SwanShadow Thinks Out Loud

By tradition here at SSTOL, we spend our last Friday or two every year looking back fondly at the best comic art commissions to enter my collection during the previous 12 months. Since, due to extenuating circumstances (in case you’re out of the loop, my wife has been hospitalized since December 9 — needless to say, I’ve had other priorities), we’re down to our final Comic Art Friday, I’ve decided to switch things up a bit.

We’re going to take the entire last week of the year to celebrate our Best of Comic Art Fridays. Each day between now and New Year’s Eve, we’ll display two artworks that added new dimensions of quality to Uncle Swan’s gallery in 2009.

So let’s get after it.

My primary theme collection, Common Elements, expanded by 14 pieces this year. (Technically, it’s 15 pieces, as I recently received a scan of a new Common Elements creation by former Valiant Comics stalwart Mike Leeke. Due to the lateness of the hour, we’ll count that one as the first pickup of the Teens Decade.)

Favorite Common Elements Commission, Heroes Division:
“We Stand On Guard For Thee”
Pencils by Dave Ross

Canadian artist Dave Ross flies his Maple Leaf banner high with this striking page starring two of the Great White North’s best-loved crimebusters, Wolverine and Captain Canuck.

Favorite Common Elements Commission, Heroines Division:
“Garden of Unearthly Delights”
Pencils and inks by Tony DeZuniga

An artist’s artist if ever there was one, Tony DeZuniga entrances the senses with the floral-themed duo of Poison Ivy and the Black Orchid — the latter of whom Tony co-created.

Tomorrow, we’ll check out two more examples of Common Elements spectacle. Be here then, won’t you?

And that’s your first chapter of Comic Art Year-End, 2009.

This entry was posted on December 25, 2009 at 5:55 pm and is filed under Comic Art Friday. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site.