One of my earliest memories as a child was when my Dad gave me a Batman comic to read when I was around 2 or 3 years old.  My Dad is now 81, he was around 43 when he gave me that comic and he will joke about how much that one thing he did caused me to become an artist. Comics have always been an interest of mine and now I am much older and they still have that "special" appeal. 

I have been fortunate in being able to be part of that industry at sundry times as an artist. 

But my favorite has always been fantasy/sword & sorcery themed comics.  From the early Prince Valiant,  Beowulf, Claw to Warlord, Arak, ElfQuest (the large format b&w comic ) and the granddaddy of them all... Conan.  Superhero comics are cool, but give me a well done example of sequential storytelling in the fantasy genre, and my interest is there.

The D&D comics that have been done in the past are lacking in my opinion. The writer's I don't believe translated that genre very well to the visual medium of comics.  The current Drizzt and Dragonlance ones are an exception. 

The key to any good comic is storytelling. I don't care how beautiful the art is or how cool it is; nor how good the writing is... If the visual storytelling is weak, it just falls flat. Taking the easy road of a panel scene or crazy layout only creates mediocrity when taking the reader on the journey like they are there... That is the wow factor.

I have always said... the medium of comics is between a movie and the written word.  There is no restriction in special effects, location, etc. It allows a freedom and creativity of combining the visual and the words into something we can go... wow. A synergy between these two art forms is comics. My friend Butch Guice and I used to joke around about comics being a poor man film maker's medium.

Escapism to me is the goal. Like with a great tale written by REH, KEW, the authors of Flashing Swords, etc or a great movie that allows us to fade from the reality around us to let us become absorbed into the world created by the creators.

I ramble... But this is a good topic and I am glad to see that SFReader has put a place for us artists that illustrate the genre.

Swords Together,

Miko

Love ElfQuest -  really good stuff.  I think I discovered it in my early-to-mid teens, right at the age when this kind of thing hits you in your solar plexus and the marks stay with you forever.

Other great comics:

Mike Mignola's Hellboy, of course.  And, his and Howard Chaykin's adaptations of Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser.  Also, Mignola's Amazing Screw-On Head.

Roy Thomas and Barry Windsor-Smith's early Conan comics from Marvel.  Windsor-Smith's cover art for the first 9-10? issues of Conan Saga.

Will Eisner's The Spirit.  Virtually anything by Jack Kirby.  It might sound sacrilegious, but a few years ago I cut out pages from different old duplicate comics I had in my collection, pasted them on poster board and framed it as a sort of collage.  It hangs in my library/work-space.  Kirby's art is represented more than anyone else.

Hugo Pratt's Corto Maltese has been one of my all-time favorite comics since I first discovered it in the mid-eighties.  The trouble is in finding Pratt's work translated into English.  I have 6 (I think) of the volumes published by NBM in the eighties, but that's it.  I tried looking for English adaptations of Pratt's work when I was in Paris in October, but no luck.  America needs to discover Pratt and his creation, the philosophical adventurer Corto Maltese.  We need good, quality English translations of everything Pratt did.

Dave Sim's Cerebus.  Agree or disagree with Sim's philosophy (especially toward the end of Cerebus' run) you can't deny Cerebus's place in the history of comics (longest running independent comic - something like 30 years; probably one of the first, significant creator-owned comics).  Cerebus is Proust's Remembrance of Things Past of comics.  And the marriage of Sim's character art over Gerhard's backgrounds produced some of the most beautiful comic-art ever.

For me, Frank Miller's Dark Knight Returns was like being a teenager in 1973 and discovering Iggy and the Stooges' Raw Power.  It was that big for me.  It's still that big for me.   I re-read it again (and again) only a couple of days ago.

Chris Claremont's run on the X-Men, circa mid-eighties.  Walt Simonson's run on Thor.  Goscinny and Uderzo's Asterix.  Carl Bark's ducks (Donald, Huey, Dewey and Louie - Unca Scrooge!)

Lots more.  There's a lot of great stuff out there.  (Little Nemo!  Groo!  ...and there's comic strips, too:  Pogo, the old Chester Gould Dick Tracy, the almighty Calvin and Hobbes...)

I agree with you on everything you said, Nick.

One of my favorites is the old EC comic line with artists like Frazetta, Williamson, Evans, Craig, Severin, etc.  It is some of the best examples of what the comic medium and storytelling could be.

Mikos,

I know something of the history and influence of EC and I've seen covers and artwork reproduced in books about the history of comics, but I have to confess I have very little personal experience with some of these greats from yesteryear. 

I do need to educate myself more on this time period.  I think I was too young to see a lot of the great old EC stuff, but I'm familiar with the names of a lot the artists and some of the titles.  I'm a fan of Berni Wrightson;s work, and I think I read somewhere that his style of art is straight out of the old EC era. 

Do you have any recommendations for collections or books about EC, or any favorite titles, individual stories, artists?

Nick Logan 

I forgot to add Jeff Smith's Bone to my list above.  Bone's very much in the fantasy genre.  Sort of Carl Barks meets Tolkien.  Great story, and great art throughout. 

Nick Logan