Saturday, July 30, 2005
Comic Art
Continuing my series on the "Honorable Mention" artists from my Expert Witness post at Evangelical Outpost, I want to look today at Bill Sienkiewicz.Elektra is far and away Sien's best known character. He more or less changed the comic book landscape by being the first "fine art" artist with an Elektra miniseries.
It was the first painted comic I remember, but don't hold me to that. His art in that series was also somewhat abstract.
He has also done some more normal stuff like Batman. Probably everybody has that has ever done comic art has done Batman at some point. I really like the look of the cape in this particular piece. Batman's cape is one of the more stunning visual elements in all of comics, and this is a particularly good use of it.
Sien has made a specialty of some of the more obscure and scary characters. Moon Knight is one that few but diehard comic fans have ever heard of. He has essentially been a mediocre character with an incredible look. He has had numerous incarnations, tweaking the legend and the story each time trying to get him to really catch on.
He has drifted from a typical crime fighter as shown here on the left to a more mystical and magical character as depicted below.
Sien, admittedly, is not my favorite artist, but his style is unique and his impact is undeniable. If you want to know anything about how comic books came to look like they look today you have to pay attention to this man's work.
