Greg Goldstein's Comic Art Gallery

Tag: Deadman

Chip Kidd & Dave Bullock — You Can’t Kill The Spirit (Part One)

Original Art and The Artists

“Bombshell, ” Spirt Vol. 2, #18 (Unpublished) DC Comics, December 2011

The first week of March is “Will Eisner Week,” an annual event celebrating the life and works of one of the fathers of graphic storytelling.

And that means… it’s time for our own contribution to Will Eisner Week as well.

This year, we feature a terrific unpublished Spirit story by Chip Kidd and Dave Bullock featuring Bombshell. Unpublished… because DC cancelled its First Wave version of The Spirit before the story saw the light of day. (And shortly thereafter, the Spirit moved to Dynamite.) 

Great storytelling along with beautiful wash tones by Bullock make this an especially unfortunate casualty of commercial considerations.

Part one of this great story appears today, part two on Thursday, and the conclusion on Saturday.

As for the dialogue? 

Let your imagination soar.

I see a possible theme here — Bullock contributed this great Deadman story to DC’s Wednesday Comics in 2009.

José García-López — Deadmen DO Tell Tales

Original Art and The Artists

Deadman #2, April 1986

Our third annual Halloween tribute continues now through October 31. 

1986 was arguably DC’s finest year. In fact, it may be one of the most of critical years in any company’s history. (DC’s entire two-year period of 1985-1987 is unmatched in terms of quality projects.)

Watchmen. The Dark Knight Returns. The Superman reboot by John Byrne, Man of Steel. Not too mention Crisis the year earlier, Batman: Year One a year later. Etc. Etc.

Occasionally lost in all of these amazing titles is the astonishingly gorgeous Deadman mini-series by Jose Garcia Lopez (Written by Andy Mangels).  Every page looks great, and some are breathtaking. (A word, I rarely, rarely use, at least as far as comic art is concerned.)

Don’t trust my word here. Read the series, finally collected in the recent Deadman Omnibus. (Which also collects most of the Silver and Bronze Age Deadman material including the earliest stories by Neal Adams.)

It’s just beautiful wok by Lopez, who is often referred to as an artist’s artist. Ask just about any professional artist to name the top talents in the industry and Lopez’s name is invariably near the top of the list.

I’m grateful I acquired this cool page earlier this year.

1986: DC’s finest hour?

Neal Adams — Chonk!

Original Art and The Artists

Deadman in Strange Adventures #210

Art pages from the short-lived (but amazingly wonderful) Deadman series in Strange Adventures are often at odds with more traditional superhero series. Deadman — aka Boston Brand — is given the power to possess any living being in order to track down his killer. Which means Adams (and others) needed to draw many pages of Deadman “inhabiting” the body of an unwitting civilian. Therefore the character is often at the heart of the action sans costume.

This is one of those pages, and it’s a great one. Four dynamic panels —each a slightly different size — of a straight out slugfest. (Deadman is typically identified with a little aura around his civilian host —he’s the short-haired fellow without the moustache, getting his face smashed the first panel. And wow, when Deadman exits, that fellow is going to wake up very confused…)