Comix

Important Comix Sites
Comic Book Writers Brian Michael Bendis: Hard-boiled writer extraordinaire becomes best selling superhero writer? True. Bendis may be the best writer in comics which he certainly is when writing dialogue. His characterization is crisp, detailed without being bogged down with extraneous detail. He is a writer's writer. Warren Ellis: Ellis may be the most talented writer in comics. A tirelessly inventive writer of boundless energy, quick witted and dangerously controversial and confrontational. Creator of The Authority and Planetary for Wildstorm - two influential takes on the tired super-hero genre. Neil Gaiman: Sandman is an exiting, mysterious, and often horrific fantasy. An accomplished and seminal work. Peter Milligan: His Shade, the Changing man is a gonzo-modernist nightmare into the heart of American darkness told an innovative comix writer. Alan Moore: Watchmen is a dense and thought provoking exploration and deconstruction of the super-hero myth by the most accomplished writer in the genre. Grant Morrisson: consistently challenges the medium and the widely held expectations that critics and admirers have sprung upon him by easily switching back and forth between the avante-garde comix work (Doom Patrol) that began his career to his more recent mainstream work (J.L.A.) that harkens back to the Golden and Silver Ages of Superhero comix. Highly talented innovator. Greg Rucka: Greg Rucka began his career as a full-fledged mystery writer of his popular Atticus Kodiak novels, and followed it up as a writer for the independent mini-series Whiteout. He has hit the stratosphere with Batman, Daredevil and other mainstream titles lending his talents to such tried and true fare giving these characters street credibility and smarts. Animation Peter Chung: Aeon Flux brought a skewed and fantastically over the top sensibility to MTV animation. Its heightened sexuality and violence brought to the forefront the silliness that hides in the backgrounds of all action adventure films and fiction. Gainax Studios: It is inconceivable that many of the key individuals in this partnership were barely out of their teens when their masterpiece Wings of Hoeniamisse was released in the late 1980's. Gainax created a brilliant animated science fiction film worthy of the best of Asimov or Heinlein. Miyazaki Hayao: His work is characterized by its depth, humanity and flawless characterization. An environmentalist in the truest sense of the word his work exudes the quiet dignity and raw passion of nature, a deeply rooted nostalgia for the faded memories of the past and the quirky rhythms of youth. Oshii Mamoru: (Japanese) One of the great Japanese animation directors. Often, like in his post-apocalyptic, religious fantasia Angels Egg, his work is deeply personal and often metaphorically impenetrable. At his best these personal themes and images give weight and substances to his more accessible films like Patlabor I and II or his adaptation of the Masamune Shirow manga Ghost in the Shell. Otomo Katsuhiro: Akira was loud and violent with a hard driving score owing more to American action blockbusters than to American animation. It changed our preconceived notions of Japanese and of American animation. Bruce Timm: may be the most influential animator in 40 years when UPA changed the look of an entire industry. Timm's stark and glamorous designs brought the vibrancy and adult stylings that revolutionized comix in the 1980's to the moribund field of American Saturday Morning animation.	Mainstream Artists Mike Allred: Madman is a thoughtful, multicolor grab-bag of 1950's Cold War paranioa and Golden Age super-heroes. Allred lends this mix a surprisingly philosophical moral center. John Cassaday : Wonderful new realist artist whose Planetary for Wildstorm and Marvel's Captain America are both classics for his attention to naturalisticdetail. Travis Charest A marvelous young comix artist. His work in Wildcats is clean and perfect for the idealized nature of the characters. Wonderfully moody artwork. Frank Cho: Liberty Meadows is a marvelousl mix of Good Girl art and Berke Breathed humor. Who needs anyone else but Frank Cho and Adam Hughes. Colleen Doran: A Distant Soil is her life's work. Begun in early childhood, this blend of generational space-faring romance, and romantic, Arthurian laced fantasy is broadened by a dead pan wit and a touch of gritty hard-boiled crime. Tony Harris: Beauty, stylized or otherwise, comes from the principles of illustration and design set forth by the early pioneers of American Illustration. Tony Harris is one of their heirs. Adam Hughes: Heir to Vargas and Gibson and other "good-girl" artists. A romantic at heart he embues his idealized figures with a warmth and humor that bespeaks of the artist behind the easel. Marvelous. Mike Mignola: Hellboy is a wonderful homage to old horror movies and stories of Lovecraftian terror and dread. Spooky and often funny as hell. Frank Miller: Sin City is a stylized and explosive pastiche of hard-boiled excess and minimalist fervor. A modern comic noir masterpiece. Steve Rude: This satirically laced science fiction series is a marvel for Rude's stylish, classically trained artwork. The influences of the great American illustrators like Loomis and Rockwell oozes off the paint as does the work of classic comic artists like Jack Kirby, Jim Steranko and Curt Swan. Jim Steranko: An American multimedia phenomenon. Musician,Publisher,Writer and foremost of all illustrator. His design work changed the staid sqaure-ness of Marvel Comics in the 1960's, bringing a pop-art sensibility to that well-worn establishment. Dave Stevens: The Rocketeer is a wonderful recreation of a bygone era. Stevens' meticulous figure work reeks of the same nostalgia and romance that Indiana Jones tapped into. Stevens also almost single-handedly resurrected the career and image of1950's icon Bettie Page. This book is the original inspiration for that warm-hearted (though tepid) Disney film that lacked a bit of the Stevens' warped sex-appeal and goofy humor. Matt Wagner: Wagner's' Mage series is a great urban fantasy and his Grendel is asprawling multi-generational exploration of the consequences rage. To have created either would have cemented his reputation. Both are cornerstones of mainstream comix art. A truly influential comix creator.	Independent Comix Eddie Campbell: Bacchus is a wonderfully warped fantasy about the dying days of the Greek Gods and this pocked-marked and scarred dionysian hero that has survived throughout time. Los Brothers Hernandez: Gilbert Hernandez: Heartbreak Soup: The multi-generational saga of a Mexican family from its small town origins to its big city future. As rich in magic-realist detail as any in Garcia-Marquez. Jaime Hernanez: The saga of two friends named Maggie and Hopie and their adventures in life and love in this post-punk, ethnically rich expanding of Archie's, Riverdale.? Terry Moore: Strangers In Paradise is an inspiring mixture of low comedy, high drama, crime, and romance. Paul Pope: Paul Pope is a one of a kind comic artist. His work is challenging, intricate and from the same sensibility as the Brothers Hernandez. Jeff Smith: Bone is a weird hybrid of Walt Kelly and J.R.R.Tolkien. Beautiful characterization and memorable scenes. Eric Shanower: A clean line art style that I love, a classical subject of Greek Heroes and Myth, and a writer of immense talent. Miscellaneous Comix Enki Bilal: A highly influential European artist in the school of Jean Giraud but his work is much darker and the images are indicative of his Eastern European roots. Richard Corben: Corben's work has always been better appreciated by the Europeans that better understood the parodies of warped, American overheated, pre-adolescent fantasies in his work. Jean "Moebius" Giraud : His dreamy, new-age style was forged from a spiritua l awakening Giraud had in the 1970's. It would permeate his future work in numerous genres and influence an entire generation of artists and writers on three continents. The poetic-master of the European comic. Herge : Tintin is beloved of four generations of worshippers to the Herge shrine. His timeless tales of the youthful adventurer Tintin and his dog Snowy are enlivened by the meticulous, clean lines of Herge's artwork. Vapid Children's literature? I think not. Tanino Liberatore (french): Ranxerox is his magnum opus of violent mayhem and bruising, punk rock energy. The true Terminator for the 1980's, it is still as raw and unflinching today as when it first appeared. And created no less with Liberatore's magic marker. Unbelievable. Milo Manara : A master at capturing the romantic excesses of adults wandering into states of erotic bliss. A soft-core giant and chronicler of the female form.