Stereo Comics   +  si spurrier

meandering opinion piece that doesn't really go anywhere

Look's like a lot of my favourite artists among the current crop of talent from 2000AD are getting gigs at Marvel - Andrew Currie is drawing the upcoming WONDER MAN mini; Laurence Campbell is drawing a WOLVERINE christmas special; and the great Kev Walker's NOVA mini-series has recently drawn to a close as I write (though Biff is yet to furnish me with a copy). The only problem is that none of these are exactly high profile breakout jobs that'll be seen by anyone other than hardcore Marvel zombies. Walker's getting regular employment at Marvel, but his work has been hidden is strange places: a short arc at obscure X-book EXILES, Chuck Austen's foul THE ETERNAL mini, then this tie-in to Marvel's other crossover. Not CIVIL WAR, mind - the other one, the one no-one's reading.

Campbell, in particular, has came on by leaps and bounds in the last year or two, his style maturing and growing bolder, to the point where his work recently did the impossible - made me enjoy a couple of Simon Spurrier-penned Dredds with his contrast heavy, Jean Paul Leonish work. All of these guys have been around for quite a while: Walker since the eighties; Campbell and Currie got their first jobs in comics in at least the mid-nineties, and Currie was Bryan Hitch's inker for a while on THE ULTIMATES. I've commented before on his Kyle Bakeresque powers as a caricaturist. That's his cover to the first issue of WONDERMAN: MY FAIR SUPERVILLAIN to the left. The guy has a way with facial expressions.