Patton by Robert Crumb

R. Crumb is famous for being a controversial, eccentric artist who likes to ride the calves of women with big butts and thighs but he is also an amazing draftsman with a beautiful sensitivity

Jack Cole’s True Crime Comics

Mr. Monster's True Crime no. 2 (Mr. Monster's Super-Duper Special no. 4) Nov 1986

Jack Cole was a master craftsman. He was a triple threat of writer, artist, and letterer whose work was as good as any of his Golden Age contemporaries like Will Eisner and Jack Kirby. 

Girl Stories By Lauren R. Weinstein

 Moving young teen stories for all ages!

I had bought Girl Stories because I saw some excerpts of it in various anthologies and really liked what I saw. Lauren R. Weinstein’s art has a wonderful naive quality that looks like a kid drew it.

The Great Comic Book Heroes, Golden Age goodness! Edited by Jules Feiffer

When I was an impressionable kid, I would spend hours pouring over the books at my local library. One book in particular I would come back to again and again and again. It was The Great Comic Book Heroes edited by Jules Feiffer.

The Great Comic Book Heroes was a distillation of the dawn of the superhero comics in the early 1940’s.

Highly Contrasting artists; Steranko; Miller; Sales; Snejbjerg; Risso

My mind has the habit of putting order and classifying everything that it sees.This is true of comic artists and comic styles as well. One style I've recently been thinking about is the high contrast style.

It can be argued that Steranko started this whole style off with his later Film Noir style that he used in his book, Red Tide.

Jim Steranko from Chandler: Red Tide (1976)

Art Spiegelman's Deconstructing comics (NSFW)

I love comics that deconstruct the comics form.

The cover of the 1977 edition of Breakdowns. There are three more pages to go with this one showing the infinite combinations of this image.

For example in Art "Maus" Spiegelman's "Breakdowns" he explores what goes into making the very cover image by breaking down the printed image into it's individual parts and recombining them in a multitude of ways.The first image is the "normal" image. The next image is only the yellow and blue plates printed; then blue and red and so on until he starts to really mix things up with printing the "blue" plate yellow and black plate red. It makes for a surprisingly fascinating picture that I end up spending a lot of time just studying.

Starman vs. the Mist From Adventure Comics #67 (Oct. 1941)

I had a dream once where I was dressed up in a strange and colorful costume and flying through a cave with the help of a rod that I carried. The cave felt strangely warm as if I was in a very comforting and dark place like I was back in my mother's womb. Suddenly these giant bat-like creatures came out of a pit and started to attack me. I quickly shot a ray out of my rod to repel these hideous beasts.

I flew on further into the cave system seeing where they would take me. Then, out of nowhere, I was struck to the ground by an invisible force. I shined the light from my rod on it only to discover that it was an invisible man with only the hideous old head showing. “Who is this old man and why does he want to hurt me?” I thought. “I am your past trying to do away with you before I myself disappear forever into the abyss of time.”

It was a strange dream that left a strong impression. Then suddenly it struck me, it probably came from the comic I had read last night!