Continuing our tour of my bookshelves. We've gone from Art books to autographed art books. (And actually I need to back up for a second. When I mentioned how much I enjoyed the book "The Pinup Art of Dan DeCarlo, I said there was a second volume of Mr. DeCarlo's pinup art available that I would love to have, and then on Father's Day look what my daughter gave me:
Thanks, Leah. This volume was just as entertaining as the first one. I doubt there will be a third though since a lot of the cartoons in here are unfinished -- well, the art is finished and that's all that matters, but some have no captions and some have a couple of possible captions that DeCarlo was considering.
Okay, on to the autographed art books:
Frank Cho used to do a great comic strip called Liberty Meadows. Then people noticed that (unlike most modern comic artists) Cho could actually draw and Marvel backed a truck of money up to his house and got him to draw the Avengers and some other superhero stuff and Frank Cho became a lot less interesting. But in these sketchbooks he's free to draw whatever he wants to. And like most great artists what he wants to draw is dinosaurs and apes and beautiful girls in various stages of undress.
Thanks, Leah. This volume was just as entertaining as the first one. I doubt there will be a third though since a lot of the cartoons in here are unfinished -- well, the art is finished and that's all that matters, but some have no captions and some have a couple of possible captions that DeCarlo was considering.
Okay, on to the autographed art books:
Frank Cho used to do a great comic strip called Liberty Meadows. Then people noticed that (unlike most modern comic artists) Cho could actually draw and Marvel backed a truck of money up to his house and got him to draw the Avengers and some other superhero stuff and Frank Cho became a lot less interesting. But in these sketchbooks he's free to draw whatever he wants to. And like most great artists what he wants to draw is dinosaurs and apes and beautiful girls in various stages of undress.
By the way, there's a fourth volume out if anybody feels as generous as Leah.
Gene Colan was my favorite silver age artist and although I didn't know it till the other night when we were playing a game and I had to answer the question "Who was your favorite artist of the 20th century?" much more than that. His art always seems so real, so textured and vibrant you feel like you could step right into. His run on Tomb of Dracula is one of the highwater marks in sequential art. Just unbeatable.
There's not a lot of art in "Shop Talk" mostly casual interviews the great Will Eisner (creator of "The Spirit") did with other comics greats. Eisner passed away in 2005 but his innovations are everywhere in comics today.
That's all for now. More later.
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