When I say "Who's The Master?" YOU say...

guest article by Michael A Lagocki, man of action

I love great books about people who create comics. While a lot of different publishers have tackled this subject from a lot of different angles, for my money the Modern Masters series by TwoMorrows publishing takes the cake. To date they've done 24 volumes, with the latest volume, featuring Guy Davis (BPRD, The Marquis) arriving in comic shops last week on March 1oth.

This series stands out because of the dedication to uncover good stuff about the subjects. When they advertise their "comprehensive interviews", they really mean it. Most editions have over 100 pages of interview, detailing every major project of the artist's career. With illustrations on every page, including TONS of rare pencils, you get the opportunity to walk through the artist's career. They dig into the artist's total approach, from how to break down the page to how to work with writers and editors, sometimes with brutal honesty. Each time out the door you get a bit of an education on what it's like to work for a comics publisher, and why comic series often go right (or go wrong). The Michael Golden volume in particular is great for this, as Golden really talks about his transition from star artist to editor of a line of books, back to being an artist.

My favorite book of the series is hands down Volume 6: Arthur Adams. As a life long Adams fan, it was mind blowing to see so much art from him I'd never laid eyes on before. Lots of pencils, lots of pages from the artist's hand before the colorists got to them.

Hats off to Eric Nolen-Weathington who seems to be the driving force behind this series, handling most of the interviewing. It's a body of work that gets better every year and I can't wait to see more of where this series goes. The next edition, focusing on Bone creator Jeff Smith, will be released in June.

You can check out the full collection of books, at TwoMorrows here.

-ML

 //Michael Lagocki is one-fifth of the mighty GhostWerks crew, as well as being the driving force behind the pleasantly notorious art activist massive called ArtLoveMagic, dedicated to overcoming Evil with good art.//
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