Ungoliantschilde

more Chris Bachalo awesomeness.

I love the drawing of Strange on a tea break.

In case you didn’t know, Neil Gaiman wrote the inscription that accompanies that delightful drawing.

(Whimsical Chris Bachalo is also my favorite)

I have and eye for this stuff. I’m an untalented twit at most things, but for illustrative cartooning, I have an eye. Chris Bachalo is a gem. A uniquely singular style in a sea of imitators and work for hire gone in a year goons. No one looks like him. No one handles projects like him. And he hits deadlines like a mofo - dude doesn’t miss a due date.

So: his published work doesn’t look like any other popular artist on the market. he sells books. he brings an artistry to his books that was previously missing.

Who would’ve called X-Men as a narrative experiment in layout awesomeness? Layouts and premises that don’t work for anyone else work for Chris. It’s not an accident. Dude is an innovator. And Timmy Townsend is his best editor. Chris needs Tim. And let Chris handle the colors too. Fantastic team.

Check back with me in 10 years. Ya’ll won’t be able to stfu about how right I am about Bachalo. Dude is a beast. Best, most consistent, most innovative artist of that ‘90s anime boom style.

Wildcats, Vol. 1 # 01 Page 01 by Travis Charest, with Inks by Richard Friend, Colors by Tad Ehrlich and Justin Ponsor, and a Script by Scott Lobdell.

Steampunk, Vol. 1 # 12 by Chris Bachalo, with Inks by Richard Friend, and a Script by Joe Kelly.

this is one of my personal favorite covers of all time. perfect balance of design, story, and use of negative space. the artwork is shifted to right side of the board to allow for the placement of the UPC Code at the bottom left, and the Indica Box at the top left. Chris knows how to use that stuff to his advantage, and this cover is a glimpse of that. just a glimpse, because he got subsequently better. And his work as a colorist is underrated. Chris pencils and colors 99% of covers by himself, with some notable inkers working with him one various different projects. and for the record, Chris is underrated as a colorist.

Timmy Townsend really makes his work pop.

For this series - Steampunk - which was a creator owned project for Chris, he worked with Richard Friend as his Inker, and Joe Kelly as his story collaborator.

The unification of the oversized-tech mods with the Victorian stylings really plays well with what Chris does as an illustrator. Steampunk was a very, very pretty book.

Chris Bachalo is gonna be looked back upon by future generations with a much kinder eye than his competitors. Mark my words. He is one of the best of his generation. And his idiosyncratic approach is gonna be influential to more and more people.

Steampunk, Vol. 1 # 12 by Chris Bachalo, with Inks by Richard Friend, and a Script by Joe Kelly.

Chris Bachalo - Steampunk 

Inks by Richard Friend.

WildC.A.T.s Version 3.0, Vol. 1 # 01 by Dustin Nguyen, with Interior Inks by Richard Friend, and Scripts by Joe Casey.

for some background, Joe Casey is part of the 4-Man creative team behind Ben 10. His teammates include: -“the Reverend” Dave Johnson (he did the covers for 100 Bullets amongst many, many other titles.) -Cully Hamner (he is the guy that redesigned Blue Beetle, right around when Infinite Crisis happened. Great artist and a great guy. -and Joe Kelly (wrote the first 50 issues of Deadpool, and won the best single-issue Eisner Award for Deadpool, Vol. 1 # 11.)

buy this series in trade and prepare to have your mind blown out of the back of your skull by the combined forces of an extremely well written story, and exceptionally pretty pictures on every page.

This is not Jim Lee’s X-Men knockoff book. This is not a riff on an X-Men Knockoff book. This is not an Anti-X-Men Knockoff book. This is a story about pre-established characters in an pre-established Universe (Wildstorm) using their powers and abilities to try to make their world better by selling batteries. Seriously.

PLEASE read this book. Really great creators and their books are often overlooked by fans for any number of reasons. Remember “the Order”, by Matt Fraction and Barry Kitson? THAT was the best post-civil war book Marvel was publishing. It got canceled after 10 issues because of low-sales.

Remember “Captain Britain and MI-13”? Captain Britain, Pete Wisdom, Blade, and a bunch of other people fighting Dracula on the Moon and all over Great Britain. It was freaking AWESOME. that got canceled because nobody bought it.

WildC.A.T.s Version 3.0 went to 24 issues and is technically considered a Maxi-Series because (drumroll, please)… NOBODY BOUGHT THE BOOK when it was on the shelf.

Buy this book in trade, please. Borrow it from a friend and tell your friends how awesome it is. It is also a mature-readers book so there is lots of violence and impolite language, so if your Mom asks where you got it, tell her that Ungoliantschilde made you do it.

more Dustin Nguyen on the way.

I agree with every single opinion expressed above.

Having read the previous volumes I’m not sure how well Wildcats 3.0 works without that background (I’d love the view of someone who only read it, or read it before the others). The first volume, known as WildCATs: Covert Action Team (it was the 90s) could probably be skipped, even the moderately good parts by Alan Moore and James Robinson, but I’d think someone would have to have read volume two (which was just OK-ish as far as I recall) in order to get how brilliant 3.0 was. Then again, I could be wrong and it could stand really well on its own.

Having started reading comics in 1989 I was used to reading things with a lot that came before that I hadn’t read. It was the nature of it. And when I picked up back issues it was whatever I could find, and I’d read them when I got them, so filling in the background was a piecemeal, non-linear process. No detailed Wikipedia entries, we depended on whatever flashbacks or exposition writers provided. Nowadays if all the previous issues aren’t collected in complete volumes including any crossover issues people won’t pick something up. It’s not the readers’ fault though, it’s the writers no longer expecting that each issue may be someone’s first and helping to get them up to speed. On their side though, a lot more gets collected now then it did even in the 90s, and when stories are collected the constant character introductions, exposition, and flashbacks can get tedious. Sorry for the “in my day” rant.

tl; dr - go read Wildcats 3.0, best usage of superhero characters in a story that doesn’t rely on who can punch harder, i.e. not a superhero story.

I read 3.0 without having ever read much of the title. The Alan Moore part was the best it ever was, and even that part was clearly Alan Moore phoning it in for a paycheck.

It took a bit to figure out who everyone was, but it did not hurt the narrative. It actually helped, because I focused on the story and did not care about who the characters were before hand.

The characters, as they originally were created, suck. Grifter is a dumb character. Grifter is a generic black-ops guy with a gun. Grifter is the character from Metal Gear, mixed with Steven Segal in Under Siege. He is not the product of a deep-well of emotional and intellectual writing fodder. He does some cool stuff, he looks kinda cool, and he shoots guns. Awesome. The character has the depth of a puddle.

Spartan is like a flying robot version of Cyclops, but more boring and less leadership capable. Zealot is Shatterstar from X-Force without the character depth. Seriously.

The WildC.A.T.s are stupid characters that were clearly ripped off from better source material when Jim Lee left Marvel and went to Image.

So, reading "WildC.A.T.s Version 3.0" as the devout WildC.A.T.s cynic that I am was like a breath of fresh air. It is exactly like zzshine said: best usage of superhero characters in a non-superhero book. VERY smart, Very Violent, kinda Funny, and lots of very pretty pictures. Read the damn book.

Steampunk, Vol. 1 # 12, illustrated by Chris Bachalo, with inks by Richard Friend, and a script by Joe Kelly.

Judge Dredd - I am the Law by Richard Friend