Welcome to The Corner Box, where we talk about comics as an industry and an art form. You never know where the discussion will go or who will show up to join host David Hedgecock and John Barber. Between them, they've spent decades writing, drawing, lettering, coloring, editing, editor-in-chiefing, and publishing comics. If you want to know the behind-the-scenes secrets, the highs and lows, the ins and outs of the best artistic medium in the world, then listen in and join us on The Corner Box.

[00:31] John Barber: Hello, and welcome back to The Corner Box. I'm one of your hosts, John Barber. With me, as always

[00:37] David Hedgecock: David Hedgecock.

[00:38] John: I'm out of practice. It's been a while for us, even though, I think, we've not missed any, from the outside, looking in. What do we do here? What do we talk about?

[00:44] David: Yeah. I don't know. We took a couple of weeks off, John. Not purposely, really. Just life happened and I've completely forgot how to do a podcast, but you know what we did do? We both finished our Kickstarters.

[00:55] John: We did, yes. Congratulations.

[00:57] David: Congratulations to you. Good job, man. Excited to get my Signa hardcover.

[01:01] John: We took the money and ran.

[01:04] David: Oh, you're not actually producing it? Same here. Once again, we share a brain on these things.

[01:11] John: No, everyone. Joke. Didn't happen. It's coming.

[01:16] David: I am super excited to have the print version in my hands, actually. Just finished up on my side for Super Kaiju Rock ’N Roller Derby Funtime Go. We just finished up the design for the full, complete package, and it's gorgeous. Darren Bennett over at […] design did a great job. Super happy with it.

[01:34] John: That's awesome. Yeah, he's terrific. That's great. Yeah, I think we've got some finishing touches to put on it now with some of the stretch goals and stuff, and Andrew and I both immediately went away after that. I think he went to Switzerland, and I actually did go to Mexico, but I didn't just take the money and run to Mexico. We were joking about it earlier. Now, we’re back in pulling everything back together, but yeah, the comic’s all done, of course. That's the tough part.

[01:58] David: Congratulations. Job well done. We’re already starting on the next one over here. So, I'm excited to get that ball rolling and make those announcements soon, but we're not here for that, John. We're here to talk about other people's work for once.

[02:11] John: Yeah, we had a great idea to talk about our current favorite artists, and then I guess, if we have time, maybe one historical artist we want to highlight.

[02:20] David: Yeah, exactly that. Man, you remembered.

[02:22] John: I did. My only caveat’s here. People that I'm really closely working with or working with a lot are ruled out. This isn't a competition between Andrew Griffith from Signa and somebody else. I don't want to enter that realm. Unlike our best of the year, where I picked one from somebody that was on our podcast.

[02:44] David: With us at that exact moment.

[02:46] John: Yeah, not doing anything like that, either. So, no offense to Dave Baker. He's not in the running. You're not in the running. I just want to have artists that I'm really excited about, and I can't wait to see what they're doing next, and that I look forward to the new issues or new books that they put out.

[03:02] David: Same. That's a good caveat. Everybody that I've been working with, or am working with currently, I truly do enjoy and love the work that they're doing. Everybody that I'm working with right now, every day, I'm just really shocked and floored. I get an email, and I'm instantly printing out the new page, whatever it is. Not because I can't see it on my computer screen. I can see it quite easily there, but I just want to have that thing printed out, so I can just have it sitting on my desk and just glance at it every once in a while, and this happens every day. This is my life. This is my job. I am so grateful for that. Anyway, same thing, though. I decided not to be super self-serving and wanted to pick some people that I'm not working with that I'm excited about.

[03:42] John: Excellent. You want to go first or want me to?

[03:47] David: Sure, I can go first if you want. So, my first pick. This isn't a top three in order. This is just three people who I've been really excited every time a new project is announced from them, or new work is coming from them, I've just been thrilled to see it. So, my first choice is a guy, we've actually have worked with him in the past, but this was several years back, and he continued to just be a dominating force in comic books, in my opinion, Tradd Moore. So, Tradd Moore, as far as I can tell, he started out over at Image Comics with a book called Luther Strode and just appeared on the scene, seemingly, almost fully formed, and Tradd’s work somehow straddles the fence between being very commercial and also really just progressive and forward-thinking and, I don’t want to say outlandish, but outlandish, the style that he's bringing to things, especially, his more recent works, like Silver Surfer: Black and Doctor Strange: Fall Sunrise.

He's just really pushing the envelope in interesting and new ways. I love his work. I love what he's doing, and I'm really excited to see where he goes next, because Silver Surfer: Black and Doctor Strange: Fall Sunrise, I think, are the things, it's the direction that I'm so glad he's going, where he's writing his own stuff, and telling the stories that he wants to tell within the superhero genre here, and then outside of it, too. So, I love watching the development of his work and of his style, and I love that he grabbed the reins, and is trying to do everything himself, in a way, doing the writing and the drawing, because I think, I mean, historically, the guys that can do all of that are the guys who eventually end up becoming the most memorable. So, Tradd Moore is my first pick.

[05:44] John: Nice. I like his stuff a lot. I mean, I'm curious where we're going to fall on a lot of that stuff, a lot of where we’re pulling artists from, but there's a general style of really kinetic artists. One of the people that really started going in that style, and what I’m thinking of, was Daniel Warren Johnson, or that kind of stuff. The other guys are on Transformers right now, and that kind of thing, where there's a real sense of movement to the art. I have no idea what the genetics of his style of art come from, but it's almost doing to what the Image artists in the 90s did to John Byrne mixed with Howard Chaykin, doing more graphic design-y styles, like Chaykin, but more cool art, like Byrne, Austin, more detailed thin line art, pulling that into poses and static images 30 years ago.

What Tradd Moore and those guys do, it has some of that same sense of dynamism, but with more of a feeling of movement than you got with pretty much any of those guys. Leifeld’s stuff is super kinetic. Larson's probably the one that's the outlier, that probably would have carried into this new camp, but all the other ones that contended, even though it was super dynamic, it was dynamic and very posed, very flash. I don't mean any of this in negative ways. I'm trying to find words that people haven't thrown at the Image guys in negative ways, but a little anarchic, as well, throwing some rules on the head, what Tradd was doing a decade ago, when he was popping up for the first time. All right. I'm going to pull things, maybe in a little different direction. It was somebody that we brought up in our best of the year, that I brought up, and I thought flat-out was the best art from last year, is Jillian Tamaki, who did Roaming last year.

I just think she has a storytelling sense that's at once intimate and also dynamic and cool. That style manages to be super polished and finished but still have the same sense of movement and kineticism, in a different way. Roaming was just about a trip to New York in the early 2000s. I mean, it’s not superheroes. They're not jumping on top of taxi cabs and doing wild stuff. There's no transforming robots. It's all very personal and very down to earth, but I just think that storytelling style, and then on top of that, the cool duotone or quad tone, tritone, three colors, white, which was the style she used in that. I mean, she has been super good forever, and Dave Baker and I, I think we're both saying, he pointed out, I hadn't realized that Roaming maybe didn't get as much praise as I think he probably deserved, because there's that maybe part of it that is just “well, here's another good Mariko and Jillian Tamaki graphic novel.” I gave my top five last year, probably my six and seven were both Ed Brubaker, Sean Phillips comics. What else is there to say?

[08:50] David: That's where you're at with Jillian Tamaki?

[08:53] John: Maybe that's why this book didn't get as much praise as some of the other ones. Obviously, I'm over the moon with it.

[09:02] David: I'm not familiar with her work, to be honest. I did check out Roaming after you and Dave talked about it. She's got a cartooning style that is really nice, super clean lines, and she's able to do really anything. She can do background, she can do really exquisite backgrounds, actually, big crowd scenes, and then the facial close-ups, the “acting” of her characters. With just a few simple lines, she's really able to convey a wide variety of expressions and emotions with her art, and yeah, I really liked her stuff, too. Roaming, in particular, I thought, the tri-color choice, that choice to use just the three colors, was pretty cool and inspired, and she uses it to great effect. So, yeah, that's a good one.

[09:50] John: She has an ability, too, with the backgrounds. I mean, New York is such a character. I mean, they have really says this, but the story is, they are going to New York to see New York. I mean, they're going there to sightsee. So, the city is really important to it, and the way she's able to weave it in and out, where there are these pages where it's not exactly realistic, but very detailed, very real cityscapes, or the inside of the museum, or something, the Squid and the Whale statues. Other times, it will just be a couple of lines that are evocative of “here's the background of a subway station,” and it still feels real, and it doesn't feel like the stuff's dropped out or changed. Everything you said, I agree.

[10:30] David: She does something. It's not like it's novel, but it's interesting in how well she employs it. As things fade into the distance, you actually have not just lessening of detail, but there's almost a fog that comes between you and whatever that thing is in the distance. She really does a great job of that, within her use of colors. As things go back in space, they become less, the coloring becomes more subdued and slightly more opaque. Is that the word I want? I really like how she does that. She uses that to great effect to create depth in her work with her colors. It's really cool to see how she employs that little trick in certain places. Good pick, man. This is going to be fun. I love that you went that direction. My second choice is another artist who I have never had a chance to work with, but think he's just absolutely one of the best around. Everything that he does, I immediately buy, and that's Riley Rossmo.

[11:35] John: Yes. I was hoping you're going to name him. He's almost on my list. 

[11:40] David: You knew I was going to pick him. So, Riley Rossmo has been on the scene for a while. His more recent works include, he did a run on Harley Quinn. He did a short, I think, brief run on Tim Drake's Robin. He did a really cool Martian Manhunter miniseries. That was just fantastic, and I think Cowboy Ninja Viking might have been some of his earlier work. I probably should have done a little bit more on that, but most of his work has been at DC, and I just love everything he does. Currently, he is on Wesley Dodds: Sandman.

[12:14] John: Yeah, he just finished that.

[12:16] David: Yeah, I think you're right. I think he did just wrap that up. So, Riley is just one of those guys, again, who's got this really quirky sensibility. The work that he does is very cartoonish, but man, does he employ it to great effect, and I think his storytelling and his expressions that he employs, and just everything that guy’s doing, is really cool. I feel like the only thing that might be holding him back from completely exploding, not that he really hasn't already, but I feel like there are moments where it feels like, I mean, I say that his storytelling is good, but I do feel like there's moments where the storytelling piece, for whatever reason, doesn't totally fit a story. God bless him. He's more interested in making a cool drawing than he is interested in moving the story forward, from time to time. Not very often, but occasionally, I'm like, “Huh, that's a really cool drawing, but it doesn't make any sense,” and I wonder if that holds him back at times, but I mean, he's gainfully employed at DC. They probably throw more work at him than he can handle. That would be, maybe, the only drawback with that guy.

I think, the other thing is that his style isn't, what you would say, DC commercial. He doesn't look like Jorge Jiménez, or the Jim Lee clone, or somebody like that. He's definitely got his own style and sensibility, and I don't know if that's as widely appealing or marketable as some of the more superhero commercial styles, but boy, do I love it. I think he's fantastic, and I can't get enough, and I'm so glad that he seems to be capable of kicking out a pretty decent chunk of interiors each year. Seems like he's able to do at least six issues worth of material a year, which is becoming more rare these days.

[14:13] John: Yeah, I was a huge Sandman Mystery Theater fan, back whenever that was, late 90s/2000s. So, the series he just did was a continuation reboot, thing of that setup, which itself was just classic Sandman but spun off of one panel from Neil Gaiman's Sandman, where they mentioned Wesley Dodds, so they launched a whole series about him. I think it's Matt Wagner writing it originally, and then Steve Seagle came in and started co-writing, and then eventually took over writing. Guy Davis was the artist. This is pretty Hellboy universe Guy Davis, which, I'd been a fan of Guy Davis since Baker Street.

[14:54] David: I forgot about Baker Street.

[14:55] John: Oh, yeah. I've got a terrible Caliber trade paperback of it that I'm sure will disintegrate in a second. Caliber was known for its paperbacks falling apart, and I remember calling customer service about it about a different book one time.

[15:14] David: You called Caliber’s customer service?

[15:16] John: Yeah, well, it gets funnier.

[15:18] David: You really do like your collections to be near mint, don’t you?

[15:22] John: I bought a book. I was in high school or something. I bought a book and it fell apart, I’m like “what do I do?” but years later, I found out, I didn't find through some secret of means, I read somewhere that Brian Bendis was answering those phones a lot of times, so it might have been Brian Michael Bendis that I was talking to about my copy. The high school John.

[15:45] David: Okay, so, potentially, Brian Michael Bendis was having to field the complaints of 15-year-old John Barber about the quality of the printing of Caliber trade paperbacks?

[15:58] John: The binding.

[15:59] David: I love it. Man, I hope that's true. I want that to be true so bad. I love that you called to complain.

[16:10] John: I don't think this is an uncommon thing.

[16:11] David: You're like “I spent $7 on this thing and it's falling apart. I want my money back.”

[16:17] John: I bet Caliber’s trade paperbacks in the 1990s were the exact same price as trade paperbacks today. For anybody that is a big Sandman Mystery Theater fan, there was a very unfortunate bit of coloring, racially, early on in that series, I believe, that got corrected mid-story, that according to letters column, they didn't expect it to print the way it did, and it looked really bad. That aside, the coloring in those days, by David Hornung, was fantastic. I think the only other thing I've ever seen David Hornung color was Dave Mazzucchelli’s Rubber Blanket series, which is very unusual. I mean, it's more like raw, or something like that than it is a comic. So, yeah, I was going in there and I'm like, “Man, I love these characters. I love this setup. I hope they don't mess it up,” and I really liked what Riley did with it. It was a different spin on the characters. Definitely more cool and dynamic than Guy Davis’s almost dowdy versions of the characters 30 years ago, or whatever, 20 years ago, 25 years ago, but Riley’s super exciting. Interesting is his uniqueness holding him back, but also interesting that DC, I think, has several books they put out that just have really unique art. That's really interesting, and really cool, and I was also, like you said, I kept waiting for there to be an issue that he didn't draw of this series when it was coming out. I kept waiting for somebody else to come in and do a fill-in, and never happened. It was him the whole way.

[17:50] David: Yeah, I can't remember off the top my head. I probably should have done a little more homework, but I'm not sure there was too many skips with the Harley Quinn stuff, either. I think he did the first year and a half, two years, of that, and I don’t think there's too many breaks in there, for him. It seems like he's capable of hitting deadlines and staying on a roughly monthly schedule, which again, to me, I love that. I love guys who are grinding, who are putting out a high volume at such a high quality. That's part of the tightrope act, for me, part of the thing that makes me appreciate these guys is, I don't want to say that anybody can draw one pretty picture, because that's not true. 99% of the population can't even draw one pretty picture, but I don't know, these guys that are out here, 20 pages a month, every four weeks. That's a lot of work, and to keep it at that level of quality with guys like Tradd Moore, or Riley Rossmo, in particular, in this case, who seems to really be capable of cranking it out. It's really impressive. Really like his stuff.

[18:49] John: It's a different dynamic. I want a Jillian Tamaki thing to be a complete graphic novel that comes out in a chunk, in a year or something, but growing up, I was a huge Paul Pope fan. That was something that really impacted me, and the weird magazines he would do and stuff, and during the course of my Moebius deep-dive, I was re-reading one of the old magazines. There's a Moebius story that was was printed in there. That stuff was messy and quickly done, and that was the cool charm of it. I love The Rocketeer, also. Dave Stevens is an amazing artist, and the way he would take a good page, and then totally rework it for the graphic novel collection, and it would be even better. At the end of the day, you have less than 100 pages of Dave Stevens art, full stop. There isn't very much of it. Almost all of it is The Rocketeer, and all of it fits in one book. I mean, he did a lot of other painting and stuff. He did a lot of other work. I don't mean that. There was a time where that was what Paul Pope was putting out every two months.

[19:55] David: The complete works of Dave Stevens in two months, in terms of quantity.

[2001:] John: And there's something, especially a Sandman Mystery Theater or Wesley Dodds Sandman, or Harley Quinn, or that kind of stuff. There's certain pulpiness that you want it, where I like that idea that they're knocking the stuff out quickly and it's not perfect, and it doesn't look right. Well, it usually does look right. It usually does look really perfect with guys like Riley Rossmo. I like that aesthetic, too. I'm with you.

[20:26] David: Nice. Alright, what's your number two, John?

[20:28] John: Okay, my number two is another non-surprise, if you've been following us talking about the stuff, and that's going to be Zoe Thorogood.

[20:36] David: Oh, yeah, you did with Riley Rossmo what I did with Zoe Thorogood. “I bet John's going to pick her. I’ll let him pick her.”

[20:46] John: What is the name of her book that we did a whole episode on?

[20:48] David: Zoe Thorogood’s It's Lonely At The Center Of The Earth.

[20:52] John: Yes. That’s such a tour de force, in terms of story, but also just in terms of the storytelling and the different types of effects she would do, and employing all of this drawing ability to different ends, on different pages. That was great. We came out of that being super excited to see what she did next, which was super weirdly a Hack/Slash series, and then she created Creepshow, but that's cool. I really liked that. I don't even know the right way to say. It isn’t the gulf between a Drawn & Quarterly book about a trip to New York and a 1940 superhero comic, or something. There isn't that wide of a gulf, but that's pretty wide gulf, and she's jumping all over the place into the Joe Hill adaptation of Rain that's chronicled in Center Of The Earth. I'm excited to see where she goes next. If it's more stuff Hack/Slash. I'm sure she's either accepting or turning down offers to do a bunch of big characters places. Not that Hack/Slash isn't a big character. No offense to him.

[21:57] David: He's not listening. I do want to have him on at some point, though.

[22:02] John: He'd be great. Yeah, totally. It's exciting to not know, in the slightest way, where this artist is going to go next. It’s almost the opposite of the Tamiko thing, where I bet the next one's going to be another really good graphic novel. I don't mean that in a boring way. I just mean, they'll find some new thing to talk about, and it'll be good. Zoe Thorogood, who knows, man? It could be Batman.

[22:24] David: Yeah, it literally could be anything with the way she’s going. I love that about her, too. We talked about this. The transition from It's Lonely In The Center Of The Earth to Hack/Slash was such an odd career choice, but I was fascinated by that, and it was fascinating to see what she did with Hack/Slash after having done what she'd done, and I don't know if you read the Hack/Slash book, but it's fantastic. I mean, she crushed it. It's great. I loved it. You’re holding up the trade paperback. Was that the first issue? I loved it. I mean, I thought what she did with it was really fun. I remember seeing at one point that she had gone to some convention, and she was cosplaying like one of the Hack/Slash characters. So, I just thought what a fun artist to follow the career of in this moment, because she's incredibly talented. The way that she's able to move back and forth from a bunch of different styles, to go from almost hyper detailed with this fine Mark Schultz-esque dry brush technique, all the way to just this wild, I don't even know, cartoonish Mark Badger/Simon Bisley. It's just all over the place with her styles, and all of it is her, and she's super fun to watch, and she obviously is thinking outside the box, which is, if you look at the folks that I've been picking, I'm all in on that thing. I like thinking outside the box artists right now.

[23:56] John: Mark Badger’s a good pull. Across all the people we've talked about with, maybe aside from Julian, he's somebody that people don't talk about enough now. Do they?

[24:05] David: I must have thought of Mark Badger because I think he did a Martian Manhunter miniseries back in the day, and that was in the back of my head. That's why it came up. As we're talking, I'm looking at some images of Zoe Thorogood’s, and one or two images popped up. That's 100% Mark Badger and/or Simon Bisley. It's always hard to put in a box, but I don't even know if those are influences, but they look like they might be.

[24:31] John: Yeah, no clue, but that definitely was one of the people doing mainstream comics in a style that, again, not knowing those genetics, like we both said, or like I said in then you reiterated that is an early evolutionary touchstone. That's the word. Couldn't get the right word. That's it. That's a good call.

[24:54] David: I like that one. Zoe Thorogood. Alright, so that's your number two. So, my third choice might seem a little self-serving, and I said I wasn't going to be self-serving. She's primarily a cover artist these days, but I've always really loved her interiors as well, and that's Nicoletta Baldari. You and I have worked with Nicoletta, or at least I have. She did a lot of work at IDW for a while, and so early on, as an example, she worked for me on Strawberry Shortcake. So, she was doing interiors on that, and then she did some My Little Pony. She did some Star Wars Adventures, and in recent times, in the last two or three years, I guess, she's been more and more just doing cover work. It's the cover work that she's been doing in the last, I'd say, a year and a half, that's really just got me standing up and paying attention. I've always loved Nicolette. I think she's fantastic, but it's that more recent cover that’s really got me standing up, paying attention, because she's just employing this huge mix of colors.

She's really bringing a level of emotion to these covers that I think nobody's doing what she's doing. She's really using color, specifically, and thinking through how the color is employed, more than a lot of other artists right now, I think, in the space, cover artists are thinking. When you look at a Nicoletta Baldari cover from across the room, the thing that's going to stand out immediately is, man, I don't know what's happening on that image but the colors just pop. It stands out on the stand more than anything else that it's next to or around it. Your eyes immediately drawn to whatever Nicolette is doing. The color choices are just fantastic, and then when you actually look at the image, she's got so much going on on her covers, but everything is clean and understandable, and aesthetically pleasing. She's using patterns of color and stars or checkerboard patterns, or she's employing all that stuff in really fascinating, fun ways. It's almost got a sense of collage to it that I am just completely enamored with. So, she's just really standing out to me, in a crowd of covers.

Every time I go to the comic book shop, not only is it instantly recognizable as a Nicoletta Baldari cover, but it instantly dominates the landscape of all the covers. When you go into a comic book shop, I'm sure I'm not explaining something that all of our comic book readers don't already know, but for those few that don't go to their comic bookstore on Wednesdays, you've got this wall of new comic books, everything that came out that week, and whenever there's a Nicoletta Baldari cover, boom, your eyes are just drawn to that cover before you see anything else. Instantly, that's the thing you look at, and man, that is a powerful ability, especially as a cover artist. So, just really enjoying what she's doing lately. I think she's fantastic. She can literally do anything. I'm just really enjoying what she's up to lately.

[28:03] John: Yeah. A few years ago, she really seemed like she had an almost retro 50s, retro 60s, cartoon-y style. It was super cool, and the colors were great and dynamic, and just looking through a bunch of images, and she did a lot of the Spiderverse covers, and it seems like some of the aesthetic of the movie rubbed off on her. Definitely, those covers look like the Spiderverse movie. I'm sure that was the assignment, but then, the way that some of that kept on there and combined with the graphic elements she already had going into it is really cool.

[28:47] David: I hadn't thought about, now that you say that, I do see the Spiderverse animation aesthetic. She's definitely looking at that and pulling pieces of that, for sure. It's interesting that you say she used to have, prior to that, she had more of that 50/60s aesthetic, because as soon as you said that, I hadn't put this together before, but I wonder if it's true. She's got a very Tiki Bar Shag style to her that I hadn't actually identified before, but I don't know, that just popped up my head. You're right on that. She's got that Shag aesthetic a little bit, or her previous work did.

[29:21] John: There isn’t like there was some “I'm going to throw out the old stuff and do something new.” You can see pieces of it in the older stuff. You can see pieces of the vaguely retro stuff now built into it. She did a My Buddy, Killer Croc graphic novel. I don't think I've seen that one.

[29:38] David: Oh, I didn't know she was doing interiors these days, but her covers are definitely worth the price of admission, for me. The thing that I like about the direction she's going is, she’s already proven “hey, I can draw on model. It's not a problem. Give me a Disney princess. I will draw it exactly the way you want me to draw it. You want me to draw Spider man looking exactly like Spider man? I can do that. Do you want me to draw anything? I can draw it exactly the way you want me to draw it.” So, she's got that ability, but here she is pushing that into the background to really explore a little bit and have a little more fun, and really, with success. So, I love the direction she's going. She's very bold and interesting, and I can't wait to see where she goes next, and I'm so thrilled that I've had the chance to work with her in the past, and the self-serving part, which she does Super Kaiju cover, which was one of my favorite things. She's crushed it.

[30:30] John: That was a very nice cover, and I guess the graphic novel was from 2022.

[30:34] David: Yeah, that's recent. I hadn't realized that. I'm going to have to check that out. My Buddy, Killer Croc. Is that what it's called?

[30:39] John: Yeah, it's one of DC’s YA middle grade. I'm not sure which one this is.

[30:44] David: I'm going to go check that out. So, that's my number three, John. That's my number three.

[30:48] John: Cool. So, coming in as your last place?

[30:53] David: No. No particular order. Don't try to pigeonhole my choices. I'm just kidding.

[31:01] John: I do have an honorable mention I want to bring up, somebody that I just ran into but my number three main choice is, I don't think we've actually talked about this very much on the podcast, we've talked about it off, is Gigi Cavenago, who is drawing Batman/Dylan Dog, currently, with Werther Dell’Edera. Sorry, I know him. I know Werther, We've worked together a bunch. He's obviously killing it on Something Is Killing The Children, but the art in Batman/Dylan Dog was just spectacular. Super cool. The series is, I think, still currently coming out. It didn't make it to the comic bookstore this past week, but the first two issues are out. They're both super thick, like pillows and books. I don't know how long they are. They're long. There's 64, or something like that, pages. Just the comic is really well colored. The whole thing is exceptionally well colored, but the first issue as a section, that Gigi colors, and his stuff when he's coloring himself, was transcendental, It was just amazing.

The additional drawing he was doing in the colors or the style of colors being so unique and so cool, got that vaguely Shawn Phillips style of the high contrast blacks and whites. Not the Mignola sense, although I'm sure there's some Mignola in there, too. I mean, why wouldn't there be? Pretty good influence to have. The storytelling is fluid and dynamic. It's like stepping out of Batman The Animated Series, in a way. Not drawn in that style. This is definitely a book that I'm reading this like, “Man, I wish more superhero comics looked exactly like this.”

[32:40] David: Can you imagine how much better off the industry would be if more books looked like this guy? These are so good. Yeah, it's a great choice, John.

[32:49] John: I had not been familiar with him, and then people we're talking about him afterwards. I'm sure people who were in the know and knew to look for him, but I think actually, the day the first issue came out, I think there's somebody in the comic bookstore I was at, was giving a good-natured lecture to somebody about who he was. He's like, “you’ve got to check this out.” All very positive and very enthusiastic. It's tough just talking about the art in this way. Batman/Dylan Dog could have so easily just been a nothing comic. it's one of those ones where, every once in a while, you get those weird crossovers that just everybody decides to give it 110% and you get something that blows me away or is worth looking at. I'm thinking of the Superman Aliens.

[33:36] David: I thought you were thinking about Dungeons and Dragons meets Rick and Morty.

[33:38] John: Well, that actually is a good one. I mean, there was one.

[33:42] David: Chase just turned around. Slowly I turned. Step by step. We had a little trouble with that one. Excellent choice, John, and somehow that book was completely off my radar, but man, Gigi can draw the hell out of stuff. I don't remember what issue it’s in. I don't know how many are out, but in one of the issues that I read, there's a moment where Joker, I don't know, he owes somebody something and instead of giving it to him, he gives them a gun in the face, basically, and there's just this look on Joker's face as he's shooting this guy, killing somebody, essentially, and it's the straight on view, man, the expression that he paints on Joker's face and the sound effects that he's drawn in behind them just really, chef's kiss. Just some excellent stuff. That image, in particular, I remember when as I was reading it like, “oh, man. That's so good and so brutal,” and just really well executed all the way across. He's got some great shots of Batman, too. It feels iconic, but at the same time, it's not a shot that I feel like I've seen before, which in and of itself is a feat.

[34:57] John: His static images, his covers and stuff are incredible. They're really nice, really evocative, and cool, but then the storytelling just keeps going, keeps adding to it.

[35:10] David: I hope they get this guy on some more US-based comics. I don't know if that's possible. He's probably pretty wrapped up with the Italian publisher, but I hope they're able to get them over here and do some more stuff, because I'd love to see more of his work. I'm just not a fan of Dylan Dog, though. I might be willing to go find some Dylan Dog that this guy's drawn. 

[35:30] John: He did some Magic Order stuff with Mark Millar.

[35:35] David: Oh, really? Is he the guy that did Magic Order?

[35:37] John: I don't think he did the original. I've actually just looked that up. I don't think he did the original one. Maybe I'm wrong. I'm not sure. He definitely did some.

[35:45] David: This feels like my first exposure to him. I'm sure I’ve got Magic Order somewhere. I'm sure I've read that. I tend to get Millar’s stuff. Yeah. Nice one. I like it. Dylan Dog, just by itself, too, that's a good book. That's definitely recommended. The story is fun, too.

[36:03] John: The Batman/Dylan Dog one?

[36:05] David: Yeah. I'm really enjoying it.

[36:06] John: Stuart Immonen drew Magic Order before him. Stuart Immonen isn't actively doing a bunch of comics right now, which is why he's not my number one on my list.

[36:22] David: I think we’ve got time to do an all-time fave. Did you want to do your honorable mention first?

[36:27] John: Yeah. I randomly picked up this comic called Love Me: A Romance Story from Mad Cave, written by Francesca Perillo and drawn by Stefano Cardoselli. I think they are a couple, and they did another series together, called Don't Spit In The Wind, which I'd missed. I just really loved it. I'm going to hold it up for you to see. It's a mix of graffiti art with Trencher-era Keith Giffen.

[36:55] David: Yeah, that's a good call.

[36:57] John: I am a big fan. Some of it goes way into that, but there's also this element, mentioning Mike Mignola being an influence on people that are doing high contrast art, a lot of solid black areas, one of the things almost everybody that aped Mike Mignola, which was a career choice in the late 90s, is you could just decide “I'm just going to do Mike Mignola,” most of them didn't tap into the storytelling that he would do, because his storytelling is so weird that he'll have just shots of background stuff, there's a panel and it's just a panel of a background, but it works and it adds to the creepiness, and it adds to the sense of atmosphere that permeates his work. This had a similar vibe to it, where there's a ton of shots of just the exterior of stuff. “Here's the exterior of a cab or a building,” but it's all drawn so goofily and weirdly, that it has a resonance with the storytelling. So, I was really excited about it. I had a great time reading it and I was looking forward to reading more from him, and Francesca as well. It’s a good story.

[38:02] David: We're probably going to have to do a little mea culpa on Mad Cave and their launches. Seems like Dick Tracy has done really well for them and looks like the Flash Gordon thing’s going to launch pretty good for them, too.

[38:14] John: I love the Dick Tracy comic. Really enjoyed that. So, yeah. Preview to Dick Tracy right in that same comic book.

[38:20] David: Look, there you go.

[38:21] John: No, good for them. I'm excited. I love Flash Gordon. That's awesome.

[38:28] David: I'm glad they found a way to make that exciting to a modern audience. It's very heartening. It's great to hear, great to see. Very excited. Alright, cool. Nice one. I like that. In addition to our three people that we're really super into at the moment, or following carefully in the moment, we have one all time-fave that we wanted to talk about. For me, it's just somebody who I have followed for a long time, but over time, he's become more and more impressive and/or important to me, whereas I would say that when his career first started, I would read his work and think, “oh, that guy's got something.” Now, though, if his book comes out, it's a must-buy for me, and that is Brett Booth. So, Brett Booth started out with Jim Lee back in the day. He was doing some of Jim Lee's books. Backlash was, I think, famously his creator-owned gig. Brett Booth has been around the industry for years and years, and I think he's had a couple of incarnations of himself, but the more recent one where he's doing Spawn Gunslinger, and now on the main Spawn, and just some of the cover work he's done. I think he did some X Men Avengers or X Men ‘97 stuff recently, as well.

Anyway, the thing that really set me off was, a few years back, he did the new Teen Titans book. I think it was the DC 52 relaunch, and he had Teen Titans, and the thing that I was really impressed with is that it seems like Brett, more than any other modern artist right now, just really understands how to create superhero costume designs, that fully incorporates and takes advantage of modern coloring, and I can't quite put my finger on why I think that, outside of, he uses the lines of the costume as markers for the colorist. So, you've got almost a Pacific Rim monster thing going on, where it's got lines of color used as ribbing or as definition within the costume itself, and it's this bright neon pop glow feel to it. A lot of his designs just really take advantage of modern coloring. In terms of his design work, I think he's next level. Probably one of the best right now, and then just in terms of storytelling and his ability to draw everything, at this point, he may have started out as an underling of Jim Lee, but I think right now he’s surpassed Jim Lee, which I know is saying something but I think if you look at what he's doing in his interiors right now, and you look at what Jim Lee was doing at his height, these two dudes are at the same level.

So, Brett Booth, just like over time has become such a really cool, interesting artist, to me, and I just love what he's doing these days. I'm so glad that there are still people like that in the industry who have plied their trade in the industry for a dozen or a couple dozen years, and we've been blessed to watch their growth, and they continue to grow as artists, which is the mark of a good artist, is they're constantly stretching themselves, pushing themselves, and improving themselves, and I wish we had more of that in the industry. So, Brett is my all-time fave at the moment, somebody who I think has really taken himself, certainly started at a high level, certainly started at a spot where he deserved to be in this industry and deserved to be working full-time right out of the gate, but has really advanced his skill and style to a point where, I think, if it was me running Marvel, I'd be doing everything I can to get that guy on the next big event book. Greg Capullo would be my 1B to his 1A, in terms of bringing some big names over to do something.

[42:28] John: Yeah, I've actually been reading Spawn. I've been checking that out. So, I've been reading that regularly, and it is really good.

[42:34] David: I have literally zero interest in Spawn, and I'm picking it up because I mean, Gunslinger, and now he's on the regular book. I'm in as long as he's there, because I love to look at what he's doing.

[42:46] John: Yeah, that's awesome. It's interesting to see some of those people that came out of those studios in the 90s. It seems like he, not vanished, but he was less valued for a while, and now it definitely seems like he's back in a big way, and in a better way than he was before, like you said.

[43:05] David: I don't know. Maybe I'm wrong but seems like he leveled up. There's a certain point where you just “oh, shoot. Can't ignore that guy anymore. He's crushing it.”

[43:16] John: Alright, well, continuing my effort to not be surprising whatsoever, but I was going to go with Moebiusbecause I’m still in my month-long deep dive.

[43:26] David: Is this where I mentioned New Universe’s The Pitt? So we can keep that moving. Okay, good.

[43:32] John: A lot of people don't remember that Moebius drew The Pitt under a pseudonym of, I don't know, whoever really drew it. I'm sorry. Moebius is a guy whose real name was Jean Giraud. Very talented at a young age. In this deep dive, you can see his early strips from when he was a teenager. I think there's one that was a comic that he drew professionally at the age of 15 that isn't great. You know what I mean? It isn't like you look at that and you're like, “Wow, this is going to change your life,” but it's solidly competent for whatever that was, late 60s, French Western three-pager. He got his big shot on a series called Blueberry. That's a long-running western series. A thing that I didn't fully grasp until this deep dive of mine began some six to eight weeks ago, he kept on doing Blueberry right up to the end of his life. He never stopped drawing Blueberry. It was fascinating. When he died, I think Francois Fillon was prime minister of France, and Moebius was big enough in France that the Prime Minister of France eulogized not only him, but eulogized both of the artists who had died that day, Jean Giraud and Moebius, for both having huge contributions to French culture.

So, somewhere in the mid-70s, early 70s, he adopted the name Moebius, which he did actually use earlier in his career doing gag strips, but he adopted that name and started using the style that he developed for science fiction illustration to start drawing these science fiction stories or more esoteric stories and that became what he got really known for internationally. There's a lot of Blueberry out there. I've read all of it that has been published in America. There was a lot of it that was published before that in English, in England, and those are, man, whatever you and I complain about the prices of European graphic novels, at least I gave up before I tried to read those, because you trying to find a lateral 1969 British collection of the first Blueberry story. That's several $100.

[46:03] David: It’s probably not going to be in near mint condition either, John.

[46:06] John: So, I have no interest.

[46:17] David: It was so bad that you just called them every week complaining about stuff. That would have been the best.

[46:24] John: What if we’d become friends. What if I was so lonely in high school that my calls to the Calibre’s helpline,

[46:37] David: and you’re like “Bendis’ best buddy.” You met through Calibre helpline. 

[46:50] John: Yeah, I kept calling asking for tips on Super Mario Brothers 3. I kept using the Nintendo fun line. He's Western work got him the attention of Alejandro Jodorowsky, who hired him to work on the ill-fated Dune movie, where at that point, he met a guy who'd come on do special effects on Dune, who had just come off of doing special effects and writing John Carpenter's first movie, Dark Star, which was Carpenter's student movie that got turned into a full-length movie. Dan O'Bannon was a comic book fan. He wrote and drew a comic called The Long Tomorrow, that was a science fiction noir story that Moebius loved and redrew it himself in Moebius style, with O’Bannon’s blessing and everything. I've never seen the O’Bannon version, but the Moebius version of The Long Tomorrow is hugely influential. It's probably one of the key texts in cyberpunk art or writing.

William Gibsons mentioned that Heavy Metal magazine was a big influence on that, but Dan O'Bannon also brought Moebius onto O’Bannon’s next movie, which was a film he wrote called Alien, along with H.R. Giger, who also came over. Giger did the creature designs and then Moebius did the space suits and some of the other design work on Alien.

[48:18] David: What an amazing combo. No wonder that movie looks so damn good. H.R. Giger and Moebius. Not only are they both just incredible artists, but that's a good mix. Those two styles work well together. They're different. They’re unique of one another, but they definitely work well together. Man, I didn't realize that.

[48:36] John: Yeah, he didn't go on to Ridley Scott's next movie, which was Blade Runner, but Blade Runner was hugely influenced by A Long Tomorrow, visually. Prior to that, around the same time of the Dune stuff was going on, he launched, with some other artists in France, Métal Hurlant, which when they made a deal with National Lampoon to publish in America, became Heavy Metal, and America initially republished a lot of that same stuff. So, Humanoids publishing, he was a co-founder of Humanoids, and then eventually, I think divested himself of that stuff. This stuff blew up in the 70s in America when Heavy Metal was reprinting it, and then Epic Comics from Marvel reprinted a bunch of stuff in the mid 80s, through the late 80s, to maybe early 90s. As I've complained before, a lot of that stuff's not in print in English right now. So, it's been a voyage to find this stuff and read a lot of the stuff I've been reading.

The Blueberry stuff is super well done. Really nice art. You can see where somebody draws the same comic for their entire career, that the style changes a lot, and you can see these impacts, and he also writes these seemingly really frank essays about the stuff. There's a six-year break or something that they take mid-run on the on the series, and then when he comes back, he's Moebius, and you can see all this Moebius stuff that makes its way into Blueberry, and then he excises that. So, it's not there in the later ones, and the Blueberry stuff is pure Jean Giraud. The Moebius stuff goes off and becomes pure Moebius stuff. It's shaky, not firm, lines drawn between any of that stuff.

One of the things that I think really won him over to a lot of people was just the amount of detail he’d throw into a lot of stuff. That's one thing he's really known for. He did a portfolio was Geof Darrow, at one point, before Geof Darrow was anybody. That was where Geof Darrow came from, was working on this stuff. It seemed like Geof Darrow took that detailed part of Moebius and made that his thing. You can still see traces of the early Moebius stuff that had that style, but he would vary it a lot, and sometimes he’d just do this stuff, where the artistic gesture on the page was so strong, and so well-drawn. I don't know. The simpler drawings he would do are almost more impressive to me, because there's so much that he accomplishes with so few lines on some of that stuff, also knowing that he can throw on 30,000 lines and they'll all be in the right place, and it won't look like there's a bunch of random stuff thrown on there.

[51:01] David: Good choice. I liked that one. So, is there a thing that you would point to? If somebody was trying Moebius for the first time, what would be the thing that you would maybe point them to?

[51:11] John: Well, I think the easiest thing that I would recommend doing, right now, Dark Horse is printing a Moebius library. They have a book called The World of Aedena, which is five graphic novels that he produced from mid-80s through maybe around 2010. Something like that. I have not finished reading it. I only read the first three of them. That is actually what I'm reading right now. That's probably a great overview of what Moebius is.

[51:44] David: That’s a good spread. The nice thing about him, one of the themes of what we've been talking about, he's pretty prolific, too. I mean, he's got so much material. You've talked about five different things already, just in this brief overview that he's done heavy lifting on. He's done a lot of work on Blueberry, a lot of work on these five graphic novels and so on, and so forth.

[52:05] John: Just to tie this in, for fans of this program that are listening right now, we talked about Silver Surfer. You'd mentioned this as part about him never having worked Marvel-style before, and then him wanting to do work Marvel-style, wanting to try that on some of the stuff he worked on. Well, it turns out that was a series called Marshall Blueberry. The main Blueberry series kept going, and it was Charlier who was the writer until he died, and then Moebius took over writing it as well, and then Moebius drawing it. They had a contract that whoever died last got to keep doing the series. So, they could have hired somebody else to come over. He could have drawn it himself. So, he could have brought somebody in. I guess, Charlier’s estate hated everything Moebius was doing, so they stopped him having a spin-off series. The Wikipedia entry on Blueberry is probably longer than the comic itself, and the comic itself is extremely long, but it's such a detailed Wikipedia entry, so if you ever have a week, you just sit there.

[53:08] David: God, bless the nerds out there that wrote that Wikipedia page. It's probably one dude. Just one dude, super dedicated to just Blueberry, nothing else. That's his jam. He's like, “I'm going to write this.”

[53:20] John: Charlier I did a spin off called Marshall Blueberry that was set in this particular time period in Blueberry where, as part of his duties as a soldier, he was Marshall of a town. So, just a place you can go back, and years later, throw a bunch of other adventures that they just never mentioned before. So, he was doing that with, I believe that was the one he was doing, and I think it was that series that he was doing with another artist. Then when he died, Moebius took over writing that series and tried writing it Marvel-style. I don’t think the line gets drawn in the Wikipedia entry, but knowing what you know from the Silver Surfer graphic novel, that was what Moebius was doing, the artists just felt like Moebius wasn't writing it, and that he was making the artists write it. He's like, “he sent me this novel, and that's not a comic book.” It was a huge fight between them. I guess the artist really hated working with Moebius on it because it's just funny to see that. Presumably, Moebius’s position really was what he said in that book, and I was just like, “there's so much freedom and fun and we'll try this.”

[54:25] David: Only Stan Lee. Okay, I think we did it again. We did another one.

[54:31] John: Another home-run.

[54:34] David: Another home-run. We hit it out of the park every single week. How do we do it? Anything else to add? This was a good one. Thanks. I like that we're being uplifting and talking about, there's so many fantastic artists out there in the industry right now. There really is, and I'm glad that we took a moment to shine a spotlight on a couple that were interesting to us for the moment. Nice choices. Very awesome.

[54:58] John: That has been The Corner Box. Thank you all for joining us.

[55:02] David: Thanks, everybody.

[55:02] John: Yeah, thank you. We'll see you next week.

[55:05] David: Bye.

Thanks for joining us, and please subscribe, tell your friends about us, leave a review and comments. Check out www.thecornerbox.club for updates, and come back and join us next week for another episode of The Corner Box with John and David.