Paul Pope could best be described as the “rock star” of comics, at least that’s how I describe him. He most well known for his indy titles THB, Heavy Liquid and 100% and recently for Batman: Year 100, which was a more mainstream endeavor.

He fuses Eastern and Western influences into a style that is distinctively his own. His work is gritty and surreal often depicting a futuristic dystopia. The worlds he creates are both scary and beautiful. I love to travel along with the characters to see where the ride will take me. Usually it is a bumpy ride fraught with danger and excitement. Merely describing his work as “action-packed” would be selling it short: it does have a highly intellectual side. A discussion about Paul Pope’s work quickly turns into a conversation about philosophy and politics.

I highly recommend his art book Pulphope. It’s chock full of Popey goodness–he shows a wide range of his works. It even includes a few childhood drawings. Also, it includes essays written by Pope which provide insight into his work. But it is a little on the adult side. Let’s just say he likes to draw the ladies.

What can I say about Will Eisner that hasn’t already been said by people with college degrees? I’ll say one thing–it’s pretty shocking that he’s this low on the list–this is by no means my only disagreement with what our staff’s voting came up with, but I guess that’s the nature of the beast. If Jack Kirby represents the creative spirit and fever of American comics, then Will Eisner is surely the brain, the science, the technique. People forget that The Spirit was cranking away in the 40’s, with some of the most gorgeous page layouts ever in comics, back when most mainstream comics characters were drawn roughly and crudely. By the time Kirby and Stan Lee created Fantastic Four in 1961, The Spirit was already 20 years old!

You can’t understate Jack Kirby’s relentlessly creative output, and the incredible brute energy of his art. But for innovation, it’s Will Eisner all the way; who besides his more famous achievements–including being credited with the creation of the graphic novel–took comics from the Siegel and Shuster adapted newspaper strip style, and developed them into a language and rhythm altogether unique. His storytelling remains peerless even today; besides his enormous influence over nearly every branch of comics, he’s directly inspired many of the graphic novelists and autobiographical cartoonists of the last 30 years. For my money, there may be no more influential cartoonist in the history of the medium–and unlike many of his contemporaries, Will Eisner was not only an incredible draftsman and idea man, but a storyteller first and foremost, a necessity for good comics that is often forgotten.

Penciler John Buscema is best known for his work on Silver Surfer, The Avengers and Conan. But he also worked on Spider-Man, Fantastic Four, and nearly every other Marvel title you can think of. His covers are iconic, especially Silver Surfer #4 where Surfer and Thor are engaged in battle.

After Jack Kirby left Marvel in the 70s Buscema helped to fill the void. He also helped to standardize the way Marvel characters were drawn. He wrote the book on it. Literally. In 1977 Stan Lee and Buscema wrote How To Draw Comics The Marvel Way.

His work is all about epic poses and dynamic compositions. I love the tension and the action in his work. But I think what I love most about Buscema is the way he would draw women. They were glamorous with their big eyes, flowing hair and long legs. I have a secret longing to look like the vixens from the Silver Age of comics. Perhaps one day… (when I grow another 8 inches or so).

If you were to combine Carl Barks, Harvey Kurtzman, Jack Kirby and Frank Miller together into a single American artist, this amalgam would still fall far short from the influence this one man has had in the history of manga. Osamu Tezuka (1928-1989) was best known in this country for creating Astro Boy and Kimba the White Lion. With the explosion of manga, American audiences have gotten a healthy taste of Tezuka’s work, offered in a dizzying array of genres and styles: Buddha: Tezuka–an Asian Christian–tells the life story of Siddhartha; Adolph: a five part novel dealing with Japan and Germany during WWII, and a fantasy told in realistic and brutal manner; and Phoenix: Tezuka’s unfinished masterpiece, a series of time spanning morality plays combining Asian folk tales and science fiction. With over 10,000 pages already translated into English, we still have over 150,000 pages left that we can look forward to. As the works continue to be translated, watch as Tezuka’s influence in THIS country grows. I would bet is that 10 years from now, Tezuka will be much higher on the list than 9.

I know I mentioned it in my long-winded con report below, but I thought I’d put a dedicated posting up, just for archiving purposes. So: hey, check out these rad photos I took of the three of us and our friend Steve Saffel tearing it up in Baltimore! Wooo!

Superman: Whatever Happened To The Man Of Tomorrow?
(Action Comics #583 and Superman #423)
by Alan Moore, Kurt Schaffenberger and Curt SwanWho better to encapsulate fifty years of Superman continuity into two issues than Alan Moore, Curt Swan, and Kurt Schaffenberger? At once a love letter and Dear John letter, “Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow” closes the door on a particularly broad slice of twentieth century American Myth. While this version of the Silver Age Superman’s ride into the sunset is not considered to be canonical, it still serves as an important record of a very important and specific time in the history of comics: when old school story sensibilities were beginning to give way to new modes of story telling in the late eighties. This push and pull between the old and the new is well represented here in the push and pull of Schaffenberger’s and Swan’s bright, optimistic art styles, with Moore’s contemporary and consequence-laden—some might argue cynical—narrative.

One of Alan Moore’s greatest strengths as a writer was and is his ability to imbue his characters (or those owned by powerful, multi-media conglomerates) an impeccable degree of humanity, which is made all the more remarkable when juxtaposed against a backdrop of goofy, comic book improbabilities. And while, in this story—a silver age tale at heart—he only began to scratch the surface of what was possible in regards to that particular notion, the comic book world would, only weeks later, give itself a collective smack on the forehead when Watchmen #1 hit the stands.