A Pair of Giants
Over the past few days I've been lucky enough to be in the presence of two of my comic book heroes.
Last Saturday, I went to a CAPS dinner honoring Gene Colan. Although Gene's doctors wouldn't allow him to travel to California, we were able to link up with him at his home in Brooklyn via the computer on SKYPE. Mark Evanier, Gerry Conway, and Marv Wolfman were among the guest speakers. Wolfman had commented on how Colan had made him better writer because Gene's naturalistic figures made it impossible for him to get away with writing bad dialogue. It was great that he and his wife Adrienne could share the moment with us despite being 3000 miles away. I was lucky enough to get a few minutes of one on one time with Gene at the end of the event.
On Thursday night, I saw a rare appearance by Robert Crumb at UCLA's Royce Hall. I felt lucky to get in because the reclusive Crumb rarely makes public appearances. The talk was moderated by Francoise Mouly ( The New Yorker, RAW ). Crumb talked about his life growing up, his current life in France, and his most recent project "The Book of Genesis Illustrated". This project was four years in the making for Crumb. He originally expected it to be a year and a half project, but 40 pages in he realized this was going to be a much bigger project. The work is amazing and the Hammer Museum is displaying every original page from the book from Oct. 24-Feb. 7. More info here.
posted by benton jew @ 4:36 PM
6 comments
6 Comments:
Would've loved to have gone to the UCLA event. But I definitely plan to see the Hammer exhibition!
Extremely cool! If memory serves right, there was a bit in one of the magazines about older comics creators, that talked about how Gene Colan was the first artist to walk out of Marvel for creative reasons during the infamous Jim Shooter era, despite the threat of losing his pension. Glad that he's kept afloat and still active. (I remember falling madly in love with his & Tom Palmer's version of the Black Widow in the old days...)
Crumb I never really noticed until the movie doc "Crumb" had come out. Also neat to read that he's staying active as well! :)
Hey Beej -
we have to put up our "Celebrities Drawn from Memory" series..i have a good one of Redd Foxx and Telly Savalas.
Apologies to all for the late replies. It seems to have suddenly gotten very busy for me in Hollywoodland!
Randy-Make sure you see it! It's interesting to see as the pages, are layed out circularly in the exhibit space. Some of his reference material and sketches are also displayed.
crazy_asian_man-It's great to see these guys still have their chops. Crumb especially so. He seems to be doing some of the best work of his career and not losing a step with his meticulous penwork.
D.J.Wong-Those sketches will be up shortly. Better late than never! Of course we have to see your sketches as well, and I will post a link to your site as well.
Two greats, for sure. I love Gene Colan's work since reading his Doctor Strange and Batman as a kid. He also seems to be a very witty fellow - his TCJ interview a few years back had me in stitches!
And Crumb is simply one of the great auteurs of comics, in a class of his own.
I'm quite jealous you made it to both these events!
nice series of cartoons. it brought out the comic sense of it, why don't you try them with loose pencil storyboard
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