly against settling on just one recognizable style, hence he kept trying out different approaches to avoid becoming "stagnant". As a result, there is surprising variety in his work. For example, his Kthulu album is quite different, only vaguely like MC; much more experimental and quite non-commercial. But while Kthulu was only partly ruined by modern-art influences, Breccia went full-on Picassotard on some of his other stuff. El Dorado is one such failed experiment; meticulously coloured, but very ugly hence unappealing, with characters who look like grotesque monsters rather than actual humans. An album that comes off as some sort of twisted amateur Kabuki theater. (I do not doubt that this description will cause instant wetness among the hipsters reading this.) Ditto Hansel and Gretel which is somewhat less ugly but similarly undisciplined and sloppy. Dracula is another album very similar to El Dorado and H&G. If you like any of these three (and you will if you're a hipster) then get the other two as well. Let's not beat around the bush: all three of these albums are very reminiscent of modern French hipster comics, i.e. they are utter shit. So in a sense Breccia was ahead of his time not just with his excellent work, but with his crap too. As a result of this wild fluctuation in quality, Breccia is ranked not quite as high on this list as his best work might suggest he deserves. It's a shame he'd wasted away so many years on his shitty picassoesque stuff. Perhaps this segment of his CV stemmed from a huge chip on his shoulder which pushed him to be recognized as an "artisteee" - which, if true, would explain why he occasionally ventured so far into the abominable reaches of the utterly repugnant and decadent abyss of sewer-dung known as "modern art". He refused to sell out, which is commendable (he stated that westerns bored him immensely - just as they bore me), but I figure he went too far in the opposite direction. Extreme commercialism and extreme "artsiness" both nearly always lead to disastrous work. As in politics and most other things, the moderate middle is the best and healthiest option usually. |
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| But if you really like the visual style of Mort Cinder, Breccia had done more in that vein, not just the abstract rubbish. Shown above is Nadie. Also noteworthy is the serial Un Tal Daneri which lies somewhere between MC and Kthulu style-wise, i.e. worthy of Breccia's reputation. The Squadra Zenith serial is also on the "commercial" spectrum of his work, also something to get. Perramus is roughly in the middle between his "accessible" style and his shitty abstract crap, though leaning more towards the latter hence hardly a priority. He also has a b&w version of his abstract bullshit, dross such as Buscavidas and El Aire. This shit is not good enough to wipe your ass with. As a general rule, his early work is more commercial/mainstream, whereas his later stuff gets increasingly hipsterish. It would appear advanced age made him either more senile or more pretentious. Either way, he became delusional. |
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| Communist propaganda in comics (the truth about German Oesterheld): Just in case you thought I was exaggerating about Oesterheld earlier on... Mort Cinder (and several other Breccia albums/serials) was written by German/Argentinian Hector Oesterheld, a Commie sociopath who vanished without a trace during Argentina's political purges in the 70s. He is unquestioningly and uncritically worshiped by (dumb uninformed) comic fans as some sort of morally flawless demi-god. Pro-Marxist comic fans (and God knows there are many of that cretinous species - especially among the nerdy cucks) misuse his brutal murder to idealize him and romanticize his pathological "utopian" cause, so one must be very wary of what's floating out there biography-wise: it's mostly semi-truths, lies and exaggerations. Hector was a member of the Montoneros, a murderous Marxist guerilla group which considered all democracies to be Fascist. Kind of like SJWs now. (They considered Americans to be "Fascist imperialists" whereas the genocidal Soviet Union were deemed the saviours of mankind: the usual idiotic Topsy-Turvy non-logic applied by literally every Marxist terrorist organization of the era.) The fact that the Montozeroes were fighting against a tyrannical regime changes nothing vis-a-vis their own insanity and plans of committing their own atrocities. After all, didn't Stalin's genocidal Commies fight the Nazis in WW2? Evil fighting evil, hardly a unique occurrence; most armed conflicts are of that ilk. Further proof of Hector's fanaticism and mental illness is the fact that after both his daughters disappeared (both indoctrinated by Hector with Marx's nefarious gobbledygook), he commented that he was so glad they didn't talk to their jailors while being tortured! Is that a normal reaction of a parent? No, but it's the typical insane behaviour of a Commie f**k who'd agreed to place the Party ahead of his own family and friends. Because that's what communism is essentially about: usually a small group of basket-case psychopaths climbing the political ladder through violence, then tightening their grip on absolute power by undermining/destroying the family unit - which is best achieved by convincing the ignorant rabble that they should always place political loyalty above genetic i.e. biological considerations! Does that sound like a healthy or reasonable attitude to you? If you answered yes, then you must be one of the numerous degenerate/clueless comic-book Commie-f**k nerds I mentioned earlier. Please shoot yourself. Hence it's small wonder that Hector is the author of the laughable fantasy shown above, about his great murderous idol, Che "Kill All Prisoners / I Hate Negroes" Guevara, illustrated by Alberto and Enrique Breccia. Read at your own risk: your brain-cells might migrate out of your head at a rapid speed. Che was banned in Argentina upon its release, but methinks the regime should not have feared it: they could have marketed it as a black comedy. Or wait, don't tell me... some people actually consider this fairy-tale real??? Breccia himself wasn't a communist though, he wasn't aligned to any political movement or ideology. According to his daughter, he hated all politicians equally. So sorry to disappoint all you snowflake couch revolutionaries! The devious, manipulative Oesterheld (just Google him: classic psycho face) cajoled the utterly gullible, clueless Breccia into doing several political propaganda comics, not just Che. El Eternaut is an anti-American propaganda piece, veiled as a sci-fi alien invasion story. Obviously, this is far more subtle than hammer-and-sickly Che, hence probably readable. (It's certainly well-illustrated.) Yet another joint propagandist venture involving both Breccia and Hector is Evita: as embarrassingly sycophantic, one-sided as the notorious Che, it is a laughable text-heavy fable which falls only a little short of licking Evita's dead punani. In fact, I don't understand how Oesterheld found the time to script so many comics, seeing as how busy he was with his tongue up the sphincters of deceased loons Evita and Che on the one hand, and holding a rifle ready to shoot capitalist pigs on the other hand! Golden rule: whenever Argentinians talk about Evita Peron - it's time to run! As far away as possible. Enrique Breccia, Alberto's son, is also a well-known illustrator. He isn't as good though, but quite solid. |
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| This formless gormless mess is a segment from El Dorado - which I decided to include here just in case you thought I was exaggerating about how bad it is. The panels that feature only scenery are OK, but whenever a Picasso-inspired Breccia face makes an appearance I just feel like tearing this comic to shreds and then stomping the remains with my feet - after which I light a bonfire. Except of course that you can't actually tear/stomp/burn a cbr file into tiny pieces. Sure, there's always the delete function, but it just isn't the same, you know... Initially I had promised myself I would only post visually pleasing drawings/paintings on this list, but this is one of two exceptions I had to make. The other one? Read on and you'll find it. Hint: it also has to do with badly drawn faces. Did I say badly? Sorry, I meant horribly drawn faces. I could draw better faces with my feces - using my feet instead of my hands. Sorry... Did I say faces? These aren't faces. I've seen blue-red-orange monkey asses that resemble faces more than these hipster scribbles. Seriously, how can something be ART if any bloody asshole can do it? The word art stems from the Latin ars which means "skill" or "technique". Only marxistically-brainwashed knuckleheads fail to understand that real art is very rare and difficult to achieve without a certain level of skill and discipline. Just because some virtue-signaling ass-wipe once said that "beauty is in the eye of the beholder" (in order to protect ugly people?) does not mean that various forms of art do not require expertise and knowledge that for example a bio engineer requires in order to be a real bio engineer. It's as if Breccia had decided to completely neglect everything he'd learned over the years - i.e. to negate all of his acquired skills - in favour of intentionally making shit. The exact reasons why someone would intentionally make shit (other than to appeal to the laughable up-its-own-ass art-fart crowd) may be something for shrinks though, not so much comic-book detectives such as me. |
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| I couldn't possibly end Al's entry with horrible picassonian drawings, so here's another great page to renew your hope in Breccia. A page from his earlier stuff, a story called La Corriera per Tucumcari. Very Argentinian, quite impressionist, really nifty stuff combining minimalism and detailism to create effective contrast. From 1972 i.e. before he'd lost his mind which is when he started dabbling in "experimental" hipster nonsense. There is a great difference though between experimentation and lazy doodling, a difference hipsters will never understand - or which some of them merely pretend not to understand. |
62. Pietro Dall'Agnol - Italian
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Great at doing women, which is not as common as one might think. Many top-notch cartoonists do all sorts of things well - but fail at making women interesting and/or attractive/sexy. Even the excellent Manara - much-touted for his depiction of women - doesn't draw women's faces that well. Moebius very rarely drew beauties. There are many other examples.
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61. Ernie Chan - Chinese/Filipino/American
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| Without Ernie Chan and Zuniga, a lot of Buscema's penciling would have amounted to little. These two inkers made sure to not only do justice to Buscema's drawings but to greatly enhance them. It suffices to look at how Alkala ruined Buscema's characters to realize just how invaluable Chan and Zuniga turned out to be. Alkala, whom you won't be finding on this list, was fairly good at scenery, not because he was very talented but because he went into a lot of detailed shading, but his portrayals of characters - especially Conan himself - left a lot to be desired. You have to be autistic not to notice these deficiencies in Alkala's work - and not to notice how superior Chan and Zuniga were to Alkala, in practically every way. Then there were the totally mediocre journeymen, such as for example Bob Camp and Pablo Marcos, whose inking was semi-miserable hence barely worth mentioning. The page above shows how good Ernie was when doing everything by himself. Pretty much concrete proof that he deserves to be included here. |
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| Another (rare) example of Chan doing both pencils and inks for Conan. Personally, I slightly prefer his ink/pencil Conan to that of Buscema. However, the Buscema/Chan tandem is the best option from the three. Unlike with so many Marvel/DC "artists" (journeymen), Chan's opening page isn't vastly better than the rest of the episode i.e. the quality is very consistent from one page to the next. Certainly this can't be said of most of the commercial American cartoonists who often put their best effort into the opening splash page, but then let the standards drop drastically thereafter. Chan contributed to a bulk of episodes from the Savage Sword of Conan series (b&w), as well as to The Chronicles of Conan (colour). SSOC is allegedly more "adult" and violent than TCOC, but to modern readers these differences will appear more like nuances. An indisputable fact is that SSOC has somewhat better writing - and bare tits. |
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| A page from Chronicles of Conan, volume 23. Chan did the pencils and inks here. A more than worthy replacement for Buscema, I don't know the reasons why Ernie wasn't assigned to do more of these "solo" ventures. Perhaps he wasn't as quick as Buscema? Speed counts for a lot in the world of comic books, but in America - with its ridiculous deadlines and mega-fast mass-production - speed is everything. Speaking of Chronicles, I hotly recommend it because it has a large number of Chan/Buscema episodes, which look awesome in colour. But, und das ist ein big But: this 34-volume Dark Horse series (that includes about 300 issues) varies drastically in terms of drawing. As is always the case with American mass-production, corners are cut, shortcuts are used, compromises are made - i.e. shit cartoonists are hired to "fill in the gaps", because as quickly as Chan and Buscema worked, they weren't magicians. Stan Lee wanted quantity much more than quality, and in order to dish out weekly/monthly episodes he regularly resorted to hiring (cheap and quick) non-talent. This is why Chronicles is awash with inferior and average illustrations, as well as excellence. Leading the way with the shittiest episodes is the horrible-yet-somehow-legendary Gil Kane: volumes 17 and 18 are full of his garbage. The way he draws Conan is laughable: the violent hero looks like an asymmetric Disney clown-mutant rather than a "barbarian", and the rest of Kane's illustrations aren't much better than amateur. When I say that I could draw Conan's face better with my feet, I am not exaggerating. Bob Camp and Pablo Marcos also stink. The first 6 volumes should be ignored because they are greatly contaminated with Barry Smith's inferior drawing (plus some Kane, just to seal the anti-deal, to make your choice even easier to make). His Conan looks like a total asshole too. Skipping volume 7 is optional, because the early Buscema Conan is not that great. Volume 8 is somewhat better. Volumes 9-14 are almost uniformly good/great though, consisting mostly of Buscema, Chan and that other inker whose name escapes me. In 15-16 however the great stuff is in the minority, 19-20 are mostly excellent, 23-24 are a mixed bag but mostly great, 25-26 are generally poor, 27-30 is nearly all garbage, 31-32 is mostly bad. The great thing is that despite not using original colour versions, the Chronicles look great: the new colour enhances the series, doesn't drench it in pools of CGI paint. Thank God that at least this time no IT peasants were hired to destroy good drawings... |
60. Marco Nizzoli - Italian
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A very stylish, neat, clean approach which I immensely enjoy. Especially good is his portrayal of faces. Even some great illustrators struggle with faces, and even more of them are unable to draw beautiful women - unlike Nizzoli who has no trouble in that area.
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59. John Buscema - Italian/American
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| I am practically an anti-fan of Marvel and DC comics - i.e. the boring generic American mainstream - and all of its rather silly superhero fluff that I only briefly read when I was around 7 or 8. I quickly thereafter got bored of it after discovering more European comics, which are overall superior to American crap. I grew out of that shit before I turned 10, and yet some adults still only read that - literally nothing else: no books, no BDs, nothing else aside from US shit. There are actual grown-ass men who only collect Marvel/DC, nothing else interests them. (Some throw in manga as well just to make their ineptness more complete.) There are so many ways you can save the universe until it becomes completely generic. And it's been generic for many decades. Perhaps this list can help a few of these marvelistas and mangatards to expand their very limited horizons. Tiny horizons so small they could fit in a beetle's anus. Note: marvelistas and mangatards are labels that apply only to individudulls who limit themselves just to those comics, or who primarily read those and rarely venture out of their cozy Kitsch Bubble. I know I may sound like a snob, but I'm not. Would it be snotty to criticize and mock Beyonce, Bon Jovi and Bryan Adams? Of course not. I am not out to crush and totally discredit "the mainstream" as such, I am merely pointing out to inferior rubbish, because as a person with the ability to distinguish crap from brilliance it is practically my duty to shit and piss on the mediocre and the trashy. |
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| But there are always exceptions. Conan the Barbarian is a refreshingly real character - inasmuch as he isn't PC, doesn't wear a silly clown uniform (like that moron who thinks he's a bat, for example, or that other moron who thinks he's a spider just because he was bitten by one, or that alien moron who thinks a pair of glasses hide his true identity) and doesn't feel the need to save the world every week. In fact, Conan would just much rather shag a bird and have a good fight than save the world. Who needs Conan 007?! I mean, can't we have heroic adventures in which the future of mankind isn't always at stake? And since when do only men in tights get the privilege to save the world? OK, I stand corrected, saying Conan is real is a bit far-fetched. But he certainly appears more genuine and realistic in terms of his personality and attire than the stereotypical morally superior superhero asswipe strutting around undignified in a bloody silly cape. It's quite fortunate that Buscema was one of the people picked to work on by far the best mainstream (anti-)hero Marvel/DC has ever had, because he is possibly the most gifted cartoonist America's trashy superhero comic world has ever had. (Silver Surfer isn't a bad serial either, but not nearly as fun as Conan. Swampy is OK, too, I guess, but badly illustrated...) His earlier episodes aren't illustrated that well though. Or more accurately, they weren't inked well. Some of the inkers ruined his drawings, such as Alfredo Alcala who was good for scenery but sloppy when it came to faces. This man was clearly deluded enough to "correct" Buscema's lines with his own, essentially obliterating Buscema's pencil with his own ink, making it hard to even consider those episodes as Buscema's. Summa summarum, it's better to avoid Conan episodes that had Alcala involved, despite the fact that they weren't badly done. Tony DeZuniga is superior to Alcala, let's just get that clear once and for all; he built upon the pencil-work, as opposed to crushing it. The episodes inked by Buscema himself vary in quality - but he was at his best when inked by DeZuniga and Ernie Chan; the Philipino-born cartoonists often did the ink for Buscema, but were great pencilers in their own right. Depending on who inked for Buscema the quality of the illustrations drastically vary, from mediocre to excellent. |
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| A page from a Buscema/Chan episode from The Chronicles of Conan. There was plenty of detail and darker patches/shading when Ernie did the ink, meaning that colour could be added but that it wasn't totally necessary; it was optional. Still, I prefer the colour versions. One can tell that some of Buscema's panels (generally speaking) were rushed; if he hadn't been under pressure to deliver quickly, (some of) his stuff would have looked better. He produced a vast amount of pages for Conan (I believe he might actually hold the record for most pages per Marvel/DC hero), and that kind of workload logically brings with it a lower than ideal quality. Of course, deadlines are a big problem for illustrators in general, not just mercenaries hired by Stan Lee, better known as Satan Lee - one of the biggest purveyors of mediocrity, and an undeserving hero, worshiped by countless morons. I am not suggesting Buscema was necessarily a greedy mercenary. By all accounts, he genuinely liked Conan's character and enjoyed doing those episodes. In fact, Buscema was eager to start Conan when the series was initially planned, but unfortunately financial considerations lead to Stan Lee hiring the much cheaper (in ever sense of the word) Barry Windsor-Smith, an inferior run-of-the-mill illustrator who turned out to be just another frustrated pompous hipster, which explains why he later bad-mouthed Buscema, like some petty, jealous little teenie-bopper... Ts ts ts, Barry... No respect for the elders, and no humility regarding your own inferior talent as compared to John's? Barry's version of Conan usually looks abysmal, at best it is OK. Some of it is so bad I wouldn't even pick up his comics in a bargain bin, so for him to criticize Buscema's technique is a staggering example of delusion and envy in their purest forms. To further illustrate what a knucklehead Barry was, his name used to be simply Barry Smith, but by the time he was in his 20s he must have grown bored and frustrated for having such a "common" name which is when he added the Windsor, probably to sound more "classy". The hilarious irony is that this narcissistic poseur was fully immersed in the Baby-boomer "anti-Establishment left-wing intellectual hero" bullshit 60s fantasy, yet by adding the "Windsor" to his name he sounded much more like some snotty-nosed British royal than a pot-smoking hippie bohemian. In fact, he is English... |
58. Philippe Druillet - French
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| What Druillet lacks in a pretty, elegant style he makes up for in sheer determination to make his comics as detailed, powerful and interesting as possible. A page from Urm le fou, a typical sci-fi horror-fantasy, most probably initially featured in Metal Hurlant (Heavy Metal magazine). |
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| A segment from the even trippier Le nuit, a nightmarish, abstract "story" created out of Druillet's frustration over the premature demise of his wife. A spectacular album, but unfortunately also the only one that I have. If you're somewhat reminded of Voivod's early artwork, it's not a coincidence. Their drummer Away (an illustrator in his own right) was heavily (metally) influenced by Heavy Metal magazine in the 70s and 80s, hence the similarities to the War & Pain and Rrroooaaarrr artwork. |
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| Druillet is very bombastic in his approach, the pages often featuring just "one panel" i.e. he often uses splash pages. He does spreads too (double splash page), and here's a great example of one. The only problem is when publishers are too dumb or too careless to print albums in a way in which one can comfortable view the entire spread without tearing apart the comic... |
57. Grzegorz Rosiński - Polish
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| I am probably one of very few people whose introduction to Greg was through The Great Power of Shninkel (above), instead of the far more popular Thorgal series (below). I needed time to warm to this drawing style. At first it appeared to be slightly ugly, and too messy, imprecise. But gradually I started to understand how these drawings "work". With some illustrators this recognition is instant, but with others it might take some time. Shninkel is a strange 150-page high fantasy (or epic fantasy) tale based on some intentional parallels with certain aspects of Christianity. Lord of the Rings meets the Bible. I read it several years ago so I can't tell you more than that, other than that it's well worth a read - if you can get it cheaply, as I did. (It's not a high priority integral.) Paying just 4 Euros for this album is the kind of price westerners can only dream of. I kid of course, because their standards of living are much higher than in this shitty dump... In France this kind of integral album costs roughly 30 Euros, and in Germany probably much more. In Serbia, the regular bookstore price for such an album would normally be around 15 Euros. |
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| Thorgal is a blend of epic fantasy, Viking adventure comics and even some sci-fi. If you're expecting a pragmatic, vicious, Conan-like brute, forget it: the title character is much closer to a fur-wearing version of Flash Gordon, i.e. a stereotypically bland, goody-two-shoes pacifist dullard. The first 7-8 episodes are fairly enjoyable though. The extended 5-album saga (episodes 9 to 13) is tiresome and quite idiotic, however: this is where the series takes a serious downward dip in terms of story. The "guest-starring" main female character makes very little sense, and even dumber is Thorgal's way of dealing with her. I can't recall the various other moronic plot-devices and logic flaws, but the story is botched in numerous ways hence annoying. After this disastrous "epic" mini-series, Thorgal recovers from its temporary bout of blatant idiocy, featuring several OK stories thereafter, but the overall level isn't very good. I've reached episode 18, so I have no clue what the rest is like. But I do know that eventually the drawing starts devolving, and presumably(?) the scripts too. |
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| Grzergzorsgsz has a rather nifty style, but I do get annoyed sometimes by his faces. When he slows down and makes the effort, especially with close-ups, his faces are excellent, but occasionally he just "pisses through" a panel, rushing hence botching the faces. |
56. José Luis Salinas - Argentinian
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| If Salinas had been as consistently impressive as shown above, I'd have ranked him in the top 50, easily. However, for whatever reasons he didn't have great consistency. One of his strengths was close-ups of characters, but occasional panels seem rushed. Cisco Kid, shown above, is what he is famous for. A long-running western series, beginning in the early 50s, with rather primitive, dumb scripts written by a talent-free hack called Rod Reid. But hey: it's a western after all! Simple characterization, predictable/lame stories and sometimes outright idiotic plot-twists. (I am basing this on the first 5 episodes, which is all I managed to get so far.) Still, some of the stories are better than others: not all of them are full-on trashy, some are merely semi-trashy. It is downright scandalous what certain publishers used to do with this serial, in the 70s and 80s when it was being featured in various magazines. They used to not only cut up panels, re-arranging them to fit the format of their magazines, but they actually deleted/omitted certain panels - and even messed with the original panels by "correcting" them: adding things, or deleting certain sections! That's what you get when Commies assault a comic book... This was done with several other b&w serials too. |
55. Haruhisa Nakata 中田春彌 - Japanese
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| Nakata isn't a typical manga author - which is a key reason why he made it on the list. His main series, Levius, is read normally, from left to right, and the drawing style is deliberately similar to the Franco-Belgian school - despite some obvious Japanese leanings. Levius is an MMA series set in a technologically advanced 19th century. I have so far only read one or two issues so I can't comment yet on the quality of the script. But so far it's been solid. |
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| There is a striking elegance to Nakata's style; he is sometimes quite minimalist meaning that some characters' faces and bodies lack detail, but he compensates for this with ease by making every line count. His portrayal of older male faces is reminiscent of Holdaway. This however does not apply to women, whom he draws as magnificently as the Brit, just very differently and more in line with the manga style i.e. usually with a minimum of lines. No, not with huge eyes and mouths - there's none of that bullshit in Levius, or extremely rarely. The character of A.J. Langdon is particularly well-drawn (shown above, coloured by me); I would have to rank some of her depictions among the Top 10 Most Beautiful Comic-Book Women, if I ever made such a list. Just check out the amazing double splash-page of her in Levius/est no 3, pages 120/121. I have rarely seen a more perfect depiction of a female face in a comic. There are some peculiarities too: longshot characters are completely devoid of facial features. (Which is probably a manga thing.) But paradoxically, a lot of the small panels, occasionally tiny even, have much more detail than is commonly found. Levius is the first series, consisting of three issues. Levius/est is the sequel, and there are so far 8 issues, with two more planned. Altogether roughly 2600 pages. |
54. Carlos Ezquerra - Spanish
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| The first Judge Dredd illustrator. Even though the first episodes weren't by him, Carlos was the one who designed and co-created the character. He worked mostly for British comics. Nevertheless, his style was more modern than that of most 2000 AD illustrators; it was close to what the best French (and Spanish) illustrators were doing during the 70s. The Moebius School, more or less, if there is such a thing. (Dots, dots and more dots.) I consider him the best Judge Dredd cartoonist, though not by a large margin. He did a lot of pages for JD early on in the series, but as the years went by the best cartoonists left the series, to be replaced by more average ones. |
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| Even better in colour, if you ask me. (And you should ask me.) Often the opening double page of an episode is a spread, and if not then usually there is one splash page, as shown here. The Apocalypse War is Ezquerra's lengthiest contribution, a fairly straight-forward World War IV (coz WW III is already in the past) plot with The Soviet Union initiating a nuclear war against this goofy future America. The ease with which Russia tricks Mega City 1 is fairly dumb and unconvincing, but hey, this is a spoofy sci-fi adventure, not a dissertation on Quantum Physics. The result is 100s of millions dead on both sides, entire cities (half-)destroyed i.e. the usual kind of over-the-top dreddian bombast. The series had started well before the fall of the Commie Empire hence this stereotypical "retro" future in which the USSR still exists, though Russians feature in only a limited number of stories. JD is refreshingly un-PC in a number of ways, with for example pacifism rarely being a viable approach for Dredd and his fellow judges. Death is treated as normal as buying apples, and in many stories civilian casualties are quite staggering, though nowhere more so than in this long entry. I am not a great fan of The Apocalypse War because during the first half there is practically none of the humour that characterizes this series, and the premise is quite one-dimensional, but these minuses are off-set somewhat by the great drawing. Also, the plot drastically improves in the last third, with some clever twists and laugh-out-loud moments - usually to do with the Russian general and his extreme penchant for punishing his own personnel. The Complete Case Files (Volumes 1 to 30+) are the official compilations of (nearly) all regular episodes, spanning decades, and they are in b&w - at least the first 11 volumes. After that, colour is introduced. I nevertheless found a large number of scans with either "just" the colour spreads or entire episodes featured in colour, of the first 10 volumes. The series looks awesome with this "retro-colouring", so I am baffled why neither the British nor American publishers put out this version instead. I am quite disappointed that these retro versions aren't available instead of the b&w. |
53. Franz aka Franz Drappier - Belgian
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| There are many good BD cartoonists from the French-Belgian Golden Era (60s to 90s), but many of them are very much alike, interchangeable, lacking their own recognizable style. Franz has their skills and is style-wise very much a typical representative of that group, but he trumps most of them due to a peculiar way of drawing, especially faces. |
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| One might say that the main difference is that Franz is closer to Moebius than the various "stereotypical" BD illustrators from his era: Michel Rouge, Edouard Aidans, Roger Leloup, Patrice Serres, Michel Graton and a few others who are quite good but not quite good enough for this top 100. I suppose you could say that Franz is similar to Griffo, but better. It's that extra amount of "grit" that makes his drawing more appealing than the more "Mickey Mouse" BD illustrators who (entirely) rely on the ligne claire approach. I like ligne claire (i.e. clear/fat lines/outlines), but I generally prefer some "dirt" to go along with the "clarity". (Describing drawings styles isn't easy, I'm doing my best...) |
52. Toni DeZuniga - Philipino
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| Even though he is primarily known as an inker for Buscema, I feel that Toni's place on this list is fully deserved. Were it not for him (and Ernie) a bulk of Buscema's (hard) work would have been destroyed by inferior or lazy inkers. Toni's Conan is instantly recognizable, as is his style: elegant, precise, consistent. He improved on Buscema's pencils rather than destroy them. In fact, Buscema wasn't nearly as good an inker as Tony was, though that might lie in the fact that Buscema rarely had enough time to illustrate his comics properly i.e. display his full potential often enough. Crazy schedules and ridiculous deadlines are the reasons that 70s Conan the Barbarian didn't turn out even better. But hey, you can ask Stan Lee why money was so much more important than quality... He's one of the key people responsible for the pathetic state of modern American comics: it's all about cheesy superheroes and mega-quantity, about recycling the same shit over and over, with very little concern for quality, let alone originality. |
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| Zuniga drew women better than Chan and Buscema, not to mention the more sloppy inkers such as Alkala - let alone the horrible pencilers/inkers such as Gil Kane, whose Conan looks like a circus clown rather than a tough fantasyland barbarian. Gil Kane is one of the most absurdly overrated cartoonists in the history of comics: his reputation baffles me. Even at his very best he was merely average. Zuniga's women were more symmetric and beautiful than Buscema's, because Toni was more disciplined/precise but also because John seemed to sometimes rush with faces. In some panels Buscema tended to be sloppy with faces, especially women - who are in a sense tougher to draw because you need to use less lines to depict beauty. He'd get the body contours right, but the faces were sometimes asymmetrical and even disproportional. Women - especially young women - generally require far less facial detail than male characters, an almost unavoidable minimalism that is a two-edged sword: on the one hand minimalism can lead to beautiful women but on the other hand some illustrators don't have a deft enough grasp of it i.e. they can only exhibit their talent by drawing a lot of lines, which is often overkill when illustrating young pretty females. |
51. Geof Darrow - American
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| The most recent addition to this list. Hence I've read only very little, just enough to gauge how worthy his drawings are and what kind of comics he does. There are elements of fairly modern commercialism in the way he draws people that doesn't appeal to me that much, but his scenery is excellent, his monsters look great, and he has the precision and the discipline to pull it all off. Shaolin Cowboy (shown here) appears to be an imaginative, off-the-wall western/sci-fi/horror/chop-sokey series with a dumb sense of humour but unpredictable enough to keep things interesting. The Wachowsky twin retards are - as far as I understand - the publishers (or thereabouts) so expect some leftist propaganda and plentiful idiocy, violence and silliness. Geof worked for the vastly overrated The Matrix (in whichever capacity) hence the connection. Shaolin Cowboy was supposed to be turned into a cinematic release but the Weinstein company pulled out late, leaving the project incomplete. Dunno, perhaps Harvey Weinstein was too busy shtooping Ashley Judd to notice an important memo on his table hence the project got scrapped by default through a misunderstanding? Maybe he was so busy chasing Cate Blanchett around his desk that an important memo flew into the bin by mistake? Or did Uma Thurman accidentally use the Shaolin Cowboy memo as a toilet-paper substitute after finishing her "consultations" with Harv? Maybe Geof's girlfriend refused to join Harvey in the men's bathroom so Harvey got offended and dumped the project as revenge? Perhaps he realized too late there were no actresses attached to the project that he could harass? Either way, I am sure we aren't missing anything. Hollywood's adaptations of comics are boring. Not to mention the fact that comic-books very rarely work on the large screen, even when a project is handled with competence (which is rare anyway). |
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| Big Guy and Rusty the Boy Robot seems to be rather Japanese-influenced. I haven't read it yet. |
Best 100 - Part 2 - Top 50:
Hipsterism In Comics - Explained:
Hugo Pratt - Deconstructed:
Some other reviews:
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