SwanShadow Thinks Out Loud

Although I collect original comic art exclusively — and that within a fairly specific range — I appreciate many different styles and genres of art.

Since the days when I struggled through an introductory fine arts course in college, I’ve enjoyed master painters and their work. Among the immortals whose creations resonate with me: Titian (his Venus of Urbino is probably my favorite painting of all time), Giorgione, Veronese, Rubens, Vermeer, Renoir, Boucher, Frederic Leighton, Tissot, Albert Joseph Moore… well, there are others, but my typing finger cramped. I’m also a fan of great pinup artists, from Gil Elvgren and Alberto Vargas to Olivia De Berardinis and Dave Stevens. I even love gawking at unusual architecture — anything from Frank Lloyd Wright to Antonio Gaudi to the Las Vegas Strip.

The one artist outside the comics realm whose work I always carry with me is Alphonse Mucha, the Czech painter and printmaker whose distinctive style defined what came to be called Art Nouveau. Mucha first came to fame in the 1890s when he created a series of advertising posters featuring actress Sarah Bernhardt, who was to 19th century Paris what Meryl Streep is to modern Hollywood. Mucha’s unparalleled design sensibility inspired a host of homages and imitations. Even today, more than 70 years after his death, artists are still trying to recreate the Mucha magic.

I have an app on my iPhone that displays Mucha’s complete works at the tap of a finger. I tap often.

Earlier this year at Big Wow ComicFest, the Pirate Queen and I stopped by the booth of a Canadian cartoonist named Sanya Anwar. (People often are taken aback by the word “cartoonist,” thinking it refers only to those who draw humorous strips or panels. In fact, a cartoonist is simply a comics creator who both writes and draws. The term is equally applicable to such diverse talents as Charles Schulz, Will Eisner, Charles Addams, Jack Kirby, Art Spiegelman, and the aforementioned Dave Stevens.) Sanya’s signature project is a self-published comic entitled 1001, a reimagined twist on the classic Arabian Nights.

I was particularly impressed with a series of posters Sanya created using an Art Nouveau approach reminiscent of Mucha. I took her business card and made a mental note to contact her about a commission. Fast forward to today, and you see the result above.

Isis seemed like a perfect choice for Sanya’s commission project, given her visual and cultural sensibility. Also, since I so admired Sanya’s Muchaesque “Silk Road” posters, I asked her to create a piece with a similar flavor. The combination of character, artist, and style melded perfectly.

Comics and Art Nouveau are like a graphical Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup: Two great tastes that taste great together.

And that’s your Comic Art Friday.

Followers of this space know my fondness for vintage superheroines. In fact, I’ve devoted an entire themed commission series, Bombshells!, to female costumed stalwarts who made their comics debuts before I was born.

Among my favorite characters from the Golden Age is the original Black Cat, who first appeared in Harvey Publishing’s Pocket Comics #1 in August 1941. (That was a fertile month for superheroines, incidentally. Such legendary figures as Phantom Lady, Pat Patriot, Miss Victory, and Wildfire also stepped onto the scene in books bearing the August ’41 date.) I say “original” because this character bears no relation — aside from code names — to the Black Cat more familiar to comics readers today: Felicia Hardy, the more-or-less-reformed ex-criminal who has alternately bewitched and bedeviled Spider-Man for the past three decades.

Unlike Marvel’s feline fatale, the first Black Cat carried no bad-girl baggage. Linda Turner, a former Hollywood stuntwoman turned star box office attraction, donned a mask, gloves, buccaneer boots, and a bathing suit (you know… like you would) to battle crime, often from the seat of a motorcycle. The skills she’d developed as a stunt performer, including adeptness with a lariat (Westerns being far more popular then than now) and karate, frequently came in handy in her new sideline. Linda even had her own masculine version of Lois Lane in the person of Rick Horne, a reporter for the Los Angeles Globe who never made the connection that Linda, whom he dated in the later years of the series, and the Black Cat were the same woman. (Apparently, journalism schools in the comics multiverse place little emphasis on observational acuity.)

For most of the Cat’s career, which included five years as the lead feature in Speed Comics before segueing to her own eponymous title in 1946, her adventures were drawn by Lee Elias, a gifted artist who had once served as Milton (Terry and the Pirates) Caniff’s assistant. Ironically, Elias also worked for a time on DC Comics’ Black Canary, the most blatant of the numerous Black Cat imitations that popped up during the 1940s. In the 1960s and ’70s, after a brief sojourn into newspaper strips, Elias illustrated horror titles (House of Mystery, House of Secrets, Witching Hour) for DC, and later, drew Power Man and Iron Fist and The Human Fly for Marvel. He also did some amazing work on the science fiction adventure series The Rook for Warren Publishing, the folks who brought you Vampirella.

What made the Black Cat such a terrific heroine? Aside from the sleek and powerful art by Lee Elias, it was the character herself. Smart, talented, beautiful but tough, and resourceful, Linda was Bruce Wayne without the edginess and gimmickry, or the adolescent boy sidekick. (Actually, she had one of those for a while. His name was Black Kitten. Some stories are best left untold.) The Black Cat proved that a female comics superhero could be both entertaining and successful, paving the way for numerous other characters — including the more familiar Wonder Woman, who arrived on the scene several months after the Cat’s debut.

Today’s art, from the top: The Black Cat as Bombshell!, with pencils by Dan Veesenmeyer and inks by Bob Almond; Linda kicking a criminal to the curb, with pencils by James E. Lyle and inks once again by Almond; the Cat swings into action, courtesy of Gene Gonzales.

And that’s your Comic Art Friday.

The truth can now be told: I’ve never much liked Thor.

I actually think the concept of Thor — lightning-wielding proto-Viking with a flying hammer — is pretty awesome. The character himself? Not so much.

I want to like Thor. He’s a pillar of the Marvel Universe, an original Avenger, wears a wicked costume, and talks as though he wandered in from an improvisational Shakespeare road company. His adventures have been drawn by some of the greatest artists in comics history: Jack Kirby, John Buscema, Keith Pollard, and Walt Simonson, to name just a few. What’s not to like?

But from the dawn of my comics-reading days until now, Thor has always left me kind of cold.

For me, Thor doesn’t work very well as a superhero. A superhero is a rather narrowly specific kind of fantasy character, a creature of modern urban mythology. Thor, who’s more or less a port-over from ancient Norse legend given a comic book twist, feels awkwardly shoehorned into superherodom. He’s too powerful to waste his time beating up Earthbound bad guys — which, let’s be frank, is also one of the main problems with the prototypical superhero, Superman — and yet, that’s mainly what superheroes do. It’s no accident that Thor’s best storylines place him outside the terrestrial realm and give him a more cosmic scope. But since he’s not a true spacefaring quasi-science-fictional character, like, say, Adam Strange or the various Green Lanterns, that doesn’t suit Thor very well either. So, he kind of floats in between, neither fish nor fowl.

We see this problem play out in Joss Whedon’s Avengers movie. Of all the titular heroes, Thor’s by far the least interesting — and, despite his familial connection to the villain of the piece, the one whose presence adds the least to the story. Which is saying something, considering how brutally that film treats Hawkeye, a character for whom I have a fair amount of affection. At least Hawkeye’s narrative, clumsy as it is, has some semblance of an arc.

Thor’s supporting cast can be fun. I’ve always had a soft spot for the Warriors Three, the triumvirate of bickering adventurers who occasionally pal around with the big guy. And Thor’s half-brother Loki makes a decent villain, as his enjoyable appearances in the first Thor and Avengers films attest. There’s at least a modicum of potential in the whole Asgardian thing.

Just not for me, I guess.

To his credit, though, Thor does make for some appealing pictures.

At the top of this post is a Common Elements scenario pitting the Thunder God against another hammer-slinging hero, Steel. Penciler Trevor Von Eeden said that he wanted to comment on the relative merits of the two characters. I believe it’s clear whom Trevor favors in this duel. Veteran inker Joe Rubinstein contributed the finishes.

Next up, penciler Geof Isherwood and inker Bob Almond team up to present old Winghead in all his Mjolnir-gripping glory.

Lastly, Bob McLeod gives us a classic rendering of the Asgardian wunderkind.

Ah, Thor. I wish we could be better pals. Unfortunately, that would require you to be less lame. No Dr. Don Blake reference intended.

And that’s your Comic Art Friday.