Not Quite THAT In Love With It...

Over the weekend, inspired by seeing the movie last week with Scott, I picked up a volume reprinting the entire run of the old Marvel John Carter of Mars series.
Some of the issues feature pencils by the legendary Gil Kane, with inks by Ruby Nebres. It is - especially in the black and white format -  stunningly gorgeous work:

Love it.

Admittedly, it suffers a little from the shortcomings of the printing technology and paper stock of the 1970s, but even so, I have to say that I love it.
Now, I don't love it so much that I'd marry it. I mean, if we were talking about the beautiful results of a well-suited penciller and inker team that I would marry, we'd have to be talking about John Byrne and Terry Austin, or, if their art wouldn't have me, George Perez and Jerry Ordway.
But I have to say there's a good chance that I could, if I were in a relationship with pencil and ink art, be tempted to cheat with the art of Kane and Nebres...

Now With Visual Aids!

As you may have noticed, I've decided to start including a little more in the way of visual aids in my posts. I'll be doing this whenever it's appropriate (read: when I bloody well feel like it).
I figure it's a good way to break up the sometimes dense nature of my posts.
Sometimes, as in this case (well, except for this introduction), the visual aid will itself be the entire post.


Note: On his absolute worst day - even when he's having his absolute worst day and is being inked by Nelson - John Byrne is a greater artist than I could ever hope to be, and despite this affectionate jab at some of his idiosyncrasies, I view him as a bona fide master of the comic form who has earned his place in the pantheon of the Comic Gods. Also, I believe he is aware of his tendency to do this sort of thing and has even poked fun at himself for doing it.

Come Back!

Usually people come here seeking things that I can't - or, let's be honest, in many cases won't - provide them with.
So it's rare that someone comes here looking for something that I can provide, and when I can, I like to oblige.
Such is the case of the person who came here earlier on the search string "dark phoenix saga sienkiewicz painting."
I believe you were looking for this, and I hope you come back and see that it's here:



Sorry that the image is a little rough (I did scan it in at a high resolution, if that's any consolation), but the source images is pretty old, and I wasn't too inclined to work on cleaning it up after scanning because I wanted to post it quickly.
I got the trade paperback that this image is the cover for in the autumn of 1985. It had the worst binding that I've ever encountered. The pages began falling out while I was reading it for the very first time.
Since that time, it has totally fallen apart, but I've held on to it because...well, for a lot of reasons.
As much as I rag on Chris Claremont for his idiosnycratic and often hacky writing, when he's on, he's on, and in the Dark Phoenxi Saga he was on.
His best work, by far.
Add to that the beautiful pencils of John Byrne at the top of his game (working with the perfect John Byrne inker Terry Austin), and you have something worth holding onto even after it all falls apart.
(Oh, and the Bill Sienkiwicz cover is nothing to sneeze at either)
Anyway, mysterious seeker of dark phoenix saga sienkiewicz painting, I hope you'll come back if you haven't found what you were looking for elsewhere.