#18 - rex hobart and the aliens (03-97) 



this comic is a confused mess. the dialogue is almost overrun by design and image, and is often put in without a character to directly attribute it to, making understanding a bloody hard thing at best. why did i do this? what was wrong with me?

first, i wanted to give props to my friend rex hobart; i would later lay down the original design for his website, long since gone, but just then i was merely an admirer of his work and wanted to mention him. second, this is, unbelievably enough, an homage to an early jim mahfood comic first seen in cosmic toast. a spaceman, or possibly a time-traveller, dimly visible in the second panel below, is getting a drink at a coffeeshop when his is assailed by two new waveish characters, seen without any explanation at all in the final panel.

and that's the sum of the homage. pretty lame.

jim was a huge influence on me, although i would be hard-pressed to point out anything in my style that has any relationship to what he does. he and the 40-oz. crew largely were kansas city comics back in 1995-1997; it was the very presence of their work that encouraged me--through hubris, i suppose--to do my own. naturally, their work then makes mine now look like garbage, so you can imagine the talent they have. my sole virtue has been persistence, but it hasn't apparently paid off any dividends yet. at any rate, their work was, and is, fantastic. they are not perfect artists, and have suffered, in some cases, a dimunition of style. for instance, jim's portrayals of the urban landscape were nothing short of mythic in appearance, something that has, disappointingly, faded from his recent work. his backgrounds have become blocky and simplified, and his quirk of 'product placing' every single store, cultural group, and local band from his community and organization has become almost distracting from his stories. one of the grrlscouts, for instance, will wear a t-shirt that in six different panels in the same narrative scene will in turn advertise five different bands and a skate shop. the eye notices these things.

but jim draws better than i, by god.

someone else will tell you they aren't a fan of mahfood because half of the would-be comic artists in the post-mahfood years here in kansas city copied his style and story-lines slavishly, but with rather less success. this was not necessarily a Good Thing. but as i've always pointed out, this was hardly jim's fault.






 

Posted: Wed - April 14, 2004 at 06:21 AM             |

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