Haunting Vision

Faust, in search of knowledge, makes a deal with Mephistopheles. And what a deal it was. Goethe wrote about it over a period of 60 years. Artists were inspired to illuminate the tale of a man who sells his soul. August von Kreling was one of the most successful to do so with this haunting vision.

Don't tell me you wouldn't sell your soul for a long box of mint golden age comix.

August von Kreling—Faust's Dream—1873

Favorite Foster

Hal Foster created one thousand seven hundred and eighty-eight Prince Valiant Sunday pages in his lifetime, and they are all beautiful in various degrees. But my all time favorite Prince Valiant page was created as a limited edition print in a very small run:

President of Neptune

Ah, speaking of Mignola, here's a comic everyone remembers, ey? Hard to believe it's been 14 years since it changed our lives. At least it shows that Mike Mignola wasn't always hellbent for Hellboy. This story was written by Steve Purcell, but I bought it strictly for the Mignola art.

There are many black and white art purists out there, but I'm not one of 'em. Oh I appreciate the concept and have seen some terrific examples, but I think stories like this would have looked really keen with some hues splashed around—case in point, look how cool the cover is.

It's probably not the case, but I had an odd thought that maybe Mignola had underground cartoonist Fred Schrier as one of his artistic inspirations for this piece.

President of Neptune — 2

Fafhrd

Mike Mignola's artwork fascinates me. Mannered and stylized with heavy ink spotting, it has a graphic impact that endures. I only hope that Hellboy isn't his magnum opus.

This frenetic panel of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser from 1990 is a beautiful example of his finest work.

Years Ago

Michael Whelan painted this piece years ago. James Cameron started planning and writing Avatar years ago. Inspiration?

Treasure Planet

It's taking a real effort to stay away from 'blogging. Case in point, here I am again. I've really got to focus on other stuff, but my collection of images has a siren's call to my inner blogger.

Wasn't there a Diz animated movie called Treasure Planet? Well, I've heard that you can't copyright a title, but this short story emanates from the DC Silver Age of sci-fi. It's weakly derivative of EC sci-fi, but it's always fun to see work by Gil Kane, this time aided by Bernard Sachs. Gardner Fox is always fun too.