Cartooning Books

Walter Simonson is one of the best and most dynamic designers in the business. This is a great overview of his career, with insights into, well, how he does it! Packed with great art! Buy it or miss out!

When I think about the nearly 45 year history of Thor, only three artists come to mind: Jack Kirby, John Buscema, and Walt Simonson. They not only had among the longest runs on the title but also the most noteworthy. Kirby guided it from the beginning and through the Silver Age. Buscema picked up the baton and guided it into the Bronze Age of the 1970's including the classic Thor #193. Simonson then brought Thor into the Modern age and embraced its Norse mythology with a magnificent run that began with Thor #337. The Thunder God could sure use any of their talents today!

Walt Simonson is the subject of volume eight TwoMorrows Publishing's Modern Masters series and is a most worthy choice. If I had one word to describe Simonson's style it would be epic. Very few artists have the ability to make almost everything they do seem monumental...there's Kirby at his peak, Perez, Adams, a few others, and Simonson.

The book is essentially a long (90 plus pages!) interview with Simonson that traces his career from the beginning to the present day, complement with scores of Walt's art. He talks about his first big break in comics with DC working with the late Archie Goodwin on Manuhunter, a back-up feature in Detective Comics. That short run won over not only many fans, but many of his peers as well. Often forgotten, Simonson actually had a shorter run on Thor as artist only for about ten issues in 1977, some six year before his famous stint that began in 1983.

Simonson had been a big fan of Thor himself since college and as both writer and artist, it gave him the opportunity to use ideas that he had come up with nearly twenty years older, and developed a dynamic mythology for the Thunder God and the realm of Asgard. Simonson discusses the concept of Beta Ray Bill and exactly why he designed him to look the way he did. Fascinating Stuff! Walt also fills readers in on the hilarious Thor frog story, influenced by no less than longtime Disney artist Carl Barks.

After leaving Thor, Walt would move on to X-Factor that was being written by his wife Louise. The pair enjoyed a run of almost three years on the title which would feature the revamping of Angel into Archangel and the death of Madelyne Pryor.

We can all be happy that Simonson, approaching his 60th birthday, continues to be very active in the comic book field. He brings an element of majesty to everything he does. Besides being a great artist, Simonson is also a great storyteller, a skill sadly lacking among many of today's artists. The book concludes with a 28 page Simonson art gallery featuring both finished pieces as well as sketches. This latest edition of Modern Masters shows why Simonson is one of the all-time greats!

Reviewed by Tim Janson

I love every one of the "My Very Favorite Art Books". I have some as featured books in my classroom and my students love to look at them and practice the drawing techniques in their free time. These books are wonderful!

All of the "I love to..." books are fabulous. Buy them all! You wont be disappointed!

This book is easy to use and is very informative. It provides simple, yet insightful guidelines for looking at a variety of works. It also provides some creative activities to further the learning process. We have tried most of the suggested activities and found them to be both fun and challenging with fine results from within the suggested age range. An excellent investment for both rainy days and summer fun.

Sometimes it seems as if there is never enough time for enrichment activities at school like art. I checked this book out from my local library hoping to find some inspiration for making some new art projects and later purchased it for my classroom. Since my elementary classroom has students with very disparate levels of English language ability, I needed a book that was written clearly enough to not discourage my ESL (English as a Second Language) students and yet not so simple that my more advanced English speakers would think of it as a "baby book."

This book was exactly what I needed with clear concise language and an abundance of beautiful color paintings and illustrations. There were also "look closer" sections for each topic, which gave useful prompts and questions to encourage further exploration by students. Suggested activities were also tremendously useful in translating learning about art into projects that my students could enjoy. Difficult words were also printed in bold so as to make vocabulary review easier for students. We ended up making a Van Gogh "The Starry Night" project and learned about foreground and background as well as color and light. The children loved it and that says a lot for often-difficult-to-please sixth graders.

I highly recommend this book as an introduction to art for third through sixth graders.

Review by: Maximillian Ben Hanan

fly i love your book. i wrote a prior review and don't see it anymore so i'll
start over. fly draws local people on the lower east side of nyc some who i know
some i don't and other's that live in other places. around her drawing she writes
what each person wants to talk about. its a really cool idea and underneath
the words and drawings is a description of who the person is and how fly
met them. i'm looking forward to a peops 2. keep at it fly love your work

Fly has made a beautiful tribute to her outside-the-mainstream East Village friends and neighbors. Completely compelling and bears infinite rereads. This is a real slice o' New York living. I learned a lot about people I've wondered about for years.

Ed Lordan captures many insights into political humor which are applicable to modern everday life. For example, in the preface alone, I learned Julius Caesar maintained an "Enemy List" (p. x, upper middle cartoon). I have been on such a list, and it is also seemingly carved in stone. Ironically, my list maker and local demagogue publicly advocates the strategies of Julius Caesar. Now if I only knew when Brutus will be making his appearance!

This broad compilation provides a nuanced and fascinating perspective on this important genre of political analysis . Anyone who follows politics will love this book!

It is 8x10 glossy air brush works of the artist. A good bit of it is women/fantasy women, which is the reason my husband/artist purchased it, but it also includes some of his advertisement art, which is very good. A lot of steel & chrome. It includes his short biography & a behind the scenes of his sketches. Excellant book

I look it as this, he is showcasing his talents. His diverse choice of material and textures, was a challenge to himself. He demanded much of himself, and to us he delivers! A fun, exciting joyride, causing you to pause and imagine the life, he so closely brings to you with his paintings. -Kevin

Nate Powell creates some of the most incredible comics I've ever encountered. The visual style shifts almost as quickly as the teenaged characters' moods, but never becomes random or incoherent. Some lines flow like Jules Feiffer's scrawl, others jolt down the page in angular tracks that remind me of Sam Keith. Some pages feel light and breezy; other times, broad, dense blacks make even night air feel as dense as a tombstone.

A comic really stands on its writing, though, no matter how good the art is. Powell presents some of the finest comic writing around. The scripts bring to life the trials and occasional small triumphs of life as a teen or an adult just starting out. That time of life often rides on emotion rather than reason. He renders that whirl and confusion accurately, something that linear plotting and familiar visual angles just can't do. If graphic novels correspond to literary prose, then Powell's work comes closer to poetry in many ways.

Written reviews have no way to capture the look of this book, and its feel simlpy has to be experienced first-hand. Powell became one of my favorite comic artists the moment I first saw his work. This volume cements his reputation as one of the finest creators working today.

-- wiredweird

PS: This volume includes "It Disappears," which has been published as separately.

Sounds of your Name is a graphic novel anthology of black-and-white zine and comic stories by punk band player Nate Powell. Featuring dark, gritty artwork, dialogue that turns on a dime from casual to deadly serious, and sequences that are likewise drift from day-in-the-life to tense to shockingly explosive, the stories in Sounds of Your Name captivate with underground fervor. From the hard life of an alley cat who longs for the comforts of domesticity, to the simultaneously grim and spiritual insights of a war veteran, to the rites of passage from childhood to adulthood, Sounds of Your Name is undeniably a "thinking man's comic" from cover to cover. An avant-garde collection especially recommended for anyone interested in taking the pulse of the underground comix scene.

The latest version of Hyperion's popular book, "The Art of Animation," will soon be available in bookstores. Bob Thomas, the author who wrote the original "Art of Animation" back in 1958, has merged the existing versions of his book with previously unpublished interviews with Walt Disney and new material from Disney's upcoming "Hercules" to create a chronicle of Disney animation that is bigger and better than ever.

The new edition of Thomas's book is entitled "Disney's Art of Animation: From Mickey Mouse to Hercules." Whether or not you own an earlier version of the work, the Disney fan in you will find this new book interesting and worthwhile.

As in the past, "Art of Animation" is split into two parts. The first half is dubbed "History of a New Art," and its nine chapters recount the history of animation, particularly the pioneering work of Walt Disney and his studio. The second portion of the book is called "The Making of Hercules," a

It's some kind of sin that a hack like Todd MacFarlane can afford things like multi-million dollar baseballs on an empire based on his comic work when there are artists out there like Seth. MacFarlane's work is like a Harlequin novel, and Seth's is like Romeo and Juliet. There's art in every line, every detail, instead of being a force for sheer commericialism. Do yourself a favour: instead of picking up whatever garbage MacFarlane is peddling, go buy this book and Seth's trade, "It's A Good Life, If You Don't Weaken".

One of the most beautiful books published in recent memory.
Even before opening the book, one sees that a great deal of care was taken in the printing of this book, the embossed cover, design, etc., ...and that's just the outside. Inside is page after page of drawings and paintings of innumerable subjects, seeming to defy any categorizing. An admirer of Seth's comic art may yet be surprised by his depth and skill as an artist outside of the comic realm. His mastery of the line is rivalled by his use of color and light. He writes that the book is composed of pages from his sketchbooks, things that he created for his own pleasure. And after poring over the book, one gets a sense that there is something personal in the subject matter, that indeed they are things that he drew for his enjoyment. Lucky for us, we get to enjoy it too.

I loved the artwork and descriptions of the animation process. (The display of the art is organized to also help explain the process.) Also "behind the scenes" recollections of how the movie was made as well as a discussion on how to conserve, and prepare for sale, animation artwork. This can be equally appreciated by those with serious or casual interest in animation art.

This book offers a clear and concise introduction to the development of Walt Disney's first full-length animated feature. The book's use of stills, roughs, and concept art vividly illustrate much of the "magic" that goes into making an animated film. Not only that, but the book's incorporation of technical details provides enough "insider information" to appeal to those wanting to know more about the how of animation. In fact, I used the book's section on the multiplane camera to introduce the invention's importance to an introductory class in animation. It worked wonders!

Also nicely developed in the book is how Snow White set the production and narrative standards for the Disney's subsequent films. It's nice to see a coffee table book with substance!