Ragged Claws Network

Courtesy of Tor.com, an original graphic story by a talented young artist, Ms. Wesley Allsbrook:

I had exactly same feeling reading this piece as I had when I first read Jillian Tamaki’s City of Champions mini-comic and the shorter “comic book” edition of Skim a few years ago, i.e., this is someone to watch!

P.S. If you buy the superb Skim graphic novel from this Amazon.com link, you’ll be doing yourself a favour and Jillian herself will receive a little extra in her Amazon Associates account!

Bonus Links:

Wesley Allsbrook Illustration

Wesley’s Wallsblog

Fresh Paint: Wesley Allsbrook (interview)

Volume 1 (of 2) of the collected Journey by William Messner-Loebs is available for pre-order at an online bookstore near you. Here’s the cover:

From the publisher: “A realistic and absorbing account of life in the 19th century frontier wilderness finds Wolverine McAlistaire enduring tornadoes, Indians and even the walking dead, all in Messner-Loebs’ unique neo-Eisnerian style. A classic adventure series from Eisner nominee William Messner-Loebs, Journey introduced the world to Joshua ‘Wolverine’ McAlistaire and the Fort Miami settlement populated by both real-life and fictional characters. Now, IDW is re-presenting this acclaimed work in two comprehensive volumes, the first of which collects issues #1-13.”

I would post my own comment on Journey, but it has been a long, long time since I read the comics, which were originally published first by Aardvark-Vanaheim, then by Renegade Press, and finally by Fantagraphics Books, and I simply can’t be bothered to dig them out of storage (I do own them). Anyway, suffice to say, I have fond memories of Messner-Loebs’ work — if memory serves, the series opened with a virtuoso first issue that consisted entirely of Wolverine McAlistaire being chased by a bear — and I look forward to owning the collections, which I know from experience will be so much easier to store and read than the original comics.

Here’s how the publisher describes this forthcoming book: “Noel Sickles drew comics for three brief years, yet his groundbreaking work on the 1930s aviation adventure series Scorchy Smith is a milestone in the history of newspaper comic strips. Over the past 70 years, however, readers have seen only occasional excerpts of this seminal work. Now, IDW’s Library of American Comics presents Scorchy Smith and the Art of Noel Sickles, a comprehensive, oversized volume that collects, for the first time, every Sickles Scorchy strip, from December 1933 through November 1936.”

That’s over 300 pages of some of the most beautifully drawn adventure strips ever created. Although Sickles wasn’t in comic strips anywhere near long enough to become a household name — after he left Scorchy Smith, he spent the next forty years in magazine illustration and (later in life) Western painting — he has long been revered among the small group of aficionados who know their comic-strip history as an “artist’s artist,” i.e., an artist whose work other artists — greats like Milton Caniff, Alex Toth, John Romita, and Frank Robbins, as well as scores of other, lesser lights — have looked to for inspiration, instruction… and swipes! Marvel stalwart John Romita has remarked that, during the 1950s, when he was in his 20s, “the whole industry was copying from photostats of the Scorchy Smith dailies by Noel Sickles.” And now, with the publication of this book, you have an opportunity to see what all the fuss was about.

Bonus Links:

Leif Peng’s Noel Sickles Flickr Set

Scorchy Smith and the Art of Noel Sickles by Leif Peng, Today’s Inspiration - introducing a week devoted to the art of Noel Sickles, with highlights from the new book.

Two books, actually: Strength Training Anatomy (2nd ed.) and Women’s Strength Training Anatomy. Both are written and illustrated by Frédéric Delavier, and both have received terrific reviews from people involved in fitness and strength training. Now, although I myself am not terribly interested in strength training, I am interested in artistic anatomy, and I have to say, I am very impressed with the crystal clarity and precision of Delavier’s anatomical drawings as well as with the variety of poses on view. No, they’re not “classic studio poses,” but that, to me, is a good thing, as classic studio poses, which were typically designed to be held comfortably for long periods of time by live models, tend to convey little if anything in the way of dynamic movement or muscular tension. (Also, they have simply been done to death.) Although I would have preferred if Delavier had not drawn so many of his models with socks and running shoes on, thereby obscuring the connections between the lower leg and the foot, that’s a small caveat since Delavier not only has kept the socks mercifully short but also has, I think, provided enough drawings of figures without shoes for moderately intrepid artists to figure that bit out for themselves where need be. And, anyway, in my experience, there is no single, perfect, one-size-fits-all text on artistic anatomy; there are only various more or less enlightening/frustrating volumes, and these two, IMHO, are more enlightening–and less frustrating–than most of those written specifically for artists.