Wednesday, November 20, 2024

30 days of comics I love #20: So much for subtlety!


Epic #4 
By Martin Edmond (and others, I suppose) 

It's in weird little series like this one - a four-part prestige format comic from Marvel's Epic line, largely published to bring more attention to the more regular Stalkers, Wild Cars and Nightbreed series that they were putting out - that you find real comics treasure.

I'm a massive, massive fan of the late, great Martin Emond, a kiwi cartoonist who did remarkable things with pencil, paint and tattoo ink in his short life, and I thought I knew of all the comics he had drawn, but I can still find a few precious pages lurking in this reject from the dollar bins.

Even better, it's Emond's take on Clive Barker's Nightbreed, and this short example shows that Emond was born to draw these wonderful freaks. Look at what he does with this spider hybrid lurking in the back of a pickup truck - 



- or the incredible way he draws Craig Sheffer's Boone in all his Cabal glory - 


or even just the wiry rednecks who have the misfortune to run into the Nightbreed crew - 


Even a tragically short artistic career can produce gorgeous comics hiding in the most mundane of places, and I know I'm never going to stop looking for them, especially when I see those bug eyes of doom staring back at me.

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