Hey there Sports Fans, Al here with the latest:
So we are now into the 3rd of the trifecta of "W"s. And what stands out for this particular artist is he was one that I had met personally, not once but twice! The great Bernie Wrightson!
If you are not familiar with the name you might more familiar with some of the movies he had worked on and/or inspired as well. "Silver Bullet" which is based upon his work in "Cycle of the Werewolf" with Stephen King, "Creepshow" - also with King, and "The Swamp Thing".
I have never been so excited in my life when you could actually talk to a massively creative individual. I have been following his work for years and started back in the day when Marvel was printing a small fanzine called Marvel Age back in 1983 or 1984 with his work on "Mary Shelley's Frankenstein." I could not wait for this book to come out. Of course, I didn't get my hands on a copy till about another 28 years later! But I got a copy. Thank you, Dark Horse!
Epic Illustrated #34 had reprinted one of his stories called "They Just Fade Away". But the one single image that Epic printed up during their run was his "Battle in Space". I constantly kept going back to. Though I didn't try to copy it like I had copying Bill Sienkiewicz's work on Moon Knight with his revision of Werewolf by Night. Wrightson's image just blew me away with this 50's flavored cosmic confrontation. His science fiction stuff really caught my attention but it was always flavored with horror. I looked at Captian Stearn in Heavy Metal and then I managed to get ahold of "Roots of the Swamp Thing". That opened my appreciation for horror in a big way. I kicked myself because I had started picking up Swamp Thing way back in the day as a kid but just after Wrightson had left the series. Arrrghh! I felt like being Charlie Brown with the football being pulled just before the kick!
Then in 1985 in my Junior Year in High School, I got a hold of a copy of the Studio!
If there is a book that celebrates a small group of great illustrators this is the book you should own. It was unfortunately short-lived but damn!
At the time one of the other contributors, Barry Windsor-Smith was the main drive to buy this volume but I constantly kept going to Wrightson. His work felt to me the easiestly (I know, not a word) the most accessible. I started going to thrift stores looking for old comics just for Wrightson's cover and taking them off and putting them into a manilla folder.
Then Pacific Comics came out with "Twisted Tales". Of course, I didn't know that these were reprints but they still were cool though the coloring was a little off somehow.
There were a couple of other titles that had come out like Captian Sternn from Kitchen Sink which was carried the character over from Heavy Metal.
But there one thing that I could give Wrightson he could turn out the work better than his contemporaries at the Studio. Nothing against Windsor-Smith, Kaluta, or Jones, but Wrightson kept churning out work. Then I found his work with Stephen King on Creepshow and Cycle of the Werewolf. Here was a small interview with Wrightson on Cycle of Werewolf on youtube. https://youtu.be/Pgt_mJjGC9E
BOOM!
I had those soon in hand. Of course, there were a handful of comics that he did lots of mini-series here and there. "The Weird" with Jim Starling for DC was one series that I had wished had gone longer but there just never seemed to be a project that could tie him down for any length of time. The Cult featuring Batman at DC again with Starling was controversial because of the depiction of Batman with a machine gun and he mowing down people.
I think of the things that I had read in the collections of his work of the best part was actually meeting the man.
In the circles that I was running around in at the time I had the fortune of being introduced to Bernie and Jim Starlin at the same time at a party being thrown. It was brief and a private party so I didn't overstep my bounds that day. Starlin was exactly like his characters especially Vanth Dreadstar. Quiet, dark sunglasses on not engaging in any banter that I can recall. Bernie was more outgoing but they had their own professionals thing going on. They were out of their element from sitting behind a dealer's table but hobnobbing with the public. As an illustrator myself I could identify with that.
The second time I met him was actually at San Diego Comic-Con. The thing that surprised me the most was here was this fantastic illustrator and creator and there was nobody in his line to his table. I said to myself "Well what the F! I gonna go for it!" I walked right up as a couple of fans were gushing over his work in a Look Back and Frankenstein. Then they left. He looked at me with that look "I know you from somewhere". I re-introduced myself to him that was a friend of a friend who had met him at a comics agent party in San Fransico. Acknowledgment followed with a nod. The usual small banter ensued. But there was a nagging question that had been plaguing me as I had been picking up his work. I had asked that I had noticed a change in his art style. I was trying to be as diplomatic as possible. The last thing that I wanted was to piss off one of my artistic heroes. The question was that seemed to me the fluidity to his earlier work was no longer there but his work of more recent times had a thicker blockier look and approach. And he said to me matter of factly "Well, to be honest, disease and a broken arm. Between those two makes it hard for me to hold a pencil for a long time."
For me, that made perfect sense. But with a lot of professionals that I have dealt with I didn't want to overstay my welcome even though there wasn't anybody else coming up to his table. I had seen that way too many times at shows. I thanked him for his time and hoped to see him again.
That never happened.
Then flash forward about 20 years and I had read that he had passed away. That just made me sad but appreciated that small time I got to spend with him. Just after that, I had started posting images that I had scoured the internet for to post in my Facebook Image banner. I did it for about a month. There were so many images that I had posted every single day that I was contacted by a family repetitive of his estate asking where I was getting all these images from.
As it turned out Bernie wasn't as savvy about the use of the internet to sell his work online. I had responded politely and responsibly by not posting any more of his work after those conversations. The one thing I always did even posthumously was making sure that he got the recognition that he deserved for being an artist.
So for a short time back in 1988, I got a little insight into the man who was pretty happy and jovial to engage this lonely kid who was in awe of his work. He was just a dude who could draw and illustrate really, really well. And I am extremely lucky for that and it has helped me understand where I am at with my artwork and better yet how to deal with other people. I may not be looking strictly for covers anymore but I am still a big fan of his work. He inspired me to be loose with the pencil and set that mood with black and white! He also taught me that I could embrace the grotesque in my drawings and still make it work.
I still collect his work to this day.
And with that, I am out of here.