2014 Top 50 Comic Book Artists #40-31
Here are the next ten artists that you voted as your favorites of all-time (out of roughly 1,040 ballots cast, with 10 points for first place votes, 9 points for second place votes, etc.).
NOTE: Don’t be a jerk about creators in the comments section. If you are not a fan of a particular creator, that’s fine, but be respectful about it. No insulting creators or otherwise being a jerk about creators. I’ll be deleting any comments like that and, depending on how jerky the comment was, banning commenters.
40. Joe Kubert – 307 points (6 first place votes)
Very few artists could ever claim to be regular working artists in the Golden Age of comics and still working as a regular comic book artist after 2010, but Joe Kubert is one of those people. He remained an acclaimed artist all the way until he passed away, still working on new comic books for DC Comics.
While Kubert was an excellent superhero artist and if you asked him, he’d probably say he preferred drawing stuff like Tarzan or his caveman character Tor best of all, he is most known for his work on DC’s war comics. He was so good at it that they up and GAVE him the books to run eventually.
His most famous character that he worked on was definitely Sgt. Rock. Here is a bit from one of the most famous Rock stories of all-time, “The Four Faces of Sgt. Rock” from Our Army at War #127 (written by Kanigher). It was one of those stories where different people tell stories about Rock from different perspectives. Here’s one about how Rock kept getting on a new recruit who kept lagging behind the others. He kept dealing Rock that he really was fast, but he was just loaded down by all his gear. Rock didn’t acknowledge it and it drove the kid sort of nuts, to the point where during one battle, he decides to show how fast he really was…
Powerful artwork.
39. Barry Windsor-Smith – 319 points (3 first place votes)
Starting in the 1960s with a highly Jack Kirby-esque style, Barry Windsor-Smith came to true prominence during his run on Conan the Barbarian with writer Roy Thomas. Not content, though, to rest on his substantial laurels, Windsor-Smith continued to develop his style dramatically, keeping his excellent storytelling skills and adding in more and more stylized touches. One of his most famous works was a one-off issue of Uncanny X-Men that he did with Chris Claremont. Check out how much stunning detail that there is in this work while never sacrificing fluidity of movement….
This is roughly his current style, and whenever he comes out with a new comic book work (which is sadly rare nowadays), you know it is going to look excellent.
38. Chris Bachalo – 322 points (6 first place votes)
After making his debut with some Sandman work, Chris Bachalo became a star artist through a long run on Shade the Changing Man with writer Peter Milligan and inker Mark Buckinghma. There, Bachalo’s sense of wild design made him stand out from most artists – he has a manic energy to him but he is able to keep the story on point.
His early work with Buckingham, though, got to the point eventually where Buckingham’s style was almost overwhelming Bachalo, to the point where the initial samples I used from late in their Shade run could almost be seen as either artist, so I’ll instead go with some later Bachalo.
Bachalo left Shade for a prominent gig on a new X-title, Generation X. It was here where Buckingham and Bachalo parted ways and Bachalo got even more frenetic with his work. Bachalo has worked mostly for Marvel the past twenty years, especially in the X-Office, where he has had multiple stints on Uncanny X-Men (including launching the current Uncanny X-Men series) plus launching Wolverine and the X-Men. He also had a short stint as one of the regular artists on Amazing Spider-Man. It is here that I’ll use as a modern Bachalo sample, since it is a Spider-Man/Wolverine team-up, so you get the best of both worlds!
Go to the next page for #37-34…
