The love of Uncle Maruo got me into some of Yoshitoshi’s work, which got me into Ukiyo-e (a kind of of Japanese woodblock printing). I blew my top off when I found out I lived pretty close to a museum full of Ukiyo-e!

Sorry about the camera flash well…pretty much ruining the pics :). Not only that, but between the dark room and my lousy camera, the colours aren’t nearly as good as they looked when I laid my eyeballs on them!

Bat!
There’s some great colour going on in these pics in my opinion. I think the aging of the paper only makes it that much cooler.

How did I not notice the wicked die on this dude’s noggin before!? If I could be slain by any warrior…

I really recommend that people who are into learning more about colour to check out this kind of work. It’s taken me a long time to realize that tons of the greatest stuff in art is the oldest. See how retarded that makes me sound???

In a year of great comics, and even greater comic reprint projects, I’m surprised to find myself leaning toward Dark Horse’s Savage Sword of Conan as my favourite publication of the year, so far.

I’m especially drawn to the depictions of the environment. It’s taking me twice as long as it normally would to get through each book. I find myself stopping at random panels and just drinking in Buscema’s compositions and Alcala’s brushwork. This is as close to the adventure strips of Raymond and Foster as Marvel or DC ever got.

In every interview with the artist that I’ve ever read, Buscema has stated his preference for working on Conan, and it shows. There’s a lot of love put on display here.

All images from the first volume of the collected Savage Sword of Conan. The three volumes released so far this year add up to over 1600 pages of comics, the majority of them by Buscema.

Growing up on the mean streets of Welland, I was maybe an average comic fan at best. My brother had a big collection that I’d often borrow from, but it wasn’t comics that really got me into marvel.

Marvel Trading Cards (series one) is what made me first realize that I could get really crazed about collecting. I was addicted! This led to a somewhat obscure view as to how the Marvel Universe might work.

Not only did most of my knowledge stem from power ratings and the little trivia blurbs at the bottom of each card, but the spectacular feature “Spidey Presents” let me understand the characters on a deeper level.

Although looking at these now, I’m not sure how spidey’s recording with only a microphone…not to mention in space! This however was the real Marvel in my eyes.

Frank preferred to be called Francis, Magneto had a “magnetic ” personality, Cap got his powers from what he thought was a glass of lemonade. These were all things that I not only naturally thought to be fact for many years, but would eventually come under fire for and bitterly defend!

You can find these cards and the whole set (holograms included) here.

This past weekend was a holiday in Canada, so my girlfriend J. and I decided to take some time out to visit family up north. Here are a smattering of comic-related occurrences from our 36-hour jaunt.

- My Dad hands me a gift bag with the movie version of the Fantastic Four on it. He bought my brothers and I a bunch of Fantastic Four stuff when the movie came out because I Was Ben co-writer Gary was cast as an extra.

- The gift bag holds a copy of The Marvel Encyclopedia, which is like a hardcover OHOTMU. The first entry I read has a mistake. Nerd!

- Dark Horse Comics, the only comic book store for over 150 km in any direction from my Dad’s place, seems to have finally closed down. We knew it would happen some day, but it still makes me a little sad.

- J. and I scoop a handful of pre-1985 Archie digests from the used bookstore. Cottage country is the best place to find them. I’d guess that at least 3/4 of my hundreds of digests are from this one store.

- My Grandmother gives me three Gold Key comics she has stored in a suitcase otherwise filled with very sentimental family documents. I have no idea what an issue of Super Goof is doing nestled beside photos of my Grandfather from his time in the service.

- J. and I pick up two hitchikers. One of them asks us how many kids we have. We tell her we don’t have any. She tells us she assumed we did, considering the Fantastic Four bag and the abundance of Archie digests.

The one thing I’ve held onto from my time in college was this piece of advice from one of my teachers. In film animation, the next person down the assembly line tries to improve on what came before. In television animation, the next person down the assembly line usually makes it worse. If you work in television like you’d work in film, you’ll never want for a job. I’m hard-pressed to imagine anyone in the history of comics who ‘upped’ his or her art as consistently or with as much energy as Will Elder. It’s obvious in his work that he had an almost inexhaustible joy for drawing, a passion that proves contagious every time I crack open an old copy of Mad Magazine and get that itch to fill a page with all sorts of ‘hilarious clutter’.

Thank you so much, Mr. Elder.

Thomas and Buscema bring the beefcake in The Savage Sword of Conan Vol. 2.

I’ve been checking out more of Osamu Tezuka’s work recently (more on that a bit later) and stumbled upon this which just opened a wave of memories!

I was never the biggest fan of Astroboy, but being a kid in the 80’s that would always wake up abnormally early it was usually a fix of this and Bionic Six in the morning.

The next best thing about seeing this again is hearing my little lady signing to the tune in the ol’ Nihongo on her way in.

Atomu!