If I Could Have Chosen ONE Artist To Work With?

 It's that type of post where if anyone comments it is usually to say what a bad choice(s) I have made. Well, you want to know about bad choices in life -I got into comics!! 😈

I was going to go through all my British comics (that is a lie because if I did that I would take a couple months to which you would need to add all the "oh, I haven't read that in a while!") and sort out which would have been my dream artists to work with. Back in the day Massimo Belardinelli was apparently interested (according to then Managing Editor at Fleetway, Gil Page) in Biog (if you knows you know) which was a science fiction-horror-action strip. As usual I handed in a script and a fully rough drawn out strip but then Egmont bought Fleetway so bye-bye.

Mike Western pencilled a Leopard From Lime Street illo which I inked but the artist apparently disappeared so Gil Page was talking to a Spanish artist to draw. Why it never appeared? Egmont.

John ("Coop") Cooper was interested in one strip but then he had an eye operation and.... if there was one British artist I would have given my left testicle to work with it was Coop.

There were a number of Spanish and Italian artists working for Bastei Verlag (Germany) I loved the work of but that never came to be as one I and an editor decided on to work on D-Gruppe (I say "I" but come on -the editor decides!) but...ahem....Egmont.  Hans Rudi Wascher I would have been happy to lose another testicle over to work with (why this obsession with losing testicles???).

Well, I decided that I would just take the hits by selecting American artists and it is not a complete list just the ones that I grew up with and really inspired me. 

First up -Paul Reinman. Yep, I know there are people hate him but I have no idea why it just seems that he never got the hype that other artists did even though he was in at the start of the "Marvel Age of Comics". I first noticed his work after buying Radio *Archie) comics from the eccentric lady at Bristol Book Centre on Gloucester Road in the 1970s. Reinman seemed to be involved as the main force in all the Archie action hero titles including my all time favourite The Mighty Crusaders.

I just like his style and it seemed to have a lot of fun exuding from it and if you can draw a comic that makes some still smile after 5 decades you are okay by me.

Next up is another much maligned artist with a very long and illustrious career (including the original run of the Justice League of America) Mike Sekowsky.  

Initially, as a youngster, I thought to art style looked different to other artists in comics -I was limited by being very young and without realising that there were many comic artists out there!  I think I saw him first on T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents and then Justice League and he did what I think was some beautiful art on the de-powered Wonder Woman -detective and spy stuff he seemed to be made for!  In the 1970s he drew The Brute for Atlas-Seaboard.

Give Sekowsky the right inker and you had pure delight -as proven by samples of his black and white art pages.

And, no, I am not forgetting the work of the inker with any of these artists.

Gil Kane.(Eli Katz)... If I had a third testicle then I'd give that up in this case. Kane's work is well known amongst those who have been in comics for longer than the thirty seconds it seems to make people "comic aficionados" these days. His work for DC and Marvel as well as other companies had the look that you could not misidentify.

Beautiful is the only word that describes his art style which in the early 1960s at DC on the Green Lantern title drew some criticism. WHY were there no backgrounds in the panels?  "Because people only want to see the fight!" Well, thank goodness he changed his mind on that because his backgrounds could be stunning.

And then we have Sal Buscema.

I mean, he was the artist that first drew the Squadron Sinister -later to be Squadron Supreme- and introduced Dane Whitman's Black Knight as an Avengers member! Like many great old artists Marvel dumped him and he ended up tidying the artwork of younger "hot shot" creators to make them publishable.

Hey, he also drew the Silver Surfer, Sub-Mariner and Hulk as a pre-Defenders team who came up against the Avengers.  The man is a legend.

I have always freely admitted that as a youngster I tried to copy his style relentlessly!

You mention Sal then you have to get down on one knee and bow before the great "Big" John Buscema -and if the legend that is Tom Palmer is inking his work -don't faint! 

Yes, I know he was not keen on super hero comics  well that is fine and dandy but he gifted us so much incredible art  and introduced so many characters that filled young (and old) readers minds with fantastic  memories.

This sort of post could go on for days

 A quick mention of some of the other guys and gals. Ramona Fradon whether on Metamorpho, Aquaman or another character had me drooling over her art. 

Marie Severin, sister of another comic great, John Severin, also produced some great action an humour work and outside mainstream comics Donna Barr is top notch. 

Steranko the name says it all. I had no idea who he was as a kid but I knew his artwork and covers used to make my eyes bulge because it was unlike anything I had seen in comics up to that point.

You will notice I have not mentioned Kirby or Ditko and that is mainly because it is a given! 

The great Carlos Pacheco (we nearly did work together). Jim Aparo, Don Heck -another artist I relentlessly tried to draw like!  Gene Colan who brought us so many characters such as Howard The Duck, Blade (there will only be one in movies and that is Wesley Snipes!!!) and Colan's work on Dracula whether the ongoing colour series or later 4 issue black and white series will never be topped.

Yeah, there are a lot of creators out there I would have loved to work  but I have to make do with what they left behind.  And, yes, I realise that from a simple  post I opened up a can of worms because this could well go into a part 2...3...4 and so on BUT there is never any interest or comments on these posts (two people I know who likely will comment -don't let me down!).

So that's a couple hours out of the way and time to rest the eyes and hands and...ooh: eat something!

Until Archie Comics accept my project proposal for The Mighty Crusaders......

Keep smiling!

All artwork and photographs are (c)2025 respective copyright holders