Ungoliantschilde

Frank Frazetta ~ Black and White Sketches and PinUps

Having bought the artists edition of Monsters on pre-order, I can confirm that it is a very sad story about abuse and childhood trauma, and it’s breathtakingly gorgeous in both the writing and the artistic quality.

It’s about a kid that grew up being severely abused by his alcoholic, PTSD suffering father.

He beats the kid so hard the kid loses an eye. Yeah. Pretty rough.

Interwoven with a lot of psychic abilities and military experimentation. The monster on the cover is the kid after he enlists in the military and unknowingly gets signed up for an experiment to turn him into a super soldier.

Honestly, kind of a tough read. But it’s like sitting through Schindler’s List or something. It’s amazing, just really, really sad.

My copy - showing the cover, the signature page, and the included frontispiece head sketch, and then some assorted pages in no particular order.

Marvel Comics Presents, Vol. 1 # 81 Page 01, penciled, inked, lettered, colored, and written by Barry Windsor-Smith.

the ReColored, unlettered version of the same splash page was from the ‘Marvel Premiere Classics’ reprint hardcover edition, and it was recolored by Richard Isanove.

I love Richard Isanove…but he went way too hard on this one. I mean I feel like you SHOULD see BWS’s inks. 

To me, it looks like they were colored in two different decades. They look like two distinct pieces of artwork.

Richard was given the daunting task of either trying to improve upon what was already done (which he was not going to do) or to go in a different direction entirely. Richard made this piece his own, and he did a damn good job of it.

I agree that Barry’s line work is stunning. A quick glance at my home page should show that I am a massive BWS fanboy. I do not mind Richard’s version, and I respect that he made the piece uniquely his. A lesser artist would have just copied the original colors from the splash.

It is like a new band covering an old song. The song will not work for the new band unless they can figure out how to make it sound like the new band, and not just a couple of people playing someone else’s music. Richard made his colors look like his colors over a Barry Windsor-Smith piece. He brought something unique to the piece, which is saying a lot considering the original artist.

Honestly I think that BWS should have colored it himself. I wonder what he does with his time. I mean it’s like he is a hermit or something.

I agree. Barry, however, does not. He has apparently got several hundred pages worth of sketches and prelim work that went into Weapon X, and he probably still has all of his original color guides. Each page was a painting. And most of it has never shown up for sale. I have only ever heard of it. Never seen most of it. Look through my blog and you will see I have posted most of his available artwork at one time or another. And the stuff online is a fraction of what he has produced.

He created an entire Superman graphic novel that DC could not get him to agree to publish. Seriously. All I have seen of it so far is a rough colored pencil sketch. Think about that for a moment and try not to cry. It was to be called “an evening with Superman”, if I remember correctly.

He does not like to part with his work, and he does not like to see it changed or altered. That includes editors and reprint editors.

I would love for Barry to make his long-awaited return. I very sincerely doubt that he ever will, nor do I think his long gestating “Monsters” will be seeing the light of day.

Barry is quite infamously difficult to work with.

The chances of him returning to work on Comics is about the same level of likelihood that Alan Moore will be writing a Watchmen sequel. I have compared those two in the past in terms of impact, depth of their work, their temperament.

BWS is the Alan Moore of comic book artists: arguably the greatest ever, and probably never going to work in comics again.

Updated:

I included links to the “An Evening with Superman” artwork, and the “Monsters” graphic novel project.

Another Update!

Monsters is finished, and will be published next year.

And yet ANOTHER update:

I own a copy of Monsters and it is flat out breathtaking. Stunningly gorgeous, achingly sad, and if it is the last comic BWS publishes, it will be a staggering milestone to his abilities.

It is all in black and white. And that’s a good thing.

It’s a very sad story about multiple generations of a family, interwoven with military experimentation, psychic abilities, and a father that came back from World War 2 as a severely abusive alcoholic. It’s goddamn magnificent, but it’s also very sad. A very mature comic book produced by a guy at the top of his game.

page 18 from WildC.A.Ts: Covert Action Teams (1992) #5 by Jim Lee, Scott Williams, Joe Chiodo, Joe Dunn, Brandon Choi and Chris Eliopoulos

The only difference between Jim Lee and Rob Liefeld is that Jim works harder. Their pacing, their layouts, their costume design, and their “storytelling” (scoff) are basically equal. Rob has actually created more characters than Jim, if I’m not mistaken. I’m not saying Rob is underrated. He’s rated exactly as he should be. Yep, you can take whatever implications you want from that about Jim. Look at their work side by side. Same artist, Jim is just more diligent.

this shit just irritates me. the whole page is laid out wrong. it’s laid out to look cool, not to tell a story. it is counterproductive to the story. action moves left to right. 

Warblade is on the top left, first panel, and he’s looking right, towards the previous page. and the lettering had nowhere to go, so they put it behind him as well. instead of advancing the story, the reader has to stop. the next panel would not be quite so jarring, had she been looking right. they could have just switched the top two panels, and it would actually work better. 

And, ah, the splash page. Jim’s bread and butter. AND IT’S GOING THE WRONG WAY. nothing is gained by the character action moving against the page flow. this is not an “innovative” approach to storytelling. this is the wrong way to lay out a page. 

but go ahead and send me hate mail. tell me how Jim Lee is the best thing ever. he has gotten better since his Image days, I will say that much. and he can draw the hell out of a pinup.

since he’s been at DC? yeah, of course. 

because he has an editor that won’t let him make mistakes like this page.

WildC.A.T.s was Jim’s creative endeavor, with help from his buddies that were riding high with him since X-Men # 1 sold a million copies. he makes stuff look cool. that’s what Jim does. he’s ridiculously good at making stuff look cool. but pages like this are where that type of comic book artwork leads. it’s why an Absolute Edition of the WildC.A.T.s is a damn joke. 

Hey, look, Wikipedia agrees with me:

I didn’t know about this BWS criticism. The “I don’t think it has even crossed their minds that comic books can be a medium for intimate self-expression” feels not only true looking back but it shows how much of an artist (in the most pure sense of the word) and how much ahead of his times he was.

Yeah.

It also speaks to his frustration with the industry. Arguably the best pure artist to have ever worked in American Comics is a footnote in that history when he is compared to the impact of Jim Lee.

Jim has not created any characters that broke any new ground. He’s really only created a handful of characters, and they’re pretty uniformly derivative of other properties (the WildCATs), or blatant stereotypes of their time (Gambit and Jubilee). Jim Lee, more than any of his peers, is FANTASTIC at creating marketable images. He knows how to draw stuff that sells.

And you know what? Michael Bay makes a LOT of money as a director. His movies sell tickets. That’s nothing to scoff at. But is Michael Bay an artist with a vision? No. No he’s not. Neither is Jim.

But you know -in reference to that excerpt from Wikipedia- say what you will about Rob Liefeld. But that guy is making EXACTLY the comics that 10 Year Old Rob Liefeld grew up dreaming he would make one day.

Jim? Jim is a merchandising tool for other people’s dreams. That’s it.

Market rules (as I felt you implied in your response)… at the end of the day you must feed the largest market and as European (I grew up in Italy) I feel that in the US market it’s always been very aggressive and BWS might have suffered a bit it being European too…

I think his work would have done rather well in the European markets, actually. His storytelling approach is much more in line with the regular Heavy Metal contributors anyways.

His latest book, Monsters is a masterpiece. An absolutely stellar achievement of the medium. If it’s the last narrative work that BWS ever produces, it will be a shining legacy to his staggering talents.

But. It also shows the only true failing of BWS’s career. “Monsters” is a comic book made for people my age. It’s an long, meditative look at the consequences of superpowers, emotional trauma, PTSD, family dynamics, and postwar American sensibilities. It’s not targeted towards a large audience. It’s not targeted at all. Barry had a story to tell, and he wanted to tell it the way he wanted. It’s never gonna sell the way a Jim Lee book does. It will be critically lauded for years to come. It belongs in the pantheon of greatest works in the medium. And nobody but old fans like me will read it.

UNIVERSAL MONSTERS trading card art by Mike Mignola.

35 years in the making, Barry Windsor-Smith’s ‘Monsters’ arrives next January

Fantagraphics will publish the 360-page graphic novel next year.

Some of Bernie Wrightson’s art from Spider-Man: Hooky (Marvel Graphic Novel #22). Like The Hulk & the Thing: the Big Change (MGN #29), it was a decently fun story that would have been forgettable if not for Wrightson’s incredible illustrations. That guy could draw gross monsters with the best of ‘em.

R.I.P., Mr. Wrightson.

I would venture to say that Bernie was THE best of 'em. He was the master of the macabre.

Jack Kirby (via comicquotations)

Here are some ghouls, gruesomes, ghosts, goblins, ghastlies gill-men, and a grizzled-antihero by Arthur Adams for you guys!

Happy Halloween!

Bernie Wrightson penciled this pinup as a prelim sketch for a production design painting for John Carpenter's "the Thing", and your friendly tumblrhood Ungoliantschilde inked it a couple months ago!

Godzilla oil painting for 2014 San Jose Big WOW Comic Fest by Frank Cho