Ungoliantschilde

Captain America by John Cassaday, with Colors by Laura Martin, and a Script by Jeph Loeb.

RIP John Cassaday

What If Donald Duck Became Thor? (Marvel, September 2024) variant cover by Walt Simonson

with Colors by Laura Martin.

Uncle Scrooge, by Steve McNiven.

Thanks!

Colors by Laura Martin. It’s (apparently) gonna be published in a holofoil variant too!

the Ultimates 2 # 13 Pages 15-16 (a Gatefold-Out spread across an 8-Page Splash!!) illustrated by Bryan Hitch, with inks by Paul Neary, Colors by Laura Martin, and a script from Mark Millar.

That’s a little easier to see.

RIP, Paul Neary.

the Ultimates 2 # 13 Pages 15-16 (a Gatefold-Out spread across an 8-Page Splash!!) illustrated by Bryan Hitch, with inks by Paul Neary, Colors by Laura Martin, and a script from Mark Millar.

That’s a little easier to see.

The Ultimates 2 #13 - Independence Day (May 16, 2007)

Written by: Mark Millar Penciler by: Bryan Hitch Inker by: Paul Neary Colorist by: Laura Martin Lettered by: Chris Eliopoulos Edited by: Ralph Macchio (editor) Published by: Marvel Comics

My favorite memory of this book is when i was a kid and opened this gorgeous 8-page fold-out, my mom almost went furious over thinking that i was staring at a bikini girl pin-up.

It was late. By like 4 months. Every issue was like that too. Very, very late. Supposed to be on the shelves in September, not in your hands until February. Late. I was in college.

Regular Marvel’s Avengers had sucked ass for a long minute. It was a quarter bin book. Ultimates was the fresh take that reminded everyone why the Avengers were supposed to be the premier super team in Marvel. Fuck the X-Men. The Avengers was supposed to be the A-Team. And Ultimates was late as fuck. Every issue. By the time Ultimates 2 wrapped, Bendis’s New Avengers had already started rocking and rolling. And make no mistake. The reason the Avengers are the premier team in Marvel is because of the Ultimates AND because of Bendis. But the Ultimates did it first. And then the movies came out and the first thing I thought was “wow, they basically copy and pasted the Ultimates with a bigger budget and less politics”.

The Ultimates was the best Avengers in-continuity comic book in decades. Avengers Forever is awesome. It’s all nostalgia and it was a miniseries. Ultimates was an ongoing title and it completely rewired how people think of the Avengers.

It was late. Every issue was late. Late because they couldn’t print that shit fast enough. It was late because Bryan Hitch brought the awesome every single issue.

And he’s awesome in person. Coolest, nicest guy in the world. Humble, will sign anything, talk to you for 40 minutes unless he’s gotta be at a booth for an event.

And Mark is famously fantastic. Drinks with fans at the after-con parties, etc. Wrote the whole Marvel Civil War event from a hospital bed because he has Crones Disease. Meet Bryan Hitch. Meet Mark Millar. Thank them for being two main creators responsible for the MCU.

Uncanny X-Men #141 cover recreation by John Cassaday and Laura Martin from the cover of Wizard #157 (2004)

JLA: Earth 2 by Frank Quitely and Grant Morrison, with Colors by Laura Martin.

 There are those who say that Mr Frank Quietly’s art is ‘ugly’ and ‘lumpy’ - they are completely missing the point; Mr Quietly’s art is the illustration equivalent of that homely old character actor who comes onscreen, absolutely makes the movie, then walks away leaving the latest bright young things to look pretty dull by contrast.

If I meet someone who criticizes Frank Quitely’s artwork, I immediately realize that I have encountered a fan who is new to the medium, and does not understand the artform. Frank Quitely is arguably the best of his generation. He’s certainly at the forefront of modern artists in the field.

Looking at his early work for newspaper strips in Scotland, his foundations are in storytelling and body language, not action, muscles, and babes with big boobs. His draftsmanship in general is pretty much peerless amongst his contemporaries. And it’s quite telling that he works almost exclusively in pencil at this point. His work is clean and elegant. The figures and especially the faces are -at first- idiosyncratic. But, after a while, you start to just adjust to it and you realize how good he is.

In my opinion, Frank Quitely is the modern equivalent to Barry Windsor-Smith. He’s technically brilliant in all areas of comic book creation, but his main interests seem to be in rendering body language and non-verbal story telling. Just like Barry. He’s about as fast as Barry was too, to be honest.