Tony Salmons; My favorite artists, part 1!

I’m sure everyone remembers, or at least can understand, the impact that Alex Ross’ art had on them the first time they set eyes on it. And for some the same can be said for Bill Sienkiewicz or Art Adams or (put favorite artist name here). Well for me Tony Salmons was like that. I first saw his work on Marvel fanfare #19, on a Cloak and Dagger story written by Bill Mantlo.

When I bought the issue I thought the artwork looked a little quirky, almost unprofessional, and I even wondered why they hired him to do the job. But then I started to read the story. That’s when I began to notice little things about it that really got my attention! Within these rather loose lines and scribbles there was some really fascinating little details; a face depicted a little more realistically than the rest of the figures;

A play with contrasting light and dark, creating interesting shapes in the negative space; 

A beautifully designed page layout.

His scratchy inking style is really cool and Glynis Wein's moody colors don't hurt none either! After reading the story I turned back to the cover. What at first seemed like a poorly rendered picture now seemed like an inspired piece of art wonderfully illustrating the contrast between Cloaks darkness and Daggers radiance. 

The more I looked, the more I got excited about this guy. “This guy has an interesting vision!” I thought. “Who is he?” “Has he done anything else?” and more important, “Will he be doing more work for them?”

I checked out the inside front cover, the Editori-Al, as Al Milgrom jokingly liked to call his editorial page.

So it seems that Tony may have been a perfectionist, not satisfied with his work, taking the pages back to redo certain panels.

Later I discovered that Marvel Fanfare did indeed publish more work of his. He did a Hulk backup feature in #17 written by David Anthony Craft, and a Daredevil story entitled “Cars” in #22 also written by Bill Mantlo. But that is a post that will have to wait for another time.

http://www.tonysalmons.net/

Check out his amazing Murky Waters here.

Here is another great story by him.