To continue my sporadic series of favorite pieces by my favorite artists, I’ve decided it’s time to talk about an artist whose work I was probably way too young to be looking at when I did.  I was in my preteens and the local magazine shop thought Heavy Metal was a comic book with regular kid-friendly superheros.  ‘Nuff said.

Simon Bisley has become a name synonymous with bulging muscles, voluptuous vixens, and all around craziness.  I remember the first thing that ever grabbed me about his art, aside from the obvious overly endowed women, was the dimensionality of the characters.  They looked like sculptures animated by way of a fever dream.  Frenetic.  And it is with this admiration of his art that I bring you my top five favorite Biz pieces.

Disclaimer: I don’t know the proper titles for a couple of the pieces on here, in which case I just made something up.  Allow it.

Hellblazer 263 (Cover)
This image of John Constantine smearing a bindi is as striking as it is simple.  His is an expression that is equal parts worry and dread.  The light emanating from below gives the scene  an ominous mood while the tight shot gives a sense of active participation in the scene.  A character as closely associated with Catholic-themed horror as Hellblazer isn’t easy to drop into Hindu culture, and it’s even tougher to pull off with just one image.  Bisley doesn’t go mainstream too often, but when he does, he makes it count.

The Nativity
Speaking of religion, this here is probably my favorite piece from his Bible-themed artbook.  The angel Gabriel appears as a haunting cloaked spectre and looks more like a ghost than a messenger of God.  Mary’s humble circumstances are lit by a single light source, instantly giving the piece a sense of focus.  From the torch our eye follows down along the angel’s other hand as he greets the virgin with a message.  My favorite little  detail is the woman’s slight paunch, hinting that she may be with child.

Tigress

And then of course, there’s the women.  I mean… there had to have been a reason why I spotted him on Heavy Metal first, right?  The theatrical lighting on this piece (focused on her bum, no less) gives it a very staged look, which is always a nice irony for jungle and wilderness-themed pieces.  The woman’s pose echoes that of her striped friend, and in place of the cat’s teeth is a long dagger in her hand.  Her expression is one of curiosity and playfulness, a stare so piercing it has reduced the jungle in the background to the shapes and colors that define it.

Jaguar God
This and the previous piece are absolutely in the spirit of Frazetta.  That is, if Fraz was on LSD.  This image of the wild man in what appears to be a jungle graveyard is a powerful example of Bisley’s command of atmosphere and mood.  The slightly yellow hue to the greenery hints at a sense of rot and decay, and the skulls are concealed enough that you don’t spot them on the outset.  To sell it, bats hover over our heroes head, as would opportunistic flies looking for a free meal.

Beauty and the Beast
Again with the bats.  This is easily one of my favorite takes on Frankenstein’s monster.  He’s got the classic Boris Karloff melancholic expression and flat head, but with steam punk elements like the valve in the knee joint that apparently releases pressure.  Bisley’s mastery of the female form is showcased without having to show too many naughty bits.  The final element of the swamp gas and foliage completes the scene and allows us to almost hear the muddy waters being disrupted as the creature lurches away with his prize.

Five Quitelys

Five Frazettas

Like many of you, I look up to a lot of artists and always see their work as something not just to be admired but studied as well.  Working in the sequential medium, I find that single images that are able to deliver story are of course given a premium.  And this is what my love for Frank Quitely’s art stems from.  He’s got quite an impressive body of work and I’ve probably missed a handful of his earlier stuff, but below is a selection of my favorite images by him, taken from the material that I’ve been lucky enough to read.

WE3 #1; “Bullet storm”

In the opening of sequence of this mini-series, we are treated to this absolutely stunning image of a hail of bullets eviscerating a human body.  I remember seeing this image for the first time and just dropping my jaw.  The shot is also saved from being too cluttered simply because the artistic decision was made to leave out any trace of background.

All-Star Superman #6; “A boy and his dog”

In this flashback issue, we visit a younger Superman who happens to still have a super-powered dog.  This image manages to capture a genuine sense of playfulness and wonder.  Anyone who has ever run around with a pet dog knows how satisfying it can be.  A playground doesn’t get much grander than a crater on the moon.

American Virgin #1 (cover)

American Virgin was a relatively short-lived series from DC’s Vertigo imprint.  It told the story of a teenage televangelist on a quest to understand the secrets of sexuality and how it related (or conflicted) with his religious beliefs.  I feel this single image that Quitely did captures the spirit of the book,  as well as the feeling the main character had of being swallowed in a living subculture that was as ugly as it was beautiful.  I dare anyone to find a comic cover that’s about 75% taste buds.

All-Star Superman #11; ” POV”

This is a pretty small panel in the masterwork that is All-Star Superman.  It’s a favorite of mine for two reasons:  First because my answer for what superpower I’d want, ever since I was a child, was flight — and this first-person point of view is what I imagine flying over a city would look like.  And second, because this shot was selected with the story in mind.  This panel tells us that Superman is flying to the Daily Planet without having to show us his face or how he is dressed.  This has purpose within the context of the story, but I’ll leave that detail out for those of you who haven’t yet read the book.

You should really be ashamed of yourselves though.

Just sayin’.

And of course.  Something I like to call “Cat Slices of Time” from WE3 #2.

WE3 was such a great book in the sense that it had so many innovative storytelling techniques.  And with the main characters being animals, the great art was never obstructed by excessive dialogue.  This is my favorite sequence in the entire series because it has really intelligent action choreography at the same time using the panel design to tell you that it’s all happening extremely fast.

Obviously, the guy is pretty fucking awesome.  The only real drawback is that he’s not quite as prolific as I often wish he was, but at least it means that whenever he puts something out, it’s special.

I wasn’t a particularly gregarious child.  All the kids in my neighborhood were a bit too old for me to play with, and so I’d always have to settle for observing the big boys play, my brother Roby among them, while I sat off to the side studying bugs… and the dirt.

I was three.

But every now and then, the big-boy world of competition and rough-housing would overlap with my world of little monsters and squinting.  That is to say… my brother would find spiders and have them fight on barbecue sticks.  For those of you who don’t know, this is a pretty common pastime in the Philippines, and it is probably one of my earliest and fondest of memories.  ——————————————-(picture below via The Telegraph)

The big boys would find spiders in my grandmother’s sprawling garden, which at the time felt like a huge forest.  Again, I was three… and pretty small for my age at that.  I was a runt in my brother’s pack, but when it was time for spider fights, I had no problem getting a good look as Roby would give me the front row seat, complete with commentary on the little arachnids’ jabs and blows.  There was humor, suspense,  and sometimes even drama.  The whole gaggle of kids would crowd around me and my brother, captivated by these miniature bloodsports.  To this day, I’ll take it over a boxing match.  The entertainment value of watching my brother pit spiders against each other  was probably one of the key factors that sparked my love for telling stories and designing creatures, and it’s all thanks to his giving me the best seat in the house.

I had picked up the skill of ‘projected dialogue’ …and it would later keep me entertained for hours on end when there were no spiders to be found and I was back to playing with bugs in the dirt.

As a pen-and-ink guy, the list of painters in my influence receipt doesn’t run long, but if I were to whittle it down to just one name, I (like so many others) would be left with just one.  Just recently listened to the Sidebar podcast’s tribute to Frank Frazetta, and I thought I’d make a short little rundown of my favorite Fraz paintings.  I also have a couple of his pen and ink work that I really love, but for now we deal in color.

Mothman, to me, is every iconic pulp concept rolled into one striking image.  The strange visitor, the damsel in distress, and the rugged hero.  By washing the whole piece with earth tones, Fraz let the mothman pop out with the vivid tones of his wings and the rich reds of his eyes right smack dab in the center of the canvas.  With so much of the familiar mixed with the otherwordly, it strikes you as both disturbing and nostalgic.

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The Mammoth is all about power.  I won’t pretend to have any familiarity with the thought process behind this piece, but if it were me… it would have sprung forth from a thorough enjoyment of the RAWK.  The RAWK is the jungle halving in the wake of the beast.  The RAWK is the blood in your veins when you charge with spear forward.  The RAWK is the look in its eyes as you stare up from under the shadow of his tusk.  The mammoth brings you the RAWK.

What do you have for it?

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Birdman is an image of freedom.

The figure soars with his head upturned — enjoying the ocean breeze as the salt sprays his face, no doubt?  But then the light falls upon his wings, and we see the ropes binding them to his arms.  It is then one might realize that this may be Daedalus just moments after his son has plummeted into the ocean, with his face upturned, cursing the gods.

Birdman is an image of loss?

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The Godmakers is a dirty, dirty image.

One might say it’s a play on self-reflexive self-reliance.  We try so hard to escape each other, but we’ve all we’ve got.  That hand hoisting you up may also be a crab claw pulling you down.

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But mostly it’s just a dirty, dirty image.

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Spider Man, originally and preferably titled Night Walk, is a testament to one image speaking a thousand words.  We know not the man who has slain the foul arachnid.  But we know the rage in his face and we know the fire he may be feeling in his venom-stained arms.  His left  knee presses into the spider’s abdomen, crushing it, forcing rancid bubbles up to the surface.

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It was a long and ugly battle, and he may have been able to cut off one of the beast’s many legs, but only with this decisive impaling of its thorax does it end.  Green ichor mixes with blood in the blackness of the tar pit.  We’ve all been there.

I like Frank Frazetta.

An amusing little collage of my biggest artistic influences.

Click to biggify.