The Top 10 Comic Book Artists Working Today Countdown List Extravaganza (According to Me, with All Due Respect to You.) #6

Let's get to it, shall we? Next up on our list is the one, the only..

#6. Steve Dillon

I love Steve Dillon. Seriously, how could you not love this guy's art? Now granted, the first time I saw his pencils on Hellblazer or Animal Man or whatever back in the day, I wasn't immediately sold. But it only took a few issues of Preacher to make me a fan. Some of the most memorable frames in Preacher involve the great facial expressions of Tulip, Jessie, Cass and the rest of the crew. I mean, who doesn't remember and love the page with frame after frame of Herr Starr looking at himself in the mirror and trying on every type of hat imaginable in an attempt to hide his...um..."unfortunate accident." Let's all drink a pint of Smithwick's or something for Steve!

The Top 10 Comic Book Artists Working Today Countdown List Extravaganza (According to Me, with All Due Respect to You.) #7

Lindsey decided we should get a portable air conditioner for the bedroom so we just ran out and got one. For whatever reason, the exhaust tube was especially annoying and frustrating to put together. But we conquered it and now its on to the countdown. Ladies and Germs, it's...

#7. Dustin Nguyen

Now I realize its a super stretch to make this comparison, but it seems fitting that Dustin Nguyen would be number seven on my list. What numeral is more angular and jagged than a "7." The angular high contrast art of Nguyen fits Gotham City to a tee. His work with Paul Dini on Detective Comics was no joke some of the most beautiful of last year. I can't wait to see what comes out of his new run on the recently launched Batman: Streets of Gotham. I'm really sorry about comparing his art to the number 7. That was stupid.

The Top 10 Comic Book Artists Working Today Countdown List Extravaganza (According to Me, with All Due Respect to You.) #8

Have you ever made steamed wantons before? We hadn't done but yesterday got a bamboo steamer and made some. They were delicious. The boiling water didn't really help our already hot and humid pad though... Now then, on with the show. The next artist spectacular is...

#8. Doug Mahnke

There's a creepiness to Mahnke's characters and a moodiness to his pages that's just about the coolest thing going in superhero comics. His exaggeratedly heightened-reality pencils made his work on last summer's Final Crisis some of the most memorable. The two issue Superman Beyond may be the high-point in a blockbuster DC event already packed with memorable moments. I can't say I'm waiting with baited breath for this summer's Blackest Night super-event, but with Mahnke set to take over pencils on Green Lantern, at least we'll get some atmospheric and bad-ass art.

The Top 10 Comic Book Artists Working Today Countdown List Extravaganza (According to Me, with All Due Respect to You.) #9

I really aught to have a scanner. I apologize for these somewhat distorted images. Here I am holding down the binding of a Fear Agent trade trying to keep my fingers out of the camera frame so that I can get a good shot of a couple frames of the art from the #9 artist on my list. Well, well, scanner or no I present to you...

#9. Jerome Opeña

Jerome Opeña and his Fear Agent compatriots, Rick Remender and Tony Moore, have blown up over at the House of Ideas. Opeña's early Punisher work is beautiful and I'm sure the Marvel brain-trust has even more big things in store for him in the near future. But the created-owned Fear Agent is still really where its at. Remender's two-fisted deep-space jive talkin' comi-tragic action hero Heath Huston comes alive with Opeña's dynamic pencils. Let's just hope that with all of his well-deserved recent success at Marvel comes a little bit more of his work on the Texas space-cowboy from time to time.

The Top 10 Comic Book Artists Working Today Countdown List Extravaganza (According to Me, with All Due Respect to You.) #10

Ahoy boys and other potential readers. I hope the oncoming Summer weekend finds you in good spirits. So I'm sitting around at work this afternoon with very little work to do and even less motivation to do it and I had a (rare) thought, "There are so many spectacular artists with singular, unique visions working in comics these days. If I made a list of my top 10 absolute favorites, what would it look like?" I wrote a list that included some twenty-odd names. In order to chisel that list down to ten, I set the ultimate inclusion criterion to be the ten current artists who excite me the most when I see their name on the cover of a new comic. Simple, elegant, subjective, and supremely meaningless; just the way I like it. Over the next ten days I will reveal one artist each day, beginning with #10 this selfsame day. Without further ado, I blowhardedly present...

#10. Davide Gianfelice

I hesitated only so very briefly in putting Gianfelice on my list. His output thus far in comics (at least American comics) has been fairly limited. Nevertheless, his expressive pencils on the first Northlanders story arc ("Sven the Returned") were so spectacular - from his figure studies to his landscapes - he couldn't not fit within my list's overly self-aware parameters. After seeing his art in the recent preview pages of the upcoming Greek Street monthly (written by Peter Milligan) and anticipating the second Northlanders "Sven" arc scheduled for release later this summer, I think (cliche alert) the best is yet to come.

Hey! Stop back tomorrow for #9 if ya feel like it.

Michael Moorcock Answered My Question!

boingboing had a contest, in which, if you wrote a question to Michael Moorcock and they liked it enough, they would forward it on to him, and he would answer it. I wrote a question in a comment, and he answered it!

All the questions that made the cut, with their answered were published here at the blog for Tachyon Publications. Mine is the third one down, and probably the wordiest. It starts off with, "I'm curious about...". He didn't really say whether he cared at all about the things I was interested in, but I liked his answer anyway.

The contest will result in three of the questioners getting a copy of the "Best of.." book. Given that his answers to a lot of others were a lot more involved, I doubt I'll win one, but it's still cool that he answered mine.

Take Refuge

Colin MacLifelesson Says "Fuschia, Ya Ya Ya." Okay, guys?

ride the darker wave

shake a little heaven

huggabroomstik

http://funnybookbabylon.com/2009/06/10/fbbp-special-the-huggabroomstik-podcast/