Graphics Illustrators Books

Illustrator was killing me at my classes at a design school. , the software is so powerful but difficult to master. Then I could buy this book ... and everything started to be clear and easy!

but where are the color pictures. Many of the illustrations comment on differences that can only be viewed in color but all are in black and white. This I will never understand.

This is one of the best tutorial manuals I have ever used. It is written in an easy to comprehend and "chatty" style, which makes you feel that "Sam" is right there with you whenever you switch on Illustrator 9.0 and start learning. I sped through the tutorials, which are fun to do and practice later on and whenever I need a refresher on a specific point I still turn to this definitive teaching manual. The only part that could have been better described was the construction of patterns and tiles. It took me a while to figure it out as the section was glossed over somewhat. The Adobe manual for Illustrator 9.0 comes into its worth only after you have grasped the basics and these are provided by working through this marvelous instruction book. In record time I was able to use Illustrator 9.0 for all our book cover artwork and design/publishing needs. Our finished product is "Accused By Facet-Eyes, A Classic Science-Fiction Novel" (C.B.Don) so you can take a look at what can be done once one has graduated from "Sam's Teach Yourself Illustrator 9.0" school! Highly recommended and essential...thank you Mordy Golding "Sam"!

I have been using Illustrator since version 5.5 and have always had difficulty understanding why it did some things differently from what I was expecting. I should have bought a Mordy Golding book years ago as it alone has given me the insight I needed to make this program do what I wanted it to do.

Once you have this understanding then the other books will help but I've found that most of them don't help you get that basic user experience and understanding of this program.

If Adobe wants users to switch from Freehand, it should be giving this book away with every crossgrade. It really is that good.

I have to say that for someone who has no illustrator skills and needs to learn illustrator for personal or professional purposes; This is the best way to start. It builds up your skills from going over the basic to explaining what every palette/window will do in a smart sequence. Other books are more like user guides that cover things without any order making it difficult to learn. After you read this book( it takes about a week to finish if you sit down everyday for a few hours) you will be able to start exploring how illustrator will benefit your needs. GOOD LUCK AND ENJOY THIS BOOK ITS LOTS OF FUN & EASY READING
SHIRLEY

And that's to say nothing of the inspiring examples that shows just what everyone's favorite PostScript editor can do. Truly inspirational. Worth every penny. If all computer reference books were as solid as this one, the world would be a happy place.

Great information, excellent layout, clear writing, brilliant examples -- this one is truly worth the price.

This is a great reference tool to be used in conjunction with other Illustrator References.

I can't figure out what all the fuss about concerning this book - I'm afraid I didn't find it particularly helpful. Yes, it does contain a large number of excellent illustrations from artists who obviously know how to get the best out of illustrator, but there is very little information on the techniques used to produce such illustrations for the novice user. As someone trying to get to grips with Illustrator, I would recommend Deke McClellands "Real World Illustrator 8" as a far better (and wiser) way to spend your money. It has an excellent hands-on approach to getting to grips with the complexity of Illustrator. Steuer's book will probably end up on my coffee table until I can get up to her level.

Let me start by saying that this is a beautiful book. I drool every time I flip through its pages. Imagine being able to do artwork of this caliber with a software program.

Unfortunately imagining is still all I can do after reading this book. The steps or processes given to accomplish what is shown just didn't help me get there. Some of the steps were outright ridiculous. It reminded me of a joke that went... "3 easy steps to make 5 million dollars: step one - Get yourself a million dollars" I won't tell the rest of the joke; you get the idea.

The odd thing about the book is that every time you pick it up and peruse it, you wish it would help you emulate the artwork shown. Too bad. Mind you, I wouldn't give the book up for anything. I love looking through it.

I guess the bottom line is buy this book if you want to see what can be done with Adobe Illustrator 8. If your already semi-pro at using Illustrator you most likely will gain more "Tips and Tricks" as the cover touts. For the rest of us it's 'too bad, so sad'.

Ilustrator Wow goes into great detail explaining Illustrator tools that an experienced Illustrator user can easily over look. The examples in the book encourage the reader to use these tools.

Many Illustrator users are quoted and have artwork featured in the book. As a cartographer, I was particularily glad to see how other cartographers do things - how David Nelson strokes lines on a map or how Steve Gordon has created a scenic background for one of his maps.

The accompanying CD has lesson plans, so that the book can be used as part of a class. The book really works for me as I try to improve my ability to draw 3D buildings. I can pick a section out of the book and try to recreate the examples or follow some of the extra lessons on the disk. When you have instructions provided in an Illustrator file (such as the ISO Actions sheet), you can recreate the drawing right next to the original step by step example. The book has many examples perspective drawings used for different purposes.

Like another reviewer mentioned, the book has fantastic illustrations, and I think these illustrations inspire the reader to try new techniques. While I ocassionally use a scanner when starting a project, this book motivated me to do more scanning.

I am not an artistically gifted person, so I was excited to see this book. I hoped, by the title, that there would be some good ideas for doing cool stuff with vector graphics in Illustrator and then optimizing them for the web with Photoshop, but I was sadly mistaken. The coolest elements of this book were the "60's Style" Conformed Text and the Text Following Path tidbits, but anyone with much experience in Illustrator probably already knows those things.

Do not get this book if you're looking for inspiration for web graphics.

As someone who's come to Photoshop and Illustrator from a tech background (I started out using them to design graphics for websites I was coding, and I'm now moving into using them purely for their own sake) I bought this expecting something high-brow and fairly abstract. Still, the reviews of past editions were good, so it must be worth a read...

However, on actually reading the book I was very pleasantly surprised to find...a recipe book. Lots of nice, step-by-step, two or three page descriptions of interesting graphical techniques you can apply, either to spruce up something you've already done, or as inspiration for something new altogether. Many of them are applicable to both Photoshop and Illustrator, and where appropriate instructions are given for both applications.

The techniques illustrated cover a wide range of subjects, from applying filters to photos to get a more painterly appearance to the creation of seamless textures, image compositing and the creation of semi-transparent object shadows in Illustrator. You'll almost certainly have seen some of them before (or arrived at your own ways to achieve similar effects) but there's enough in this book that you're sure to find something you'll want to add to your own list of techniques.

In a way this is "Photoshop 7 Down And Dirty Tricks" polite sister. The basic idea's the same (like I said, a recipe book) but the aim's slightly higher (i.e. improving your art, rather than impressing your boss). There's even some overlap in the techniques presented, although generally this book favours aesthetic results over flashy impact.

This book doesn't tell the reader where any of the controls, palettes, or windows are located or how to use them. Its title states "Professional Studio Techniques" and it means that. The book is written for PhotoShop v.5 and Illustrator v.8 and should easily provide inspiration beyond the current v.6 and v.10 of the two programs. Often the technical methods and processes discussed are relevant to achieving visual effects that express a particular mood appropriate for certain image types. Testing the methods in an experimental fashions to images of my own I have always achieve something of a satisfying innovative nature. In one sense the brevity of the authors explanations forces one to experiment and the nature of the illustrative art is meant to suggest creative possibilities. I came back to the book's web page in search of a newer edition I could purchase. Naught, so instead I wrote this review.

I'm not a professional graphic designer. But as a graphics enthusiast, and webmaster by profession, i take my occasional graphic design work quite seriously. As someone who is always searching for ways to use PhotoShop in better, more efficient ways, I found this book to be both helpful and inspiring.

Design Essentials is a very hands-on book, providing basic, short instructions, which familiarize the beginner and novice PhotoShop user with all the little tricks that transform an image from "nice" to "great", as well as providing the necessary explanations and "how-to" information on those tools beginners like myself still need to discover and maximize the full potential of.

Personally, i had a lot of fun both reading the book, and experimenting with its tutorials. I just wish I had a copy of Adobe Illustrator, since it seems like a wonderful tool.

It is an interesting book if you happen not to have the previous edition.
There are not too many new examples, these are added to most that appeared on 3rd edition. Sadly a compact narrow book format has replaced a more suited wide desktop size.
Techniques have not either got to far or up, is still somewhat basic and does not cover transparencies or other Illustrator 9/10 features.
A pity I went on holidays and could not return it on time. If you have have earlier book, look elsewhere.

Even though I have used Illustrator for several years, I found the steps and tips a little confusing. I bought this book to increase my knowledge.
It wasn't too helpful, especially when steps are skipped, and the tips don't correspond with the instructions. In one area the instructions read, "expand and ungroup, (about a million times) to delete the wireframe." Didn't work for me.

Not for beginners. Tips and adjoining windows don't seem to match. Projects were helpful in teaching you to be able to use the techniques for your own projects or creativity. But on the whole I don't feel the book was worth the price.

I love it, it is an advance book. not too good for beginners.

[...]


Many people first take look at cover and then decide if they want to buy book or not. When i first took a look at cover of this book i wasn't really impressed by it. But later when i already had it in my hands i understood why. Because cover is glossy and if you want to scan a cover - it's become almost impossible. It's the same that scanning silver or gold cover. But if you buy this book in usual store I am sure that it will attract your attention.

From other hand cover of this book - it don't try to impress you with pretty pictures on cover or big words to make you but it. It gives you exactly that why you buy this book - practical knowledges that you can use when you need it.

This is a great book for beginners and intermediate users of Adobe Illustrator. You can study or improve your knowledges on practice. The book is full of different kind of tasks (54 in total if to be precise). Every of them presents unique value and exotic experience. Every tutorial is explored to the maximum, all the possible options are explained clearly.

During this tasks you will work with many interesting Illustrator tools as mesh, path tools, blends, 3D spirals, Live Paint (which allows you to paint those vector graphics as if you are painting them by hand) and many other.

If you create digital animation, you will appreciate chapter number 11 where you create layers to manipulate individual parts for character animation. When everything is ready, you can preview the animation frames and then export them as a draft in the Flash format.

Book includes many highlighted "notes," "tips," and "warnings", "cautions", "alternatives" interspersed throughout the book. Notes will give you addition information or alternative actions, warning will notify you in advance about tricky moments and tips will will make your work a bit more easy.

My favorite effects in this book are graffiti and Dracula effects. Last effect you can overview on companion website. I'm sure you will find where to use it in your projects.

In my opinion, David Karlins and Bruce Hopkins made a great work. Book is good written, very friendly, easy to follow, the page layout is very clean, and the readability of this book is very high.
This book is an excellent guide to performing wild effects. For more information visit companion website and find more information about this great book.

There are three things that I really like about this book:
1. There are good illustrations that showcase step-by-step transformations of how each technique and tool was used to get to the "end goal"
2. There is a companion website that is fun to browse and helpful if you want some guidance with Adobe Illustrator but don't have the time or money to take a class
3. The tips on the Blend tool were especially helpful for me; they gave me new ideas for what I could be using this tool for when constructing illustrations

My personal preference for the style, layout and 'final' projects the book takes you through were not especially inspiring or attractive to me. For me, the layout of the book made reading it hard to follow and difficult to get engaged.

A well written book, but I would reccommend that you peek through it at a local bookstore so you can see if it fits your style or not before you go out and purchase it.

If you do graphic art work at all, this is an excellent book.

I learned an awful lot about Photoshop and Painter when using this book. Very helpful.

This is a truly great book; much better than other books I've read on Illustrator alone. The fact that it covers Photoshop (and Painter) as well is a bonus.

Since there aren't many books out there on Painter, I grabbed this book as soon as I saw it figuring that the Illustrator and Photoshop information would be a bonus. What a disappointment - the very day I received the book I resold it on Amazon. The book's title "Side by Side" describes exactly what you can expect to find inside this book - a comparison of the three programs. I can't see where having this book would be useful since it really doesn't describe techniques or provide useful information, or do anything more than cite differences between the programs, which any user would already be aware of anyways. Rather than waste your money on this useless book, I'd recommend the WOW books and/or Kelby's photoshop books - they're packed full of useful information. This book gets one star for the pretty pictures.

I enjoyed the insightful comparisons between these packages. However, the biggest drawback is that this book doesn't cover the most recent versions of the software, but it a version behind.

This *book* is much better than the internet sites that cover some of the same material. This is a work of devotion and love.

For those who collect Chick Tracts and ancillary Chick art works this reference is indispensable.

Cover price is rather dear, however the value is in the exhaustive reference material. I thought I was a Chick completist, but found many holes in my collection and a few items I had never heard of.

For those who like collecting the works of this raving crackpot Kurt Kuersteiner's "The Unofficial Guide to the Art of Jack T. Chick: Chick Tracts, Crusader Comics, And Battle Cry Newspapers" is the Overstreet Guide of the genre.

In a world in which vicious Catholic-bashing is given a yawn and a pass, and also viewed as no threat to decent American values, the preservation of Chick's hate is a necessary documentation of the two last forgivable public prejudices of our PC world (anti-Catholic bigotry is only as forgivable as anti-poor Scots-Irish Southern white bigotry, not even Muslims get as vicious a treatment. In mainstream sources).

Kurt Kuersteiner did an excellent job of putting this book together and he does a great job of analyzing Jack Chick, even though he doesn't go into depth about whether or not Jack Chick is right or wrong in his theological wars, (as I have done in my own work of Chick). Kuersteiner aimed to look specifically at the artwork and the story telling that have come out of Chick's publications in order to discuss Jack Chick more as a cultural phenomenon, which Kuersteiner did with great success. Kurt also adds his own humor and sarcasm throughout the work which in most cases I found to be spot on.

A quick aesthetic note: The artwork in Kuersteiner's book is also quite professional. Kurt was able to reproduce Chick Publications and keep their original feeling, while at the same time meld it together with his own written text. I thought the layout was quite good as well. It was a top notch job.

I originally bought this book and interviewed Kurt when I was writing my own book refuting some of Jack Chick's wilder claims and slanders which he produced based on the false testimony the the religious fraudster Alberto Rivera. (My book is called Thou Shalt Not Bear False Witness: The Truth about the Vatican and the Birth of Islam). Kurt Kuersteiner is one hell of a knowledgeable source of information about Jack Chick and his book is definitely the ultimate in depth resource spanning the entire career of Jack Chick and his Chick Publications. Keep it up Kurt! Haw! Haw! Haw!

What little i knew as a kid about catholicism and the druids came from Chick comics. My only regret is that he never did one comic or tract about my church. I enjoy good camp and would consider it a badge of honor if he did. Haw haw haw!!!

Chick is one of the best comic artists out there. The color printing and line detail was better quality than most other comics, especially of that time. His work deserves an unoffical guide.

Aaaaiiiiieeeeeeee!!!

I love this book, and hope that we can update it soon! I'm glad that I got to submit several reviews and write a chapter, but dang, I only wish I had a co-writing credit! YAAAAAAHHHHH! Haw haw haw!

I write down anything about Jack Chick with some trepedation because as a Christian I have never been quite sure how to take him. The most christian lady I ever knew described these booklets as "satanic", other Christians have described them as "a bit extreme at times", and still others have described them as "the right message, but brutal". No one has ever completely agreed with them, whether they are Christians or not. Non-Christians are usually amused or repulsed or even infuriated by them.

Yes, it is true - they show everything in black-and-white terms. Unbelievers are usually loud-mouthed brutes, guffawing, cursing, and snarling their way through life. Believers are angelic and innocent-faced. I suspect he is an ex-Catholic (I have known ex-Catholics as angry, or angrier at the Church as he is) since he seems to feel that every evil in the western world was committed by the Catholic Church, and that the King James Bible is the only valid translation apart from the original Hebrew, Aramaic and Koine Greek. he has a lot of opinions, some a little far-out, but some of them are brutally close to the Truth. But they are also very blunt, and sometimes bluntness is not a bad thing, especially in a world that is often too nuanced, too politically correct, and too concerned about giving offense.

I first read some of these books in college, decades ago, back when I didn't even know what it meant to even be a Christian. No, these books did not lead to my conversion, but they did present some topics I had never heard before, and they made me think about a few things which had never before crossed my mind.

Some of these books are a little crackpot, no doubt. They are a lot more about hellfire and brimstone than what most Christians are comfortable with, and yet in spite of the fingerpointing, I do not really see hatred in them. Hatred Chick projects is towards Satan, and towards various institutions that he feels have lost their way, or those which never had it in the first place. I don't think he hates individual people at all, but he doesn't hesitate to show that people living apart from God are sinners, and this comes accross in his drawings.

Part of me is really turned off by these books, yet another part of me enjoys them. You cannot dismiss or ignore them, and that may be their greatest strength. You cannot be unaffected by them.

And now you can collect them.

One of the distinct pleasures of being a Studio Art major in college was simply browsing in the library. When I had a free afternoon, I would often sit down and leaf through the entire collection of illustration yearbooks, which covered American work as far back as the 1950s. I'm glad to have this book for a look at more recent work from another country. The styles represented run from the simple lines of HIRO-SHI and Iegamo's weird and whimsical cartoons, to the 3-D computer graphics of Hitoshi Miura and Kimiyuki Tsuji's shimmering waterlogged photography. My particular favorite is the hyperrealistic coelacanth courtesy of Susumu Uchida, but whichever way your tastes run, you're sure to find something interesting in this collection.

I was looking for another O'ekaki Sudoku book. This was not a puzzle book but a book of pictures. It was sent as a gift. So it was a disappointment.

The vast majority of work displayed in this book is generic and pedestrian advertising illustration. A lot of it almost looks like stock illustration. The book's description and the reviews posted here made the volume sound cool, but the reality was a let down.

I prefer the variety, quality, and relevance of work offered in the American Illustration annual or even The Spectrum annual.

this is the best collection of japanese illustrations ever! so much variety and so much to learn from.

Don't let the plain cover fool you, this book is filled with great artwork!

The art in this book runs the gamut of mediums, from simple pencil drawings to paintings to sculpture to photography to computer animated. Some art is very urban and manga-oriented, and some is very classic looking. A personal favorite of mine is Hiromitsu Yokota-his "blissful seasons" are absolutely gorgeous.

I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in art. It is a collection of Japanese artists, but the art goes far beyond the traditional "manga" style that I expected when I first opened it. This book is full of a huge variety of art styles and is a great survey of a large and unique group of artists.

Overall, just a great book full of great artwork!

If you do not have alot of time in your day and a basic understanding of Illustrator this is perfect. Each tip is just that a tip. Half page explanation, easy way to do things.

Unlike a lot of Illustrator books, this doesn't describe the full range of functionality or offer lesson plans. Instead, it's a compendium of hints and shortcuts, many of which are those niggling little things that you wish you knew how to do, but can never seem to find in the bigger, more complete books.

I've bookmarked a lot of these nifty items: how to align items using one item as the "keystone"; selecting an object "hidden" by another object; and how to get that @&#*!$ knife tool to cut in a straight line. And there are many timesaving techniques and shortcuts, such as averaging and joining two points in one step. Not earthshattering, but a nice way to speed things up so you can spend more time on creative work.

I guess "photoshop Junkie" must be an incredibly experienced Illustrator user to know all the tips in this book. I've used Illustrator for around 5 years and there were lots of tips that I didn't know. Okay, I probably could have found many of them by searching around in the Help Files, but why bother when they're right there in the book?
There were enough tips in there for me to say it was worth the money. Why not 5 stars? Some of the graphics were not the greatest (although that really didn't affect the tips I guess, so I'd give it 4.5 stars if I could)

I do not agree with the 5-star reviewers of this title. If you have used Adobe Illustrator for more than, oh say 15 minutes, you probably know more than this book will teach you, and anything else can be found out by using the pull-down menu system, or the Help button.

Okay, maybe not fifteen minutes, but there is nothing here, no "hidden" tips and tricks. And if the creative value of this title were to be measured from 1 to 10, it would rate a minus 6.

I hear Dave's doing another book for CS2; however, if it's like all the other Kelby-clone titles, it will just be a rehash of this book with a few screen shots from the new application.

Save your money on this title, and treat yourself to a nice dinner.

I bought this book based on the wonderful customer reviews and was very disappointed. Most of the items can be easily found by anyone exploring the menu bar or palette options. In my opinion such things don't qualify as "hidden secrets," as the cover claims.

I did find one tip that I use (a keyboard command to reset the horizontal scale of type to 100%). It saves me, oh, a minute a month or so. At that rate the book will pay for itself in five years!

I was very disappointed with this book. I bought it after reading a few reviews and recommendations from NAPP. It seems to me it isn't any much more than the manual revisited with a few extra details. I was hoping for some innovation and some interesting things that I might have stirred into my pot of knowledge, but I found I was reading a lot on basic tool function. It's a manual at best. It is too text bookie, and too long and drawn out over simple things. I got to about the 18th chapter, and put it down. I don't think there is anything that I'd use. I feel sorry that the message is so down as the things that I've read are accurate in the book. I just don't feel the investment came out to be worth it very well.

The blurb on the back cover claims this will be "the only Photoshop 7 book you need." In truth, it is probably the one book on Photoshop 7 you will never need.

It is superficial in every aspect. For example, it devotes less than a page of text to working with Quick Masks and not much more to the Extract function. Adjustment Layers get three paragraphs.

This is the second utterly disappointing book I've seen which is highly lauded by Scott Kelby, President, National Association of Photoshop Professionals. Kelby's turned out several useful collections of Photoshop tips, but his recommendations make me dubious of him and his association.

Overall, Using Adobe Photoshop 7 is useless.

Jerry

I'm a web designer, Illustrator teacher, author of beginner level Illustrator books, and quasi-graphic artist. This is my favorite Illustrator book - except for mine:).

When I reviewed the version 9 edition of this book, I noted that while somtimes Que's Special Edition Using series tends be too encyclopedic, you NEED an encyclopedic reference for Illustrator. Nobody is going to explore every feature, effect, and tool, so professional designers and teachers need an accurate and complete a-z guide handy.

I've got a half dozen books, but after repeated comparisson, I find I pull SE Using AI 10 off my shelf much more than any other guide to Illustrator. The basic value of this book lies in the clear explanations of any feature you need to look up.

The artwork in the book is still utilitarian - clearly demonstrating features, but not providing much in the way of creative spark. And the the 4-color gallery section doesn't add much in my opinion - especially without any annotation. But so what? This is a reference book for experts, not a design book or a hybrid of the two.

My main beef with this edition is the frustratingly bad layout of the index. A book like this needs a comprehensive and comprehensable index. This index is complete, but whoever decided to save a couple bucks by cramming the content into 3 columns, and not putting headings (as opposed to the many subheadings and long lists of sub-sub headings) in boldface made the book nearly unusable. Hopefully we'll see a much better index layout in the next edition.

While the coverage of Illustrator is complete, Special Edition Using Adobe Illustrator X is most suited for the graphics professional who has at least some working knowledge of the software. In the course of covering Illustrator, Peter Bauer will draw special attention to new features including: Full Mac OS X coverage; new drawing capabilities: grids, lines, arcs, compound-shape enhancements, Flare tool; Enhanced Web features: symbols, slicing, dynamic data-driven graphics, enhanced Flash and SVG support; improved effects: warping and envelope distortion, Liquify tools; and increased productivity: new Magic Wand selection tool, dynamic data-driven graphics, improved interoperability with other Adobe products, asset management, scripting. Special Edition Using Illustrator X also has several appendices that serve as a quick guide to all of Illustrator's tools, palettes, and menus. User Level: Intermediate - Advanced, 784 pages.

Adobe Photoshop is simply the best image-editing software currently available and is the choice of preference for millions of graphic artists worldwide. Its breadth of features and raw power to manipulate any type of image has made it the recognized standard. New graphic artists need to learn Photoshop, while established professionals need to keep their skill sets current with every new revision. Collaboratively written by Adopbe Photoshop experts Peter Bauer and Jeff Foster, Special Edition Using Adobe Photoshop 7 includes all the new features of Photoshop 7 including: Macintosh OS X compliances (native mode and carbonized); an integrated image management system; an improved painting engine for both PC and Mac versions; a more advanced web workflow capability; and added editing features. User Level: Intermediate-to-Advanced, 1008 pages.

Back to the future for Stormwatch. A complete change of pace, with an all human team of highly skilled military types, and one expert computer genius putting a team together to police superhumans.

In general these are humans, and one superhuman that is no longer allowed in his native devastated Finland. The idea is to avoid US interference.

Colonel Ben Santini is obviously a student of Machiavelli, with a bit of a chip on his shoulder.

This is excellent. If you like The Authority, etc., this should be right up your alley.

With the combination of great art and a good concept to it's credit, I would recommend this trade to anyone interested in comic SPBs(super powered beings). Yes... great art; contrary to what some think. Portacio does a superb job here--terrific background details; his rendering of human figures is for the most part very interesting. He did a super job inking and the colors are boss. Over the top on the musculature in a few scenes? Maybe. So do just about all comics of late. I look at it this way. If I was baseline human and stupid enough to tangle in melee combat with SPBs, I would do anything in my power(steroids, whatever) to even the odds. Since these fellas don't seem to care about legalities--go for it. In some instances, Portacio does stretch artistic license a tad in those figure poses and facial expressions; but mostly he succeeds admirably, and the characters move true-to-life in the rest of the comic. Too many look-alike characters? Yeah, but that's not his fault. Too many dark haired males. No spandex to tell them apart. Later pencilers in the series had the same problem. What brings this trade down to four stars is the writing--dialogue is OK for a comic but nothing to write home about. There are multiple tech errors. The sniper rifle is known as M82A1; it's bullet is nowhere near as big as any ketchup bottle I know of; fuel-air explosions don't really work that way, etc, etc. The premise about normal humans taking on rogue super-humans is a very good concept and a big plus. Although the idea that the team would be able to easily defeat SPBs so easily--that stretches it. So, overall, a very good paperback; better, IMO, than the other volumes; in part because the art in this issue is superior to that of the others.

This was not what i was expecting. Not Portacio's best work and the writing was not enough to keep me where the art lacked.

I read this comic because of its premise: a team of ordinary military people whose job it is to bring down out-of-control superhero types. It was a great read. The art, however, was lacking--too many over-muscled, steroid-pumped characters with not-so-well drawn faces. It reminded me of why I hated the Image comics of the 1990s. Because this book was so well written, I was able to plow through the lackluster art.

The good thing about volume 2 is that you get an infusion of new artists who give Team Achilles a dramatic improvement in the art.

STORMWATCH: TEAM ACHILLES, Volume 1, is yet another entry in the modern Wildstorm Universe. While I have enjoyed the adventures of the Authority, Planetary, WildCATs, and Sleeper, STA has hit a sour note with me. The writing is fine, but the book takes two steps back towards its Image Comics roots due to the utterly incomprehensible art of Whilce Portacio.

The revamped Stormwatch is a sort of counter-Authority, standing up for humanity in the face of an increasing number of super-beings. Great concept! But then you open this book and are confronted with non-proportional bodies, awkward stances, gratuitous defining lines, deformed physiques: in short, everything that was the dark days of Image art! Portacio puts far too much effort into defining every single muscle and vein on these angular characters, to the point that they look emaciated. There is simply too much pointless detail and not enough technical know-how in these panels. Also, the art does not help the reader to understand what is happening in the story, as there is no planning of layouts, and many characters look exactly alike. For example, THREE team members with dark hair and goatees. Another character is supposedly scarred over their entire body, but as every character is overdrawn and covered with cross-hatching, who can tell? While this might be acceptable in a team book full of ciphers, writer Micah Ian Wright provides us with a team roster of distinct characters with their own personalities. So how about a little variety in the art department? Thankfully, Wright's writing is strong enough to eventually claw its way out of this mess and provide us with a good story.

So aside from the art, this is an entertaining book. Stormwatch: Team Achilles is out to make sure that those super-brats don't get too big for their britches, and they deliver. They even manage to take out the Authority out of commission for a bit, and that says a lot. Check this out, and root for the little guy.