Masterful Marks
Cartoonists Who Changed the World
-
- $12.99
-
- $12.99
Publisher Description
In a first-of-its-kind collection, award-winning illustrators celebrate the lives of the visionary artists who created the world of comic art and altered pop culture forever.
Sixteen Graphic Novel Biographies of:
• Walt Disney • Dr. Seuss • Charles Schulz • The Creators of Superman • R. Crumb • Jack Kirby • Winsor McCay • Hergé • Osamu Tezuka • MAD creator, Harvey Kurtzman • Al Hirschfeld • Edward Gorey • Chas Addams • Rodolphe Töpffer • Lynd Ward • Hugh Hefner
The story of cartoons—the multibillion-dollar industry that has affected all corners of our culture, from high to low—is ultimately the story of the visionary icons who pioneered the form.
But no one has told the story of comic art in its own medium—until now.
In Masterful Marks, top illustrators—including Drew Friedman, Nora Krug, Denis Kitchen, and Peter Kuper—reveal how sixteen visionary cartoonists overcame massive financial, political, and personal challenges to create a new form of art that now defines our world.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Giving top cartoonists a chance to draw biographical comics about their major influences is a bit of a no-brainer. Former Blab editor Monte Beauchamp tasked 16 cartoonists with the creation of graphic portraits of the medium's biggest legends, from Superman's Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster to the "father of manga," Osama Tezuka. Sadly, the list of greats lacks women, reinforcing the erroneous idea that there weren't any prominent female cartoonists active during the period covered. The artists' approaches to biography are as diverse as the subject matter; their best work avoids straight biographical exposition. Marc Rosenthal's Chas Addams strip cleverly imagines the macabre New Yorker cartoonist as ghost relating his own story from beyond the grave, while Peter Kuper's Harvey Kurtzman portrait shows the author pitching the Mad cartoonist his own biography. The Crumb bio by Drew Friedman, meanwhile, is entirely autobiographical, beautifully rendering his interactions with the underground legend in his photorealistic caricature style. Thankfully, few opt to mimic the inimitable style of their heroes, which might have made this colorful traipse through conventional comics history awkward.