We've seen a few threads like this before, where we list influential people in our lives, but I'd like to do one that's in the vein of the "Under the Influence" sections in TwoMorrows' Modern Masters series, where we write a small paragraph about each influence, but with a slight twist -- let's order them chronologically from when we were little kids to adulthood.

Now, this isn't necessarily a "favorite artists" thread -- someone can be a favorite but not really a major influence. I'm talking about the guys whose work you really pored over and tried to emulate. My influences below...


Marketing Art




My first exposure to superhero art was through stuff used in advertising and merchandise. I have a photograph of me when I was 3 or 4 years old, wearing a Jose-Luis Garcia-Lopez Batman t-shirt. I bought comics randomly at this point but always noticed how nice a lot of the art was for Marvel's house ads (a lot of which was done by John Romita Sr.). These kinds of things probably got me thinking that this is the way superheroes should look.



John Byrne




I never really knew his name and didn't really follow his work, but I remember these two issues of Superman as the points where I said, "Hey, the art in these looks cooler than the art in most other comics." There was a difference between the various comic artists and some were better than others. I remember getting one of my uncles in Korea to try to draw me a scene of Superman flying from #3 and later I remember being greatly amused and impressed with how he drew Mxy changing Superman in a fat guy and an old man in #11.



The Image Boys: Jim Lee, Erik Larsen, & Rob Liefeld




Even though I was following comics regularly, I still didn't really care about who drew them. I was still just randomly buying stuff based on which ones looked coolest to me. I remember buying a 3-pack of comics with X-Men #1-3 at the HEB grocery store and being amazed by the artwork. I thought they were just about the coolest looking comics I had even seen. I lived on a block where almost every boy collected comics and a kid up the street showed me his copies of Youngblood -- we both were head-over-heels for the art. The characters seemed awesome and cutting edge, the characters seemed darker and more violent, and I was sure that Liefeld had a universe as rich as the Marvel or DC ones to explore. Alas, the stupidity of youth.

Not too much later, I found a copy of Spider-Man #23 at the Shoppette on base -- Larsen's dialogue seemed witty and hilarious at the time and everything seemed badass. While he didn't quite rate as highly as Lee, Liefeld and McFarlane to all of my friends and me, Erik Larsen still seemed totally rad.

For a long time, I emulated the excessive cross-hatching and hulking physiques of my heroes whenever I drew, creating characters with pouches, swords, bionic arms and guns -- they were the epitome of awesome at the time. Their influence is still heavily engrained in my way of approaching art, as I sometimes must battle using too many tic lines and maybe cutting back on the extreme muscle-definition when I draw these days. But yeah, this was probably the most exciting time in my life for my comics hobby -- it felt like things had opened up and I was at the beginning of something new and different. And I was, much to the pain of older collectors and art teachers the nation over.

On a deeper level, Erik Larsen’s story-telling strongly influenced my own sense of pacing, design and layout – I still regard him as one of the best pure story-tellers in the business, alongside Romita JR and Walt Simonson, even though I’m pretty lukewarm to his art style at this point.



Jack Kirby & Steve Ditko




I remember my friends and I looking over the classic reprints featuring first appearances of major superheroes, as we would all laugh and goof on how primitive the work of Jack Kirby looked compared to the unmatched skill of someone like Rob Liefeld. But I had a deeper industry in the history of the medium and genre, often checking out books featuring these works from the base and public libraries.

And secretly, while I favored my 90s artists, there was something about the older guys I liked that the new guys didn't really have -- the stories seemed to be a bit clearer and the action was easier to follow. I liked how much more story each issue had despite the same page count. There was an appeal there that would be more fully explored as I got older, but these books kicked off that interest and I deeply respected these creators for their innovation and co-creation of the enduring heroes of my youth.

Looking back now, I was just starting to understand what story-telling in the medium actually meant and that the strange appeal was me responding to guys who put telling the story before flashy art styles and excessive splash pages.



Joe Madureira & J. Scott Campbell




I was pretty excited the first time I saw Joe Mad’s work in Uncanny X-Men #316 -- here was a guy that combined American comic art with Korean comic art! (Little did I know at the time that most ‘Korean’ comics were Japanese comics reprinted in the Korean language) It made me realize that you didn’t have to have a hyper-detailed (re: shitloads of crosshatching) art style and there were other ways your stuff can look cool.

Needless to say, I was soon poring over his work instead of the Image guys and went into “big eye” mode for my characters. J. Scott Campbell was discovered a bit later but he only reinforced the appeal and I faithfully collected Gen 13 as long as he drew it.



Frank Miller & John Romita JR.




Along with Kirby and Ditko, these two guys continued to build my appreciation for layouts, design and storytelling ability. I found myself scratching my head with my interest in these guys’ work – they lacked the crisp, slick, modern styles that made the Image and manga-influenced guys work so attractive – the people they drew could be odd and ugly looking, the lines were rough and sketchy (which I usually dislike)…

But damn, when they told a story, I could feel what they were going for. Tense exchanges of dialogue actually felt tense. Dramatic full page splashes felt full of real drama. When characters got hit – ouch, it looks like it really hurt! While Jim Lee and Joe Mad’s characters looked like posed statues, perfectly rendered with just the right badass look on their faces – they lacked movement. You just thought “cool” but not much else. When these guys, the hits felt like they were actually hurting the characters.

These guys made me love storytellers just as much as slick, graphically appealing artists.



The Two Mikes




With these two, my love for comics as well-designed pop art began to grow.

Mike Allred’s slick, lush brush lines and Silver Age nods seemed to take everything ginchy about all the old comics, sci-fi movies, and spy shows from the 60s and put them together in one perfect little package. His work also made me more conscious of line-weights. Prior to Allred, I hadn’t even really thought about line weight and how it worked – when I realized a core reason his work appealed to me were the big fat lines, I came to realize how important they were, not just to making things visually clear but also to making things look graphically appealing. It was a big step.

Mike Mignola’s stuff was sort of the opposite – he seemed to have Tim Burton’s love of horror and the gothic but his stuff didn’t look like the scribblings of a 16 year old goth kid, lamenting his inability to fuck the really pretty cheerleader – his work looked ancient, mysterious, and full of mood. I was amazed at how much he communicated with such little linework. Most artists would be adding tick marks and details through the night to communicate that a sword or chest is centuries old – Mignola seemed to do it with a couple carefully placed lines.

Even more importantly, I began to understand dramatic lighting a bit more as well; he draped characters and background in perfected designed shadows, adding a spooky intensity to anything he drew. And his storytelling was off the charts. He may be the best comicbook artist in the world when it comes to pacing, making a short 8 or 10 page story seem like it took all night.



Art Adams & Frank Cho




Finally, the two artists I probably try to emulate most these days, though sadly with little success.

Art Adams’ work has just grown and improved by leaps and bounds since the 80s. His rendering work used to cover up poor drawing and distract you from mediocre story-telling – now, his rendering adds dimension to his work, his storytelling is mostly on point and he’s truly perfected his style, making it both simple and easy to read while adding texture and nuance with his famed “tic mark” style.

His stuff’s still a little stuff and while his exaggerations of the human form work most of the time, there are times when it feels awkward and bizarre.

On the other end, we have Frank Cho, who blends the natural, gorgeous figurework of greats like John Buscema or Alan Davis with the crisp, pop-art slickness of more “cartoony” artists. His storytelling is fairly pedestrian and he tends to skimp on backgrounds, but man alive – his characters look super-attractive and his linework makes things as clean and beautiful as you can ask for.



So anyway, I’ve prattled on for long enough – how’s about you? Marcus? Rob El? Rick? Anyone?

My parents and grandparents were getting me comics since before conscious memory. I can't remember a time I didn't love them. The first month I distinctly remember getting most of the comics was May 1977, the month I turned seven. http://www.dcindexes.com/timemachine/ga ... a&site=all

The first time I starting noticing specific artists though a few months later, and the artists were Jack Kirby and Herb Trimpe.



Yeah, I loved dinosaurs as a little boy. Who didn't?

When I was nine and about to go into grade four, my father took a job at a new pulp and paper mill's chemical plant. This meant moving from the capital city of our small province to a village of 900 people. This new town was .. well, a little more redneck than what I was used to. I was a small, smart, weird kid and my asthma made me lousy at sports. It took me a long time to make new friends. In those first few months, comics were pretty much the only thing I had and boy did I love 'em. These books were on the stands the month we moved there, and I got most of 'em: http://www.dcindexes.com/timemachine/ga ... a&site=all

The stuff I liked most though were the Marvel reprint titles - Marvel Tales (Spidey), Marvel's Greatest Comics (FF), Marvel Super-Heroes (Hulk), etc., etc. What blew me away the most were Fantasy Masterpieces and Tales To Astonish #1. When I got those, I pretty much decided that John Buscema was the greatest artist of all time. Growing up, Buscema and Jim Aparo were the guys I wanted to draw like.



In 1982, Marvel Tales restarted reprinting Spider-Man from the beginning, and my crush on Steve Ditko art became full on love.



By time I was fifteen I had long since settled in, made friends and had become a big player of AD&D and the like. I was still buying a ton of comics, and along the way I had begun to like DC more than Marvel (previously I got everything, but was definitely a Marvel Zombie). Alan Moore on Swamp Thing was around this time, which made a huge impact on me. However, one comic in particular altered the hobby forever for me: Elfquest.



This comic was SO GREAT. From the moment I read that comic, comics opened up for me - they became a lot larger than super-heroes. Elfquest took me to direct market scene of the mid-'80s - if you were around then, you knew how incredible that scene was. There were so many great books, but the one I fell hardest for was Cerebus.



I thought Dave Sim was a genius (still do). Volumes 2-5 (High Society, Church & State I&II, Jaka's Story) are probably the biggest influence on what I'd like to be as a comics artist. What Sim did graphically in those books ... I have no words.

In 1987, DC was just entering the post-Crisis era, and things felt like anything could happen there. Byrne, Miller, Wagner and others had arrived. Watchmen had either just started or was just around the corner. The Dark Knight Returns was an earthquake that had changed everything. The Doom Patrol (who I'd fallen for from a three-parter in Showcase, a DC digest and the Robotman arc in Teen Titans) were back, drawn by the incredible Steve Lightle. Len Wein and Paris Cullins were having a great time doing an old-school fun super-hero book with Blue Beetle. Barr and Davis were doing the best Batman run in ten years. Plus manga was appearing in the US in a big way for the first time. This was no doubt my peak of comics love.



In the late '80s, I'd fallen hard for a girl and had moved on to college (eventually to drop out halfway through second year, though). The college life meant alcohol and music took over from comics. I'd lost access to the direct market titles. I still checked in for a while, but there seemed to be a sudden, fast drop in quality in most of the books I liked. DC had already spoiled the promise that the Crisis restart had brought, the Millennium company event interfered obtrusively in all the books I liked. Alan Davis had been replaced by some hack named McFarlane on Detective Comics. Cullins was gone from Blue Beetle, taking the fun with him. Lightle was replaced by Larsen on Doom Patrol. Outside Nocenti/JR JR. on Daredevil, Marvel had completely gone to shit. This looks to be the month I checked out of comics: http://www.dcindexes.com/timemachine/ga ... a&site=all

After I dropped out of college, I moved back to the capital of the province and ended up working fast food for a while. At the time we had an incredible comic shop owner who got me back into comics again. I wasn't reading much super-hero stuff, but I was following Sandman and Hellblazer from DC and I was back with Cerebus full-gear. I was enjoying Byrne's Namor and (I think) West Coast Avengers from Marvel. The comics shop guy got me into the alternative scene though, including the big three Toronto guys - Joe Matt, Chester Brown and Seth.



Around this time I was 21 years old and had hit rock bottom. I had to go on welfare for the second time (first time lasted one month) and I used that and some money from my parents to move to Toronto. The first few months I lived on my grandmothers couch in her tiny one-bedroom place. I took the first the first job I could get to get off welfare (the second round on welfare lasted two months) and it took me six months to get my own place in the city, but that job ended up becoming the start of a career in IT. I had to work crazy, unpaid hours to get off the ground, but since I took that first job in 1992 despite my lack of education, there hasn't been a day I've been unemployed.

For the first year or two in Toronto, I was too broke for comics. I'd sample a few, but this was 1992-1994 so the big guys were utter shite. I tried DC or Marvel every couple of years but outside the first few months of Heroes Return, I couldn't find anything much interested me in the mainstream. I did keep up with Cerebus, Hellblazer and Sandman. Preacher was eventually added to the pick-up list. They eventually trickled out, too.

EDIT: What I was getting pretty regularly was Heavy Metal, mostly because you didn't have to travel to a comics shop to get it. I'd been reading it one and off since the late '70s and it was far from its prime, but from 1996-2001 it was pretty much the only comic I got every month - for the sole reason that I could pick it up on the way home from the pub down the street.



In 2001, they hype for Dark Knight Strikes Again was heavy so I went back into the store to buy it. While there, I I picked up some other stuff, including an issue of Generations II by this John Byrne guy I liked back in the day.



I liked both of them, but Generations II sent me on a massive nostalgia kick for the old days. By this time I wasn't poor any longer - I could drop a couple hundred bucks a paycheck on comics if I wanted. I believe this was about the time I found the Byrne Board (one of the previous incarnations, not the current one). It amazed me that one of my old heroes was so accessible and I became a regular. I also ended up buying most of his back catalog in original issues. I'd missed a lot of it - I don't think I read much between 1991 and 2001.

Anyway, I've tried following new comics for a while, but they didn't take. The latest has been the NuDC relaunch, but I doubt that will keep me either (although All Star Western, Wonder Woman, Batman and Earth 2 are very exciting right now). Primarly it's the old stuff I love, and not necessarily the stuff I read growing up - I love '40s and '50s comics, too. The rise of the Image style in the early '90s seems like it was a poison that killed off the art of comics storytelling. As a result, the pendulum has swung so far from the artist side to the writer's that instead of curing the disease, the victim was euthanized.

Anyway, I've given away most of my comics. Right now my nostalgia comics project is collecting the DC hero books from '77 to the Last Superman Story, with the intent of eventually expanding the collection to the date of my birth (May, 1970). Outside of that I'm enjoying the artists I love the most - Ditko, Kubert, Toth, Wood, Eisner, etc. in whatever form I find them in.

I still occasionally check out modern stuff, though. My two favorite current series right now are Sixth Gun and Locke & Key.

Not exactly what was asked, but hey... I ain't re-writing. Chronologically, my most influential artists are all there, though.

Since you're only guy interested enough to reply -- I ain't complainin'!

I hope more people post. I loved your starter.

Thanks, I think this could be a fun thread for us to go through and maybe, just maybe, we could appreciate what some artists meant to other people even if we don't personally like their art.

Come on, Marcus. Monk? Frax? Rob?

I know you fuckers are out there.

It is interesting how you have JR Jr and Miller linked together. In my mind, the Miller, Byrne, Simonson and Perez are forever linked. Those were the kings when I was in my teens - three Marvel guys and DC's top artist.

Oh, some guys who's stuff I loved but haven't mentioned yet - Matt Wagner and Howard Chaykin. LOVE these guys.



Strangely, Simonson didn't have a big impact on me. I liked his comics, but I wasn't hooked.

Bernie Wrightson, though - him I ADORED. I found his Swamp Thing through reprints. Also, Gil Kane - Superman, Sword Of The Atom, anything he did for DC really was gold. He's the guy I think of who kept getting better as he got older.



Another guy was an Canadian writer/artist I don't think most people ever heard of called Bernie Mireault. He was genius (hope he still is, somewhere).

Yeah, I didn't really pay attention to creators until the 90s (I was 10 in 1990), so the guys you mention weren't "big deals" to me when I was a teenager.

I bought Watchmen and Dark Knight Returns because Wizard ranked them the two best comics ever and that's when I started getting into "quality" funnybooks. I discovered Romita JR. in the 80s with the issue of Daredevil I posted and liked it, but I didn't really know who he was until I was on my Frank Miller kick and re-discovered him through the "Man Without Fear" TPB. This was in 1995, roughly.

I just saw this. I have to think about it but the answers will involve Kirby, Ditko, the Buscemas and Romitas, natch.

John Buscema was like a god to me because of the book 'How to draw comics the Marvel way', which I had as a kid (and still have).

Mike Ploog's art in Werewolf By Night is still some of my favourite artwork of all time, despite the dodgy anatomy.

And Gene Colan's Tomb of Dracula and Howard the Duck artwork really used to get my attention. It was somehow not as clearly defined, and more 'sketchy' than other artists of the time, but I loved it so much.

The other one I loved was John Byrne because of his Fantastic Four stuff; I never did get into his X-Men work, but that run of FF made me a fan of his even long after the guy had lost his mojo.

The other great, in my view, was Jim Starlin. That 70's Adam Warlock comic just bent my mind somehow, and I've always loved the way he draws.

I could go on - there are no shortage of people whose art I love. Val Mayerick, Barry Windsor Smith, Gil Kane, Marie Severin, Herb Trimpe...lots of people.

Based on his choices, I think that Simon is about six or seven years older than me.

When I was a wee lad I had an uncle that would donate comics to me. Of those books the ones I remember most are Silver Surfer 2 and Swamp Thing 4. I didn't necessarily know who drew the books, but since I can remember them so clearly I have to assume John Buscema and Bernie Wrightson were huge early influences even though I didn't know it at the time.

Later, I noticed an artist by the name of John Byrne. My mom would buy me the three comic, poly-bagged, Whitman Marvel reprints from a spinner rack at K-mart. Those poly-bags contained copies of Avengers 164 and Marvel Team Up 59. I wasn't really turned on by the cover art, but I loved the interiors. In fact, because of Marvel Team Up 59, Yellow Jacket was my favorite super hero for many years (then they turned Hank into a wife beater, thanks Marvel).

In addition to work by Buscema, Wrightson and Byrne I really appreciate work by Gil Kane, Neal Adams, Jim Starlin and Barry Windsor Smith.

Walt Simonson was the first artist whose work (on THOR) that made me sit up and take notice and whose style I tried to emulate (badly). THOR was also the first title that got me into the habit of reading comic books, starting with back issues of Walt's run. I thought his style was the coolest thing ever. I was blown away that comic book art could look like that.

Not much later, I started picking up back issues of FANTASTIC FOUR and I came to think of John Byrne (whose work I first encountered in OHOTMU Deluxe) as the best comic book artist ever — hey, I hadn't seen much of anyone else at that point. I held this opinion for a good while. I also tried to draw like Byrne with, again, poor results.

Roughly at the same time, I got HOW TO DRAW COMICS THE MARVEL WAY and was thus introduced to the name John Buscema, who has since always been an influence. I remember being disappointed that he was the artist for the new Wolverine book in 1988. I wished it were somebody like John Byrne or Barry Windsor-Smith. I was a fan of Buscema but didn't think he was right for the Wolvster. How wrong I was.

In the late 80's, Marc Silvestri, whose work I first saw in X-MEN VS. AVENGERS became the regular penciler on UXM. I immediately took to his work, seeing things in his work I'd wanted to be able to do. I also liked what Todd McFarlane was doing in HULK and SPIDER-MAN, though I don't know if I ever saw him as an influence. Then the early 90's came along, Jim Lee's star was rising and I became enamored with his UXM in 1991. I thought it couldn't possibly get better than Jim Lee. I don't think I ever tried to draw like him, though. Anyway, both Lee and Silvestri have slipped considerably down my "totem pole of esteemed artists," though.

I was also impressed by John Romita Jr. on DAREDEVIL. I was underwhelmed for the most part by his work on UXM, but found his DD to be fairly eye-popping. He has been a big influence ever since.

Later that year, Alan Davis returned to EXCALIBUR (after a sporadic first run in the late 80's), which I was, of course, happy about, but it also brought about the realization that he was quite possibly my favorite comic book artist. This largely still holds true. I don't know if I've ever tried to emulate his style but sometimes I find myself unconsciously aping certain aspects.

I think it was about this time or a bit later into the 90's, that I finally started getting Jack Kirby, where before (like, apparently, many others) I really didn't his work. I wouldn't start reading his work in bulk until quite a bit later, but I did at least begin to understand his brilliance. I also started reading Mike Allred via MADMAN, which I almost immediately took to.

In the late 90's I finally picked up Mike Mignola's HELLBOY. I'd been a fan of Mignola since at least the late 80's but, for some reason, didn't get "Seed of Destruction" when it came out. I thought it was his best work to date, and today think it's still his best work ever, artistically. Mignola was one I really wanted to be able to emulate, but it was just beyond me, it was just so freaking brilliant.

I started to look at Steve Rude's NEXUS back issues and LOVE AND ROCKETS trades by Los Bros Hernandez, at about this time; I was awestruck by how Jaime Hernandez's art; yet another artist to be jealous of. Oddly enough, my appreciation of Jack Kirby grew through guys like the Hernandez Brothers, Rude and Mike Allred.

I fell out of comic reading for a while starting in the late 90s through early 2000's. Around the mid 2000's I noticed various Marvel Masterworks being offered at discounted prices, so I started grabbing up volumes of FF and ASM. It was then that I truly beheld the brilliance of Jack Kirby as well as Steve Ditko (another artist whose work I didn't care for before). Anyway, Jack Kirby pretty much became one of my favorites and another artist whose work I wanted to borrow aspects of, and still do. I could hardly believe I held these guys in contempt when I idolized Byrne, when I saw how much he owed to them. I've since sold all the Masterworks editions because I got the DVD-ROMs, needed the cash and wanted to save some space. I think I'll pick up the Masterworks again when I can afford it, though.

I haven't really followed many of the newer artists. I'm mostly interested in the older stuff I haven't seen yet, such as by the likes of Joe Kubert, Neal Adams and a host of others.