Moebius and More: Comics as art

Dear Spring 2013 class,

This post was written during last year's spring semester originally, but I thought it might be interesting to you as well! Comics as art – maybe something easily relatable to you? As a comics fan myself, I see a lot of commonality between some of the best comic art and some work that contemporary artists are doing now. See what you think.

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I know lots of young people are into comics (or more specifically, Manga), and since we lost one of the masters of the medium last year — the French artist known as Moebius (LA Times obituary), I thought I'd have a look at comics as art and comics influencing art in this post.

You may not be familiar with his work, but you should definitely have a look. He made his mark not only in the comics world but also in film, having contributed artwork to such films as Tron, Alien, Willow, The Abyss, and The Fifth Element. He has influenced countless artists around the world.

Comics Alliance has a nice summary of his life's work and some beautiful examples to start with. There is also an excerpt from a program produced by the BBC about the artist.

"I wouldn't categorize him as a comic book artist – he is just a brilliant artist." —Stan Lee

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Along these same lines, I thought I would take this opportunity to share with you a few of my favorite comics artists. If you didn't know, there is more to comics than superheroes and Manga, and that's exactly the stuff that I am into. :)

Paul Pope has a gorgeous, painterly style ‐ a bit grungy and rock and roll. His influences include Japanese Manga artists of yore, and in fact got his start at a Japanese Manga house creating comics for the genre. He writes about some of them in his blog if you go back in the archives. I'm a big fan of his series THB, but he has also done a take on Batman for DC Comics as well.

Self Portrait

Monsieur Bandit has a studio visit, complete with video interview! Putting this post together was the first time I'd come across any video footage of Pope at all, so it was kind of a thrill for me to see this.

Another artist who I very much admire and can also be tied to Manga is Adrian Tomine (pronounced Toe-meen-uh), who is most known for his work on the indie comic series Optic Nerve. More recently, he was responsible for editing and designing several volumes of Japanese Manga artist Tatsumi Yoshihiro's work and bringing to US audiences.

Here's an interview with Tomine that gives a general overview of his career and his somewhat self-defeating attitude. ;)

Bythefirelight blog posted an interview between Tomine and Tatsumi (long, but worth watching!)

Though there are many others I could share with you, I will end this post with one last artist, French-Canadian Julie Doucet. Her style is quite different from the other artists I've mentioned so far — you may like it, you may not. It's perhaps a bit more naive in feel, almost child-like in its rendering, but make no mistake, Doucet was/is a master. She actually stopped actively making comics a decade ago (everyone's loss!) but still creates artwork, as you can see on her website.

The details of her departure are chronicled in a series of comics created by Ladydrawers:

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

I also found this blog post that talks about Julie Doucet along with someone considered a fine artist but whose work visually connects with comics, Laylah Ali (who grew up in Buffalo, by the way!). To take you one step further, Art21 has a segment about Ali that you'll find interesting - definitely check it out on your spring break!

Other artists whose work might be influenced by comics that you can research include:

Roy Lichtenstein
Andy Warhol
Raymond Pettibon
Takashi Murakami
Larry Rivers
Jean-Michel Basquiat

See if you can find others, and share them on your blog if you like.