#JRJR Williamson

[ghostattack]

Archiving my artistic influences thread from twitter, continued. I liked this exercise, for all the usual narcissistic reasons, but also bc by juxtaposing all these artists that have affected me, I see where they connect to each other as well as myself. - Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3 -

CF William Blake Jesse Moynihan Daria Tessler Gustaf Tenggren Chester Brown Kevin O'Neill Eiji Tsuburaya David Lynch Dan Spiegle Ramona Fradon Bill Sienkiewicz Walter Anderson JRJR Williamson Ashley Wood Xaime Joann Sfar Jillian Tamaki Sammy Harkham Shary Boyle geneviève castrée Paul Karasik (layouts)

[beyondthespheres]

it so me babes  

[ungoliantschilde]

Al Williamson

Pencils by (from the top) John Buscema, Rick Leonardi, John Romita, Jr., Arthur Adams, Jack Kirby, Lee Weeks, Joe Quesada, Jack Kirby, Al Williamson, and Curt-motherfucking-Swan.

Modern comic book artwork is primarily done on apps and tablets. Older artists draw on paper, but the younger generation has figured out that turning in a finished page digitally is a lot cheaper (and therefore more profitable for the publishers). Inkers are, frankly, a relic of an older era of the art form. John Buscema’s great gift to comics was not the stuff that he had published as the lead penciler. His legacy is “How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way”, and the laundry list of Inkers that worked with him on Savage Sword. He taught those guys how to draw comics, and most of them went on to have storied careers in comics. Bill Sienkiewicz, Bob McLeod, Pablo Marcos, Tony DeZuniga, and more. All of them started as INKERS.

Now, what does this have to do with Al Williamson?

Al was a penciler for EC Comics. Plotting and storytelling, not finishing. Al had a number of finishers, but the one that did the best for himself? His name was Frank Frazetta.

FRAZETTA WAS AL WILLIAMSON’S STUDENT.

End of Al Williamson’s career. He doesn’t want to plot comics anymore. He wants to finish and get his page rates. He does a few prestige titles. He adapted Blade Runner as the lead artist, with multiple inkers. He did Star Wars for George Lucas, with multiple inkers. But the bulk of Al Williamson’s later career was as an Inker. Finishing for younger talent.

And his trademark as an inker is unmistakeable because he’s almost unique in comics history. Al’s trademark was making the penciler look like the star. He never dominated or “corrected” anybody’s line work. Al’s job was to make the young talent pop. And he was as good at inking legends like John Buscema, Jack Kirby, or Curt Swan as he was at making young talent like Quesada, Lee Weeks, JRJR, or Arthur Adams look as good as they should.

That’s why he’s the best inker in comics history.

[thebestcomicbookpanels]

Daredevil #281 by John Romita Jr.

[stryfeposting]

punisher vol 2 #69

written by dan abnett and andy lanning, pencils by the supremely talented doug braithwaite, inks by al williamson, colour by christy scheele.

i like a lot of different frank designs but after mulling it over for a while i think this is the best design out of all of them. jrjr's big boxy junkyard dog punisher is a close second, but braithwaite's frank has that sense of weight, presence and realism that edges this frank into first place.

[whitelippedviper]

Pop Comics #2: Dark Nights: Metal #1

This article originally appeared on my patreon, which you can subscribe to for as little as one dollar a month.  As a patreon subscriber you get to see these and other articles sometimes weeks before everyone else.  Subscribe now.

So this is the second installment of my more informal writing series(my, me rambling into an open window on my desktop...series) on popular monthly comics.  Each week I pick a comic from the top 10 on Comixology's best seller list, and I read it...and then I come over here and write about it.  This week: Dark Nights: Metal #1

Dark Nights: Metal #1 was written by Scott Snyder, penciled by Greg Capullo, inked by Jonath Glapion, colored by FCO Plascencia.  It's I guess the start of the new DC event or something.  I'm not sure.  The issue starts with the JLA in some sort of arena battle scenario on some planet Mongul has taken over.  They figure that whole situation out, return home, and there's a giant mountain that has appeared in Gotham.  They go into said mountain, see some shit.  Cyborg is like "man this shit is some shit, huh?" and then the Blackhawks show up.  Which I thought they were like a WWII team or something, but apparently they are like...I don't even know...Batman.  And they're run by Kendra Sanders, the I don't know what she is in this continuity but I think she's Hawkgirl or whatever.  Or is it Hawkwoman.  I don't remember.  Probably girl, right?  Let's see...it's woman if they are their own hero.  Girl if they are a female knock off.  But then reverts back to woman if they are a lesbian knock off of a male hero....  I think that's how it works.  

Anyways.  Kendra Sanders convinces the JLA to come to her secret base to explain how Batman is the vessel of some ancient evil, which is callback to Morrison's Batman RIP ish run stuff after final crisis--which I did read!  I vaguely remember some of that.  But so they've done all this research on batman, but still just pull guns on him, and so of course he escapes.  For some reason he is able to fool the whole JLA who don't think to look for him...at his Bat Cave?  I don't know. So batman is at his bat cave like looking at nth metal on his microscope.  He finds some journal from carter hall.  And just as carter hall is like "look batman, I know you think shit might not be shit, but let me assure you, shit is way fucking the shit" Dream...from Sandman...shows up and is like "Batman, this shit is about to get real(shit)".  The end. 

  And I'm not sure if Dream is now just running around normally in DCU continuity again, or if this is meant to be something like special.  Either way, you can see in the above image, Dream has apparently sent his stylist to hell this time. Either way....holy shit.  It's a first issue of a superhero comic, and so of course it ends in a splash page shocking reveal cliffhanger at the end.  I mean this whole thing is just so by the numbers for how you do event comics it is just hollow.  Heroes do a thing seemingly unrelated to the main thing, the big thing happens, it's like multiverse spanning, splash page reveal...the end.  Even Capullo's art here looks bored with itself.  There's two panels in this comic that I can recommend.  One is a small panel of Superman:

The other panel is when Batman is riding a dinosaur, which I still didn't even bother to take a picture of.  On the whole, it makes Howard Porter look like JG Jones.  And this is supposed to be a big event comic.  If all of these event comics are just going to be continuity porn they should at least be a spectacle.  I'm just not sure what I'm supposed to take away on any level from a book like this.   Even the Variant covers were pretty mailed in.  Great artists like JRJR and Jim Lee just kinda drawing a standard superhero pinup and calling it a day.  Nothing really on the theme of metal.  You get this sexy idea of doing a heavy metal version of a superhero comic, but then it turns out it's nth metal, and that's not really metal at all.  Go get Joe Jusko to paint Wonder Woman riding a vampire bat out of a lake of blood.  Come on.  Metal.  It's like the Met Gala where all these stars who have the money to have taste show up completely off theme and completely boring giving us nothing even remotely aspriational.   If you asked me why I don't care about superhero comics, this comic is pretty much what I'd conjure up as an example of why.  I'm too old to give a shit about which of these palette swaps dies and then is resurrected or what worlds collide.  And I don't care about good versus evil in these basic cop versus robber terms.  I'm not a child.  But like I'm reading JRJR/Williamson and Nocenti's Typhoid Mary comics this week, and thoroughly enjoying them.  And it's not because I give a shit about Daredevil.  It's because there's actually shit on the page to react to.  There's great art to inspire you.  And the writing is in big bold terms, but it has a certain soap opera quality.  It's not ironic.  It just says what it means and is all about these sappy triangles of people.  It works.  It doesn't matter that it's a superhero comic.  It's just a great comic.  I think what I want from superhero comics now, doesn't have anything to do with them being superhero comics.  It has to do with the two biggest companies putting the most resources behind their comics, I expect to see a quality of work, particularly artistically that I can look at and just be in awe and be like "never in a thousand years could I draw that".  I think people don't respect the art in these things anymore because the styles artists have adopted don't scare people, don't put them in awe.  And honestly neither does the writing.  People read these things and they are just like "oh man, I could do this" which is cool, I mean I'm one of those people.  But it's not healthy in terms of the sort of reverence the top artists in the comics game should demand. No one was stepping to Neal Adams or Norm Breyfogle. But I mean, I think it's just a paycheck, and it reads like that--which makes sense, because why would grown adults who have been in the industry for decades in some cases, and who have already written like a million superhero things--past a point, you just get that formula, hit those marks, cash those checks, and try and whittle away on whatever your actual passion is in the background, like the rest of us. But then meanwhile this is the stuff that gets geeks breathless and hyperbolic...and for what.  What is all of this for?  It's just this cycle of fans pushing up artists until they are gibbering self parodies of themselves, and then dropping them off creator cliff to go die in a ditch somewhere.  And these fan groups, what do they do with their shit?  Stay in this false dream for as long as they can.  Throw a tantrum at anyone who says anything negative or threatening to that dream?  Like there's no wrong way to live, all of our lives are meaningless, so value is an illusion.  You just do what best makes sense for you to pass the time until you die.  But for me, this shit fucks up my hustle, because I'm in this life game to see shit.  I want things that at least aspire to be something I haven't seen before.  At least TRY to be beautiful.  But the demands of these fan things, are so insane, who has time for beauty?  And because that's where the money is, it just sucks people in and traps them there until there is nothing left.   You see the effects of this stuff at Image where creators are supposedly let loose to do their passion projects, but they've been so warped by working these fan projects, that there's very little truth left to them.  And all these big two tics of how to do issue #1 arc #1 and so on and so forth come up and really mar work.  It's not just the writing.  It happens to artists too.  There's like a set way these sort of things get laid out on the page, and certain stock ways you do a scene because you're like double shipping a book and don't have time to really like consider the absolute best way for you as an individual to do a book.    So even when artists get outside of that infrastructure, it is usually too late and they are reduced in potential by their habits.  I mean I can't be the only one who can open a comic from these sorts of people, and your eyes just glaze over as you see it's just the same thing.  It's appropriate that this thing ends with Dream, because this comic is sleepwalking.  Like most of the most talented people in comics. Every month you have the opportunity to say one thing to an audience of several thousand.  Which is huge for a comic.  And you are going to say...what?  You are going to show them....what?

[mercurialblonde]

Nocenti. JRJR. Williamson

[paraphernaliawagon]

last night my crossfaded chucklefuck self attempted to make a list of my favorite comics artists even though i was struggling to remember some of their names. reproduced below complete with one footnote and other odd digressions.

Favorite and most revered comics artists of all time

p. craig Russell

wendy pini*

john byrne

wally wood

jack Kirby

bret Blevins

becky cloonan

colleen doran

jack kamen

all Williamson

frank frazetta

steve ditko

barry Windsor smith

jrjr*

walter simonson

marie severin

art adams

whos that lady what draws monstress

Fiona staples

Did tom Tierney ever do comics

Mobius

Some other French guy I forgot about? Oh yeah it’s Phillipe druillet I think.

Curt what’s his face Shaffenberger I think

Im gonna include manga so ryoko ikeda

And naoko takeuchi

And rumiko takahashi I think is her name? inuyasha lady

And tsukasa hojo

And yoshitaka motherfucking amano? He did manga right?

Shigeru mizuki

I will not make a list of my favorite comics writers cuz people who have favorite comics writers deserve execution

Liefeld deserves credit for creating shatterstar and shatterstar’s hair. AND YET

*indicates there is art of theirs I want to make an elaborate embroidery piece based on. Mr. Williams- I mean p. craig russuel l I just accidently called him mr Williams for some reason- I will get to you to someday. But you understand how hard it is

(SOBER ADDENDA:

-”jrjr” means John Romita Jr.

- “that lady what draws monstress” is Sana Takeda

-i DO have favorite writers. Ann Nocenti and Roy Thomas are some of them

-the art that I want to do embroidery based on is:

and the cover of Uncanny X-Men #199, featuring Rachel Summers becoming the Phoenix. yeah both of those pictures are of women surrounded by flames that radiate outwards? coincidence i guess. i just think they look cool and would be fun to stitch. never actually tried embroidery other than cross stitch yet. but i wanted to try threadpainting

[beyondthespheres]

DD #260 (1988) by Ann Nocenti/JR JR/Al Williamson/Max aka Christie Scheele/Joe Rosen

DD #282 (1990) by Ann Nocenti/JR JR/Al Williamson/Gregory Wright/Rick Parker 

[mercurialblonde]

JRJR and Al Williamson. Love how those two panels work together.

[mercurialblonde]

JRJR and Al Williamson

[mercurialblonde]

JRJR and Al Williamson

[mercurialblonde]

This page is wild. JRJR. Williamson. Scheele. Nocenti

[mercurialblonde]

JRJR. Al Williamson.

[mercurialblonde]

Nocenti. JRJR. Williamson. Scheele.

[mercurialblonde]

Williamson and JRJR 😈