Tag: Richard Corben

Illustration Art · Look Here · Original art vs. printed page · Richard Corben

Look Here: NEW TALES OF THE ARABIAN NIGHTS, page 23, by Richard Corben

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I invented a technique —my system of color overlays —which apparently nobody can understand, but it’s really very simple. The luminescent quality of my color overlays is derived from the way I combine the colors. I shoot the photomechanical separations myself, to a slightly higher contrast than a normal photo engraver would do. This makes the colors appear brighter. I’m excited when I do finally see the colors. I can see if my ideas work well or not so well.”
—Richard Corben in conversation with Brad Balfour,
Heavy Metal #53 (August 1981)

Heads Up! · Richard Corben

Heads Up: Corben Art Sale, 16 July 2011

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Richard Corben comic art pages will go on sale via the official Corben website on Saturday 16 July 2011, at Noon, Central Time. The sale will include ten pages from Hellboy: The Crooked Man by Corben and Mike Mignola, ten pages from Corben’s Children of Fire (including the original black-and-white cover art for issue #3 — see above for the colour version), and ten pages from The Bodyssey by Corben and Simon Revelstroke. Right now, the pages are up for “viewing only.” The prices will be posted when the sale goes live. Click here to jump to the sale page.

Heads Up! · Mike Mignola · Richard Corben

Heads Up: HELLBOY: HOUSE OF THE LIVING DEAD by Mignola, Corben, and Stewart

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The Eisner-winning dynamic trio of writer Mike Mignola, penciller/inker Richard Corben, and colourist Dave Stewart reunites for an original 56-page hardcover Hellboy graphic novel (ISBN-10: 1-59582-757-9; ISBN-13: 978-1-59582-757-9), available in November from Dark Horse. “Devastated over the loss of his luchador comrade to vampires,” writes the publisher, “Hellboy lingers in Mexican bars until he’s invited to participate in the ultimate wrestling match with a vicious Frankenstein monster!”

Book/Magazine Covers (All) · Illustration Art · Look Here · Richard Corben

Look Here: 1984 #1 – cover and original art by Richard Corben

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Corben’s unique method of producing full-colour art by combining a continuous-tone black-and-white grisaille (produced using airbrush, pen and ink, markers, pencil crayons, brushes and paint, etc.) with overlaid, handmade colour separations, gave his finished work a luminosity, intensity, and above all, a texture, that artists who relied on airbrush alone struggled to imitate; it also meant that all of the images produced via Corben’s process — including not only many classic covers but also entire graphic novels such as New Tales of the Arabian Nights, the multi-volume Den saga, and the Heavy Metal reprint of Bloodstar — only exist in colour in the printed versions. The cover of 1984 #1 is a case in point:

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Here’s another example.

Book/Magazine Covers (All) · Connections · Illustration Art · Look Here · Richard Corben

Connections: Richard Corben and Jason Brashill

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Corben’s cover art for the debut album by Meat Loaf and Jim Steinman, Bat Out of Hell, is explosive, iconic, classic. And since Bat Out of Hell is one of the best-selling albums of all time, I suspect that a great many people would recognize Jason Brashill’s cover to Judge Dredd 1996 Mega-Special as a homage to it. Still, I am delighted that the magazine’s editors acknowledged, on the indicia page, that the front cover art is “after MEATLOAF: Bat Out of Hell”; I am disappointed, however, that they didn’t see fit to mention Corben by name. Because technically speaking, it’s Corben’s art alone that Jason Brashill’s work is “after”; the typographical choices of the designer of the Bat Out of Hell cover have been completely ignored.

Heads Up! · Mike Mignola · Richard Corben

Heads Up: “Hellboy Library Edition Volume 4”

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Coming in July 2011 from Dark Horse:

At last, the handsome, oversized “Hellboy Library Edition” hardcover series continues with Volume 4, which collects the following two trade-paperback collections of short stories: The Troll Witch and Other Stories, with scripts by Mike Mignola and art by Mignola, Richard Corben, and P. Craig Russell; and The Crooked Man and Others, with scripts by Mike Mignola and art by Richard Corben, Duncan Fegredo, Joshua Dysart, and Jason Shawn Alexander. The book will also include an extensive selection of previously unreleased sketches and designs. If you own any of the previous volumes, you’ll know that Mignola’s much-admired solo art looks absolutely gorgeous in the oversized format, and I expect that the work of Mignola’s hand-picked artist-collaborators will fare just as well, especially with multiple Eisner Award-winning Photoshop magician, Dave Stewart, handling the colours. A must have!

BONUS LINK:

The Art of Coloring: Making Comics With Dave Stewart [Interview]

Heads Up! · Richard Corben

Heads Up: More Corben art for sale…

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On 19 February 2011, Corben Studios will hold another sale of comic art by Richard Corben. The sale is to include twenty-eight pages from the artist’s DC project, Solo, along with all five pages of the story “Herbert West: Reanimator, Part 1: From the Dark,” Graphic Classics [#4]: H.P. Lovecraft (2002). All of the pages have been drawn by Corben with Sharpie and Pigma pens on 11 x 17 inch Strathmore paper, and small scans are available for viewing on the Corben Studios Web site. The pages will go on sale at 12:00 noon CST.

“A note about these pages,” writes Corben on the sale page. “In my own opinion the book Solo published by D. C. Comics in 2003 represents a high point in my comic career. ‘Homecoming’ and ‘The Plague’ are some of the best line art and writing I ever did.”

Here’s a sample page, as it appeared in the published comic:

And here, finally, is a link to the sale page.

Comics · Here, Read · Interviews · John Severin · Look Here · Richard Corben

Look Here, Read: “Interview with John Severin” from 1973 and more!

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From The Mirk-Wood Times #2 (March 1973), here’s an interview with John Severin in which the EC and Cracked stalwart can think of only one underground artist worthy of praise; and if that isn’t a big enough blast from the past, here, too, from Thrilling Adventure Stories #2 (August 1975), is “Town Tamer,” with story by Steve Mitchell and art by Severin:

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“They made a devastation and called it peace” — Roman historian Tacitus on the Roman conquest of lowland Scotland, AD 80-81.