I found this beautiful piece inside a preview for one of the Hellboy prose novels. I have no desire to "read" a Hellboy story, so I make it a point to avoid them, but Mignola still contributes chapter art, and the first story begins with a western tale. It's almost enough to make me buy the book. Almost.**edit** Bonus awesome Mignola image! Cover from the current Lobster Johnson mini-series.
3 comments:
By some miracle Mignola is congenitally incapable of producing an unattractive image.
Are you familiar with any work of J.H. Williams III? Having been impressed by his collaborations with Grant Morrison on the two bookend issues of the Seven Soldiers megaseries and the three-issue Batman arc concluding this week (not to mention his illustration of Paul Dini's Detective Comics #821), I've been checking out his back catalogue.
Most recently Desolation Jones, Warren Ellis' very loose adaptation of The Big Sleep! His characteristic experimentaion with multiple styles in an issue, if not on the same page, is more interesting than practically every other artist working on monthly titles.
In his current stint on Batman 667-69, for instance, he's been drawing each character in the style of a different artist -- in the same panel! But his magnus opus is still probably Seven Soldiers #1, the concluding issue of the greatest series ever.
I am not familiar, no. I did find his webpage (http://www.jhwilliams3.com/), though, which has a lot of samples of his comic work. Looks interesting, especially the Seven Soldiers stuff. What's the story like? I take it it counts backwards?
Does he color his own stuff? The color seems very unique.
JHWIII inks his stuff but doesn't color it. Jose Villarubbia did his Desolation Jones stuff but his most recent colorist for SS and Batman has been Dave Stewart of Hellboy and BPRD fame. However I have a feeling the colors are somewhat directed by Williams as his work is so design specific and he mentions approving color corrections on his blog.
The numbering in Seven Soldiers doesn't go backwards, SS#1 is just the last of 30 issues of related titles:
Seven Soldiers #0, Shining Knight #1-4, Manhattan Guardian #1-4, Zatanna #1-4, Klarion #1-4, Mister Miracle #1-4, Bulleteer #1-4, and Frankenstein #1-4, and Seven Soldiers #1. The final issue is #1 because it's the first time the seven characters of the individual series are in the same issue.
All 30 issues were written by Grant Morrison but each title had a different art team, from Simone Bianchi to Frazer Irving. The seven miniseries ran concurrently so they are collected in chronological order of publication, just like the new collections of Jack Kirby's Fourth World (comprised of four related titles), which is one of the primary influences on Seven Soldiers.
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