Coming around to the softer delights of John Bolton

Tastes in comic art can radically change with age, and I didn't really appreciate the highly stylised work of Jack Kirby and Mick McMahon until I was all grown up. 

This was usually just a matter of maturing taste, but I have come to love some artists that I didn't like when I was younger because of the way I was introduced to their work, like John Bolton's art on the back-ups in the Classic X-Men comics in the late 80s. 

These short stories - which filled in some background details of prime X-Men continuity-  were usually written by Claremont and featured a tonne of Bolton's art, which was a subtler line than the usual x-fare, and certainly far less dynamic line than the Cockrum/Byrne/Austin art that filled the classic parts of the comic.

He was obviously a great artist, terrific with mood, (which was good because most of those X-Men back-ups were moody as hell). But the action always felt a little stiff, and none of the characters ever really looked cool in that way that 12-year-old nerds demand. Wolverine usually just look like a sad little dork in Bolton's hands (except for that one story where he is hunted in the snow).

So I never really gave much attention to Bolton's comics, and more fool me, because his painted work outside the worlds of superheroes and his tights is genuinely stunning. His art on horror and fantasy comics is gorgeous, reaching photo-realistic heights that are still clearly his own style. 

Check out his Black Dragon (with x-collaborator Chris Claremont), or the unexpectedly wonderful Evil Dead comics he has done. Or his work with Clive Barker - The Yattering and Jack adaption is truly brilliant, especially when it's all confined to a boring suburban home. Even a forgotten Vertigo mini series like Gifts of the Night offer innumerable examples of his work at his finest. 

While he has largely stayed away from superhero comics since Classic X-Men ditched the back-up stories, he shines when he does things with the Man-Bat or the Joker. His artwork in Alien comics is breathtaking - there is an exactness to it all, even with the fuzz of the paint.

Neil Gaiman also made a film about him once, but we won't hold that against him.

You can find a lot of his ridiculously beautiful work at his website here, but it can also be found lurking in bins of cheap comics throughout the world, and they are always worth picking up. I'm still stumbling across some of the earlier work he did for the Hammer horror comic magazines that a young Marvel UK put out in the 70s, and it's even had me going back to those x-stories. It's not the fully painted brilliance of his other work, but there are charms to be found, even in a dorky Wolverine.