More pieces added to my Comic Art gallery!<\/p>\n
You know how much I love The Authority<\/i>, right? The series was to comics what summer blockbusters are to Hollywood – filled with over-the-top action sequences, superheroes facing apocalyptic, planet-threatening problems and dealing with them the simplest way possible – maximum violence. You might argue that the premise of such a series has as much substance as a Michael Bay film, but therein lies the difference. The writers in the first 29-issue run of The Authority<\/i> were Warren Ellis and Mark Millar, two writers who know how to use comicbook ( I nearly said ‘cinematic’ just now) violence to maximum effect, AND write a worthy cerebral story. The first twelve issues that Ellis wrote were illustrated by Bryan Hitch and Paul Neary. Millar took over on issue 13, after a major change in the status quo, and along with Frank Quitely, Gary Erskine, Chris Weston and Art Adams, set to make his run a worthy successor to Ellis’s.<\/p>\n
Enough with the blabber already. Those of you following my art collection avidly know that my Quitely Authority page kickstarted Mark two of my collecting phase, the phase where I spiralled downward towards complete art addiction. Recently I got my hands on a Bryan Hitch Authority page<\/a>, from issue 11, a page that features the whole team. Love it! Then there is a Gary Erskine page<\/a> from the last issue of the run, #29, which features Angie, the character we know as The Engineer brought back to take her rightful place in the team.<\/p>\n I picked up a page inked by Gary Erskine, over Chris Weston’s pencils<\/a>. The series is called The Filth<\/i>, and it’s one of Grant Morrison’s most convoluted storylines. Chris Weston is a highly-underrated British artist whose eye for detail and realistic penmanship brings to mind the works of Brian Bolland. The page features the first appearance of Dimitri, who is a talking chimpanzee, and an assassin, and a staunch communist to boot. Dimitri, needless to say, is a character whose coolness levels will make you weep. There was also a splash page from the second volume of Invisibles<\/a>, also by Grant Morrison and Chris Weston, that I added to my gallery. I love Weston’s work more and more everytime I see his blog<\/a>. He’s currently doing a series called The Twelve<\/i>, which I will pick up once it’s complete.<\/p>\n There’s also a Starman page<\/a> by Gene Ha, one of those classic pages from a classic story that lands in your lap when you’re least expecting it. It’s a piece I had been eyeing for the better part of a year, and suddenly was put for sale at nearly half its original offer price. Needless to say, I jumped on it faster than you can say “bundolo!”.<\/p>\n There’s also a neat Warrior woman pinup<\/a> by Ernie Chan, that I picked up last year at Super-con, and got around to scanning just a couple of weeks ago. Three<\/a> sequential<\/a> Daredevil<\/a> pages by the wonderful Gene Colan, again picked up sometime back, but these took quite some time to wend their way to India.<\/p>\n